Femmes Fatal

by Dorothy Cannell

  Joining me on the bed, Ben enveloped me with his arms and spoke into my hair. “We were ready for a new hearth rug.”

  “Oh, yes! I hated that little family heirloom.”

  His laughter vibrated down my spine, and if the tingling wasn’t one of exquisite passion for my dark and stormy knight, it didn’t matter. At that point I was ready to trade up to friendship, with its lifetime guarantee. Shifting around to face him, I cupped his face in my hands.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For cleaning up and …”

  “Yes?”

  “For being imperfect.”

  His blue-green eyes were flecked with the gold of tomorrow’s sunlight, and I wanted him to hold me so tight that neither death nor thoughts of six A.M. feedings could part us.

  “What’s that?” He lifted his head.

  “Sounds like Abbey.”

  “And there goes Tam.”

  “Perhaps if we lie here and don’t breathe …” But even as I spoke, I was on my feet, already mentally back in uniform.

  “Ellie, you’re not leaving this room.” He took hold of my arms and walked me backwards to the bed. “I’ll see to the twins while you get some shut-eye.”

  “But you have to go to work in a few hours.”

  “So do you.”

  I wove my fingers through his rumpled black hair and whispered, “Why don’t we both go? We could make a date of it.”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he removed my chenille dressing gown from the hook behind the wardrobe door and wrapped it around my shoulders as if it were a sable stole and we were Lord and Lady Fitzuppity stepping out for a night on the town.

  Lucky me, I am blessed with one of those constitutions that bounces back from lack of sleep with no ill effects—other than feeling as though I’ve just donated eight pints of blood and every drop that is left has migrated to my eyeballs. When Ben left for the restaurant at the inhuman hour of ten A.M. the next morning, I presented as sweet a picture of domesticity as you could imagine. There I sat at the kitchen table demurely sipping coffee while my offspring, identically attired in peppermint green, gurgled and gooed in the playpen. Ah, but what falsehood lurks in the heart of woman! As soon as the garden door closed behind Ben signalling the all-clear, I grabbed up the newspaper and rifled frantically through the pages, desperately searching for a late-breaking bulletin on the late great Norman the Doorman. Not a word.

  The death-of-the-week honours went to the recently departed Mrs. Huffnagle. Her husband, a distinguished gentleman of the old school wearing an ascot and a lugubrious expression, was pictured under the caption Grieving widower learns faulty electrical outlet a factor in bathroom death of spouse. Did I need this callous reminder that joining Fully Female could prove a fatal mistake?

  The last of my energy drained away and I slumped forward, rocking my coffee cup in its saucer, and was out like a light for all of thirty seconds. Grimace! Something was calling me back to life—an insistent knocking that brought me snarling to my feet.

  “Coming!”

  Under the watchful eyes of my daughter, who was gnawing on her rattle in a most unladylike way, I staggered to the garden door and opened up.

  “What is this, the Royal Mint?” Mrs. Malloy stood on the doorstep, supply bag looped over her arm and the spotted veiling of her hat drawn down over her eyebrows.

  Immediately on the defensive, I stammered that the door wasn’t locked, only stuck. Before she could open her mouth, my brain had thumped out the anticipated response in a series of jolts that threatened to cave in the sides of my head. But to my perplexity, Mrs. Malloy never said a word about not doing windows or hinges. Her introductory crack seemed to have left her spent. She entered the kitchen as if borne upon a current of air, her four-inch heels seeming to skim the quarry tile. Belatedly, I realized she looked as though she’d had even less sleep than I. Her eyes stared out of a face as white as the roots of her hair into a vast nothingness. They reminded me uneasily of Norman the Doorman’s last night.

  She paused in the middle of the room, staring down at the red-gold heads in the playpen. “They new?”

  “What?”

  “The kiddies.”

  “No, I’ve had them for some time.” Shock turns me giddy. “I got them at a two-for-the-price-of-one sale.”

  “That’s right. I remember now.” Mrs. Malloy deposited herself, supply bag and all, in the rocking chair beside the fireplace and began pumping her foot as if working a treadle sewing machine, back and forth, back and forth. I would have gone mad if I hadn’t been so desperately afraid she had already crossed the invisible line. Could she have fallen off the bus and suffered a concussion? Should I phone Dr. Melrose or, light dawned, was her state of mind a repercussion of her romantic tryst with Walter Fisher? Had he performed some kind of experimental taxidermy on her? Or were we dealing with a standard case of post-orgasmic trance?

  “Tell me,” I asked with a brave smile, “how was your evening?”

  “None of your bloody business, Mrs. H,” she answered in a monotone.

  “Sorry.” Properly put in my place, I attempted to hide my discomfiture by plopping the kettle down on the cooker and hunting about for the copper caddy. Sure enough, it was where it always was—next to the teapot, right under my nose.

  From behind me came a raucous sob and, scattering teabags, I hastened back to the rocking chair to find Mrs. M with her face buried in a black-edged hanky. A gift no doubt from her beloved. And suddenly it occurred to me that what I had read in her face might not have been ecstasy revisited, but the blank look of despair. All too possibly her homework assignment had been the same dismal failure as mine and Jacqueline Diamond’s.

  “Roxie, dear!” I stayed the arm of the chair to fend off a wave of motion sickness. “So what if your romantic rendezvous didn’t measure up to your hopes and dreams!”

  “How’s that?” She lowered the hanky a notch to reveal eyes that looked as though they had spent twelve rounds in the ring, but there was a note in her voice that suggested she might be returning to her old fighting form. “I trust you’re not suggesting, Mrs. H, that I failed to give satisfaction.”

  “Heaven forbid!”

  “Mr. Fisher was transported.”

  “Lovely!” I said, sounding like the vicar’s husband. Mercifully, my blushes were forestalled by the shrill summons of the kettle. Like a herky-jerky damsel in a Charlie Chaplin film, I scurried to and fro, steaming up the kitchen as I brewed up, fetching the mugs because I didn’t want the hassle of saucers. Ooops! Forgot the sugar.

  “There!” I held out Mrs. Malloy’s tea.

  “What are we doing, sending up smoke signals?” her voice came from far off, causing me to fear I was losing her again, but she spread her hanky on her lap in lieu of a serviette and took the mug. “Walter told me he’d never had it so good. He held me in his arms after he had his way with me for the fifth or sixth time and told me things I can never breathe to a living soul. The floodgates were opened, you see, and … he … The man wept, Mrs. H.”

  Gracious! Now I did feel like a failure. In all the time Ben and I had been together I had never once made him cry for joy during moments of intimacy. Perhaps the occasional sniffle when my perfume didn’t agree with him, but that hardly counted. Noticing Tam sleepily rubbing his nose, I plucked him from the playpen and cradled his silken head against my shoulder. All the perfumes, all the creams, and we grown-ups still never smell this good. Eyes on Abbey, who at any moment might demand her turn with Mummy, I asked Mrs. Malloy about Mr. Fisher’s wife.

  “What about the woman?” Jealousy is a powerful force. The rocking chair almost did a backwards somersault. Tea slopped all over the hanky. “She’s been out of the picture for donkeys’ years.”

  “So you told me.” I shifted Tam in my arms. “But are they divorced? Is he free to marry again?” Already I could see the announcement of nuptials in The Daily Chronicle. Mrs. Roxie Malloy wed Mr. Walter Fisher, Chi
tterton Fells’s foremost undertaker, in a simple ceremony at the Chapel of Rest last Tuesday. The bride wore a shroud of white silk with a demi-train and carried a wreath of white roses.

  “Walter didn’t promise marriage.”

  Ah! Herein lay the rub.

  The rocking chair started up again. “You don’t get it, do you, Mrs. H? I tell you, after last night it don’t require a piece of paper to make me Walter’s till death do us part.” Her voice broke.

  “You know what they say,” I interrupted. “ ‘Love is a good servant but a poor master.’ ”

  Mrs. Malloy ignored me. “No need to brand his name on my behind. I knew when my eyes opened this morning and met his across the pillow that I’m his till the end, bound by invisible chains, never to be a free woman so long as we both shall live.”

  This peppering of the conversation with references to the mortal state didn’t alarm me. I assumed that after a night in Mr. Fisher’s company, one might begin to think in terms of the Big Sleep. But at the same time, I wished she wouldn’t talk that way. It fleshed out the horror of seeing Norman the Doorman dead on the floor.

  Watching Mrs. Malloy plod over to the table and begin unloading the supply bag, I felt the full weight of Tam in my arms. Since he and Abbey were born, I had chafed at times against the loss of freedom. I had wondered if I’d ever belong to myself again. But surely lovers weren’t as high maintenance as children, although I would concede they were more work than husbands. Inviting a man into your bed is quite different from yawning a “Ready to turn in, old dear?” before toddling around to your own side with a cup of cocoa. In a liaison there are expectations to be met and amenities to be observed. Fresh sheets at the drop of his drawers. Your mother’s photo turned to the wall in case her scowl puts him off his stroke …

  “Time for a drink,” said Mrs. M, causing me to curse Mr. Walter Fisher for driving her back to the bottle. But I misjudged the matter—if not the man. She lifted her container of Fully Female Formula from the supply bag and helped herself to one, no, two glasses, and held them under the tap. “You’ll join me, won’t you, Mrs. H? I haven’t heard—and I’m not asking—what you got up to last night. But we both have to keep up our strength. Bottoms up!” In the context of Fully Female, this toast struck me as decidedly risqué, but no time to gape. Mrs. Malloy drained her glass, set it down, and removed Tam from my arms. “There! You sit down and enjoy yours.”

  “I really can’t.”

  She clearly took this to mean that I didn’t wish to horn in on her meager supply. Quickly, she set me straight. “What’s a tablespoon of Formula between friends? You can stand the next round. By the by, Mrs. H, what with one thing and the next, I forgot to bring back your Healthy Harvest Herbs and the purple gown.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “How the bloody hell can I help it? I can see from your face you’re upset.”

  “It’s … the Formula,” I said through contorted lips. The liquid mush was the vilest stuff imaginable. It looked as though sawdust were the main ingredient and it tasted like glue. I was sure I would never get my tongue unstuck. Unbeknown to Mrs. M, this was the first time I had taken more than a couple of sips before chucking the stuff down the sink. “Perhaps I shouldn’t indulge this early in the day.”

  “Finish it up.” Depositing Tam back in the playpen, she stood over me—right down to the last gulp. The beauty spot above her upper lip twitched as she stretched a damson smile. “That’s the girl, Mrs. H. Now you can be off to your Fully Female meeting with a clear conscience.”

  If she only knew what secrets lurked in the heart of her employer.

  There was no possibility of my making the morning session, and I strongly urged that Mrs. Malloy be the one to attend the afternoon one. But there was no budging her. She returned to her trance state when she picked up her feather duster.

  “I was tickling Walter’s fancy with this when …”

  Happily, I was spared the gory details. She exited the kitchen through the already open door, but if it had been closed, I swear she would have walked right through it. Here was a woman elevated above the normal impediments of daily living, as once was Norman the Doorman. When the hall was clear, I went to the telephone and got Jacqueline Diamond’s number from the operator.

  “Want me to ring through for you, love?”

  “Please.”

  Brrrrrppp … Brrrrrppp …

  At the fourth ring I hung up. To have held on longer would have seemed as vulgarly persistent as pounding on the front door of the house in Rosewood Terrace. Either the widow was incommunicado … or was she visiting Mr. Walter Fisher’s place of business? Was he even now showing her the ultimate in relaxing pleasure—Eternal Rest’s Chaise Lounge, with the Regency Ribbon lining and scrollwork sides?

  Don’t worry about the lack of notice, Mrs. Diamond. These spur-of-the-moment deaths are our bread and butter. We’ll get your husband fitted out. We are talking made to measure, I assume. We wouldn’t want a gentleman of your husband’s fame going down in an off-the-rack jobbie, would we?

  Disconsolate, I proceeded about my business, feeding the twins, getting them down for their naps, and putting an experimental load in the washing machine. I was in no mood to go down to Fully Female. That is, I wasn’t until Freddy walked in through the garden door, tracking in dirt and a glimpse of the outside world.

  “Peace offering, cos!” He held out a scraggly bunch of flowers. “I stole these especially for you from the vicarage garden.”

  “You really shouldn’t have …”

  “For you, nothing is too much trouble.” A grin broke through the facial stubble, and he flourished a bow in which his ponytail brushed the floor.

  “I meant, O Great Impostor,” I said, bunging the purloined posy into a jug, “you shouldn’t have set foot within a yard of the vicarage.”

  “You’re right.” Freddy strolled over to the table and helped himself to the cheese and tomato sandwich that was to have been my lunch. “Could have been very embarrassing if I’d been spotted lurking outside the French windows. The vicar—well, I assume it was she, but to be on the safe side, I’ll call her Madam X …” Freddy paused for dramatic effect and to take a huge bite of sandwich.

  Damn the wretch for driving me to vulgar curiosity. “You were saying?”

  “Madam was at prayer.”

  “Freddy!” There are some places I will not stick my nose lest it be smote from my face and cast into the outer darkness, never to be found again.

  “She was petitioning forgiveness for the sin of jealousy, which had caused her to act unjustly to a fellow voyager through this vale of tears.”

  I silenced him by pitching a tea towel in his face. But of course the damage was done. I was unable to put this piece of gossip from me before my mind began toying with it, the way Tobias was pussyfooting at a grey felt mouse over in the alcove by the garden door. Was the Reverend Eudora Spike suffering pangs of remorse concerning Miss Gladys Thorn, whom she had sacked from the position of church organist—not because of any lack at the keyboard, but because Gladys might be singing “Abide With Me” to Mr. Spike.

  Freddy tossed the towel back to me. I wadded it up into a ball and began buffing the surface of the counter between the cooker and the sink. Somewhere in the house Mrs. Malloy was singing “John Brown’s Body,” and the mouldering melody settled like a greasy film on the kettle, the copper bowls, the tea caddy, and the chairs. As for the hanging plants in the greenhouse window, they seemed to wither on the stem as if waiting for the inevitable root rot to set in.

  “Who’s the merry warbler?” Freddy bit into the apple that was to have been my dessert.

  “Mrs. Malloy.”

  “Does she charge extra for these little ditties?”

  “She’s in love.”

  “And who’s the lucky chap?”

  “None of your business.” As soon as the words were out, I regretted snapping at him of whom I was about to beg a favour. I suppose the idea had been
at the back of my mind since he set foot in the kitchen, but it had taken old John Brown to make crystal clear that I had to go down to Fully Female and turn in my resignation. “Freddy”—I folded the tea towel over the rail of the cooker—“if I promise to listen to your lines for Norsemen of the Gods when I get back, will you stay and mind the twins for an hour or so? Mrs. Malloy is busy and, as you can hear, not really with it.”

  “My dear Ellie”—Freddy’s face lurched into a porcupine grin—“groveling doth become you as the stars the night.”

  “Is that a yea or a nay?”

  “What do you think, cousin?” To my surprise, he came around the playpen and gave me a hug. “Toddle along, old girl, and leave all in my capable hands.”

  All the way into town I practiced my farewell speech to Fully Female. You’re going to hate me, Bunty, but what with the babies and the house, to say nothing of the garden now that Jonas isn’t here to help out, I really don’t feel I can make the commitment to Fully Female that both you and I would wish. My marriage will undoubtedly be the loser, but at this point I feel I have to settle for getting my bed made every day rather than getting Ben into it every half hour.

  I had my lines down pat by the time I parked the car on the circular drive. But when I was walking around the fountain toward the Hollywood mansion shaded by trees, my mind derailed. All I could come up with was the truth: that I wanted to get out of Fully Female because I was beginning to think of love as a dangerous and possibly deadly pastime.

  My feet slowed as I neared the half-moon terrazzo steps, and my heart throbbed with sympathy for all those people who, not having any major problems, have to make do with little ones. With my usual sterling cowardice I began hoping that Bunty would be unable to see me, either because she was at Marriage Makeover or engaged in interviewing Fully Female candidates. Alas, this was not my lucky day. The door opened as I reached the top step and Bunty herself stood on the threshold, looking as fetching as ever in a sleek outfit that resembled a body stocking for fit and exactly matched her champagne curls.