Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  Unless you are Jocasta.

  chapter twenty

  Jocasta’s mother, who hasn’t got a name and doesn’t really need one for the story, has aged a lot. It seems to Jocasta to have happened overnight, but a lot of time — three years — has trickled by since her mother came to help out when Jocasta couldn’t stop those dreams about walking in the woods. Her mother is still beautiful, still bitter-looking too, like a flower spike on a cactus. But she isn’t colouring her hair any more. She tinted it till half way through the war. She used some of Grandma’s recipes, the beauty remedies, simple things for coughs and such, so she didn’t despise or fear all Grandma’s secrets. For her hair, she used henna and sage. Now Jocasta’s mother has let the grey come through at her roots and she looks like a fluffy tabby cat. Jocasta likes it. Even in her outrage, disbelief at what has happened, Jocasta sees her mother growing into her true self, an individual, at peace within — and the bitterness is part of it. She is more eye-catching now than when Jocasta was a child and the parade of hopeful grocers, sailors, soccer players, even a policeman once, came calling.

  Jocasta is on the blue cretonne sofa in the new house Geordie’s bought — yes, bought — near Cottingham Road. How did he manage that in a few war years!

  Her mother pats Jocasta. Jocasta looks at their hands, her own cupped on the sofa cushion like a sea shell of some strange kind, her mother’s resting on it like a leaf, blue veins and mottles. A shell. A leaf. Washed along in the tide, puffed up and away in a wind.

  In front of the hearth, smoothing at his hair, stands Geordie. The fire isn’t lit: the grate behind him’s scoured clean. It’s summer. Is it? Yes. But Jocasta feels cold — her hands, that is, even with her mother rubbing them. Inside, she feels herself begin to burn like a stove-top element.

  ‘Felix,’ Jocasta says. ‘I want him back.’

  ‘That’s what we’d planned.’ Geordie rocks on his heels. ‘Once we’d done for Hitler.’

  ‘So send for him. I’ll have my boy. I posted him a special present just the other day and promised I’d see him soon.’

  ‘You haven’t heard what Geordie’s told you,’ says her mother. ‘I don’t want to be hearing it myself. What a terrible to-do.’

  ‘I’ll have my boy.’

  The others shake their heads. Geordie’s smoothing at his hair again, and rocking. It’s the day after VE Day. Streamers in the streets, and dancing. Geordie will topple backwards into the high mantel shelf if he keeps rocking on his heels that way.

  ‘I never liked it,’ her mother says. ‘But I couldn’t argue that you needed a chance to improve. Doctor’s orders. And it was safer for the boy to leave him there. They were meant to be nice folk. Geordie checked them out, Jocasta. He promised me he’d checked them out as carefully as he could. Just as minders. For fostering. Unofficial.’

  ‘We had to get you well again,’ says Geordie. ‘And it made sense to leave him there for his protection.’

  Jocasta’s forehead puckers: why did men think if they repeated what a woman said it would be any clearer?

  ‘How could I know what those crazy folk would do?’ There’s just a tinge of whining in his voice.

  Those crazy folk had left Thwaite months ago. They’d left a clutch of letters for a neighbour to send on. Nobody seems to know a forwarding address for the folk themselves. There’s a whisper they were hoping to go abroad, but people can’t travel out of the country yet, of course.

  ‘They took my Felix.’

  Jocasta’s mother nods.

  There’s buzzing in Jocasta’s head like the faint high shriek of crickets in the bomb sites. ‘The authorities will know he’s not their son. They don’t have papers —’ In fact they would have papers, Jocasta realises. Ration books, all kinds of bits of paper.

  ‘They’re a cunning pair,’ says Jocasta’s tabby-haired mother. ‘A lot of people lost their papers in the bombing. There’s been worse muddles than this, it seems, but — Geordie, are you certain you’ve done all you can? Why didn’t you tell us before? At once?’

  Geordie smiles: his face goes tea-coloured as his freckles move together. ‘You must trust me. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to the lass till I’d been thorough.’ He tells them how he’s driven up to Thwaite and knocked on doors, doors in grey stone houses up and down the street; he’s stood on the hump-backed bridge wondering where to ask next while the water beat and babbled on the stones. He stood looking at the calm green fields with their wanders of grey stone walls, incredulous that things can lie so calm. He asked in the villages nearby, Muker, Butter Tubs and Gunnerside. He talked to the authorities, the police, all sorts. He’s done all that can be done.

  Geordie’s being very plausible.

  Jocasta takes in a breath of cold living-room air and it turns to fire inside her. ‘I will have a straight answer to this next question, please. If they moved on months ago with no forwarding address, why didn’t all my little presents come back marked “address unknown”?’

  Geordie shrugs.

  ‘I sent those silver trinkets,’ her mother says. ‘They’ll have got a good price there.’

  ‘Where did those people take my baby?’ cries Jocasta.

  ‘Four years old,’ says Geordie in an inadvertently correcting tone.

  Jocasta’s mother gives a look fit to wither him.

  Jocasta quiets down. In a strange way she is enjoying this. Someone has got her son. She’ll fight as ferociously as the women in old stories fought for theirs, for their children, lovers, husbands: women like Isis, Boadicea, Medea — no, that last one killed her children when she got so mad with Jason, the one who stole the golden fleece. Medea had justification, of course, because of how badly Jason treated her. This is not the time to go into that; Jocasta must think of herself. Jocasta’s an ordinary young woman (seems, that’s to say, she seems an ordinary young woman), but that hardly means she lacks the nerve, the strength, the wit, to get exactly what she wants, however long it takes.

  ‘I will find Felix.’ Jocasta hasn’t raised her voice but Geordie takes a step back, does bump his head on the mantel, and Jocasta’s mother presses harder on her daughter’s hand.

  ‘We can’t count on it.’ Geordie rubs the back of his skull.

  Jocasta takes in another breath and her mother quickly stills Geordie, quiets Jocasta with a patting motion on the air.

  ‘I’ll get him back,’ Jocasta says. ‘I’ve got a world of patience in me. I will trace them.’

  Her mother looks a little sick. Geordie reminds her that the couple’s name is Smith.

  So. Something doesn’t feel quite right. There’s a year or so of fuss, a pale word for the anger and distress Jocasta feels, but she keeps an even temper. She buys little toys and clothes for Felix still, and stores them up. Blue slippers. A pair of wellingtons. Black boots for school, because he’s five. Her mother comes back to stay, and there’s tension that simply won’t lift.

  ‘They might be in Australia by this time,’ Geordie says. ‘Or they might have moved on to the other place. The one next to it.’

  ‘Australia?’ asks Jocasta.

  ‘End of the bloody earth,’ says Geordie. ‘I called it a day, long since.’

  Jocasta’s mother stands up as if she wants to belt him one.

  ‘Enough of that,’ growls Geordie.

  ‘I don’t know what it’s like down there,’ Jocasta shouts. ‘I don’t know what they’d do to my boy down there!’

  ‘Human nature is the same the whole world over.’ Jocasta’s mother speaks through pinched lips. ‘More’s the pity.’

  ‘Geordie got rid of him. You were jealous of my boy,’ Jocasta whispers.

  He scowls: a fair man can look dark. ‘I got rid of him, as you call it, because you were not able to be a mother, that’s why. Let alone much of a wife.’

  ‘She kept the coal range leaded, and the tap on that boiler shone,’ Jocasta’s mother says. ‘She kept your trousers creased, no matter what.’

  ‘
She did,’ Geordie agrees. ‘And if it is Australia, there’s a lot of folk wanting to be off there to get a decent life for their children. We should be grateful we can think on the positive side.’ He licks his upper lip, a dart of his tongue in and out. ‘We’ll have kids of our own now, my lass.’

  Jocasta’s mother does belt him one, a flick on his arm. ‘You can’t replace a child!’

  His own hand rises in a fist — he holds it still.

  Jocasta’s mother does what women always do when there’s a crisis: bustles off to brew a pot of tea. Geordie smooths his hair, he’s always smoothing his hair.

  There will be no child unless it’s Felix. Jocasta will make sure of that, no matter what Geordie might think. Her mother’s on her side, and Geordie’s just a little apprehensive: she’s in control again.

  Jocasta hears the hiss of the gas flame. The gas is nothing to how furious she feels inside where it’s fired by how powerless she seems — seems, mind you, only seems. Geordie may have done his best. It isn’t good enough. But she keeps her fury hidden because Geordie has very much the upper hand at the moment as far as money goes. All she can do, for the next few years, is wait.

  Pride tastes like a bolus of bitterness. It sits heavily in your stomach, burns the inside of your ears and makes your nose smart. Pride hurts from your stomach to your scalp. Ruth hasn’t been able to write a word all morning. She swallows her pride and phones the Ministry.

  ‘Ruby, it’s me,’ she tells Walsh’s PA. ‘Walsh didn’t leave me an itinerary for his trip and he’s gone already. Can you fax one?’

  There’s a curious silence.

  ‘His trip?’ For a few moments the phone makes a distant furry hushing like the inside of a sea shell. Ruby must be holding it against her bosom — Ruth’s seen her cup the receiver like a holy relic to her cleavage, eyes uplifted while she thinks. There comes a little clearing of the throat. ‘He’s here in the office, Mrs Savage. Perhaps you’d like to speak to him.’

  ‘Walsh,’ says Walsh’s voice.

  ‘What do I have to do to speak to you in person?’ asks Ruth. ‘Face to face.’

  ‘Right now is awkward.’ Walsh sounds distant, hurt. ‘Anyway, you might prefer to speak to someone else.’

  Ruth’s ears fizz. She hears the whoosh of far-off galaxies. Walsh knows — or seems to know, at very least suspects — she’s had it off with Craig. Which she has. And she should not have done. It wasn’t even fun.

  ‘So,’ says Walsh.

  ‘Walsh,’ says Ruth.

  They are not doing clever things with words. If she wants to save this marriage, such as it is these days, she had better think at light-speed. Shit, it’s the only marriage she’s got.

  ‘You don’t want to come home for a couple of hours?’ she asks.

  Walsh makes a non-committal growl that probably means Ruby has appeared at his shoulder waving a memo from the Minister.

  ‘Right. I’m booking a room at the James Cook,’ says Ruth. ‘I’m taking my red nightgown and the silver candles. Give me forty-five minutes. Then be there, Walsh, or else.’

  She drops the phone because she has to scramble. If she doesn’t arrive before him she will be in a heap of trouble. A bigger heap. But you don’t need to pack a lot for an afternoon in a hotel. Red nightgown. Candles. Wine? Room service will take care of that.

  It’s nice when a woman has some independent income and keeps it independent too. Come on, how did you think Ruth would get away with paying for a face lift without letting her husband know? It’s so lucky she does her own tax.

  Where the hell is her red nightgown? She scuffles through the dressing-table drawer, hurls everything out on the floor. There’s the man’s nightshirt she takes away with her because she can tuck her feet up in it: sexy, it is not. There are long-sleeved winceyettes with buttons to the neck, the ordinary t-shirt ones she wears for everyday. That should be everynight. No silky satin-and-lace is there at all. No wonder magic’s vanished from the marriage. She tosses the contents of the next drawer and the next on top of the first pile. Belts, scarves; a leotard so old it looks like a nineteen-forties bathing costume, a white camisole that’s yellowed; the blue and white lace garter from a wedding day. Knickers she’s never worn because they’re too tight around the hips — why can’t they make knickers for a woman who has hips? — and a crumpled purple silky thing.

  Baffled for a moment, Ruth holds it up. It’s a lace and silk teddy, the mistake she made four years ago in Paris. It’s the colour of eggplant, with diamante shoulder straps and snap fasteners on the crotch. Ouch. She can’t remember how French sizes translate, but this purple thing might do. It will damn well have to do.

  She leaves the mess on the floor, stuffs a lacy black shawl and the teddy (why is it called a teddy? Is it named for things to cuddle, or for things that should be shot?) into a hold-all and runs down to the living room for the candles. She takes the stairs two at time back to the ensuite for a quick tooth-brushing, grabs her hairbrush and her make-up case and finally gets to the garage. She throws herself into the car, turns on the ignition and presses the automatic door opener.

  The door lifts a hand’s breadth and stops with a Ragnarok groan.

  What the hell use is a husband if he doesn’t do the man jobs round the house?

  Ruth flings out of the garage, cursing. About to jab her cellphone for a taxi, she sees a woman with a stroller at the bus stop down at the corner. She checks her watch. The bus! By the time a cab arrives, she could be walking into the hotel, with time to struggle into the eggplant thing before Walsh gets there. She sprints towards the stop, the bus arrives, and it’s a day of one minor miracle at least because the driver sees her coming and waits.

  The bus starts with a jerk before she’s found a seat. She tumbles into a space beside a sleepy-looking woman.

  Ruth tries to catch her breath. She hopes this surprise turns out better than the last one she organised for Walsh. That was for a weekend at Lake Taupo. It took three days to resurrect their marriage then. It was unfortunate about the eco-trip. A twilight tour around the edges of the water to see delicate egrets, fluffy ducks, flotillas of black swans, volcanic puffs of steam like the exhalations of the gods (or sleeping demons) on the lovely green-clad slopes. The clouds, the colours of the sky, reflected in the lake. Romantic stuff, an idyll.

  But Walsh, a naval captain seconded to the Ministry — he’s got a personal secretary but we won’t go into details for reasons of national security and potential diplomatic embarrassment — where were we? Walsh. Stepped out to help Ruth disembark, ignoring the startled warning of the tour guide that the boat wasn’t tied up yet. Walsh dropped into the lake and nearly drowned. He accused Ruth of laughing, hysterical laughter, it was very bloody certainly not funny. But laughter was the way Ruth made her complicated feelings manifest.

  It did work okay, really, that weekend. Patched things up. It papered over the cracks. The difficulty is knowing whether ‘papered over cracks’ is the right term. Surely it should be ‘forged stronger ties’? This is something Walsh recognises in his work for the Ministry of Defence — the importance of choosing the right phrase, giving a comfortable false impression to soothe international feathers.

  In a marriage, who is trying to fool whom?

  Ruth lets out a little groan. She is on a city bus heading for an assignation with her own husband, a man who doesn’t want to be there.

  Shit, she hasn’t booked the room. She drops the hold-all beside the seat, delves into her handbag for the cellphone, gets hold of directory service, and connects to the hotel. The sleepy woman next to her perks up and stares.

  ‘Just the one night,’ says Ruth into the phone. ‘Thank you. I’ll be there in the next few minutes.’

  ‘You’re the fashion person,’ says the revived woman.

  Ruth smiles.

  ‘You recommended sewing different coloured buttons on an old cardie to rejuvenate it.’

  ‘I did.’ She pinched the idea from an overseas maga
zine.

  ‘You said, “Don’t be afraid.” Don’t be afraid. About buttons. I had to laugh.’ The woman stares at Ruth, eyes slitted. ‘You live in town. You’re one of the Wadestown celebs. And you’re going to a hotel for a night.’

  Ruth smiles more thinly. Thank God, they’ve reached the Quay. As the bus halts outside Kirkaldies and Ruth stands, the woman calls out.

  ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t, dear.’ A witchy cackle.

  Despite the glee on the faces of the other bus passengers, the studied blandness of the smile on the face of the hotel receptionist, Ruth says a prayer of thanks that she lives in a small city. She still has ten minutes before Walsh arrives.

  Except she feels exhausted as well as damp with sweat. She flops across the big soft hotel bed and closes her eyes. No, better put her feet up on the pillow so blood will run to her head and revitalise her. She swings her legs around and counts while she breathes in deeply, holds it for a beat of three, then out again. Three full breaths should do it — but it’s so relaxing that she lets herself take three — four — five —

  With a jerk, she comes awake. She should have phoned for champagne. It is the full three-quarters of an hour now. And she hasn’t lit the candles. She leaps off the bed and scrabbles in her hold-all. No matches.

  Room service. She asks for champagne and a tray of snacks — the oysters, and some cheese and fruit, nothing too heavy. ‘And matches!’ she shouts as she ends the call.

  Then off with her trousers. Her patent-leather sandals hurtle across the room and hit the air conditioner, her bra is flung over the back of the chair. Ruth wriggles into the purple teddy.

  Oh dear. None of its faults have self-corrected in the past four years. Thanks be she has brought the black lace scarf. She can drape it over — the back? Or should she hide her front? Over one shoulder, hiding as much as possible of both the back and front. She brushes her hair, runs a pale lipstick on and darkens her mascara before a knock comes at the door.