Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  ‘You’re going to meet Ruth overseas,’ Bella says. ‘But I can’t remember what you do or who you work for. You were in newspapers, now you’re something in the fashion industry.’

  He is staring in a most peculiar way.

  The smell of burning has begun to disappear but Eliot still curses in the kitchen. He appears in the doorway, uglier and larger in his fury. He grips a hammer in his fist.

  Craig treads backwards into the corridor. ‘Bad timing. Here’s my card. Another day?’

  ‘There are no eggs,’ shouts Eliot. ‘We’ll have to have baked beans. But there are no bloody beans!’

  That isn’t true. There is a can of kidney beans. There is a can of asparagus Bella bought six weeks ago, and there is a can of tuna.

  Craig seems even more bemused, as if he can’t imagine that a man Eliot’s age can cook.

  Eliot lowers the hammer. ‘What are you selling?’

  ‘Advertising,’ says Craig. ‘No, no, I’m not trying to sell some now. I think I should diversify. I wondered … I’d like some photographs … but this definitely seems an awkward time.’

  It is. Out of the depths of her soul, grief pounds through Bella. It is inky, choked with power, and she hadn’t expected it at all. Perhaps it will never be over. For months, years maybe, this lurking monster might assault her without warning. She doesn’t know if she truly loved Barnaby or had just been grateful to him; doesn’t know if he truly loved her or just wanted her because he thought she was lovely, and she doesn’t see that when she looks in a mirror so it was all a fraud and she will never escape from this punishing muscle of grief.

  Eliot and Craig, one in the dim hallway, one standing in the kitchen door, stare as if she is an apparition. What’s showing on her face?

  ‘Fashion shoot,’ says Craig. ‘Briefly, that shop of Barnaby Rivers’ would be ideal. The windows, all that panelling, it’s very Gothic and I think I could play that against the delicate, you know, minimalist styles for the next season. If you’re a designer, Bella, you’ll appreciate the tension. And —’ He eyes her up and down. ‘You in the background, that would be great. A ghostly presence behind the counter. But I’d love to get some shots of you on your own.’

  Does he not know how crass he is? Bella senses Eliot bulking in the doorway at her back. Be independent, Bella tells herself, think fast.

  ‘How much?’ she asks.

  Craig brightens, beautifully young and fresh. ‘We’ll talk! I’ll buy you coffee!’ He punches the air and says goodbye.

  She’d thought she was tired out before. Now, the onslaught of grief has left her trembling. Certainly she’s no strength to continue arguing with Eliot. She’d better just get her bag and leave.

  ‘You haven’t been sleeping,’ says Eliot behind her.

  How does he know? She hasn’t used a sleeping pill since Barnaby died. Stupid, probably, but she wants to get through this on her own, without her senses dulled. It means she lies awake all night, mind tipping back and forth into the past and future till her body feels sandpapered with the lack of sleep.

  ‘And I’ve wrecked dinner,’ says Eliot.

  The can of asparagus. The can of tuna. Bella shrugs.

  ‘We could eat out,’ says Eliot. ‘But you look awful.’

  Pardon?

  ‘People stare at you even more when you look like shit,’ he says. ‘I hate it.’

  Pardon?’ she asks out loud.

  ‘They don’t understand why a beautiful woman should look terrible.’ He drops the hammer on the floor against the wall. ‘Prurient curiosity comes uppermost. They imagine what kind of sexual arguments you must have been through, to look so goddamned used. Like the way that guy stared at you now.’

  This would be depressing if it wasn’t simply absurd. Bella begins to go through to her room. Maybe she’ll be able to sleep, if only she lies down. She’ll leave tomorrow.

  Eliot stops her. ‘Food.’

  ‘Takeaways. Get a pizza or a burger. Fish and chips.’

  ‘You need more nourishment than that.’ Eliot scowls like a Beast of the Apocalypse by Goya.

  ‘For God’s sake.’ If they are going to continue the argument, so be it. ‘Look in your backpack. There’ll be some freeze-dried offal. Cook that if you need food.’

  It looks as if he’ll grab the hammer up again, smash the walls, roar and rampage. But that’s because he is so very ugly.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Eliot says.

  He flings open the big hall cupboard and hauls out his pack. He goes straight to a pocket on one side, unzips it and pulls out a foil sachet. Out of another pocket he draws a collapsed metal thing, uncollapses it, click clatter, only one curse, and it turns into a camping cooker. In a few minutes, while Bella watches not knowing whether to laugh or call the mobile psychiatric unit, Eliot has set up a burner in the middle of the living-room floor and it’s firing away with a pan of freeze-dried rice and gluteney stuff on top. Whistling, Eliot uses the side door to the herb garden, barges back in with a handful of chervil and some leaves of purple sage, opens the pantry and finds the asparagus and tuna, brings them in to his campsite, drained, and stops whistling long enough to suggest Bella pour herself more Chardonnay.

  ‘I’ll have another whisky while you’re at it,’ he says.

  She doesn’t think she’ll mention the salad he’s already made. He can’t have burnt that too.

  Amazing. He drops nothing on the carpet: the rice and gluteney thing stays in the pot; he is as neat as a magician. He serves them both on plates from the best dinner service, the one that was his mother’s second-best. They eat crouched on the floor. That is, she sits on a hassock, he’s cross-legged as he would be on a mountainside in Turkey or a jungle hut in the hills of Peru. They’ve met in the middle of nowhere; they’re wanderers, two lonely people who can’t believe that anyone might love them, so very soon they’ll journey on.

  ‘We were going to have a row,’ Bella says at last. She’s had two mouthfuls of the mixture. Very tasty.

  He waves his fork at her. ‘Go ahead.’

  Sometimes he pisses her off. Tonight this is very like a marriage. All it needs is for him to say his relatives are about to come and visit with a stack of videos of their last trip to Niagara Falls.

  Bella lowers her fork and stirs her rice. An image of Barnaby seems to lurk in the armchair near the curtains; he sits one leg crossed over the other, arms folded, watching to see what she’ll do next. His badger head of hair, the twist in the corner of his mouth, the scar on the eyebrow, the look in his eye that means he expects her to do something foolish — but the glimmer, too, that he knows people think her beautiful; he likes their admiration of the way she wears her clothes, the way she moves: doesn’t he know it makes her feel like a shell, a vacant egg, unreal? What’s wrong with her? She loves watching other people work at something they do well: an artist, a doctor examining a patient, a student poring over a textbook, Eliot at his little cooking stove — something special shines from deep inside. It’s a time when they are real. The only time she’s felt like that was when she was in the workroom of the shop, choosing the shade of blue to mix with white to get the delicacy of the Gundersens … And once when she made a pair of earrings. She used to feel it in New York, but — Bella, a designer? Go on, laugh.

  She cannot bear the image of Barnaby, self-important and proprietary in the armchair, smiling as if she’s an obedient curiosity like a bug in a glass jar. She can’t bear the way Eliot is watching her either.

  She sets her plate of freeze-dried tasty dinner on the floor and scrambles to her feet. She’ll pack her case and go to a motel. Stupid: she could go to the home she owned with Barnaby. It is her house. But the thought of it without Barnaby dismays her. His things are there. His clothes. The smell of him. The last towel he used is still, most likely, lying on the floor beside the bath. He won’t have hung the bath mat up. It will be green and pink with mould, and he won’t be there to scream at.

  Eliot stands up too. ‘You’re
leaving.’

  ‘I loathe it when you read my mind,’ says Bella.

  Eliot glances towards the window. ‘What I loathe is when that kid of Ruth’s appears at the worst possible moment.’

  For crying out loud. Déjà vu. Anna, in her black dress, up the path.

  What a pleasant sight: a bird-like little old lady in her kitchen. A nest of fluffy silver curls, the tiniest wisp near one of her twinkling eyes. Trim apron round her waist, a cookbook open on the window sill, and the last honey bees of evening still buzzing on the lavender outside.

  What is Jocasta cooking? Green tomato chutney. We don’t eat the leaves or vine of the tomato, just the harmless, pretty round fruit. Tomato plants contain a substance known as solanine which, for a start, creates havoc in the digestive tract. It is then absorbed through the damaged gut into the blood, and injures the entire nervous system.

  It is staggering how toxic some very common plants can be, if you know the ways to set about it.

  There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with Jocasta’s green tomato chutney. It is not Grandma’s book propped open on the sill. There’s the sharp, flavoursome scent of tomato and vinegar, onion and pepper. Her chutney is a perfect accompaniment to cold meat, if you happen to have any left-overs.

  Left-overs was a term old Mr Wainwright used, and most unpleasantly, when she was getting married back in Yorkshire over fifty years ago. He didn’t say no to Jocasta’s bacon and chutney sandwich, though.

  ‘Do you like raw onion with it, given as how that bacon’s a little dry?’ Jocasta asked. ‘We can’t say no to bacon if it turns up though, not with this rationing.’

  Mr Wainwright couldn’t resist raw onion. Raw onion adds a lift. He never said no to a bit of onion.

  We know what raw onion looks like. Very similar to the bulbs of jonquil, daffodil, the delicate narcissus. It’s marvellous how dainty the flower can be on some highly dangerous plants. The crocus flower looks like a fairy goblet.

  It’s a comforting sight, an old lady pottering in her kitchen. It says the world is all to rights. A peaceable old age is what everyone deserves, wherever they live — in Alexandria, Singapore, New York or Alice Springs. Whatever trials their life has brought, if they’ve been refugees, diddled by a lawyer with a gleaming smile, misdiagnosed by surgeons, had their facial nerve paralysed by novice dentists, they all deserve a restful twilight year or two. A time during which they can look back and think, I managed to do this and that, I achieved a little here, a bit more there, I wangled my revenge on her, I got the better of him, I’ve still got my tomato plants to tend, one or two small tasks to tidy up before I go. They deserve, as well, to have their last moments sorted out beforehand.

  This is very straightforward if they have the ancient recipe book that belonged to Jocasta’s Grandma.

  Jocasta is content with the way things turned out. It wasn’t easy, finding just the place to move to. Even discovering which country was a trial because of all that chaos once the war was over, the chaos that lasted so long. Then, to find out what town, what little house to buy, and which house to buy next … well, luck was on her side, for she was patient.

  Any old lady would be happy with this cottage, the tidiness of the front path, the easily managed garden, its nearness to the bus, a library, shops. The hill is steep but serves to keep her fit. And the view. A climbing rose called Compassion, blue sea, blue sky, clouds colouring shell-pink as the sun goes down.

  You can push luck, of course, give luck a nudge.

  But not every girl gets a start in life like Jocasta.

  ‘You don’t know what nasty things life tosses at you,’ Grandma said. ‘So we’ll make it easier for you to cope, dear, d’you follow?’ Five years old, Jocasta shook her head, but Grandma put the knife into her hand. ‘Isn’t this the dearest little onion?’ Grandma asked and set it just off-centre on the chopping board.

  Ah, they were playing a game. That was all right, then. It was a game of making sandwiches for Grandad. If you’ve done something because you’re told to, it isn’t all that terribly awful, is it?

  The joy of being in a kitchen. The kitchen is a satisfying place to be. Feeding people is an act of love. Old Jocasta takes a yellow check tea towel to protect her hands from the heat and screws a lid on a hot jar of tomato chutney. Nobody can screw lids down as firmly as Jocasta.

  She puts a large red tomato on the window sill. That’s to ward off evil spirits. She begins to sing a postwar song: Three little sisters, three little sisters, and they were only in their teens. It’s an American song that was played here over and again on the radio in the fifties. She wasn’t here in the fifties but she came to know plenty of folk who were. Sing-songs round the pee-ah-noh! in the years after she left the edges of the cold North Sea, its low waves sucking at the coast and scraping, scraping it away to the other side of the world. And one loved a soldier, one loved a sailor, and one loved a man from the marines. It’s love, it’s love that makes the world go round, and the underside of love is lined with hate.

  Anna at the door. Eliot lets her in.

  Just the sight of her makes Bella feel defeated. The imp of mischief, bad-luck child. Take the budgie Anna had when she was seven.

  ‘We’ve just bought you an expensive clarinet,’ protested Ruth. ‘You can’t have a budgie too.’

  But what can you do, when a seven-year-old Anna throws a tantrum? Buy a budgie, name of Sing-Sing. With Anna’s luck, it soon fell ill. Walsh held it up and peered at its glazed eyes. ‘I think it’s dead,’ he said just as the bird revived and jabbed his thumb. ‘Shit!’ said Walsh and flicked his wrist in pain. The little head flew off — the body stayed in his hand. Holofernes was nothing on Sing-Sing.

  Walsh and Ruth buried Sing-Sing (reassembled) before Anna arrived home. She wept like a leaking bucket, dried her tears and fetched the spade to dig the budgie up. Ruth refused to let her, so she threw a far worse tantrum.

  ‘I want it!’ Anna sobbed. ‘For Show and Tell!’

  A vet could tell worse stories. So could Jocasta.

  The adult Anna sits in the centre of the sofa, black skirt spread around her like a blot, hands folded, ankles crossed. Bella stands beside the dresser, wanting Anna to hurry up, say what she has to say, and go.

  ‘You two are mad,’ says Anna.

  Certainly it looks crazy. The groundsheet on the carpet. The pannikin part-full of rice, the butane bottle in the middle of the floor, and Eliot’s treasures around the walls: a Zulu mask, five Indonesian shadow puppets, the giraffe — the pair of tiny silver boots has gone.

  Lydia! What a grasping witch that woman is.

  Eliot hasn’t noticed. He begins to gather up the plates. Anna watches with a sour, knowing look like Lydia’s. This is the young woman who claims she and Barnaby would somehow have had a baby. Misguided beyond belief.

  ‘Quite mad,’ repeats Anna.

  Eliot puts the pannikin of rice to one side on the carpet. ‘Define madness.’

  Anna lifts her shoulders like two bony incipient wings.

  ‘Don’t be mean to her,’ says Bella, surprising herself.

  ‘I’m just being friendly,’ Anna says. ‘Just curious to see how Bella’s doing.’ There seems more to it than that. There’s something shifty going on. ‘I thought we could have — well, girl-talk, maybe.’

  Eliot picks up the groundsheet. It crackles as he folds it.

  ‘Like — what will happen with Barnaby’s ashes?’ Anna asks. ‘Is his mother going to have them?’

  Something seems to knock into Bella from the side. She steadies herself with one hand on the dresser.

  ‘You haven’t thought about it,’ says Anna.

  Eliot bundles the groundsheet under his arm. ‘What, if it doesn’t sound impolite, has it got to do with you?’

  Anna frowns. ‘I’ve known him since I was born.’

  ‘Barnaby never wanted children,’ Bella says, voice trembling. ‘If you had a thing going with him, fine. I don’t want to hear, that’s a
ll.’

  ‘Now, hang on …’ says Eliot.

  ‘What?’ Anna stands and dusts her skirt down.

  There is no sign of a pregnancy. Anna is such a skinny thing that half an extra ounce would show.

  ‘Look, he was my favourite fake uncle. Right?’

  The room blurs around Bella. Through the fog of it she hears Eliot saying it’s time Anna went, and Anna saying yes, well, she got it wrong again, goodbye.

  Eliot’s back in the room next to Bella.

  ‘You’ll get through this,’ he says. ‘It will take time. It’s dealing with the guilt — this thing about purity. It tears mind apart from feeling.’

  She pulls away and starts for her room.

  ‘I mean,’ says Eliot quietly. ‘Look what it’s doing to you. And me. Look what it’s doing to us.’

  She stops, but can’t look at him. Has Eliot just implied he wants to love her?

  A pause, like crackled glaze, crazed lines, a static explosion. Then Eliot does explode.

  ‘Fucking Barnaby!’ He kicks the pannikin. It shoots across the room and into the fireplace where it ricochets neatly and dumps the last of the risotto in the hearth.

  ‘Fucking you too!’ yells Bella. ‘Get the hell back overseas and let me breathe! You know more about my husband than I did. How do you think that makes me feel!’

  More silence. Thunderous silence.

  Bella knows a woman has three options at these times. But she can’t storm out like a wife because she isn’t one. The second would be leap at Eliot, make love, but he’s already rejected her tonight and the image of Barnaby floats between them like dust motes, a cindery outline. Though Bella’s belly and breasts long for Eliot’s fine hands to press and stroke her, the idea of making love with a ghostly Barnaby watching is the cause of instant pain behind her forehead.

  That’s right — the third option. For God’s sake, have the headache.

  chapter seventeen

  Jocasta did her reading long into the night, even in the blackout. The prettiest girl in the village, and the best read too. She was the prettiest new wife in Whitby, that’s certain, poring over her books while her husband stayed out doing whatever essential plumbing job it was, in the blacked-out evenings. She read about a most important widow. Isis. Those Egyptians. Another set of vulnerable deities, to Jocasta’s mind. Isis didn’t want her dead husband scattered around in pieces. (Isis’s husband was also her brother but Jocasta won’t dwell on the incestuous, thank you.) He was killed twice. Seth killed him out of jealousy — it’s jealousy that kicks the world around, Jocasta knows. Poor Isis, twice a widow to the same man. She put her husband’s body on a barge and floated with it down the Nile. Bulrushes rustled in the hot night wind while, weeping in her grief, Isis climbed over the body and — miracles will happen — was impregnated by the corpse.