The Widow's Club (16 page)

My eyes did not deceive me. This ghastly, unkempt apparition standing before us was my cousin Freddy. Tobias leapt away from Dorcas and skirted the intruder, hissing. My sentiments exactly. “I knew we would come home to leftover food, but not to leftover guest.”

Ben was shaking hands, all man to man with him. “Ellie, dear, I know you’re joking, but old Freddy may take you seriously.”

“I
am
serious, darling. The last time this creature came for a weekend, the weekend lasted three months.”

Dorcas jabbed her hair behind her ears. “Think I’ll start packing.”

“Me, too.” Jonas trudged after her.

“Good idea,” I called after them. “Maybe it’s contagious.”

Freddy flopped into the rocking chair. “You were a saint, Giselle, taking me in that time when I had no place to go. There I was, appalled at the thought of being a burden to my parents, not working—”

“Oh, don’t sell yourself short. We both know you did rather well as a salesman, hawking
my
groceries door to door.”

“Ellie, why don’t we hear what Freddy has to say.” Ben’s voice wasn’t quite as devoted as I would have liked.

Freddy gave a dejected wave. “Forget it, mate. Ellie’s the boss—that’s how it should be. Sorry I’ve outstayed my welcome.”

Ben shot me an ambiguous look. Freddy was shifting his shoulders up and down. “Sore muscles?” I inquired. “From bracing yourself to leap from the tower?”

“Snickering does not become you, cousin. I would have jumped could I have been assured of an injury that looked bad but didn’t hurt. I wanted Jill on her knees with remorse.”

Freddy stood up, flipped the chair over, and assumed a heroic pose. Reaching a hand inside his shirt, he brought out a folded piece of paper and held it out to Ben. “Behold! My application for employment in your pending restaurant. Jill is going to weep her eyes out.”

Ben took hold of the paper, as I said, “Oh, what a shame. You were just saying this morning, weren’t you, darling, that Abigail’s won’t open until spring.”

Freddy clutched at his heart. “Cruel Ellie! I’m sorry now I put you down as a reference.” His eyes moved to Ben. “Well, mate, what’s it to be? Is she the boss at work as well as at home?”

I moved to my husband’s side, slid my arm through his, and smiled.

“What exactly did you have in mind, Freddy?” Ben slapped the application in his hand.

It was stupid to feel betrayed. Ben was undoubtedly doing this for me. He believed that I really wanted to help Freddy but was afraid to show signs of nepotism so early in our marriage. I only removed my arm from Ben’s because I was getting pins and needles in my elbow. Freddy shot me a V-for-Victory sign and a smile that said, No hard feelings—loser.

“To be straight with you, Ben—sir—I would prefer to start at the top and work my way down, if necessary. My grand plan is to achieve, then thumb my nose when Jill comes crawling on bleeding knees, begging for one more chance.”

Looking from me to Freddy, Ben twisted the application into a plane and tossed it into the muddy waters of the sink.

“At the moment, all I’ve got to offer is a sort of Man Friday. You would help me get the building ready for occupancy, do some clerical work, and learn a few fundamentals of cooking.”

Freddy held up his hand. “I’ve only one question: Does the job come with a car?”

“Afraid not,” I said, “but we will throw in the chauffeur’s cottage.” I certainly wasn’t having Freddy and his guitar installed here. Just look at him! He already had the refrigerator open and was hauling out trays of hors d’oeuvres.

“How about putting the kettle on, Ellie—unless you two would rather have champagne? I’m easy.” My cousin grinned at me.

Had I felt any anger toward Ben it would have vanished when we turned off the lights and the pheasants on the wallpaper in our bedroom came to burnished life in the glow from the fire. I fell asleep curled up against him and dreamed about my mother-in-law. I couldn’t see her face. But I could hear her. Someone was carrying her away into the mist. She was screaming, “Help! Help! Murder, murder!” It was like something from one of those forties films where all the women are young war widows being preyed upon by fortune hunters. Off in the distance people were weeping and wailing; slowly the screen filled up with something long and dark, moving closer—closer. It was a coffin and I knew who was inside. “Well, no wonder she couldn’t come to the wedding,” I thought.

I woke to find the wind hurling the maroon velvet curtains against the walls and rain dripping over the sill. We had to leave the window open a crack because of Ben’s claustrophobia.

Poppa telephoned the next afternoon. Ben answered the phone. When no voice responded to his hello, he promptly handed me the receiver.

“That you, Ellie? Can’t be long—have to unload a crate of bananas—but thought you would like to know that Paris received a postcard from Maggie this morning. Said she was still staying at that nice quiet place at the seaside.”

“Which seaside?”

“It wasn’t a picture card.”

“What was the postmark?”

Ben was making it hard for me to hear. He was walking in circles, making deep breathing noises.

“It was smudged.”

“Did your wife send any message for you?”

“She did. She told Paris to see I took my cod liver oil.”

I made encouraging noises to Ben. “That sounds very positive.”

Poppa snorted. “What do you know? I think she poisoned the bottle before she left.” The receiver went dead in my hand.

“I expect I will get a card or letter from Mum tomorrow.” Ben sounded cheerful, but looked defensive.

His mother didn’t write. And still no word from Brambleweed Press.

Fortunately, Ben did not have much time to stand at the letter box. He and Freddy (now installed in the cottage at the gates) spent most days in the building which was to become Abigail’s. Ben swore that Freddy might become a credit to us in time. And he did seem to be buckling down. Occasionally the pair of them even skipped dinner, grabbing a bite at The Dark Horse. I didn’t mind—terribly.

I had a lot of work to do myself, and I was glad of time to devote to Dorcas and Jonas. Marriage to Ben was utter bliss, but living with a gourmet chef when one is chained to a diet is rather like a nonsmoker living with a smoker. I inhaled calories when Ben used words like flambé and fricassee.

The days passed swiftly. Most days I would putter into Abigail’s with slide rule, paint chart, and fabric samples. And I did some shopping with Dorcas and bullied Jonas into being fitted for a new suit. His current Sunday best was older than I.

On the fifteenth of December, the eve of Departure Day, Ben prepared a fabulous dinner. The dining room gleamed with dark oak, silver, and the Indian Tree china. Freddy joined us, looking very spruce. Even his fingernails were clean.

“Quite the dandy, aren’t you, boy?” harrumphed Jonas, who was wearing a plaid shirt and shoestring tie.

Dorcas moved around the table, arms swinging briskly.

“A sight for sore eyes, each of you. We shall always treasure the memory of this final hour.”

“Don’t!” I whispered, and only just stopped myself from adding “don’t go.” And I, a grown-up, married woman. How could I spoil the voyagers’ pleasure? How could I be so disloyal to Ben? He was bringing in the turkey, garlanded in holly, amid cheers from everyone but me. Jonas was tucking his serviette into his neck, Dorcas was moving her chair to allow Freddy more room.

Freddy tilted his chair on two legs and whispered, “You look beautiful, Ellie.”

“Why, thank you.”

Jonas and Dorcas laid their soup spoons down with echoing clanks.

“The fang marks in your neck are barely noticeable.” Sorry”—Freddy swung the chair out of reach—“but sometimes I kinda miss the old Ellie. I feel sorry for her.” He proclaimed mournfully, “Thinny rolled over and Fatty was dead.”

What idiot Freddy didn’t understand was that Fat Ellie’s ghost still walked. I took the vegetable platter from Dorcas and smiled into Ben’s eyes. “We don’t miss her, do we, darling?”

“No.”

“But we will miss our dear Dorcas and Jonas.” I lifted my wineglass. “Come back soon, both of you.” My vision was so blurred the jolly wanderers looked like they were teary-eyed, too.

Virtue is its own reward. As I lay between the silver-grey sheets that night, feeling the night air on my skin and Ben’s hands slipping over the green silk of my nightgown, I was glad I had not succumbed to the buttered parsnips and sherried trifle. As it was, I would have to find a way to burn up the calories in the brussels sprouts. The pheasants on the wallpaper shifted as I felt the rasp of Ben’s cheek on mine, his quickened breathing, and those wonderful hands—I smiled dreamily up from my pillow.

They were waiting for me in dreamland. Two humanoid hamburgers. One had the face of Mrs. Shirley Daffy, the other Mrs. Amelia Bottomly. They both kept screaming at me as they drew me inside a refrigerator and locked the door: “You’ll lose him, you stupid girl. He’ll run off to
Chicago with someone meatier. Someone like me!” Their lips cracked into huge tomato sauce smiles. It was so dark, so cold. My heart tried to fight its way out of my body, and I knew, as I fought my way out from the refrigerator, this buried-alive feeling must be what Ben had feared ever since someone had locked him in the potato bin.

I was suddenly awake but the bedroom looked different, alien. Moonlight spattered the room. The dark oblong facing me looked too tall to be Ben’s chest of drawers. I moved to sit up and realized that I was up. Standing up. Worse, I was clutching something. I fumbled for the light switch and in a blaze of blinding light, found myself in the kitchen. In my hand was a sandwich—a grotesque sandwich of lettuce, tongue, raw egg, and mandarin oranges slathered in tomato sauce. Shuddering, I dropped it into the sink, turned on the hot tap and punched the monstrous thing through the drain holes with the handle of a wooden spoon. No one, with an emphasis on Ben, must ever know.

No need to put on the hall light. There was plenty of moonlight breaking through the windows. I wouldn’t stumble over Rufus or his compadre, but I did get a jolt when I saw the shadowy form of a man standing in front of the drawing room fireplace. I grabbed at the stone moulding of a niche in the wall; the Egyptian urn it contained almost toppled over. The figure moved sideways to the window. But as my breathing slowed, my brainwaves quickened. Jonas must have wanted one last undisturbed look at Abigail’s portrait. For luck? For … love? Surely, he and Dorcas weren’t having regrets about this trip to Chicago? Stealthily, I reached the stairs and stood on the second one up, twisting the loose top of the bannister in my hand. Perhaps I should go and ask him if he and Dorcas were leaving because of some misplaced idea of chivalry: “Let the young couple have a few months on their own.”

My feet took me slowly upstairs.

The curtains billowed into the room as I slid into bed. Inching toward Ben, I felt like a parasite draining his warmth, but I didn’t begrudge him the open window. Not after my sojourn in the refrigerator.

The next day, I did not flood Heathrow with tears. Dorcas, wearing a navy blazer with her old school badge on the pocket, was the one with last-minute flutters. She
wasn’t afraid of crashing; what scared her was eight hours of no sit-ups or chin-ups.

“What you need is a good book,” I said.

“Now you mention it, wouldn’t object to a little fictional excitement—perhaps something on Girl Guides.”

“Right, ho!” Ben vanished into the crowd and returned with a paperback with red lettering spattered on a black cover—
Friendly Death
.

Ben’s voice fought a loudspeaker announcement of a flight to Paris departing from Gate Eight. “Read the back; it does fulfill the Girl Guide criteria: ‘Pretty dimpled Sarah Lynn Webster goes to camp for the first time and finds something nasty in her bunk. If you’ve guessed frog, you’re wrong. If you’ve guessed dead—you’re right.’ ”

Jonas smacked his gum contemptuously.

“How positively ripping. And by Mary Birdsong.” Dorcas clapped the book to her brow. “Quite forgot to mention. She—I mean, Mr. Edwin Digby—came to the house the day of the wedding, minutes after you left.”

“Is this on a par with a visit from Garbo?” Ben was propping hand luggage against our legs.

“Fellow was drunk,” grumphed Jonas. “I opened the front door to see him struggling to put his key in the lock.”

“An understandable error,” said Ben mildly. “Our houses are a scant half-mile apart.”

“Had a goose with him that looked as though it could have done with a few gins. Asked them both in but they turned tail and went.”

Dorcas winced. “Feel sorry for the man. Hear he hasn’t published a book in years. Must make him feel a bit inadequate.” Her eyes met Ben’s and her face mottled. “I say, is that our flight? Whamo! Shoulders back, Jonas, no snivelling, anyone.”

The men started gathering up the luggage, and Dorcas gave me the familiar clap on the back. “Sorry about the blooper. Know Ben will hear about the masterpiece soon.” She raised her voice. “Don’t worry, Ellie; I’ll see Jonas gets forty winks plus on the plane.”

“Doubt I’ll close my eyes.” Jonas adjusted his cowboy hat. “Slept like a top last night. Must have been the sherry in the trifle, Ben.”

*   *   *

Dorcas’s hopes regarding Ben’s masterpiece were realised the very next day. Brambleweed Press wished to publish his cookery book. An editor named A.E. Brady wrote, “All at B.P. adored the recipes, the anecdotes, indeed the whole essence, and would consider it a privilege to include so important a work on our spring list.”

Ben brought the letter up to the bedroom. I was still in my nightdress.

“What a charming, insightful man, this Mr. Brady.” I reached for Ben, but he slipped through my fingers. Never had I seen him more ecstatic. After leaping on and off the bed a few times, pummelling the pillows and tossing them across the room, he whipped on some clothes, rummaged through his hair with his fingers and announced he must dash down to the cottage to share the news with Freddy.

“Don’t you want to phone your father?”