We Five

by Mark Dunn

  “He makes my flesh crawl.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but that’s the breaks, Mags. You’re very pretty. You can have anybody you want—I mean, if you actually opened yourself up to possibilities. It ain’t my fault you haven’t put yourself out there.”

  “I don’t like any of the boys in Bellevenue. They talk like hicks and have dirt under their fingernails.”

  “Then, honey, you should go someplace else. Especially now that your mother and Molly’s father are gettin’ married and you don’t have to look after her no more.”

  Maggie nodded. “I just might. Even though you’ll all miss me. At least I hope you’ll all miss me.”

  Jane reached over and pulled Maggie to her so the two could hug. “Of course we’ll miss you. You know how much we love you.”

  “If you really loved me, you’d let me have Tommy and you can take Jerry.”

  “He won’t want me. I’m ugly, remember? Besides which, he makes my skin crawl too.” Jane pulled back so she could brush a strand of hair from her friend’s eyes. “Honey, just get yourself through tonight. It’ll all be over real quick.”

  Maggie appreciated the thought, even though she didn’t say so. She forced herself to smile in a way that didn’t look forced. “I hope you and Carrie and Molly don’t schedule your three weddings too close together. The ‘always a bridesmaid’ thing—well, it’s gonna get very old for me very fast.”

  “You funny lady,” said Jane, imitating the impatiently indulgent immigrant waitress at the Chinese restaurant We Five sometimes went to in Bellevenue. “Now what you ordah?”

  No. Maggie couldn’t talk to her mother about any of this. She let her sleep. Maggie got ready for bed, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to turn off her brain. Was there a little something there—between Jerry and her? A little something about that gauche, foulmouthed, all-but-certainly racist and anti-Semitic and xenophobic Jerry Castle that redeemed him just the teensiest little bit? Maybe he had a secret life in which he nuzzled kittens and puppies, and took meals to shut-ins and taught Sunday school to five-year-olds when nobody was looking. Maybe he was a good lover, or at the very least a good kisser. Of course, Maggie lost her chance to find that out when she’d refused to let him even walk her to her front door.

  She wished he’d acted just a little bit disappointed over the brush-off.

  At around this time Ruth was also lying awake in bed and thinking. She was wondering if she wanted to see Cain again. Although she had said yes to his suggestion that the two of them get together the next week when they were both off work at the same time, still she wondered. He’d made it fairly clear it wouldn’t be a date. They would just go for coffee somewhere and talk without all the noise that made conversation so difficult in the blues club.

  Still…

  There was a new combination bookstore/coffeehouse on the square in Bellevenue she’d been wanting to visit. Bellevenue, with its antebellum courthouse, quaint post-bellum shops, Victorian-era frame houses and stately antiquarian oak trees, had a certain Southern charm to it that hadn’t been entirely erased by the arrival of all the new casinos and fancy destination-hotels down the road. Movie companies liked Bellevenue. Several films had recently been shot there. But also recently, the native Mississippi residents who called the town home had come to want some of the same things other American towns—not so “local-colorful,” and much more hip and progressive—were enjoying. Like combination bookstore/coffeehouses where you could sit and sip tea while flipping through the latest issue of your favorite magazine.

  But if there was a chance this was a ploy by Cain to get his romantic foot in the door, it wasn’t going to work. Ruth didn’t want a serious relationship with Cain, or any man for that matter.

  In spite of this, Ruth liked Cain. He was bright and aridly funny and nothing at all like his buddies. But she liked him as a potential friend. Eventually, she’d have to let him know this.

  Ruth didn’t know that at that very moment, Cain Pardlow was lying awake thinking the very same thing, in spite of the bet. In spite of Will’s threat to expose him—to tell what he’d walked in on in the men’s room at the casino. Cain didn’t really care whether he lost the casino job or not, but he didn’t want it to get out there—to screw up his admission to law school, to find its way to his father’s ears, to the ears of all the people his father worked with as district attorney in Cottondale. Isaiah Pardlow didn’t need a scandal like this right after announcing his decision to run for another term.

  Cain had been with girls before. He could be with Ruth in that way if he had to, but he’d certainly be leading her on, lying to her while compromising himself.

  Cain, like Ruth, had had a nice time that evening. Unfortunately, he was now back to feeling like shit.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tulleford, England, August 1859

  Mrs. Colthurst sighed contentedly. “It is done. And I commend each of you for your care and diligence in completing the task. The gowns are quite beautiful and Mrs. Cuthwaite will be most pleased. I warrant the five charming Misses Cuthwaite, when transformed by our singular creations, will catch the appreciative eye of every eligible young man at the Starlight Ball.”

  Mrs. Colthurst’s five seamstresses, situated behind their five identical worktables, looked equally proud and rather satisfied with themselves. However, none seemed more pleased with the accomplishment than Jane and Ruth, who had toiled at Mrs. Colthurst’s side long past the setting of the previous workday sun. It was not required that the gowns be delivered to Mrs. Cuthwaite until Saturday morning, but Mrs. Colthurst, sensing interest from her best customer in the work of a different seamstress—one who had recently opened her own shop in Warrington only five miles away—thought it would be to her advantage to complete the job one day early in an attempt to secure the wealthy woman’s continuing favour and patronage.

  “Jane and Ruth were so very helpful to me, that I must charge you, Maggie, with the task of delivering the finished gowns to Mrs. Cuthwaite. I’ve arranged for Bob, the hostler at South Haven Inn, to come along at half past ten to take you in Mr. Lincoln’s fly. At the same time, Molly, I will ask you to take Mrs. Dowell the frock I’ve just mended for her. She isn’t far, as you know. I’m certain you’ll manage sufficiently by dint of your own two good legs.”

  “Without doubt,” said Molly with a compliant nod.

  “Carrie is the lucky one today, but in no time at all I’m sure I’ll have something for you to do, my dear, to even the ledger with your diligent circle-sisters.” Mrs. Colthurst looked about the room, nodding complacently. “Now this is how a business should be run—each contributing a part to make a success of the whole. It is as if each of us was a different leg of the hard-working dung beetle, who pushes his dung ball hither and thither in happy and productive industry.”

  “Have you been looking at that book again, Mrs. Colthurst?” asked Jane, with a wag of the finger.

  Mrs. Colthurst coloured. “The illustrations are really quite remarkable, and I must confess I take great inspiration from the assiduity of the superfamily Scarabaeoidea. Every one of us should apply ourselves to our tasks in the manner of our insect friends, the hard-working beetles.”

  After Molly and Maggie had left on their appointed morning errands and Mrs. Colthurst had returned to her little office alcove to balance the accounts, Ruth and Jane and Carrie smiled amongst themselves. Jane rolled back her eyes with especial delight. “I cannot say I fault the woman for her love of curious books, but it is her enthusiastic admiration for dung beetles which I cannot completely fathom.”

  Ruth defended the honour and worth of her employeress. “The comparison is a fair one, Jane. Let us not be uncharitable, simply because the insect happens to be coprophagous.”

  Carrie bridled up. She tossed aside the black bombazeen cloak she was making for Mrs. Evers, who had asked for mourning weeds in anticipation of her husband’s demise. (Mrs. Colthurst had well nigh refused to accept the commissio
n; Mr. Evers seemed in robust health, but Mrs. Evers, having received a premonition of her husband’s premature passing in a dream, insisted it would serve for her to be sartorially provident.) “I must say, Ruth, that it is a burden to be the constant recipient of so many words which cannot be understood except by the one who has just said them.”

  Jane threw up a hand to silence her friend and co-worker. “We’re fortunate to have Ruth here to improve our vocabularies, Carrie. Now if you’d been paying the least bit of attention you would know the meaning of the word from the context in which Ruth used it.”

  Carrie picked up the cloak and resumed her work. “It is too much with which to tax the brain so early in the day.”

  “My word, Carrie!” protested Ruth in a tone of playfully contending vexation, “you tax your brain each and every time you visit a new piece of music upon the page. You are no sloth. What I wager you are at this moment is tetchy and irritable, and I should like to know the reason why.”

  “Then I shall tell you why,” replied Carrie, setting the cloak aside to look at Ruth with a flashing eye. “You are like the cat that cannot decide if it wishes to go inside or out. You have now changed your mind three times about whether you will be coming along with us on the picnic on Sunday. Or is it four? I cannot keep track of which side of the door you are clawing at any given moment.”

  Jane spoke before Ruth had opportunity. “She is in. She will remain in. Won’t you, Ruth?”

  “I’ll go,” said Ruth with a bland sigh. But almost instantly her voice stirred, the colour returning to her face. “Though may I ask, Carrie, why it should be any concern of yours? Must the five of us always do everything together? Except, of course, for those things you do not wish to do. May I remind you that last night it was Jane and me who stopped here for four hours more whilst you and Maggie and Molly skipped merrily home?”

  “That isn’t the same at all,” returned Carrie in slightly puling rebuttal. “The three of us have parents who would fidget and worry if we were abroad past dusk. Neither you nor Jane has a mother or father whose feelings must be considered.”

  Ruth did not pursue her side of the argument, which would have put to Carrie that Mr. Mobry and his sister treated her as their own child and that Jane’s brother, for all his defects of character, was still her brother, and must by definition care if she be gone too long without an appropriate explanation (although truth be told, Jane had said that upon her return to their apartments the previous night, Higgins was nowhere to be found, and perhaps had no idea she’d even been delayed).

  Jane signed to Ruth that she would speak now and she did so in a soft and conciliatory tone. “Dear, sweet Carrie: you must tell Ruth and me what has really put you in such a state of distemper this morning. It cannot only be the fact of Ruth’s vexing indecision. It simply isn’t like you to be so petulant and difficult.”

  Carrie nodded. She closed her eyes to gather her thoughts and then opened them fully to convey the following: “Yesterday after I was left at my doorstep by Molly and Maggie, and as I was fumbling for my latchkey, who should I discover coming out from behind the poplar tree next to the house but one of the young men with whom we will be picnicking on Sunday! His name is Holborne. I was startled that he would take such liberties to introduce himself since we had not, as of yet, been properly presented to one another, but he made bold not only to present himself to me but also to insinuate an intimacy with me, which I will not portray. In fine, he was quite rude and disrespecting of all propriety and I could not understand why he would accost me in such a manner until that moment in which he finally chose to explain himself.”

  Jane and Ruth both stood as one, and, as if the movement had been rehearsed beforehand, lifted their chairs and brought them round to Carrie’s table with great alacrity and immoderate anticipation of the next paragraph of their friend’s intriguing unbosoming.

  Carrie lowered her voice, with Jane and Ruth now situated in close proximity. “He said it was decided that he and his fellow millhands—the ones with whom we will be spending Sunday after noon—should each select one of us to affix himself. But it so fell out that there was some disagreement as to which would have me, for, apparently, both Holborne and one of his mill-mates had heard my singing voice one after noon as we were walking home, and were quite taken with it, and he found it incumbent upon his interest in both me and my tuneful voice to obviate any unpleasant rivalry between the two come Sunday. For this reason he said he was forced to make a preemptive sally, and though he sought my forgiveness for the impropriety, it could not be helped. He desired, beyond anything else, to possess my exclusive attention and companionable society this coming Sunday.”

  “And what did you say to that?” sought Jane, her voice quavering with excitement.

  “He is a very good-looking fellow. I have seen the others as they take their luncheon before the shoe shop. I must say it is his looks which appeal to me the most. And here is something that pleases me, as well: that he should wish to break every rule of propriety to have me.”

  “And does he ‘have’ you?” asked Ruth. Her interest in the upshot to Carrie’s story was equal to Jane’s, but fraught with far less passion of feeling. Jane, for her part, had observably placed herself vicariously (and palpitatingly) into Carrie’s shoes, whereas Ruth’s investment was largely academic.

  “He does have me!” ejaculated Carrie. “He does! I was all but overcome by his impertinent ministrations. Subsequently, I acceded without hesitation to his terms of engagement on Sunday.”

  “Setting aside the indiscretion of his loutish behaviour,” said Ruth, “I have yet to glean, then, how this can be construed as anything but a good thing for you.”

  Carrie’s elation was now supplanted by a look of sudden trepidation. “Oh, but what if the other fellow will not be satisfied by my choice? What if he means to contend for me? Perhaps blows will be exchanged, grievous injury inflicted!”

  Ruth emitted a loud groan, which sounded as if her throat were being scoured. “Carrie Hale, sometimes the things you say make the inanities our friend Molly occasionally spouts sound like pearls of wisdom. This is what troubles you? That two men may fight over you? You, who hasn’t spoken a single syllable to any man who wasn’t transacting business with you from behind a shop counter or asking you courteously to mind the dung his horse had just deposited in your path within the lane!”

  Jane sought to stay her friend with a fluttering hand. “Do be kind, Ruth. This is all quite new to Carrie.” Then, turning to the recipient of Ruth’s uncharitable remarks, Jane said with softer accents, “Carrie, it is the dream of every girl to be pursued by multiple suitors. If it so happens during Sunday’s outing that these two men end up fighting over you, rejoice! Be glad for the attention, regardless of how much blood may be spilt.”

  Carrie relaxed into a half smile, which quickly transformed itself into a smile in full, accompanied by carefree, girlish, giggling laughter.

  Ruth lifted herself—and then her chair—and returned surlily to her own worktable. Jane and Carrie, who bethought themselves at first that Ruth would apply herself wordlessly to her work, were mistaken. Ruth did speak. She said, “You aren’t the only one of us who can sing, Carrie. We all sing. And quite beautifully, I might add.”

  “That is certainly true,” replied Carrie, who, with Jane still sitting hard-by, returned her attention to her eagerly receptive friend to disclose: “His body is quite well-formed, Jane. His look reminds me of that picture of Hercules in Bulfinch’s.”

  “Bull cods!” expostulated Ruth in a rude voice, making certain to scrape her chair loudly upon the slate floor to keep the oath from a precise audit by her two companions.

  But even though there was no guessing from Carrie and Jane about Ruth’s tenor or her present state of ill humour, they purposefully ignored it.

  Molly Osborne delivered Mrs. Dowell’s grey satin pelisse into the hands of the woman’s maid-of-all-work. She was upon her return to Mrs. Colthurst’s dres
s shop when she was hailed in the High Road by her cousin, Jemma Spalding. Though Jemma, who was the child of Mr. Osborne’s sister Cecily Spalding, was only one year older than Molly, yet the two had not been close since childhood, for as Jemma grew older she began to display a capricious nature that removed common sense altogether from the equation of her life, and became unpredictable and erratic in her behaviour, once taking it to mind to have a bathe in the stream that meandered behind the church she attended, and to do so right after morning services and whilst still dressed in all her Sunday finery. There were some who thought her mad. Molly did not. To Molly, her cousin was merely maddeningly eccentric.

  Having completed her marketing for the morning, Jemma was bending her steps to the home of an old woman she knew who lived in a crooked house on the apron of town—a woman who, Jemma explained to Molly as they walked along, was of gipsy stock, but no longer roamed the countryside to sell gispy jewellery and colourful hand-knitted scarves and shawls, but was now settled upon a little piece of tenant land, where she raised poultry and grew parsnips and did only one thing that she confessed was a residual indulgence from her former life: she told fortunes.

  “I have my fortune told once a fortnight,” said Jemma, with a look that conveyed a great eagerness to see the woman again. “Then I hurry home and tell Mamma and Papa all that Madame Louisa has told to me. Alas, they never believe me—not even when those things which were predicted come true. Yet I know that the Madame has a rare gift, and I cannot help wishing I had leave and means to tell a good many others about it.”

  Molly smiled with genial indulgence. “That is all very interesting, Jemma, but I must go back to work now. The dress shop is just round the corner.”

  “Yes, I know, but won’t you come with me for just a few minutes to see my fortune-telling friend? I have nearly half a shilling left from my marketing and will be happy to pay to have your cards read for a change. Aren’t you the least bit curious to know what your future holds?”