Black Widower

by Patricia Moyes

  “You are optimistic, Michael, as usual,” said Winnie. “I foresee very little hope.”

  “Well, I’ve done what I can. I’ve given orders that she’s to be served nothing but tomato juice, and she’s promised—for what it’s worth—just to stand quietly in the receiving line, shaking hands and keeping her mouth shut. Meanwhile, it’s up to you and me to keep a sharp eye on her all evening.”

  “Up until seven o’clock, I shall be pleased to help you.” Winnie’s slightly precise English always gave Holder-Watts the impression that he was speaking an acquired language, rather than his mother tongue. “However, Bishop Barrington has kindly invited me to take dinner at his house. I have a rendezvous with him and Mrs. Barrington at seven o’clock, and I will drive them home. They have no car, I understand.”

  Michael frowned. “That’s a nuisance. Can’t you get out of it?”

  “I fear not. I owe a great deal to the Bishop, and it is many years since we met. I would not care to appear rude.”

  “Does Eddie know you’ll be leaving the reception early?”

  “Of course. Naturally, I asked his permission. He is quite agreeable.”

  “In that case, I suppose there’s nothing I can do about it.” Michael’s handsome face clearly showed his displeasure. Normally, he made a good job of disguising his dislike of, and contempt for, Winston Horatio Nelson, but this sort of thing really riled him. These people, he reflected, had no sense of the proper way things should be done. Nelson’s duty obviously lay in staying at the Embassy throughout the reception—but no. For some devious reason of his own, he had arranged to swan off to dinner halfway through the function. Michael could not imagine offhand what personal favor or advantage Nelson hoped to gain from the elderly, retired Bishop and his wife, but he was sure there was something, real or imaginary. And Eddie, of course, condoned such behavior. For all his brilliance, he was only a Tampican, after all. Otherwise, how could he ever have made the monumental blunder of marrying Mavis?

  Michael said, “It’s all very annoying. I shall have to enlist Eleanor, and you know how she feels about Mavis.”

  “With good reason, I believe,” Winnie remarked icily. Michael Holder-Watts affected him in much the same way as squeaky chalk drawn slowly across a blackboard. The arrogance of the man! Everybody knew he was sleeping with Mavis, but far from being ashamed of the fact he appeared to think he could get away with enjoying her favors while at the same time holding her in public contempt. No . . . Winnie was honest, and he rephrased his thought . . . he did get away with it. All Winnie’s sympathy was with Eleanor Holder-Watts.

  As a matter of fact, Mavis Ironmonger’s amorous adventures were so numerous, so casual and so indiscreet that the wives of most of the men involved merely shrugged their shoulders and laughed, reckoning Lady Ironmonger to be no more than a natural hazard encountered by every personable man who visited Tampica. Eleanor Holder-Watts, however, had reacted more drastically.

  She came from an English middle-class family—pillars of respectability with none of the moral elasticity of the aristocracy. The actual fact of Michael’s infidelity mattered much less to her than the assault on her dignity. She behaved toward Mavis Ironmonger with icy correctness and was laughed at for her pains, not only by Mavis, but also by Michael, the more sophisticated Europeans in the Caribbean, and even by Eddie Ironmonger himself. Within the present Embassy, Winston Horatio Nelson was the only person who felt true sympathy for her, and—even had she known about it—she would have rejected it as coming from an inferior. Eleanor’s life in Washington was not proving easy.

  “Oh, well,” Michael remarked, “I expect she’ll enjoy being appointed as watch-bitch over H.E. It’ll reinforce her illusion of moral superiority.”

  This was too much for Winnie. “I trust you are not implying,” he said, “that Mrs. Holder-Watts is not morally superior to Lady Ironmonger?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it, old boy,” said Michael, infuriatingly. “Anyhow, this is the plan of campaign. At the first sign of trouble, one of us moves in and gently but firmly removes Mavis from the scene of action. Takes her up to her room, and locks her in if necessary. If she’s been at the booze and is obviously sloshed, the story is that she is ill and being treated by some sort of rare drug, which renders even the smallest drink lethal—and that she was given a Bloody Mary by mistake. Remember, get her out of the way as quickly and quietly as possible, and then make sure you spin the tale to anyone who was involved. There’ll be about three hundred people all told, so with any luck a lot of them won’t see—whatever there may be to see.” He stood up. “I’m not looking forward to it, but I don’t see what more we can do.”

  2

  Thursday, April fourteenth, turned out to be one of those spring days when Washington really excels herself. For once, the Japanese ornamental cherry trees around the Tidal Basin had burst into a glorious profusion of pink blossom exactly on time, delighting the crowds of sightseers on the Mall. In the cool, sparkling sunshine, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials had never looked more elegantly Grecian, the Washington Monument more monumental or the White House whiter. The Stars and Stripes fluttered proudly from Ministries and Departments, and the Capitol fittingly crowned the scene, like a gigantic wedding cake.

  Up the hill in Georgetown, the tree-lined, cobbled streets, with their traditional red-brick pavements, were also coming to life. Gardens were waking after the hibernation of the cruel months, and decking themselves with hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils. On Wisconsin Avenue, the great shopping street that bisects the area from north to south, pavement-squatting hippies in outrageously colorful outfits were the unmistakable harbingers of spring.

  The trendy boutiques festooned their windows in a riot of way-out fashions, and even the owners of dark little antique shops got busy with feather dusters. The Georgetown Coffee Shop produced a windowful of growing herbs for sale. The French Market did a roaring trade in enormous lunchtime sandwiches, and put up endearing notices in inaccurate English begging their patrons not to eat them in the car park. White-painted garden furniture was hauled out from garages and basements, scrubbed, and set up in a thousand patios. Summertime lanterns and bright umbrellas blossomed in back yards, while in grander gardens porcelain elephants and jaguars took up their summer stations.

  It was the time of the year when Margaret Colville always decided that the high cost of living in Georgetown was well worth it. She and her husband had been renting a house there for four years—ever since John had been lured away from the London School of Economics to work at the World Bank. In London, they had lived in Chelsea—so, to them, Georgetown was like coming home. Margaret knew that most of John’s colleagues considered that they must be crazy to squander so much money in rent, but she would not have traded their tiny frame house and square of sunny back garden for a modem split-level rambler in any smart suburban development. Especially in the spring.

  The latest excitement, of course, had been the setting-up of the Tampican Embassy in Oxford Gardens, just around the comer. Plenty of diplomats had their private homes in the area, but this was the first actual embassy to break away from the Massachusetts Avenue—Kalorama Triangle quarter and move into Georgetown. Naturally, it caused comment, curiosity and speculation.

  As Michael Holder-Watts had remarked, gossip runs like a brush fire in a city the size of Washington, more especially in that small section of it which revolves on the diplomatic carousel. Under British rule, Tampica had been a holiday playground for wealthy sun-seekers from both sides of the Atlantic, and word had quickly spread about Mavis Ironmonger’s reputation. Bishop Matthew Barrington had not been exaggerating when he declared that—unencumbered by Mavis—Sir Edward would almost certainly have been elected the first prime minister of independent Tampica.

  As it was, shortly before independence he had been knighted by a grateful British sovereign for services to the law in Tampica: an elderly and less able colleague had been elected prime minister, and Eddi
e and Mavis had been sent off to Washington to see whether Lady Ironmonger could pull herself together and learn to behave decently in time for the next Tampican general election —which, rumor had it, would be very soon, if all went well. Sir Samuel Drake-Frobisher was known to have accepted the premiership reluctantly, and was only too eager to retire and hand over party leadership to Edward Ironmonger.

  Most of this information, spiced with racy episodes from Mavis Ironmonger’s past, had filtered through even to the Colvilles; and although Margaret was no gossip, she had her natural share of human curiosity and looked forward to catching a glimpse of the notorious lady. However, apart from the comings and goings of a few dark-skinned girls whom she took to be secretaries and domestic staff, Margaret had been unlucky.

  One day, it is true, on her way back from the supermarket with her arms full of groceries, she had caught sight of a chauffeur-driven limousine moving away from the Embassy. In the back, elegant and relaxed in a coat of dark, supple sables, sat a blonde woman of such astonishing beauty and obvious breeding that she quite took Margaret’s breath away. Cool as an ice princess, not a hair out of place, her long fingers pale against the pigskin upholstery of the car, a single string of perfectly-matched pearls at her throat, she epitomized aristocratic, understated excellence. It never even crossed Margaret’s mind that this could be the sluttish Mavis Ironmonger. She remembered that the Counsellor at the Embassy was an ex-British Foreign Service diplomat named Holder-Watts and jumped to the conclusion that the fair-haired beauty must be his wife, Eleanor. But Margaret was wrong. It was Mavis.

  Tout Washington tends to arrive late at diplomatic cocktail parties, and to leave early. However, the Tampican reception had attracted such an unusual response that cars were piling up in Oxford Gardens well before six o’clock, keeping the local police busy and causing late-comers without chauffeurs to park several blocks away. In fact, many of the guests had already arrived by the time that Franklin D. Martin led his colorful, chanting parade of protesters from Volta Place across Wisconsin Avenue and into Oxford Gardens. There were the usual banners demanding “Kill the Pigs” and “Legalize Pot,” but also a selection more appropriate to the occasion, reading “Uncle Eddie Go Home,”

  “Death to the White Bitch,” and even—rather obscurely—“Tampica for the Tampicans.”

  It was all very friendly and good-humored. The police kept a path free so that invited guests could reach the Embassy door. The demonstrators chanted a few slogans, waved their banners, and then began to sit down in rows on the pavement, smoking and chewing. Most of the guests were perfectly accustomed to making their way into the White House through ranks of political demonstrators, and would have felt the occasion to be slightly lacking in style if none had been there. As with wire-tapping and bugging, the inconvenience of stepping over demonstrators is outweighed by the fact that their presence proves one to be somebody, doing something worthy of other people’s anger or curiosity. As Michael Holder-Watts remarked to his wife, the demonstration was just what was needed to make the evening go with a swing. Eleanor was not amused.

  Inside the Embassy, everything was going suspiciously well. Lady Ironmonger, taken by surprise by the early arrival of so many guests, had been a few minutes late taking her place in the receiving line, but now the wheels of diplomatic hospitality were turning smoothly.

  Sir Edward, handsome and beautifully tailored, was greeting his guests with exactly the right blend of dignity and affability, finding an appropriate remark to accompany each handshake, and keeping the line moving while appearing to have plenty of time for a personal word with each visitor. At his side, Mavis had never looked more chillingly beautiful. She wore a simple dress of very dark green wild silk with diamonds at her throat, and her ash-pale hair was drawn back into a chignon which accentuated the Garbo-like perfection of her features. To each guest, she proffered a tapering, lily-white hand, and most of the time—under Michael’s watchful eye—she kept her mouth shut. Even her occasional murmured remarks—“Pleased to meet you I’m sure” and “Ever so nice to have you”—had the beguiling innocence of Eliza Dolittle’s New Small Talk.

  Every so often, while her husband chatted with a new arrival, she would refresh herself from a small glass of tomato juice. Michael noticed with satisfaction that several of Washington’s most avid sensation-mongers were beginning to look decidedly glum. The Washington Post’s photographer caught her at a most opportune moment, shaking hands regally with the wife of the French Ambassador. Yes, it was all going beautifully.

  By half-past six, all the guests had arrived and most of the demonstrators had gone home. The few who remained, including Franklin D. Martin himself, were lounging on the sidewalk, banners at the droop, chatting idly among themselves. Sir Edward and Lady Ironmonger had shaken some three hundred hands, and were now free to circulate among their guests. Eddie, with unerring instinct, made his way toward the New England senator whom he knew shared the Tampican government’s view on the matter of the naval base. He intended to spend a minimum of time cementing this ally’s support, before addressing himself to charming the opposition in the form of George and Magnolia Belmont.

  Michael Holder-Watts, keeping a strict but unobtrusive eye on Mavis, saw that she was conducting an apparently decorous conversation with the Otis Schipmakers. A few minutes later, he saw that Winston Nelson had joined the group and was obviously detaching Mavis from the wealthy young couple (Otis Schipmaker’s father had founded the Schipmaker chain of supermarkets). Michael suppressed a ripple of annoyance. He appreciated Nelson’s motive, but how like the man to be so ham-fisted! Here was the first grain of fuel for gossip. He could just hear Virginia Schipmaker: “My dear, little men from the Embassy positively surrounding her, not allowing her to speak to anyone . . .”

  However, to Michael’s relief, Winston—apparently reassured— moved away from Mavis and smoothly took over the New England senator, leaving Eddie free to concentrate on the Belmonts. Michael mentally nodded his approval. Winnie could be quite intelligent at times.

  Meanwhile, he saw the Schipmakers move to the other side of the room to talk to the Dutch Ambassador, while Mavis got into conversation with Prudence and Matthew Barrington. This was not so good. Michael knew the Bishop’s opinion of Lady Ironmonger, and Prudence was well known for her innocent lack of tact. Unobtrusively, he moved over to where his wife, Eleanor, was gallantly trying to find common conversational ground with a Nigerian lady in superbly flamboyant national costume.

  Turning on a little burst of charm, like a jet from a warm tap, Michael inserted himself into the conversation between the two women, and then said to his wife, “Have you had a word with Matthew and Prudence Barrington yet, darling?”

  Eleanor followed his glance and took his meaning. “Oh, how nice, I didn’t realize they were here. I must go and talk to them.”

  “Why don’t you show them the garden?” Michael suggested. “I know they have to leave early, and Prudence has always been interested in flowers.”

  Eleanor smiled at her husband, proud and happy to be performing a really useful function, and went off to detach Mavis from the Barringtons.

  Michael said, “That was a delightful party you gave last week, Mrs. Ngomo. I had never tasted Nigerian food before. . . .” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eleanor steering the Bishop and his wife toward the hallway which led to the gardens. Another possible danger-point successfully navigated. “I hear your son is doing famously at Harvard. Wish I could say as much for my boy. Takes after me, I’m afraid.” In fact, Jonathan Holder-Watts was currently covering himself with academic honors at Cambridge University, but England was a long way away, and Mrs. Ngomo was not to know. Jonathan, as shrewd as his father and destined for the Foreign Service, would certainly not have objected to being thus thrown to the wolves in the cause of diplomacy.

  Mrs. Ngomo, undoubtedly pleased and flattered, made a gracious remark and turned away to greet a friend. Michael continued his peregrinations, always
finding the right word, remembering family details, raising pleased smiles. Some minutes later, he became aware of Winston Horatio Nelson at his elbow. Winnie said, quietly, “All going well, I think, Michael?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “I shall have to leave you soon. I am meeting the Barringtons at seven in the small library.”

  “Are you?” Michael consulted his watch. “That’s a moot point. It’s two minutes to seven now. Eleanor is currently showing the Barringtons around the garden, and the sooner they are out of here, the happier I shall be.”

  “Then I will go.” Winnie flashed a brilliant smile, which failed to conceal his dislike, and disappeared through the door leading to the hallway, leaving the conversational buzz of the reception behind him.

  The small library was empty when Winnie Nelson got there. It was a pretty, well-proportioned room at the front of the house, furnished with English eighteenth-century pieces, most of which Edward Ironmonger had picked up on his last visit to the U.K. The glass-fronted bookcase contained Eddie’s own precious library of leatherbound English classics, and the rose-strewn carpet was handworked in grand point.

  Winnie looked around him, and gave an angry little sigh. He knew that it was Eddie’s favorite room, and he could not help feeling that it was a betrayal of Tampica. Eddie knew how Winnie felt—he would laugh his wonderfully warm laugh, and slap Winnie on the back and tell him that if he’d been up to Oxford, he’d understand. The fact remained that Winnie had not, and did not.

  However, he did not have long to indulge in the luxury of irritation, before the door opened and Prudence Barrington peeped in, tentatively at first, then with a big happy smile.

  “Ah, so this is the right place. Hello, Winnie dear, you’re looking very well. Come on in, Matthew, Winnie’s here. So very sorry we’re late, dear . . . we were looking at the garden, and there are some very interesting specimens . . . I’m afraid we lingered far too long. . . .”