“It’s a gorgeous nightdress. Pearl pink, one of a kind. Made from the gossamer wings of one thousand and one Arabian fireflies.” I trailed a finger under his chin. That sublimely masculine chin, betraying, as with dark, impassioned lovers everywhere, a hint of evening shadow. I could feel a pulse beating in his neck.
“I am sure it is the most beautiful nightdress in the world,” breathed Ben. “But it might be a bit hot this time of year.”
I backed away from him. “You must see it. And perhaps make a decision over a glass of champagne… a red wine would clash with the room.” I was rummaging through my suitcase with increasing fervour. “I can’t believe it! I must have forgotten to pack the wretched thing!”
“What a bitter blow!” Ben’s arms came round me and he consoled me with kisses. My pulse quickened; I would have been transported on a tidal wave of ecstasy but for one thing. The bed. My experience as a decorator advised me that this one was purely for show, a place to display one’s collection of drawn-threadwork pillows and china dolls. One wasn’t supposed to sleep on such beds, let alone cohabit. But Ben was lifting me up, carrying me toward it, laying me down upon the silken counterpane.
Here it was at last-the golden moment. The drum roll I heard was my heart. The bedframe creaked, merely because I turned my head on the mignonette-scented pillow. But I could not entirely blame the bed for my Victorian flutters. I loved Ben. I had wanted him desperately for months, but had insisted we wait; I had not wanted our first encounter to be an afternoon tea party or a late night snack. Or had I been plain scared? Would Ben be disappointed? Would he find the dishabille me about as exciting as roast lamb without red currant jelly? I began taking the pins out of my hair. A pity I had had it cut recently; those extra inches would have provided extra coverage. Ben was peeling away my blouse and I focused on a new fear. Would he start humming? Our family M.D., Dr. McTweedy, had always hummed while checking me over.
“Ellie,” he said gently.
“Yes?”
“This has been a long day. If you would rather…”
Anguished, I stared up into his blue-green eyes. He was having second thoughts. My heart slowed. Resolutely I wound my arms around his neck. Sometimes a wife has to fight for her marriage. My hands moved up into his thick black hair. I would make him forget his squabbling parents, his unsold cookery book, the responsibilities inherent in opening a five-star restaurant. I would be the strong one, the one who would transport us both to that transcendent star-studded sphere previously glimpsed only in the final pages of paperback romance.
My wedding night was delightful. But as I drew the counterpane over Ben’s ears to keep him snug during the hours till morning, I was attacked by an infinitesimal doubt. Perhaps I hadn’t done everything perfectly. Wasn’t I supposed to have heard a symphony of scraping violins and experienced a sense of floating out of my body into a burst of golden light?
“Ben?” I touched his shoulder. “Were you carried away to another planet?”
“Wild horses couldn’t have dragged me away from right here.” He gathered up my hair, twined it round, laid it over my shoulder, and was asleep.
Light was beginning to creep through the window. If I didn’t at least doze, I would be a walking corpse in the morning. An unfortunate turn of thought. Again I saw the widow on the church steps. Jenny was holding my bouquet, and then I was on the train. There was the infamous Dr. Bordeaux, Jenny again, and those two women-the nanny and the invalid. Who were they in relation to Jenny? My eyes… so heavy and Ben so warm and close… but somehow I was in the hall at Merlin’s Court, and Mr. Daffy was trying to sell me my own house. His voice kept getting louder and I tried to shush him because my husband was sleeping.
Too late! Ben bolted up in bed and shouted, “Gladys!”
When I touched him, I found he was trembling. So was I. Gladys who?
“Ellie, I had the most ghastly dream about Miss Thorn-we were in this tunnel and I couldn’t escape.”
“That Gladys-”
“When we were talking to her, I thought she had funny eyes. The kind that peel your skin off.” He sat up, trapping my hair under his hand.
“Ouch!” I clutched at the headboard. Ben rolled sideways and there it came-an ominous groaning. One brief second later, and the bed collapsed in a crash, sending the chandelier into a crystalline spin. Swearing and laughing, we struggled to crawl free from the tangle of sheets and blankets. He might have asked if I were injured, but happily only my eyes smarted-from the sunlight streaming through the open windows. And my pride. We must immediately don false moustaches and do a flit down the fire escape. Alas, immediately was not soon enough. The door was thrown open and the manager swooped into the room. Behind him stood a half-dozen smirking chambermaids.
Happy Ever After was off to a poor start, but I was still a believer!
Looking like an Indian without feathers, I faced Monsieur Manager and threatened suit. He countered with an offer of a complimentary breakfast.
“Sounds pretty decent, don’t you think, Ellie?” said Ben.
I did not. The dining room would be standing room only, with people come to gawk at us. Had Ben ever been overweight, he would have been more sensitive to collapsing furniture.
“Darling,” he whispered, “this is the bridal suite; the other guests will be green with envy.”
Nine o’clock saw us prominently displayed between two Grecian pillars under the diamanté sparkle of the dining room chandelier. Hide as I might behind my napkin, I knew that everyone was staring at us. Far from keeping a low profile, Ben ordered in French off an English menu. The waiter, a man with black patent leather hair, vanished through the archway to fetch porridge for Ben and a boiled egg for me.
Leaning back in his chair, Ben tapped a spoon on the table. “Ellie, sweetheart, did you have to make such a big deal about wanting a small egg? I thought you were going to ask the poor man to weigh it.”
I came out from my napkin. “To me it is a big deal. A calorie saved-”
“Darling, are you becoming a little fanatical? You’re forever poring over colour pages in magazines, planning what not to eat for lunch and dinner.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.” I smiled serenely for the benefit of the gawkers. “But I do have to keep one step ahead of the enemy.”
“How? By getting down to zero calories a day?”
“Detachment. I don’t look at what I am eating. I don’t think about it. Aromas still give me some problems, but I am working on that area. Aren’t you proud of me, darling?”
His smile looked a bit frayed. “Of course, but a man does hope his wife will share an interest in his work. Food is more than my work, it’s my life”-he caught my eye-“my life’s work. And Ellie, on the subject of Abigail’s, with all the renovations required to the building, I don’t believe we will be able to open before May. But that will be as well. It gives you plenty of time for the decorative end, selecting furniture, wall coverings, whatever. I’ll arrange the building contracts and deal with the crews. You know how it is; men respond better to taking orders from a man.”
I was about to ask if this meant he wasn’t going to give Mandy & Mindy Plumbers a chance to bid, but remembered those wise words in chapter four of Remaking Your Man: “The male is like iron, hard to bend unless you have him properly hotted up.” Ben went on talking about Abigail’s opening, how we would have to have a bang-up celebration on the evening before the restaurant opened for its first meals. A premiere of sorts, starring some of Ben’s most famous miniature morsels with a central fountain of champagne.
The waiter appeared at my side. Blast! This egg had to be at least five and a half inches around the fattest part of the circumference.
Ben studied the bowl placed before him. “This porridge looks unpleasantly damp.”
“I believe, sir, that is a feature of porridge,” the waiter replied.
Ben raised his spoon and sniffed the contents like a wine cork. “Is it also a feature of porridge t
o be thickened with spray starch?”
“Perhaps, sir, you wish to accompany me to the kitchen where you may advise our chef, newly lured from Windsor Castle, on how to prepare le porridge.”
I sank in my chair. People were coiled around the marble pillars, hands cupped to their ears. Ben would laugh, of course; he would explain to the waiter that he had been joking. Wrong! Instead, he patted my hand, spouted off something about professional integrity, said he would only be a minute and followed the waiter through a pair of swinging doors. I was left twisting my napkin into a rope and smiling with false conviviality at my egg. Was this what the books meant about The Morning After?
I forgave him because wives do. I had believed that marriage was like baptism. Sin was shed during the ceremony. Ben the fiancé had been wonderful; Ben the husband would be a paragon. No more reading during meals, no more monologues on the quiche objective. No more laughing in the wrong place at my jokes. As I waited for him to come back to me, I readjusted my thinking. Some faults would remain, but I would begin to appreciate them. I hitched up my smile and stirred my coffee one time, two times… sixty-seven, sixty-eight times…
Because his parents’ situation was still up in the air, when Ben rejoined me, we decided to return that day to Merlin’s Court. And really I didn’t mind. I felt the house was missing us, wanting us back. Dorcas and Jonas probably already had the kettle on. But first things first. We left our luggage in the Hostelry lobby and took a bus to Tottenham. As we jostled off the bus behind a girl in rickety high heels-a cigarette dangling from one hand, a pushchair and toddler from the other-some of yesterday’s unease concerning my mother-in-law returned.
To be seventy years old and have one’s marriage fall apart, what could be worse than that? Even widowhood might be preferable. This woman had brought Ben into the world. She had bathed him when he was little, hitched up his short trousers, and she most assuredly would never have smacked his thumb out of his mouth as the girl was doing while she jerked the pushchair out into the street. In twisting round to glare at her, I missed my footing and my shoe flew off. Ben caught it and, like Prince Charming, bent to put it on for me, but found the heel had twisted off. While he set to fixing it, I stood like a flamingo as men and women scuttled past us, their heads bent against the snappish wind, pinpricked by rain.
“Almost got it.” Ben was tapping the heel down with its mate from the other shoe.
Stepping out of the way of oncoming pedestrians, I noticed a man leaning against the sooty brick wall of Haskell’s Fruit & Veg. He was thirtyish, had no neck, long hair, and a pimply face. He wore an upturned raincoat and was picking his teeth with his little finger. The nasty part was that his eyes were drilling into me. Even nastier, I thought I recognised him. If he wasn’t the man who had stood on the platform as we waited for the train to leave Chitterton Station yesterday, then he was his double. I was about to say something to Ben but as he handed me my shoe, a woman collided with us.
“Ever so sorry, loves.” She was tall and had that sticky, rust-coloured hair which looks as though it hasn’t been properly rinsed after a tint. She wore skintight jeans, a baby-pink sweater outlining twin pyramid bosoms, and she positively rattled with gold chains. The Pyrex dish she carried did not go with the rest of her, and she was staring at us with a blend of calculation and discomfort that seemed disproportionate to the collision.
“Why, Mrs. Jarrod!” Ben bared his white teeth and bit out the words. “Making sure Dad doesn’t skip any meals, I see.”
The Raincoat Man had disappeared.
10
… “A tall woman, you say.” Hyacinth laid down the green notebook. “Brash but good-natured, I would imagine. The sort who offers to clean your windows along with hers and thrusts half an apple pie at you whether you want it or not.”
“Very pushy,” I agreed. “She shoved a handful of pounds sterling at me and said to buy something pretty as a wedding present-a china poodle for the front window. Ben was livid.”
“Speaking of unattractive objects,” said Hyacinth, “did you mention the man in the raincoat to Bentley or his father?”
“No. He looked so much a cross between a gangster and a seedy private eye I did wonder if he might be a plainclothes detective. But I talked myself out of that idea. It was too unsettling. I persuaded myself that the man at Chitterton Station and the one outside the shop could not be one and the same…
We caught the early afternoon train home. Chugging along I sported a stiff upper lip, in conjunction with the stiff neck I was developing from the open window. As Ben slept, I contemplated the way the wind tousled his black hair. I thought about my missing mother-in-law and how brave Poppa had been that morning. I thought a little about Mr. Vernon Daffy and his narrow escape from certain death. But mostly I thought of home, waiting for my love and me-Merlin’s Court-safe, sane, unchanging.
I sat at the scrubbed wood kitchen table, Tobias on my lap, a smile stapled to my cheeks. The wheat-sheaf patterned wallpaper with its border of wild flowers blurred. The quarry tile turned chill beneath my feet. For Dorcas and Jonas had greeted Ben and me with the news that they were leaving Merlin’s Court. I was to be deserted. Had I been an old reprobate, I would have cut them both out of my will.
“Chicago, you say!”
“Knew you’d be pleased as punch.” Dorcas clapped me on the back.
Jonas stuck his thumbs under his braces and released them with a snap. “You’ll miss us. But t’is only temporary. Doesn’t do to get into a rut at my time of life.”
Absolutely! Especially when one hasn’t left Chitterton Fells in fifty years!
It seemed that the morning’s post had brought Dorcas a most gratifying invitation. Her participation was requested in the development of a field hockey institute in Chicago.
Jonas punctuated his pronouncement that he could not allow a frail woman to pioneer alone with gravelly snatches of “… My kind of town, Chicago is…” What a world this was. First Ben’s mother and now Jonas wanting to fly the nest.
Tobias struggled off my lap without a backward glance to paw at Dorcas’s argyle socks, hoping, doubtless, for future overseas parcels. Picking him up, she wrapped him around her shoulders like a fox fur and paced the room talking about our nasty experience on the train. “Frightful for you-and Mr. Daffy. Course to my mind, anyone who’s afraid of a little mouse shouldn’t wear long trousers. According to The Daily Spokesman, the woman who saved him should receive a medal-if they knew who she was.”
I started rearranging the pots of herbs in the bay window. “Accidents can strike at any time. That man Thrush electrocuted himself. And what about the dentist, the one on Kipling Street, whose drill went berserk when he was giving himself a filling?” I moved the pots to the sink, turned on the tap, and squeezed in Fairy Liquid. “Both of you must promise to be very careful crossing streets and find a flat with a doorman.”
“Apartment.” Jonas was practicing lassoing with a piece of string.
“And do we have your promise you won’t go to wild parties”-Ben folded his arms-“or drink the water?”
This was no time to be frivolous. We must make lists, air suitcases, buy traveller’s cheques. “When do you leave?” I asked crisply.
“In a fortnight,” replied the deserters.
“Before Christmas! The drawing room will look naked with only two stockings hanging from the mantel.”
Dorcas was still wearing Tobias. She tossed his tail over her shoulder. “Mistletoe’s wasted on the likes of us, right, Jonas?”
“Yup.”
I saw Ben grin and noticed something else. Dorcas and Jonas had not once looked directly at each other during this entire conversation. Guilt, that was their burden.
Ben looked in the sink, draped an arm around my shoulder, and stage-whispered, “Alone at last!”
The clock ticked into silence. Then, amazingly, the hall door slammed open. “Alone? You aren’t alone-you have me!”
My eyes did not deceive me. This
ghastly, unkempt apparition standing before us was my cousin Freddy. Tobias leapt away from Dorcas and skirted the intruder, hissing. My sentiments exactly. “I knew we would come home to leftover food, but not to leftover guest.”
Ben was shaking hands, all man to man with him. “Ellie, dear, I know you’re joking, but old Freddy may take you seriously.”
“I am serious, darling. The last time this creature came for a weekend, the weekend lasted three months.”
Dorcas jabbed her hair behind her ears. “Think I’ll start packing.”
“Me, too.” Jonas trudged after her.
“Good idea,” I called after them. “Maybe it’s contagious.”
Freddy flopped into the rocking chair. “You were a saint, Giselle, taking me in that time when I had no place to go. There I was, appalled at the thought of being a burden to my parents, not working-”
“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. We both know you did rather well as a salesman, hawking my groceries door to door.”
“Ellie, why don’t we hear what Freddy has to say.” Ben’s voice wasn’t quite as devoted as I would have liked.
Freddy gave a dejected wave. “Forget it, mate. Ellie’s the boss-that’s how it should be. Sorry I’ve outstayed my welcome.”
Ben shot me an ambiguous look. Freddy was shifting his shoulders up and down. “Sore muscles?” I inquired. “From bracing yourself to leap from the tower?”
“Snickering does not become you, cousin. I would have jumped could I have been assured of an injury that looked bad but didn’t hurt. I wanted Jill on her knees with remorse.”
Freddy stood up, flipped the chair over, and assumed a heroic pose. Reaching a hand inside his shirt, he brought out a folded piece of paper and held it out to Ben. “Behold! My application for employment in your pending restaurant. Jill is going to weep her eyes out.”
Ben took hold of the paper, as I said, “Oh, what a shame. You were just saying this morning, weren’t you, darling, that Abigail’s won’t open until spring.”
The Widows Club Page 11
