Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  Well, that’s what she said. It must have been the climate, there’s no other explanation. The child, Horus, with the hot climate and being a deity as well no doubt, grew faster than tomato plants in summer and brought his father back to life. Seth killed Osiris a second time, cut the body into fourteen chunks and scattered them, here, there. Isis set about collecting them. A tidy goddess, Isis. Some versions say she buried them in one place, while others say she buried each sad portion where she found it. Some versions say she didn’t find the phallus, it was swallowed by a fish. It would be more exciting if a crocodile had snatched it, but a fish is bad enough.

  Jocasta has it figured out. The versions which leave the bits all scattered are by people who feel rage towards the dead. The versions which say Isis gathered Osiris together are by neat and orderly folk.

  It takes all sorts. The important thing’s to understand what variety you are.

  Yes, Jocasta has it figured out. Isis was a prototype good wife, good widow and good mother. That’s exactly what Jocasta planned to be.

  There was a catch, mind you, for Isis. That son of hers! He cut his mother’s head off and replaced it with a cow’s head. Cows can be very beautiful: those huge liquid brown eyes, those lovely bigboned heads. Isis was still a goddess, for all the horns and big brown eyes. Cow, world without end. Amen.

  Some mothers can be real cows at times. Some cows are better mothers than some women.

  Jocasta, sitting thinking in the dark. The blackout curtains drawn, the baby sleeping — such a good child, sleeping all night though he is only five weeks old — and now just waiting for the knock of Geordie’s boots against the stoop as he bangs the mud off. Then a nice little dinner, like a good wife. Though they won’t be having bacon. There’s the rationing, but you can get it if you have the contacts. She and Geordie like its salty smell, its juicy fat. They like chewing the last sweet white off the rind. But Geordie’s against bacon at the moment because of Mr Wainwright. Poor old man, choked on a bacon and chutney sandwich and died of a heart attack soon after.

  So you think Jocasta poisoned Mr Wainwright? That’s a laugh. There’s a difference wider than the distance between the cold North Sea and the warm Pacific Ocean between poisoning someone so you kill them, which would be murder, and just giving them a moment of discomfort. Choking to death wasn’t what she’d had in mind, but old men can choke easily.

  The nasty old man deserved it. The daffodil would just have been enough to give him a belly ache. Maybe. It has sometimes been a cause of cardiac upheaval.

  According to Jocasta’s Grandma, if you don’t know exactly what will happen with a recipe, you can hardly be blamed for any consequence. You provide the food. And someone eats it. All you’ve done is put it out there. They’re the ones who pick it up. They’re the ones who do the chewing.

  Peter was a different case. Jocasta is sorry he’s gone, but she wanted Peter, not a shadow of him, not a man who’d sift around like ashes, like an adumbration. That means shadow, in the sense of faint resemblance. Jocasta is a well-read, self-educated woman, thank you.

  Shall I let you know more about Geordie? He’s very partial to a strawberry, in season. He’s a chunky man with sleeked-back carroty hair and pale eyes. He works down on the Whitby docks in an essential occupation. Can’t go to war, because his eyes are much too pale. That’s his joke — not a good one, but Jocasta lets him think she laughs at it. In fact, he’s colour blind, has trouble with some greens and yellows, not a common form of it, but it’s a fact and Geordie keeps it hidden. Strange, isn’t it, what embarrasses some folk?

  He’s the opposite of strong red Peter with the black black eyes. Geordie can’t go out in the sun, he burns too fast; he takes care of his skin, does Geordie. He’s a hairy man, like Esau, sandy riffles on his back and on his shoulders, wide sandy vee of chest hair and, down below, a very bright carroty patch. He’s brawny. You have to be brawny, working on the docks. You have to be, to shrug off comments made by people who don’t know you’re colour blind and are doing essential work.

  You have to be very strong to take on a young woman who is going to have a baby out of wedlock.

  In fact, Geordie wanted to get married before little Felix was born. Jocasta’s mother said she was all for Jocasta getting married, though she wasn’t so very keen it be with Geordie. She might have been jealous, for she never had a husband of her own, or not for long. Grandma had died — did I tell you? Yes, of course. Old Grandma came downstairs with her wheezing and her shaky, white old legs, and sat beside the kitchen table while she coaxed Jocasta through the reading of the strange old writing, told her how to measure and mix, how long to let it steep. Old Grandma and Jocasta had always been of one mind about most things. Old Grandma died very pleased, with the cordial and her elderberry wine.

  So: Geordie would marry a girl who’d fallen pregnant and save her from the talk and sidelong glances. Jocasta thought about it for a few days, wandering in the wood with her belly swelling up as proud as treasure, her toes winking out beneath it as she walked over the dead leaves, past a bent old oak where a troop of squirrels frolicked up the trunk, their tails bannering behind, chk chk.

  She didn’t mind the sidelong glances. She was strong as well. What was, is now. It ever shall be. And Peter had concurred in her decision.

  Of course, there was one little paragraph in Grandma’s recipe book that talked about hypnotism. Jocasta didn’t believe such things, not really. But that very first day in the kitchen, when the sun shone warm and yellow, toffee sunshine on the table, and the silver spoon flung glitter in Peter’s eyes — you could forgive a girl who was curious and thought she’d see if that particular notion of her Grandma’s had any meat in it.

  Some men are warm as toffee in your hands, as firm and malleable as dough. Some men are richly sweet beneath your mouth.

  Jocasta walks in the woods, hearing the chk of squirrels, chk-chk-chik of blackbirds calling their warning. She scents the sharpness of a fox and remembers Grandma. Peter’s little son yawns inside her and stretches out, a heel beneath her ribs, fist in her pelvis. He’ll be a tall child, this. Is it fair to give him a short father? He will outstrip his dad.

  Will jealousy come into it? Geordie looks like a man who will be jealous.

  We know what she decided. You don’t know about the jealousy, that’s all. Just wait and listen. This is not yet the middle of the war. There’s quite enough going on, so many hardships. The petty frills of human passion can be put on hold while we deal with rationing, try to get through the bombing, and wonder how on earth we can gather bits and pieces to have some sort of show for Jocasta’s wedding. Well, Jocasta, you can’t have more than a new dress, and if you think you’re being hard-done-by you are childish. You can have a nice dark serge with some white at the collar to draw people’s attention from your waist. Hold the bouquet so: we’ll take a photograph.

  Even six months pregnant, Jocasta is the prettiest woman around. Jocasta’s mother smiles with her mouth but her forehead’s creased like paper. Geordie smiles as wide as the Humber (it’s a bleak-looking river, but you can’t deny it’s wide) and kneads his bride’s shoulder with his solid freckled hand. The other chaps might mutter, but they know Geordie’s on to a bit of all right, by heck. She knows what’s what, in the dark. A woman with a child inside is such a mystery.

  ‘What hotel will you be staying at in Vancouver?’ Walsh stands at the table with his open briefcase, scuffles his fingers through a folder, lets it slap down on the floor and pulls another out. After a moment, his fingers stop. Ruth hasn’t answered. He looks up. His close-cropped hair, round face, the expression in his brown eyes make him seem vulnerable, upset like a small boy.

  Ruth’s heart twists with love.

  ‘Crown Plaza, Royal Plaza, they’re all pretty much the same.’ She picks up a pitcher of dying delphiniums, and some shrivelled blue drifts to the floor. There’s a secret to keeping flowers fresh and Ruth has not a clue what it might be. ‘I can’t remember
the time difference. It’s best if I call you.’

  ‘I like to know, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll leave it written down.’ She won’t. She can’t. ‘Sorry, Walsh, I hate travelling. Hours in a tin can. I’m more edgy than usual this time, and there’s so much to organise before I go.’ God, she sounds artificial.

  He smiles, a little tightly. ‘Leave some things to me. I’ll get the garage door fixed.’

  She should have had that done already. She bustles the vase into the kitchen and empties it. The petals block the sink. ‘Dinner in an hour, all right?’

  Walsh calls after her. ‘What time does the plane leave?’

  Shit, she ought to have the answer ready. ‘Oh — around two. I’ll get a taxi. It’s a few days off, why worry now?’

  He appears in the kitchen with her. ‘I could change my plans, you know. I could come too. We haven’t travelled together for years.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much fun.’

  ‘What sort of fun do you want? You can’t spend all your time with manufacturers and style gurus.’

  ‘Don’t be suggestive, darling, or sarcastic. Neither suits you.’ That was bitchy too. She knows it. Ruth turns and tickles her hands up into his armpits. ‘Why don’t I come with you, next time you hit the Pacific?’

  He pulls back. ‘If I lost a stone, you’d let me come. You don’t want to be seen with a chubby old man, is that it?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Shit and shit, Walsh is impossible when he thinks he’s second best. If she doesn’t handle this correctly, he’ll suspect all kinds of stuff.

  ‘So this is just your normal cleaning frenzy before you head off overseas,’ says Walsh, whose expression doesn’t seem quite right, to Ruth.

  This is relatively normal marital friction — it must be. Ruth sticks her hands back into his armpits. ‘Why don’t you want me with you in Rarotonga?, she says. ‘What’s wrong with me coming to Apia next time? You don’t want a wrinkled old crow around?’

  He’s supposed to laugh and say she’s gorgeous, ask what she’s cooking for dinner as a husband should when he simply wants reassurance that he’s sexy but doesn’t want to expend physical energy on proving it. After a very brief moment he puts her aside and opens the grog cupboard. So he does think she’s a wrinkled crow.

  Damn it, she is having a face lift against all her better judgement to stop herself from becoming a wrinkled crow.

  Life is so unfair.

  A wife is supposed to boost her husband’s self-esteem.

  Vice versa.

  Ruth is in her kitchen with her husband of twenty-nine years. She has never felt more lonely in her life.

  ‘There’s something I’ve been trying not to say,’ says Walsh.

  Then don’t, you silly old fool, she wants to snap.

  He turns away from her. ‘I found a condom under the bed.’

  What on earth’s a wife supposed to say to that? If this is criticism of her housekeeping — but she doesn’t know what it is, because she and Craig used the spare bedroom and she can’t even remember if they used protection.

  ‘What bed?’ she asks.

  He glares.

  ‘When?’

  He glares again.

  ‘How did it get there?’ asks Ruth. ‘Was it used?’ What a disgusting thought. ‘Or still in the packet? Walsh, what the hell is this?’

  ‘I wish I knew. Enjoy your trip. I forgot to say — I’m off to Samoa tomorrow. I’ll be late tonight, too. Meeting. At the Ministry. Emergency.’ He dips his hand into his pocket, draws something out. Ruth’s palm opens instinctively to take it. A little square golden packet, with something round and ring-like slipping about inside. ‘I suppose we’ll discuss it, some day. You and me, I mean.’

  ‘When did you find it?’ shouts Ruth. ‘You still haven’t said where! What about dinner? Stay here and talk to me now!’

  But, just like a husband, he slides all the folders back into his briefcase, clicks it shut and strides out of the door.

  Infuriating husbands, every decade, every era. Infuriating, whether they’re alive or dead. Follow me, I know the way, out the gate of the Chatham Marine Barracks. Wheeling to the left we march up barrack hill, through Old Brompton, and now on to the Lines. No, it isn’t railway lines or clothes lines, it’s an open piece of ground about a mile outside Chatham, and we’re talking about a great-great uncle of Ruth’s who was in the Royal Marines, a lively likely lad, and aren’t they all? Harry Diggins, and he had a wife and son. They were practising manoeuvres there one windy, grey-cloud day, and wind makes young men skittish. The order came, ‘Stand easy!’, which young men take as a chance to jump and skylark. Harry Diggins turned a somersault. His bayonet slipped from his scabbard and pierced right through his chest. Up ran the major, too late to do a thing of course, or there’d be no story in it. ‘Is there any last request!’ he cried.

  ‘Oh, sir,’ gasped Harry Diggins. ‘I would like my son to go to Greenwich College.’

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ promised the major.

  Harry, on that cue, expired. Dead. Just like that. An accident.

  What would you reckon widowed Mrs Diggins thought of her husband’s last request? Greenwich College? Where they train little boys to be marines? A large building of two storeys, and in its grounds a full-rigged ship fitted up like a man-of-war. Around the outside of the bulwarks a netting is spread out. Why? To catch any little boy who falls during sail drill or spar drill. Widows and mothers must put up with male skylarks, pick up the bits that fall.

  At Greenwich Hospital, you hear the ruined old sailors sing ‘The Sailors’ Alphabet’:

  E is the Ensign that flies at the peak

  And F is the Fo’c’sle where some they do sleep

  G is our Guns that stands between decks

  and H is our Hawsers that gets well stretched

  In the chorus, all the old men beat upon the floor with their crutches, and those that have them drum with their wooden legs.

  So merry, so merry, so merry are we

  No mortals on earth are like sailors at sea

  No man on earth, in Ruth’s opinion, could be as irritating, stone-walling, as Walsh. No woman on earth could be as foolish, as beset in every way, as Ruth herself.

  She’s wrong. Everybody has a turn. Even Jocasta.

  part three

  spotting fakes

  chapter eighteen

  Barnaby’s still floating round. He wonders if it is because there are so many jobs he’s left undone. Like: never telling his mother he loved her. All he remembers along those lines is one Mothering Sunday in the Cathedral, in the aisle with a group of other kids all holding posies of some sort with a sprig of maidenhair fern. His sprig was bent. He felt a real nong, waiting till his father (not an archdeacon yet, nor yet excessively tippled) gave the word to hand it to your mother as a gesture of how much you cherished her. Even in his twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, Barnaby never told his mother he loved her because she seemed to take real notice of him only when he was badly behaved. It would have been overly self-serving to say he loved her when she was having a go at him.

  There, he’s admitted he was sometimes badly behaved. That’s progress, surely?

  After a blur of time, an attempt to focus in the mist, he doesn’t notice any change in his condition. There’s no immediate reward, then, for admitting minor sins. But — he’s feeling ghostly now, not feeling so angelic.

  He probably never told Bella often enough he loved her, either. He did, though — love her — didn’t he?

  I care for nobody, no, not I, For nobody cares for me.

  His absent internal organs twinge, like a phantom toe that’s long been amputated and tossed in the hospital incinerator — he’d have thought you didn’t ache in this suspended spiritual state. He’d thought you couldn’t take it with you, worldly goods or worldly guts; you have to leave it all behind.

  He’d never liked that sentence in the marriage vows: With all my worldly
goods I thee endow. He said as much to Bella. ‘That doesn’t mean I want your battered suitcase. You look like a refugee with it. Bung it in the mini-skip next time we clear out junk.’

  ‘You can’t find that kind of leather any more,’ Bella answered. ‘Wait and see. Those things are going to bring in a fortune.’

  ‘Don’t tell me my job,’ said Barnaby.

  ‘It was my mum’s suitcase,’ Bella said. ‘The others beetled off as fast as they could with the silver but they were fine about me having this.’ It held her grandfather’s christening gown. And half a damask tablecloth. The other half? God knows where that is now. One side of Bella’s family verged on the aristocratic, had a dining table that seated twenty. Yes, there was the coal man and the stevedore but there was a posh side too, and it had a fearful argument about their father’s will. It was all reported in the Evening Star, Dunedin, 1912, in the tiny serif font that papers used back then. The daughter never spoke to her brothers again. If she saw them coming down George Street, she’d stick her nose in the air and strut to the other side.