A Serious Widow

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  More and more birds are flying in to the convention. The wire sways as they teeter together, twittering with gossip and fluffing out their feathers importantly. Mrs. Wilson smiles at them.

  “Please pay attention,” I tell her. “This is serious. The mortgage payment will soon be due again. You don’t seem to realize –”

  “There’s a sort of rhythm to these things,” she says. “Good times and bad; bad times and good … And then Providence weighs in from time to time, often when you least expect it.”

  “Providence takes no interest at all in people like me.”

  “Ah, that’s just it. Applies to everybody. That kind of detachment is the whole point about Providence.”

  “Well, I can’t wait around for miracles. Is that all you can suggest, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I suppose you could always marry Cuthbert.”

  “Nonsense. Even if I wanted to, it would be a bad idea. We’re far too much alike.”

  I rather hope she might disagree, but instead she murmurs, “True.” Then she adds idly, “Well, what about Tom, then? He can’t be sixty-five yet. And you must admit he’s young for his age, whatever that is.”

  “Come on, Ethel. The last thing on earth he’s going to do is marry anybody. Why on earth should he? And besides, marriage isn’t the answer to women’s problems any more – haven’t you noticed? I wish I had, thirty years ago, I can tell you.”

  “Well, things were simpler then, weren’t they? In my day, women married the most unlikely people. And quite happily, too, on the whole.”

  “Not that Tom hasn’t got charisma, of a kind. He’s certainly got skills I never … well. Anyhow, of course that was nothing but a crazy sort of episode – it has nothing to do with anything. I can hardly believe it happened at all. And it certainly won’t happen again. That much I’m sure of.”

  “Are you?”

  “Come on, we’re forgetting the point here. I do wish one of us had a tidier mind.”

  “Neat as a new pin, they say,” she remarks, more to the birds than to me. “But there’s nothing in the least attractive about a pin, in my opinion.”

  The phone rings. Suddenly all the birds rise with a flutter and wing busily off, leaving the wire to swing empty in the wind. Mrs. Wilson seizes the opportunity to disappear with them.

  “Rowena,” quacks the voice in the receiver. “Pamela here. Could I possibly pop over for a minute, or is this a madly inconvenient time?”

  “No, come right along.” My heart has given a little skip of expectation. Sebastian has insulted Mrs. Blot again, I think, and they want to pay me – didn’t she once say practically anything? – to take over. Oh, I’ll never again say a bad word about Providence.

  Pam is evidently on her way to work. Scarlet trousers under her fur coat would give her the air of a guardsman if it were not for the silver earrings big as handcuffs that swing from her ears, and the Shalimar with which she is lavishly perfumed.

  “We’re off at noon today for bloody Hamilton again,” she begins, “so this is my only chance to ask you the most terrific favour.”

  “Glad to help,” I say, trying to sound casual.

  “Well, we’ll be gone all weekend, you see, because John’s mother, who is ninety-one and crazy as a hoot owl, is finally going into a home, and we have to pack up the stuff in her apartment and get her settled in, what a hideous job, old people have such tons of tat, old photos and hats left over from various wars, and all of it sacred to them. Oh, well, it has to be done, I shall pack an enormous bottle of lovely gin. Anyhow, Max is back at Queen’s now and Colin and Arthur will have to come with us, so I wonder if you’d be an angel and pop in twice a day to feed Wittgenstein.” Here she fumbles rather distractedly in her coat pockets.

  “Oh. Yes, Pam, of course I will.”

  “It never pays to get chummy with the neighbours,” says Edwin sourly from beyond the grave. Before I can so much as ask how Sebastian is – and I really would like to know – Pam has looked at her watch with a faint shriek and thrust into my hands her house key and several foil packets of cat food. A second later she is gone.

  A fortnight later I’m walking home from Dream Pies, breasting a bitter wind from the east that makes my eyes burn. Saturday is always our busiest day at work, because people want to escape weekend cooking; and then after hours we all have to give the kitchen a thorough scouring to be ready for the coming week. It is nearly seven; the sky is black and starless. At the corner my own empty street stretches away under the cold, greenish eyes of the lamps. I meet no one but a lean dog going purposefully somewhere, as lonely a wayfarer as myself.

  Out of the corner of my eye I become aware of a large car nosing along close to the curb. Nervously I begin to walk faster, but the car keeps pace; then toots its horn softly. With alarm I see the driver switch on the interior light and click open the door on my side. Then I recognize Cuthbert.

  “Just on my way to your place,” he says. “Hop in.”

  “Thanks. Nice to see you, Cuthbert. How is your –?”

  “She passed away early this morning. Exactly at four o’clock.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, Cuthbert. Poor you; that’s very hard.”

  As we get out of the car, the street light catches his glasses, giving him a blind, bewildered look. “Well, the doctors really didn’t seem to expect anything else, right from the start; you’d wonder, wouldn’t you, why they operated at all. To relieve discomfort, they said to me. Well, I don’t know what you’d call what she went through afterwards, with that incision and all … It’s hard to figure out their logic, I must say.”

  Glad of something practical to do, I whisk off our coats (mine smelling faintly of chicken) and hurry to plug in the kettle. It is reassuring to see that Cuthbert, clean-shaven and neatly buttoned into his three-piece suit, seems to be his usual calm self. “I actually came by, Rowena,” he says, slipping three fingers into a breast pocket, “to give you this – your funds must be very low at this point, and I apologize for that – but you understand how it’s been these last weeks; I’ve been at the hospital every spare minute.” Deftly he tucks a little packet of bills under the biscuit tin.

  “Oh, please, Cuthbert – of course I understand. I’m back at the pie place now, but the mortgage was three days overdue yesterday and I couldn’t bother you with it, so I asked Marion …”

  (An uncomfortably vivid memory here intrudes of Marion’s frown when I had to explain my dilemma. “Of course I’ll pay it, if you can’t,” she said sharply. “I can manage. Been putting something aside for a vacation. But I wish you’d told me before. Overdue payments can affect your credit rating, you know.” “Sorry,” I said. She wrote the cheque with an offended air and added, “Next time, let me know well in advance. Don’t let this kind of thing happen again.” It won’t, I promised not her but myself.)

  “Well, I knew if necessary she’d help out,” he says comfortably.

  “I was afraid they’d turn me out in the snow, you see, or I’d –”

  “They wouldn’t have done that,” he says, and gives me a sharp glance. “But you pay her back now, do, and keep what’s left over in reserve. From now on, I want you to turn over big bills like that to me. No need to bother Marion. I’ll deal with them.”

  “Well, it’s sweet of you, but I mean to keep on looking for a proper job.”

  “That’s right,” he says vaguely.

  “And until something better turns up, the chicken place isn’t a bad stopgap, though I know you don’t approve of it. They’ve even given me a raise. Only it’s put me off chicken, probably for life. Come, our drinks are ready – let’s sit in the other room.”

  Pam’s hooting laugh comes muffled through the wall, and I think as I sit down, pressing my tired back against a cushion, how solitary that would make me feel if I were alone. But Cuthbert has now lapsed into silence. Even as I look at him, slowly stirring his cocoa, grief seems to dwindle and wizen him. In the big chair his feet dangle just short of the flo
or and his pale face looks forlorn as a lost child’s. I try to find something comforting to say to him, but can find nothing. Instead I lean forward and take his hand in mine. It evidently conveys the message, because he says, “Yes, people try to make you feel better, but everything they say only makes it worse. They say, ‘Well, she had a grand, long life,’ or ‘She is resting now.’ It doesn’t help one single bit that these things are true. Not one bit.”

  “No. Nothing does.”

  Of course I am not thinking of Edwin’s death, which deprived me of so much, and yet so little. I am remembering how Nana drifted away from me after Clive died, and my desolation when she joined him. Cuthbert’s sad, numbed face brings it all back as if I’d lost her three hours, not thirty years ago.

  “I suppose it’s ridiculous to feel orphaned, at my age,” he says, “but that’s how it is.”

  “You have to be a lot older than we are – or much younger – to face this kind of thing without damage. I was three when my parents were killed at a level crossing, and I was perfectly cheerful about it. Nana told me they’d gone to Heaven, and to me that was just as if they’d gone to Calgary or Niagara Falls. But when Nana died long after that …” My throat closes here and I have to stop. There was something clean about that grief, though. My much more recent loss, on the other hand, has left behind it a crippling debris of mostly ugly emotions and confusions that still from time to time overwhelm me. There are days (and nights) when, like the Old Man of the Sea, Edwin rides my shoulders and I wonder whether I will ever be free of him. But Cuthbert, leaning his head on one hand, is listening to his own sorrows, not mine.

  “I’d gone home, you know,” he says, “because it was so late, and she was sleeping after something they gave her. But about three in the morning I woke up just as if somebody was shaking me, and I got dressed right away and drove to the hospital. On the way there I heard her call, ‘Bertie’ – she called me Bertie – it was her voice, just as if she were in the car with me. In a way I guess I knew right then what was happening. And sure enough the nurse came down the hall to meet me. “Just on my way to call you, Mr. Wesley,” she said. “I’m sorry, but your mother passed away fifteen minutes ago.” I went in and sat by the bed – they’d taken away all those awful tubes and wires, thank heaven – and when I took her hand it was still warm. She looked exactly as she did when I left her just a few hours before, as if she were asleep. But it was different, because she wasn’t there any more, Rowena. She’d gone – somewhere. For good. No mistake about that. Nothing could possibly be more empty than that room.”

  Fumbling a little, he puts his cup and saucer aside and stands up. “Well, I’d better get on home,” he says, and with a forefinger pushes the heavy glasses up more firmly on his nose. “Thanks for the drink.”

  “Could you eat anything? – no, what you’ll want now is to get some sleep.”

  “Yes. Only how can I possibly sleep? She called me, Rowena, and I wasn’t there. I should never have left her all alone. She called, and I wasn’t there.”

  He turns his face helplessly away and begins to sob. Tears blear his glasses before spilling out and rolling down his cheeks. Silently I put my arms around him. My stomach gives a loud rumble of hunger. The weight of him makes my back ache harder. After a little I draw him down to sit with me on the sofa where, holding me fast, he gradually weeps himself out. It is strange as he quiets to hear Pam’s laugh again from next door, and the clock ticking indifferently on. His breathing slows and thickens, and, mouth a little open, he finally sleeps.

  With care I draw off his glasses and tuck the afghan around him. Outside like another voice the November wind shakes the windowpane. Wiping my own eyes, I turn out all the lights and leave him sleeping there. Sooner or later, one way or another, I think, we’re all orphans. It should make us kinder to each other than it does.

  The envelope is addressed simply “Rowena Hill,” with no preliminary tag of Mrs. or Ms. The handwriting is unfamiliar – a small, crabbed script. I examine it carefully, intrigued to have mail from someone unknown, and bemused by the novelty of seeing my own name (at least some of it is mine) on an envelope. A heavy cold has kept me away from work for several days and given me a good excuse not to attend the Wesley funeral. But it has also given me a feeling of isolation and immobility. I feel like that static toy figure inside a glass ball full of whirling snowflakes. But now this letter … Instead of tearing it open, I fetch a knife from the kitchen and slit it open with care.

  “Dear Mrs. Whatshername,” the note says, “Where the hell have you disappeared to? Mrs. bloody Blot is back, to be sure, but is that any reason to deny me the pleasure of your company? I herewith invite you to tea any afternoon around four when it may suit you to come. Wittgenstein (Ludwig, not the cat) pointed out that there is a connection between the signs on paper and a situation in the world. There is a connection here. Do come. Yours – Sebastian Long.”

  This piece of paper gives me a pleasure out of all proportion to its simple message. It tickles me that so few words can convey so much of their writer’s personality, and at the same time endow me with quite a vivid identity of my own – because he knows I will enjoy the tease of his “Mrs. Whatshername.” I read the note over and over again. I even read the envelope again. His handwriting, though small and untidy, is bold, but the stamp has been applied haphazardly, crooked and upside-down, as if by a shaky or impatient hand.

  With a sense of luxury I sit down at the desk where till now nothing at all interesting to write has ever taken me. A phone call is obviously not the right response. Yet once confronted with a square of blank paper, I struggle in vain to find words. “Dear Sebastian,” I write; then come to a dead halt. “I’d love to come”? Too gushing. “Thank you for your –”? Too stuffy. “How good to hear from you”? Sickening.

  The empty page stares up at me and I stare down at it. Can this be what they call writers’ block? Hopelessly I look out at the winter day for inspiration. Snow is coming down, gusting upward from time to time on vagrant puffs of wind. Ground, air, snow and sky – there they all are, communicating without vocabulary of any kind. They are no help to me whatever.

  Sneezing, I walk up and down the house; come back and contemplate the square of paper once more. Somewhat desperately I consider, “Your nice note came this morning”; but the dictionary confirms my suspicion about the word “nice.” I tear up the page and am still biting the end of my pen when the phone rings.

  “Mother,” Marion begins in her usual abrupt fashion.

  “Yes. Hello, dear.”

  “About receipts. I’ve been meaning to remind you. You’re keeping everything, I hope. Dad had a file for them somewhere. You’ll need them all when it’s time to send in your tax return.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “You’re keeping them all – hydro, fuel oil – everything?”

  “Er, yes, that’s right.” (Actually I don’t know where the last paid fuel bill has gone to.)

  “You’re sure, now.”

  “Yes, quite sure.” Try as I will, I cannot keep a slight edge of irritation out of my voice. But then, I think, she doesn’t even try to keep it out of hers.

  “Mother, when are you going to learn! The other day when you were here about the mortgage, I found your last fuel bill – stamped paid – on the floor. It must have fallen out of your purse or pocket somehow. You see what I mean.”

  “Sorry.”

  There is an ill-concealed sigh at the other end. Poor Marion. Suddenly I sympathize with her. No doubt I’m a very trying and unsatisfactory parent for her to have.

  “How was your weekend up north with Bernice?” I ask, trying to change the subject to something we can discuss agreeably.

  “Oh, quite nice. We got in some good skiing.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad.”

  “One thing happened you’d have liked. I was out by myself early one morning and in a field just a few yards away I saw a big red fox trotting along in the snow. I wa
s downwind of him and he didn’t see me at all. Just trotted along about his business. He had a rabbit in his jaws. There, I thought, that’s the kind of thing Mother likes to hear about.”

  “Yes, dear. Very true; I do. Wish I’d been there to see it with you.”

  “Well, I’ve got to go now. Remember about those receipts.” And she rings off. For some reason this call lifts my spirits. The snow spins and whirls past the window gaily as a celebration. I go back to the desk and without any pause for thought write, “Dear Sebastian, I have a bad cold just now which I’d rather not pass on to you, though I don’t care what befalls Mrs. Blot. It will be gone by Monday – my day off – and then I’ll come for tea. Yours, Rowena.”

  There is something familiar about the bulky figure approaching me along the snowy street; and sure enough, on closer view it turns out to be Tom. His girth is increased by the big sheepskin coat, and he wears a woollen toque pulled well down on his forehead. With a polite token gesture he indicates he would remove this headgear if it were not so cold. His smile is broad with pleasure.

  “Greetings, Rowena. Splendid day, isn’t it?” His breath puffs an exuberant plume of white into the frigid air. He takes my mittened hand into his gloved one and gives it a chummy little squeeze. We have not seen each other since the day we danced to “Let Yourself Go,” and I am glad the cold air can be blamed for my red face. Low in the sky an orange sun hangs, but the light wind has such an arctic edge that it has frozen the tears on my eyelashes.

  “Would you really call it splendid? I wouldn’t.”

  My hand, which I try to extricate, only receives another ingratiating squeeze. “Nice to run into you, my dear,” he goes on. “I hope you’ll be home a little later – I have a couple of parochial calls to make hereabouts, but after that maybe you’ll give me a cup of tea.”