The Beloveds

by Maureen Lindley

  “Can’t be too careful,” he says. “Amanita virosa lurks among the delicious Agaricus macrosporus.”

  “Really?” He has my attention now.

  “Both white and firm to the touch,” he says. “Deceivingly similar, only the virosa is deadly. It’s referred to as ‘the destroying angel.’ ”

  Gloria shudders when he speaks of mushrooms.

  “I can’t bear the slimy things,” she says, screwing up her face. “They remind me of slugs, horrible slimy slugs.”

  “They’re not slimy,” Henry insists. “It’s just the morning dew on them.”

  Gloria can’t even bear to touch them, so Henry must cook his own, which he is happy to do, fried in butter, dotted into a creamy pasta, folded into a risotto, his favorite. He thinks himself a bit of a chef.

  I contemplate adding a couple of those noxious ones into his bowl. I may do it, just to slow down their nest building for a bit.

  When I think about it, Pipits’ garden is laden with venomous plants, a veritable pharmacy; there’s daphne, and the rhododendron gone wild by the water hole, a clump of wolfsbane in the shade of the trees at the margin where meadow meets wood, the queen of poisons, they say. There’s laburnum and the shiny red berries of the bryony, and there’s yellow toadflax alongside the hedge. Mother used to boil its flowers in milk as a poison for flies, until a neighbor’s dog on the loose lapped it up and was found on our terrace, stiff and grimacing. Dogs are unlucky creatures, no nine lives for them.

  October is a dangerous month, fungi and the black veined nightshade catch the eye. The yew sprouts its little jelly tots, each one housing a single toxic seed. They would go unnoticed in a summer pudding.

  Measured amounts are a fine art when considering such things. You might say much of life is about the right dosage. Mother love springs to mind, fairness, too, and luck, of course, especially luck. If we all got the right dosage of these things, what need for shrinks, what need for the fight.

  If all I want is to hold up the works, to buy some time, then not too much, or too little, is the way to go. If all I want is to buy some time.

  * * *

  THE GIRL WHO HAS been hired to paint the mural has stumbled on the loose stair carpet and cracked her wrist on the banister as she grabbed it to save herself. She won’t be able to continue her destruction in Mother’s bedroom until the bone has healed. Six weeks should do it, she apologizes. A small victory for me, but still a victory. I’m inspired to take things further.

  Henry has hammered in tacks to flatten the carpet and make it safe. They can’t afford a new one, he says. At least not until after the show at May Park. He’s convinced he is going to sell out of his quirky mugs and sure that his fat-necked flower vases will delight. No chance with the mugs, but the vases have a naive, unvarnished sort of charm, so who knows.

  * * *

  THE RAIN HASN’T STOPPED for three days. It has churned up the mud in the river and spun the water into a ribbon of chocolate. There is a drowned rat drifting on the surface of the swimming hole. It annoys me to see it out-of-bounds there. Rats are usually good swimmers.

  The downpour has found the split in the roof and dripped into the attic where we have had to put buckets to catch it. I don’t mind the drumming soundtrack. The split can be repaired, and a bit of damp is hardly something to stress about. I’m amused, however, by Henry’s distress at the leak.

  “Houses like this cost money to keep up,” I remind him.

  “Feel free to help out with that if you like,” he says without humor.

  I won’t, though. Why should I make it easier for them? As far as Henry is concerned, I have outstayed my welcome. I’m sure he would tell me so if it weren’t for upsetting Gloria. They lived happily enough with Mother, so why not with me? It’s my family home after all, not Henry’s.

  I’m amused at the relief on his face when I go to London to visit Bert. I know he hopes that Bert and I will resume our marriage and live happy ever after, far away from Pipits. Dream on, Henry.

  It’s a journey I make less and less often, not because I like to annoy Henry with my presence, but because things are no easier with Bert, and I have not yet made up my mind where to go with the marriage. There are financial things to consider, and if I leave Bert, I want to know that I am choosing something better.

  Odd, isn’t it, how things go along in the same way day after day, and then suddenly when you least expect it, everything changes. Along with the rain, news is streaming in from everywhere. Gloria and Henry have had some sort of spat. They are skirting silently around each other. I get the feeling the spat was about me. I can’t be sure, of course, but neither of them will look me in the eye. They will make up soon, as is their way, and when they do, they will be more lovey-dovey than ever. For the moment, though, I am enjoying the peaceful distance between them.

  And now an email from Bert. He needs a break, and as luck would have it, we have been invited to Helen’s mother’s house in Spain. It’s just for a long weekend, and he thinks the sea air would do me good. October is a gentle month in that part of the world, he writes. He would like us to accept. What reason not to?

  I get the feeling that he is pushing me to say yes or no to our marriage, rather than to a weekend away. I decline the invitation, tell him I’m not up to the travel. I have no desire to stay with some old lady in Spain who is probably as odd as her daughter.

  And then, suddenly, without warning, without the tiniest sign to prepare us, comes news that obliterates the lovebirds’ argument and Bert’s little holiday, news that puts Alice in shock and leaves her struggling to summon her courage. Feeling fine one day, she woke up yellow the next. Jaundice, she thought. But no, she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It has prospered under the guise of no symptoms, and in the wake of its devastation they say she has only weeks, months at the most left to live.

  I came across Gloria in the kitchen sobbing at the news of it. Henry had his arms around her; he was kissing her hair, making little soothing noises. He looked quite distraught himself. Well, that sort of news is bound to be a shock. I’m shocked myself, although no one seems to have noticed.

  Now Gloria is insisting that Alice must leave her house in the village and come and live with us. She wants to be the one to nurse her, to care for her dearest friend. Her dearest friend. Once again, my saintly sister is to be the fulcrum, the linchpin in one of life’s dramas.

  “I’d like her to live to see the baby,” she snivels.

  “Unlikely, my darling,” Henry says.

  “Well, Christmas, at least, then.”

  “We’ll make it a wonderful one if she does. We’ll treasure her for as long as we can.”

  Henry is against Gloria nursing Alice. There must be a better solution, he says. I hear them talking it over in what they take to be the privacy of their bedroom. Henry’s tone is firm for him; Gloria’s, pleading. Guess I know who will win that one. When does my sister’s obliging husband not give in to her demands? They are so sweetly insisted upon.

  No surprise then that Henry has caved in and Gloria is to have her way. He is concerned, though, and has confided in me.

  “It is so typically generous of her,” he says. “Kind but impractical. How can she care for a dying woman when she is carrying our child?”

  He worries the pregnancy should be a time of celebration, that the sadness of caring for her failing friend will harm Gloria and the baby.

  “Of course, we must care for Alice,” he says. “She really needs us now. Such bad timing. What’s to be done?”

  He delicately implies that I could move in with Alice, nurse her. I won’t, of course. I can’t leave Pipits to them, and besides, I will not allow Henry to put the burden on me. Alice might as well start packing. She will be here before we know it.

  Bert, back from Spain with a light tan and a guilty conscience, is going to New York. There’s a chance of a Hopper through a colleague who owes him, and he can’t hang about. It’s one of the few Hoppers in
private ownership, and would be just the boost the gallery needs. The Lichtenstein did well for us, but the Tony Ward show was a bit of a flop, and business has slowed, worryingly so. A Hopper would certainly pep things up.

  I think about going with him, but I feel rooted here, waiting. He hasn’t asked me, but I tell Bert anyway that my energy is low and that he should go on his own. I wish him luck with the Hopper. He says that he understands. Is it resignation or relief I hear in his voice?

  I am drinking too much, I know. It is my comfort, but it has to stop. Those extra tipples make my head feel mushy, mess up my thinking. I wake so late sometimes that the house is already in full swing when I come downstairs: the kettle whistling, the self-satisfied tones of that woman on Radio 4 who imagines herself in charge of the news, repeating one pointless question over and over. She presses for the answer, yes or no, as though there are no intricacies to be considered, no subtle shades. She’s desperate to force an answer worthy of a sound bite that will be repeated on every news program throughout the day. Is that what we pay our license fee for?

  I would prefer to be the first up, to watch the light sneak through the curtains, to hear my dear home waking. Those extra shots of gin soothe, but they must stop. I need a clear head, a plan to see off the Bygones, and I need action. From now on, I resolve not to take a drink before six in the evening.

  * * *

  MY ROOM IS ROSY with the russet light reflected through the leaves of the copper beech tree that spreads its branches outside my window. They tap on the glass in the wind, comforting chatty little taps. I have always loved the sound and delighted in the swaying branches that throw flying silhouettes around my room. Henry says the tree doesn’t look well to him, that the leaves are dead.

  “They are holding on, won’t let go,” he says. “A sign that something is wrong, surely.”

  “They are always the last to leaf, the last to let go,” I tell him. “Haven’t you noticed?”

  It’s true that their fall is later than usual, but I’m not worried, things in nature change their habit from one year to the next. The leaves will be blown away on the wind soon enough.

  “The roots of it are dangerously close to the house,” Henry drones on. “Part of the trunk is hollow. I think it’s on its last legs. We should consider chopping it down before it does some damage. Horrible, I know, such a magnificent thing.”

  I’m too shocked to answer. I love that tree. Mother loved that tree. See, Mother, see the outcome of your foolish bequest. Henry is not the benign creature you thought him.

  My sister and her husband are endlessly annoying. Their presence in what should be my home eats into my peace of mind, scratches around my insides until every organ throbs. Henry with his absurd adoration of his wife, his determination to cut down and smash through; and Gloria so nauseatingly saccharine in her pregnancy. Henry would love me to be gone; Gloria, too, most probably, but she would never ask me to leave; I am the eldest, and she feels guilty being the chosen one, being willed our family home, which she knows means so much to me.

  Each morning now when I look in the mirror, I see a different face from the one I am expecting. Is that me? Surely my eyes were never that dark, my skin never that sallow. I get thinner as Gloria gets fatter. It feels like I’m matching her pound for pound, but in the opposite direction.

  6

  I HAVE NINE YEW BERRIES in a plastic bag hidden in my underwear drawer. I’m not sure if nine will be overdoing it, or if cooking them will lessen their kick. It’s a problem.

  There was a hard frost on the ground this morning, and a wintry light, hardly the season for summer pudding, but I have been dropping hints that I fancy one.

  “No law that says it must be summer,” Gloria says obligingly. “I fancy one myself, and it might even tempt Alice.”

  Alice, who, in the space of the last fortnight, has left her job, shut her house up, and moved into one of our guest rooms on the first floor, is having a sleep.

  “Summer pudding and a thick crème fraîche,” I encourage Gloria pointlessly. I know she’s up for it. She hardly needs coaxing with food these days. Her appetite is huge.

  “Eating for two,” she says, as though that is an original excuse.

  “There are some raspberries and black currants in the freezer from the garden, and the last of Mother’s strawberries,” she says with a wobble in her voice. “They’ll do, Betty, won’t they?”

  I start the cooking, while Gloria sits at the table cutting crusts off the thick white bread. When the fruit begins to bubble, I strain off some of the juice to marble through the bread later. I’m still not sure that I will do it. I have Mother’s gingham apron on, the yew berries snuggled now in the pocket.

  Gloria is in and out of the kitchen. She has to pee a lot these days. She weeps a lot, too, the slightest thing and she’s blubbering like a child.

  “Happy tears for the Apple,” she says. “Sad ones for Alice. I hardly know how to be anymore.”

  “It’s probably just hormones,” I say.

  With my back to Gloria, I stir the berries around in the remaining juice, and then as though it has a mind of its own my hand reaches into the apron’s pocket and before I know it the yew berries have become as one with the simmering fruits.

  Gloria is humming along to a tune on the radio. It is the first time that I have heard her hum since the news of Alice’s illness. It’s the long-dead Ella Fitzgerald singing about love and loss, sad lyrics accompanied by trembling trumpet notes. Gloria says she is a fan of Ella’s. I have never understood the nature of a fan, never been prepared to hero-worship anyone myself.

  I take the saucepan of fruit to the table, and Gloria starts building the pudding. Bread and fruit, a glug of cassis, added to the juice for a treat, she says. The pudding shines garnet red through the cut glass bowl. I watch her layering, fascinated. I have no idea if what looks like the most delicious pudding is in fact a deadly one.

  “There, all done,” she says. “Put it in the fridge would you, Betty.”

  I take up the bowl, heavy with the bread and the glistening summer fruits, and we both admire its beauty.

  “Gorgeous, a dish of jewels,” Gloria says.

  “Rubies,” I agree.

  But then as I turn from her a sudden vision of Henry and Gloria, tongues out, lips black, dead on the kitchen floor, and Alice expired on the sofa, puts me in a panic. There may be carnage. Everyone likes summer pudding, after all. Have I thought it out well enough for myself to be in the clear?

  I hesitate by the fridge. I should have planned it better; it’s a lesson I will learn for next time. I let the bowl slip through my fingers to the floor. It shatters, and glass splinters mix with the pudding as the juice seeps across the kitchen flagstones like a run of blood.

  “Oh no,” Gloria cries. “And it looked so yummy.”

  “Pity about the bowl,” I say.

  “A wedding present from Alice,” she says. “Don’t let’s tell her.”

  A shadow shifts at the corner of my vision. I feel a puff of warm air on my cheek. Heat from the Aga or the wafting of angel wings? Lucky, lucky, Gloria.

  I feel regret, a coward. If I am not prepared to save Pipits from my sister’s meddling, then why do I stay? I had thought myself ready for the battle, but had hesitated, held back, let myself down.

  In the gloom of disappointment, I catch the train to London the next day for an overnight with Bert, who has returned from New York. He sent an email to say he is too busy to visit me at present, no other news except that he will leave it to me to come when I want to. Well, I would like to see the Hopper.

  “Just overnight,” I say to Gloria.

  “Well, as you like, but perhaps you should stay longer,” she says without guile. “Bert will be thrilled to see you.”

  I can tell that Henry is delighted at the sight of my suitcase.

  “It’s time you went home,” he ventures boldly. “I mean, Bert must be missing you.”

  Gloria throws him a
frown, and he says he is off to the studio.

  “It’s only an overnight stay,” I tell him.

  “Well, have a good time,” he says. “Love to Bert.”

  * * *

  THE GALLERY LOOKS DIFFERENT, wrong somehow. I notice it the minute I enter. A vase of mixed anemones droops on the reception desk where there should be orchids. They are purple and puce with some drained pink ones scattered among them. How irritating. We always have white orchids, always. They are elegant. They enhance rather than clash with the art.

  The desk, an elongated white curve, designed especially for us, designed with clean lines to impress, to give the look of style and order, is cluttered with the debris of what I take to be Helen’s mess. There’s a box of tissues by the phone, a bowl of jelly beans, and a tub of assorted pens. The place has taken on the look of one of those gift shops selling a mess of itsy-bitsy little things that you can’t imagine ever needing. What is going on with Bert, letting things slip like this?

  Helen has put down the book she was reading when I first came in.

  “Oh, hello,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting you. Bert’s out to lunch, but he’ll be back soon, I expect.”

  I don’t answer. I remove the tissues and jelly beans and the tub of pencils and put them in a drawer.

  “What has happened to the orchids?” I ask, offering Helen the anemones and indicating with a nod for her to take them to the kitchen.

  “Bert and I thought some color would make a change,” she says.

  Bert and I! Bert and I!

  “We saw something similar in New York. Color against the white. We just loved it.”

  Shock scurries through my body. A pulse beats painfully in my head. I feel as though I have been punched in the gut. Helen went to New York with Bert!