“What I’ll never understand, Ellie”—Mum handed Mr. Watkins his cup of tea without spilling a drop—“is why you put up with that dreadful woman. I would say to Dad—in the days when we were speaking—that it stood out a mile that she drank.” Lips on the straight and narrow, she got on with the business of wiping down the stove, as calm as you please.
“We all drink! The intake of liquid is part of the human condition.” I flapped a hand towards Mr. Watkins, who was downing his cuppa as if a return to full mental and physical health depended on it.
“Gin! That’s what I’m talking about.” Mum folded her dishcloth and set it aside, for future darning, I suppose.
“Mrs. Malloy does not imbibe on the job!” I had to fight to keep my feet on the floor so as not to hop up and down with rage, an activity which in addition to making me look ridiculous would have jarred Mr. Watkins out of his chair. All I needed was to have him add a slipped disc to his list when suing us for damages. “Do you really think, Mum, I would leave the twins with Mrs. Malloy if I thought she would be under the sofa with a bottle? She’s a changed woman since she signed up for brass-rubbing classes at St. Anselm’s.”
“A pity she doesn’t do a bit more of that here!” Mum gave her signature sniff, but wasn’t finished. “And that hair!”
I was on the very edge of saying that Mrs. Malloy was blessed with a full head of the stuff, albeit in two colours, but I bit my tongue. Standing before me, I reminded myself, was the woman who had brought Ben into the world.
“She looks like a prostitute.” Mum screwed up her face. “Those taffeta frocks with the necklines down to the knees!”
“You wouldn’t happen to have a tube of liniment handy?” Mr. Watkins piped up. “I’m beginning to ache all through my joints.”
I would gladly have thrown one at him. But first things first. I mustn’t miss a word of what Mum was saying.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when I caught her …” She dangled the unfinished sentence under my nose.
“When you caught her doing what?”
“Reading that filthy book!”
Following her sparrow-eyed gaze towards the row of instructional volumes in the art of cookery, I thought bleakly, so that’s it—the one thing I missed, sponging off the batter-spattered pages of The Way to a Man’s Stomach,
“Admittedly, there are a few dirty spots here and there.…”
“A few spots here and there!” Mum was in full flood. Marching over to the shelf, she pulled out a volume as if afraid of catching a venereal disease. “Every page, every line full of smut. I almost had a heart attack when I opened it up looking for a recipe for pork loin. There were loins all right, writhing and throbbing and generally carrying on in the most disgusting way.”
Mr. Watkins was on the edge of his seat, tipping Tobias onto the floor in the process.
“Oh, heavens!” I pressed my hands to my cheeks.
“There’s the most awful bit about stoking the boiler.” Her face working, Mum stared me down. “Don’t think for one moment, Ellie, that I am criticizing. You know that has never been my way! But how you could let Mrs. Malloy bring a book like this—with twenty-eight references to ‘her ripe red strawberries’—into the house when you have an impressionable young husband, I will never understand.”
“I’m coming over all hot and cold!” Mr. Watkins did indeed look feverish. But who had time to worry about him?
“Honestly, Mum, you’ve got everything back to front.” I attempted a shamefaced laugh. “Lady Letitia’s Letters is my book.”
“I knew it!”
“Well then …”
“I knew you would defend that woman. But it’s not a bit of good, Ellie. She owned up without so much as a blush the moment I showed it to her,”
“Of course she did!” I had tears in my eyes. “That’s the sort of person she is—loyal to the death.”
Wasted words. My mother-in-law wasn’t standing still for my defense of Mrs. Malloy. She marched over to the Aga, and before I could let out a howl of protest ripped the book down the middle, lifted the cover of the hot plate with the iron hook, and crammed Lady Letitia’s Letters down onto the coals.
“If it wasn’t hot stuff before, it is now,” Mr. Watkins murmured.
“It was a library book!” I flung myself across the room. “My library book! I will be arrested. Librarians all over the country have banded together in demanding the return of the death penalty for books that are more than a fortnight late.”
Mum flinched as if she had stuck her hand on the hot plate. “I might have known it would be like this.” She gave a teensy-weensy sob. “A woman on her own is always fair game. You don’t need to tell me that I’m no better than the female in that book, for it’s written all over your face. But let me say this, Ellie. In all the years Dad and I were together, I never once let him”—shudder—“see my loins.”
Before I could respond, the hall door opened. In stalked Mrs. Malloy in all her glory, with Sweetie nipping at the hem of her frock.
“Oh, there you are!” I stammered.
“Well, if that don’t warm me cockles.” Mrs. M. drew on her three-quarter-length black satin gloves with slow deliberation, but I could tell she wasn’t as calm as she wished to appear. The beauty spot which she usually penciled in above her lip was way up over her left eyebrow. And when I hurried over to her, she warded me off with a shaky hand.
“If it’s all the same with you, Mrs. H., I’ve been having a last sit-down in the nursery with me precious babes. They’ve always loved their old Roxie, have little Abbey and Tam.”
Mum stood there as if she had been stuffed by a master taxidermist; but I would gladly have dropped to my knees in full view of Mr. Watkins and Sweetie, who was herding Tobias into a corner.
“Mrs. Malloy, we have to talk this over.”
“Thanks but no thanks, Mrs. H.; you could hand me Mrs. MacIvelli’s”—a glare in Mum’s direction—“head on a silver platter, and it wouldn’t make no difference. You’ll be getting me resignation in tomorrow’s post.”
“This is all so silly. I’ve explained to Mum that it was I who borrowed Lady Letitia’s Letters from the library, and I know she’s most frightfully sorry for going off the deep end at you—”
“I can see she’s all choked up.” Mrs. M. teetered around on her high heels, lifted her supply bag from Tam’s booster chair, and cocked her black-and-white head at Mr. Watkins. “Up with you, lad, you get to take me home in the van.”
I played for time. “He’s feeling poorly.”
“And I suppose if he sits here all day, paralysis will set in.”
“He got stuck on one of the balconies.” I had to raise my voice, because Sweetie was yipping and yap ping as she made little rushes at Tobias in an attempt to wrest what appeared to be a bone from his tenacious paws.
“Ah.” Mrs. M.’s butterfly lips softened into a smile. “Mr. Watkins couldn’t find his ladder with his little footsies, poor lad.”
“Blame me for that.” Mum came back to pinch-faced life. “Another case where I went wrong thinking I was doing right—”
“I’m still in shock.” The victim’s beret fell off when he hung his head. “Every bone in my body aches from the drenching I took.”
“What a shame.” Mrs. Malloy’s smile spread. “You come with me, there’s a dear, and we’ll stop at the chemist’s to pick up a tube of nice smelly ointment.”
“I don’t know as I can stand up.” Mr. Watkins stared hopelessly up at me, his right hand protruding at a peculiar angle, but it took a moment for the penny to drop.
“Goodness! I haven’t paid you!” Reaching for my handbag, I went to give him a twenty-pound note, saw him fade before my eyes, and hastily produced a fifty. Undoubtedly I was making a mistake admitting liability, but surely this would be the end of the matter.
Pocketing the money with no trace of a smile, Mr. Watkins struggled to his feet, saying in a terminally weakened voice, “I’ll h
ave to be careful of this few quid, for who knows when I’ll work again.”
“Cheer up, duck!” Mrs. Malloy gave him a whop with the supply bag. “You and me will plot our revenge on the way home.”
Someone let out a squeal. It could have been Mum, but in all probability it was Sweetie. The dear little doggie kept getting underfoot as my former daily half dragged, half carried wan Mr. Watkins into the alcove where we kept the Wellington boots.
“Is it asking too much for someone to get the door?” Mrs. M. asked in awful accents.
“Coming!” With leaden steps I went and opened up. Too choked up to say good-bye, I couldn’t bring myself to close the door on the two figures heading for the van. Arms dangling at my sides, I stared into a future without Mrs. M. giving me her orders for the day.
“Say it,” came Mum’s voice from behind me. “You blame me for the lot. But don’t worry yourself, Ellie, I’ve never been one to cause trouble and I’m not about to start in my old age. I’ll go upstairs and pack my suitcases.”
Tempting as this offer was, I couldn’t let things end this way. I would feel like a villain, and Ben had enough to contend with, given the bar sinister. Prying myself away from the open door, I went over to Mum and tried to give her a hug. She fended me off, declaring she couldn’t take any more, and Sweetie greedily seized upon the notion that I was attacking her mistress. Leaping two feet in the air, she took a yank out of my skirt. I yelled. Mum squealed and Tobias, with a meow to waken the dead—to say nothing of the twins in the nursery—hurled himself into the fray. Jaws snapped. Teeth flashed. Eyes rolled until only the whites showed like boiled eggs. And when the fur settled, dog and cat were heading out the door.
“Sweetie! Stay!” Mum pressed a hand to her throbbing lips.
Obedient to her command, the little dog rushed back into the kitchen, all the way into the corner by the Welsh dresser, to retrieve the bone of earlier contention with Tobias. Only it wasn’t a bone, it was the much-put-upon St. Francis, and nothing—not a bolt of lightning nor a heavenly voice thundering “Stop that dog”—could have stayed Sweetie’s racing paws as she vanished into the great green yonder.
“She’s not thinking clearly, poor little poppet” was Mum’s verdict. “Who knows what she may do in her state of mind!”
“Eat St. Francis?” I asked.
“No! Take her own life! Don’t think I am blaming you, Ellie, but I will never get over it if my darling, in a fit of despondency, throws herself over the cliff.”
I was tempted to have Ben arrested for breaking and entering when he waltzed through the door that evening. Any fool knows there is a time and a place for everything, including husbands, and this was neither the hour nor the venue. I had put Abbey and Tam to bed, fed Jonas a makeshift meal of leftover cottage pie, and packed him off to the parlour to sleep it off. But I was still at a loss as to what to do with Mum. My mother-in-law’s face, as she sat hunched in the rocking chair with Sweetie clutched to her makeshift bosom, was enough to send me right up the wall. But did her sonny boy notice?
No.
“How are my girls?” He whipped his hands out from behind his back and with a conjuror’s flourish produced two identical bunches of sweet Williams. “Don’t I get any welcome-home kisses? I’ll have you know there are women starving in remote corners of the world for such an opportunity.”
He was right, damn him! Never had he looked more diabolically handsome, with his dark hair crisped by the misting rain and his eyes almost the teal blue of the mixing bowl on the Welsh dresser. His innate elegance was apparent in the set of his shoulders and the turn of his trouser cuffs. And to think I hadn’t had time to wash and starch my hair! Really, it was enough to make a woman pine for the convent. Mum did not lift her eyes from her dog.
“Home from the wars?” I bestowed a peck on Ben’s cheek and would have snatched it back when his smile turned bitter at the edges.
“It’s been a rough day. The tomato aspic didn’t jell and the truffles weren’t up to snuff, but what else could be expected after last night?” Going over to Mum, he bent and kissed the top of her unresponsive head and laid one of the bunches of flowers in her lap before handing me mine.
“You look like a couple of bridesmaids.” Ben strained to come up with the joke.
“These are lovely.” Eyes lowered, I fiddled with the petals while waiting for an echo from the rocking chair. When none was forthcoming, I flooded a jug with water and began separating stems. The tension had thickened to the consistency of wallpaper paste.
“What have you been doing all day?” asked the man of the hour.
“The usual”—I snapped a stalk savagely in two—“looking out the window to see what the neighbours are doing.”
“We don’t have any neighbours.”
At that I lost my composure. A case of delayed anger, I suppose. Flinging the flowers into the sink, I whirled to face him. “Thank you for setting me straight on that one.” I was about to say I’d had enough of everything and everyone, but Mum forestalled me.
She rose from her chair, and said, “I’m sorry, son, you’ve made your bed and will have to lie on it, but I can’t live like this and won’t subject Sweetie to constant hysteria”—she held the smirking dog closer—“she might make another attempt.” And on that dismal note, the mistress and mutt vacated the room.
When the saucepans had stopped bouncing up and down on the stove, Ben availed himself of the rocking chair, flattening the abandoned sweet Williams in the process. Head flung wearily back, he addressed the ceiling. “We can’t go on like this, Ellie.”
“You don’t say.”
“What was all that about the dog?” He pried a finger under his collar as if I, along with his silk tie, had him about the throat.
“According to Mum, Sweetie threw herself in front of a bus coming past the gates. She was forced to administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”
“But the dog is fine.”
“It’s debatable. I have spent the last hour listening to your mother ponder aloud whether to take heroic measures should the need arise. Quite frankly, at this moment I am the one who needs to be on life support.”
“Sweetheart, you need to relax.” Ben got up and began pacing the length and breadth of the kitchen. After lap three, and barely winded, he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Today of all days you could have let the housework go. Be damned to routine.”
Who was this monster hiding inside my husband’s body? Blinking back tears of fury, I lashed out at him. “See those dishes in the sink? See the twins’ washing piled up in that basket? Does it look as though I couldn’t tear myself away from the daily grind?”
“I’m not saying any of this has been easy on you”—Ben rubbed a hand across his forehead—“but the day hasn’t been a piece of cake for me either. I went to see Dad at the Dark Horse this afternoon and got absolutely nowhere with him. He’s still smarting from having been caught with his pants down, and the only way out of his embarrassment is to blame Mum for the whole affair. I had Freddy pick up my car and drive it back here, meaning I won’t have to use yours again tomorrow, but otherwise we are no further forward.”
“Well, I feel sorry for your father. To hell with Sweetie! Dad is the one liable to end up under a bus. Everyone makes mistakes, and I’m sure he is consumed with remorse.”
“I can’t believe you’re taking his side.” Ben brought a hand down on the working surface with such force that the cups and saucers in the sink chattered with fright. “I’m beginning to feel I never knew the man.”
“Because he went for a nude swim with Beatrix Taffer?”
“No! Because he did not have the courtesy to marry my mother.”
“She was a grown woman when they set up housekeeping.”
“Ellie, you are not being sympathetic.”
“You’re right!” My voice went spiralling up to the ceiling. “For your information, your mother sacked Mrs. Malloy this afternoon. Yes!” I held up a shaking hand. �
�I can tell myself that Mum reacted with such virulence due to a deep-rooted fear that she and Lady Letitia might be sisters under the skin, but—”
“Lady who?” Ben looked completely at sea.
“Letitia. The wanton heroine of the library book Mum consigned to the flames of the Aga. And if it isn’t bad enough that she refused to apologize to Mrs. Malloy when I explained that I was the one who had brought the book into the house, she stranded Mr. Watkins, the window cleaner, on a balcony for several hours, she accused me of driving her dog to suicide, and … she criticized my cottage pie.”
“Ellie, I am not defending her, but I do think you could make allowances. Haven’t I put up with assorted members of your batty family over the years?”
This was a low blow considering my sensitivity on the subject of Freddy’s mother, Aunt Lulu, who shoplifts for a hobby; Aunt Astrid, who believes she is the reincarnation of Queen Victoria; and Uncle Maurice, who can’t be left alone with any woman this side of the grave.
“You … you bastard!” The foul words were out of my mouth before I could call them back.
“So!” Ben curled his lip and retreated to the farthest reaches of the kitchen. “I should have known it wouldn’t be long before you threw my illegitimacy in my face.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!”
“Whatever is going on in here?”
Mum burst into the kitchen with Jonas hard on her heels. Her wispy hair stuck up all over the place as if she had spent her time away from us pulling it out, and her nose twitched like a divining rod. “I had just tucked Sweetie up for the night when I heard the most fearful disturbance. I know, son”—her voice left me right out of the picture—“I know it is none of my business—”
How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law Page 12
