The Thin Woman

by Dorothy Cannell

  “If you are hoping to find a hidden masterpiece shining through the top layer of paint, I think you are doomed to disappointment. I doubt if any of the artist’s earlier efforts were superior to this one. And I can’t see some amateur plastering his own work over a Renoir or Van Gogh.”

  “I don’t know so much. Where Uncle Merlin is involved I think we must expect something lunatic.… We write off the picture as junk, store it in the attic, and six months from now we find …”

  “Speaking of the attic.” I yawned again. “That’s another place I have to explore. So perhaps we should all get a little shut-eye. Ben, bring in Dorcas’s luggage while I see about her room.”

  “Can’t have you waiting on me.” Dorcas attempted to take the tray out of my hands. “I’m here to work, not sit lazing around.”

  “Nonsense.” Ben held the door open for her. “Ellie and I think of you as one of the family. More of a companion than a housekeeper.”

  Dorcas flushed, a painful mottled red which clashed with her hair. Seeing her embarrassment at a rather mild compliment, I shook my head. “She doesn’t want to be one of those. Companions are always downtrodden grey ladies banished with their tatting box to the draughtiest corner of the room, and only tolerated because they are distantly related to the family.” I spoke lightly but as I did so, a thought occurred. Another name applied to Dorcas’s services in this house: “chaperone.” Ben and I would no longer be alone at night. Was this, rather than a concern for my detergent hands, the reason he had placed the advertisement in the paper?

  While Dorcas did the washing up, I went upstairs and collected bed linen. I gave her the room next to mine, Spartanly furnished with a single bed and a plain oak chest of drawers. When Ben came up with the cases I was spreading an eiderdown over the blankets. He agreed that the room was not very inviting but at least the wallpaper was not peeling damply from the walls, and the curtains did not crumble to dust at the touch of human hand. Dorcas, appearing moments later, seemed quite satisfied. “Certainly no worse than my cubicle at school. Shouldn’t have made the bed up though, quite capable of fending for myself.”

  “Dorcas.” I touched her gently on the arm and looked very directly into the hazel eyes under the shaggy brows. “Please climb down from your high horse. I have never been an employer, except once,”—I sent Ben a smouldering sidelong glance—“and that is best forgotten. I thought we agreed earlier that this was going to be a team effort?”

  Dorcas blinked rapidly, gave a slight sniff and, extending a hand, shook mine fiercely. “Never looked forward to anything more in my life. Together we’ll win this game of hide-and-seek.”

  “And the best of British luck to all of us.” Ben leaned against the door jamb. “Don’t stay up too late, ladies, we don’t want to spoil sport for the ghosts, shy creatures that they are. They won’t start their prowling until everyone is tucked up in bed.”

  “The only person who prowls is Aunt Sybil,” I said. “The night we moved in I caught her at it, and a couple of times since. A lot of elderly people have trouble sleeping.”

  “Ellie, you are so naïve,” scoffed Ben. “Under that frumpy old lady exterior Aunt Sybil is quite as weird as the rest of your batty relations. I expect the moon was full and she was stretching her vocal coras.”

  I was the one who had trouble sleeping that night. The day had been so eventful that hunger had remained at bay, a small plaintive hand tapping at the outside of my consciousness. Flat on my back with the light turned off starvation threatened to storm the citadel. Worse! I began to entertain lustful thoughts. I desired a roast beef sandwich with horse-radish and pickled onions with a wanton savagery that I had never felt for any man.

  I have often read, in those “true life experience” magazines, how in moments of deepest crises people have been rescued from the chasm by a voice floating out of nowhere, with warnings such as: “Marge dearest, do not marry the man with the black handlebar moustache and the eagle talons where his hands should be. Fernando is a fortune-hunter who has murdered nineteen wives and wants to make an even number.” My experience was not quite that uncanny but as I swung my legs over the side of the bed and fumbled for my bedroom slippers, I remembered some quite simple words Ben had spoken to Dorcas that evening, so ordinary in fact that at the time I had not attached any significance to them. I replayed them now: “Ellie and I think of you as one of the family.”

  Ben could as easily have said “part of the group” or “one of the gang” but he had said “family.” He had linked himself with me, however momentarily, in a warmer bond. I lay back and held those fragile words to me like a flower, touching each syllable, each petal, gently, until one by one they fell away and drifted off into the night. Smiling into the darkness I wriggled into the hollow spot of my lumpy mattress and kissed the roast beef sandwich goodnight.

  I awoke the following morning feeling rather more rational. Sentimentality looks a little silly in broad daylight, but my determination to stick with my diet had fixed. At breakfast I watched Dorcas and Ben chomping down on bacon and eggs without too strong a pang. Half a grapefruit didn’t do much for my appetite but it promised (rather sourly) to do marvellous things for my figure.

  Dorcas spread chunky orange marmalade on her toast. “Not much of a cook, I’m afraid, always thought cookery books harder to decipher than Greek but if you’re not afraid of being poisoned, I’ll do my best.”

  “Tell the expert,” I said, taking a mouth-shuddering spoonful of grapefruit. “Ben’s Cordon Bleu.”

  “No dice.” The recipient of this soap-job looked up briefly from the book he was reading between mouthfuls. “I told you I’m retired. This morning was different, I gave Dorcas a hand with the ‘fry’ because she is new and …” He drank a sip of coffee and spluttered, “Yuck! Dorcas, what blend did you use for this witch’s brew? Tobacco juice and ashes?”

  “Instant.”

  “I give in!” said Ben. “If you can do this to hot water and a teaspoon of brown crystals I daren’t think what you might do to dinner. You and Ellie can have the fun jobs like swabbing floors; I’ll be the resident chef.”

  “Motion carried.” I poured myself a glass of tomato juice and raised it in salute. “Don’t think, Ben, that I fail to realize why I was never considered for the job. But I’m not resentful. Cooking is a very dangerous occupation in my state of transition and the less time I spend in the kitchen the better. On the subject of food, how is Jonas Phipps managing? I gather he has cooking facilities in his rooms, but what about shopping? I know there is a bus but …”

  “Don’t worry about the old boy.” Ben rather reluctantly put his book down. “People of his age still manage to fend for themselves. Jonas doesn’t exert himself more than need be, but good grief, he’s no older than my father! Being seventy doesn’t make a man an ancient monument.”

  “Neither is he a spring chicken,” I said. “And cooking for himself he won’t be getting his vitamins and minerals. We don’t want him ending up run-down. I suggest we invite him to share breakfast and lunch with us; that way he will have two good meals a day and if he wants to eat bread and dripping for dinner it won’t matter. A light meal at night is better for people his age anyway.”

  Dorcas nodded. “Kind thought. My grandmother always said …” She paused and took a sip of coffee—“a little more water in the stew and no one notices the extra mouth to feed.”

  After a round of fresh coffee, I called an organizational meeting. Ben, it was agreed, would not try to dazzle us with his culinary techniques that day. We would have a light lunch and supper. He wanted to spend the day with his book to make up for the unproductivity of yesterday.

  “Baked beans on toast will do me fine.” Dorcas was already rolling up her sleeves.

  “All right.” I put down my cup. “Dorcas, I think you and I should tackle Uncle Merlin’s bedroom this morning. Everybody happy?”

  My enthusiasm faltered a little when we reached the room and I took another look at the du
st and detritus accumulated by half a century of neglect. But I reminded myself that buried beneath the cobwebs might be another clue, or at least an explanation of the clue we had already received. A man who hoarded laundry shirt boxes must have kept other souvenirs, like newspaper clippings or letters. The first order of the day was to take down the sagging maroon velvet curtains from the window, and let in light and air.

  “Not worth cleaning!” snorted Dorcas in disgust. “Thick with moth, and stiff with dirt.”

  Sneezing violently, as a swirl of dust—equal to any desert sandstorm—blew out of the folds, we staggered under the enormous weight of the material. When we finally got the curtains unhooked we were faced with the question of where to put them. Mounted on chairs at both ends of the window, Dorcas and I looked at each other. Nodding like a pair of identical mechanical dolls, we flung open the casement and bailed the lot out. The same fate awaited the stained bedspread. Fifty or more years ago it had matched the curtains. In a sense it still did. Another eruption of dust almost choked us as we lumbered over to the window. Blankets and sheets followed.

  “Mattress?” Dorcas raised a shaggy eyebrow.

  “Right. Out it goes.” By this time we had synchronized the old heave-ho routine to perfection. The mattress sailed out the window like a magic flying carpet.

  “One blessing.” Dorcas was brushing the grime from her hands onto her dungarees. “In the good old days they made windows a sensible size.”

  Stripped, the room looked a little indecent, naked. Dorcas and I divided up; she took on the huge wardrobe, and I pulled up the bedside chair and opened the mahogany desk. Two drawers revealed nothing of interest, other than a large assortment of old Christmas cards. Rather surprisingly, these were neatly grouped together by year and on some, comments had been noted: “Nice pair of carpet slippers this year” and “Another box of peppermint humbugs—doesn’t the woman know they yank my teeth out.” In addition to the Christmas cards I found several boxes of used cheque books—again nothing exciting there, other than the fact Uncle Merlin had on several occasions either given or lent money to both Aunt Astrid and Uncle Maurice. From the sums involved neither had done badly out of the old man while he lived.

  In the third drawer was a large cardboard box bundled with bills. Thumbing through I found them all marked paid in full and the dates. One caught my eye; it was a subscription to a free veterinary clinic. I studied it briefly and put it down.

  “Any major discoveries?”

  “Not really. Except Uncle Merlin looks better on paper than he did in real life. Turns out he gave the relatives quite a bit of financial help, and here he is making donations to an animal home. You’d think if he liked the four-legged race that much he’d have had a pet of his own, which brings me back to what that waitress said about this house having the wrong atmosphere.… How about you, found anything?”

  “Four boxes of those round laminated collars with studs.”

  “Hang onto them. They are antiques!”

  At the back of the bill drawer was another cardboard box, smaller than the other and lighter. Lifting the lid I experienced a sudden premonition. This was important. I saw at once that the letters it contained were old, but what interested me more at first were the toys. They were small and worn, remnants, I supposed, of a child’s visit long ago to Merlin’s Court. Peeling open the top letter, I saw from the date that it was sixty years old and its tone was stilted, authoritative, pompous. Hardly today’s informal letter from Daddy to his son away at boarding school.

  Poor Merlin! (For the letter was addressed to him.) In one of those peculiar flashbacks which sometimes come from reading old letters, I could see him vividly—a knobby-kneed, ink-smeared schoolboy in short trousers, striped tie, and peaked cap. Stricken with a father such as his no wonder the kid had grown into an oddball. Arthur Grantham had always been a vague figure to me, the skipped step in the family ladder. I had gleaned more about him from Brassy the waitress yesterday than I had from my mother or the family.

  The letters all bore the same message. Rearing a child was an awesome responsibility at best, and to a widower like Arthur Grantham a great trial. How “sharper than a serpent’s tooth” it was to have raised a son who shared none of his father’s talents or virtues and had the audacity to resemble his mother in taste and feeling. I was heartened to discover that Arthur admitted to one mistake in the course of his lifetime; he had married a woman unworthy of him. The sins of mother and son were dissected minutely.

  I laid the fifth letter with its brethren and picked up the sixth wondering if I really wanted to read any more of this pompous piety. “Oh well, in for a penny …”

  The letter began:

  My dearest Merlin, happy as I am that you are enjoying your visit to the seaside, I must tell you that the days go slowly by without you. Think me very selfish, but I confess I am anxious for your return and so are the animals. I was sorry that Sybil’s kitten got lost.

  Uncle Arthur in a more affable mood? Turning the page, I read the signature—Your loving Mother, Abigail Grantham. This letter, dated four years prior to the others, had been folded into a small square. Making it, I thought, just the right size to tuck into a small clenched palm where no one could see it. A sort of security blanket for a little boy whose mother had died, and whose father did not like him much. The time-scarred toys in the box assumed a thoughtful new significance. They had not belonged to a child who had come to visit and forgotten them on his return home. The wooden camel with the broken hump and the painted train engine had been the playthings of the boy Merlin. I was sure of that. At the ripe old age of nine or ten when he was sent away to boarding school, his stiff-necked father probably ordered him to put away the trappings of childhood and immerse himself in Greek and Latin. My mental impression of Arthur Grantham was a man dipped in starch along with his linen, slicked-down hair parted in the middle, eyes like brown cough drops and a twirled wax moustache that never came unravelled.

  What had the man really looked like? I riffled through the drawer again. Pulling open the others I had already searched, I left them stacked out like a row of steps in my haste. No photographs.

  “Dorcas,” I said to the wardrobe, “can you manage without me for a few minutes? Fine! Tell you about it anon!” Down to the bureau in the drawing room. From its state of chaos I knew this had been used by Aunt Sybil, but being the jackdaw she was I might find a wad of old snapshots under the litter. Besides, I remembered something about the bureau. In a rare benign mood during one of my childhood visits Uncle Merlin had shown me a secret. There was a false bottom to the main drawer. Slowly inching this out I held my breath. Nothing. Nothing but more old bills, a dilapidated telephone directory, and a yellowed travel brochure itemizing the charms of a tropical paradise. Had Uncle Merlin once planned a trip for his health? Somehow I could not envision him sitting under a striped umbrella wearing a pair of skimpy bathing trunks and oversized sunglasses. I was disappointed because the memory of the secret drawer had raised hopes of finding more than old bills. One day soon I would box up all this stuff and send it down to Aunt Sybil.

  The stampeding movement of typewriter keys from the dining room across the hall informed me that Ben was hard at work. Lunch, therefore, was not imminent. I went through the kitchen to the alcove by the garden door and unhooked my raincoat from its peg. The day was overcast and thick with clouds. A buffeting wind laced with rain punched into me the moment I set foot outside. With my rain hood flapping about my ears, I ran across the courtyard. I caught a glimpse of Jonas staring round the stable door, dressed in a sou’wester and oilskin coat. Ben had set him to clean out the moat, which had become a dumping ground for litter, but the elements had forced him to retreat to dry ground.

  Cupping my hands around my mouth, I bawled across the wind, “Come up to the house for lunch, Jonas.”

  “Aye, won’t say no. Had a bellyful of me own cooking these last few days. Ain’t nothing highfalutin, is it? I take me grub plain. If I wan
t snails I’ve got plenty in the cabbage patch.”

  “You’ll eat what you’re given,” I yelled, and I was off. I could feel old Jonas watching me. Goodness knows why. A fat girl running is not one of the lovelier sights of nature.

  Aunt Sybil took her time answering the doorbell. Assuming she must have taken the bus down to the village, I was about to turn away when I heard her feet slapping down the hall in oversized carpet slippers. The cottage door opened an inch, then widened, rather tentatively, I thought.

  “Oh, it’s you, Giselle.” Aunt Sybil sounded as though she had been hoping for someone else, the coalman perhaps on a day like this. Or the vicar? That might explain the uneven streak of lipstick across her mouth and the mismatched earrings protruding from her lobes.

  I explained my search for old photographs and followed her into her overstuffed sitting room. Every surface was smothered with magazines, books, rusty tin canisters, or blobs of tangled knitting wool stabbed through with metal needles.

  Aunt Sybil started to gesture vaguely that I sit down, but thought better of it. Standing about, I felt like a stranger, which in a way I was. I had never known her well.

  “Sorry, Giselle, but I can’t help you.” She was glancing absently around the room. “I was devoted to Uncle Arthur, but at my age hanging onto mementoes becomes overly sentimental.” (I refused to follow her gaze which must have absorbed the mass of useless paraphernalia, making Queen Victoria look like an amateur collector.) “I destroyed all old photographs years ago.”

  I was almost certain she was lying. And I could not blame her. She might well feel that Ben and I had more than enough without demanding a piece of her past as well. But as I made a move to go, she unbent a little. She did have some snapshots of Uncle Merlin, if I would care to see them? What surprised me was that she found them so fast and when she handed them to me they were neatly wrapped in tissue paper. Alas, the package was better than the products. Every one showed Uncle Merlin taken unawares in the garden, with half his head missing. “Tact versus Truth” was an old family motto on my father’s side. My enthusiastic response to headless Uncle Merlin brought its own reward. Aunt Sybil unbent still further and offered me a verbal glimpse of Uncle Arthur. “He was a dear, wonderful man,” she volunteered, folding up the tissue package. “Would you like to know his pet name for me?” She flushed slightly at the remembered compliment and smoothed one of the inevitable wrinkles in her dress. “ ‘His little ray of morning sunshine.’ And in those days children were expected to behave—not slouch or wriggle—so you see, if Uncle Arthur thought me special it was a great compliment.