by Lynn Freed
And yet, I told myself—and yet he had come here for me, not for Bess. And he hadn’t even given me a chance to reject him. Which, almost certainly, I would have. Or probably would have. It was hard to say, watching them go off together for yet another dinner somewhere on the island, what I would have done.
“Does he know,” said Dania, “that the last one took most of her money?”
I shrugged. “The funny thing is he’s never been the sort to go for women with money. Or, at least, I don’t think so.”
“Who knows what such a man wants? In this case, she goes for him, and he’s gone. Ha!” She sat back, pleased with the construction.
But she was getting on my nerves now, almost as much as Bess. “What do you think attracted Amos to you?” I asked.
“Amos?” She shrugged. “A rotten piece of sheet. I’m gled he died.”
I stared at her. Dania hardly drank, and never took so much as a sleeping pill. I’d never heard her like this.
“When I saw him choking on those marshmallows, I didn’t jump up. I sat where I was. I smiled at him.” She gave out a hard guffaw. “He was waving with his arms and pointing with his fingers to his throat, digging in there, too, but I just sat where I was, waiting for him to die.”
“What?”
“I did, I did! He was a sheet,” she said again. “He even went to bed with that crazy bombashell who stalks me.”
“With Wendy? I don’t believe it!”
“You don’t believe with those breasts and that money and those glued nails she could get him? Such a bombashell for that pig? I say they must have been good pigs together!” Again, the guffaw.
And then suddenly, I understood. “Daniushka, did she know about the choking? Daniushka,” I whispered, “did you tell her?”
At last she returned to herself. She rubbed her eyes. “She took like a thief whatever she liked. And she liked Amos. But then I had enough. So I told to her myself the news he died. And, boy, did she scream and cry! And when again she asked, I told her again how, just to make her scream and cry some more. And that time she was recording it.”
“God!”
“Yes, Gott! So that is why I can’t call her a bluff, as you say it.”
* * *
I SAT OUT ON THE veranda, observing the cat on the roof down the hill. Every evening it sat there, still as a shadow, watching the pigeons swoop and turn, and then swarm back to their dovecote. It was a melancholy sight. Were Finn with me, he’d blame the melancholy on the moon. He set great store by the phases of the moon. But, moon or no moon, if I told him what I’d just heard from Dania, he’d sit up sharply. Didn’t I tell you about that woman? he’d say. Didn’t I tell you to stay away from her?
* * *
Ruth, dear, we’re wondering if you can redo the piece on Finn and Bess, play down the weight issue a bit. We love the idea of your “bemusement,” but can you go with that rather than her heaviness? It sounds a bit snarky. Sxx
* * *
à gg, Greece
Have you ever noticed how delicately fat people eat? At least in public? A bite of this, a bite of that, and then the discreet chewing, eyes darting to the buffet table to make sure there’ll be enough left for seconds?
We were all invited to the annual feast on Easter Sunday. It was a community affair and, because the weather was fine, it was held outdoors in the square. Enormous spits had been blazing since dawn, roasting lamb. And there were trestle tables laden with food. It had been brought in from all over the island—Easter breads, bright red hard-boiled eggs, cheeses, soups, olives, potatoes, pies, salads—a gorgeous display.
Bess and Finn were already there when Dania and I arrived. They’d found seats within easy reach of the buffet, and Bess was already taking her tiny bites, Finn sitting rather awkwardly, I thought, beside her. He’s always been scathing about fatness, loud and scathing, and now there he was, with Bess lifting and lifting her fork, and Gladdy, also fat, behind the buffet, helping the Greek women serve.
With Gladdy, though, also a delicate eater, I don’t have a sense of greed behind the fatness. Or of lust. Or even of relish. I have the sense of a woman making do with what life has dealt her, and waiting out her time until she can be reunited with her Lord.
Standing there with the other women, with none of whom she can hold more than the most rudimentary of conversations, Gladdy looks more at home than I’ve yet seen her. She is concentrating on carving into the haunch of meat before her, laying out the pieces on a disposable platter. And when Bess wambles up with her empty plate for thirds (or fourths), Gladdy doesn’t look up and smile as she’s always done. She just goes on with her carving. So Bess has to choose the juiciest bits for herself.
* * *
NO SOONER WAS EASTER OVER than Wilfred appeared, striding in, with Tarquin behind him carrying the child. They were an odd trio—Tarquin, tall and pale and tattooed, an earring in one ear and his head completely shaved except for a fence of gelled gray coxcomb down the center; Wilfred, much older, short, ovoid, and balding, nothing like his mother; and then the child, a beautiful black pearl of a baby, almost as plump as Wilfred.
“Wilfie!” Gladdy cried. “You get too fat!”
He took Gladdy’s hands in his. “Fat old tart yourself, leaving us in the lurch like that!”
She laughed merrily. “Hau!” she said. “You too rude!”
Bess waved from her usual place on the window seat. A few days before, she’d moved back without any notice, and still seemed a bit mystified that Dania and I hadn’t welcomed her warmly. “Is that the baby?” she said vaguely. “What’s his name again?”
Wilfred turned to Tarquin. “Darling,” he said, “take Mohammed down to the hotel while I deal with my mother.”
The hotel had not been due to open for some weeks, but somehow Wilfred had talked the manager into letting them in, at least for the time they’d be there.
“I told him he couldn’t come until June,” Bess said to no one in particular, “but did he listen? Has he ever listened? Ha!”
“You listen to me, Ma,” said Wilfred, settling himself into a chair, “we will come when we please and stay for as long as we please.”
He was a hateful little man with a hateful, whiny little English voice and close, pale, hateful little eyes. According to Bess, he’d been hateful from birth—hateful when she took off with her lovers, and even more hateful when she returned. A bully and a cheat, she said, just like his father.
She glanced around, hoping, it seemed, for some help from Dania or me. “He could’ve gone anywhere for a holiday,” she said lightly. “So, why here?”
He laced his fingers together. “Do you want to hear it again?” he said. “Now? In front of your friends?” He was nothing like Bess, nothing like his sister either. Agnes, without the sort of New Age Renaissance garb she favored, was a tall, clear-skinned, large-boned beauty, much like the great-grandmother and namesake I’d seen in the photographs.
Bess tried a laugh, shaking out her hair. But her flush gave her away, cheeks and ears and neck. “What about some tea, everyone?” she said. “Gladdy?”
“Look, Ma,” Wilfred said, leaning forward, “at the rate you’re going you’ll be on the dole before autumn. Do you know how much you’re overdrawn? No, of course you don’t. You’ve never even bothered to answer my e-mails.”
“Gladdy?” Bess said again. But Gladdy was clattering tea things in the kitchen now, the kettle beginning to whistle.
“I won’t save you this time, you know,” he went on, “and neither will Aggie. I’ve seen to that.”
I glanced at Dania. Nothing Bess had told us could have prepared us for this.
“So, this is what I’ve done: I’ve arranged a debit card for you. In fact, I’ve brought it with me—here it is.” He slapped it down on the table between them. “A certain amount will go into your account every month, and that’s it. If you want to take on another fancy man—although I gather this one is anything but fancy—he’ll have to carry you
this time. I have also instructed Spottiswood to freeze the overdraft, which is just about at maximum anyway. And, by the way, I’ve discussed all this with Aggie, and we are entirely in agreement. Neither of us will contribute another cent.”
At this he stood up and, as Bess had made no attempt to reach for the card, bent and flicked it a few inches toward her. “We’ll be dining at the hotel tonight,” he announced.
* * *
AFTER THE DOOR SLAMMED SHUT, we all sat in silence, like survivors of a mass attack.
“Hau!” said Gladdy, coming in with the tea tray. “Wilfie he’s gone?” She cocked her head. “You fight with him again, Bessie?”
“You brought him here!” Bess shouted, sitting up. “You’re the one making all the trouble! You’re a traitor!”
Gladdy shook her head. “Hai!” she said. “Don’t talk lies, Bessie!”
“I know!” Bess went on. “I know you phoned him! Do you think I’m stupid?”
I looked on as she struggled, trying to imagine her without her money behind her. But it was impossible. Even after Rex had made off with the bulk of it, she seemed to wear it about without a thought, spending wherever she felt like it. And now here she was, the debit card staring at her from the table, as if she’d been forsaken by the gods.
* * *
à gg, Greece
We were never the sort of women to divide the bill according to who had ordered what. Right at the beginning, and because Bess wanted to feel free to order and eat and drink as much as she pleased (which was a lot), she insisted that she put in half to our quarter each for all food purchases, including restaurants. She was so insistent about this that we finally gave in. But, when Gladdy arrived, we wouldn’t consider allowing her to increase her share, although she did make a good try at doing so. Every month, we deposit the money into an account we’d opened at the bank in town, keeping some cash in the coffeepot for Gladdy to use when she goes to the market.
I have thought a lot about money since we entered this arrangement. What would we do, for instance, if one of us didn’t have enough? And how long would the others carry her before resentment set in? For years now, women have been suggesting to each other how marvelous it would be if we could all live together when we were old. The reigning fantasy is built around a compound, a physical compound, each of us living separately, but within reach of the others. Where this would be—with some of us for the sea and others for mountains, some for hot and others for cold—we didn’t bother to decide. Nor did we discuss the disparities among us, most important of which was money. None of us, it seemed, tended toward socialism, and so we just chatted on, never coming to any practical conclusions.
And now here we were, living out a version of the fantasy, and still there was no real talk of money. Dania and I had equivalent amounts to see us through, accumulated variously from our books, our retirement, the rent for the houses we’d left behind. If we didn’t live to be a hundred, we said, we’d be okay. But Bess was another matter. She’d inherited her money from her grandmother and had never had to think how difficult it had been to come by. When she found that most of it had been lost by a feckless lover, she hadn’t seemed to think much about it then either. And neither had we, until it finally ran out.
* * *
I SAW FINN AT THE bus stop as I drove past. He looked silly, standing there among the tourists and, like a silly girl myself, I felt a bit sorry for him. But only a bit.
And then, down at the port, there he was again, loping along toward the ferry terminal, his bag slung over his shoulder. I turned back toward the café, but too late. “Hey!” he called out. “Didn’t you see me at the bus stop? Aren’t you even going to say goodbye?”
It had never been easy to ignore Finn. I was always somehow in danger of laughing, even when things were anything but funny.
“Hey!” he said again, crossing the road, mindless of the traffic. “You’ve been avoiding me. That’s not nice when I came all this way to see you.”
I got the car door open and deposited the box of baklava I’d bought.
“Why are you being like this?” he said, loping up behind me. “You know you’re the only woman in my life.”
People were turning now to watch us from under the café umbrellas. Some were smiling.
“Go home, Finn,” I said, low and clear. “No one wants you here.”
“No one?” He peered down at me. “Really?”
I’d written about women in stupid situations like this, and now here I was myself, secretly pleased with the game. “I’m expecting Dania,” I said.
“That woman is out of control,” he said, suddenly sober. “Best to send her back to where she came from.”
“Dania?”
“I didn’t say her, did I?”
“You didn’t say anyone. You said ‘that woman.’”
“Well, I meant the other one. And you can take that or not.” He wheeled around and made off, back toward the ferry.
I watched him go. He had always been like this, refusing to utter the name of someone he didn’t like. Dania had been nameless for years. And now it was Bess? Doubtless, he considered her to blame for the failure of his magnificent gesture in coming to see me—she, and now her homosexual son behind her. Sooner or later, I knew, he’d decide we were all to blame—that we’d been against him from the start. When I’d told Hester that he’d gone off with Bess, she’d rolled into a fit of hysterical laughter. “Did you kick him out?” she’d said. “Did you hurl his slippers after him?” She’d always adored the slipper-hurling scenes, and when finally Finn was kicked out for good, that’s when, with the coast clear of rivals, she’d felt free to lay claim to me herself.
As the weather was fine, I walked down the alley to the café, sat at the cat’s table, and ordered a salad and a beer. If I stayed in town for lunch, Bess might be gone by the time I went back up. But where would she go, she and Gladdy? Back to London? I couldn’t see Wilfred agreeing to have them. And yet, how could she stay on here? And, if she did, how would I cope with her?
There were a scant three months left before the children would start to arrive, and already they were trying to adjust the rules. What if they came for our seventieth birthdays? Hester had asked. Dania and I were weeks apart, and surely Bess could be talked into celebrating two months ahead of time? Anyway, earlier would suit Hester because of Lily’s riding camp. And Agnes was keen to come at the same time so that Lily could babysit. Lily herself would be glad to earn some extra pocket money, she said, so how rigid were the rules?
I took a swallow of beer. Yael, Wilfred, and now Hester and Agnes, all of them arriving when they weren’t supposed to. At least Noam wasn’t coming. And maybe Wilfred and Agnes wouldn’t come at all, I thought, now that Bess was on her beam ends. I stared down into the salad. It was still too early for tomatoes, I should have thought of that. I should have thought about Bess, too, before so impulsively including her in our arrangement. As it was, we’d all been so full of hope—stupid, thoughtless hope—so pleased with ourselves for our escape that we hadn’t considered anything like this. But who could have thought up Finn? Or Dionysos? Or Gladdy? Or even how empty the house would feel without Bess and Gladdy in it?
* * *
Hester #4
Perhaps if I’d actually seen Hugh’s body after the murder—brains and blood, the nostrils slit to ribbons, one eye out of its socket (I invent these things; all I know is “stabbed”)—perhaps then I’d have felt the loss more violently. If I’d even thought he might die, perhaps I’d have tried to notice things about him more carefully, things to remember for the future. But, as it was, all that was left of him that first time I revisited the bungalow was his absence. The place without him in it. The peacocks gone. Dust on the binoculars. Cobwebs in his boots.
I’d watched Hester walk onto the veranda. At fifteen, she’d had his wide shoulders and sinewy arms, but not his careful deliberation of movement, the float of the head. And, suddenly, watching her there, I felt the
loss of myself as I’d been with him, and turned away, pinching the bridge of my nose between two fingers.
* * *
DANIA AND BESS WERE STILL there, just as I’d left them, the card still on the coffee table.
“It was never me Finn wanted, you know,” Bess said as I came in. “I knew all along it wasn’t me.” She looked up, hoping, I knew, for a miracle that would return things to what they’d been before.
“Maybe it’s too late to be knowing things all along,” said Dania.
But Bess ignored her. “What if I do another ‘Granny’ piece for you, Ruth? I mean about him, you, and me?”
“I did one already.”
“Really?” She sat up, suddenly brighter. “May I read it!”
I waved off the question. Somehow, with her so desperate for forgiveness, the charm was gone out of the whole idea of revenge.
“I could write about how antic he is,” she said. “Like a grasshopper.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
“And how he announces what he’s just about to do,” she said, a bit encouraged. “Didn’t you find it funny?”
Clearly, she expected me to forgive her as quickly as she’d forgiven Rex. Well, I did and I didn’t, one minute to the next. But if anyone was going to skewer Finn, it was going to be me, not her.
“Look,” said Dania, “soon we should be discussing the money situation.”
“I sent an e-mail to that banker in South Africa,” Bess said quickly. “I told him not to worry about the exchange or penalties or whatever it was, just to send it. So it’ll be okay, see?” Her voice was uncharacteristically high, and her body seemed to have collapsed into a mound.
“Maybe we talk about this when Wilfred is here?” said Dania.