The Ludlow Ladies Society

by Ann O'Loughlin

“Let’s get you inside, you are frozen with the cold.” Gently, he helped her to her feet, fussing about, guiding her to the upstairs bedroom. “Get into bed, I will look after things today.”

  “What do you think is so important, he has to fly all the way to New York?”

  “I don’t know, Eve. Best to concentrate on getting better.”

  Michael left her and went to heat a can of soup. When he brought a tray upstairs ten minutes later, she was sitting up in bed.

  “How long is Arnold going to be away?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe a few weeks.”

  “Do you have any family or anyone who can come and stay with you?”

  “There is nobody to ask.”

  She paused, pretending to look towards the windows, but he could see she was upset.

  “Do you think Arnold is going to come back, Michael?”

  Michael Conway spluttered out his answer. “That is silly talk. You have been through a lot; it is putting silly ideas into your head.”

  “Things have been so quiet between us, since the baby died.”

  He rubbed his hands along the sides of his trousers, embarrassed that the talk was turning intimate.

  “Maybe a break of sorts will give you both time to grieve.”

  “Or drive us further apart.”

  Clearing his throat, because he was nervous, he spoke in a gentle voice. “I can help you out, get somebody in at the shop while I tip around the farm for you.”

  “Michael, you are so kind, but what will Arnold think, or others in Rosdaniel? They will have something to say.”

  “I am not moving in, Eve, just helping out. Arnold will understand, and the gossips, they will blather about it for a day or so. Will you be okay on your own at night?”

  “I have stayed a lot of nights on my own here already, Michael.”

  He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. “I have to go back to the shop just now, but I will call around later to see what needs doing.”

  When Arnold came back two weeks later, he looked worn out. When she enquired, he would not be drawn on the details of the trip. Neither did he explain why he was gone so long. He handed her the Bloomingdale’s box before going upstairs to lie down, not even waiting to see her face when she opened it.

  Standing at the bottom of the stairs, she watched as he trudged away. Taking the box into the drawing room, she did not open it immediately. Instead, she stood by the window, listening to her husband move around upstairs. She wondered if he would ever tell her what happened in New York.

  Outside, the sheep bunched together. A young horse in the next field cantered into the middle of the plot, throwing its head about. The geese flocked down towards the lake, and crows in the far copse of trees kicked up a racket, showering spent twigs onto the avenue.

  She turned to the box. Never had he given such an extravagant gift. Slowly, she nicked the tape on the outside with her fingernail, gently pulling up the top. Layers and layers of white tissue paper she pulled out, until she came to the dress, neatly folded, as if it had that minute been placed there. When she lifted it out, the full skirt fell to the ground in a swish of chiffon. She knew only a woman’s eyes could have picked this dress. A man could never pick a dress that on first glance looked so simple.

  An uneasy feeling came over her, making her reluctant to even hold the dress up to her. She knew it would fit perfectly, and that knowledge made her feel strange. Letting it drop back in the box, she hastily put back the cover, pushing the box with her foot under the long couch.

  Eve caught the dress now, yanking it from the hanger and balling it into a bag. It was meant for a stylish city life, not an old house in a backwoods town. Maybe she would have a use for it in the quilt. God knows, for long enough she had wanted an excuse to put scissors to it.

  Eve checked her appearance in the mirror, patted a tint of powder on her face and applied a slick of lipstick, before putting on her coat and heading for Ludlow Hall. She wanted to get a head start on Hetty today, afraid the deadline was making her rush, cutting lazy large pieces of fabric to cover a big span of quilt.

  Hetty, with her tiny squares of suit and shirt fabric, had been aghast when she saw the rectangles and squares howling with colour, drowning out the smaller neighbours.

  “You can’t get away with that, Eve, people will comment,” she had said, and though Eve knew she was right, she would never admit it out loud. “Don’t give in to fast progress and sacrifice the mystery and depth,” Hetty said, a smug tone to her voice.

  Walking to Michael’s shop first, Eve stuck her head in the doorway.

  “I am off to Ludlow for the best part of the day. Drop into the little house on the way home this evening, we can eat together.”

  “I can’t do it tonight, Eve, I have the Scrabble Club.”

  She pretended to be in a huff, making a face, and he laughed.

  “I am in the semi-final. This is my chance to knock Sean Mackey off his perch.”

  “I have a word for you: quagga. Remember that.”

  He picked up a pencil and attempted to jot down the word on a newspaper on the counter. “Spell it out, Eve.”

  She did, slowly, adding, “That better not be my Irish Times.”

  “What does it mean anyway?”

  “Look it up. I can’t stay gabbing, I have to get to Ludlow.”

  He waved goodbye as a few customers slipped by Eve for the morning newspaper.

  Eve rushed along, anxious to get to Ludlow, a renewed vigour in her to make a go of this memory quilt. Beetling along the driveway, she suddenly stopped as she came to the rhododendron. There was Ludlow Hall, the sunlight streaking morning gold across the top windows, the pots of primulas at the front door, left there by Connie, the car parked where Arnold used to leave it, a sense of life there now. She expected the sheepdog to amble around from the back, the horses to raise their heads in the paddocks, the geese to start fussing, to hear the echo of a voice from inside the house. It was as if nothing had changed and everything had changed.

  Sensing the house was silent, she let herself in as quietly as she could, holding the door until it clicked shut, for fear it would bang and make a noise. Tossing her bag of fabric in the drawing room, she headed for the kitchen to put on the kettle.

  Eve was surprised when she saw Connie sitting at the kitchen table.

  “You are very quiet. I hope you don’t mind me turning up so early.”

  “That is why I gave you the key.”

  Eve felt awkward, loitering, not knowing if she should help herself or wait to be asked.

  Connie, as if she sensed the other woman’s discomfort, stood up.

  “Why don’t I get out of your way?”

  Eve looked at her closely. “It may not be my place to say it, but you look like shit.”

  Connie smiled. “I was dancing, working up a sweat. I thought it might be a good way to clear my head.”

  “And did it?”

  “What do you think?” Connie mopped her forehead with a towel she had around her neck. “I am sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. It has been a bad night.”

  “I should not have walked in on top of you so early. Why don’t I go and come back at a more decent hour?”

  Connie shook her head.

  “All the hours in the world can’t sort some things out.”

  “We don’t know each other very well, but I know a thing or two about grief.”

  “You don’t want to hear my story, Mrs Brannigan.”

  Eve reached over, touching Connie on the arm.

  “Ludlow is a huge responsibility. Is there anyone who can keep you company for a while?”

  “A friend said he can come over.”

  “That is something to look forward to.”

  Connie slumped down on a chair.

  “Not exactly. He was my lover . . .” She paused, waiting for a reaction from Eve, but all Eve did was pull out a chair and sit into the table. “I was planning to leave Ed. I’d met B
ill years earlier. He went off to California, but when he came back, we rekindled our relationship. This time I was ready to leave my husband. I am shocking you, I guess.”

  “There is not much in the world that shocks me these days.”

  “Bill is in London, working. He wants to come over.”

  “What is wrong with that?”

  “I thought you would not approve.”

  “Firstly, you don’t need anyone’s approval. Secondly, take it from me, you should snatch happiness whenever it comes knocking, otherwise you will regret it.”

  “You sound like somebody with regrets.”

  “I have never met anyone on this planet who does not have regrets. It is the size of the regrets that matters: I would rather a big sack of small ones than one big one that colours your life.”

  Connie smiled. “It might be too late for that advice.”

  Eve got up and filled the kettle at the tap.

  “Connie, I am no expert, but if I knew a man was interested enough to travel to meet me, I would dress up and bloody enjoy it.”

  “Even if you felt guilty?”

  Eve put two mugs down heavily on the table.

  “Tell me, what can either of us do about the past? We can’t change it.”

  They sat together, waiting for the kettle to boil, the peace of the house cloaking around them. When the water spat and bubbled, Eve waited until the kettle switched off before getting up to make a pot of tea.

  17

  Eve was in the drawing room, her head down, busy at work, when Hetty arrived.

  “Why do I get the impression the day started much earlier? I am late to the game,” she said, picking up the new squares Eve had cut out. “A change of heart from a two-patch quilt?”

  Eve put down her sewing. “I had a rethink.”

  “You have created a lot of work for yourself, Eve.”

  Eve smiled that Hetty was taking so much umbrage.

  “Kathryn rang. She said they have a lot of fabric to sort through for the Rosdaniel quilt and they should be here around eleven.”

  Eve noticed Hetty was barely listening. She reached out and touched her shoulder.

  “We have different memories, different stories to tell, but there is no competition between us.” Eve noticed a shadow move across her friend’s face.

  “Mine is too sombre. I don’t know if it is a good idea including fabric from the suits,” Hetty whispered.

  “If anything was to sum up Barry Gorman, it is the beautifully cut suits, the trousers sharply creased,” said Eve.

  Hetty did not answer, but spread her quilt over the rug in the middle of the drawing room floor. Pulling the blue suit from a box at the side of the room, she heard Eve sigh.

  “See what I mean, Hetty, after all these years, I can see the trousers crease, like it is just pressed in.”

  Hetty let the trousers drop along one side of the quilt, a cacophony of delicate linen that once made up his expensive shirts.

  “Why don’t I add a narrow strip?”

  Eve picked some black trousers from the box.

  “Not those,” Hetty said, handing her some grey trousers instead. “Use the brown and a pinstripe for the other sides. The black one is his wedding suit,” she said, as if she had to explain why she did not want to cut it up.

  “Lovely quality. Why would you want to destroy it?” Eve said, sensing a big upset in Hetty.

  They stood back and considered the quilt.

  “It looks bigger. Have you been working on squares at home?” Eve asked.

  “I was afraid I would not get it done in time.”

  Eve did not quite believe Hetty, but she said nothing.

  “The ladies will be along later for a full meeting and review, so we had better get cracking.”

  Hetty, moving towards the kitchen, mumbled she could not start without a coffee.

  Eve watched her go, noting for the first time that Hetty’s step was unusually heavy, her shoulders slightly hunched. Best to leave her be a while. No doubt if there was something big eating her, she would spit it out when she was ready.

  Hetty shook the kettle to check there was water in it, before clicking it on. A streak of tiredness darted through her, so she sat down, jiggling her shoulders, in an effort to throw off the foggy feeling in her head. Most of the night she had sat looking at Barry’s suits, wanting to slice them to shreds, almost afraid to touch the fabric that summed up all his parts.

  His shirts she had easily slipped from their hangers. Picking his favourites, she carved through, cutting small patches, so when she sewed them together it looked like a wave of lilac and blue turning to grey and white. The linen was the right fit for patchwork and easy to work with, so she sat up at night sewing the squares together, deftly stitching, all the time creating a new story for herself. Every time she turned up at Ludlow, she had even more to add to the memory quilt of a marriage, so that it was already much bigger than Eve’s.

  Eve might think Hetty was being competitive, making a big show to impress the town, but the truth was that once she started ripping his favourite shirts, she enjoyed it, revelling as the fabric shrieked in protest when she pulled with the grain, giving pleasure as she sliced with the shears up the back of the shirt in the first long cut.

  Her husband’s words, in her head, she slashed at random.

  “The back of a shirt must be crease free, pristine.”

  “Show me a man who can’t take off his jacket. If the shirt back is not ironed, show me a man who can’t control his wife.”

  The first shirt she cut tentatively, nicking it at the side seam, picking away a few stitches, wrenching the seam hard with her hands so that it gave way. She cut out a neat square, almost the size of his back. The shape of him made her angry, making her slash erratically through the panel, his words fading as she stabbed with the scissors. So much she cut, and in all directions, that she was compelled to choose small pieces to achieve the number of squares she required. Handling the small patches, it no longer felt like Barry’s shirt – like she had finally escaped him.

  Eve came through to the kitchen.

  “I don’t know what is up with everyone this morning. Is there something wrong, Hetty?”

  Hetty made a show of smiling brightly. “Nothing a cuppa won’t sort out.”

  Eve knew better than to ask further.

  “I brought out the black serge trousers, the wedding pair. You don’t have to cut them up, if they mean so much to you.”

  Hetty busied herself, throwing a tea bag into her mug, fishing for a cookie from the jar beside the sink.

  “You are not yourself this morning, Hetty. What is it?” Eve asked gently.

  Hetty stopped what she was doing, swinging around so that her elbow hit against the cookie jar, nearly knocking it off the worktop.

  “My head is a bit addled, Eve. What are you doing with those trousers?”

  Eve handed them to Hetty.

  “You should put them aside, so they do not get cut up by mistake.”

  “Mistake? It doesn’t matter. Nothing will bring back the happy feeling I felt that day, nothing will obliterate the unhappy years I spent after that.”

  Eve stared at Hetty. “Sewing this quilt is not good for you, Hetty. I am sorry.”

  Hetty flopped on to a chair. “You are wrong, Eve. It has freed me from the clutches of that bastard. No longer will he have a grip on me from the grave.”

  “You are not talking about Barry?”

  Hetty snorted loudly. “Barry Gorman and his wife, Hetty, the woman envied by the whole of Rosdaniel. What did they envy, Eve? The way he put his hand around my throat and squeezed? The nasty things he said, the time he pinched my tits so hard I howled like a dog in pain?”

  Eve did not answer, but Hetty did not notice.

  “A fine gentleman who beat up his wife if the crease in his trousers was not pencil sharp and straight, who insisted I steep his underpants in bleach so they were perfect white, even though he knew the fumes m
ade me throw up. His socks and underwear had to be ironed and folded a certain way.”

  She stopped to pull in a deep breath, all the time registering the shock streaking across Eve’s face. When she spoke again, it was in a lower voice.

  “If I fell down on any of the things he expected, he docked my weekly allowance. Mind you, he still expected the same amount of food on the table.”

  She stopped talking when she saw Connie standing in the doorway. Connie, pretending she had not heard anything, waved and retreated.

  “Hetty, I had no idea,” Eve said, reaching out and rubbing her friend’s hand.

  “Don’t worry, Eve. Nobody knew. We were very good at keeping it a secret.”

  “Was it drink? What made him act that way?”

  “I wish I could blame the booze, but it was just him: he was a cruel man. Don’t get me wrong, there were some good years, but once he showed his cruel side he could not get away from the great sense of power it gave him. When the shop began to lose out to the fancy shopping centres, things got a lot worse. When he lost the shop altogether, it nearly destroyed him and me.” Tears flowed down her cheeks and she squeezed Eve’s hand tight. “Barry Gorman was no gentleman in his own home.”

  They sat, Hetty gulping her tears, her shoulders heaving.

  “I am sorry about the quilt,” Eve said quietly.

  Hetty squeezed her hand more. “Don’t be. I let go of the bastard’s clothes, finally. I got to cut them up.”

  “And stick needles in them,” Eve said, noticing a curl of a smile on Hetty’s lips.

  When Connie arrived back in the doorway with a bottle of whiskey and three of Arnold’s crystal glasses, Hetty beckoned her in.

  “Come in, we can’t be taking over your kitchen.”

  “I thought you could do with a drink,” she said, pouring a measure into each glass. “To the men in our lives, long departed.” Connie’s voice was strong, almost comical.

  Hetty and Eve clinked Connie’s glass, the three gulping large sips of the whiskey.

  “I think doing the quilt you have had your revenge,” Eve said, walking towards the drawing room, the others following to where all the sections to make up the Barry Gorman quilt were laid out on the floor.