Three Pretty Widows

by Barbara Else

  Perhaps she doesn’t need a face lift after all, and should just get rid of Walsh. Or sleep permanently in separate rooms.

  She is, in fact, deeply worried. Walsh didn’t come home last night. If he’s not around, how can she win him over? When he couldn’t believe, so many years ago, that Ruth truly wanted him, she’d visited his flat, led him into his bedroom, locked the door and undressed while he gasped with shock. She’d rather not do that in Defence House.

  He was meant to go away again today. He didn’t take a suitcase with him yesterday.

  He didn’t take the prophylactic, either. In the mirror, Ruth eyes the little gold packet sitting where she dropped it on the tray of his valet stand. An unopened packet. Quite a cheap one, by the looks of it — she examined it before she went to bed. The writing on it seems to be Chinese, though how would she know? Little crossed-stick pictures. Ruth’s never coped with letters that are pictures, ideograms, runes. Even languages with Roman letters that she can make some effort to pronounce give her a headache.

  Craig must have dropped it by the bed. But she is still sure they didn’t use the main bedroom. They nearly went into the library where the sofa is broad and soft, but they fell in the door of the spare room. Ruth’s never liked that room much.

  That was frightful, to have it off with a man who is young enough to be her — hardly a son — well then, a nephew. Now that more of the occasion is coming back to her, it was another frightful thing at the time to realise that Walsh was better at it than Craig. What’s the use of adultery if you didn’t find it particularly fun?

  It would be nice if it wasn’t adultery at all, if you hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed it.

  She suspects Craig hasn’t a clue what he’s meant to do next — want more, or just get lost. She’ll kill him if she sees him again. That’s exaggerating. But she certainly won’t be terribly polite.

  Anyway, back to the point. That flat gold packet, unused though it is, lies on the valet stand. Craig didn’t come upstairs, she’s sure of it. Unless he had a snoop around.

  Anna might have dropped the packet. Ruth has to face it, no matter how it tears her up: Anna is an adult. And Anna did make that goading comment about baby clothes from Harrods — or was it a preggy dress she’d asked for? Nonsense: these days pregnant young women wear skimpy crop tops and let their swelling bellies show, sometimes still with silver navel rings protruding. Ruth thinks they look gorgeous and wishes she’d had the nerve, years ago, to assert her bulging self so proudly. That was the good part of being a mother: the time before the child arrived.

  Dear, oh dear, what a well of self-pity to fall into. Ruth knows madness lies in wait for her that way.

  To be serious, if Anna were considering getting pregnant, she wouldn’t be dropping condoms underneath her parents’ bed. Using your parents’ room is a teenage thing to do. Anna has a room of her own in the scungy flat across town —

  Damn, damn, Ruth and Walsh were going to talk to Anna. Damn, damn, damn.

  Ruth reaches for the phone and calls the flat.

  ‘Who?’ says a flatmate, hoarse with sleep. ‘Anna? No.’

  Ruth thinks it’s too early for Anna to be at work but phones the lab. There’s a discontinued signal. Blast. It would be awkward asking Anna about the golden packet anyway. What if Anna said she didn’t drop it? What if Anna admitted she did? She might have dropped it to annoy Ruth, put her in specifically this difficult predicament.

  The flat gold packet. Did Walsh really find it, or pretend he did? Why would he do that — trying in a devious diplomatic way to tell her he knew she’d had an episode with Craig? Or, more subtly, letting her know he was having an affair himself?

  It makes no sense.

  Ruth stands so abruptly the bedroom stool topples over. She crosses to the valet stand and picks up the little packet. The ringlike thing inside slips about. She rips the packet open. Oh yuck. It’s pink, and like a little plastic beanie for a pixie. She’s never seen one in this state before. Maybe she should have but she hasn’t. She pokes at it. It starts to unroll. University days, blokes being stupid in the back rows of Political Studies, hur hur hur, pale grey-white balloons drifting down the lecture room and some of the girls pretending not to look. She rolls it out completely. It’s not so slippery now. Ruth puts it to her lips to blow it up, expecting it to grow big and silver as a moon, but it’s too tough. No matter how hard she puffs, it stays shaped like a miniature legless dachshund. It isn’t easy to tie the end with a self-knot, but she does so, throws the window open and drops the pale object out in the wind. It scurries over the lawn. A gust whips it up past the climbing rose, into the next-door garden, then it noses up and over the road towards the harbour.

  It’s still too early to call a student flat but what the hell, she’s already done it once this morning. Ruth dials Anna’s number again. Another croaky voice answers.

  ‘Uh?’ it says. ‘Nah, haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Please ask her to call her mother when you do.’

  ‘Uh.’ The phone is dropped.

  Ruth stands there in her lovely sunny bedroom. She doesn’t know where her husband is, and can’t seem to get hold of her daughter. She doesn’t know which of them she’s more worried about, and she’s just tossed a poorly inflated prophylactic out the window. She is alone with the mahogany bedroom suite and the expensive duvet with gold piping, the elegant Venetian lace mask upon the wall and, over the dressing table, the scratch marks left by Ivan.

  Ivan has a history. He belonged next door when Lucy and old Dougie still lived there. Dougie had a heart condition, unspecified, and claimed he was too weak to drive himself. Lucy was a long-suffering wife of the old school, not a grizzle, not a bicker, not a murmur. To cheer poor Dougie up, Lucy presented him with Ivan, a lively tabby. When you pop a kitten on a sick old person’s lap, a light of contentment is meant to flash on in their eyes. No such effect with Dougie.

  One day Dougie closed the garage: rumble smack! It flattened Ivan like a cat in a cartoon. Lucy heaved the door open — up tottered Ivan too, a little dazed but rough enough. Thereafter, Ivan flattened out again whenever he lay down.

  It was Lucy who dropped dead one day, by the cold meats in the supermarket. She’d had a far worse heart than Dougie all along.

  ‘But she’s been driving me around!’ gasped Dougie. ‘That woman! She might have killed me!’ He put himself into a rest home and Ruth commandeered the cat. She has never been able to swallow her annoyance with Dougie and visit. Her revenge is knowing he has to suffer through song nights presented by amateur drama groups. ‘There’ll be Blue Birds Over’. ‘The Hills Are Alive’. And: ‘Ukulele Lady’.

  Anna never cuddled Ivan. It was odd how much she’d wept when Ivan died. Ivan would sit on the sofa behind Walsh when he read the paper. He’d dribble down Walsh’s neck.

  Old Jocasta bought the house next door. Five years ago or so, soon after the tippling archdeacon went to face his maker.

  Nobody knows how Ivan the Awful came to meet his end. Ruth misses him. If he were still around, the house wouldn’t feel so empty. There’d be a cat flat as a doormat on her bedroom floor right now. He might even have pursued the condom around the room until it popped.

  Ivan is awfully flat as a cat

  Ivan is my bit of fluff

  Ivan likes to wolf chopped liver

  Even when he’s had more than enough.

  Ivan didn’t care what Ruth looked like.

  She leans on the window sill and stares out. A small plane descends over the harbour and arrows for the airport. She looks down into the garden and sighs like a princess in a fairy story hoping for the prince to rescue her.

  Cosmetic surgeons, contemporary princes, gallop to the rescue every day. At the moment, her prince is probably on the other side of the hill, in the discreet private hospital, performing a blepharoplasty on some woman with loose skin around her eyes: it may be a perfectly legitimate use of modern science because her eyesight might be impeded by the fold
s of age. Blepharoplasties were first used on officers in the German army to make sure they could aim their pistols straight. From the exigencies of warfare to the lack of self-esteem in modern women. There are millions of people ravaged by hunger and want, and Ruth intends to spend thousands of dollars on something utterly selfish. She is ashamed but she can’t stop. Instead of sending the money to Angola, she will have the face hauled back a centimetre or so to preserve that inexplicable mystique. She ought to be finding her daughter: Anna’s more important than all this. She should be comforting Bella, supporting her in these dazed first weeks of widowhood. Ruth feels like mud that she’s not there for her. Ruth loathes self-pity, but there isn’t a single woman friend she can talk to; nobody who will understand her feelings, why she’s doing something she’s so frightened of. Why she’s so — Ruth has to admit — so victim-like.

  Three men in Bella’s day. She’s in the gallery, having left Eliot back home in his study. He’s had another call from Santa Barbara: they still want him for that job — they’ve upped the money. He’d be an idiot not to take it. He’s playing a tape of English folk songs, not singing along with it as he usually does. Alas, my love, you do me wrong, To cast me off discourteously, For I have lovèd you so long. He’s playing no speakies with Bella. Not sulking — he’s too much of a saint for that. But grappling with his guilt. Playing I have deep problems I must wrestle with in solitude. Playing Bella like a fish if she’d acknowledge it, but she won’t; it’s bad enough feeling so drawn to the man without confessing it. She can play no speakies too, to him and to herself. He still hasn’t noticed that his little boots have gone. Bella must tackle Lydia soon about that.

  She’s had the owner of the Gundersens on the gallery phone. He sounds thick as pea and ham soup as he tells Bella yes, he has the copies, they are excellent; what’s more Barnaby promised a second set by the end of the month and, as he’s paid Barnaby a considerable amount in advance, he expects Bella to keep that end of the bargain. Bella feels she’s playing Piggy in the Middle without being asked if she’d join in.

  Craig is number three. He’s fiddled with Barnaby’s little steel and horn pocketknife, and a jade and brass abacus; now he’s playing with the mechanical toys. Bella wishes he would stop it.

  ‘You must have had a modelling career?’ asks Craig.

  She should never have let him come in.

  ‘An actress? I’m sure I’ve seen your face.’

  He’s trying very hard. But he is in Bella’s way.

  ‘People have told me I look like a film star,’ she says. She doesn’t bother to disguise the edge in her voice. ‘Danny de Vito.’

  He laughs, abashed, and picks up a clockwork clown that guffaws when you bash it on the head. ‘Social pages of magazines, maybe. Or just around town. Like, you know, openings, concerts, that stuff. Your — your husband was into charity events.’

  And into making bargains that included Bella, it seems. Barnaby did expect her to return, and here she is. The wretched Gundersens.

  ‘Look, all right, you don’t want me to use the shop for a photo session, though it would be great publicity. I’m not trying a hard sell, but …’

  ‘What are you trying, then?’ Bella removes the clown from his grasp and puts it on a higher shelf. ‘I’ve told you no. No is a simple word.’

  ‘Ah, you’re going to get rid of the gallery.’

  ‘No!’

  It’s all she’s got, it’s an income, it’s security, an anchor. She glances down to make sure the floorboards are beneath her feet. Solid. Unswept as well.

  ‘I’m just trying to make my way in the world. You’re artistic, so am I … I thought we could help each other out —’ Craig spots the ferret lurking, dusty, on the top shelf, blinks at it, and picks up the pair of dancing dolls, Prince Charming-and-Cinderella or Queen-Elizabeth-and-Duke-of-Edinburgh, whichever you choose. ‘Hey, romance.’ He turns the key in the back of Cinder-beth’s skirt and puts the toy upon the counter. The little pair waltzes on metal wheels beneath the crinoline. Duke Charming doesn’t touch the floor. His feet are on tiny platforms fixed to Eliza-rella’s hem. Duke Charming’s a freeloader.

  Bella catches the dolls before they whizz off the counter and have a dramatic separation on the floorboards.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Craig. ‘I’d love to get some pictures of these guys. I’m getting a portfolio together — symbols of cultural icons, actually. I want to mount an exhibition. Right, I told you. Just a half an hour — Look, you’ve got a customer.’

  ‘I’m not …’ But someone’s peering in. ‘Oh God.’ Bella eases past Craig and opens the door to speak to Anna. ‘What is it? You look upset.’

  The tip of Anna’s nose is pink. She’s been in tears. ‘It’s all screwed up. I’ve lost it.’

  Bella feels a slam of hatred, loss, of jealousy. Anna had been having a baby? She flings the door back and pulls the young woman inside. ‘For heaven’s sake — come through into the workroom.’ She sits Anna down and rubs her dry little hands. ‘I’ll help you tell Ruth. I’ll come with you. Have you seen a doctor yet?’

  Craig sidles through as well. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘You’d better leave,’ snaps Bella. ‘Anna, you must be in bed.’

  ‘I’m not ill.’ Anna drums her fists on her knees. ‘Oh, I’ve been such a fool! I’ve gone and lost it on the bus!’

  ‘Lost Property office?’ asks Craig.

  Anna’s face clears. Before Bella can stop her, she is out of the chair, across to the door and running away up the street.

  ‘You’re unbelievably stressed.’ Craig has his hands out, a gesture so like Barnaby’s. ‘Lock this place up, come for a walk.’

  Bella bites her lip to stop it trembling, shoos him out and returns to the workroom. The Borsalino on the hat stand casts its shadow on the table.

  Four men in Bella’s day. The fourth is Barnaby. She can’t escape: his bargains that include her; his slew of knick-knacks, genuine or fake, tasteless, cracked, the odd piece of beauty lurking in there. And a lost baby, connected with him somehow?

  No wonder Eliot is sulking. But he’s a big man, larger than is normally allowed, so let’s agree he’s brooding, it does sound nicer. It could mean: serious and cogitating.

  At least Bella has never lost a baby on a bus. The child she’s lost is just a wish, a hope, a dream: it would fit inside the empty silver cradle. She could puncture her dream with Barnaby’s tiny pocketknife, but when she looks for it she cannot see. Her eyes are blurred with loss.

  Is it worse to lose a baby or never to have had one? Is there a gauge by which to measure such distress? Jocasta doubts it.

  There are many ways to have a baby nowadays. Even in days past, scientifically or practically minded people tried various methods to make sure conception happened. For those who couldn’t manage with the usual form of presentation, spoons were a common instrument. Wise old women knew the ways and passed them on, in written form, in whispers over tea cups, over a glass of cowslip wine. Over whisky, if they had it.

  There have always been ways to lose a baby, some inadvertent, some deliberate, some malicious. All are tragic. To mislay one on public transport isn’t usual.

  Ruth has never used protection. When she and Walsh got married it was understood they had to have a child as soon as they could. Among their wedding presents — the pottery wine goblets, the crystal fruit bowl, the pair of china horses’ heads (donated to the first possible church fair) — was a voodoo thingummy to suspend over the bed, a gloomy feathered object to ensure they’d have many children (boys first). Neither Ruth nor Walsh could cope with it. They hung it in the laundry, which was plagued for months by mice.

  They longed for children. Even when Ruth was being fiercely feminist in the staff cafeteria and arguing in the editor’s office, she wanted to have children.

  It was nine years before they managed to have Anna. Anna doesn’t look anything like Walsh. Nor does she look a lot like Ruth. For the first few months Anna looked like a w
izened little weasel. ‘We don’t know who she takes after,’ people said. ‘She’s her own little person, isn’t she? What an individual this dear wee creature is.’

  Anna means grace. Like Ann, it comes from Hannah, which means He has favoured me in Hebrew. Hannah was Samuel’s mother. Samuel was the prophet who anointed Saul as king and later trained young David to succeed him. David did some very noble things. He also saw another man’s wife having a bath and then arranged to have her widowed. The king as voyeur, king as lecher, king as murderer. Samuel hadn’t taught the king too well in matters ethical. Ergo: Anna is named after the mother of a prat, as Barnaby delighted in pointing out to the archdeacon. How Barnaby loved a joke.

  Life can be very complicated.

  How can Anna have lost a baby on the bus? She wasn’t even pregnant. Bella knows she can’t have been, not to Barnaby at any rate, unless he’d had his snip reversed. Besides, Bella doesn’t think Anna was distressed in the way a woman would be if she had really lost — miscarried or mislaid — a baby, anywhere.

  It is a huge part of Bella’s grief that it’s too late to have a child. If she had talked to Barnaby about it earlier, it would still have been too late. Barnaby, the badger-haired darling of the social set, the life and soul, the playboy, jokester, clown. The problem with loving someone like him is, finally, it all becomes so tiring. Love erodes. It vanishes: poof! You shouldn’t have a child as the father of your child in any case.

  Bella isn’t too old to have a child, but she must be realistic despite how much it hurts. It’s a sorrow to put up with, treat like a shameful secret, to slide away into a corner like an old photograph album and bring out now and then for a moment of regret. Life happens: some things you accept, some things you fight against, but mostly you just jog along.