Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  Lydia’s swept the bowl up. Silly witch, must think it’s valuable. She’s slung it in the back seat of her car, is driving away without even going into the chapel. Some blokes would be offended but I can understand. This is my show, and Lydia could never stand for that.

  Jason, James and Kirsten are — shit, kids, just get Mother into the other car, get her home and give her a full glass of brandy. Good. They’re off as well. So nobody will be there to watch me be consumed by flames. A private showing after all. Thanks, God. I mean it sincerely.

  Inside. Not the greatest décor, but you can hardly suit all tastes.

  The bloke who’s going to pull the lever seems respectful but matter of fact.

  Do you know, I haven’t asked myself how this happened. How did I die?

  I was taking pills for angina but I have the feeling I ended up having a stroke. Can’t recall — but suddenly everything looked blue — grey — black … The first thing I remember after that is being in the funeral parlour, seeing Bella, pale as silk, and I knew she had driven up with Eliot.

  Eliot Carten, Nicolas Jones, Walsh Savage. And me.

  And now the heat. I will enjoy this. The heat’s increasing, it’s unbearably glorious. Why do I have an image of roasting nuts? I’m in a swirl of sparks, mosquito points of flame, a billow of white heat and all I can think of is nuts.

  chapter eleven

  A woman can go too far. Jocasta, even these many years later, still wishes she’d set it up as spontaneous combustion. If you go too far, however, you risk serious loss of control. Her purpose? To get things back as close as possible to the way they ought to be. The universe, the multi-layered state in which we live, can be very, very unfair. A woman does what she can to set it right. A woman is owed, expects to achieve, her due. A woman does what is expedient. A woman’s wise and bides her time.

  So. Peter. With his strong black eyes and the wide crooked smile that nailed her to the ground in the little wood on the way to the cliffs of the cold North Sea. How young and fine he was, how beautiful she was, how they delved into each other’s warmth and smiles that summer long, that summer hot and burning in her memory. All she’d wanted at the start was to experiment, explore a strong male body with its firm straight limbs, a firm straight back, a firm unyielding cock. Unyielding, that is, until she’d used it and it nestled soft and sweet as a worm curled up asleep. Jocasta didn’t realise that love would grasp her, body and mind; would delve and turn her inside out and back again until she breathed each moment just for Peter. Peter. Such a beautiful young man, such male perfection.

  ‘You’re walking out a lot these evenings,’ said Grandma from her neat white bed.

  ‘All the better to get exercise,’ replied Jocasta.

  ‘You’re singing a lot about the house,’ remarked Grandma, with her old mottled hands on the white unwrinkled sheets.

  ‘All the better to do the dusting and chop vegetables,’ replied Jocasta.

  ‘You’ve got a glow about you,’ said Grandma. ‘You’ve got a spring in your step.’ Her sharp blue eyes peered at Jocasta’s.

  ‘Mr Wainwright says I look as lovely as my grandma did one summer long ago,’ Jocasta said.

  Grandma snorted. ‘He had a way with words, although with very little else.’

  ‘Do you want a fresh brew of that lemon-balm tea? How’s your cough?’

  The summer may not have been as wonderful as Jocasta and Peter thought. In the memories of other people it might have been wet, or cold, or full of blustery wind. The history books indicate it was indeed good weather, but to Peter and Jocasta it was the season of all joy, the summer of a glorious inner burning. It seemed fitting to Jocasta that the August brought with it the terror and excitement of a worldwide conflagration. And Jocasta was fifteen, beautiful, fresh fifteen: she had faith and hope and all her life ahead of her with her Peter. Of course he was eager to go and show the bully when to stop: he’d volunteered before war was declared, the minute he’d turned eighteen. The air force. And clever enough to get in, too. He was going to be a gunner, was her Peter.

  He was young and strong. He would come back. It was laughable to have any thoughts that weren’t vigorous with love, white hot with hope. The Phoney War, the papers said; but the air force was busy, you’d be fooling yourself if you didn’t know how dangerous that was —

  So the joy of it when Peter came back in his airman’s uniform, a bag slung over his shoulder, to spend three days at home.

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Peter said. ‘I’ve realised, you’re far too young.’

  ‘Are you trying to get away?’ Jocasta teased. ‘D’you meet nicer girls at the aerodrome? Come and see what’s what in the woods.’

  They didn’t take much time to talk, though he said he flew in Hampdens. Flying tadpoles, a squash inside, four men and four bombs to each. When they were up and away flying and he had to test the guns, he told her how the tracers curved away and down, splashing patterns in the sea. When they flew in jet-black cloud above the ocean, ice hurtled off the props and hailed along the outside of the plane. Static sparked around the windows. Uncanny, he said, it made him realise how shut in he was. No, he didn’t like that part.

  ‘Be quiet, then,’ said Jocasta. ‘Lie down. Love me.’

  Three days, then he slung the bag on to his back and waved her another goodbye.

  Oh, Jocasta cried, but they were tears of triumph that he loved her so, and tears of certainty that he’d come back. She would be patient. It would all be over very soon. How could anything bad happen to Jocasta? She was a perfect golden beauty. And Peter was the perfect poppy man.

  Ruth has to blow her nose again as Walsh ushers the others into the living room. She had expected a few tears, not to weep throughout the ceremony as if she had to fill a bath.

  ‘Whiskies all round?’ Walsh asks. ‘You, Bella?’

  ‘Far too early in the day. For God’s sake, make mine a strong one,’ Eliot says.

  Ruth dabs her nose again. Thank goodness she dashed out to the supermarket early and prepared some little bits of things to eat. Tiny pastry cases with sour cream and caviar. Brie, biscuits. She’d known it would end up like this, the four of them. She’d even tidied the living room without really realising, whipped round and sorted things in piles. Chucked out those flowers at last.

  Maybe it was the sound of Walsh and Eliot singing in the church that set Ruth off. She gulps down another sob and goes to fetch the tray. There is something in Walsh’s past that he never talks about. Ruth can live with that. It’s the same stuff she won’t talk about, and Eliot doesn’t mention either. There’s something new as well that she hopes she’ll never have to talk about. It will be ghastly if she gets so upset she blurts out what happened with Craig. Good grief, her judgement took a nose-dive.

  From the kitchen, she glances at the men, side by side at the mantelpiece, and Bella in an armchair looking utterly emptied out. Probably everyone has a minimum of one nasty thing in the woodshed of their past. Even Eliot — he’s travelled in darkest continents and looks battered enough by his experiences to have any quantity of nasty things concealed. He’s developed such a wounded hero look. He never mentions his disastrous marriage to the administrator of an aid agency with whom he had two sons, now elongated, pale-as-milk young men. When Barnaby saw photographs, he claimed Eliot must have conceived them through the sheets.

  And Bella? Ruth knows most things about Bella, at least since Bella arrived, an elf-faced innocent whom Barnaby had swept up in the States where, Ruth suspects, she’d been thoroughly used by some sleazeball. What happens in your twenties scars a person. Ruth’s been Bella’s confidante, a mother figure, pseudo sister, friend. Big sisters get hell of an irritated with their little sisters, sometimes. Like now. Which is unfair. Bella has just been to her discarded husband’s funeral: she is entitled to be irritating.

  Bella’s merely sitting on the sofa. She’s done nothing irritating. That’s the most exasperating thing of all to Ruth.

/>   Ruth hates herself, very often.

  The only thing Ruth doesn’t really know about Bella is what Barnaby had been like for her in bed. Efficient, she has gathered. No problems. But truly the only time Ruth’s seen a radiance of sexual contentment surrounding Bella was that day after she left Barnaby. Even in Ruth’s battle with the menopause, for crying out loud, she feels more of a sexual aura than Bella usually shows. Even in her confusion about what she’s done with Craig … wait a moment, the thing is, all Ruth can recall of that sordid episode is lying flat on her back in the spare bed downstairs, away with the fairies, while Craig did some clambering around. Whatever: it was sadly juvenile behaviour for a woman in her fifties. Earlyish fifties. A woman who is terrified of time to come and what it will do, what it’s already doing to her looks.

  Ruth covers another sob by scooting into the living room with the tray of nibbles. Eliot’s talking about Lydia.

  ‘She’s so conventional, she’s terrifying. Each of her children is a triumph of individuality.’ He sees Ruth coming with the nibbles, looks sick and shakes his head.

  She offers them to Walsh. He stares at Ruth but not as if he sees her.

  ‘I was talking to a famous cook once at some parliamentary function,’ he says. ‘One of those women who make muffins on TV. She’d spoken to a group of army wives and said she’d never seen a plainer lot. She admitted it was a terrible thing to say and the sisterhood should shoot her.’ One of Walsh’s hands is pressed to the small of his back: he must have twisted it again, sitting with both arms round Ruth in the pew. ‘On the whole, navy wives are prettier than army wives. A curious fact. But true.’

  Bella raises her head slowly. ‘What on earth has that got to do with …’ Her voice trails off.

  Walsh’s eyebrows try to twist together. ‘I wasn’t counting Ruth. She’s not a navy wife any more, and … I mean, she’s my wife.’

  ‘There’s a vast difference, I can see.’ Eliot is good at notes of irony, even when he is distressed.

  Ruth’s grateful to see Walsh shut up. He stands in front of the fireplace like a waxwork.

  Eliot takes the tray from Ruth and, with a gentle push, encourages her to sit. She does so, beside Bella. Their hands meet and pat on the cushion. Their rings click together softly. Ruth doesn’t want to be Bella’s mother today, nor her pseudo sister. She wants to curl up on the cushions and sleep until tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, a hibernating mammal.

  Walsh comes to life again. ‘Ruth’s managed to become even more beautiful as she’s grown older. Not like most women. Part of it’s the eyelashes, sooty, thick, you know.’

  ‘This is spooky,’ mutters Ruth.

  ‘She works at it, of course.’ Walsh eases into a chair. ‘Well, that’s legitimate. She doesn’t have to, though.’ He laughs. ‘I mean, I’m no great shakes. Second rate, I know it, I don’t mind. What right have I to demand that Ruth stays beautiful? I’m damned lucky she chose me.’ He takes a sip of whisky with his eyes closed. ‘I’m not like Barnaby. You don’t change a wife like you change a tie.’

  Ruth feels a nasty jolt for Bella’s sake, and takes her hand again. Walsh is on only his first whisky but is acting as if he’s thoroughly drunk. Well, it’s a reminder of the fragility of life when one of your close friends — what was that expression she’d heard one of the nephews use? — carks it. Presumably from carcase. Ruth shivers.

  Eliot’s still on his feet. He put his fists in his pockets and brings his shoulders forward, as if to hide his size so Walsh won’t be alarmed. ‘That camellia of yours is looking sick. Noticed it down the side, as we came in.’

  Walsh springs up in the lumbering way he’s developed since he injured his back: a sideways movement, heave, and stagger. He steadies himself with a hand on Eliot’s shoulder. The men wander off outside, Walsh with his empty glass.

  ‘Thank you, Eliot, you lovely selfless man,’ Ruth murmurs. ‘Walsh doesn’t mean to be offensive. If I tell him he’s been a pig, he’ll be contrite.’

  ‘He’s just confused,’ says Bella. ‘I keep forgetting how long …’ She shakes her head.

  How long Ruth and Walsh and Eliot had known Barnaby. Bella doesn’t know the half of it. Ruth blows her nose again. Bella hasn’t touched her whisky.

  ‘Walsh knows you don’t like spirits, why did he pour one? Would you prefer a wine?’ asks Ruth.

  Bella shakes her head again.

  For a moment, the world is silent except for the whirr of cicadas and a rattle of the side gate as the men go through to the back garden. Too much Ivan is the problem with the camellia. Ruth should have planted him beneath a rose. As if the men care about the shrub, though. They need a moment on their own, that’s all. Poor men. Poor boys. Poor boy.

  ‘Ruth …’ says Bella. ‘Did you talk to Anna, outside the church?’

  Ruth tries to speak through another appalling rush of tears. Her hand has fallen open on her lap: Ivan used to pretend it was a bird if she did that. He’d pounce and then expect a belly rub.

  ‘Anna?’ she says. ‘No, I looked for her but there was such a crowd … I haven’t talked to her for days. She — I was pleased she turned up at the funeral. She should have been there. He was always overly bluff with her, even for him. But he gave her incredible presents. An antique mechanical witch, when she was ten. It waved a broomstick, and sparks exploded from its mouth.’ Ruth’s eyes will not stop filling. Really, she could hire herself out as a professional mourner.

  ‘Anna came around to Eliot’s the other night …’ Bella takes a shuddering breath. ‘Of course, she’s old enough to have affairs.’

  What unusual things one talks about after funerals, thinks Ruth. To avoid mentioning the deceased, it’s understandable. ‘She’s twenty-one years old, at university. Experimenting at least, I’d hope,’ she says. A normal mother would say that, wouldn’t she?

  ‘Oh. Well, I don’t suppose she’d tell you what she was up to.’ An odd expression crosses Bella’s face.

  ‘I don’t think I’d wish to know it all. The only boyfriend Anna told me much about was the one when Jocasta brought the muffins. It hasn’t put her off men, I do know that much. It would be abysmal if she fell for one of the scientific types she meets at work.’ Ruth’s talking too much. She’s too tired, too weepy to make sense.

  There’s singing in the back garden: ‘The Last Rose of Summer’ in baritone and bass. What sad clowns. The song stops abruptly at the end of the first verse.

  ‘Walsh. Barnaby. And Eliot,’ says Bella. ‘Thirty years. Since university.’

  Ruth shakes her head. Longer for Eliot and Barnaby. They’d gone through school together. Walsh and Nicolas met them later, doing maths and in the choir. ‘I wasn’t a very good navy wife, you know, for all that I may have been a pretty one. False modesty’s not becoming. I know I was a pretty one. It meant the senior officers came on to you on the outskirts of official functions.’ Ruth’s pleased how bright she sounds. ‘No, I was a hopeless navy wife. I thanked God when Walsh was seconded to the Ministry and we could move back here. I laughed when he nearly drowned, each time. Of course it wasn’t really laughter.’ She holds down a sudden sob. ‘I know I’m not much of a mother to Anna, either. I suppose it’s partly the career.’

  ‘Anna and Walsh like it when you’re recognised,’ says Bella.

  ‘Anna resents it, too.’ Ruth twists her fingers in her lap. ‘Children are cunning that way. They can be proud of what you do and simultaneously resent it. I daresay it wouldn’t be much fun if it were all simple and straightforward.’

  Cicadas. Bees. The breeze. Another sob.

  ‘You didn’t look after me in church,’ Bella says. ‘That’s all right. I didn’t really want you to. That photo of him in the …’ The funeral programme. ‘Just about made me fall over. But that’s all. I haven’t cried.’

  There isn’t any answer Ruth can think of. And she had laughed when Walsh nearly drowned. It had been funny. Such bathos. A naval captain tripping off a jetty. Into f
our feet of a seaweed puddle, like miso, that Japanese soup. It was particularly funny because he was hardly ever on a ship; he taught maths to the ratings, poor creatures. Besides, she hadn’t known about it till days later when Walsh was safely out of hospital. She’d been in London, enjoying (not accepting) the advances of a fashion designer who’d been trying to confirm he wasn’t gay. As if she cared. What had bothered Ruth was that the man was far more beautiful than she.

  Ruth hates herself, very often. When she’d laughed that time, back home in Devonport and Walsh had told her of his accident, it had looked as if Walsh might hate her too. He sat sulking in the evening light, very dark about the jaw line. What was a wife to do? She’d gone to the bedroom, undressed completely, adorned herself with all her jewellery as if she were an Eastern slave-girl, even chains around one ankle, and returned to the living room to cheer him up. It worked, too. It didn’t work so well a few years later when he was miffed about something else and Anna woke and came through with a ten-year-old pout to ask for help with a project on volcanoes that was due next morning. Ruth had felt exceptionally stupid, crouched behind the sofa in a state of undress while Walsh tried to get Anna back into her room with the encyclopaedia.

  This very sofa, which they’ve had for twenty years. Where Barnaby sat and wept angry gut-deep sobs because Bella had walked out; where he’d told Ruth he was going to have a break in Sydney — how that hurt Bella! Where he sat and described his symptoms for angina and blamed them all on Bella. Where Walsh had sat a few weeks past and talked about the new medication for men’s problems, which might help him and Ruth out because it was not as if he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t even sure there was a problem but the medication was available so it made him wonder, that’s all. He loved her. Really. But he wasn’t sure if Ruth was still as interested as she said she was. They had a long discussion, that night, ending up with no conclusions. Some women might not want their men to have help for that sort of problem. Some men might not want help either, they might be thoroughly relieved. Some couples just get tired and need a break. Some couples just get tired.