Ben shifted on the bed. The breakfast tray which he had set across my middle tipped and tilted like a ship in a storm. “Ellie, I am not talking about the electric bill or the towel rail which hates you. I am trying to talk about a letter sent to me from America.”
My eyelids weighed as heavy as piano lids. But Chapter One of The Pregnant Pause stresses not playing the invalid. “From whom in America did this letter come?” Why did he keep bringing me breakfast in bed? I had begged him to stop. That poached egg was staring at me. A gargantuan eye. Filmed with cataract. The few sips of tea I had swallowed sloshed up and down in the hull. Marmalade? I couldn’t face the stuff. Ah, but what was this cannily concealed under the pot? An envelope. Reaching for it, I perked up. A letter from my friend Primrose Tramwell was always a treat. She and her sister Hyacinth have confirmed my faith that the years of discretion—or mature indiscretion—can be life’s great adventure. The sisters, both of them over sixty, owned Flowers Detection agency.
“Sorry Ben, I didn’t quite catch …”
His black brows merged. “Am I losing my voice or is the baby pressing on an auditory nerve?”
“I’m not yet three months.”
“Once more with feeling, then, my correspondent is the Secretary of the Mangé Society.”
Instantly I was all sympathy. “Oh, not one of those crackpot organizations that promise to trace your family tree for a nominal fee of a thousand pounds? Drop it in the waste paper basket, darling!” I shifted the pillow under my head.
“Ellie—”
“Do listen to this. Primrose writes, ‘Dearest Ellie, Hyacinth and I send our best love to you and Bentley. Life is tranquil here at Cloisters. We are sadly underworked in our chosen profession. Butler, speaking with authority—having, as you know, acquired his start in life as a burglar—asserts that crime doesn’t pay what it once did.’ ”
“As well no one has poisoned the old girls’ smelling salts.” Ben, pacing at the foot of the bed, did not sound pleased.
“Must you use the word old?” I reproved.
“Why not? It’s a status most of us wish to achieve. We want time to fulfill our dreams, one of mine having always been—”
“Darling,” I said, “you will be so touched by this. Primrose encloses an old family remedy, ideal for someone in my delicate condition. She says it has been favoured by members of the Royal Family in times of stress. It uses only natural ingredients.”
Ben dredged up a smile. “Sweetheart, you have magnanimously led this conversation back to the Mangé Society. It does not dig up family trees, but is a custodian of history in the ultimate sense.” He withdrew his letter from its envelope and crackled the stiff parchment. “The Mangés are a secret organization of chefs, dedicated to the noble cause of tracking down long lost recipes of cultural importance.”
“My word!”
“Ellie, we are not talking about Aunt Maddie’s mislaid variation of jam tarts.”
“I should think not!” I laid Primrose’s letter down on my paperback copy of Pregnancy for Beginners. Tobias Cat strolled out from behind the wardrobe and I tried not to meet his eyes.
Ben made himself comfortable on the bed and my feet. “None but the Crème de la Crème are admitted to membership and those fortunates only after arduous admission proceedings.”
“Such as?”
“My dear, all that is kept exceedingly hush-hush. The members take a vow of silence. As for those who don’t make the grade, blabbing would be professional suicide.”
“Heavens!” If that poached eye did not stop gawking at me, I might be driven to take a poke at it with my fork. Maybe not. My mind dodged the dreadful vision of yellow goo running out. “In other words, these Mangés are sort of like Masons with cooking spoons? Given to secret handshakes and coded eye twitchings?”
Ben caressed my layman’s brow.
“These are the people who one year ago announced to the world—the thinking world, Ellie—that they had singlehandedly tracked down a recipe for a minestrone dried soup mix, created by none other than …” The maroon velvet curtains stopped rippling in the breeze from the open window. Tobias Cat, who had been stalking his tail, sat frozen. “… By none other than Leonardo Da Vinci.”
“Gracious! And history has written him off as an artist who dabbled in aviation, anatomy, et cetera, et cetera.” Must quell the urge to ask if the soup would be marketed under the label Momma Mona. My beloved was clearly infatuated with this gourmet sect.
“Why have the Mangés written to you?”
Ben stood up. The bed heaved, threatening to keel over. I hugged the rim and the room settled back into shape. My spouse was standing before the dressing table mirror, taking a good hard look at himself. His eyes danced with emerald sparks.
“Ellie, I hold here in these hands” (staring as though they had sneaked up and attached to his arms while he wasn’t looking) “I hold here an invitation from the Society to present myself for consideration as a Potential Member.”
I strove to look dazzled.
“Speechless, aren’t you? The question I keep asking is, Why me?” He was pacing in front of the marble fireplace, every fourth step hitting the board that squeaked.
I adore this man. He is my knight in shining armour. He who saved me from a fate worse than death—Aunt Astrid’s scorn, thinly veiled as pity: poor Ellie, single by default! But there are times when his masculine smugness, poorly disguised as self-deprecation, irritates me just a smudge.
He stopped pacing and tossed me a wry smile. “Hard to credit isn’t it? Me! Son of a humble greengrocer!”
His father is as humble as the ruler of an oil well kingdom. Poppa considers himself a fruit and veggie magnate.
“And think how proud your mother will be,” I enthused. Confidentially, Magdalene is opposed to any organization not run on strict Roman Catholic lines. And surely it was too much to hope that all Mangé members were of the faith.
“Ellie, I wonder what made the Mangés pull my name out of the hat? Abigail’s is doing well but not on an international scale, and The Edwardian Lady’s Cookery Book has yet to make me a household name.”
“You’re far too modest.” I was background music.
Ben leaned forward to touch my hair. Missing by inches he paced on. That dratted board still squeaked with every fourth step.
“My entire life hanging in the balance and I did not know it. Do you think the society may have sent one of its members to dine at Abigail’s undercover?”
“A point to ponder.”
Gripping the letter with both hands he strove to unravel its secret code. “Sweetheart, I told you about the suspicious-looking chap with the ginger wig and the eye patch.”
“I remember being quite frightened.”
“Oh, my God, Ellie, wasn’t that the Thursday when Freddy let the salads reach room temperature?”
Freddy, for the record, is my cousin. Supposedly he is Ben’s right hand man at Abigail’s. We felt we owed him something because on the whole he was pretty decent about our inheriting Merlin’s Court. He may have thrown things in private, but he never tried to throw Ben or me out a window.
“Why couldn’t the Mangés have sent their spies on a Tuesday? Nothing, if I do say it myself, compares with my escallop of escargot—the sauce gentle, almost shy …”
Once, believe it or not, I had found the way Ben talked about food one of his most sensuous qualities. Now I resorted to an antacid tablet. He smoothed out the letter, kissed it, and returned it to his pocket.
“Darling,” I said, remembering it would soon be time for me to take my nap and I hadn’t yet got up, “where will your meeting with the Mangés take place?”
He tightened his dressing gown belt, eyes fixed on my face. “Ellie, the society’s headquarters are in the States. Where else would we meet?”
“I …”
“Ellie, it’s not the moon. Jonas and Dorcas thoroughly enjoyed their stay in Chicago.”
“So they did.” I s
ank back against my pillow. The thought of his being gone from home was a bit of a shock. A sigh escaped me. How desperately I would miss him. What wife of less than a year would not repine? But surely he wouldn’t be gone more than a week or a fortnight at most? Unbidden came a rush of euphoria. Scant weeks ago my definition of bliss was being in bed with Ben. Now I must strive not to betray—by sparkling eyes—that I might adjust to being alone. Especially at night.
What ecstasy not to have the bed plunge and plummet every time my beloved turned over in sleep or roused up on an elbow to inquire how I was faring. Oh, that I might in the early hours of morning crawl into the bathroom and drape myself over the blessed chill of porcelain without that dear male voice explaining through a crack in the doorway that we were moving hour by hour ever closer to the end of this disagreeable, but stock, manifestation.
Euphoria ebbed. Guilt flowed in. I do guilt awfully well. Wasn’t I the woman who only two years ago at the declining age of twenty-seven would have bartered thirty years of life for thirty minutes with a man? Wasn’t I the one who had put in an official request for a baby? I had taken up the rosary, given to me by my mother-in-law, ostensibly as a souvenir from Rome, and I had prayed for the rabbit to die, the test tube to stop fizzing, the word Yes! to appear on the litmus paper.
My fertile hero! After having to be persuaded by all the wiles and negligees in my repertoire that fatherhood was for him, he had committed himself to the parenting project with zeal. From day one he had insisted that we eat right, exercise, and think Lamaze. He had set aside quality time to be spent with the embryo. My darling knew to the second when we would be talking fetus. He was heavily into such involvement as reading to our child—now. Thus ensuring genius level or above. Daddy Dearest believed in singing to the baby. He had no conception of the horror I endured, having my abdomen serenaded, while my insides heaved like a tempest and the bathroom was a thousand-mile trek across burning desert sands. He had no idea because I hadn’t told him.
I didn’t want to hurt him. I was ashamed of the botch I was making of this joyous experience. Women today are giving birth on their lunch breaks or while standing at the Xerox machine; the race is on to see whether the copies of Mr. Brown’s memo or the baby will be delivered first. Every photo of an enceinte female shows her garbed in moonbeam white, holding a rose to her parted lips, while waves froth over her polished toenails. What happened to me? Less than three months along and I already felt as though the timekeeper’s watch had stopped. I didn’t have the energy to look dewy and radiant. Most mornings I didn’t have the energy to get up and start counting the minutes until my nap. I lived in constant fear that my mother-in-law would arrive unexpectedly and demand a count of the woolies I had knitted for the layette.
One of these days I would have to drag myself down to Rock-A-Bye Baby in the village, buy a couple of lacy coats, unpick the labels, unravel the necks, and stick knitting pins through them. What I needed, yearned for, was an intermission, only a short one, so I could gird myself to continue with the next six months. That being an impossibility, I would settle for Ben’s going to America. I would sleep until his return. Dorcas would fend off cobwebs with an occasional charge of the mop. Jonas could be guaranteed to be rude to unwelcome visitors.
“Are you asleep?” Ben loomed over me.
“Just doing my eyelid exercises, darling! Close, push up and hold; close …” Dorcas stressed the importance of prenatal Physical Education.
“Ellie, we’d better see about booking our tickets. Not much time if we are to leave in a month.”
“Did you say … we?” My eyes were opened. The air stretched tight as a drum.
“Darling, would I go without you?” He reclined with rakish elegance against the mahogany wardrobe. “The society urges that you accompany me. You are banned, of course, from meetings in the Inner Sanctum. But you are part of the package. Spousal support is considered crucial. Think of it, Ellie. If I am admitted to membership, there exists an excellent chance you will be invited to join the auxiliary.”
Oh, cripes! As if I didn’t have enough to do feeling rotten.
Inching to the edge of the bed, I sat looking into those marvelous eyes of his, flashing now with opal fire. “Ben, darling! You Odysseus. Me Penelope.”
“Meaning?”
“You go, I stay.”
Tobias yawned his boredom and disappeared back behind the wardrobe.
“Surely you jest!” Eyes dark and brooding, Ben slumped into the fireside chair. “You can’t send me off alone. I might do something both of us would regret.”
“Have an extramarital fling?”
“Use foul language—convenience foods, for instance.”
“Darling, I’m sorry. Even at the best of times the words Selection Committee make me want to stick pins in animate objects.” True enough. I was the fat child who never made it into the inner circle of schoolgirl secret societies.
If Ben wanted to be a Mangé, let him. He was his own grown-up person and thus entitled to be childish when he chose. He might need deprogramming when I got him back, but I could think up ways to make that fun.
Lying back down, I said, “My personal prejudices aside, the trip wouldn’t be good for the baby. All the books stress stability at this period of a child’s life.”
He scraped his chair back with enough force to make ruts in the floor. “Rubbish. I read in an American newspaper only last week that prenatal travel is crucial to the development of inquiring minds.”
I toyed with the idea of luring him down on the bed, twisting my hair into a rope, and wrapping it around his throat. “Ben, what if I should want to eat while over there? Dorcas says the Americans do unspeakable things to baked beans instead of serving them as God and Heinz intended: straight out of the tin. And they serve jelly—named Jello—on the same plate as meat and gravy. Physically I’m not up to all that.”
“Baked beans and Jello”—he spoon fed me the words—“are on the Mangés’ list of outlawed foods.”
The room reeled. Tobias had landed on my stomach. “Ben, I’d be a burden. Whenever you attended one of your meetings and had to leave me alone for hours—maybe days on end—you’d be worried to death about me.”
“I would not.”
“You wouldn’t worry”—my voice went all stringy, like chewing gum—“that I, who have the worst sense of direction in living memory, might head out on the wrong bus to Iglooville, Alaska?”
“Ellie!” He thumped a fist against his forehead and the whole room shook. Incredible to think that only fifteen minutes ago this had been a happy marriage.
I stroked Tobias’ ears. “Ben, please understand! I’ve had a grudge against America ever since my parents left me with Uncle Merlin while they went job hunting over there. But if I have to set aside a pet phobia, I would wish to travel light in every sense of the word. As it is, I will only be pregnant enough to look fat. And haunted as I am by my fat past, that would be demoralizing.”
What I didn’t tell him was that I was gaining weight at a frightening rate. When next visiting Dr. Melrose, I would forego makeup and pop the fillings out of my teeth. Unfair! My food, when I could eat, mostly didn’t stay down long enough to do good or harm.
Ben dropped down on the bed, sending the pheasants on the wallpaper into eddying flight. “Sweetheart, treat yourself to some maternity clothes.”
“I’d feel presumptuous at this stage.”
Gripping his head, he fell back on the bed.
I closed in for the kill. “And what about Abigail’s? Agreed, Freddy is improving. He no longer tells customers that the desserts are chock-full of cholesterol. But can he be left with no one to restrain him? I know how his beady mind works. He’ll introduce a Leftovers Special before you can say jet lag.”
Ben sat up. “I believe my reputation can withstand Freddy. And he has earned the right to fail or succeed under his own steam.”
Sometimes the man was diabolical. Appealing to my sense of fair play like that!
He was gaining on me to the point where I was reduced to wondering how the weather would be in the States at this time of the year.
“Whereabouts in America are we talking?”
A smile slithered on and off his face. “Where would you like it to be?”
“Boston.” A fifty-to-one chance that I was in the wrong state. I hoped to see his eyes cloud with disappointment, but he was looking down, fiddling with his dressing gown belt.
“Amazing!” he said.
“You don’t mean …?”
“Well, not in the heart of Boston.”
I breathed easy again.
“Some miles outside.”
Tobias got off the bed. Smart cat. I was ready to throw something at Ben—if only I’d felt up to it.
“I don’t want to go on a plane.” Definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
“You’re not afraid of flying.”
“I’m afraid of turbulence and those horrid little paper bags and the horrid waits outside those horrid little toilets.”
Scowling, he kicked the side of the bed. “Ellie, I want to be a Mangé. I know you’re feeling frayed around the edges, but remember, Chapter Two of The Waiting Game stresses that’s a positive. I’m not asking you to go mountaineering.”
Smoothing my hair off my brow, I fought to look fragile. “Ben, we’ve been married nearly a year now. We don’t have to keep proving ourselves. Love doesn’t mean driving oneself to the brink of nobility.” I patted his cheek. “Be selfish, my love, and Godspeed.”
“Such is your final answer?” Rising, he spoke in the voice of one who is going down with his ship. “Foolish of me to be surprised.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’d rather not say:” Putting his best profile forward.
“As you wish, dear.” Already I was planning my days without him. Bed until noon. Could I possibly be eligible for Meals on Wheels?
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