“Anyway, you’re the expert, judging by your success,” Suzanna observed. “We can’t be running out of mustard, for God’s sake.”
“I’ve been lucky. What, after all, separates the middle-of-the-road writer from the wildly successful one?”
“Talent? Perseverance?”
“No. No-o-o-o. Luck, of course. Pure luck. It’s a business that runs on luck. Otherwise, I’d still be selling ladies lingerie at Harrods.”
“According to our resident best-selling author, Frank Cuthbert, it takes more than that. Frank claims it takes genius. While I’d say Frank is a high-functioning idiot, I’d also say he’s right. At the least it takes talent. Don’t be so modest.”
The chatter continued in a giddy ebb and flow interspersed with laughter; in between could be heard the scrape of utensils on plates or the sound of water being poured into glasses. After a time, Suzanna’s voice again could be heard above the rest, asking, “Where is Eugenia? She said she was bringing serviettes. It’s not like her to be late.”
“Eugenia?” asked a woman who was new in the village. Suzanna thought her name was Bridget.
“You know. The one who dresses like a reenactor, although it’s not clear what century she thinks she’s in. Seventeenth, possibly.”
“Eugenia would have liked the seventeenth century,” someone commented. “Lots of rules.”
“And punishments,” added someone else.
“And public hangings.”
Several nodded at this. Under Eugenia’s reign at Bowls for Souls, several minor uprisings had taken place, only to be ruthlessly put down. However, if she insisted on X brand of coffee, someone might bring Y in a feeble show of independence—accompanied by a fist pump once Eugenia’s back was turned.
Although she put on a brave front, these insurrections were painful to Eugenia. She would paste on a mask of Christian forbearance while nurturing the grudge for weeks. “They know not what they do,” she might murmur, in a gross misapplication of Scripture. One and all agreed Eugenia’s head was screwed on just a bit too tightly.
It’s since her brother died, said some. And didn’t she have a son somewhere that no one ever saw? She didn’t used to be quite so … so. Well, so weird. So particular and driven about everything. But few thought her really sinister or threatening in any way. Simply tedious as a head cold, as Suzanna Winship might say.
Sometimes, when reprimanded by Eugenia, the donor would comment that these were poor people they were feeding, and no doubt those in need would appreciate whatever was given them, and not judge too harshly the brand of mustard being used.
“Are you saying that they should be happy with whatever rubbish we choose to foist off on them?” Eugenia would demand. “That they are somehow less than we are—we who can afford to buy the national brands?”
“Of course not!” would be the reply. “I wasn’t saying that!” But somehow the donor felt caught out by the accusation, as if in some way guilty of snobbery or of being a cheapskate, when in fact some of them had a job to scrape together the pennies for the well-intended donation. The whole transaction, meant to be a generous and kind-hearted impulse, somehow had become tainted by this point. Eugenia noticed there were dropouts from the roster of volunteers, but she never suspected she was the cause.
* * *
By the time Eugenia arrived fifteen minutes later, the soup soiree was in full swing. She had, she explained, been delayed on the train from London. Not everyone welcomed her arrival, but Eugenia set to work, immediately getting on Suzanna’s nerves.
She got on everyone’s nerves, but she got on Suzanna’s in a big way, since Suzanna frequently also had to deal with her when organizing Women’s Institute events.
Eugenia threw herself into WI projects with the same lunatic verve that might have been better applied to resolving a standoff between Russia and the Ukraine. And she was not one to admit failure. A recent theater outing to Staincross Minster she had organized for the women had not been a success, as predicted by Suzanna.
“That’s because Titus Andronicus was boring when it was first written.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“It’s Shakespeare.”
“So? Shakespeare had his off years, too. We can’t all be Harold Pinter.”
“Talk about boring.”
“Is not.”
“Is too.”
Now the perennial argument with Suzanna again had to do with buying supplies for the luncheon. The smart money was on Suzanna to win this time. She had bought half a dozen tins of sliced pineapple on sale, a rare and unusual treat, and she was proposing to make upside-down cakes for a future meal.
“On sale? Are you saying the needy should be fobbed off with stale, low-quality food?” Eugenia demanded.
Suzanna met her steely gaze head-on.
“No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying even I can’t afford to eat organic fucking sliced pineapple imported from goddamn Hawaii, for Chrissake.”
“Language, please! We are here to set a Christian example.”
“Then do a better job of it.” Suzanna stared boldly back, taking in the hair, the general air of desperation that she sensed lurked behind the relentless, tireless do-goodery. In charge of feeding the homeless, Eugenia had managed to rile both the destitute and all the volunteers with overly precise instructions (“How many times? I said Ryvita. It has to be Ryvita. Where did this CrispAlivo come from, anyway?”) and with her constant hovering. Soon many of those in need stopped showing up for their free lunch, heading over to St. Catherine’s instead, even though the food wasn’t as good and it was a long bus journey out of town to get there. But the nuns fed them, asked no questions, believed their lies, or pretended to, and stayed out of their business. This, to those in need, was much more like it: Just hand over that sandwich and shut up about it.
Eugenia had drawn back at Suzanna’s little outburst of profanity. Now she turned the tin of pineapple over and over in her hands, like a grenade she was preparing to lob. “Twenty-two grams of sugar,” she read from the label. “Think what it’s doing to their arteries.”
“Think what going without food is doing to the rest of them,” Suzanna shot back. “You know what, I really don’t need this.” To herself she added, What have the poor ever done for me, anyway? “I should be over at the Village Hall, helping them get ready for the gymkhana on Saturday.”
“Fine,” Eugenia said shortly. “Why don’t you just go do that.”
Suzanna, subsiding into a mutinous huff, considered quitting Bowls for Souls altogether. But as she had said the evening before to her brother, Dr. Winship, if she waited long enough, Eugenia might get bored and quit.
“There’s also divine intervention,” she had added, in what she knew was a lovely, throaty voice—a voice of command she used to good advantage at WI meetings, speaking with a polished and direct delivery that suggested Sarah Palin barnstorming across America’s corn belt.
“You’re not thinking of how you rose to power in the Women’s Institute, are you?” Bruce had asked.
“I was, rather.” Suzanna had ascended the throne in time-honored fashion, via the untimely death of her predecessor. Now she reigned supreme and unchallenged. It helped, of course, that no one else, with the possible exception of Eugenia, really wanted the position. It involved a tremendous amount of work. The WI, along with the Altar Guild, constituted a sort of women’s underground in Nether Monkslip, the women constantly abuzz behind the scenes, only the results of their efforts showing. And they had fun, too, if the latest wine tasting and photography event were anything to go by. Although it was later suggested they might want to keep these two events separate in future.
“I’d step carefully around Eugenia if I were you,” Bruce had warned his sister. “No one has much time for her, but I think she could be a fearless and formidable enemy. There’s something not quite right about her.”
Suzanna had jumped in before her brother could get atop his fav
orite hobbyhorse, which she and others had titled “The Killer Amongst Us.”
“Yes, yes, of course you’re right.” But too late. Bruce and his horse had already left the gate.
“Have you seen,” he’d continued, “the way she looks at Max Tudor?”
“They all look at him like that,” said Suzanna, carefully distancing herself from the charge of which she was equally guilty. Max had been the village’s prime bachelor catch until Awena had come along and hooked him.
Without even trying, she thought with an inward sniff. It really was galling. Suzanna was the village’s Delilah, a temptress operating at full tilt, a woman who admitted no competition. But even she saw the perfection of the “Maxena” pairing, and was reconciled to its inevitability. Mostly.
Bruce had said, as they continued their conversation over dinner, “Eugenia seems to ignore the fact he’s a married man now with a child. It’s like it doesn’t register with her. Even if she’d ever had a chance with Max, that ship has sailed.”
“Don’t I know it,” said Suzanna. “I mean, yes. You’re right.”
“That sort of willful blindness, that inability to face reality, combined with a thwarted sexuality—it can be dangerous. Perhaps more dangerous than anything I can name.”
“Perhaps you could have a word with her when she comes for a checkup.”
“Like she’d listen! Besides, I never really see her in my professional capacity. She’s healthy as a horse.”
And likely to live forever, worse luck, thought Suzanna now. She returned her attention to the work at hand at Bowls for Souls, which seemed more useful than wrangling any further with Saint Eugenia. The conversation across the table from her had drifted to the whereabouts of the dowager, which soon led to a rehash of the woman’s checkered past.
“She came here to help her son out when his wife died,” said a plump woman with a topknot. “Devoted to him she was, they say in Nether Monkslip.”
“Came over like a shot once the first wife was out of the picture, you mean.” Others, seeming to agree with this hypothesis, nodded their heads. “She never seemed to like the first Lady Baaden-Boomethistle all that much—until she saw what the second one was like. But then, no woman would have been good enough for her boy.”
“Hardly a boy, although he likes to act like it.”
Universal nodding at this sentiment.
“No fool like an old goat,” said someone sagely.
“They are very close, mother and son?” Suzanna asked.
“Only in the sense that rich people always stick together.”
“The folk at Tot Hall don’t have much time for the likes of us,” continued the woman with the topknot, who seemed to be sampling as many of the biscuits as she was setting out on plates. There was a telltale smear of chocolate at one corner of her mouth. The biscuits were donated every week by Elka Garth of the Cavalier Tea Room and Garden, and they were always fresh, never day-old, and of the same high quality as the products she sold in her shop. Eugenia definitely approved.
“I hear they live as high on the hog as drug lords in a Mexican prison,” said Suzanna.
“I hear they’re going broke.”
“Wishful thinking.”
“But no wonder if they are!” This from a slender dark woman with a pixie haircut. “The new Lady Baaden-Boomethistle sees to that.”
“She only cares about them horses of hers. Still, it’s an expensive hobby.”
“I think the gentry should try joining the twenty-first century. Come down off that high horse and see how the other half lives. That dowager is—”
But this speaker, with her back to the kitchen entrance, was shushed by the others, who had spotted her topic surging through the door. The conversation stilled and polite masks were applied.
Lady Caroline Baaden-Boomethistle smiled at the little group. She was in rare form, reveling in her role as the titular head of various committees, raised like many such to that high estate not because of merit but for the name recognition she brought to whatever worthy cause was in play. In truth, the Dowager B-B, as she was called (behind her back), had trouble telling one worthy cause from another, and frequently would rise to give a little speech in aid of those less fortunate, to the bewilderment of those who thought they had gathered to promote the hunt, save the forests, or protect the dormouse. One thing of which she was certain, however, was her position in the village, which meant she was expected to be on the Parish Council even though more often than not she ended up sending elaborately invented regrets when she could not attend—regrets that generally included a plug for her latest book.
Now Suzanna, also with her back to the door, said, “Viscountess Baaden-Boomethistle is running late. Let’s start serving this lot without her.”
Eugenia drew back, horrified. Her mouth, generally settled into a straight and unforgiving line, peeled itself open into a shocked O of dismay.
“A viscountess is never to be addressed as such in conversation. It is always Lady Baaden-Boomethistle. In any event, she is, since the passing of her husband, the dowager viscountess.”
“Who gives a sh—” began Suzanna, interrupted at that moment by loud shushings and throat clearings and eye rollings, and finally noticing the Lady herself.
In she swept, trailing scarves and perfume, shellacked and false-eyelashed and completely out of place at what was, after all, a charitable working environment. The rest of them were dressed casually in jeans and exercise pants or flowered shirtdresses. Possibly to indicate her lack of interest in work or exercise, or in flowers, for that matter, the Dowager B-B wore blue shot silk, black gloves, a strand of matching pearls of incalculable worth, and a great deal of eyeliner. To the further puzzlement of all, she wore a matching blue hat with a bit of netting falling coyly over one eye—a hat at first glance resembling a hedgehog caught in a lobster trap. She looked as Kate Middleton might look in forty years on her way to a royal christening.
Given that the dowager was fresh from her manor house, a homestead of terraced lawns with tinkling fountains, small artificial lakes, and a private tennis court, it was difficult for even the keenest observer to posit exactly what she thought she might bring to the proceedings.
Her daughter-in-law, Lady Baaden-Boomethistle, generally would by now have breezed in and out, wearing pinks and shouting encouragement on her way to the hunt. She would park her horse outside, like a cowboy stopping off for a beer at the local saloon. Actually, she’d leave the horse waiting with a groom or trainer, as it was too valuable a piece of property to be left alone.
But today, despite Bree’s stated intentions at breakfast, she was mysteriously absent.
Now the dowager, pasting on a smile, braced herself to do good in a vague way. Hers was an all-encompassing brand of do-goodery, for she was the type to cut ribbons and make gushing little speeches of hope, flapping her scarves and jangling her bracelets and adjusting her rings, and generally trying to look beneficent, while her eyes rather desperately sought the whereabouts of the drinks tray. Rather to everyone’s surprise, she was an avid participant in the whist drive, a key social event of village life. It was assumed the game gave her a safe outlet for the gambler’s instincts that were said to run in her distinguished family and to have brought it near ruin more than once.
Suzanna dragged her head around to observe the new arrival. Really, comparisons with Barbara Cartland were inevitable—the Queen of Romance who had also had an uncanny knack for minting coin from the dreams and marital aspirations of women of all ages. One wondered how someone like the Dowager B-B, who had led by all accounts such a cosseted youth, had come to know so much about the wars between the sexes.
The dowager had early on rejected the home-county style of her peers and contemporaries. Not for her the sensible skirt, flat shoes, and padded jacket of the Tory, worn with pearls and a silk neck scarf. Not for her the dogs trotting at her heels as she surveyed her grand estate. She, in fact, made herself very scarce on National Gardens Sche
me days, when tourists were permitted into the grounds of Totleigh Hall to be shown about by the head gardener. Even the opportunity to flog her books to the waiting masses could not compete with her innate horror at seeing common folk in cargo pants and flip-flops traipsing about the gardens and parklands of her precious home. Those ill-shod fans (and she did have legions of fans, ill-shod and otherwise) who had purchased a ticket with the hope of meeting the famous dowager in person were regularly disappointed.
Now she gravitated to one corner of the kitchen, where she soon could be heard braying at the one woman in the room reputed to have a drop of blue blood in her veins. The dowager began doing one of her bloodstock tallies: “She was a Witherspoon—one of the Derbyshire Witherspoons, of course I mean, not the other branch, who were something in packaging. Her orchids were magnificent, but she was largely known for her tulips.”
“But I mustn’t keep you,” finished the dowager, and neatly sidestepping any attempts to get her actually to help with the food preparation, she swanned her way into the dining room to mingle with the peons.
She paused in the doorway for a moment before charging in, gushing sincerity and flinging compassion in the general direction of the downtrodden. Noticing a family of three—two young parents and a smiling baby less than a year old—she lobbed herself at them, warbling exclamations of delight in her upper-class drawl. Grabbing the baby (not without a struggle of protest from its mother), she proceeded to dandle the child at arm’s length until it began to cry (it wouldn’t do to get peasant drool, or worse, on her dress). It was, had anyone but known it, a reprise of her role as mother to Lord Baaden-Boomethistle, a blend of engulfing affection interrupted by very long stretches of bored disinterest. She had not realized her son had learned to walk until one day he escaped from the nanny and, totally nude and trailing his blue blankie, interrupted one of her cocktail parties. She had had to speak quite sharply to the nanny about that.
Now she returned the squalling baby to its rightful owners and, literally dusting the talcum powder from her hands, proceeded to dance around the room, chatting at, rather than with, the great unwashed, who were unfailingly polite in their turn. When one of them addressed her as “Old Duck” she smiled bravely, lips atremble, and moved on. Here and there the dowager extended a gloved hand to one of the men, much as if she expected him to kiss the outsize ring on her index finger. It was a queenly act she had modeled on newsreel footage of the Queen Mother touring the bombed-out East End during World War II. In the case of the Dowager Baaden-Boomethistle, it was an act hollow at the core, and was, reflected Suzanna, like watching Gloria Swanson auditioning for a role in The Song of Bernadette. The dowager simply could not damp down her fundamental self-interest and self-regard.
The Haunted Season Page 5