The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

  “How kind… of you to worry.”

  “My dear wife lives and breathes worry.” Charles Delacorte’s voice chilled the room. “What is one more sleepless night in a good cause?” Horrible man. Other than sharing his interest in antiques, what could have possessed Ann to marry him? That she could ever have loved him was frightening.

  “I did appreciate your help in selecting the dress,” I told her.

  “You are certainly intrepid, Mrs. Haskell,” commented the man with acid flowing through his veins. “My wife might have sent you down the aisle dressed as the ghost of Joan Crawford.” He picked up a silver-backed mirror and buffed it. “Not that your wedding lacked excitement.”

  Ann touched my arm and gave a low laugh. “Charles likes to tease about my taste in dress.”

  “I have never found the forties interesting.” He jiggled a finger on one of the keys of the till.

  Ann, who would never see thirty-nine again, pressed a hand to her throat and laughed. “I suppose I am time warped, but I admire everything about that era. Those were the days when I was happy, perhaps not a child prodigy, but a child success. I could sing, and I had parents who wanted me to shine. They entered me in talent contests and for several years I toured the country.” Her eyes took on a far-away look; she leaned against the counter, one hand rippling along its surface as if it were a piano keyboard.

  And suddenly, incredibly, she began to sing, “Where did you go, man of my tears, leaving nothing on my horizon, but lonely, lonely years…”

  I was excruciatingly embarrassed. Charles Delacorte was smiling as if his wife had finally made his day. Her voice (which wasn’t great) petered out. She gave a choked laugh.

  “As well I retired at age ten, isn’t it? I never had the magic of the greats like Sylvania. Hers was a voice like Irish whiskey, all fire and passion. I did a show with her once.” The far-away look was back in Ann’s eyes. “She must have been about eighteen at the time, and she lit up the place with her sequins and her flaming hair. She sang ‘Goodbye, Again.’ I wanted to grow up to be exactly like her.” Ann lifted a hand to her face. “I don’t need you, Charles, to tell me that she was a great beauty and I never was. But I think my figure is comparable; I’m still thirty-eight, twenty-three, thirty-seven. One of the benefits of never having had children.”

  Charles fixed his arctic gaze on me, increasing my discomfort. A clock chimed the quarter hour and I slid the picture frames across the counter and opened my bag. I had yet to overcome my feeling that measurements were a private matter, never to be casually discussed, especially in mixed company.

  “I’m not really familiar with this Sylvania.” I glanced at the bill Charles handed me and started writing out a cheque.

  Ann moved around the counter. “She shunned publicity. Her private life was always exactly that. There were rumours that she was secretly married, first to this man and that and even that she had children. But then her music went out of style, like this dress. For ages nothing was written about her, except for the occasional piece in the gossip papers pondering her fade-out and hinting that some tragedy had befallen her.”

  Poor lonely Ann. Forty-some years old and a crush on a dead singer. I was tucking my parcel under my arm when the William Tell Overture sounded again. Gladys Thorn entered the shop.

  Surprisingly, Charles Delacorte warmed to tepid enthusiasm. He smoothed his transparent hair and adjusted the knot of his tie.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Thorn. Have you come to look at that sheet music which Dr. Simon Bordeaux discovered in an old trunk at The Peerless Nursing Home?”

  “Oh, how well you read me, Mr. Delacorte!” The organist’s skin soaked up an unbecoming blush and she adjusted her spectacles to a more lopsided angle. “I have long been aching to do something special for Lady Theodora. She has been so good, assisting with the children’s choir. And always so jolly-saying she is the ideal person because she is tone deaf. Do you agree, Mr. Delacorte, that she would like the music as a souvenir of the childhood home whence she was so cruelly evicted by her male relations?”

  “Why not? I almost wish I could make a present of the music to you.”

  Ann, who had come to stand beside me, looked at him as though she couldn’t believe her ears.

  Miss Thorn twisted her hands. “Oh no, I couldn’t permit that. I do have my little private income, you know. Of course, I’m not an heiress like-” Miss Thorn gave a start and squinted at me through the thick lenses which magnified her eyes to mushrooms.

  “Mrs. Haskell! How rude of me! But truly I didn’t see you, or rather”-another grievous adjustment to the spectacles-“see that you were you.”

  “Nice to see you.”

  “How incredibly kind-oh, Mrs. Haskell, I do wish to mention that I find your cousin so convivial. As does the vicar. Twice at services, on consecutive weekends. And to come such a distance!”

  “Freddy?” He who eschewed habitual churchgoing on the grounds that familiarity breeds contempt? Well, it must be all of two minutes on the bike…

  Ann murmured that she was slipping into the back to fetch her coat.

  “The person who interrupted our-your-beautiful wedding?” exclaimed Miss Thorn. “Oh no, I haven’t seen him at church but I suppose he is very busy with your husband-and business.” I wished people would stop talking of Ben and Freddy as if they were inseparable schoolboys. Miss Thorn peeled back the collar of her coat, revealing a crimson blouse. “Your cousin’s so friendly and… flattering. She suggested I wear red more often to heighten my natural vivacity.”

  That blouse made Miss Thorn look as though all her blood had drained from her to it. Vanessa! How dare she go to church-my church! This was my punishment for not attending the last two Sundays. What was she up to? A thought slid into mind but I swiftly dismissed it. Rowland was too strong to be taken in by empty beauty and rampant sex appeal. No, cousin Vanessa wanted to nose out any gossip about Ben and me. But she wouldn’t luck out.

  “Excuse us, if you please.” Charles Delacorte raised a gilded eyebrow at me and beckoned Miss Thorn with a frostbitten smile.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Haskell.” Handbag clasped to her concave bosom, she moved along the counter. “Do please remember me kindly to Miss Fitzsimons next time she comes down to visit you.”

  “I will.” To admit that Vanessa hadn’t been near Merlin’s Court since the wedding would make me look the mean sort who wouldn’t offer my own cousin a cup of tea.

  Miss Thorn, with an expectant smile, followed Charles into the back room. I put down the lamp shade I had been pleating into a fan as Ann came through the curtains wearing a beaver coat and a wide-brimmed black hat dipped at the front. She pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

  “Miss Thorn will enjoy talking to Charles alone-you know how these spinsters are-and I felt like going out to lunch today.” She hesitated. “Would you like to join me?”

  I explained about meeting Bunty and her husband’s secretary and suggested that Ann join us. She seemed hesitant. “Oh, do come.” I propelled her across The Square. “We may bump into my husband and Freddy and get treated to drinks.”

  I pushed open the heavy oak and glass door of the pub.

  “They’re quite close, aren’t they?” said Ann, following.

  Same old song. “Mmmm.” I gave a secure married laugh. “Isn’t that Bunty Wiseman over there in the corner, next to the man in the raincoat?” It wasn’t. And I couldn’t see Ben and Freddy among the beer swillers at the bar or among the diners seated at the benches against the walls. The stout woman presiding at the bar, pulling on the brass tap handles and handing over foaming tankards, had pale gold hair and wore rhinestone-studded glasses. Mrs. Hanover (as I heard her addressed) spoke with meticulous poshness. A kind but crisp smile was affixed to her lips.

  “That’s the last one for you, Mr. Daffy.”

  Quite right, Mrs. Hanover. Having escaped death by inches, it behooved the real estate agent not to walk blithely under a bus. But when Mr. Vernon Daffy tur
ned his curly black head and his ripe olive eyes in my general direction, my smile faded. I had no desire to buy a piece of residential property just to get rid of him. Spying a corner staircase, I suggested to Ann that we avail ourselves of it and look for our luncheon associates on the second floor. She nodded, and we circumvented a group of plaid-suited young men who were attempting to gulp down pints of bitter without dislodging the cardboard coasters balanced on their heads.

  Snatches of song followed us up the poorly lit, steeply pitched stairs. At the top was a door. I had opened it a wedge when Ann said from the rear, “Ellie, I think that room is reserved for private parties.”

  Too late I saw the little brass plate that said Reserved. The scent of cut flowers wafted toward me and inside I saw rows of women seated at white-clothed tables, sipping from sherry glasses. Chairs scuffed back; all persons were now standing. A voice commandeered the floor, but the speaker was out of my sight.

  Ann tugged at my arm, but somehow (it was becoming a habit) I had lost a shoe. I fumbled around for it with my foot, keeping my mutterings low and my ear to the door. Terrible, isn’t it, but remember I am the sort who reads other people’s shopping lists while making myself at home in their cars.

  “Ladies, dear friends, our monthly meeting having been called to order, I wish to address a subject of concern. Yes, Mrs. Beatrix Woolpack has suffered a major nervous breakdown. She collapsed last evening while attending the Amateur Symphony. She has been admitted to The Peerless Nursing Home, where I understand she has placed herself unreservedly in the good Dr. Bordeaux’s hands. In view of Mrs. Woolpack’s current standing in the club, Correspondence will confine itself to sending a card with printed good wishes. No visitors are permitted.”

  A buzzing from the assemblage.

  Ann handed me my shoe and I followed her downstairs, not wanting to linger any longer. Poor Mrs. Woolpack. I felt I knew her through her car. Stumbling down the last step, I took a couple of seconds to realise that the voice hailing me above the babble was Mrs. Lionel Wiseman’s.

  Sidney had whipped Bunty’s hair into a blond cloud, the kind which must present doorway difficulties. “Sorry we’re late! Ellie, you remember Teddy?” Bunty tapped her tweedy middle-aged companion on the head. “And I see you’ve brought Ann.”

  Perhaps she didn’t mean to sound the way she did. Her eyes slid over Ann, who gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “Let’s bag a table over by the window, as far as possible from that creep in the raincoat. Yes, over there-doesn’t he give you the willies?”

  The man was standing in front of the Gents. He had a beer glass tilted up to his face. My heart skipped some beats, then put them back in the wrong place. Could he be the man I had seen before? No, Ellie, don’t be paranoid. England is a country of raincoats.

  “Is this hunky-dory?” Bunty patted the floral cushion in the window nook overlooking The Square.

  “Very nice,” said Ann. There was a slight draft, but not from the window.

  The Raincoat Man opened a box of matches, tumbled the contents into his palm and began snapping them in half, a stick at a time, dropping them on the floor.

  Teddy removed her gloves and adjusted one of the combs poked at random through her bundled-up hair. She looked a safe sort of secretary for a married man. When she spoke, her voice was as beige as the rest of her. But to be fair, Bunty’s vivacity probably did that to all of us. Certainly Ann looked more wan than usual.

  “This is nice, Mrs. Haskell,” Teddy’s projecting teeth gave a slight catch to her speech. “I enjoyed your wedding. Please tell your husband I liked the little chicken tarts.”

  “He’ll be delighted.” This sort of chitchat was the real world. I stopped eyeing the Raincoat Man.

  “Teddy,” I said. “Is that short for Theodora?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are you Lady Theodora Peerless?” The mysterious Theodora who had grown up in the mansion that was now a nursing home? The Theodora on whom Miss Gladys Thorn was to bestow the music found in an old trunk?

  She was easing out of the tweedy coat, revealing a hand-knitted oatmeal cardigan and twin strands of pearls. Pink plastic ones.

  “Mrs. Haskell-”

  “Ellie, please.”

  “All right, Ellie, I’m Teddy to my friends. I gave up the title years ago, along with other unimportant things.”

  “To make it short and sweet,” Bunty interrupted cheerfully, “Teddy said balls to the ancestral home when Daddy, the earl, left all the lolly to unlovely brother Walter, who offered in turn to give her two quid a week pocket money.”

  “You exaggerate, Bunty,” scolded Teddy gently.

  “Okay. So it was twelve pounds a week. Walter is as miserly a worm as my first hubby, but things turn out for the best.” Bunty grinned at me. “Teddy is devoted to Li. Although I have to admit (don’t I, Teddy?), the reason I first decided to be chums with the other woman in my sugar’s life was to make damn sure that when they worked late at the office, they kept the lights on. I may not look too smart but, believe me, I learned my sums from hubby number one.”

  Ann clearly didn’t like this baring of the soul. She touched her dark hair and said, “Mr. Wiseman’s professional reputation has always been above reproach.”

  The Raincoat Man was going into the Gents.

  Bunty crossed shapely legs. “Listen, pals, when the likes of me has angled long and hard to reel in a rich and able-bodied husband, he has to be kept safe from those who might also want to stick a hook in his neck. And Teddy here is a very fascinating woman.”

  “I do have a way with writs.” Teddy smiled. It gave her face an elusive charm.

  Reaching across the table, Bunty flipped at a strand of my hair. “You look the romantic sort, Ellie, a bit like Lady Godiva with clothes. Don’t you think Teddy has lived?”

  Ann looked at me, I looked at Teddy, who was her monochromatic self again. But Bunty was off and running.

  “So what does brother Walter do after he gets to be earl? He sells the estate to Dr. Bordeaux (who rents it out for a while, then turns it into a rest home) and whips off to the south of France with his ugly wife, Wanda-the woman who asked Teddy if it wasn’t nifty never again having to worry about being married for money.”

  A leaden pause. The three of them might not be deliberately avoiding my eyes, they might not be wondering if Ben had married me for my money, they might… simply be looking around, thinking what a pleasant room this was.

  “Are we ladies ready?” Mrs. Hanover spoke from beside us.

  I ordered a Gorgonzola sandwich.

  “Ughh!” said Bunty.

  Exactly. I wouldn’t be tempted to eat it. While the others decided, I studied the horse brasses on the walls.

  “And so,” Bunty continued, “Teddy was thrust out in the world with her suitcase and typing diploma and if that isn’t ’orrible enough”-she stopped and drummed her fingers on the table-“she was the victim of blighted love.”

  “It wasn’t as exciting as that.” Teddy’s voice was flatter than usual. “Let’s hear about a romance with a happy ending. Ellie, how did you and your husband meet?”

  They were all looking at me expectantly. “We were introduced by a friend.”

  “Oh,” Bunty shrugged. “I thought it was something more dramatic than that. Teddy, you knew your bloke from the cradle, didn’t you?”

  Silence. Again, that touch of a smile on Teddy’s face.

  “A son of friends of the family, that’s who he was,” Bunty said, answering her own question. “Interestingly older…” Mrs. Hanover returned and began sliding plates onto the table. “All those long summer days ogling young Galahad in his cricket pads and romping through the buttercups, and what does he do but grow up and marry another.”

  Bunty slipped an arm around Teddy’s shoulders. “Final scene is a real tearjerker. They met again-in another city-years later, shortly before she came to work for Li. Love flared anew, but in the way of this wicked world he was still married,
and they were forced to crush their passion underfoot, knowing they were doomed never to be together on this earth.”

  A hush. Ann’s lips parted and I had this terrible fear that she would start singing again. “How terribly sad.”

  “Isn’t it,” enthused Bunty. “Just like something out of one of Edwin Digby’s books.”

  This time the hush went pit deep. I couldn’t look at Teddy. What woman wants her grand passion likened to the works of anyone less than Shakespeare? Surprisingly, the atmosphere at our table seemed to be affecting the rest of the room. People stopped talking and stared toward the window.

  Bunty giggled. “Don’t all be surprised that I’m literary minded. Ex-chorus girls do read, you know. I even like poetry that doesn’t rhyme.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man lean forward in his chair and twitch back the curtain. We weren’t the cause of interest after all. Something was happening in The Square.

  As I started to turn, Bunty tootled her fingers down the back of my hand. “Li spotted me from the balcony when I was in Music Maestro, Please.” She fanned her face. “He steamed up the thee-ater so much the radiators had to be turned off. All things considered, I don’t think I could have done better. He’s good to look at, I have a lovely house, spiffy clothes, and jewels.” She tucked two fingers under her neckline and pulled out a bauble. “Li grumbles sometimes that I’m going to ruin him, but he always manages to pull something out of his pocket. Besides, like Teddy here, I have a job. A pretty classy job.”

  No one answered.

  Mrs. Hanover had come out from behind the bar, and other patrons were converging toward the windows. There were exclamations of “What in the world?” And from outside came shouts, feet pounding.

  Bunty peered around and shrugged. “I’m a teacher. Aerobics. Every Thursday afternoon at the church hall, St. Anselm’s, which is superconvenient for you, Ellie. Didn’t you just lose a lot of weight?”

  I hate that expression. I hadn’t misplaced part of me. I’d starved it to death an ounce at a time.

  Now the patrons of The Dark Horse were piling toward the glass doors. All except the Raincoat Man; he was standing at the bar, his back to me… and he was so familiar in that stance that I couldn’t move, even when I heard someone ask whether Lloyd’s Bank had been burgled. I shut my eyes and saw myself looking into our drawing room in the middle of the night and seeing a man in front of the fireplace.