Every Woman for Herself

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Didn’t you? Well, I think you’ve done enough. Get out before I throw you out!’

  ‘There’s no need to be like that when I came round here in all good faith to apologise. And after all, she did kill my husband!’

  There was the tapping of high heels and a slammed door, but it all seemed to be happening somewhere else, beyond all that awful sobbing.

  I cried myself out, curled up on the bed in Mace’s arms, while he stroked my hair, and murmured soothing things … and eventually I stopped sobbing on a hiccup, and lay there, feeling exhausted, but much better.

  After a while (and a lot of nose-blowing) he brought my flannel and washed my face with cold water, as though I were the same age as Caitlin. Then he fetched a bottle of champagne (which he must have brought with him) and two glasses, and we lay on the bed and drank that, as the afternoon light faded into dusk.

  It was terribly cosy: the lion shall lie down with the lamb.

  ‘What are we drinking to?’ I asked after a bit. My voice was interestingly husky – quite sexy really – but I didn’t suppose it would last.

  ‘The test results – Caitlin’s definitely mine. I wanted you to be happy with me.’

  ‘Oh Mace, I’m so glad! And I’m sorry about that scene. I think I must have been bottling lots of things up for too long, and they all sort of exploded at once. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.’

  ‘I’m just glad I was here for you.’ He tightened his arms around me. ‘Charlie: as well as the good news about Caitlin, I also came to swallow my pride and tell you I think I love you.’

  ‘What do you mean, think?’ I demanded before I could stop myself.

  ‘Well, I’ve never felt quite like this before,’ he said, sounding puzzled. ‘I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve somehow managed to get right under my skin, so now whenever I think of the future, you’re there, too. But it’s also been slowly dawning on me that if I marry you, I’m going to have to take on board the whole Rhymer clan as well. It’s a big commitment.’

  Marry me? Is the man mad?

  ‘That’s all right,’ I assured him soothingly. ‘I’m not going to marry you.’

  He relaxed his hold a bit and gave me one of his smouldering stares: ‘You’re not?’

  ‘No, of course not! It wouldn’t work – I don’t want to live in London, and also I simply don’t think I could take all the effort involved in trying to look good all the time for the role of Mace North’s wife. Too boring and exhausting. There was a Regency dandy who killed himself simply because he couldn’t take any more of the buttoning and unbuttoning. I think I’d feel just like that.’

  ‘But you do look good all the time. You’re a beautiful water sprite, come to drive me mad. Besides, I’m going to spend most of my time in Upvale, though my house in London is very nice, with a big, private garden. You’ll like it.’

  ‘I’m not going to see it,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ve done the marriage bit, and now I’m going to stay here where I belong, and paint, and maybe run the magazine if it takes off, and be happy.’

  ‘You could marry me and still do all that – and we can share Caitlin,’ he offered, persuasively.

  ‘But would I be happy as the third wife of the actor Mace North? I don’t think so!’

  ‘Better the last than the first, darling,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Really Mace, you must be mad wanting to marry me! I wonder if you could be impervious to Gloria’s antidote because of your Tartar blood? But then, if it was that, I suppose the love philtre wouldn’t have affected you in the first place.’

  ‘My Tartar blood is about to rise to the boil if you don’t say you love me…’ he muttered, kissing me. ‘Or maybe it’s rising anyway.’

  ‘Cooee!’ called Gloria down the stairs. ‘Are you there, Charlie? Would you like a nice cup of tea, my little chicken?’

  Mace sprang up from the bed with a muffled curse, kicked the door to the bottom of the stairs shut, then shot the bolt.

  ‘Mace, Gloria will think—’

  ‘Gloria will be quite right,’ he said, advancing purposefully.

  * * *

  Mace stretched his muscular frame out to straighten the kinks left by my little bed.

  He always looks so gorgeously graceful I still expect those camera trolley things to whiz in and out at odd moments. Mind you, it would have been pretty disconcerting if they’d done that during our recent odd moments – if we’d noticed.

  ‘I’ll have to go,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Tomorrow’s the opening night of my new play in London, and I’ll have to be there. Then I can bring Caitlin home – but right now I’m going to go straight back to the cottage and finish writing the last act of my next play, even if it takes me all night!’

  This man clearly has his own private energy source, because I feel as limp as a boned herring.

  ‘And the first batch of Skint Old Northern Woman is coming sometime this week!’ I remembered, feeling even limper. ‘We’ve got lists of advance orders already, and Chris is coming round in the morning to help us get everything organised – we’re a bit amateur.’

  ‘I’d come and help too, if I didn’t have to go to London. Still, at least I’m sure now that Kathleen will turn up for her wedding, because Rod phoned earlier from the States and said the wedding organiser would know where she was.’

  ‘Of course – someone must be in charge of it!’ Weddings don’t arrange themselves, after all.

  I sighed as he got up, and said wistfully: ‘Do you have to go home now?’

  ‘Afraid so. Besides, it will give you a chance to think about me while I’m gone, and maybe miss me. There are advantages to marrying me you may not have thought of yet, too, like if your father’s marrying Jessica, couldn’t you marry me simply to get your hands on my cottage?’

  ‘That would be mercenary,’ I said, shocked. ‘Besides, I could go and live with Em in the Vicarage if it came to it, only it’s awfully small. I can’t really imagine Em being happy in such a little kitchen.’

  ‘Well, my cottage isn’t huge, but it’s bigger than the Vicarage. You think about it.’

  The cottage is likely to be way down the list of his assets I think about while he’s away.

  He pulled a fleecy dark top over his head, then picked up a heavy leather coat lined with rather outrageous fake fur.

  ‘What happened to the duvet?’

  ‘Nothing – I’m just having a change. Do you like it?’

  ‘On you, yes. On anyone else, I’d say they were a raging queen.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘Evidently.’

  ‘I think I’ll leave by the Parsonage and make my peace with Gloria,’ Mace said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe have a word with Ran, too, if he’s in. What would be the best way to make an impression on Gloria? The sort that doesn’t involve being transformed into a toad?’

  ‘Say you’ve come specially to take the super-strength love-potion antidote she brewed up at home last night, and if she asks you to drink a cup of tea after that, do it.’

  ‘And it definitely won’t be hemlock?’

  ‘No – though I wouldn’t mention … well, what we’ve been up to.’

  ‘I don’t usually issue bulletins. But I thought I would tell your father my intentions are honourable, in case Anne and Em try to kneecap me.’

  ‘He won’t know what you’re talking about – he doesn’t even realise you’ve ever had any dishonourable intentions. And when you’ve drunk this new version of Gloria’s concoction, you probably won’t,’ I added firmly.

  ‘Don’t bank on it,’ he said, kissing me.

  He opened the stairway door and came face to face with Flossie, who was sitting on one of the steep steps trying to remember whether she was going up or down.

  ‘Hello!’ he said, and she got up wagging her tail, licked his face, and went back upstairs ahead of him.

  He didn’t come back down. Gloria probably ushered him firmly out after he’d spoken to Father – if he
spoke to Father; for surely he must have been joking?

  After a while I dozed off.

  When I woke up again it wasn’t as late as I thought, and after washing my face – which looked normal if a trifle feverish – I went up to the kitchen.

  Em was there alone, though I could hear Gloria belting out ‘Three Little Maids from School’ in Father’s bedroom, and Walter’s ‘heh, heh, heh’ laugh from the small sitting room where he was watching children’s TV.

  ‘Where’s the body?’ I asked.

  She looked up and grinned. ‘He took the cup of poison from Gloria with his own hand, and drained it in one.’

  ‘Did anything happen?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t suddenly smite his forehead and exclaim: “Yes, I see it now – she looks like the backside of a donkey, and has the intelligence of a cushion.” In fact, he looked exactly the same, only more so.’

  ‘More so?’

  ‘Sort of determined on a course of action. He said he was off to see Father next, but Gloria gave him a cup of tea first. She told him she’d put bromide in it, but she was only joking – I think. You haven’t been at it again, have you?’

  ‘You needn’t make it sound like I’m a rabbit. I had a rather traumatic visit from Angie and Mace was just comforting me.’

  I told her what Angie’d said. ‘And I don’t know why it should upset me so much, because I thought I was over all that: I mean, I accepted I wasn’t going to have a baby years ago. But Mace was so sweet, and just held me for ages, and wiped my eyes, and hugged me and—’

  ‘Spare me the rest. There was something very significant about the way he slammed closed the door to the stairs.’

  ‘You heard that, did you? Yes, there’s something significant about all his actions – it’s because he’s an actor, I think, but also he’s just sort of naturally graceful.’ I sighed.

  ‘He’s not coming back for dinner later, is he?’ Em asked. ‘Just so I know how many to cook for – I’m doing individual syllabubs.’

  ‘Coming back? No, of course not. He’s suddenly got over his writing block, and he says he’s going to finish the last act of his play tonight, no matter how long it takes, because he’s due back in London tomorrow. It’s the first night of his latest play, then the wedding, so he will be able to bring Caitlin home after that – assuming Kathleen turns up, and agrees to it.’

  ‘So he does mean to come back to Upvale?’

  ‘He did. I don’t know how he’ll feel after a bit more time in his own theatre world – or about me, after the potion kicks in.’

  ‘If it does.’

  ‘Em…’

  ‘What?’ she said, sieving sugar in glistening cascades.

  ‘You know the five power bracelets you gave me?’ I asked. ‘Well, the rose quartz one exploded spontaneously, and there are tiny beads all over the place.’

  ‘Probably the heat,’ she said drily.

  ‘But that’s the one for love!’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Do you think it’s significant?’

  ‘Yes, but like Gloria and the tea leaves, I can’t decide which way. I’ll get you another one.’ She set out a row of little glass dishes, and spooned syllabub into them. ‘I must put two of these in the fridge for the twins to have later – I promised, because they’re going to a birthday party after school.’

  Then she picked up a small packet and read: ‘“Super-Lite Mousse: The No-Calorie Dessert.”’

  ‘Is that the Treacle Tart’s?’

  ‘Yes, she’s bought loads of them, and Super Soup-Lite, and I am to serve her one instead of my fat and calorie-laden concoctions.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’ I watched as she emptied the packet into a bowl, poured in double cream and began to whisk.

  I examined the packet. ‘It says water here, Em, not cream.’

  ‘I know.’ She added a bit of sugar, poured the mixture into a little dish, and garnished it with angelica to distinguish it from the rest.

  ‘There. It looks almost as good as the real thing, doesn’t it?’

  * * *

  Em was ladling soup by the time Father came in, looking baffled: ‘They’re all at it! Mace just waltzed in and asked me for Charlie’s hand in marriage. Have they all been reading Jane bloody Austen? Is your Red going to turn up next, Anne, singing “It’s A Nice Day For A White Wedding”?’

  ‘Not effing likely.’

  ‘What about you, Bran?’

  Bran looked up questioningly.

  ‘Going to get married, are you? Got a girl?’

  ‘Isis.’

  ‘You can’t have a relationship with a figment of your bloody imagination!’

  ‘Language!’ said Jessica primly. We all looked at her.

  ‘Isis Cadwallader. Student. Postgrad.’ Bran looked from one to another of us as though trying to pick up faint and fuzzy signals. ‘Speaks eight languages.’

  ‘In bed?’ asked Anne, interested.

  ‘Yes,’ Bran said. ‘Miss her a bit,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘Well, as long as she doesn’t turn up and ask me for your hand,’ Ran said.

  ‘She’s got two of her own,’ Bran said seriously, propping his book up against the recumbent figure of Mr Froggy and losing interest in the conversation.

  ‘Mace must have been playing a joke on you, Ran,’ Jessica said. ‘He couldn’t possibly be interested in Charlie – he could have anyone!’

  ‘He probably has,’ Gloria muttered, hacking viciously at a crisp new loaf.

  ‘No, he seemed serious – said he found her compellingly irresistible.’

  Everyone turned and looked at me.

  I shrugged. ‘We haven’t found a cure yet. Gloria’s won’t work, for some reason, though perhaps the new one will, in time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jessica interrupted. ‘What cure? And have you been having it off with Mace, you dark horse?’

  It forcibly struck me that poor old Jessica is always bobbing along on the surface of our lives like a cork, and she is, and always will be, one sub-plot short of a novel.

  ‘You’re such a romantic,’ Em said to her sarcastically.

  ‘And you’ve got it the wrong way round,’ Gloria told her. ‘He’s after my Charlie – but he’s only good for one thing, you mark my words, blossom.’

  ‘Bet he’s good at that, though?’ Jessica said enviously, then caught Father’s eye and subsided.

  ‘He’s a bold one!’ Gloria said rather admiringly. ‘Said he’d come for the cup of poison and drank the anti-philtre right down in one go. Then he took a cup of my special tea to take the taste away, smiled at me, said a handsome dark stranger had just entered my life bringing change, and then off he went to see Ran.’

  ‘So, what did you say, Father?’ Em asked.

  ‘I said to ask me again when his last wife had turned up safe and sound, and he said he would. Providing she’s not in bits, I’ve no objection, I suppose. But I thought Charlie would have had enough of all that marriage stuff. Have you been dosing the poor man up with love potions, you lot?’

  ‘I haven’t. And thank you, Father, but your gracious approval won’t be necessary – Mace drank one of Gloria’s love philtres by mistake, but he’s resistant to the antidote. We think it’s the Tartar blood or something. Shouldn’t the new antidote have worked immediately, Gloria?’

  ‘Yes. He’s impervious.’

  ‘Load of rubbish,’ Father said uneasily. ‘Er – you didn’t give any of it to anyone else, did you. Gloria?’

  ‘Oh, do they work?’ asked Jessica eagerly.

  ‘No,’ Gloria said flatly to both, and slamming down the breadknife went out muttering.

  ‘Oh, well,’ Jessica said, disappointed. ‘I expect it’s just a temporary infatuation then, Charlie. You should marry him while you can!’

  ‘No point. I won’t leave Upvale ever again, but he will soon tire of it and go back to London permanently. We come from two different worlds,’ I added tritely. ‘We’ve nothing in co
mmon.’

  ‘If pagans can marry vicars, artists can marry actors,’ Em said. ‘Marry him, and bend him to your will – we will all help you.’

  ‘Come on, does he look bendable to you? And name me an actor who’s been married to the same woman for more than five minutes.’

  There was a long, thoughtful silence.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t want to live his life, I want to live my own. I’m going to stay in Upvale, and paint, and maybe the magazine will sell so many we can publish it regularly – say six issues a year or something. I’ll be happy and successful, which is the best sort of revenge on Matt that I can think of.’

  ‘Reminds me,’ Anne said. ‘Jen rang. The first five thousand copies of the mag. are arriving tomorrow.’

  ‘Five thousand! Don’t you mean hundred?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘My God – where are we going to put them?’

  ‘Anywhere except my study,’ Father said firmly.

  ‘How about the back sitting room? The one we don’t use because of the little poltergeist thing?’ Em suggested.

  ‘Do you think she’ll mind?’

  ‘Probably glad of the company. I’d sit in there myself sometimes, except she’s always so bloody miserable and restless.’

  ‘Which little poltergeist thing?’ Jessica said, looking scared. ‘I thought you said that room was never used?’

  ‘Oh it’s used, all right, but not by us.’

  ‘Have to get organised: promotion, packing, labelling,’ Anne reeled off efficiently.

  ‘Chris is going to help. He’s coming round tomorrow when he’s seen the bishop, and he’s bringing his computer. He says he can print out the address labels on it, and he’s going to do the bookkeeping,’ Em said.

  ‘What if his bishop sends him away?’

  ‘He won’t go – he belongs here in Upvale now, with us?’

  ‘There!’ Father said with satisfaction to Jess. ‘I said everything would go on as usual. The bishop will defrock Chris, and he can come and live here with Em. There’s no need for her to leave: problem solved!’

  ‘Not with the Treacle Tart as stepmum, it bloody well isn’t,’ Anne said.