Femmes Fatal

by Dorothy Cannell

  Mrs. M is quite a personage. We became acquainted at my wedding reception, where she had been hired to hand round the champagne. And very conscientious she was, too, taking a slurp from each glass to make sure there were no slops on the crisp white doilies. Admittedly, it is wrong to judge by appearances, but the word Madam suits Mrs. Malloy better than it does me. Maybe it’s her hair—jet-black with two inches of white roots. Or the plaster-of-paris makeup. Or the beauty spots that make her look as though she’s recovering from a bout with the Black Death. Whatever, on that first meeting I suspected her of moonlighting in a house of ill repute, the sort of genteel establishment where the gentlemen always take off their shoes before getting into bed and leave the appropriate tip for extra-special service. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Mrs. Malloy had confined her favours to three, or it may have been four, husbands and adhered to a strict moral code—no boozing before work. When she took me on as a client—strictly on a trial basis, you understand—I discovered that she had more hats than the Queen Mum, owned at least four fur coats—parting gifts from the hubbies—and was given to sequins and taffeta frocks with plunging necklines.

  By ten o’clock on the morning in question, I had the babies settled in their playpen in front of the kitchen fireplace. I had already taken one of the quickest baths in history, swigged down a cup of cold coffee and flipped on the telly, which was presently seated on the ironing board because I’d had to move it from the working surface to make room for the basket of washing.

  The screen flared to life, becoming the front window of Tinseltown Toyshop. On came the familiar musicbox jingle, and I pushed away all thoughts of the dreaded interview with Fully Female, my day instantly brightened by the sight of Norman the Doorman hanging up the Closed sign on the glass door.

  “Highly educational!” I informed the twins. “It will put you way ahead of the pack in prenursery school.” What a shame. My darlings were too busy playing with the beads on the playpen to gurgle a comment for or against.

  Norman opened the shop door and held it wide. “Why, bless my spectacles, just the people I was hoping to see. My favourite boys and girls. A little bird told me you would be popping by …” A cockatoo with scarcely visible marionette strings fluttered onto Norman’s braided shoulder and sat preening and batting his eyes through spectacles just like the Doorman’s. “I’ve had a bit of worrying news. Word from the grapevine …” In the toyshop window a smiley-faced potted vine with leaves for hair and bunches of grapes for earrings began hopping and bobbing. “Word is that a little girl named Annabelle Fandangle hasn’t been treating her toys properly. Who wants to come with me and rescue them?” Norman cupped a hand to his ear, and Mr. Cockatoo fanned an encouraging wing.

  “Count me in!” I pumped a fist in the air.

  Mercifully the twins missed seeing me make a fool of myself. They were snuggled in the middle of the playpen, terry-cloth rumps in the air, sleeping the peace of God’s little lambs.

  “Splendid!” Norman tipped his cap at the camera, revealing a head as bald as Humpty Dumpty’s. “But before we step aboard the magic escalator, let’s recite The Tinseltown Toyshop Motto in your best big voices. Ready, set, go!”

  Seated on a corner of the kitchen table, legs swinging, I forgot all about being a parent and became a child again.

  “Teddies and dollies,

  Stuffed rabbits too,

  All have feelings,

  Like me and you.

  Don’t leave on the floor,

  Nor out in the rain,

  Lest dear old Cuddles

  You don’t see again.”

  “Brings tears to the eye, don’t it?” I hadn’t heard the garden door open to admit Her Mightiness, but there stood Mrs. Malloy. Unbuttoning the leopard coat that looked as though it had been ironed on the wrong side, she thumped her supplies bag down on the china cabinet shelf, to the annoyance of Tobias Cat who was there taking a snooze.

  “Who the hell does he think he is, the Chat of Persia?” This was one of Mrs. M’s standard quips; her second—or it could have been third—husband had been from the wrong side of the Channel, as well as the wrong side of the blanket, and had left her naught but a smattering of parlez-vous Français when he abandoned her for another.

  Scrambling off the table as if caught on the headmistress’s desk, I switched off the telly and looked wildly around at the chaos. “Heavens! Are you sure you’re meant to be here?”

  “This is Monday unless someone’s been tampering with the calendar.”

  The grim reply should have warned me that Mrs. Malloy was not her usual merry self but I was too busy stacking up the breakfast dishes to look for nuances. Having friends catch me on the hop doesn’t bother me. But Mrs. Malloy, never! I always have a whip round before she sets her high-heeled foot in the door. I feel I’ve let her down if she doesn’t find the house the way she left it—the pile vacuumed off the carpets and the windows buffed spotless with newspaper and her foolproof cleaner. A mixture of gin and the secret ingredient—It.

  “If you don’t need me, Mrs. H, say so.” Mrs. Malloy stood by the ironing board, coat still on, holding her feather hat in her hands as though it were a church collection plate.

  Offend Mrs. M and her hourly rate tends to go up. “Of course I need you.”

  The washing machine had been pulled out from its cubby hole at a crazy angle in the room, along with the dryer, which Mr. Bludgett in his wisdom had also disconnected. His tools were strewn on the table along with the breakfast dishes. The newspaper lay tossed on a chair, the sink was full of soaping nappies, and the broom leant against the pantry door as if taking five minutes out for a cigarette break.

  The babies alone would pass inspection. Daisy-fresh in their terry-cloth suits appliquéd with bunnies, they were awake, faces pressed to the bars of the playpen, their coppery hair a match for Ben’s collection of jelly and blancmange molds.

  “Sorry about all this!” I gave the nappies a stir with a wooden spoon (not the one I use for soup). “Why don’t I straighten up in here, Mrs. Malloy, while you get going in the study?”

  The token protest wasn’t forthcoming.

  “Suits me, Mrs. H.” She sidestepped Tobias, who was buttering up to her on account of the feather hat, picked up the supply bag and tottered on her four-inch heels past the playpen without a sideways glance. Peculiar. Mrs. Malloy had developed a sneaking affection for the twins, whilst still insisting she’d prefer a canary.

  Wasn’t she feeling up to snuff? Shaking my hands free of suds, I dropped the noose of an apron over my head and began tying the strings. Mrs. Malloy turned back from the hall door.

  “Remember, I don’t do ceilings, Mrs. H.”

  If Michelangelo had taken that tack, where would we be? Never mind. Her face told me there was more here than keeping me in my place. The beauty spot above her damson mouth was all atwitch and her pancake makeup looked ready to crack at the seams.

  Reaching for the kettle, I said, “How about a cup of tea before getting started? And there’s some of that cherry cake you like.”

  “I’d as soon get going.” All the spark had gone from her voice. And her bosom, which would have done double-duty as a flotation device were she ever lost at sea, heaved. But I felt a little reassured when she changed the subject. “By the way, I saw Mr. H as I was getting on the bus. He was outside the post office.”

  “Really?”

  “Chatting away with Miss Gladys Thorn.”

  “Was he?”

  “Never say I didn’t warn you! That woman would lie back and give the V sign to anything in trousers. You know it was her what caused the break in my marriage to François.”

  Before I could proffer sympathy, Mrs. Malloy’s leopard coat twitched out the hall door. But at least I knew why she was out of sorts. As for Ben … did it say something about the state of our marriage that I could not work myself into a froth over his being seen with Miss Thorn? Our church organist’s sexual magnetism was legendary—the more
so because the women couldn’t explain it and the men wouldn’t. In a rare idle moment, I had toyed with the idea that Miss Thorn might be one of those Plain Jane secretarial types who to save their Cary Grant bosses from some fate worse than death—usually another woman—whip off their spectacles and unloose their hair. But somehow that didn’t work for Miss Thorn. I’d seen her without her glasses with her mousy locks stirring in the breeze, and it was a reminder that Mother Nature is not always kind.

  After picking up Abbey and Tam, cuddling them for a bit, then resettling them, I got busy with the nappies. They would have to be hung out to dry in a hurry if I wanted to miss the rain which, from the way the lilac bushes had begun shivering and the clouds glooming overhead, might not be far off. And this had started out as such a picture-perfect day.

  The great thing about housework is that your hands scurry about like moles, leaving the mind stuck in the same old place. I tend to get some of my best worrying done at such times. One bugaboo on this morning’s agenda was, needless to say, Fully Female. For the life of me I couldn’t think why I’d made that appointment. Admittedly, the meeting with Mr. Bludgett on the stairs had brought home the realisation that life at best is short and we had better make the most of it, but did I have to rush into self-improvement? Surely by the time I was ready for a complete revamp, science would have come up with all sorts of shortcuts. Such as, The-More-You-Eat-the-More-You-Lose Diet and Armchair Exercise.

  Piling the rinsed nappies into the basket, I dropped in a handful of pegs and switched over to Mrs. Malloy’s problem. Was I jumping the gun in assuming the blight was Miss Thorn? Spotting her on the street couldn’t be anything unusual. Chitterton Fells is a small place. Could the trouble be something as simple as losing at bingo last night? Or might Mrs. Malloy have had bad news about her health? Oh, the evils of drink! Was her liver now paying the price or … perhaps her heart? Who would have thought it! Despite an occasional unsteadiness on her pins, she always seemed so robust. At nearly twice my age, she could run rings around me with the Hoover. Pity the burglar Mrs. Malloy met on the stairs.

  Sighing at the memory of my poor showing in the face of Mr. Bludgett, I was overcome by one of those mad urges to rebuild my body in five minutes. Gritting my teeth, I contemplated pushing the table back against the wall and doing some aerobics; then I remembered that walking is believed to be one of the best forms of exercise. Before pegging out the washing, I would jog briskly down the hall to the study and give Mrs. Malloy the newspaper for cleaning the windows.

  “Mummy won’t be a moment.” Leaving the babies lying on their tummies, sleepily chewing on their blanket, I crossed the hall to the study. Its door is one of those round-topped oak ones, studded with heavy nails, that you know must have been taken from a dungeon about to be modernized. The ring handle creaks with the turning and sometimes the door jams, so that you have to give the old heave-ho to get it to budge. Inside is a small room with latticed panes set into deep sills. A dreadful oil painting of an Irish wake looms above the fireplace. But I am a great believer that every house should have its share of eyesores or everything gets lost in perfection. The study has another blooper—a hospital-green gas fire, installed donkey’s years ago because the chimney smoked.

  Wedged in the doorway, the newspaper in my hands, I said, “Sorry to burst in on you, Mrs. Malloy.”

  How embarrassing! I felt such a snoop. She wasn’t hard at work buzzing around the room with the Hoover or scattering ornaments with her duster. Still in her leopard coat and feather hat, she was slumped in the easy chair by the gas fire, arms trailing, neon lids closed.

  “What is the matter?” I dropped the newspaper in a flutter of pages and rushed toward her, cracking my hip on the desk in the process.

  “Mrs. H,” she said, her shoulders heaving, “I’ve come to the end of me rope.”

  “Don’t tell me I’m out of Johnson’s Lavender Wax again?”

  “I can’t go on in this hell-hole.”

  “You don’t mean that!” Dropping on my knees, I grabbed her hand. Her perfume, Tequila Sunrise, rocked me on my heels and made me choke up. “Mrs. Malloy, you can’t let it end like this. I’ll do anything, give you anything!” Frantically, I looked around for something to press into her hand, some piece of family silver that did not need cleaning.

  Her eyes cracked open and the butterfly lips fluttered into a sad smile. “Mrs. H, you mustn’t blame yourself.”

  “But I do.”

  “Flatter yourself, don’t you?” Mrs. Malloy straightened up, her voice strengthening to its usual rasp. “My working for you one day a week don’t mean you own me body and soul.”

  “I never thought anything so feudal.” Outraged, I stood up, almost putting a knee through my apron.

  “You may be queen of the castle up here at Merlin’s Court, Mrs. H, but the world spins all on its ownsome without you giving it a poke.”

  “You said something about a hell-hole.”

  “Life, Mrs. H.”

  “Oh!”

  “If I choose to kill meself, that’s my business.”

  “Quite.” In the relief of hearing she wasn’t handing in her notice, I didn’t quite grasp the horror of what I was hearing.

  “Mrs. Malloy—Roxie, dear!” My eyes zeroed in on the hospital-green monster. “You weren’t going to use the gas fire?”

  “Ever know me to take liberties?”

  “Never!” I lied.

  Her sigh blasted me halfway across the room. “I’ll have you know, Mrs. H, I’m of legal age. No need for parental permission norways an excuse slip from the boss.”

  “But why?” Standing there wringing my hands like the village idiot, I watched as in ghastly slow motion she lifted the supply bag from the far side of her chair and cracked open the catch. Oh, my heavens! She had pulled out a gun. Between the gaps in my fingers I watched her raise it to her temple.

  What sort of a monster was I? At that moment my mind escaped to safer ground. I thought of the nappies waiting to go on the line and the threat of rain. I pictured Abbey and Tam alone in their playpen. If only one—or both of them—would start crying. That sound might break the spell.

  “Why?” Mrs. Malloy asked, and it took a moment to sink in that she was echoing my question of a lifetime ago. “Why take me farewell bow at Merlin’s Court?”

  I tried to say Why do it at all? but I couldn’t get my tongue around the words. She was buffing the gun on her cuff. “No need to say nothing, Mrs. H. It’s as plain as the nose on my face you think I’ve overstepped meself. And there was I, hoping you’d take it as the compliment intended. My house on Herring Street’s not a bad place to live, but when it comes to breathing me last, I’d always had me heart set on something classier. Somewhere with a bit of history.”

  A sob in her voice, Mrs. Malloy laid the gun down, just out of grabbing distance, on the arm of her chair. Opening up the supply bag, she pulled out a black-edged hanky and dabbed her eyes. Daintily. So as not to smudge her mascara. “Mrs. H, we’ve had our differences, but there’s not one of me other ladies I’d want with me at the end.”

  “Thank you.”

  The hanky fluttered to the floor. “Is it too much to hope that one day me portrait will hang in the upstairs ’all?”

  “I’ll have a mural done.”

  The trick was to stay calm. What good would it do to grab for the weapon and risk blowing off my fingers in the attempt? A mother cannot function with hands turned into boxer’s mitts. My best bet was to try to dissuade her from making a fatal mistake.

  “Mrs. Malloy, why kill yourself?”

  “That will go with me to the grave.”

  “Well then, how about a nice cup of … gin?”

  Martyred smile. “One for the road? Better not. Never let it be said I wasn’t in me right mind when I handed me earthly treasures into your keeping.”

  “What?” I sank into a chair that wasn’t there and had to grab for the desk.

  Rummaging in the supply bag, s
he produced a china poodle and a brass Aladdin’s lamp. “No need to fall over yourself in gratitude, Mrs. H! Earlier, when I was downing the second bottle of tablets, I said to meself, ‘Roxie, old chum, there’s none will look after your bits and bobs like her at Merlin’s Court.’ ”

  “Tablets?” Thank God this was washday! With luck I could use the rubber hose attached to the sink as a makeshift stomach pump.

  “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Mrs. Malloy looked miffed enough to take back the statue of David she had fetched from the supply bag. Poor chap, he was missing one of his earthly treasures. “They was me indigestion jobbies.”

  Oh, what a relief it was! Young David joined the china poodle and Aladdin’s lamp on the end table. Should I preach the sanctity of human life or ladle on the guilt? How can you desert me, Mrs. Malloy, in the middle of spring cleaning?

  “Are things really that bad?” I sidled toward her. “Why, only last week you were on top of the world because your horoscope predicted that the man of your dreams was about to enter your life.”

  The worst possible thing I could have said. A moan erupted from the depths of Mrs. Malloy’s being. Her feather hat trembled.

  “ ’E came, me Romeo! But ours was a love doomed from the bloody start.” Picking up the gun, she nursed it tenderly against her leopard bosom, as if it were the fruit of her loins, born of his love.

  “There’ll be someone else,” I consoled, with all the triteness I could muster.

  “When you’re on the lying side of fifty, Mrs. H, men aren’t thick as flies on damson jam. These last few years, most nights I’ve gone to bed alone and woke up alone. What kind of life is that for a woman who’s had more husbands than you’ve had hot dinners? In me young days I was never your sort, Mrs. H—glad to settle for being in a rut, married to the same chappie till kingdom come. But now …” A sigh that rattled the collection of inkwells in the glass-fronted cabinet.

  My goodness, I thought, remembering Miss Thorn. Romance would seem to be rampant in Chitterton Fells. How I wished Reverend Foxworth were here. “There’s that passage from Leviticus,” I stammered. “The one about a time for every purpose under heaven. And don’t forget the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Could this be your time to lie fallow?”