She Shoots to Conquer

by Dorothy Cannell

“Yes, I’d forgotten that point. But one must assume something quite dreadful…” He stopped. We had both heard someone enter the library below, not that whoever it was was noisy about it-indeed, there was something hesitant, tentative, it could even be said surreptitious about those footsteps, followed by a soft closing of the door. Lord Belfrey rose to his feet-his courtesy as instinctive doubtless as the curiosity that caused me to follow suit. There was no telling how visible we would have been, obscured by the gallery railing and shadows collecting in the corners, but the person who had come in did not look up. After a quick, jerking glance around the library proper, she tiptoed, head down, to stand in a bare expanse of wood floor with only the billiard table, which did not take up undue space. An island of serenity compared to the suffocatingly overcrowded drawing room and hall.

  She placed a smallish rectangular object on the floor (impossible to see what it was without leaning dangerously far over the railing). Then she drew some item-or items-from the pocket of a full peasant-style skirt before bending down to remove her shoes in the same stealthy fashion that had accompanied her entrance. It did not occur to me to wonder why Lord Belfrey had not called down to her, let alone descended the stairway. He and I had become the intruders in the vignette. Setting the shoes under the billiard table, she sat down, picked up what she had taken from her pocket-slippers of some kind-placed them on her feet, and proceeded to lace them above her ankles. Before getting back up, she touched the rectangular object, and music-glorious, if at a subdued sound level, Tchaikovsky-poured into every particle of the rather musty air that was Mucklesfeld even at its best.

  I felt the pressure of his lordship’s shoulder, heard the catch of startled amazement in his breath, but neither of us murmured a word. Nor did it occur to me to wonder what Georges would have made of our standing glued together like the ornamental bride and groom on top of a cake. Molly Duggan-for it was she who, incredibly and improbably, raised her arms above her head, fingers touching to form a Gothic arch-started to dance on her points. Those hadn’t been slippers but block-toed, satin ballet shoes. My hands gripped the railing when she teetered. She was going to fall splat on the floor in an ungainly heap of dumpy, frumpy forty-year-old woman. Unbearable to watch. We all have our dreams, ridiculously unrealistic though they may be. But no! She steadied, spread her arms, arched her back, and extended one leg behind her in the pure straight line of the arabesque. Out the corner of my eye I saw that Lord Belfrey also had a fast hold on the railing. Then he ceased to exist.

  The music was from Swan Lake or, as my mother, who had been a ballet dancer, would have called it, Le Lac des Cygnes.

  Gone also were the peasant skirt and black top. Molly was Odette in a white tutu with a cap of snowy feathers on her head as she leaped, twirled, and fluttered, light as down, achingly tragic… The early wobble must have been caused by a moment of distraction, perhaps as her eyes went to the door in fear of someone coming in and discovering her secret. For I had no doubt that this Molly existed in absolute secrecy, quite apart from the woman who worked in a supermarket and was probably most generally known pityingly as the meddling Mrs. Knox’s daughter. Suddenly, with a shift in tempo, she was Odile in black tutu and feathers, her movements no longer dreamy and sad but sharply edged, evilly bewitching, the pirouettes faster, the leaps even higher, so that it was hard to believe she could be airborne without being held up by strings. Again the music changed. No longer Tchaikovsky, but a composer I didn’t recognize. This piece was not white or black, but the misty gray of cobwebs, and that is what Molly became-a filmy drift upon the air, fragile beyond belief. I held my breath in the fear that she would brush against the billiard table and disappear. Then, abruptly, it was over. The music faded away to nothing and did not resume. Molly removed the ballet shoes, replaced them with her ordinary ones, picked up the player, and after a final furtive glace around her as if fearing that the walls had tongues as well as ears, tiptoed from the room.

  “Incredible!” I said into the silence that descended.

  “I’ll be damned!” said Lord Belfrey. After which we started down the stairs to hover speechless in the space where the magic had occurred. After a couple of minutes, I looked at him, he looked at me, we both nodded and went out into the hall. Understandably, Molly had not lingered there clutching the evidence of her secret life-unless she was hiding behind one of the larger pieces of furniture, which would make no sense, especially as who knew what recording devices peered and listened out of holes that only the likes of Whitey would find charming. It spoke to Molly’s desperate need to dance that she had taken so great a risk in the library. But for her surreptitious entry and exit, I might have wondered if she had entertained the possibility that his lordship might be a hidden audience to be enchanted into choosing her for his bride. No, her fearful uncertainty had seemed genuine. By now I felt sure Molly was back in her room, back pressed to the door, trembling at the enormity of her daring, yet glowing at the memory of the music that had given her wings.

  I could see the lake in the moonlight as I stared rapturously into his lordship’s dark, unfathomably thoughtful eyes.

  “It was the same for me, Ellie.”

  “And yet the most incredibly beautiful moment was when she became the cobweb fairy. Oh, someone,” unaware of doing so I placed a hand on his arm, “has to write a ballet just for her and call it that-Cobweb and… Candlelight. She was both, wasn’t she… shadow and radiance!”

  “Yes.” His mouth curved gently.

  “I suppose the reason I care so much,” I continued haltingly, “is that my mother was a ballet dancer. She died when I was seventeen.”

  “Such a vulnerable age.”

  “I still miss her.” Words I hadn’t spoken in a very long time. A shaky laugh. “Not an ounce of her talent came my way.”

  “You have other gifts.” There was no missing the tenderness in his voice, but he was a kind man.

  “Something must be done about Molly. Oh, I don’t mean,” sensing his reaction, “that I think you ought to choose her as your bride, only that she can’t be left to dance in hiding. It’s such a waste.”

  He nodded. “How blind we are much of the time to who people really are. She seemed so ordinary, but she isn’t… in fact, quite the opposite. You are absolutely right, Ellie, something so lovely should not be kept hidden.”

  “Yes,” I whispered, enraptured by the thought of Molly curtsying amidst a shower of flowers as the curtain came down behind her.

  “Pardon me for interrupting.” The suavely pleasant voice belonged to my husband. In the act of turning, I saw the hand I recognized as possibly… just possibly… my own resting on Lord Belfrey’s arm. It weighed a ton as I lifted it; a crane would have been useful, but there wasn’t even one in that foolishly jam-packed hall. Silly! Of course I was uncomfortable for nothing. Ben couldn’t possibly think his lordship and I had been looking just a little bit too cozy. Or could he? That tightening of the jaw, the brilliant flash of his blue-green eyes that accentuated the dark line of his brows did give me pause; as had been the case with Wisteria Whitworth when Carson Grant came upon her gazing limpidly into the eyes of the highly eligible justice of the peace shortly after her release from Perdition Hall. She had merely responded to his avowals of sympathy, yet she sensed with palpitating bosom and trembling lashes that Carson had misconstrued. A triumphant joy had seared her soul, before melancholy seized her. Looking into Ben’s now-closed face, I missed out on the joy and had to settle for melancholy for the heart-ticking moments it took for common sense to return.

  “Hello, darling!” Wide smile. “Lord Belfrey and I have been sharing a magical moment.” Sensing from the lack of responsive glow that as clarifications went this was opaque at best, I entreated his lordship: “Is it all right to tell him?”

  “Of course, but perhaps it should go no further at present.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t time just now to share whatever makes the two of you look so pleased with yourselves.” Ben t
witched a smile that didn’t fully reach his lips, let alone his eyes. “Georges sent me looking for you, Lord Belfrey. He wants you in the dining room in ten minutes for luncheon with the contestants.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And, Ellie, Georges has requested that you join the ladies for the sweet. Regrettably, as I understand it, his lordship won’t be present for that course, but chocolate is always a great compensation, isn’t it?”

  Somehow it didn’t seem to be quite the right time to say that I didn’t wish to fall in with any other of Georges’s schemes and be drawn into explaining the reason. Suddenly both men were gone and I was alone with the creaking of floorboards. Or was it the sneering whispers of ghosts? At least, I thought, as I trailed up the staircase, they wouldn’t start guffawing. Even a hollow laugh would be too merry a sound at this Mucklesfeldian moment in time.

  12

  A pplying lipstick to quivering lips is beyond my limited makeup capabilities. After staring bleakly in the spotted mirror above the bathroom basin, I tossed aside the tube and dragged myself downstairs. I was sure I could put matters right with Ben, given ten minutes alone with him-not possible when he was in the final rush of preparing lunch, but hopefully very soon thereafter? The tense scene with him and Lord Belfrey had lowered my spirits, so that my banked-down missing of the children bubbled to the surface. It was not only their dear faces that I saw through a mist of tears… but Thumper’s also. And while I was sure that Tam, Abbey, and Rose were happy in the care of Gran and Grumpy, I had doubts that Thumper had been joyfully reunited with the Dawkinses. Rushing to open the dining-room door, I had trouble sticking a smile on my face. And really, why bother, when I would instantly have to switch to scowling at Georges?

  There he was in his wheelchair, but so screened by crew and equipment that my glare was swallowed up in the tension that fogged the air. Lord Belfrey was seated at the head of the rectangular table with Mrs. Malloy to his immediate right, while Molly Duggan occupied the privileged position to the left. Alice Jones sat next to Mrs. Malloy. Livonia Mayberry had the chair next to Molly. Judy Nunn was at the foot of the table. What was to be made of that distinction?

  His lordship rose to his feet at my arrival. This courtesy was accompanied by a general turning of heads and some scattered smiles, including a crack in Mrs. Malloy’s cement face. Impossible to believe Ben had not provided a superb meal, but she had the look of a woman whose insides had turned to stone, requiring serious drilling if ever to be put right. A growl from Georges might or might not have been a greeting. When it came to the crew, I was patently of no more interest than a crack in the timbered ceiling.

  I had not previously been inside the dining room, and though like the library not excessively burdened with furniture, it had all the hallmarks of Mucklesfeld gloom. The dark oak paneling would not appear to have been polished in a hundred years. Curtain-sized cobwebs were the only window treatments for two narrow panels of grimy glass. The sideboard was hideously carved with mythical creatures that looked ready to come to life with a vengeance at the sound of a dropped fork. The massive rusty iron light fixture above the table-unlit, as were the several lamps scattered around the room-might have seen former service when the need arose to string up a clumsy footman. As for the dark oil paintings dotting the walls, even the most menacing family portraits, instilling the urge to put oneself up for immediate adoption, would have been preferable to those gory battle scenes and lamentable shipwrecks.

  His lordship stepped aside to offer me his chair, then addressed a few gracefully kind words to the contestants and myself and left the room. Georges barked something, the crew murmured back. Only Alice Jones roused herself from staring at the frayed tablecloth to flick a glance their way. Feeling very much the intruder in the wake of such lackluster greetings, I consoled myself that I no longer felt blinded by the camera lights. Either I was adapting to their glare or had permanently lost the ability to blink. I waited for Mrs. Malloy to voice her delight that I had spared time from my unoccupied day to join them. Oh, how I relished the memory of her barbed affection before her foolish urge to marry into the nobility had put a dent the size of the Grand Canyon in our relationship. As the silence mounted, I yearned to whisk off on a magic carpet to the United States or any other outback of civilization that had never cottoned on to the notion of titles. What had I walked in on this time?

  Mrs. Malloy failing to take pity on one less fortunate, I was grateful when Livonia suddenly and sweetly came to life. “Look,” she said, in her gentle voice, “it’s a strain for everyone trying to make the best possible impression on Lord Belfrey.” I doubted she included herself in this statement, but there was no doubting her sincerity. “Lunch has been so lovely-the food, I mean.” She smiled at me. “Why don’t we all make an effort to relax with each other and enjoy the pudding when it comes? Doesn’t that sound a good idea?”

  “I always say sweet,” countered Mrs. Malloy, who did nothing of the sort. In any other company she would have been holding forth that a jam roly-poly was a pud, as was anyone of them fancy meringue things Mr. H was so fond of making. And don’t let the Queen herself say different.

  “Really?” Molly, looking neither a swan nor a cobweb fairy but ordinary to the point of frumpishness, sounded uncertain yet eager to open herself to a different view of the world. “I always think of a toffee when someone mentions sweets. I’ve always loved toffees, but I can’t eat them now I wear dentures. Mummy will continue to say false teeth, which sounds so much worse. More… more dribbly, if you get what I mean.”

  “Oh, I do,” exclaimed Livonia. “Can’t mothers be awful? Not Dr. Rowley’s, I don’t mean her,” delightful blush, “she sounds as though she was absolutely lovely. Perhaps the reason he hasn’t married is that he hasn’t found a woman to equal her. Of course, anyone the least bit nice would never try to compete with her late mother-in-law.”

  “I’m not the least competitive,” Alice Jones of the abundant hair and home-woven clothes broke in. “That’s why I find the situation we are all in-other, that is, than Mrs. Haskell-so stressful. I know I should have anticipated being uncomfortable, but thinking about something isn’t the same as being thrust in at the deep end.”

  “No, it isn’t,” agreed Livonia, “and I think your teeth are absolutely lovely.”

  “Mine?” Alice looked delighted.

  “Oh, yes, but I meant… also meant Molly’s.”

  I heard myself say that everyone present had lovely teeth. How stupid could I sound? A diversion would have been welcome. Alas, the huge and rusty light fixture, so reminiscent of a medieval torture apparatus, did not begin swaying ominously overhead. Nor did the cutlery choose to leap out of a sideboard drawer and go skimming like unguided missiles through the air, as had reportedly happened at yesterday’s lunch. It seemed that, like Homer, Georges sometimes nodded.

  “I know I haven’t been very chatty,” Judy spoke from the foot of the table, “but I’ve been thinking about the grounds.”

  Mrs. Malloy folded her arms purposefully under her bosom and curled a damson lip. “You would be!” Honestly! Georges (I couldn’t bring myself to look his way) had to be lapping this up like double cream. The woman needed to be shoved under the table and her hand trodden on if she attempted to crawl out.

  “How can you not be thrilled, Judy, by the repairs you’ve already made to the broken wall?” I rushed to say. “I understand you all got together this morning to plan what each of you will do to improve Mucklesfeld while you are here.”

  “We did.” Alice Jones fingered the frayed edge of the tablecloth. “I said I would go through the linen cupboards. Plunket,” like a true mistress of Mucklesfeld Manor she forewent the Mr., “tells me there are ten of them, although Mrs. Foot said there were not more than seven.”

  Mrs. Malloy stared at nothing, unless hopefully into her conscience. Livonia looked at her hands, but whether because she wasn’t deeply engaged by improvements at Mucklesfeld or was thinking of Tommy
Rowley could only be a mind reader’s guess.

  Alice tucked up a bundle of hair that had escaped from a large tortoiseshell comb. “However many cupboards there may really be, I hope to locate a sewing machine and repair as much of the linen as I can. It doesn’t match up to Judy and the wall, I know.” There was none of Mrs. Malloy’s rancor in her voice and Judy responded appreciatively.

  “Kind of you to say, but we all do what we can. I can’t sew a stitch.”

  “Same here,” said Molly. “Working in a supermarket isn’t my life’s dream,” no faltering or conscious look here, “but like I said this morning, I started out stocking shelves.” That must have thrilled Mother Knox. “Boring, unless you learn to take pride, and it taught me a thing about being quick to get organized. So I think I can help organize the furniture, at least to make better paths through it.”

  “I could help you with that,” I offered, realizing with surprise that for several minutes now I had been unaware of Georges, crew, and moon-sized stare of the camera.

  Livonia turned to me. “Oh, Ellie, you are kind. I said if it would help I’d make up inventories of what’s in each room. Being a bank teller isn’t the most exciting job in the world either, but you have to be quick and make sure you’re correct to the penny. The only difference is I’ll be adding up tables and chairs.” She beamed at me. “Could you also give us some ideas of what is and what isn’t valuable so I can make note of that, too?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think.”

  “That is nice.” Molly looked directly at me for the first time. There was nothing in her gaze beyond gratitude, nothing to suggest that she connected me in any way with the library.

  “This is all well and good,” proclaimed Mrs. Malloy with a toss of her black head with its two inches of white roots and a heightening of rouge, “but what the place needs more than anything is a start on a good clean. From the looks of it, that’ll be left to Muggins here.”