Every Woman for Herself

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Perhaps Charlie wouldn’t mind going upstairs and helping you to repack it a bit?’

  ‘If we’re not disturbing you?’

  ‘I find you constantly disturbing, especially since you’ve given up the widow’s weeds: but if you mean will it stop me writing, then no. I’ve come to one of those patches in the play where nothing goes right, and I need a break.’

  I stared at him uncertainly, but he was looking so Mr Rochester that I suppressed the impulse to bleat out: ‘What do you mean, disturbing?’ and just followed Caitlin up to her room, where I repacked her case, and calmed her down a bit – she was wildly excited about spending the night with two big girls like Febe and Clo.

  ‘What sort of clothes should my Barbie take?’

  ‘Practical ones. Clo and Febe’s Barbies are not really party animals these days.’

  ‘Ski wear?’ she pondered.

  ‘As long as it’s not a red duvet, like your daddy’s.’

  She giggled. ‘Daddy calls it his duvet now, too!’

  Daddy, six-four of soft, downy vermilion, went out for a walk with us later, thus entirely defeating the reason for employing me to entertain Caitlin in the first place. But he said he needed to stretch his legs and think.

  We climbed right up to the beacon, and although I’m not sure how the conversation took such a turn, I ended up telling him all about Skint Old Northern Woman; only I called it a comic, since he seemed to have an acute aversion to the word ‘magazine’. He said he’d order a dozen copies and send them to all his friends for Christmas.

  I do not have a dozen friends. Come to that, apart from family (in which I include Walter and Gloria) Miss Grinch, and possibly Vaddie at the gallery, I’m not sure I’ve got any at all.

  ‘You need an arts page,’ he suggested. ‘A sort of “What’s On in the North”.’

  ‘“What’s On in the North That’s Worth Parting With Brass to See”,’ I corrected.

  ‘Did you know there’s a sort of natural amphitheatre in the rocks above the stream in the woods?’ he asked. ‘It reminded me of the Minack outdoor theatre at Porthcurno in Cornwall. You could start a campaign to have summer theatre there.’

  ‘Yes, I know where you mean. It’s on Madge’s land, too, so her old dad could charge everyone going in.’ And out, knowing him.

  ‘You could have local people as the actors, like the Passion Play at Oberammergau.’

  ‘Or a Shakespeare a year … in the vernacular!’ I enthused. ‘I can see it now: “Enter Hamlet – he were a short, stiff man with no hair or eyebrows.” Or “Romeo, Romeo, thou art got a right poncey name, flower.”’

  ‘That kind of thing,’ he agreed, grinning. ‘I could direct it.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you will be spending that much time here.’

  ‘I intend spending as much time in Upvale as I can, though I’ll have to keep my London house on, as well. Upvale and the moors have got to me, in a way Haworth never did.’

  ‘Don’t mention Haworth – or the Brontës,’ I shuddered. ‘My brother and sisters and I are the result of a failed Brontë experiment.’

  Then I described Father’s attempt to replicate the conditions that had turned the sisters – or, in Father’s opinion, the brother – into literary geniuses.

  ‘So he chose a similar area, not too far away as the crow flies, and settled there with my mother. She’s Lally Tooke, have you heard of her? She went to America, and she’s very big on the radical feminist literature circuit – and they had Em and Anne and me. And by then their opinions of the Brontës had turned in opposing directions, Mother discovered that she hated childbirth, and wasn’t that mad about children, and she bolted. Father carried on, since it made the situation more authentic, after all, especially after our first au pair had Branwell, and made the numbers up. But none of us was brilliant except Bran, and he is a genius of a different kind.’

  ‘I met Bran in the pub with your father,’ he said. ‘Well, I say met, but we didn’t seem to be speaking the same language.’

  ‘Not many people do.’

  ‘Probably not. I’ve also had a close encounter with your other sister, Anne. She said she thought I would strip well.’

  I choked: ‘I think she just means you look like you’d be a good man in a fight.’

  ‘Let’s hope it won’t come to that – I think she’d win.’

  By the time we got back it had been a longer walk than I’d intended, and Caitlin was ready for a snooze before being brought to the Parsonage.

  There was no sign of Angie, except for something very rude scrawled across my door in spray paint, which Walter had already half-obliterated with Mediterranean Blue.

  ‘I seen ‘un off,’ he said. ‘I were up the back chopping firewood, and come to see what she were up to. She screamed and run off.’

  ‘Were you still holding the axe, Walter?’

  He nodded. ‘Aye, that’ll be it. Still, t’door wanted another coat.’

  ‘Yes – it’ll look lovely, Walter. You’re very kind to me.’

  He beamed. ‘Don’t you worry about the mad lady – Em’s going to set them three witches on her.’

  That should be interesting.

  * * *

  Father wandered into the kitchen, removed several candles from the top of his birthday cake, tossed them into the bin, and wandered out again, muttering darkly.

  ‘I told you he wouldn’t like the right number on it,’ I said. ‘Has anyone told Jessica how many it really is? He’s wearing well for his age, but he’s still getting on a bit.’

  ‘Dining room’s ready,’ Anne said, appearing. ‘Girls are in bed listening to that story tape I got them.’

  ‘I thought Jessica confiscated Rambo: Tocsin of Terror?’

  ‘Ho bleeding ho,’ said Anne. ‘Lion, the Witch and the effing Wardrobe. They’ve got a load of biscuits, pop, and stuff. Said they were going to have a midnight feast.’

  ‘I don’t think any of them will last as long as midnight, and let’s hope they aren’t sick.’

  ‘Em,’ I said cautiously, looking at the hem of the magnificent amber velvet gown in which she strode about like a queen: ‘I don’t think gorilla slippers go with that dress.’

  ‘It’s that or boots.’

  ‘No it isn’t – bare feet would be better. And you look amazing – it could have been made for you.’

  ‘You’ve all scrubbed up nice,’ Gloria agreed, coming in with a furtive air and secreting something away in the pocket of her pinafore. ‘I thought you were going to wear that lovely green dress, Charlie?’

  ‘I think it’s a bit much – I couldn’t decide. It’s very wispy for the middle of winter.’

  ‘You go and put it on this minute,’ Gloria ordered as the Parsonage doorbell sounded. ‘That’s your father’s guests now.’

  ‘Oh, all right, Gloria.’

  Em said: ‘You know what you’re to do, Gloria, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Gloria knows what she’s doing.’ She looked severely at me as I hovered on the stairs. ‘Scat!’

  I ran down and quickly changed into Felicity Hake-Hackett’s rejected Tinkerbell costume and strappy sandals.

  There is one thing Felicity and I have in common besides being the runts of our respective families: we may be skinny, but we both have busts. This dress showed more of mine than I thought I’d got.

  And thank God I’d already lawnmowered my legs and armpits even though it was winter when you’re usually glad of the extra warmth in Upvale. Otherwise, I’d have been much, much later.

  Skint Old Beauty, no. 1: Going Hairless

  One of Nature’s most cruel pranks is the way that, after forty, she starts to thin the hair on your head, while over-compensating by causing a sort of angora body stocking to gradually envelop the rest of you like mould.

  And, to add insult to injury, there is no cheap, fast, efficient and painless way of removing it. (Or even cheap, fast, efficient and painful.)

  One day, we hope, the
y will perfect the art of a total immersion in body wax from nose to toes, but until then we must suffer.

  Now you know why Victorian bathing costumes covered you up like that – and it wasn’t for modesty.

  One of the Great Mysteries of the Universe is: just where did that three-foot spike of nose hair hide before it sprang from your nostril, fully formed, at an embarrassing moment?

  Chapter 17

  Surprised

  Skint Old Fashion Victim, no. 3

  Leopardskin prints and gold accessories complement each other perfectly.

  The girls were hanging over the banisters in their pajamas when I went up to the drawing-room floor.

  ‘You look like a flower fairy,’ Febe said. ‘If there are green ones?’ she added doubtfully.

  ‘You’re very pretty,’ Clo agreed. ‘Mummy said you looked like a little ghoul in those baggy black things you used to wear.’

  ‘My daddy says she looks like an abandoned nymph,’ Caitlin said. ‘Is that good?’

  It is, as long as she didn’t get it wrong, and he really said ‘abandoned nympho’.

  ‘Em’s got a pretty dress too,’ Febe said. ‘The vicar walked into the door-post when he saw her. Even Anne’s got her best denim shirt and trousers on!’

  ‘We like to push the boat out at Rhymer Birthday Feasts.’

  ‘Bran had his tea with us – he ate all the biscuits, but he let me hold Mr Froggy.’ Caitlin said importantly. ‘He says he hasn’t time for birthday dinners, he has to finish his book before anyone else gets in his head and interrupts.’

  ‘And Walter was there, too,’ Febe said. ‘We had our own party!’

  ‘Why has Walter got no eyebrows?’ asked Caitlin.

  ‘It was the war. His hair just fell out and never came back,’ I explained. My neck began to ache from tilting back to look up at them, so I was quite relieved when Gloria popped her head out of the drawing room and beckoned.

  She was holding a tray of sherry glasses. (That’s how the Birthday Feast always goes – sherry and birthday cake first, then dinner.) ‘Take that glass nearest you,’ she instructed, ‘and go and give it to Em while she’s talking to the vicar.’

  ‘Right. Will it…?’

  ‘Just open her eyes to his good qualities.’

  ‘I can see most of those myself, from here. And wasn’t it his goodness that was the stumbling block?’

  ‘Love will find a way,’ she said. ‘Better him than that actor – for either of my little chickens.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve got against Mace. What did you see in the tea leaves, Gloria?’

  ‘Trouble,’ she said heavily. ‘And that Mace – his first wife drove into a tree and killed herself.’

  ‘Did she? How awful! But you can’t blame him for that, can you? Poor Mace!’ No wonder the poor man was bad-tempered.

  ‘Surprise! magazine said she lost control of the car after a row with him,’ Gloria said. ‘After she found out about the other woman.’

  I looked at her. ‘But how did she find out about the other woman?’

  ‘From the Surprise! Stolen Secrets column – though they can’t name names.’

  ‘I wondered what Mace had against women’s magazines, and now I know. Was it true, about this other woman?’

  ‘There’s no smoke without fire, and that one’s still burning,’ Gloria said cryptically. ‘Look at him!’

  I turned; Jessica had cornered him, and he was standing, arms folded, glowering down at her. Tyger, tyger …

  Then he caught sight of me, raised one eyebrow and smiled. It was the Ravaging Horde bit all over again.

  ‘Here,’ Gloria ordered brusquely, giving me a dig in the ribs with her sharp elbow. ‘Take that glass to your sister this minute! Bloody tea leaves – I’ll show ‘em!’

  Em and Chris seemed to be getting on fine without any herbal help, so it was easy to give Em the glass while she was looking at him.

  They were in the corner, and Chris was leaning over her with one hand on the wall next to her head, in a very masterful way. I’m sure Em was enjoying the novelty, because otherwise she would have released herself in a painful manner: painful to Chris, that is.

  None of us except Father actually like sherry, but Em was too engrossed to notice what she was drinking.

  I’d missed Father blowing out the candles on the cake, because Anne was now slicing it … and Gloria was purposefully forging down the room in the direction of Mace and the Treacle Tart, one solitary, twinkling amber glass left on her tray.

  Something Wicked This Way Comes.

  She wouldn’t – would she?

  She would.

  Mace had just lifted the glass to his lips when I said urgently: ‘Don’t!’ and reached out for it – but too late.

  He stared at me in mild astonishment.

  ‘Excuse me!’ Jessica said tightly, having been unceremoniously elbowed out of the way. ‘Mace and I were having a conversation.’

  ‘Sorry, was that your glass?’ Mace said, relinquishing it to me.

  ‘Yes. Gloria gave you mine by mistake,’ I said feebly. ‘Shall I get you another?’

  ‘No. I don’t really like sherry, though I don’t mind sharing this one – with you,’ he offered, with that irresistible smile – and smouldering dark eyes, so Gloria was right about the fire. ‘You look like a creature from another world tonight. Beautiful, fragile, insubstantial…’

  Disconcerted, I found I’d taken a gulp of the potentially doctored sherry myself – then Mace took the glass, turned it around, and drank from the very place my lips had touched, his eyes holding mine.

  Do not ask me why this was the sexiest thing that ever happened to me, because I don’t know. Take it from me, it was.

  I was dissolving faster than a love philtre – which is probably what we were drinking.

  Whoops.

  ‘Do you feel all right, Mace?’ I asked tentatively.

  ‘Yes – in fact, I feel wonderful!’

  ‘Right. Er … Mace, I think Gloria put a little something of her own concoction into the sherry.’

  ‘I thought it tasted unusual – but pleasant. What does she use? I thought it was only liqueurs that had herbs added?’

  ‘I could have been wrong. Or got the glasses mixed up?’ I mused.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? At least now I’ve got the chance to tell you how beautiful you look tonight.’

  The slow-fuse-burning smile made my spine tingle and my toes sort of curl like Turkish slippers …

  Jessica, who’d retreated to the other side of the room, was giving me the evil eye, and I don’t think she even realised she’d taken a bite of birthday cake. Em’s birthday cakes have one hundred calories per crumb.

  The blissful moment was rudely shattered. ‘You made a right cock-up of that, you daft ha’porth!’ Gloria hissed in my ear like an angry wasp. ‘He was supposed to be looking at that Jessica when he drank it, not you!’

  ‘But Gloria, wasn’t that a bit … underhand?’

  ‘Never you mind!’

  I was about to tell her that I’d had a sip myself, then stopped. It was the tiniest sip and couldn’t possibly matter … could it?

  ‘Still, maybe…’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’ll brew him something tomorrow to cancel out the spell – but you can’t go against Fate, I should have known better. Time to start dinner.’

  ‘What’s the matter? What was she saying?’ asked Mace.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I assured him. And it would be once he’d had the antidote and saw me in my usual persona of boring old Charlie, sometime murderess and part-time children’s nanny.

  Walter beat the gong with enthusiasm, and we all trooped into the dining room and seated ourselves under the birthday banner, Father at the head of the table, with Jessica sitting smugly at his right like a Borgia bag of secrets.

  * * *

  I don’t remember much about the rest of the dinner, except that Mace sat next to me and told me all about his first play
, and the one he was writing now, which both seemed to be about guilt, and hasty actions leading to disastrous outcomes. But then, so is life.

  Good, dry champagne ran like water, and Jessica drank too much, which is easy to do when there’s nothing else whizzing round your bloodstream. She got a bit giggly and excitable. The sticky toffee pudding would have lagged her bones a bit, but she declined with horror.

  ‘Oh no, I really couldn’t eat a stodgy dessert!’

  ‘You can’t seem to eat anything at all lately,’ Gloria said. ‘And when you do it doesn’t stay down. Happen you’re pregnant – unless it’s that bulimia.’

  ‘I have not got bulimia!’ protested Jessica. ‘And I’m certainly not pregnant. I had my tubes tied when I had the twins.’

  ‘Then I hope they were tied good and tight, flower, because there’s no knot that can’t be undone,’ said Gloria grimly.

  Jessica stared at her, aghast. ‘Have you been putting something in my food? Or Em? – she’s put a spell on me, so I get pregnant!’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Em said. ‘The last thing I want is for you to get effing pregnant and have any excuse for hanging around here.’

  ‘And it’s not what goes in your food that makes you pregnant,’ pointed out Gloria meaningfully.

  ‘Shouldn’t think she is,’ Anne said, busy surrounding her castle of pudding with custard prior to the initial assault. ‘We’ve all seen the backside of forty.’

  ‘I haven’t!’ exclaimed Jessica.

  ‘That could have been more felicitiously put, but you’re right, Anne,’ agreed Em.

  ‘Ran, I’m not pregnant, am I?’

  ‘How should I know?’ he said irritably, looking up from his dinner plate. ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters! It took me a year to get my figure back after the girls were born, and I’m not getting married looking pregnant.’

  The pause after that statement was pregnant, even if nothing else was.

  Ran sighed and put down his spoon. ‘Well, I was going to save it for the birthday speech, but the cat is out of the bag now: Jess and I are getting married.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Anne.

  ‘We love each other!’ Jessica declared dramatically.