“Ben”—I turned from seating Abbey in her booster chair—“have you seen your mother?”
“No.” He poured a sample measure of freshly brewed coffee into a cup and applied his nose to savour the bouquet before taking an experimental sip which, after much rolling around the tongue, was found to be of suitable vintage, and duly swallowed. “She’s probably still in bed.”
Rubbish! We both knew the only time Mum would agree to a lie-in was when the coffin lid closed. What could be wrong? A particular piece of bedroom furniture loomed large in my fears, even though it was lunacy to picture her being pressed to death like the Blessed (or was it Saint?) Margaret Clitherow. Ben and I couldn’t have failed to hear if that chest of drawers had come tumbling down, unless … my blood ran cold … it had happened when we were making love and the trombones and clarinets were at their zenith.
Leaving the twins in their booster chairs under the watchful eye of Daddy, who promised not to feed them eggs Benedict, I raced upstairs to tap on Mum’s door.
“Hello, it’s me, Ellie!”
No answer.
I knocked again. This time, to my relief, I was rewarded with a tiny invitation to “Come in.”
When I timidly complied, I found Mum stretched out in bed with the sheet up to her chin, looking as if she were only waiting for a well-wisher to close her eyes and drop a couple of pennies on her alabaster lids.
“Don’t worry about intruding.” She didn’t so much as turn her head my way. “As my poor boy made plain last night, this is your home, not mine.”
“Aren’t you feeling well?” I hovered by the bedside while the skyscraper dresser mocked me from the wall.
“I’m as right as can be expected.” The ghostly words were spoken without a flicker of expression or eyelash.
“Good!” I looked around for someone to come to my aid, but the Grecian nymphs on the mantelpiece had their hands full holding up their bronze skirts. “Ben just made coffee and I could bring some up, or if you would prefer to come down …”
“That’s very kind of you, Ellie.” I heard a sigh so weak, it wouldn’t have fogged a mirror held to her lips. “But if it’s all the same with you, I’ll stay here out from underfoot. That way I can’t be accused of causing trouble and you can get on with whatever it is you do all day. All I want is my son’s happiness.”
“He won’t be very chipper if you put yourself to bed for life.” I tried to soften the words, but my patience was wearing as thin as Mum’s hair, which stuck out from her face in forlorn wisps.
“There’s no need to be sarcastic, Ellie; but when all’s said and done, I don’t suppose you will have me cluttering up the place for long.” It was pure chance that her eyes fixed upon the dresser, which to my nervous gaze appeared to be on the point of keeling over, with or without outside help.
“Please, Mum.” Sitting gingerly down on the bed, I said with all the firmness I could muster, “You mustn’t talk about dying.”
After looking blank for a second, her face cleared. “I meant you wouldn’t have to put up with me if I went ahead and married Jonas; he was talking last night about buying a little cottage with a thatched roof and roses around the door.”
“And I suppose you’d have Miss Marple living next door?” I am ashamed to say I let my irritation get the better of me.
“Who?”
“The village busybody. But don’t get me wrong,” I added quickly, “it all sounds extremely romantic and I am sure Dad will be sick with jealousy. Not that you give a fig bar what he thinks.”
Mum’s sniff was somewhat ambiguous.
“Jonas is a dear, wonderful man”—I sat pleating the corner of her sheet—“and I’m sure you would quickly adjust to his sleeping in his gardening boots.”
This wicked fib did not fall on fertile ground. Squaring her birdlike shoulders, Mum managed a courageous smile. “After nearly forty years with Eli, I can cope with pretty much anything.”
“I’m sure you can,” I soothed, “but I don’t know that you will be able to wean Jonas away from the Church of England. He’s a pillar of our little congregation.” This at least was not a complete fabrication. To my certain knowledge, Jonas had attended St. Anselm’s on two occasions—my wedding and the twins’ christening.
Finally! I had scored a bull’s-eye. Mum blinked uneasily and murmured, “I must have heard what I wanted to hear. The way I understood it, he was C. of E. in name only. Are you telling me”—she shrank down in the pillows—“that he passes the collection plate?”
“And changes the numbers on the hymn board,” I assured her without a blush. “You did know he’s an elder?” At seventy-odd, surely no one could deny Jonas that distinction. “Oh, well, diversity is the spice of life. I’m sure you will be able to work things out—perhaps one Sunday at his church, the next at yours. After all, you and Dad coped with your difference all these years.…”
“That’s not the same thing at all!” Mum bobbed up like a jack-in-the-box. “It wasn’t the Jewish people who destroyed our monasteries and pinched our holy relics!”
“To say nothing of a few nuns’ bottoms in the process,” I agreed, with a sorry shake of the head.
“What my parents refused to see when I told them I wanted to marry Eli”—Mum’s sparrow eyes filmed with tears—“is that Catholics and Jews have a lot in common.”
“Of course they do,” I concurred. “There’s the Old Testament and—”
“And more important”—sniff—“is that I grew up with the mass in Latin while Eli attended services in Hebrew, so neither one of us understood a word of what was going on.”
“That would make for a strong bond.”
Mum looked at me in amazement bordering on shock. “Are you telling me, Ellie, that you understand why I did what I did?”
“Absolutely. In respecting Dad’s religious convictions you couldn’t insist that he marry you in a church any more than he could have demanded that the wedding take place in a synagogue, and neither of you could have accepted a heathen registry office.”
“So you don’t lump me in the same category as other fallen women … like Tricks?”
“Of course not,” I said firmly. “You’re much prettier.”
“Am I?” A smile wavered on her lips, and I wondered with a pang of guilt if this was the first compliment of a personal nature I had ever paid her.
“You put Tricks completely in the shade.” I laid my hand on hers. “Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t gild the lily. Have you ever thought”—I was getting really daring—“about putting a rinse in your hair and using a smudge of shadow to bring out the sparkle in your eyes?”
She lay so still against the pillows that for a moment I thought I had gone too far, but then she said softly, “That’s one thing I’ve missed in life—having a daughter to help keep me smart.”
“We could have a beauty session today.” I gave her hand a squeeze. “I was looking at my hair this morning and thinking I need two inches cut off the ends.”
“You want me to cut it for you?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Well, if you’re sure you have a decent pair of scissors …” Sitting up, Mum pushed back the bedclothes and reached for her dressing gown at the foot of the bed. “I must say, Ellie, I’m not usually in favour of women your age wearing their hair long, but on you it looks better than most.”
“Thank you.” Picking up her slippers and handing them to her, I thought, Is that where I’ve gone wrong? Had I been guilty of never asking for her help or advice because my own insecurities necessitated I present myself as the model wife and mother when in the company of the woman whose son I had appropriated? While Mum was buttoning up her dressing gown I moved casually over to the dresser, which had figured in my idle little plot to murder her and, upon a hands-on inspection, realized that guilt had made an idiot of me. That piece of furniture was as unbudgeable as the Rock of Gibraltar.
“You go on down, Ellie”—Mum was plumping up
the pillows and spreading up her sheets—“I need some time to sort things out in my head.”
“Take all the time you want.” I moved towards the door. “By the way, where’s Sweetie?”
“Under the bed.”
“And we haven’t heard a peep out of her.” Hope reared its naughty head that the doggie would dig her way to China and chew up their Oriental rugs.
“She had a bad night. Not, of course, that you should feel guilty about that, Ellie.”
Hand on the doorknob, I said, “Perhaps she would like a magazine.” On Sweetie’s last visit she had devoured several copies of Woman’s Own.
“That’s all right, she took one of my crocheting patterns under the bed with her.” To my delight, Mum smiled as if she really meant it, and I heard myself asking if she would mind doing some ironing for me sometime.
“I know Ben misses the way you do his shirts.”
“Since you mention it, Ellie, I did notice that you press the creases in instead of out, but we can’t be good at everything and I’m sure you could teach me a thing or two.” She was clearly racking her brain. “I’ve got it, you could show me how to defrost frozen dinners.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, and headed downstairs convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that everything was coming up sunshine and roses.
On reaching the kitchen I found Ben draining a cup of coffee, one eye on the clock.
“How was she?”
“Fine. We kissed and made up.” I bustled him towards the garden door. “It dawned on me that incredible as it sounds, I may have been to blame for part of the problem. But I don’t want to hold you up doing a rehash. What are you going to do about the cars—take mine and worry about getting yours later?”
“I’d better hurry,” he said, shrugging into his jacket, “if I’m to have my meaningful talk with Dad, before setting down to Abigail’s.”
While the twins fussed in their booster chairs, I retrieved his car keys from my raincoat pocket, placed them lovingly in his hand, and waited for both his well-shod feet to clear the step before closing the door firmly behind him.
“Daddy’s all gone bye-bye,” I carolled at my impatient twosome, but before we could get down to a serious game of patter-cake on this, the fifth day of the tournament, the door banged open and Jonas came stomping into the kitchen with a big bunch of dahlias in his hands.
He shoved them at me. “Here you go, Ellie girl. Thought you might like something to brighten your day.”
“You’re a dear!” I gave him a peck on his grizzled cheek and received a grunt in return. The window showed a square of rheumy-eyed morning which promised to turn into a day of fretful rain and whining wind. But Jonas, as I understood it, was talking about the atmospheric pressure inside the house. His eyes under the shaggy brows were worried and his moustache had more of a droop than usual when he said, “You done wandering off, lass?”
“I’m back in harness,” I promised. Avoiding Abbey’s grab for the dahlias, I went over to the Welsh dresser to get down a vase. And when Jonas next spoke, I sensed he was glad I had my back to him.
“Did you hear tell, girl, as how I asked Magdalene to marry me?”
“Word leaked out.” I was about to say I was wise to his little game and thought it might just do the trick where Mum and Dad were concerned, when a knock came at the garden door. Bunging the flowers in the vase, I opened up, fully expecting to see Freddy on the doorstep with an empty porridge bowl in his hands and a hopeful smile on his lips.
“Mr. Savage,” I cried. “So you’re back safe and sound!”
“I had to see you.” His spectacles sparkled and his smile broke through the mist to drive back the threat of rain. “I had to come and thank you for last night.”
“How kind!” Without looking around I knew that Jonas’s eyebrows were lodged in the middle of his forehead and that Abbey’s and Tam’s rosebud mouths were opened wide.
“It was the best night of my life, and it only heightened the pleasure to know that my mother would have been appalled. What matters is that I learned more in one evening—”
“Good.”
“I couldn’t believe it when you let me start your motor!”
“And afterwards”—I hurried him along before Jonas could rush to the phone and ask Reverend Spike to make an emergency house call—“did you have a productive session with my father-in-law?”
“Between us we composed four new songs and added a new verse to ‘The Fair Maid of Chitterton Fells.’ ”
“That’s wonderful.” I was genuinely pleased for him and sorry I had to break the news that I had left his tape recorder at the Dark Horse.
“Don’t give it a thought!” He beamed at me. “I found it sitting on the bar when Elijah took me down to breakfast. And now I must pick up my guitar before meeting up with him. We’re heading down to the railway station—”
“You’re leaving? Both of you?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about Dad returning to Tottenham at this stage of Jonas’s clever game.
Mr. Savage laughed merrily. “Don’t worry; you’re not losing us. We’re going to stake out our busking pitch and take the village by storm. We even have our collaboration all worked out—I’m to do the strumming and the tra-la-las and Elijah will sing the verses.”
Behind me one of the twins’ breakfast spoons went clattering onto the booster chair tray and from there ping-pinging to the floor. But I couldn’t so much as turn my head. I was in shock! Dad had to be out of his mind, unless … oh, of course—stupid me! This was his way of forcing Mum’s hand. She would have to beg him to come back when she found out he had been driven bonkers by their separation.
“I hope you won’t feel I’m deserting you by moving out of my stable room.” Mr. Savage wiped the mist off his spectacles with the back of his hand. “Elijah feels strongly that we should spend every waking and sleeping moment together if our careers are to advance. And helpful as Freddy has been, I have come to believe he might not be the best musical partner for me. You will make my apologies to him, Mrs. Haskell—Ellie—and please never forget that you are my inspiration.” His voice broke. “There isn’t a song I wouldn’t sing for you, no plank I wouldn’t walk …”
“That’s very kind of you.” My blushes were already turning into second-degree burns when he turned and stumbled down the steps in the manner of one whose eyes were blinded by rain or tears.
“He’s round the bend, he is!” Jonas bent to pick up the dropped spoon and stood wagging it at me.
“Mr. Savage is a musician,” I reproved, closing the door.
“By gum, you can say that again.”
“Can I help it if I am a woman to die for?” Sashaying past him, I got busy rescuing Abbey, who had been kicking her heels against the chair long enough. And having put her on the floor with her building blocks, I turned my attention to her brother, who needed his face washed. “I fully appreciate, Jonas, that you prefer your women on the spicy side of seventy, but there are men who are prepared to settle for someone of my meagre years.”
Having put him in his place, I asked if he would take Mum up some coffee.
“You think that’s wise?”
“I know I can trust you, Jonas, to slip the cup and saucer under the door.”
“If I have to go in, I’ll keep me eyes closed.”
Off he went at a speedy shuffle, having laid a single dahlia alongside the milk jug on his little tray. No doubt about it, I thought fondly, the old codger was playing his amorous role to the hilt. And he was doing it for me, so I would never have to run away from home again. Bless him! And bless Dad for taking poor Mr. Savage under his wing. I had meant well in agreeing to provide the man with a temporary roof over his head, but it might not have been the wisest of moves.
After helping Abbey stack her building blocks and watching Tam knock them down with his fire engine, it was time for me to remember that a woman’s work has no beginning and no end. I was removing a pile of clothes from the dryer and reflecting sadly th
at it is a fact of life that socks do not mate for life when, blow me down, there was another knock at my door. And to think I had gone years without these many interruptions.
“Coming!” Throwing up my hands and sending the socks every which way, I went to open up, yet again.
“Why, Mrs. Pickle!” I couldn’t for the life of me think what had brought her here, unless … my heart faltered … had something happened to Mrs. Malloy? Had my faithful daily in a fit of depression over being sacked decided to end it all?
“Do come in!” I backed up like mad.
“I don’t want to be no bother.” Her plump face was every bit as drab as her squashed felt hat and beige coat, but that didn’t mean anything. Mrs. Pickle always looked as though she had just finished laying out her best friend.
“Please”—I scooped Abbey into my arms for moral support—“don’t break it to me gently, I can take whatever you have to tell me.”
“You’re a lady, Mrs. Haskell, I’ve always said so.” With these words she advanced into the kitchen with excruciating slowness. “But it isn’t so much a matter of telling—as asking, if you get my meaning.” This was worse than any form of torture practiced at the Tower of London other than being pressed to death. Happily, I was prevented from screaming by Abbey who, cheered on by her brother, got hold of my lips and twisted them into a knot. My bulging eyes must have spoken volumes, because Mrs. Pickle picked up the pace a fraction. “I’ve come along on the off chance—and you’re free to tell me to go—so as to ask if you’d like me to do for you a couple of mornings a week.”
“That’s it?”
Mrs. Pickle looked blank, an expression she had plainly mastered years before.
“I’m sorry”—I set Abbey down with her brother on the rug—“it’s been one of those mornings and I’ve been very worried about Mrs. Malloy.”
“Yes, I suppose you have.” Mrs. Pickle nodded slowly. “And from the sound of it, you’ve got your problems with Bill Watkins. I’ve never had much time for him, but he and me live two doors down from each other and he was telling me just this morning, when he come round to borrow some milk, about how come he got stuck on that balcony for hours on end.”
How to Murder Your Mother-In-Law Page 17
