The Widows Club

by Dorothy Cannell

11:00 A.M . I shushed Tobias out into the garden and warned him that if he tried to reenter I would guillotine him. Back on with the apron and head scarf. A glance at the statues on the window sill was a comfort, knowing that the saints were with me.

  12:35 P.M . I took time for a tea break and surveyed the kitchen. A volcano had erupted in its midst, and for what? The batter that was to produce six dozen choux pastry puffs had produced seventeen lone items. Skimpy ones at that.

  Footsteps on the stairs! I quailed. Had Magdalene dozed off? If this was Ben, the sight could kill him.

  Whooh! False alarm. It was Magdalene. She surveyed the whitened floor and the working surface which would have to be chiselled clean, but didn’t say an unkind word. Would it, I wondered, be easier to like her if she weren’t my mother-in-law?

  12:45 P.M . Into the oven with the cheese straws. They looked like worms, but that didn’t mean they would taste like them. Hark! The front doorbell. Bunty at long last. What might it take to bribe her into helping me roll out pastry? I skidded across the flagstones in the hall. Was it futile to hope I could contain the flour upon my person, so as to prevent its absorption into the air? Another peal of the bell. Were Bunty’s arms so full of boxes and bags that she had to lean on the bell with her nose?

  I must have looked like an overworked pirate as I flung open the door. But it wasn’t Bunty on the step. Mrs. Amelia Bottomly, gargantuan in cape and deerstalker hat, stood there. She was flanked by the beaming ladies of the Historical Society.

  “Hello, hello! Dear Mrs. Haskell!”

  “What… what a lovely surprise!” I gasped

  “It shouldn’t be. I telephoned last weekend and your charwoman assured me she would convey the message. She did, I trust?”

  “Oh, certainly!” I brushed at my apron and the air whitened. Roxie had conveyed that message when my brain was all stuffed up from my cold. I had never given another thought to this invasion.

  “Splendid.” Mrs. Bottomly surged inward and onward. At the lift of a ring-laden hand, a swarm of angora berets and assorted hats followed suit. The hall buzzed. I was surrounded by cameras, notebooks, and pencils. Could I throw my apron over my face and refuse to come out? I did not have time for this. I had Ben to consider. Still, this calamity might not be without its silver lining. It did, after all, provide me with a viable excuse for not spending the afternoon with my recovering husband.

  I stepped backward to avoid being trampled, then ducked, so as not to be clumped in the face by a free-swinging Kodak camera.

  “Super to have you all here.” I gave the scarf a pat as though it were the latest thing in headwear for the mistress of the manor. “But there is one smallish problem.”

  “Yes?” A dozen pairs of eyes fixed themselves on me. It occurred to me that I might be in danger of being lynched if I failed to let the tour proceed.

  “My husband Bentley is ill in bed, so I would appreciate your being as quiet as possible while taking a peek into the rooms on the second floor. I will show you which door not to enter, and-”

  “I wonder if they share a bedroom?” came a voice from the foreground.

  “What about the dungeons?” demanded an anemic-looking woman in the accusing voice of a reporter.

  “Sorry. Dungeons are one medieval convenience we don’t have at Merlin’s Court.”

  A rustle of disappointment. Two women lifted eyebrows in unison, tightened their coat belts, and stalked out. But as they exited, two others came in. One was Miss Gladys Thorn.

  “Mrs. Haskell, such a thrill! I have been unable to sleep for nights.” Miss Thorn went into one of her curtsy dips. I also spied Mrs. Hanover from the pub and Froggy-pardon me, Shirley-Daffy, wife of Vernon Daffy, estate agent. Was she here at his behest, in hope of persuading us to sell?

  The group broke into twos and threes and wandered around the hall as though it were a museum. Every table leg was respectfully surveyed. Mrs. Bottomly stage-whispered in my ear. “Decent of Millie Parsnip to accompany Shirley Daffy, don’t you agree?”

  “Frightfully.” Goodness knows why, but agreement was so much speedier than questions, and speed was vital when… the cheese straws! They would be burned to a crisp!

  “One has to applaud Shirley for staying in the mainstream at a time like this.”

  Mrs. Bottomly drew me toward the bannister and Rufus, the suit of armour.

  “Mrs. Haskell, you did read in Tuesday’s Daily Spokesman that Mr. Daffy has disappeared? He went out jogging and hasn’t been seen since.”

  “I didn’t know.” An awful phrase popped into my mind-third time’s the charm. Dreadful! Poor Mr. and Mrs. Daffy! Even more dreadful was the realisation that at that moment, I was marginally more concerned about my cheese straws than a neighborhood tragedy. If they were burnt, could I curry them?

  1:08 P.M . I sped down the stairs after breaking the news to Magdalene that a couple of dozen women were rampaging through the house. All she said was, “We all live our lives differently, Giselle.” Ben, thank the blessed saints on the windowsill, was still asleep.

  “Do continue to make yourselves at home, ladies. I have taped a piece of paper to the door of my husband’s bedroom. And the kitchen is also off-limits because I am whipping up a few cakes for tea… in case the vicar should chance to call.”

  I slipped around Millicent Parsnip and past Mrs. Daffy. Mrs. Bottomly was posing for a photo, her arm around Rufus. I hoped she wouldn’t crush him.

  1:13 P.M . Bless Bunty’s blond head. She had let herself in the back door. Dressed in a leopard-skin waistcoat over a black leotard, she was shaking cheese straws off their baking trays onto cooling racks. I wondered if I should throw her an apron as a hint she was welcome to stay on for the next couple of hundred stuffed grape leaves?

  “Hey, El, this is kinda fun. And Li will be so proud of me; he’s got such lofty ideals about helping the oppressed!”

  1:35 P.M . All that exuberance had me fooled. Bunty wasn’t any better at this than I was. So far, we had sixteen spinach balls the size of golf balls, thirteen the size of walnuts, and forty-one pellets.

  2:00 P.M . Bunty and I were discussing where we might locate a suitable pop-up cake for my role in the Aerobics Follies, when a voice caroled, “Don’t mind me. I couldn’t resist a peek at the kitchen and… my, isn’t it…”

  2:01 P.M . Shaking with flour and fury, I marched into the hall to speak to the Historical Society. Typically, my timing was off. The women were all clustered around Rufus. All, that is, except Millicent Parsnip, who stood in the middle of the Turkish rug, saying, “Smile!”

  The camera flashed. There were the usual complaints. “I wasn’t ready!” “My mouth was open, I’ll look like I was catching flies!”

  I tiptoed behind Mrs. Parsnip, lest I be invited to be in the photo. To subdue my frustrations, I tapped on the ledge of the niche by the drawing room door. The Egyptian urn that once reposed there had been replaced by a statue of an unfamiliar saint who looked nearly as unhappy as I.

  “Everyone set?”

  A pang, as I remembered Dorcas taking our wedding pictures. Then, a gasp-I’m not sure if it was mine-widening to a ripple of consternation. Mrs. Bottomly swayed, caught at a bannister rung and, amid screeches of alarm, disappeared, taking with her a section of the floor, Rufus, and the two closest ladies aboard.

  It was a distressing moment. The scramble of the rest of the party to terra firma! The shrieks of distress. And the sound I dreaded most-Magdalene, calling over the railing, “Giselle, would you mind asking your friends to be a little more quiet? My boy is trying to sleep.”

  It isn’t enough to say I was numb. I was standing outside myself, watching this other Ellie Haskell go straddling over the legs of those women who were prone on the floor.

  “Excuse me, please!” said this Ellie as she joined the braver members of the Historical Society in staring down into a dark void approximately three foot square-or to simplify, the size of one flagstone. A whisper stirred through the group, but there
was silence from the grave… I mean, below. The other Ellie opened her mouth, then closed it. A section of flagstone was sliding out from the under belly of the floor. Horribly, instantly, there was no more void. The silence that Magdalene had urged now engulfed the hall.

  I was stunned, but my extensive reading in the field of gothic novels was decidedly in my favour. I sensed what sort of gadget I was up against and summoned up a mental picture of where the ladies of the Historical Society were standing at the crucial moment. I had been alongside this niche, my hand on the stone ledge. Repositioning myself exactly, I thought back… yes, my eyes had been on Mrs. Bottomly as she clutched the bannister, the second bannister up… The loose bannister! The one first brought to my attention by Mr. Vernon Daffy at the wedding reception and the source of many Roxie complaints. But surely the bannister of itself could not be the catastrophic catalyst? Were it so, the hall floor would be forever dropping out from under. No, the bannister had to work in conjunction with something else. My fingers clenched the stone ledge; I felt a give and in that moment had the answer.

  “Mrs. Parsnip,” I called across the room, “would you kindly twist the second bannister from the bottom?” As she did so, I depressed the ledge. Seconds later, a ripple of wonderment washed through the hushed group. The void had reappeared.

  Millicent Parsnip cupped her hands around her mouth and inquired tremulously, “Anyone down there?”

  Silence. Then a flicker of hope. Way, way down in the blackness we could see a tiny splurt of light. Could it be…? Yes. Someone had struck a match; voices set up a cheer.

  “We’re alive! Uninjured! Not even a dent in the armour!” There was a sound of pulleys churning, and the tiny flame glowed brighter. The survivors were being elevated to the surface.

  “And,” boomed Amelia Bottomly triumphantly, “we have found the dungeons!”

  * * *

  There were those in the group who made it plain they were convinced I had known all along about the secret entrance. But they managed to work off their irritation by discussing what a vast improvement ours was on the oubliettes of old, which provided no safety net when the floor dropped out beneath the hapless victims at the whim of any sheriff, duke, or king who didn’t have better things to do with his time.

  “Come now, Mrs. Haskell,” Mrs. Bottomly’s eyes were like suction cups. “There has to be more than twiddling a bannister. I swear I cannot leave this house until you tell me the nature of the Open Sesame.”

  Were she to carry out this threat I could have ended up with her in one turret and Magdalene in another. But something-call it stubbornness-stopped me from assuaging her curiosity.

  “I’m sorry, but where would be the fun of having something like this if its secrets weren’t-secret?”

  The chins quivered in disappointment, but Mrs. Bottomly made a valiant effort. “Never mind, Mrs. Haskell. Merlin’s Court will still be added to the Historical Society’s permanent register-meaning, we will be back next year.”

  I was tempted to suggest that if they left right now they wouldn’t have to rush.

  As the door closed on the last beret, I was torn between fatigue and elation. I should have realised that local legend spoke true. Wilfred Grantham had been too much of a purist to build his castle without that most basic of requirements, a dungeon. Had everything been different, I would have raced upstairs to tell Ben. As I passed the telephone, I even felt an urge to ring up Mr. Edwin Digby. He might be interested; after all, he had featured a dungeon in that book of his about Ethel the pickler, and he had a link with the mad-hatter doings of Wilfred Grantham, on account of the Misses Lucretia and Lavinia.

  4:27 P.M. I returned to that chamber of horrors, the kitchen. The ticking inside my head was getting louder. No Bunty. Her apron was discarded on a chair; scrawled in the floured surface of the table was Gone home to slip into something comfortable-a bubble bath. Well, this explained why she hadn’t come out into the hall to see what all the commotion was about. But she had finished the last batch of chicken tarts. They looked nice, even the ones we had to make out of tuna because we ran out of jellied breast. Everything else looked subtly nongourmet, but the refrigerator was now full.

  Too full. As I brushed past it, I heard a crash from within. The top shelf had collapsed. Hours of work reduced to pâté.

  I wanted to kick off my shoes, lie on the floor, and turn up my toes, but there was a knock on the garden door. Freddy come to beg forgiveness? Thoughts of pressing his face inside the fridge revived me somewhat.

  But the man on the step was short and stout with deep brown eyes, a bald spot, and a fluffy white beard. Two suitcases and a yippy little dog were by his feet.

  “Ellie, is my son dead?”

  His question revived me like a slap in the face. My father-in-law, Elijah Haskell, threw his arms around me and we both began to sob.

  “No, Ben’s much better.” I wiped my face dry and stepped aside to let him and his dog enter. Tobias wouldn’t be pleased about the dog, but we are all called upon to adjust.

  “My wife, she’s bunked off to another convent?”

  “No, but…”

  “Then, what’s to cry about?” Poppa asked over the dog’s yapping. His eyes took in the culinary turmoil. “This is a nice place you’ve got here. A Star of David on the wall, and it could look like home.” He put his luggage down and began unwinding the little dog. “Take me to see my family, Ellie, then tell Poppa how to help.”

  Now was the time to inquire if Ben’s culinary skill was a genetic fluke, but I was put off my stroke by his suitcases. They didn’t look the weekend sort.

  I gave a casual, hiccuping laugh and found myself thinking of the handmade furniture in the flat in Tottenham.

  “You can make me a cake, Poppa, one I can leap out of on the night of Bunty Wiseman’s Aerobic Follies at the church hall.”

  From the Files of

  The Widows Club

  MEMO: From Executive Board to Mrs. Geraldine Stropp, Correspondence Chairwoman.

  Thursday, 30th April

  Please arrange to have two dozen yellow roses sent on Saturday, 2nd May, to Mrs. Ellie Haskell of Merlin’s Court, Cliff Road, Chitterton Fells. Card to be enclosed. Message to read: “Sorry.” No sender. Please be sure and bill Treasury before the first of the month.

  NOTE: This action was not presented to the members at large. It is a direct order from The Founder.

  18

  … “My poor Ellie, what an agonising day! If only we had known… known you!” Primrose sighed. “We could have helped by sending Butler over to make little sausages on sticks. You would have been pleased to do so, would you not, Butler?”

  The man removed plates scattered with toasted teacake crumbs. “Certainly, madam. Although not as much as I h’enjoyed breaking into The Peerless Nursing Home. Surely Mr. Freddy…”

  “Please!” Hyacinth’s black brows zigzagged together. “We do not wish to hear that name…”

  In all fairness, a certain person did knock on the front door Thursday evening to sob his apologies through the letter box. If Eli’s dog had been handy, I would have whispered, “Postman!” in her ear and flung wide the door.

  “Ellie, old sock, did I by chance forget to mention that one of the deep freezes at Abigail’s is crammed with bite-sized morsels prepared during my training sessions with Ben? Of course, I never dreamed that they would go public-we have been eating them for lunch. But it occurs to me that in a pinch…”

  I almost went through the letter box. To have suffered the horrors of the damned while a deep freeze had everything at the ready! A moment’s quiet reflection, however, brought me to realise that Freddy was not totally to blame. Had my husband and I been properly communicating, I would have recognised that while Ben lay blank-eyed on the pillows, he wasn’t fretting whether Freddy would recall the precise ratio of air to solid in a mousse, but whether he was up to proper thawing.

  Freddy rattled the letter box to recapture my attention. “Of course,
Ellie, you might like to make some chicken tarts. They’re a bit simplistic for Ben or me, but-”

  “I know, they were a great hit at the wedding reception.” So, the chicken tarts weren’t wasted, but nothing could give me back the hours I could have spent with Ben, or undo the fact that he thought he came a poor second to dusting the drawing room.

  When I brought Poppa up to see Ben, I could tell that the dent in our marital relationship had deepened into a bottomless pit. My own husband had to snap his fingers a couple of times to recall my name. And if I didn’t have enough problems, the little dog, misnamed Sweetie, took a snarling dislike to me. I couldn’t think of a thing to serve for dinner except ruined hors d’oeuvres. And, for all his pleasantness to me, Poppa soon made it plain that his desire to see his son did not include a willingness to speak to him. Honour must prevail. The possibility of instant reconciliation between my in-laws also went out the window like a loose canary when they met across Ben’s bed.

  “You’re looking fatter, Eli.”

  “You’re looking thinner, Maggie.”

  “I will not turn my son’s mansion into a battleground.”

  “Won’t seem like home, will it?”

  She smoothed down her grey cardigan, he rubbed his bald spot, and that was that.

  From then on, the house turned into a revolving door. Each time Magdalene saw Eli, she crossed herself. Each time he saw her, he chanted something in Yiddish. I grew dizzy wondering how long this might last. And, to add zing to the tension, Sweetie was trying to drive me off her territory. Tobias went into hibernation. Occasionally I would espy a dangle of fluffy tail out the door of a high cupboard but, in my time of need, the comfort of a warm furry body was denied me.

  How long would Poppa stay? My suspicions became confirmed when he requested a room with a view, enquired as to the location of the nearest synagogue, and wanted to know whether I was aware of any chess societies in need of new members.

  Within hours of Poppa’s arrival, I began to perceive unnerving signs of a different sort. He wasn’t making himself at home; he was making my home his home. Candlesticks bearing the Star of David and portraits of rabbis began springing up all over the house in direct competition with his wife’s statues, pictures, and the holy water fonts she had placed beside every door-from the refrigerator to the drawing room. What would Dorcas and Jonas think were they to walk in now?