‘Who?’ asked the Mayor. But the grocer simply grinned and raised his hands in a gesture of surprise at such a dumb question. ‘Well, it’s impossible, anyway,’ said the Mayor. ‘You and I know why the papers are missing. No one else does. But we do.’
‘I don’t know that we do, Mr Mayor,’ said Mr Stokes winking. ‘This town knows you to be an honest and upright man and if they don’t, I’ll tell them. They’ll listen to me. Your wife knows that.’
The insult wasn’t lost on the Mayor. As he made his way home it stuck in his throat along with the sandwich. How dare the grocer! How dare his wife! Well they could all go hang. He’d have none of it. He wouldn’t be bullied. He wouldn’t be blackmailed. He was his own man. He was clever, wasn’t he, smarter than all of them, wasn’t he, so why wasn’t he using his brain? He had an excellent brain and he should use it. He would. He’d apply himself.
His brain, when consulted, said of his beloved, Let her stew in her own juice, as she surely would if she stood for Parliament. His brain went on furthermore. Why shouldn’t the stupid girl keep her job? He’d given it back to her and he was not only Mayor, he was king of his own castle. His brain asked what kind of hot water he’d be getting into if he agreed to shady back-room dealings over land that had already caused him trouble enough, and his brain replied, She is pretty, because there she was, in his hallway, polishing the mirror. She smiled at him with such warmth he completely forgot the lack of respect he must have imagined in his wife’s eyes over breakfast. ‘Your job is quite safe,’ he said to her.
‘I know,’ she’d replied. ‘Mrs Mayberry told me.’ Which obliged him to acknowledge that lack of respect all over again. And now where was he? No further ahead of the game than he’d been when he’d sought out Mr Stokes with every intention of putting his wife in her place. His wife was not in her place and he wasn’t at all sure how he was going to cram her back into it. The Mayor went directly to his office to examine ancient documents he’d been paid good money to keep well out of harm’s way.
Chapter Eighteen
There is a world of difference between sounding like a woman who can move mountains and actually being one. Pearl, having agreed to lead the charge against all mountains confronting the respectable ladies Beyond The Arch, found herself flailing in the face of her own. Her fiercest charge took her back once again to the presbytery and Father Kelly, who this time allowed her through the front door but only briefly. Was there a known criminal in the town, she asked him this time. A man famous for extortion, say, or theft, or anything else that might bring a family to its knees?
The priest considered her sadly. He said there was no one with any such reputation. ‘Have you tried the police?’ he asked hopelessly. But of course she hadn’t. Where would they look, in any case, if not in Prospect, last known point of contact? ‘The railway?’ he priest suggested again. ‘Why don’t you get a big, strong fellow to go to the railway with you? A man on the road meets other men on the road and someone might have heard of him.’
All she could do, all any of them could do, was pin their hopes on the big, strong fellow Annie McGuire would certainly send them. But it was with a faint heart that Annie, on a dismal Sydney morning, went to meet the prospective part-time husbands. She’d prayed all night that none would turn up because, Lord alone knew, she’d done her best to put them off. ‘We are four elderly women of limited means,’ she’d explained as instructed. ‘But we need a capable man who can help us with tasks we are increasingly failing to manage. None of them intimate.’ Now she sat in the dimmest corner of an almost empty tea room with the brown squashy hat pulled as far down her face as it could fit so no one passing would immediately take her for the kind of woman who might be interviewing men for the personal use of brazen hussies.
In the event, neither Sergeant Harold Fletcher at two o’clock nor Mr Martin Duffy at half-past two had any trouble finding her. Mr Smith didn’t turn up at three o’clock, or if he did it was after Annie had made her decision and left.
Sergeant Fletcher was a man in his late thirties, well built with an unsmiling weather-beaten face, one eye concealed by a patch, and a manner that suggested a tough but successful war as clearly as the medals he wore on his chest. He asked sensible questions, such as, ‘Have you decided what tasks will take priority or will you leave that to me?’
‘I’m not one of the ladies, Sergeant Fletcher,’ Annie confessed. ‘I’m acting on behalf of them because they live so far away. Will you mind living that far away?’ He said he wouldn’t, which struck Annie as odd when he couldn’t have known how far, since she hadn’t mentioned it. She thought she hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe she had. When she asked further if he was familiar with that part of the world, he said he was, so she must have. And since the lapse was obviously hers, she let it pass. He understood horses, could build a shed, was capable of adding a column of figures and after what he’d been through, he feared no man. He was neither handsome nor frivolous. His manner, while not rude exactly, was abrupt; a private man, Annie guessed. He was, by any reckoning, the perfect candidate. ‘And what religion are you, Sergeant Fletcher?’ she enquired as he was leaving.
She gave the job to Martin Duffy because she wanted to. The poor boy hadn’t fought for the King because he had brothers fighting against him in Ireland. ‘I know you understand me,’ he’d said and of course she had. He’d had a difficult war, being young and fit and failing to fight, and not much had improved with the peace. Work was even harder to come by for a man who hadn’t served.
He was tall, slender, pale skinned, softly spoken, with a lovely voice, Annie thought. If she failed to notice his long-lashed blue eyes sparkling with mischief, or the extreme handsomeness of his face, it could only have been because she deemed them unimportant. His arithmetic was rough and ready and his chief knowledge of horses was that they could run very fast and the fastest were the safest to bet on. He wasn’t a big man with his fists, but he could argue pretty well, he told her, and he could sing if that was any use. All in all, when taken as a whole, weighing one thing against another, such admissions did the trick. Annie was delighted with his candour. Honesty and simplicity were great virtues. She was looking for a good-hearted man who wouldn’t bully or throw his weight around, and here was a fellow country man in great need. ‘Do you drink?’ she’d asked. Now and then, he’d said. ‘Do you go to Mass?’ Now and then, he’d said. So they’d agreed the wage Pearl had suggested of one pound a week plus board and lodging. She’d given him the train ticket to Cooma, the fare for the coach to Prospect and instructions to present himself as the cousin of Miss Pearl McCleary care of the Nightingales, to Mrs Quirk at The Irish Rover. Mrs Quirk would give him further directions. Martin Duffy arrives Tuesday 4 o’clock coach. Best I could do, read the telegram she sent to Pearl.
Between its receipt and his arrival a scant three days later, the ladies made what preparations they decided on their own account needed to be made. Adelaide’s astonishing resistance to the combined force of Mr Stokes, her mother-in-law and her husband had resulted in a molten atmosphere from which, the entire household knew, nothing good could come if you excluded Adelaide’s unprecedented concern for Louisa. Within hours of Mrs Nightingale Senior’s hasty return to Melbourne, Adelaide marched into Nightingales and demanded of her manager that he not only give Mrs Worthington more time to settle her bill, but that the shop provide a hamper of essentials for which there would be no charge at all. It had so taken Louisa by surprise that she’d forgotten to be grateful, but it hardly mattered. The concern was as much for the lodger as it was for his landlady, who might otherwise have failed to provide board along with the lodging.
The quality of the lodging similarly concerned Maggie. She arrived on Monday afternoon to inspect the room designated for him, a filthy tip as she later described it, and she spent the next four hours scrubbing, polishing, sweeping and washing down not just that room but the kitchen, the drawing room and the dining room as well. She might have spent another three h
ad she not been desperate to get home to attend to herself. Had the room been in her house, she’d have made it perfection, but it wasn’t, and so it was more important that she made herself perfection.
Maggie’s wardrobe was improving by the day. She found that the more she applied herself, the cleverer she became, and because she was her mother’s size and shape, she needed to make just enough adjustments to turn a twenty-year-old trousseau into a wardrobe fit for the town’s most alluring catch of 1919. She would turn herself into the kind of woman with whom a part-time husband might fall in love at first sight. Her model was Mrs Worthington less ten years.
She washed and put her hair into rags so she could have tendrils. She applied oatmeal to her face and polish to her nails. She examined herself in the mirror, looking for defects that might be disguised and assets that might be accentuated, then she tried on one last time the skirt and blouse so similar to ones Louisa had been wearing they could have been bought from the same shop. Had they said he would be good-looking? She couldn’t remember. She knew he would be.
Louisa was equally hopeful. She too had prepared her wardrobe, but where Maggie was dressing to flatter her figure and her rosy complexion, the wiser, older, more experienced Louisa was dressing for sympathy. Her intention was to present to the part-time husband the understated, fragile beauty of a widow who needed the strength and protection of a burly, loving man.
Pearl and Adelaide entertained no such thoughts. Pearl hoped only that Annie had chosen wisely and Adelaide prayed that Marcus would stay too drunk to query the propriety of their housekeeper’s cousin living under the same roof as Louisa when Louisa had never suggested that she was cut out to be a landlady. His looks, as far as they were concerned, were immaterial.
Norah Quirk, on the other hand, noticed them at once.
‘Mrs Quirk?’ Martin Duffy asked on finding her sipping tea behind the bar of The Irish Rover even though she was being paid by the Post Office.
‘Do I look old enough to be my mother?’ she replied boldly. She directed him to Nightingales, counted to thirty then hotfooted it up Hope Street arriving just in time to hear him introduce himself as Martin Something, ask Mr Stokes if he were Mr Nightingale and further could he possibly have a word with Miss McCleary who was his cousin.
He was the handsomest man to come to town since Joe Fletcher, she announced to Theresa Fellows whom she met in the street minutes later. Mrs Fellows hoped that he’d be friendlier and Norah said how could he not be? ‘But what do you make of this? He’s not staying with the Nightingales. He’s staying at Mrs Worthington’s.’
It was a bombshell. If there was nowhere for him to sleep at the Nightingales then surely he should have booked into her mother’s pub with its excellent reputation. Mrs Worthington’s own reputation was … not excellent. ‘Something’s funny,’ said Miss Quirk. ‘Mark my words!’
Pearl, on the other hand, took one look at Martin Duffy and wanted to scream in disappointment. No! she might have screamed. He was so profoundly not what she’d had in mind, not what she wanted, not what she needed, not what any of them needed, that it was all she could do not to punch him. ‘Follow me,’ was all she could bring herself to say by way of greeting at the Nightingales’ gate. Instead of a capable, well-put-together man, Annie had sent a ridiculously weedy Irish boy who looked as if he’d never done a day’s hard work in the whole of his life and would expect breakfast in bed and nights on the tiles. In terms of brawn, in terms of muscle, in terms of fearsomeness and out-and-out manliness, he might just as well have been a woman.
Worse, the minute she saw the look on the faces of Maggie and Louisa she knew their hearts had melted. She regretted beyond measure that she had trusted Louisa to send the advertisement and that the others, when apprised of it, had decided to forgive her and allow the man to come.
The minute he opened his mouth and said how pleased he was to meet them all, the minute he smiled and said what a delight it was to find them in such robust and youthful health if they didn’t mind him saying so, he had Maggie and Louisa eating from the palm of his hand, regardless of how pale and soft it was. Good humour shone from his very blue eyes. His fine head of black hair, slightly wavy and swept back, revealed a perfectly proportioned brow, which may or may not have suggested intelligence but definitely invited longing. How well Pearl knew the type. They were two a penny at St Canice’s, arriving for ten o’clock Mass during The Offertory and leaving during Communion, pink eyed and bleary from the night before.
As the four respectable ladies gathered about the table that had conjured him into existence, she looked from them to him and back again and she wanted to yell. Even Louisa might have been handier with her fists than he was. What did it matter that he had excellent teeth?
Martin Duffy dragged his gaze to the end of the table where Pearl sat, arms folded, eyes flashing and he took command of the moment with grace and ease. ‘My name is Martin Duffy and I would like to thank you for your kind proposal of a part-time marriage.’ He fished about in his jacket pocket and produced a small bag, the contents of which he tipped into his open hand. Four curtain rings. ‘I would like to offer each of you a token of my commitment to our arrangement. If you could just introduce yourselves I would be most grateful. It’s always handy to know a wife’s name I find, for when we are out and about.’
Louisa and Maggie giggled to show their delight. Adelaide, whose hopes and dreads were being met all at the same time, flinched. It was so poorly judged in Pearl’s eyes that she made up her mind to cancel the ‘arrangement’ before it began. ‘Mr Duffy,’ she said, ‘be under no illusion. The reference to any kind of matrimony should never have been included in the advertisement and if this is what has brought you here then we will pay for your immediate return.’
‘It has not. Certainly it hasn’t,’ began Martin Duffy, clearly alarmed, but Pearl hadn’t finished.
‘It’s true that we each have urgent and hair-raising problems that we find ourselves unable to address on our own because we are women, but they are not to be diminished by any foolishness from you. This is not a lighthearted experiment and we won’t hesitate to let you go if you fail us.’ She placed her ring on the sideboard next to the decanter, which was full of rum ordered by Louisa on credit to supplement the hamper. ‘This does not represent seriousness to me,’ she said.
It was embarrassing. What kind of person with any proper manners spoke so angrily to a newly employed right-hand man who was to live among them as an equal? A housekeeper, Louisa told herself. ‘Oh, Miss McCleary,’ she chortled. ‘The man has just arrived. There’s plenty of time for us to be serious.’
But Pearl would have none of it. It was a business agreement, she said again. Mr Duffy must be tired and hungry – she gave him no time to contradict her – and as it was very nearly tea time, Louisa must give him something to eat, show him his room, then leave him in peace until morning. They would meet again at eight o’clock, assuming that suited everyone.
‘She’s awfully bossy,’ Maggie whispered to Mr Duffy, placing a gentle hand on his elbow.
‘But always right,’ said Martin. ‘I can tell from looking at her.’ Which he was doing so steadily that Pearl was obliged to pick up the baby even though he wasn’t crying.
Adelaide, halfway to the door, said, ‘Remember, Louisa, the food only needs half an hour in a slow oven. I think you’ll find Miss McCleary’s rabbit casserole excellent, Mr Duffy. Come on, Maggie.’
Chapter Nineteen
Three respectable ladies stood in the street and, as one, saw only too clearly the folly of leaving the fourth in sole charge of a man she had labelled, against their wishes, husband. If there was a circumstance in which Louisa Worthington could not be trusted, it was alone in the company of a good-looking man with a gallon of rum on the sideboard. They could almost hear her say as the door closed on them, ‘I can’t stand stew on an empty stomach.’
Maggie said, ‘She’ll get her claws into him before bedtime.’
‘Maggie!’ Pearl snapped but it was what they were all thinking. ‘I should go back and chaperone.’
‘You can’t,’ said Adelaide. ‘I need you.’
‘He should be staying with me,’ Maggie said. ‘At least I don’t live alone.’
‘He shouldn’t,’ said Pearl. ‘And I can’t imagine Captain Nightingale being happy to have him in his house. We’ll have to trust her.’ That was how they left it, at odds with their better judgement, which overcame Maggie so early the next morning that she knocked on the Worthington door a full hour before she was expected. She was wearing a freshly restored floral frock that revealed her much admired chest and an expression that suggested she was a match for any temptress.
As a puzzled Martin Duffy admitted her to the house she asked breathlessly if he needed any help with the horses. ‘Do I?’ he replied. ‘Mrs Worthington’s still in bed. What am I supposed to do with the horses?’ He lowered his voice. ‘To be honest, I’m not much good with them.’
Maggie flushed at the confidence and at his closeness as he leaned towards her to draw her into it, shocking though it was, dreadful though he didn’t seem to realise it might be. ‘You’ll still need breakfast,’ she said. ‘What would you like? Eggs?’ She turned herself to finding and cooking them so delightfully that he would immediately love her. She hunted out pans and bread and butter and tea and soon she was chatting so comfortably about her life and his that it was easy for her to imagine that this was how it would be when they were married. She was in the process of correcting him, ‘No, Somerset Station is the Bluetts’ land and it runs behind ours and the Nightingales’,’ when Louisa appeared, fully dressed and properly groomed even if her face was the colour of cucumber.
Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Page 11