Mum's the Word

by Dorothy Cannell

  The dream wasn’t fuzzy around the edges. No sensation of looking through the tattered film of sleep. I was there, climbing the sheer rock face of stairs, the naked boards worn slick as ice. I could feel my skirt grazing my legs, I could smell damp newspapers, and brass polish and fish. The banister was hard and real under my hand. Up, up, past Flat No. Five where old Mrs. Bundy lived. Terrible woman, forever thumping on the ceiling with her stick. But given to kindly lapses. I remember she let me stroke her cat Angela on my seventh birthday. And another time she slipped a tube of fruit gums into my school satchel, accompanied by a wheezy, “Not a word to Father.” She meant Mr. Bundy, not my father.

  The air grew thin. Out of condition, I was forced to use the banister as a tow rope. Dad took pleasure in proclaiming that we lived up in the Gods. Theatrical expressions fell lightly from his lips. He had trod the boards in his youth. Bit parts. Soldiers or policemen, that sort of thing. “Paid to be seen and not heard,” was the way he put it. A severe test of the spirit for someone who believed Shakespeare wrote with him in mind. Once when playing a corpse in a graverobbing scene he burst into fiery rhetoric, failing to shut up until run through by the leading man’s sword. He and my mother, a dancer, met while performing in the Mikado.

  Always a performer, my mother. Was the role of parent any more real to her than Giselle, for whom she named me? Would she be home? My hand weighed heavy when I knocked on No. Six. The door barely visible under the collage of theatrical posters. And suddenly, I was terrified that I had made a mistake in coming. There was nothing for me here. Mother had been dead for years and Dad was God alone knew where. Neither had met Ben or, for that matter, Mrs. Bentley Haskell.

  Too late. The door had slowly blown open, and a dreamy voice called out, “Come in, Ellie darling.”

  The sitting room was exactly the same as the day we moved in. Cosily, crazily crowded, with furniture set down in most peculiar places. The grandmother clock stood in the middle of the bare floor. And a desk was edged in front of the fireplace as if waiting to be moved into proper position. Christmas ornaments from years back dangled from the candelabra. A rug was rolled into a bolster, while linen curtains lay folded up on the window ledge waiting to go up. When there was time. My parents never had enough time to do everything they wanted to do. Case in point—Mother had been racing down a flight of steps—not the death-defying ones I had just mounted, but ones leading to a railway station, when she fell and died.

  For a ghost, she looked awfully good. No more altered than the room. One of the few advantages of dying young. Strange to think that one day, before too long, I would be older than she had ever been. But then some people have a talent for being young. At age six I was the one reminding her to wear a scarf out in the smog. I’d even threatened to sew her gloves on elastic strings inside her coat, if she lost another pair.

  “Come and give me a hug, darling!” She was attired in several transparencies of muslin draped into a sort of Grecian tutu. Naturally she was as at the barre. Dad had installed the ballet barre and, true to form, it didn’t run true. I blew her a kiss. She was in the arabesque position and a trifle unsteady en pointe.

  “Ages since I heard from you.” She wobbled slightly as she went into a deep knee bend.

  “You’re not easy to reach.” I sat on a chair stacked with papers. “Mother, we have to talk.”

  “Any time, my little girl.” She was doing a floaty motion with her right arm. “So lovely of you to come. Your father’s always too busy being alive to keep in touch. And people have this silly idea that I’ve grown deadly dull since I passed over.”

  “Mother!”

  “In all due vanity, I’m more alive dead than many people I know …”

  “Oh, please!” I pressed my hands to my temples. “You never change! Always adrift in your own private sea.”

  Mother stopped standing on one leg, removed her hand from the barre and pressed it to her elegantly boney breast. “My darling, are you and that gorgeous husband having problems?”

  I fought the snuffle in my voice. “Our relationship is in shreds and, Mother, I am here to assign blame. Had you but raised me to be beautiful, charming, and witty, Ben would never have turned to another woman.”

  She raised her left eyebrow and right leg simultaneously, but I didn’t give her a chance to open her mouth. “How can you justify bringing a child into the world who would weigh more at age eight than you did at thirty? Where was your sense of responsibility when saddling me with a father who believes everything one owns should pack into one suitcase? You say he doesn’t have time for you, well, what about me? I’m supposed to be alive.”

  “Ellie, dearest.” She kept going at the barre. “All this resentment! Was I too busy to notice?”

  “Too busy to be a mother. I wrapped my own Christmas presents.”

  “Was that wrong? Daddy and I wanted you to experience every facet of the excitement.”

  “I hosted my own birthday parties from age six.”

  “We wanted you to be self-reliant.”

  “Thank you. That explains your sending me alone by train and taxi to Merlin’s Court to stay with an ancient great uncle whom I had never met? Let me tell you, Mother, that experience scarred me for life. The breakup of my marriage is the result. And don’t tell me that I would never have met Ben but for Uncle Merlin. This is no time for relevancies. You never even noticed I’m going to have a baby, did you? Did you?”

  “Ellie,” Mother was standing still, only her tutu astir. “You could write a book about my sins.”

  “Why not!” I stood up and rigorously smoothed down the sleeves of my blouse. “Other people do it. How else is a divorced expectant mother to support herself?”

  “My poor darling.” Her voice was a whisper against my face, but I couldn’t see her any more.

  What a relief to wake up and realize that sleep had not impaired my memory. I could recall every anguished breath of last night’s betrayal. Thank God for pride. When Valicia X referred to me as the unsuspecting wife, I had switched off the medicine cabinet and fled back to the bedroom. And when Ben returned some five or ten minutes later, I pretended to be dead. Oh, the horror of that Judas kiss upon my neck, the treachery of his hands smoothing back my hair, the anguish of hearing him murmur, “Sleep well, my love.”

  Sunlight knifed through the window and spattered the walls. Nine A.M. by the travel clock. Turning over, I found Ben’s side of the bed empty. He must have heard me talking in my sleep and realized his life was in danger. Life loomed before me, insurmountable as a mountain of clothes to be washed. No one to bring me flowers; no one to tell me I looked great when I felt like hell; no one to do the ironing. The beast! Why couldn’t he have made life unbearable so it would be easy to leave him?

  Were there no depths to which he would not sink? Over by the window was our luggage, rescued from the boat house. How did I know he, and not Pepys, was responsible? Easy. The traitor had left me a note on the dressing table. I read it quickly, then ripped it into confetti. He hoped I had a happy day! And signed off with kisses. Ha! Did he already suspect that his fling with that woman would soon burn out in a blaze of passion? Was I to be kept around like a hot water bottle in case the central heating went out? The man must be made to pay.

  Looking out the window at the water surrounding the island, I toyed with the idea of dying—from some rare river fungus, exacerbated by marital neglect. Let him put that kind of remorse in his pipe and smoke it. No! I mustn’t indulge in these fantasies. Nothing must disrupt the even tenor of my misery. I had my child to consider. And truth be told, I felt wretchedly fit. Which left me no choice but to have a bath and get myself dressed in preparation for a flagrant affair with the first man to cross my path. My hopes weren’t high because my skirt wouldn’t button and I had taken no more than a couple of steps when I heard a rip. Oh, well! The sexy slit from knee to thigh went with my new image. I had stopped tearing my hair out and let it hang loose.

  Fate handed Mr
. Brown to me at the head of the staircase. His handsome face was a thoroughfare of emotions. None of them happy.

  “Good morning,” I said, batting my eyes at him.

  “Yes, but is it a good morning?” Shoulders slumped, he made a half-hearted attempt at pulling my name out of the hat.

  “Ellie Haskell,” I helped out. “Also married to a candidate.”

  “Right—you’re not the French one, or the one in orange trousers, but the pregnant one. Tell me, aren’t you up to here”—he thumped a fist under his chin—“with this un-American, godless bunch of mumbo-jumbos?”

  I reached up through my own misery to assuage his. “Mr. Brown, The Mangé Society is not a religious cult.”

  “We don’t know what it is, do we? The Frenchwoman told me when I was downstairs trying to force down some breakfast as how the latest candidate is a witch.”

  Et tu, Solange?

  “Mrs. Haskell, have you no fear? Don’t you wonder what your husband will be turned into behind closed doors? Will you even know him when you get him back? Think of your child!” Mr. Brown’s voice petered out. Accidentally, or on purpose, he had brought my face into focus, causing his to pucker in revulsion. He was looking at the slit up my skirt and my wanton hair as though I were a disease his Lois might catch. I wanted to shout, You’re unhappy because your wife is in love with the idea of being a Mangé! Big deal! My husband is in love with a Mangé. And you, sir, have blown your chances! I’d sooner take a fast-acting depressant than have an affair with you!

  I scraped up a smile. “If you’ll excuse me …”

  “Don’t expect to see your husband downstairs,” he said glumly. “Today’s meetings are already in progress.”

  Perfect. I would rather walk the plank than descend those stairs to collide with Ben … and his Valicia. I wasn’t ready to see anyone or to rub shoulders with them in the dining room. I needed time. Time for a face lift, time to learn to play the piano, time to acquire fluency in six languages. A witty, charming, accomplished woman can smile in the face of betrayal.

  I abandoned Mr. Henderson Brown. Two doors down from the bathroom, tucked into an alcove, I found … a lift. Well, why not pamper yourself, Ellie dear? After all, you’re pregnant. Opening the narrow wooden door I found another door—the brass accordion type, which separated me from a wooden platform suspended in the dark shaft. Careful. Sometimes the morning sickness had included a dash of vertigo. Ellie, you don’t have to do this. Take the stairs for exercise! Nonsense! This was an adventure! Entering the elevator cage with its six-foot-high, iron mesh sides, I refused to believe I was about to become a prisoner of my own making. A light came on. The floor buttons were conveniently at hand. An electrical hum glided up my arm, a groan of ropes being churned over a rusty caster. Three, two, one: rocket descent. My insides lurched up as the floor dropped down. I gripped the sides of the cage, then dragged my hands inside; the walls of the shaft pressed closer with every downward jolt.

  A half century later I reached the main hall. Amazing how all was the same as last night—the oppressive opulence of mahogany, the pawnbroker candelabra, the breathless air. Melancholy Mansion. Home of the Black Cloud. Might anything have been different if I had visited the Tramwells and spoken with Chantal? What was it she had said about my having to find the answer within myself?

  “Bonjour, Ellee! You travel in style.” Solange might have been clipped from the glossy page of a fashion magazine, circa 1789. She glided toward me, the cape collar of her cloak gown falling to her elbows; a wide black belt cinched in her waist. She wore bold black earrings and her hair was plaited into a knot low on her neck. “Why, what hurts you, ma cherie?” She touched a flame-coloured nail to my cheek. “You look fit to cry.”

  I very nearly threw my arms around her neck and sobbed out the whole dreary tale. Saved by the fear that my skirt would split further up my leg, also that, being French, Solange might think it not only acceptable, but tres bien for a man to have a mistress. The last thing I needed was to be called a spoil sport.

  “These shadows under your eyes, you too find sleep hard to catch after the big scream. But I theenk we not have to be jolted up in our beds again. Mr. Grogg and Mademoiselle Divonne are gone. Never the word of good-bye. Never the word of good-bye, unless …” She fidgeted my collar straight. “… I count what I find on my pillow last night as the bon voyage.”

  “Escargot?” I asked.

  “Non! That would be the good party favour. Someone take my Vincent’s prize recipe for La Potage Grandmère and stab to zee pillow. My Victor is afraid to say ‘boo!’ because he think it some Mangé exam of will.”

  “Oh, dear.” For no good reason I was remembering Ben’s mentioning that Bingo had asked “to be excused” several times during the evening.

  We went into the dining room together. Having thought I never wanted to eat again, I discovered I was not immune to the enticing aroma drifting up from the sideboard buffet. “Did Pepys take the Groggs over to Mud Creek in a boat?” I asked Solange.

  “What? Allow in my boat those who smuggled baking powder into this house! Over their dead bodies!” Laughter crackled. Sunlight was less kind to Pepys than the comtesse. Ice blue eyes peeped through lids resembling button holes frayed at the edges. His wrinkled face and bald head could have been a rubber mask—a couple of sizes too big. The rest of him was a sackful of loose bones shaken into a dark suit.

  “How did Jim Grogg and Divonne leave?” I asked. I hadn’t imagined the missing knives. Only four now hung in the elaborate display on the wall. Two brackets were empty.

  “Don’t know, neither care a tin nickel!” Pepys’ eyes rolled upward until I could see only their sallow whites. “Have enough on my plate wondering what my sterling new employer, Miss Mary Faith, is doing in her room all day.”

  “Making of you the immortal?” Solange poured herself coffee.

  Pepys shuddered. “Her mother now, what a difference! Never a moment’s sitdown when Miss Theola’s in residence! Through the house like a tornado, tripping on her feathery fripperies. Knocking ornaments off the piano. Shouting for Jeffries and me to join her in a sing song.” His calloused hands adjusted some grapes on a platter of smoked salmon. “Enough! You ladies will excuse me if I shuffle off.” Fists clenched, arms bent at the elbows, he did a slow jog out the door.

  “Worry not.” The comtesse set down her coffee cup, lips curving into a three-quarter smile. “We have not seen the last of him. My Vincent tells me Pepys is instructed by Valicia X to take any who wish to the mainland. No skin off his knees. He has to collect Mees Rumpson’s luggage anyway. I go now to put on a new face. Mrs. Hoffman comes with; so you also, Ellee, please!”

  I promised and she left. Well, why not? Mud Creek did number among its attraction the black rental car. The keys were in my bag along with the infamous traveller’s cheques. Wouldn’t it be best for everyone concerned if I slid behind the wheel and drove off into the sunset?

  “Nobility does not become you, Ellie!” Aunt Astrid was so fond of saying. My mother had put it a different way: “Darling, with your nose up in the air you can’t see where you’re going.” A tear dribbled down that nose and plopped onto my lips. Curses! My eyelashes would shrink to nothing. What was that about starve a fever, feed a broken heart?

  I was hovering indecisively between two chafing dishes set out on the black oak sideboard, when in came Jeffries. Luckily the room was shadowy. Jeffries wouldn’t notice I had been crying.

  “What you blubbering about?”

  “I’m allergic to dust,” I flared back.

  She was the spitting image of Crosspatch the fairy. Her maid’s uniform did as much for her as my tutu had done for me when I was eight years old and about her height—in both directions. Those horsehair curls and a face like a doorknocker! She was to be congratulated for not taking one look in the mirror and going to bed for life. Without flexing a bicep she had driven me back from the sideboard and was standing guard over the assembly line of silver chafin
g dishes and domed platters. Did I need a ticket to be served? Oh, crumbs! She lifted the lid and the most marvelous aroma of tomato and herbs, fortified with bacon, steamed forth. She stirred with a massive spoon and moved on to raise another lid. This time the aroma caramelized on my tongue. Brandied fruit baked into a sticky sponge.

  My stomach rumbled.

  “You say som’at?” Jeffries wielded a spoon that had to be taller than she in a pan of scrambled eggs, rich with cheese and cream and chives. “Someone standing on your tongue?”

  “I’ll take a lit—make that a lot of everything.”

  Fixing me with her walnut eyes, she jabbed a finger at the three plates I held out. “Collecting for your bottom drawer?”

  “Eggs is eggs and tomato is tomato and never the twain shall meet.”

  “Ain’t you the oddball!” Surprisingly, she made it sound like a compliment. “And I don’t suppose you go for paper plates either.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  She spooned eggs onto one of my plates, white china with a blue rim. “I tell Pepys that paper plates has done more to bring down the good old U.S.A. than anything else. Back in the days when I was a dresser to Theola Faith and His Nuttyness was doorman at the Palace Theatre, people knew how to party.”

  I handed over another plate. “What is she like—Miss Faith? I got the impression from something someone said” (best not to mention Mary) “that you don’t see a lot of her.”

  In the manner of a revolving door, Jeffries went back the other way—into unpleasantness. “She’s a boss—that’s what she’s like! Any more I won’t say. Not while that woman who calls herself a daughter is in this house. Here the walls don’t just have ears, they got mouths too!” Her vehemence had me backing away from her. “We’re in that book of hers you know, me and Pepys. Calls us by different names—to protect the innocent. Don’t that beat all? Think I wouldn’t know myself anywhere? Bouncing curls and a pixie smile. You tell me you ain’t looking at it?”