by Marie Joseph
‘I called in on Mother today,’ he said, missing the way Clara’s eyes narrowed. ‘I told her about Amy getting my house, but I don’t think it sank in. All she wanted was for me to stay and have a spot of lunch with her.’ He frowned, seeing a picture of his mother’s flushed face and watery eyes. ‘She didn’t look well at all. Puffed in the face – blotchy.’
‘She’s an old lady, love.’
‘Not that old. Sixty-eight. She was six years younger than my father.’
‘That man who looks like the village squire came in the shop this morning.’
‘Which man?’
‘The man you said was in his sixties, though God knows he doesn’t look it. The one whose wife died last winter. The one with a double-barrelled name.’
‘Mr Brown-Davies? What made you think of him?’ Wesley put out a hand and touched the silky hair curling that day in tight little sausages round her head. He sighed and closed his eyes.
Clara paused for a moment, then went on: ‘He can’t get over losing Mrs Brown-Davies. He really bared his soul to me, poor old sausage. He can’t cope. Has no idea. He comes in every day for his Balkan Soubranie, just for an excuse to drive into town and have a walk round. He says I make him laugh, make him feel twenty-one again.’
‘He’s loaded,’ Wesley told her. ‘His father was in textiles when textiles were a good thing to be in. I can understand him missing his wife, she was a lot younger than him and a right bobby-dazzler. There’d been one before her too. I think the old codger’s been quite a ladies’ man in his time. I always find myself waiting for him to twirl his moustache!’
‘Look who’s talking! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. You’d be forever twirling yours if you had one.’
Wesley liked that. Clara leaned back against his knees, the gas fire spluttered and the meaty smell from the landing was making his mouth water. Clara was right. Let Amy have the house, give in gracefully and that way he’d be free of any further obligation to her. In a few weeks, when his mother was more herself, he would have a long talk with her about her financial position. Once the Will was read and probate granted she would begin to realize she was quite a rich old lady. When she was over the worst of her grieving she would listen to him. He would point out to her that having a son living over a shop wasn’t exactly compatible with her idea of gracious living. In a few weeks’ time he would bring her over – it was time she met Clara.
He reached into his inside pocket for his cigarette case. Yes, Clara’s attitude about the house was exactly the right one. He watched her lay knives and forks out on the card table by the window. What a woman she was! Hard as nails, some would say, but he knew better. Calculating, some would say, but he could contradict that, too. Think what she’d left behind to follow him. Just think about that well-kept, red-brick house with all the mod. cons, and a lot besides. He bet there were more controls in Charlie’s kitchen than on the flight deck of an airship. Charlie had always been a gadget man.
Wesley blew a perfect smoke ring up to the rather dirty ceiling, his badly shaken confidence trickling back, his innate belief in himself fully restored. His mother hadn’t been herself at all this morning but give her time, give everything time. It was early days. She would be only too glad to hand over the shops to him, only too glad to have him sort out her papers. In time she would be more than willing to let him explain things to her, advise her on what to hold on to and what to let go. When she was more herself, not in such deep shock.
He put out his cigarette, sat down at the rickety makeshift table and helped himself from the steaming dish brought in by a scowling Clara.
‘I hate cooking!’ she burst out. ‘If you say you don’t like it I’ll empty the lot on your head.’ She watched him carefully.
Was it stew? Hotpot? Were these pieces of gristly meat beef or lamb? Shouldn’t the gravy be thick rather than watery? And what was this hard lump? A piece of carrot or something dropped in by mistake? Wesley put a forkful into his mouth, chewed valiantly for a full minute, subdued an almost overwhelming urge to spit it out. He swallowed hard, feeling the food stick halfway down.
‘Very nice,’ he forced himself to say, smiling at her with watery eyes. ‘Really delicious.’
Clara put her knife and fork down with a thump. ‘It couldn’t taste worse if I’d boiled up the dishcloth.’ She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You don’t always have to act flarchy, you know.’
‘Flarchy?’
‘Oh, come on, Wesley. Didn’t they teach you a word like that at the Grammar School? It means turning on the charm, saying things you don’t mean. Lying, I suppose, with charm. Always with charm.’
‘I’ve never lied to you. You’d have found me out if I had.’ Wesley’s smile was intact as he stretched out a hand across the table. ‘That’s just one of the many things I like about you, your direct honesty. It takes my breath away at times, but I wouldn’t have you change in any way.’
Clara got up swiftly and began to scrape the plates into the brown dish. ‘You lied to me about this flat. You told me we’d be living here for no more than a month at the most. You made me believe that this shop was yours, when all the time you were nothing more than a so-called manager with a staff of one – a half-baked lad with a slate missing.’
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘If the old man hadn’t died . . . there were all kind of negotiations in the pipeline . . .’
‘Stop blustering, Wesley! Your dad had your measure, I’m beginning to realize that.’ She marched out with the dish, then marched back, pink-checked and furious, with the little jewelled slide slipping from her yellow hair. ‘He knew what he was doing when he left the house to Amy, and bloody good luck to her, I say. You haven’t given her a penny piece since you walked out, have you?’
‘Clara! Love . . .’ His face was a mask of hurt. ‘Why are you being like this? Tell me why?’
‘Give Charlie his due,’ she said, ‘he’s never missed a week. His money has come through regular as clockwork. He’d have me back tomorrow, would Charlie.’
‘But you wouldn’t go? You’d never leave me? You couldn’t . . . not after . . .’
There was a trembling in his voice and for the life of her Clara couldn’t make out whether it was real or whether he was play-acting again. He certainly looked hurt, deeply wounded – bewildered even. Like a small boy being punished for something he hasn’t done. Clara sighed, feeling the anger draining out of her. What right had she to pick faults in him? Chastise him for telling lies? God help them, they were two of a kind if you went down that road.
There was a sweetness about him that caught you unawares at times. He would have eaten the atrocious stew to please her, and he had to be the best-looking man she had ever set eyes on. His voice alone was enough to seduce a Mother Superior, and that was before he even touched you. And to feel the clean springiness of his thick hair, trace the outline of his curvy mouth, experience the strength of his arms, the fierce passion of him when he made love . . . After all, who on this rotten earth was perfect? Certainly not her. Definitely not yours truly.
Slowly she moved towards him and as his arms came round her and just before he kissed her, she saw the fear in his eyes change to relief.
‘Clara, oh Clara . . .’
His hands were gentle at first, holding her to him so that she felt his hardness, then he was lifting her up into his arms, carrying her through into the room across the landing, still kissing her even as he tore at the buttons on her blouse. She heard herself cry out with impatience, tangled her fingers in his hair, closed her eyes . . . and heard the telephone shrill out, intrusive, shocking, jerking them back to reality.
‘Ignore it,’ she whispered, winding her arms round him and pulling him close again. ‘It’ll stop soon. Wesley . . . oh, Wesley . . .’
But it was no good. The ringing went on and on, louder it seemed with every second. When Wesley rolled away from her and went downstairs to answer it she lay there staring up at the ceiling, in
the bed surrounded by packing cases, not bothering to cover herself, waiting for him to come back to her.
‘Is that you, dear?’
Ethel’s voice was uncharacteristically loud so that Wesley had to hold the telephone away from his ear. He had stubbed his toe rushing down the stairs, and the pain was so bad it was making him feel sick.
‘Of course it’s me. Is something wrong with Mother?’ He stood on one leg, hopped slightly round the counter trying to avoid the draught coming at him from beneath the shop door. ‘You sound a bit upset, Ethel.’ He controlled his temper with difficulty. Getting any sense out of Ethel had always been like getting blood out of a stone.
She was whispering now: ‘Your mother says your father is sitting on the top stair. She wants to go up to her bedroom but he won’t let her pass. She says she’s very cross with him.’ The whisper faded almost to nothing. ‘I’m ringing from the upstairs extension, dear. She looks very ill, most peculiar, but I don’t think she would want the doctor to see her like this.’
‘How did you manage to get past Father on the stair?’ Wesley felt bound to ask.
‘Oh, he’s not there really, dear,’ Ethel explained. ‘I wish you’d drive over. You’re so good with her.’ The faint voice wobbled. ‘I’m at my wits’ end, dear. I don’t know what to do.’
Clara said in a sarcastic way that of course she understood that Wesley must go to his mother’s house right away. He had his priorities right, hadn’t she always known that?
Wesley dressed angrily, pulling on his jacket, not bothering with a tie, wincing as he forced his bruised foot into his shoe. He saw the hard-set expression on Clara’s pretty face and went to sit beside her on the bed.
‘Look, love. I don’t want to go. The last thing I want to do right this minute is leave you. But she is my mother and I can’t not go. For God’s sake, Clara, she’s hallucinating! She thinks my father’s there. She might do something silly.’
‘But she won’t, will she? Not now she knows Wesley is on his way.’ Clara actually gave him a push. ‘Oh, go to Mummy. Stay the night with her if you wish.’
Wesley stood up. ‘For God’s sake! Aren’t you listening? She thinks my father’s there, sitting on the stairs.’
‘Give him my kind regards,’ Clara said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for her dressing gown.
It was two o’clock the next morning when Wesley arrived back at the flat, exhausted. The sight of his fastidious mother in the state she was in had disgusted him. She looked beaten, she smelled of vomit, and it was obvious she had somehow tricked Ethel and managed to drink the best part of a bottle of sherry.
‘It won’t happen again,’ Ethel had vowed, wearing her Band of Hope expression. ‘I’ve cleared the house of drink.’ She winked at Wesley. ‘Poured the lot down the sink!’
‘Oh, my God,’ he said.
‘Oh, my God,’ Clara said when she woke up the next morning in a much better mood. ‘What a waste.’
‘Cousin Ethel’s so filled with virtue she could make Al Capone himself see the light.’
‘So your mother wasn’t too bad after all? I bet she forgot all about seeing your dad sitting on the stairs.’
‘Oh no.’ Wesley grinned. ‘When we finally got her to walk upstairs to her bedroom she stepped aside on the third step from the top and bowed politely. “Excuse me,” she said.’
‘Is that meant to be funny?’ Clara wanted to know, back in a black mood again.
Amy called round to see her mother-in-law after her stint at Mrs Green’s house. She found Ethel in the kitchen.
‘Amy! How nice to see you, dear.’ Ethel was busily beating a raw egg into a glass of milk. ‘If I have to hold her nose and spoon it down her throat I’ll see she drinks it,’ she said gaily. ‘Both my parents had this every morning of their lives once they’d turned eighty, and as you know they both saw ninety before dying as fit as fiddles.’
To Amy’s surprise the little round woman turned to face her, her plump face as red as fire.
‘I have to say this, dear.’ She twisted the corner of her apron into a rope. ‘Your mother-in-law is being very difficult. I’ve had to be firm with her at times, but I’ve got the better of her now.’ She lowered her voice, obviously overcome with embarrassment. ‘For instance, I got it out of her when she was a bit muddled one day that you and Wesley aren’t living together. That he’s living in sin at Preston. I know it happens,’ she went on, ‘and never having been married I don’t feel qualified to speak about such things. You don’t expect to come across it in your own family, but what I want to say to you before Wesley’s mother comes downstairs is that I’m on your side, dear. I won’t give my reasons, but I am. When I see what goes on in some marriages I’m glad I was never tempted.’ Her smile wavered. ‘Though I have to say I always thought you and Wesley were such a lovely couple. A perfect foil for each other, somehow.’
She was so kind, so obviously trying to say the right thing that Amy gave her an affectionate hug, just as Phyllis walked in looking much better than Amy had expected her to.
‘Be a dear and bring my spectacle case down from the bedroom, please, Ethel. I left it on the table by my bed.’
‘No trouble, dear.’ Ethel trotted off, eager as ever to be of service, her round face shining with zeal.
‘That’s for me, I take it?’ Phyllis nodded at the egg and milk, opened her handbag, unscrewed the top of a flask and poured a generous slosh of whisky into the custardy mixture, then with obvious satisfaction drained it down.
‘I’ll soon have her built up,’ Ethel said, coming in with the spectacle case. ‘I would have done that, dear,’ she fussed, as Phyllis rinsed the glass and upended it on the draining board. ‘She doesn’t need to lift a finger while I’m here,’ she told Amy. ‘She’s down to rock bottom, but I’ll soon have her fully restored. You can see my egg and milk mixture doing her good already. Just look at the way it’s brought the colour back to her cheeks.’
‘What did old Ma Battersby have to say about the house?’ Dora had come in and caught Amy listening to a talk on the wireless by an earnest young man called Godfrey Winn. It was all about the rights of the modern woman, and Dora made it clear she had no time for him. ‘Switch him off,’ she advised Amy. ‘He’s talking through his hat. Women never had any real rights, and he should know it. He probably only knows rich women, anyway.’
Amy could see that Dora was in a good mood. Lately the tired look had gone from her eyes and she could sit still for five minutes without dropping off to sleep.
‘Okay,’ she said, reaching for the switch. ‘Let’s have him off, then I can tell you.’ She settled back in her chair. ‘The house wasn’t mentioned. Cousin Ethel was there for one thing, and for another I’m taking Bernard’s advice and playing it all low key till I’ve had it in writing.’
‘You told Bernard?’
Amy blushed. ‘He seemed concerned about how I was managing.’ She nodded at a shrouded object on the sideboard. ‘He brought me an old typewriter to practise on, and a manual. He says typing skills are never wasted.’
‘I should think not,’ Dora said. ‘The first thing Greta Garbo was asked when she arrived in Hollywood was could she type.’
Amy said that for the first time ever she had realized that there was a side to Wesley’s mother she hadn’t seen before. In fact, for a few moments she had actually felt very fond of her.
‘Was that when she told you she wished she’d had Wesley drowned at birth?’
‘It was when she got Cousin Ethel out of the way so she could slosh whisky into her egg and milk. She’s human, Dora. Plus being quite capable of stopping drinking when she wants to. She’s not the type to drink herself to death.’
At that moment, in her state of well-being, Dora couldn’t care less if Wesley’s mother lay down on the Boulevard in front of Queen Victoria’s statue and had to be marched off to the police station, shouting rude words and waving her arms about. Things were definitely looking up for
her and Amy, and she wouldn’t be surprised to see her friend typing so fast on that machine eventually that the carriage smoked. There wasn’t an ounce of envy in her whole body. She had always known that Amy deserved better, and with her own life transformed so completely she could afford to be magnanimous. Besides, any good that came Amy’s way was one in the eye for the wonderful Wesley.
She was positively pink with pleasure as she described the washing machine in Charlie’s kitchen yet again. She hadn’t known about the drying cabinet, or the ironing board you could sit down at, or the fact that the Hoover meant an end to wet tea leaves sprinkled on carpets to stop the dust rising when you swept them.
‘It nearly sucked the cat up this morning,’ she declared. ‘Charlie laughed his socks off when I told him.’
Amy found it difficult to talk naturally about Charlie ever since he had declared his feelings and almost made a dive for her across the width of the table. She also accepted that unthinkingly she had wounded him deeply,
‘Charlie reminds me of Greg – of the way Greg used to be before he was wounded,’ Dora was saying. ‘I don’t mean in looks. Charlie is much better looking. Greg was no oil painting, was he?’
Amy was fascinated. ‘You think Charlie is handsome?’
‘Suave,’ Dora said at once. ‘With a sort of Bulldog Drummond look to him. He’d be the living spit of Ronald Colman if he had darker hair, a moustache, was quite a bit thinner and spoke in a posher voice.’
Amy hoped her eyebrows were still where they belonged. ‘Do you think Wesley is handsome?’
‘Not in the same class.’
‘As Ronald Colman?’
‘As Charlie.’
Dora nodded, smiling at nothing, sure that her ship had come in at last, determined not to let the niggling worry about Charlie’s daughter Lottie spoil her new-found happiness. Lottie was seeing a boy, having him in the house when her father was out at the pub in the evenings. Dora had found a pair of bicycle clips underneath the sofa cushions, besides which she knew a lovebite when she saw one.