Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

The best damask was cut in half around about that time.

  Nobody needs an enormous damask tablecloth these days. However, Barnaby made Bella use it when the ex-admiral came to dinner, and when those American friends of Walsh’s turned up. ‘But it’s hell to wash,’ complained Bella.

  ‘Dry clean it,’ Barnaby said. What was wrong with wanting a lovely home, a beautiful wife? Why can’t a chap be a chap these days? Why can’t a bloke be a bloke?

  ‘I can buy you plenty of silver, I’ll make sure you have the best.’

  ‘I don’t care about having silver,’ Bella said.

  Why she said something so obviously untrue, Barnaby did not know. She seemed drawn to it, often held the teapots in the shop, Georgian, Edwardian, art deco, turned them slowly in her hands and gazed at her reflection. Bizarre of her, to want to see that elfin face distorted. When he saw her doing that, something happened in the pit of his belly. To try and stop her he gave her gold jewellery, but she said it was too flashy, she didn’t want to wear a dowry.

  Lydia. There were a few things for which he could never forgive his sister. She used to smile at Bella as if she’d like to murder something in her. It was Lydia’s own fault she’d aged so fast. Dieting since she was seventeen, smoking like a factory to keep her weight down: all that raddled a woman. Lydia was always jealous of anything that anyone else had. Even when she and Barnaby were kids. Not that they had much. But Lydia would sit and seethe with envy while Barnaby got off his backside and did things. Collected things. Had things. Poor sour-faced Lydia. Disappointment raddles a woman as well. But it was up to the individual to push themselves, make their own way; it was Lydia’s problem if she didn’t do what she wanted in her own life. She didn’t have to take it out on Bella.

  The canary sums it up, for Barnaby. How he had loved that bird. It didn’t matter to him if it couldn’t sing. It was the only time he’d been able to deal with spiders, trapping them to see if his canary cared to eat them. It didn’t. Something of a disappointment, that.

  Bella wasn’t disappointed in Barnaby: she loved him. Barnaby was convinced of it. So why the hell did she sleep with Eliot that night? He didn’t blame Eliot. But why did she stay with the big ugly berk?

  Barnaby would have forgiven her. It takes a big man, to be forgiving. He would have liked to show how big he was.

  I was no worse than the next man, he tells himself as he drifts in the corners of the shop wondering when Bella will come back. I was no worse than the next woman, either, like Ruth, the way she’d flirt — not that it was obvious, but she’d carry on in that exquisite way to make sure everyone was aware of her. Behaved sometimes as if she owned us, me and Eliot, owned us and didn’t want to. Can I blame her? Ruth and her million-dollar eyes. Walsh. Never knew if I envied the bastard to hell and back, or whether I felt sorry for him in the circumstances.

  God, I loved Bella’s smile. Worth twenty bucks a day, that smile. She’d persuade a customer, male or female, to spend with that smile. Totally unaware of it, she was. Bella didn’t know how valuable she was to me, in all the ways.

  I do want to be sure that Bella loved me.

  Someone in the street now, a woman, but not Bella. Skinny thing, peering in the window, hands up to her forehead so she can see into the dark. Anna. Good grief, with a family situation such as Ruth and Walsh provide, no wonder that kid’s turned into a fanatic. Waste not, want not. Take care of the underdog — or under-guineapig for that matter. Experiment with it, at least.

  How much responsibility should you take for your friends, for your family? For your own vanity?

  A male quartet, a flagon of beer, arms round each other’s shoulders, warm dark nights — God, we were happy. That was pure happiness. Those were the days, my friends.

  I had no idea that ghosts could cry.

  Angels can weep. But do they have guts that twist? Is this some proof I’m one thing or the other?

  You’re a girl, Barnaby.

  Fuck you, Walsh.

  You were flat. You tried to lead. And you’re an ugly bastard, Barnaby, you’re a moron.

  Fuck you too, Nicolas. If you needle me again I’ll bloody smash you.

  Barnaby is weeping. It makes him cold. A coldness, moisture, on the Indian brass figurines. They’ll tarnish. Indian widows and suttee. No, he wouldn’t like Bella to have gone up in flames with him. A particularly selfish custom, dog-in-the-manger. A guy’s allowed a bit of selfishness sometimes, but Barnaby thinks Bella ought to have a life of her own now … Fuck, he did not mean that.

  He does not want to be a saint. Barnaby hates being selfless. It’s worse than being bodiless: it makes no sense at all.

  Jocasta likes cooking with gas but not for any reason you’d expect. People — that is, the advertisements and people sucked in by advertisements, or folk who never cook themselves but decide to sound knowledgeable about it — talk about the fingertip control of gas elements. Cow flop, if you ask Jocasta. If you set the flame too low and open a window on a breezy day, the flame blows out. Even if you turn on the kitchen fan, the sudden suction can make the flame go out. A set of electric hobs is far more reliable that way.

  No, the great thing about gas elements, what Jocasta is so passionate about, is the whoosh, the blue and yellow flame, its edge of pink. What sort of cooker does she use in the twenty-first century? A fast one, sleek one, bells and timers, neat one.

  Jocasta deeply, truly longed to use spontaneous combustion. She’d seen it with a pig once. It was easy enough to figure out. A drugged fat carcass, an incendiary agent, naked flame. Even the bones reduced to ash. But for true revenge, more subtle ways are best. Even in the worst, most dreadful need for retribution, you must take care you don’t explode in flames yourself.

  You need to keep your sense of humour.

  Jocasta was her Grandma’s favourite girl. A subtle girl. Determined. Just as well. That Geordie Ferral, pale-skinned and freckled, turned out to have a dark streak. Who’d have thought it of a man so pale and chunky, so tidy in his dress, so particular about the way he did his hair? A man who encouraged his wife to do the driving. Because of being colour blind. His secret. As I’ve said.

  Felix was a good name for this baby. Happy, placid little chap. Felix was the name of many saints and four popes, Jocasta heard, but who cared a toss for that? Jocasta wasn’t RC, she was C of E, a pearl among the Methodists. Still, after she’d named her baby she read a bit about the saints and couldn’t find a word about Saint Felix. It left her feeling cheated.

  The baby had thick black hair and a red face crumpled with the exercise of being born and squalling, as they do. His eyes were that vague grey that might turn blue or might turn brown. As the weeks went by Jocasta felt more love for him than she’d deemed possible, even though she’d known it would be measureless. One thing for sure, he didn’t look like Geordie. Felix was a long child, as she’d thought, a lively baby even in his pram while his dark hair fell out and blond curls grew instead.

  Geordie moved them down to the Humber for his work. Jocasta’s mother complained. ‘You can’t take my daughter and my grandchild into Hull! Folk are moving out of the city to be safe! Nor, Geordie Ferral, will you put my girl in one of those shamfours. My daughter’s used to better than a rented place and one cold tap outside.’

  ‘I’ve got my plans,’ said Geordie, his squat hand on the back of Jocasta’s neck, rubbing it and kneading. Not many men touched their wives in public, but Geordie liked it known, he said, just who belonged to which. ‘I’m planning to have things very nice once this war’s over. Wait and see.’

  ‘Don’t worry, mother,’ said Jocasta. ‘I know we’ll all be safe.’

  Certainly, moving to Kingston-upon-Hull was a step up as far as work went, and he got promotion very soon, though it meant he was away from home in Arundle Street all day and sometimes half the night. It was dangerous in the city. But you had to trust that your number wouldn’t come up.

  Jocasta pushed the pram around the rubble of the bombing, and G
eordie strolled alongside, his hand upon her waist. Folk stopped to goo at the baby, as they do, and never one said Isn’t he like his dad? Had anyone known Peter, they might have begun to say so, but after a sideways peek at Geordie they would have had second thoughts. Even if they had said Isn’t he like Peter? it wouldn’t have been true. This baby was Jocasta’s child. A pretty boy, so fair, and his eyes did seem about to change to blue, a brighter blue than hers.

  Geordie didn’t like Felix for a name. It sounded foreign. He didn’t like Jocasta still feeding the child herself neither, though he’d always stay and watch if he was home. He learned better than to try to touch her afterwards, not till the baby was put down and sound asleep. His burly shoulders at times appeared to swell with passion, so Jocasta never thought to check she’d mesmerised him. It seemed so clear to her: he acted just like Peter’d done, the way he moved towards her in a crowd even while she’d been pregnant, like a lump of iron drawn towards a magnet, the way he held her waist, felt the softness of her neck when they were on their own, the way he groaned into her ear when they made love, and always agreed to do whatever she suggested, in bed and out of it, looking at her as if his eyes were ravenous and only she could fill them up. It wasn’t till the baby was able to sit if you propped him, and Geordie made it known he didn’t like the name, that Jocasta realised it might not go her own way all the time.

  ‘Say dadda,’ said Geordie.

  ‘Puh,’ went Felix’s lips, and he blew a bubble. ‘Puh, puh. Puh.’ Geordie didn’t like that. His wide, wide smile lacked humour. But there were strawberries for tea — that made him happy.

  Just imagine. You get through months with not a scratch. Then, just a step away from home, you get knocked over by a stray bomb the night a big raid deals so badly to the docks. But still not a scratch, not one. Jocasta was on her own, thank goodness, hurrying back on foot in the blackout from a woman a few streets over, a woman who knew about herbs. The siren went, but Jocasta was so close to home she hurried on. There was a shattering of glass all around, then she was lying on the road looking up at a strange black sky. An air-raid warden was kneeling next to her, asking something, bending closer to her ear and asking, urgently, but she couldn’t hear a thing. Smoke and flakes of ash were floating, shimmering, slowly floating. She turned her head and, near her hand, in the light from flares, saw a tangle of rose bay willow. It had taken root in a crack, pretty thing in the smoke: it seemed ghost-like. Jocasta stared at it for a while — she’d never seen it out of the woods before.

  Another warden’s hat bobbed towards them. ‘Is the lass all right!’

  So she could hear, after all.

  The men helped her up and took her home. The neighbour was still waiting, minding Felix.

  ‘You’ve not a scratch, not one,’ she said. ‘You’ve been knocked out, mind you, I can tell by that look in your eye. Y’don’t know where you are, lass. Shall we make a cup of tea?’

  ‘I don’t need to be with my mother. She’s back near Whitby, I don’t care. I’m safe,’ Jocasta said. The tea tasted very odd.

  ‘Hush now,’ the neighbour said.

  ‘They say there was a man in Hessle Road, ooh, years back now.’ Jocasta couldn’t hold the cup at all. ‘He fought dogs with his teeth. Someone said he earned a living at it.’

  ‘Here’s your husband home,’ the neighbour said. ‘You’re all right, lass.’

  When Jocasta stood up, though, her legs began to buckle.

  ‘You can’t go out,’ said Geordie. ‘It’s night time.’

  ‘Where are the woods?’ asked Jocasta.

  ‘We’re in Hull, you daft woman, we’ve been in the city for months. You’ve had a nasty bang.’

  ‘Babies need fresh air,’ Jocasta said, or thought she said.

  ‘Not this time of night. Get in your nightgown,’ Geordie said, or did she dream it?

  ‘He’s my baby,’ said Jocasta. ‘I need something for his cough before his birthday. He’s going to be a whole year old.’

  ‘Not for a few weeks yet.’ Geordie Ferral’s face was blotchy when he was angry. She wasn’t dreaming those blotches. ‘The chemist will have something for his cough tomorrow.’

  ‘When I fell over, I lost what the woman gave me.’ Jocasta’s words were floating around like feathers. ‘I’d be better making it myself.’

  ‘You stick to what the chemist says,’ said Geordie. ‘This attitude of yours is doing the kid no good. He’s draining you, that kid is. Now, woman, come to bed, I know what you need.’

  Even later it must have been, another day, Geordie’s complexion was blotchier and he wasn’t handling the baby very kindly.

  ‘I’ll have to talk to your mother, by heck. I’m sending the kid to the country. He’ll be safer there. I’ve been saying so since before we came to Hull.’ Had he? Jocasta didn’t recall.

  ‘I’ve never seen the girl in such a state,’ her mother said when she’d come all the way from Whitby, still shaking the rain off her coat. It was a nice dark green, a new coat, how’d she managed that? The green of pine trees. ‘What have you been doing to her? How are we to see she gets a rest?’

  Jocasta didn’t need a rest. All she needed was to walk in the woods with the pram, Felix smiling at her with his new peeping tooth, and to remember what it was like in the blanket warm with Peter. But she couldn’t find the same woods, and you wouldn’t get a fox to nip your ankle anyway, unless it was a special fox, and she couldn’t remember, really, if it was a fox or a dog because foxes didn’t come so close to human beings. The way she missed her Grandma was like knives that sliced in her chest.

  ‘You’re squeezing that baby too tight, Jocasta,’ her mother said. ‘Here, give us the boy and lie down.’

  Her mother didn’t seem to like the way Geordie held the baby either. She kept taking Felix off him. ‘I can’t stay longer than another night or two, and we must do something now because you’ve got your work too, Geordie.’

  ‘That’s right. I earn the bread round here and I’ll say how it is to be spent,’ said Geordie. ‘There’s some taking charge to be done. I’ve had more than enough of her concentrating on that baby and not doing what a wife should.’

  While Geordie went to take charge, her mother set to on the gas stove in Jocasta’s scullery. Jocasta had never known her mother cook before: it had always been either Grandma or Jocasta. But her mother was Jocasta’s grandmother’s daughter after all. She managed as if she’d always had the one cold tap outside and the boiler by the range. It was nice for Jocasta to lie back on the settle in the kitchen and drowse off, with little Felix saying ‘Puh! puh!’ on her lap and wanting to start crawling. Felix was going to be a big boy. He would grow by the minute, like a pumpkin.

  ‘You watch out,’ her mother murmured. ‘I’ve never liked that look in Geordie’s eye, and now I like it less.’

  ‘Be quiet, I’m in a story,’ said Jocasta. For it was like a story, and her dreaming it, and around the house were coils of spiked wire, brambles reaching to the clouds, and petals, dried petals falling like rain while Peter cut his way through to find Jocasta and her boy. He didn’t have hands to cut with, but two bandaged paws, so Peter wasn’t much use to anybody, was he?

  Geordie was like Joseph, dreamed Jocasta. Joseph was the forgotten one of that old story. He was there only because the story needed him and it was essential that Mary have someone to provide her with a living while she carried the baby. Joseph found her a donkey to sit on as well. But he never said anything, except to the innkeeper: Please let us have a room, my wife is big with child. Joseph might have been a saint, or he might have been all eaten up with jealousy and kept a saintly smile on, who would know?

  Geordie Ferral had a dark side. His forehead grew dark with a shadow that was his worry for Jocasta.

  ‘I’ve arranged to send the boy to folk in Thwaite,’ he said. ‘It’s well inland. Much safer there. Fresh air.’

  ‘Jocasta has to meet them first,’ her mother said. ‘You take her along as well
.’

  ‘Am I in charge or what?’ he roared. Then he took a long slow breath and spoke like butter. ‘She can’t take proper care of him in this state. Do you want the best for the boy? And for Jocasta? Of course you do. And I want Jocasta here with me, to keep an eye on her. It will be hard to keep in touch, things as they are, but we’ll be sure the boy is safe till the war is over.’

  ‘If you must, you must,’ her mother said with her voice as sharp as iron. ‘Well, now,’ she muttered to Jocasta, and it was a shock when her mother hugged her. ‘Send presents to him, little packages so he’ll remember you. I’ll send things too. Toys. Bits of clothing. Photographs. It’s just for a few short months.’

  Her mother went back home. Felix went as well — when? It hurt too much to remember. But Jocasta sent on presents, little shirts and shoes, a tweed coat with a velvet collar. She kept asking for some photographs of Felix. Geordie said they might upset her, she should wait a month or two more. It was always a month or two more. She hauled and tugged her dreams, shut them away inside her head so they didn’t cloud her any more, and felt it might have been a mistake to say yes to Geordie, to believe he was doing his best. It may have been a dreadful thing, not to listen to her mother.

  But there was a war on. You had to muddle through, and so she did. She kept sending little presents. Some wooden animals. A set of tiny tools. A pocketknife for his fourth birthday to make him feel grown up, but with instructions not to use it till he was older.

  Everybody had their problems, loved ones away in the country for safety and hard to keep in touch with, and that made you feel better, you weren’t doing it on your own. It was not till the end of the war that it was clear to her there’d been very terrible mistakes made. Just as there were in some stories.

  chapter nineteen

  Ruth sits on her mahogany bedroom stool, hand-worked lilies on the cushion and lion paws on its bandy legs, and holds her hairbrush. Hot wind outside: even with the window a little open it is stuffy. But she’s had a surprisingly good sleep, as she often does when Walsh is not in bed. She hasn’t put on make-up, but the lines on her forehead are not as sharp, the shadows round her eyes are a lighter grey than yesterday.