The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

  “Hey, you-Mrs! You wanting a gardener?”

  I stood there perched on the top of that cliff, like a bride on a cake, within easy shoving distance of certain death. Alone with the elements and the Raincoat Man.

  “I’m… not sure.” As he drew closer, I could count the pores in his skin. But it was his black-currant eyes that goaded me to action. Diving down, I grabbed an armload of snow, clamped it into a ball, and flung it. Then I stepped out of my boots and was off at a skidding run, through the gates and past the cottage. The thought did traverse my mind that should he go over the cliff edge, I might be guilty of something-murder, manslaughter, or at the very least, killing a man in self-defense. One doesn’t want that sort of thing on one’s resumé, but neither did I want the Raincoat Man so quickly recovered he could crawl at a fast pace after me. Thank God for the wind. It pushed from behind, forcing my legs along at unnatural speed. The snow was coming down half-heartedly as I passed the stables and barrelled into the courtyard.

  But I wasn’t home free yet. I heard a noise. Something, someone came moving behind me. A scream began percolating in my throat. And then, in a snap, I realized I was a fool. The Raincoat Man couldn’t have leapt over our high fence and sprinted here ahead of me. Either Freddy had returned from Abigail’s and hoped to cadge lunch or Tobias had something similar in mind. Ah yes-here he was, creeping out from behind the rainbarrel, snow glistening on his fur.

  “There, there,” I crooned, as Tobias landed, hissing, spraying snowflakes, in my arms. “Poor baby, you got locked out, too. How about some nice Ovaltine?” My panic was gone. Stuffing him inside my coat, I rubbed my frozen feet against each other, took a step forward and saw the figure standing by the back door.

  Not the Raincoat Man. This was an elderly female person in a grey flannel coat and a damson knitted beret dragged down over her ears. She was small and the black holdall she grasped with both hands, the way Roxie did, was pathetically big.

  “Mrs. Bentley Thomas Haskell?” Her feet, laced up in brogues, were pressed tightly together; wisps of dust-colored hair escaped from the beret. Who was she, an elderly orphan? A terrible thought occurred.

  “Yes, I am Mrs. Haskell. Do please come in and have a hot drink. I feel awful-your coming all this way in the cold and snow. You have every right to be furious, but what with one thing and another, I quite forgot to take the advert for household help out of the paper and we have already hired someone.” Tobias slithered down to my waist and jumped to the ground, as I stabbed the key into the lock. The woman in the beret hadn’t opened her mouth. Perhaps it was frozen shut. “I do hope you haven’t been standing here too long.” I pushed open the door. “As soon as I have heated you some soup and fixed you a sandwich, I will make some phone calls on your behalf.” I stepped aside to let her enter. “Or better still, I will talk to my cousin Freddy (my husband is in London) and see if there are any vacancies in the kitchen of our new restaurant; the work wouldn’t be too arduous.” I stopped and, when she didn’t budge, added desperately, “This way, please.”

  “Did you say our restaurant?” the woman asked in a tight little voice.

  “Yes, I-”

  “Do you work there?”

  “Well, if by that you mean-”

  “I see. In other words, the decision doesn’t rest with you, and naturally I won’t wish to be a burden.”

  Frostbite of the brain, and we knew who to blame. Me.

  “Do please come into the kitchen and I will get the kettle going.”

  Still she hesitated. Tobias was lending his howls to the wind. Snow blew around the woman in silver eddies. She clutched the holdall tighter.

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot set a foot over your threshold until I’m given the assurance I am welcome.” She looked down at her hands. “Certainly I’m used to hard work and it’s always been in my nature to keep the peace, but as we both know, there are a lot of very nasty jokes about mothers-in-law and it’s not as though you and I are likely to have anything in common, saving my dear boy, and from what you say”-she tugged open the bag and dragged out a hanky-“he’s off in London, not here to greet his mum.”

  15

  … “May we assume, Ellie, that you gave Mr. Edwin Digby and this Raincoat Man scarcely a thought during the course of the next few hours?” Hyacinth flipped a page of the green notebook…

  Having my mother-in-law materialise on my doorstep brought home to me the realisation that for weeks I had been harbouring the nasty suspicion that she was dead. Murdered (by the predatory Mrs. Jarrod-I did not want my children to inherit a tendency to homicide from their paternal grandpa) and buried somewhere dark and slimy, waiting to be dug up by carefree little children with buckets and spades. I should have been overjoyed at seeing her. Instead, I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t fortified for the interview by impeccable grooming, say an ascot, hat, lipstick, and fake fingernails. I had pictured this scene so often in my mind. My teary smile and outstretched arms had totally disarmed the imaginary Mrs. Haskell: “My son loves you, Ellie, so I love you, too.” The message I read in the eyes of the real woman was, What sins have I committed that my only son marries a barefoot woman in a three-piece man’s suit with hair like seaweed who mistakes me for a charwoman?

  As we stood by the Aga cooker in the kitchen, I pecked at her cheek and, to her credit, she flinched only a little. Now what? I took her bag and set it on the counter.

  “Ben’s in London on business to do with his cookery book. He’ll be back this evening.” I squared the bag so it wouldn’t fall over the edge of the counter.

  “That’s good.” Her arms hung lank at her sides.

  I picked up the kettle. “Ben has been so concerned about you, as have I.” I sounded pitifully like an amateur actress who’s been told to project. “He was relieved to hear that you had written to Paris, but I know he kept hoping for a letter.” Should I modify that statement to delete any hint of criticism?

  “Naturally I wanted to write to my only son. But he would have had to show the letters to you and it didn’t seem fair to drag you into our family problems.” She looked the room up and down. “This is a nice place you’ve got here, Eleanor. Some holy pictures on the walls and you could make it a lot more homey.” She sized up the copper pans and hanging plants.

  “Thank you.” I reached into a cupboard, took a rubber band from a jar and dragged my hair back. Panic struck. What did I call her? Mother? Magdalene? “Do, please, sit down.” Relax, Ellie! And will you stop talking to her as though you still think she is a down-on-her-luck applicant for a job! I shoved the kettle under the tap. Water splattered all over my waistcoat. Why couldn’t I be warm and easy like Bunty? Or serenely gracious like Ann Delacorte? If Dorcas had been here, my inadequacies would have been less apparent. She would have slipped off my mother-in-law’s coat, chafed her small hands, popped her teeny feet onto a stool, talking all the while-“I say, Mum, frightfully ripping this! By the time our man Bentley gets home tonight, you and I will be thick as soup!”

  Mrs. Haskell had taken off her coat and was neatly folding it over a chair. I tried to flex my face into the type women want their sons to marry. It was hopeless. Some basic ingredient is missing from my personality. I cannot ease gracefully into new relationships. And to make excuses for myself, this situation was hampered by my being exactly what Mrs. Haskell had expected, and she being nothing like the made-to-order mum I had conjured up. Death had endeared her to me, and I was going to have some trouble adjusting.

  She pulled a chair away from the big scrubbed table, peered down at it, brushed it off with a glove, and sat. “Don’t let me keep you from what you normally do at this time of day, Eleanor.”

  “You’re not keeping me from a thing. By the way, although it really doesn’t matter a scrap, my name-full name-is Giselle. However, if you prefer Eleanor, by all means-”

  “I don’t like one better than the other.” She folded her hands and pressed her feet together. “But I don’t feel I can take
the liberty of calling you Ellie.”

  “Oh, please do!” I plopped the kettle on the stove, soaking it and me.

  She watched me sopping up with a teacloth. “I won’t, if you don’t mind-it’s a bit too much like Eli, and-”

  “Yes?” Now we’re coming to it, I thought.

  “Ellie’s a frilly sort of name and you don’t look that sort.”

  I restrained myself. This was not a propitious moment to reveal that I had locked myself out of the house as a direct result of a marital spat or that I had changed out of my wet clothes in the home of a strange man.

  She rubbed her hands together and pulled down her beret, making her ears stick out. “Well then, Giselle, you won’t want to call me Mother, so better make it Magdalene.” Before I could answer, she observed, “I hadn’t realised this house was so secluded.”

  I was about to stutter an apology for the location of Merlin’s Court when she added:

  “Nice.”

  At last-after all those minutes-my mother-in-law had paid me a compliment. My heart sang. The kettle gave a shrill echo, its metal cap going into a bobbling dance as steam clouded the air. I dropped a couple of tea bags into the earthenware pot (the silver one wouldn’t be nearly as friendly) and sloshed on the scalding water.

  “Don’t think me interfering, Giselle, but did you forget to warm the pot?”

  I counted to ten. The temptation to spit on the tea bags, floating like the bloated bodies of string-tailed rats, was strong. “I’ll pitch this and start again.”

  “You don’t find loose tea more economical?”

  “I’ll get some in.”

  “I hope you understand, Giselle, I am not criticising. My landing on you like this has you at sixes and sevens. Giselle, the tea cloth, is it about to singe?”

  “Oh!” I fought to look casual. “I was just letting it dry.” The smoldering cloth flew from my hand into the sink.

  Magdalene moved her chair. “Ben will have told you I always vowed that even should something happen to Eli I’d never land myself on him. The thought of being a burden… but of course it’s always easy to talk. After forty years of marriage and always doing my wifely duty, I never guessed that Mrs. Jarrod would happen to Eli.” Her voice faded.

  “No, of course not.” Put the pot down, Ellie, an inner voice insisted; go over and put your arms around her.

  “You mustn’t feel that way,” I said, feet still cemented down. “Ben and I will love having you here; although my guess is that when your husband knows you are here, he will be down immediately on the milk train.”

  “I don’t think so.” She took the cup of tea I held out to her. “I imagine, Giselle, that you and Ben do rattle around in this big house, but there won’t always be just the two of you.” Over the rim of her cup she pointedly appraised my middle.

  “Ben and I want children at the appropriate time.” My intent was to sound cheerfully optimistic, but due to my sucked-in breath, the words pinged out hard as tiddlywinks.

  Magdalene’s lips drew together. “That’s your Protestant thinking. I left motherhood in higher hands.”

  My hands shook as I poured soup into a saucepan. My mother-in-law unbuttoned her cardigan and wrapped it around herself. I’d have to turn up the heat. If the soup would only boil… if Freddy would only come knocking at the door. What I needed was five minutes alone to pace up and down and sink my psyche into the role of good daughter-in-law. If I could only get her to tell me where she had been these last five months.

  “I expect, Giselle, that Ben has told you I had him late in life and nearly died three times when he was born. Father Padinsky was a new priest then, and I’ll never forget him getting in such a fluster, checking with the bishop on how many times he could administer the Last Sacrament.”

  Warmth crept through me. This woman had suffered to bring the man I loved into the world.

  “Giselle, the soup is boiling over, but don’t worry. I don’t like tomato, or rather it doesn’t like me.” She shifted in her chair and I opened up the fridge to cool off and get out stuff for ham sandwiches.

  “I don’t suppose you read old medical journals, but I was written up in every one of them for months, years. I’ll have to show you the scrapbook I’ve been keeping for the grandchildren, when-if-I return to Tottenham.” She tweaked at her cardigan sleeves. “Did you say Ben went to London to see Eli?”

  “No, to see his publisher.”

  “Ben’s father not talking to him does complicate things, no getting around that.” Now surely she would tell me where she had been all this time. I slid the sandwiches and teapot onto the table and sat down. I had forgotten the cosy, but perhaps Magdalene wouldn’t notice.

  “And when will my boy be home?”

  “About seven.”

  “Hours to go.” She said it; I thought it.

  “Giselle, did you mean to leave off the cosy? It’s a bit worn, isn’t it? I’ll have to crochet you a new one. After all, I have to do something to make up for landing on your doorstep, asking to be taken in like a stray cat.”

  “You mustn’t think like that.” My eyes crept to the clock.

  “That cat-the one that followed you in here, it is yours, I suppose?”

  I’d read in Inlaws and Outlaws that the ideal length of a maternal visit was a fortnight. Plenty of time to do all sorts of fun things like climb the walls a fingernail at a time.

  “Tobias? I promise, he won’t bother you.”

  Magdalene opened up the sandwich on her plate and rearranged the sliced ham. “I’m the visitor, making me the one not to bother anyone. Cats do affect my breathing, but I wouldn’t want you to get rid of him on my account. You’ll have to do so soon enough, won’t you, when that first baby finally puts in an appearance.”

  “I-”

  “There I go, interfering when I swore I wouldn’t. What I have to remember is you’re a different generation. Ben was my life’s work, not a hobby.”

  I counted to thirty. Ben must not come home, weary from a hard day of lunching with Mr. A. E. Brady, to discover I had wasted no time in having words with his mother. Shoulders hunched as she sipped her tea, she looked like a victim of daughter-in-law abuse. And so she was. I got up from the table, went into the pantry, came out with a hot water bottle, filled it from the still steaming kettle, tightened the stopper, and wrapped it in a wad of tea towels.

  “What are you doing, Giselle?”

  “Seeing that you don’t catch pneumonia.” I plucked a cardigan off the hook in the alcove by the back door. Drat! It had a hole in one elbow. “We have a party planned for Friday to celebrate the opening of Ben’s restaurant, and you must be in top form as guest of honour. Off with those shoes! We won’t bother about your stockings. They can steam dry. There!” I planted her dinky feet on the tea towel hummock. “How’s that?”

  “A bit too hot, but-”

  “No buts; pop on Ben’s cardigan over your own.”

  “You knitted it for him, I suppose. Never mind, I’ll give you some lessons on ribbing.” Her back was curved and her arms were thin as drumsticks.

  “Drink your tea, Magdalene, eat a biscuit, and then I want to know where you have been hiding yourself since the twenty-seventh of November.”

  “Well, perhaps a small one, if Ben made them. I can see you are the sort of strong-minded young woman in vogue nowadays. Of course that was clear from the start. Ben couldn’t have wanted to be married in the Church of England. It wasn’t as though his father and I hadn’t given him enough faiths to choose from. It may come as a surprise to you, but religion was never a difficulty for Eli and me. There’s a lot to be said for the convenience, when husband and wife each have a different day of rest. Nothing was a major problem until…”

  “Until Mrs. Jarrod?” I poured more tea.

  “A bit before her, I suppose.” My mother-in-law tucked the beret down over her ears. “I blamed it on the rift with Ben. I don’t know, but I came over very nervy last summer. I kept getting this nasty
feeling that I was being watched.” Magdalene looked through me with her sparrow eyes. “I wasn’t safe anywhere, even in the house, with the curtains pulled. Least that’s what I thought. Dr. Padinsky (brother of my parish priest) even had to give me tablets to help me sleep.”

  “Did they help?”

  “Yes… and no.” Her cheeks went pink. “I’m not like you young people; I don’t like discussing intimate matters, but to wrap it up as cleanly as possible-a wife falling asleep the minute she gets into bed and staying that way all night long doesn’t help keep the night fires burning.”

  “Quite.” I crossed my legs, decided doing so emphasised the masculinity of the pin-striped suit, uncrossed them and crossed my arms.

  “So I don’t entirely blame Eli for succumbing when that woman came flaunting her pickled herring at him. What nearly killed me was him telling me there was nothing going on. All the while standing there”-her lips drew in so tight I thought they would pop-“with that smile spread all over his face.”

  “I would have spread him out the nearest window! Aren’t we talking about the man who cannot break his vow never to speak to his son again because truth is all?”

  Magdalene seemed to forget whose side she was on-hers or his. There was pride in her voice as she said crisply, “Never one lie from Eli in all those married years. If a customer asked were the oranges soft, he’d say, ‘Yes! You want tough oranges? Go to the supermarket.’ You won’t understand, Giselle, but the carrying on I could have forgiven, if he’d only been a man about it. I’d have fetched Father Padinsky round to give Eli a dressing down and have moved into the boxroom until he came to his senses.”