Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  You thought it might be Barnaby, did you?

  Wrong. I wondered for a while — some years, in fact — but Barnaby was useful: he was the focus of the group. That type of male attracts others around him, although at times they hate his guts. I knew that wherever Felix was hurled by work, by the years, by women, he would stay in touch with Barnaby. The connection would be lasting. I had to stay in one place.

  Black widow and her web, merry widow on the dance floor.

  I didn’t recognise him when I carried in the pumpkin casserole. I didn’t recognise him in the crowd at Barnaby’s funeral. I still don’t recognise him as my son. There’s nothing of Peter in him. Peter, with the strong black eyes, the thick black hair, the smile. And yet: the red red face, burned by years of sun, by years of waiting silently. The prince found Cinderella because of her tiny crystal shoe. I found Felix because of the silver boots, the strange trinkets my mother sent to him in 1945. He’s kept them, all these years. He is grizzled, pock-marked. Hair’s growing on his ear lobes. My perfect baby boy’s well on in middle age. He thinks his mother is the child-stealer he visits in the nursing home. Ah, how I’d like to deal to her, but — I daresay she loves him too. And may she burn for it.

  What kind of mother am I? What will I do? I can go to meet him now.

  It’s amazing, the way Barnaby can still shock Bella. Honestly, that man, his collection of old secrets. But Ruth looks as if she needs some loving care.

  ‘Eliot, we’d better go,’ says Bella. ‘Walsh needs some rest. So does Ruth. I’ll bring you a load of groceries later on, Ruth. I’ll phone Ms Nausea to let her know the trip is off.’

  Ruth shakes her head. ‘You’re sweet. But I’ll do my own groceries. I can still do the trip too. It is virtual.’

  ‘It’s lying,’ Bella says.

  ‘So is not admitting what you want.’ Ruth pushes Bella and Eliot out of the house. ‘But the face lift is off. I mean — given I made such an idiot of myself in order to keep Walsh alive, we’ll grow older together disgracefully. Now, for heaven’s sake, sort yourselves out. You two look thoroughly awful. You’re madly in love, so be nice to each other. Hide her suitcase, Eliot. Be a man.’ She shuts the door and leaves Eliot and Bella on the porch.

  The climbing roses nod and sway. Bella hoists her shoulder bag, runs a hand through her hair and walks out to the car. A hot wind licks her neck. She looks across the harbour to the silkscreen shapes of the hills. Eliot has followed slowly. ‘Eliot —’ she says.

  ‘I’m all right.’ He doesn’t sound it. ‘I just cannot compete with his ghost.’

  Something cracks inside Bella. ‘Why the hell don’t you simply tell me that you need me?’

  She jumps into the car and drives off without him. In the mirror, she sees him hunch his ugly shoulders, his grey hair tousling in the wind. The old next-door neighbour’s heading towards him with what looks like a plate of pie.

  Back home — it could be her home, if only she could climb into Eliot’s bed and insist with her whole heart and body, soul and mind, that he loves her — she phones her lawyer and instructs him to sell Barnaby’s house. Next she slams into the studio. The pig portrait is finished. She’ll never try to sell it, even if she’s begged for it, because it makes her laugh. Hang on — she’s leaving it here for bloody Eliot.

  As she crashes bits and pieces around, she finds the jewellery she made eight years ago, and remembers too the silver cradle she stole from Barnaby’s coffin. (Damn it, it was not stealing, it was hers.) She should melt it down. It isn’t all that good. The supplies haven’t arrived from Auckland yet but she has the propane torch. She’s on her way to the bedroom to find the cradle when someone knocks at the front door. It’s probably Eliot. He knows where the spare key is — it’s his spare key, his house, he can let himself in. She’s got a job to do before she crams her clothes into her suitcase. She fills the metal bucket with water, sets the cradle aside, puts the earrings and the ingots in a crucible to melt them. There’s enough silver there to make a bangle. She pours the molten metal into a mould and plunges it into the bucket. A most satisfying scream and snarl of water.

  Time eases by. The metal cools. She draws designs, crumples them up and tries again. A bangle for Anna — misguidedly efficient, happy, multiple-parented Anna who is making no more than the usual blunders in her new adulthood. Who is Barnaby’s only child.

  Bella hears more noises in the house but if Eliot wants her he can come and say so. There’s a burn in her shirt front and a scorch on her knuckle: she dabs it with her tongue and continues working. She is watched over by the pig-portrait, the black and purple ugly-face. But this, the fire and cooling metal, the resilient shaping still to come, is where her heart comes alive. The hiss of the fire, the barely audible scrape of the chisel, silver gleam under the blackened metal, the bash of the large hammer on the anvil, the tap-tap of the miniature brass hammer. She doesn’t care if she isn’t much good at this either; it’s what she wants to do, shaping, puzzling it out and learning as she goes. So it isn’t very good? It’s hers, and the next one might be better. She won’t melt the cradle after all. She’ll hold on to it so that she can compare.

  Bella flexes her shoulders and realises she’s had nothing to eat or drink for hours now. By the shadows on the lawn it is late afternoon. She wanders through the house, still stretching. No sign of Eliot. He should be here by now. And she had heard noises.

  Through the glass of the front door, there’s movement, someone stooping. A youngish male figure. She yanks open the door.

  ‘What the hell are you doing? I don’t want anything that has to be purchased door to door! Take your pizza and your WatchTower …’

  It’s Craig. He straightens up and looks ashamed. There’s a box at his feet, a solid cardboard wine box, with a label on the side addressed to Bella. It must be the borax and the other supplies at last. He’s opened it and hauled out a ceramic container more or less the same shape as the one Anna carried earlier.

  ‘You thieving little creep!’ She tries to grab it.

  Eliot appears at the bottom of the path. ‘Hey!’ he shouts.

  There’s a moment of confusion; the container slips out of Craig’s hands — there! Bella knew he wasn’t much of a photographer, nobody who’d worked in crowds around politicians would be so clumsy, they’d be all fists and elbows. The pot shatters on the path.

  ‘My borax!’ Bella cries.

  Craig looks even more horrified. Bella bends down to see what she can salvage. But Eliot’s hand is on her shoulder, pulling her back.

  ‘Um,’ Eliot says. ‘It isn’t borax.’

  Bella looks again. There are tiny creamy nuggets in a lot of powdery grey.

  It’s Barnaby. Oh dear. How lucky the wind has dropped.

  ‘Don’t anybody move.’ Bella steps away slowly, then rushes to the studio and finds the little brush and pan for silver scrapings. On her way back to the front door, she snatches up her mother’s metal teapot. It has a lid.

  On the step, Craig and Eliot stand as still as temple dogs.

  Carefully, gently, Bella sweeps Barnaby up. Of course, she could have left him there to blow away. But, she loved and still loves Barnaby. He deserves a theatrical send-off.

  Once the step is white again Bella nests the teapot in her hands, thumb over the spout, and looks at Eliot. ‘We’ve got him cornered,’ she says.

  She lets the men come inside. They face each other in the living room. Eliot scowls at Craig. ‘If it wasn’t for Bella, I would call the police.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ says Craig. ‘They’ve already warned me not to pester people, but you’ve got to get your first portfolio together somehow.’

  ‘This is the bottom of the world,’ says Bella. ‘I thought bad things like you happened elsewhere.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ says Eliot. ‘Bad things sift to the bottom. Then they sift back up again.’

  ‘He can sift off out of here,’ Bella says.

  Eliot opens the door o
f his wine cupboard and pulls a dusty bottle of red from the lowest rack. Craig looks pleased and expectant. ‘You heard her. Bugger off,’ says Eliot. ‘Permanently. I’ve got plans for this evening.’

  ‘He’s got some things to give me first.’ Bella holds a hand out.

  Craig digs into a pocket and brings out the medal, thimble, pocketknife and silver boots.

  Eliot’s shoulders swell. Bella shoos Craig through the front door before Eliot explodes. She returns and stands in front of him.

  ‘What kept you?’ she asks.

  ‘That old woman gave me a thorough scolding about …’ He looks bewildered. ‘And she made me have some pie. I can’t remember, actually, but she said … I went for a long walk. But I decided you were right. To hell with guilt. I am staying where I want to be. Right here.’

  She drops the tiny boots into his hands.

  ‘Thank you, my love,’ says Eliot.

  Eliot’s plans are her plans. She winds a plastic bag around the teapot so there’s no danger of it tipping, of a breeze blowing down the spout and sifting Barnaby around, and puts it in the studio.

  They lock all the doors. They make sure the windows are shut tight, except one in Eliot’s bedroom to let the welcome cool of the summer evening steal around them while they rest.

  They need plenty of rest. In between. In between the unbuttoning of Bella’s scorched shirt, the unsnapping of Eliot’s belt. The stroking of his hand over her clavicle, his fingers tracing down to cup her breast. The soft trailing of her hands down his chest, his belly, to fold around him, cup him too. His mouth is gentle on her breasts, the sweetest tugging. The gasp, the holding of breath as their blood begins to thud inside their veins.

  The sun dips away, the evening folds around like silk. They take their time. They have enough of time to whisper yes, to whisper love, to taste. He’s like rich wine, the texture, scent, the blending of so many senses, feelings, longings, memories of what they had just once and now will have so many times, of sleeping gently side by side, the waking up at dawn to lick the morning taste of love and gentleness, the skin of his shoulder, rough skin on the back of his hand, the tousle of his hair against her mouth. She starts to move against him, ask again as the evening deepens. He answers her, his hands like velvet and his ugly, dear-loved face so close to hers that she can’t see him, only feels him, on her, in her, she’s wrapped around him and will never let Eliot go. There might even be a baby out of this, they’re open to it.

  ‘I read somewhere,’ Bella whispers, ‘that if you want to be sure to have an orgasm, don’t hold your breath, don’t gasp. Breathe evenly.’

  ‘That’s for women, is it?’ Eliot asks.

  Bella doesn’t answer. She’s too busy breathing slowly, evenly and oh, so sweet, so sweet.

  They hold each other more loosely now, and he wipes away a tear that’s stolen from her eye. ‘Because it was so sweet,’ Bella whispers.

  ‘All of it,’ he says. ‘It’s all so sweet.’

  chapter twenty-nine

  Bella offers Ruth more tea from the new teapot. China. Willow pattern. Eliot bought it for her. Ruth doesn’t seem to hear. She’s looking at the medal and the thimble.

  ‘I didn’t even know they’d disappeared. Thank God Walsh didn’t know. I made love with an amateur photographer,’ Ruth says in a hushed voice. ‘That’s as low as you can go.’

  ‘Surely not,’ says Bella.

  ‘I thought he might be a policeman. Or a Customs officer who thought Barnaby was smuggling things. But the Customs Department hires private investigators so he’d have been a fake Customs officer. You’re right, that would have been worse. I have to forget it at once.’

  ‘As you wish.’ Bella pours Ruth more tea anyway.

  ‘I was so stupid,’ mourns Ruth.

  ‘Perhaps you were naïve.’ Bella hopes she’s being kind.

  ‘Naïveté is boring.’

  ‘As you wish,’ repeats Bella and sips her tea. ‘I’ve learned a lot, lately.’

  Ruth questions her with a look. It’s a sisterly, nice look.

  ‘Well, there’s a story,’ Bella says. ‘It’s a true one. In 1916 before a beautiful young man, a golden boy, went off to fight, he became engaged to a beautiful young woman. She had a minor operation which went very badly wrong, and died. He was in the trenches when he heard the news. He simply stood up in front of the enemy guns and was killed at once.’

  ‘Stop it.’ Ruth’s eyes are brimming.

  ‘But last week,’ continues Bella, her eyes full too, ‘his greatniece was married to her great-nephew. It is truly a true story about love.’

  Ruth blows her nose. ‘Walsh is much better. There was nothing poisonous in my fridge. He’s chucked the job and he’s getting — um. Some energy.’

  ‘You’re blushing,’ Bella says. ‘It suits you.’

  If this were a fairy tale, I could wave a wand as godmothers are supposed to do and vanish in a puff of smoke, spontaneously. It will take a little longer, that is all.

  It’s not hard to choose which way to do it. It’s Grandma’s recipe again. And no confession left behind, no note. Good heavens, what would be the point of that? Leave people baffled. Make them wonder. Let them sift through whispers, tiny clues. Let them make their conjectures and hypothesise about the psychology of old women living on their own.

  The bills are paid, the gas and power, newspaper are stopped: all this will make them wonder, won’t it?

  Ha. She’s waited long enough to learn the truth. She’s in control. Of course. Jocasta is her Grandma’s girl, best girl.

  And so Jocasta wears her loveliest gown. Not a nightgown, goodness no. An evening gown, black velvet. Pearls lie around her throat and are suspended from her ears. She sits in her armchair with the view across the harbour. The heat wave seems to have ended. Blush apricot roses sway in a warm soft breeze. The hills beyond are pale as silk, their edges crisp and cruel.

  She sips at Grandma’s recipe. Very sweet. There’s a row of shoes on the mat in front of her, lined up in pairs. Tiny Roman sandals. Small black boots. Blue slippers made of felt. She’s talked to her boy, looked into his eyes. What large feet he has now.

  The candle’s lit; when it burns down, a trail of oil will lead the flame to the large box of fireworks she’s saved since last November. She’s got a sense of style, a sense of fun. She’s going to keep them guessing.

  It’s not at all what you’d expect of a frail old lady.

  It’s not what she expected of herself. Renunciation. Well, well.

  You never know what little tragedy is in the making only over the fence. You never know what triumph’s in the making either, as near as over the fence, as near as home.

  Dusk is falling. The shapes of the city hills are strung with lights. The tide is right. The wind is right. Bella stands on the bank above the river mouth. Ruth, Walsh, Eliot, Anna and the niece and nephews line along the grass with her. Charlotte sits on a camp stool, gypsy black draped round her, fringes twisting in the breeze. Lydia’s mouth is fluted shut with disapproval. Bella has told Lydia if she opens it she has to leave. This is Bella’s scene: Bella and Barnaby’s.

  She unwraps the metal teapot.

  ‘Oh,’ whispers Anna. ‘It’s lovely, Bella.’

  So it is. The shape of it’s just like a boat, and Bella has fashioned a tiny dragon head for the spout. The teapot itself is seated on an oval dish, a raft to cradle it into the darkness and cool of the harbour.

  Bella picks her way down to the slippery green stones where Eliot has spread a mat for safety, and stands at the water’s edge. Eliot’s been warned again: Don’t touch me. But it’s just for these few moments. He knows she must do this.

  She holds the tiny funeral barge in front of her. ‘Goodbye, Barnaby,’ she shouts above the sound of rushing water, a sudden rushing of the wind. ‘You were a bastard and a good man. I loved you, you loved me. We were thoroughly wrong for each other, and also most thoroughly right. We had a great time, sometimes. Now you mus
t move on towards whatever is ahead for you, and I’ll move on as well.’

  Bella wades in as far as she can and lowers the little Britannia metal barge into the river. She lets the current take it from her. It tips but rights itself. On the hillside, above the lights of the motorway, a beacon of flame rises up. Sparks leap from it; stars shoot and dive in the fire.

  ‘Barnaby!’ shouts Bella. The watchers raise their hands, waving and clapping. ‘Barnaby! Barnaby.’ The wind is fresh. Moonlight glints off the silver, off the waves. The little barge scoots off, and round, and off again.

  Barnaby. Oh, Barnaby.

  Eliot slips and slides across the stones and drags Bella out. She’s laughing and awash with tears. So is Eliot.

  ‘That is exactly right,’ says Charlotte. ‘That’s my boy.’

  It is. Exactly right. No false praise and no false accusations. All I wanted was some honesty, the rarest thing. I just wanted to be sure that Bella loved me. She did, and I loved her. I made mistakes. I was a fool. Nor was she perfect, goodness knows; she was a feeble thing at times without the courage of her own experience. But that’s all right. We were human. She still is. She’s got a way to go.

  And so have I. I’m a drift of ashes in a teapot, surging wayward in the dark, snatched into the current, forging on, around, askew, and on again through the great bowl of the harbour, and now heading out to sea. I’ve loved, and lost, and made mistakes, and had bright moments. I’ve had friends. Sometimes I’ve made people happy.

  I’ve done, and been. I was, I am.

  And it’s into the dark.

  Full speed.

  About the Author

  Barbara Else is the author of three best-selling novels and two books for children. Her first novel, The Warrior Queen, was shortlisted for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards. She was the Victoria University of Wellington Writer in Residence for 1999, during which time she worked on Three Pretty Widows. With her husband, writer Chris Else, Barbara runs TFS, a Wellington-based literary agency and assessment service. Her favourite activities include walking, reading, and gardening. She is a devoted cat-owner.