Aunt Bessie Decides

by Diana Xarissa

  Penny’s face had been done up perfectly, and Bessie realised that the other woman’s heavy eye makeup hadn’t budged in spite of Penny’s lengthy crying jag. As Bessie patted her hair into place, she wondered at the elaborate tangle of curls and plaits that Penny’s hair was styled in this morning. It must have taken her ages, Bessie thought. Didn’t the woman ever sleep?

  As Bessie headed back downstairs, she decided that this morning called for a pot of coffee. She set it brewing before she headed out to look for her unexpected guest. Penny was sitting on the large rock that sat behind Bessie’s cottage. At high tide it was surrounded by water, but at the moment it sat on dry sand. Penny was staring out to sea. Bessie walked up next to her and then cleared her throat.

  “Oh, there you are, my darling,” Penny said. “I’m ever so jealous of you and this amazing view. I think your life must be positively idyllic.”

  Bessie smiled at her. “I love my life,” she said. “My little cottage by the sea suits me perfectly.”

  “But don’t you get lonely?” Penny asked. “I assume you must be a widow?”

  “I never married,” Bessie told her. “And no, I don’t get lonely. I have many dear friends and I have my books. After all these years on my own, I think I’m rather too fond of my own company. I’m quite happy this way.”

  Penny shook her head. “I’ve been with William forever,” she told Bessie. “I can’t imagine not having a man in my life.”

  Bessie bit back a dozen replies before she settled on a neutral one. “Well, everyone is different. That’s what makes the world such a fascinating place.”

  “William and I met when I was sixteen,” Penny said, looking back out to sea. “We met doing community theatre. It was Romeo and Juliet.”

  “And you were Juliet to his Romeo,” Bessie guessed.

  Penny laughed. “Ah, wouldn’t that have been romantic? Unfortunately, no. I was merely an attendant to Juliet, and William was Gregory, a servant to the Capulets.” She shrugged. “We were both still learning our craft in those days.”

  “And you’ve been together ever since?”

  “Oh, yes. I had just turned sixteen and William was somewhat older. He swept me off my feet and I’ve never been interested in anyone else.”

  “Sixteen is very young,” Bessie commented.

  “He was so handsome in those days,” Penny sighed. “Not that he isn’t still handsome,” she added hastily. “But in those days he was stunning. He was actually dating the girl playing Juliet when I first met him, but once our eyes met, that was the end of that.”

  “Poor Juliet,” Bessie said.

  Penny laughed. “She ended up falling for her Romeo. Last I heard they were married with four kids and still doing community theatre. William and I had bigger dreams, of course.”

  “I don’t know. Being happily married with children and still pursuing your passion sounds pretty good to me.”

  Penny frowned. “But she gave up on becoming a star,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I guess it’s just different for some people, but I need to perform. Applause is like oxygen for me.”

  Bessie shrugged. “I’m happy with a simple life. But then I’ve never even tried acting. Maybe I’d get hooked if I gave it a try.”

  “We could give you a part in the show,” Penny offered. “We can always use more extras. You’d be fabulous, I’m sure.”

  Bessie grinned. “Thanks for the offer, but I think I’m strictly audience material,” she told the other woman. “I do have to say, though, that that was the most interesting offer I’ve had in a long time.”

  Penny laughed. “Well, the offer’s open if you change your mind,” she promised. “Just let me know and I’ll tell William to find you a part.”

  Bessie’s stomach growled, interrupting her intended reply.

  “Is that time for breakfast, then?” Penny asked brightly.

  “Yes, please,” Bessie grinned.

  The coffee was ready when they returned to the kitchen, and Penny’s mood brightened even further after her second cup. Bessie helped her find the equipment she needed and then sat down at the table and watched her work.

  “I’ve done a lot of short-order cooking over the years,” Penny told Bessie as she cracked eggs. “Pretty much any small town you end up in has a diner or two that can use an extra cook for a week or so. It’s a great way to supplement the rather meagre payments actors get for performing.”

  “I thought your troupe was quite successful,” Bessie said.

  “Oh, this one was,” Penny answered. “At least while we were touring the US, we were. I didn’t do any cooking for, I don’t know, five years, maybe. Well, except for meals for me and William, and sometimes the rest of the troupe as well. But I didn’t need a second job. We did okay.”

  “What made you decide to come to the UK, then?”

  Penny shook her head. “That was all William,” she said. “He’s always had this crazy idea about performing Shakespeare’s works in their home country. He’d been talking about it since I met him. I guess, when we’d gone all the way across the US, he felt like it was the perfect time.”

  “And you came with him,” Bessie said.

  “I love him,” Penny said. “It may have been a crazy scheme, but part of being in love with someone is supporting them in their crazy schemes, you know? Besides, if I let him go without me, he would have just found someone else to take my place. We were all hoping this trip might be our big break.”

  “And for Scott, it was.”

  “Yeah,” Penny sighed. “He was really talented,” she said softly.

  Bessie watched as Penny deftly shredded cheese and then chopped a slice of ham into small pieces. She heated a pan and then swirled butter around in it. The kitchen filled with wonderful aromas as Penny added the eggs and then the ham and cheese to the hot pan.

  A few minutes later, Penny slid the gorgeously browned omelet onto two plates. Bessie topped up her coffee and grabbed a fork. Penny had been right. She wouldn’t forget this breakfast in a hurry.

  “This is delicious,” she told Penny as she ate. “You’re a good cook.”

  “If the acting thing doesn’t work out, I always said I’d love to open my own restaurant.” Penny laughed bitterly. “Who am I kidding?” she asked. “The acting thing isn’t working out, not even a little bit. And I haven’t two cents to my name to put towards buying a little restaurant, either.” She sighed deeply.

  “I would have thought you’d have made some decent money during your years of travelling,” Bessie said innocently.

  Penny shrugged. “We made some money, but the travelling part isn’t cheap. We spent almost every penny on hotel rooms and meals. Whatever was left over went to paying for things like props and costumes. Oh, everyone in the group got a small salary as well, but mostly mine went to pay for makeup and extra costume pieces that the group’s budget didn’t cover. By the time we got to LA, we were pretty much broke, and then we had to stay there for half a year while William sorted out the paperwork for the trip.”

  “Plane tickets are expensive as well,” Bessie remarked.

  “They really are,” Penny agreed. “We all worked at least part-time to help pay for our apartment and other expenses while we were in LA, and William made sure to put away little bits here and there until he’d saved up enough to pay for our flights here. Unfortunately, now we don’t have any money for flights home, but maybe the two weeks over here will help.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Bessie told her. “What will you do when you get home?”

  Penny shrugged. “I don’t even know where I’ll go,” she said sadly. “I suppose I’ll go wherever William wants to go, but at the moment I have no idea where that is.”

  “Where would you go, if it were up to you?” Bessie asked.

  “Maybe New York,” Penny said. “I don’t know. I suppose anywhere William can find work.”

  “What about you? Don’t you want to find work?”

  “Oh, sure,
” Penny said indifferently. “But really, if William’s happy, I’m happy.”

  Bessie drew a breath and forced herself to count to ten. “And does William feel the same way about your happiness?” she asked.

  “I’m sure he loves me,” Penny said, avoiding answering the question directly.

  “It must be difficult, all that travelling. When you get back to the US, do you think you’ll stay in one place for a while?”

  “I’d like to,” Penny answered. “I’d like to settle down and buy a little house and just be like a nice normal couple for a little while before we go back to chasing fame.” She laughed. “I can hear William’s voice in my head, saying ‘boring,’ even as I speak.”

  “It doesn’t sound boring to me,” Bessie told her. “It sounds lovely.”

  “William isn’t the settling down type,” Penny said. “He’s too creative. He gets bored too easily. His mind is always working and he needs new stimuli or he gets frustrated.”

  “Really?” Bessie said, cutting herself off before she added the ‘perhaps William needs to grow up a little bit’ to her reply.

  “But it’s so invigorating being with such a brilliant man,” Penny told her enthusiastically. “He makes every day a new adventure. I’m never as happy as when I’m with him.”

  Bessie gathered up the breakfast dishes and put them on the counter to avoid commenting.

  “Shall I do the dishes, then?” Penny offered.

  “I’ll get them later,” Bessie told her. “Let’s go out and sit on my rock and chat, shall we?”

  “I’d love that,” Penny replied.

  Outside, there was a cooling breeze blowing off the sea that made the warm morning feel comfortable. The two women sat side by side on the large rock and watched the waves silently for a moment. Further down the beach the sand was beginning to get crowded with families with small children making sandcastles and collecting shells and rocks, but behind Bessie’s cottage it was still empty and quiet.

  “He cheats on me, of course,” Penny said conversationally.

  “Of course, because he always needs new stimuli,” Bessie said sarcastically.

  The sarcasm was lost on Penny, however. “Exactly,” she said. “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just about new experiences.”

  Bessie nodded and carefully considered her reply. “You could do better,” she said finally, unable to find a better way to express what she was thinking.

  “Oh, no,” Penny said, shaking her head. “William’s perfect for me. He really is.”

  “Except for the cheating part,” Bessie suggested.

  “Well, yeah, I mean that really upsets me when it happens, but it doesn’t happen often.”

  “Really?” Bessie could hear the skepticism in her voice.

  “Oh, well, not all that often,” Penny said, not looking at Bessie. “I mean, when we had the troupe and there was a continuous stream of pretty girls in and out of the chorus, well, he used to chase after them all, but once the group split up, he calmed down a lot.”

  Bessie nearly bit her tongue in half trying not to say what she was thinking. “I’m surprised you put up with that,” she said finally. “You’re a beautiful woman. There must be plenty of men out there who would be honoured to spend time with you.”

  Penny shrugged. “Like I said, I’m in love with William; I have been since I was sixteen. Anyway, he’s been much better lately. I think he and Sienna might have had a bit of a fling, but she’s really Adam’s problem, not mine. William and Candy used to get together once in a while as well, but they’d dated years ago, so that was just friendly-like.”

  Bessie stood up abruptly and gasped as she stepped into cold seawater. The tide was on its way in and she hadn’t noticed that the rock was slowly being surrounded by water. She was glad she hadn’t bothered with shoes as she splashed up the sand, taking a few steps towards her cottage.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Penny. “But I can’t just sit here and listen to you try to justify the appalling way that William treats you.”

  Penny shook her head. “You just don’t understand,” she said tearfully.

  “No, I suppose I don’t,” Bessie agreed. “And nothing you can say will get me to understand, so I don’t think we should discuss it any further.”

  Penny shrugged. “Please don’t be mad at me,” she said to Bessie. “You’re just about the closest thing I have to a friend right now.”

  Bessie sighed deeply. This woman needed a lot more than just a friendly shoulder to cry on, and Bessie didn’t feel up to the job. “What about Sienna?” she asked.

  Penny climbed down from the rock carefully, making sure to keep her very high heels out of the water. She walked carefully back up the beach, following Bessie, who’d turned to head for home once Penny had left the rock.

  Bessie opened the cottage door, and Penny followed her back inside. They took their seats at the table and Penny sighed.

  “Sienna is a friend, I guess,” she said, finally answering Bessie’s question. “But it’s hard to be friendly with someone that you know would steal your boyfriend if given the opportunity.”

  “No offense to William,” Bessie said. “But I’m sure Sienna could do better as well.”

  Penny laughed, a harsh and brittle sound. “But William runs the show, you see,” she told Bessie. “And little Sienna wants to be a star more than she wants to breathe.”

  “Couldn’t she do better than being the second lead actress in a small travelling theatre group, then?” Bessie asked.

  “Our Sienna is lovely to look at,” Penny said harshly. “But she can’t act her way out of a paper bag and she can’t carry a tune if she had to do so to save her life. She’s second lead because she’s sleeping with the stage manager and for no other reason. That’s why she’s been chasing after William. She’s after my job and she won’t ever earn it based on her acting ability.”

  “Do you think Scott would have helped her become a star?”

  Penny shrugged. “He might have, if he thought there was something in it for him. Oh, not sex,” she added, when she saw the look on Bessie’s face. “Scott and Sienna had a fling ages ago, and when that finished Scott wasn’t interested in getting back with her again.”

  “Does everyone in the company sleep with everyone else?” Bessie demanded.

  Penny shook her head. “It really wasn’t as bad as it sounds,” she said defensively. “I’ve never been with anyone other than William.” Penny blushed brightly as she spoke.

  “Should I ask why you’re blushing?”

  “Oh, I, well, the thing is, about a year ago, maybe more, I got Scott to agree to pretend to have an affair with me. I thought maybe it would shake William up a bit and get him to, well, I really wanted him to propose, but I would have been happy if he’d just stopped chasing other women. I wanted him to see how it felt, you see.”

  Bessie didn’t see at all, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “Anyway, we snuck around a bit, meeting for lunch in out-of-the-way places and that sort of thing, but William either didn’t catch on or chose to ignore it. After a little while I got bored with the pretense and we dropped it.”

  She looked around the room as if she were suddenly worried she might be overheard, and then leaned in towards Bessie. “I think Scott might have been gay,” she whispered. “We spent a lot of time alone together in hotel rooms and he never once even tried to kiss me, let alone go any further.”

  Bessie nodded and refrained from pointing out to Penny that perhaps the man simply hadn’t been attracted to her. Obviously the thought had never crossed Penny’s mind, and she didn’t want to be the one to put it there.

  “Anyway, I said Scott had a thing with Sienna, but I always wondered if it was just to make Adam jealous and nothing really happened with them either.”

  “You could ask Sienna,” Bessie suggested.

  Penny made a face. “We’re not that close,” she replied shortly.

  “What about Candy?” Be
ssie couldn’t help but ask.

  Penny giggled. “You know, for a former porn star, she was quite a prude off-camera. I know I said that she and William used to get together once in a while, but I’m not sure if that was about sex or just about friendship. Beyond that, I don’t think she was sleeping with anyone in the group, and I never saw her picking up guys anywhere on our travels, either. Of course, she’s much older than the rest of us, which matters a lot to men.”

  “What about Adam?”

  “Oh, he’d sleep with anyone if he could,” Penny said casually. “But he doesn’t get all that many opportunities. Sienna keeps a very close eye on him.”

  “Do you still think Candy killed Scott, then?” Bessie asked.

  “Oh, did I say that?” Penny asked. “I mean, I guess so. I don’t like her because she broke up our happy little family, so I don’t mind thinking of her as a murderer. It’s much more uncomfortable thinking that someone from our little group might have done it.”

  “Indeed,” Bessie said.

  An insistent buzzing noise interrupted what she was going to say next.

  “Oh, that’s my phone,” Penny said, digging through her pockets. Bessie watched as she dug out a huge pile of tissues, a hotel room key, a small wallet and, finally, a large mobile phone.

  “William insisted that we all get these as soon as we arrived in the UK,” Penny told Bessie as she stared at the still ringing device. “I’m not sure how it works, actually.”

  After several seconds, Penny finally stabbed at a button with one of her well-manicured fingers. “Hello?” she said cautiously into the phone.

  Bessie could make out William’s thunderous voice, but couldn’t hear his actual words.

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Penny said. “I’ll be there. I’m only a short distance away. I’ll grab a taxi now.”

  There was a long pause while Penny listened and then, “What do the police want with me? Really? But I already told them everything I know. Anyway, I’ll be back soon.”