The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew

by Milly Johnson

  ‘Even more attracteev, because he is unattainable, n’est-ce pas?’ said Sophie, after a split second of thinking dare I actually poke this fire? And then deciding, oh, why not.

  That switched up Miriam’s lip-pursing to max. She must only be in her twenties, thought Sophie, yet she was going to have a face like a hessian blanket if she didn’t stop frowning and doing that ridiculous thing with her mouth. Sophie would never have mentioned anything like that to another woman, but Pom was a different animal.

  ‘Can I just give you a little advice, Miss Bird?’ Pom did not wait for permission. ‘I notice that you do ziz . . .’ she gathered her lips into a cats bum. ‘You ’ave to stop crumpling, because you will get ze smoker’s lines and will look so much older than you are.’

  ‘Well!’ Miriam’s jaw dropped open.

  ‘I am sure that it might be all right for you to say such things in France, miss, but it isn’t done in Yorkshire,’ said Josie.

  ‘But you Yorkshire people are straight-talking, so I have ’eard. And, ladies, my advice is kindly given. If you want to attract a man, you should smile, be ’appy. Not have the face of a cul de chat.’

  The glass in Josie’s hand banged down onto the table as if she were an auctioneer closing a sale.

  ‘Drink up, Miriam, we’re going,’ she said. ‘I haven’t come here to be insulted by a barmaid.’

  ‘Oh, mademoiselle, please do not take my words the wrong way . . .’ Sophie was starting to turn into Poirot now. Her accent was getting stronger with every word. She would be calling for Captain Hastings and Miss Lemon soon.

  Miriam and Josie Bird stood, picked up their handbags and stormed out, slamming the door behind them. Marshall looked up from his newspaper, gained eye contact with Sophie, said the immortal line, ‘If you put lipstick on a pig, lass, it’s still a pig,’ and then returned to his newspaper.

  From behind Sophie a snort made her whirl round and there, standing in the room to the side of the bar, was Elliott Bellringer.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I came in the back door to check that you were all right. I didn’t want to interrupt the floorshow.’

  Sophie felt herself colouring. How long had he been there? Had he heard her talking about him having the face of an angel and being even more attractive because he was married?

  ‘I couldn’t resist,’ she whispered, dropping the accent. ‘I don’t know what got into me.’ Well, clearly Pom had gotten into her.

  ‘It was very funny. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did. What was that about the ghost ringing a bell?’

  Sophie did a quick track back: she had been talking about the ghost before discussing Elliott’s attributes. Aarrgh. He must have heard the face-of-an-angel line.

  ‘Oh, I made that up,’ she said.

  ‘Luke’s having an hour at his friend’s house tonight, in case you think I’m a bad parent and have left him home alone. He earned his badge for swimming a width of the baby pool and he’s totally hyper. It’s a one-off late one for him,’ said Elliott. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket and looked as if he had just stepped off a motorbike.

  ‘I never thought anything of the sort,’ she said. ‘Is he happy about his achievement?’

  ‘Er, you could say that. Nice hair, by the way.’

  ‘Betty’s of Slattercove.’

  A silence fell between them that was charged with a strange energy. If the tumble drier hadn’t ended its cycle prematurely and buzzed, it was possible the pair of them would have been standing there forever, held in its grip.

  ‘Washing,’ explained Sophie. ‘Tracey said I could wash my things here.’

  ‘You’re always welcome to use the facilities at the vicarage.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Do you need any help?’

  ‘Nope, I’m enjoying myself.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be off then if you’re in control of everything. There’s always some paperwork to catch up with in my job.’

  ‘Good night, Reverend.’

  ‘Elliott’s fine. Or Ells Bells. I answer to both.’ He smiled, suddenly looking more like Superman than Clark Kent and Sophie felt a kick in her chest. That shouldn’t be happening. It really shouldn’t. She obviously wasn’t in control of everything at all.

  Six more customers came in after Marshall had left and were themselves leaving by the time Tracey returned.

  ‘How did it go?’ asked Sophie, after she had bolted the door behind them.

  ‘Just pour me a glass of wine, will you?’ Tracey said by way of reply.

  ‘Shiraz or . . .’

  ‘Any. Red, white, green, blue, preferably pink though . . . the higher alcohol content the better.’

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘No, it was a lovely evening. Jade actually initiated some conversation . . .’

  There was a big pregnant ‘but’ hanging in the air.

  Sophie handed over a large glass of rosé which Tracey almost dived into head first, then asked, ‘But?’

  Tracey gave a low growl of frustration. ‘But . . . I have done the most idiotic thing ever to impress.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Jade bought a prom dress on the internet and it doesn’t fit. It came from China and there isn’t enough time to send it back and change it for a smaller size, so I said I’d alter it for her.’

  ‘Oh, you sew?’

  ‘I do. I told her to give it to me and I’d sort it. I’ll have to unpick all the seams though and put them back together again . . .’ She made an anguished noise. ‘Why oh why did I say that?’

  ‘Because you care and you want to help, perhaps?’

  ‘Because I am a total big-mouthed dick, that’s more the truth.’

  ‘I can sew if you need any help,’ said Sophie.

  ‘Bless you, but I have to do this myself. I promised and I will do it. I’ll take it really slowly and carefully and I’ll come up with the goods. I’ve got plenty of time. It’s doable. Get yourself a glass and join me.’

  ‘Bless you. I’ll have a small one.’ Sophie poured herself a glass of red.

  ‘And thank you for standing in for me this evening,’ said Tracey. ‘I started to feel pretty rotten for asking you when I thought about it. I know you need some space. When people have stayed in the almshouse before, we’ve always said, we’ll leave you alone to sort out your head and you know where we are if you need us. I promise, I shan’t be asking you any more favours.’

  ‘I really didn’t mind,’ Sophie replied.

  ‘Yeah, but still. You came here for peace and quiet and the least we can give you is that.’

  That night Sophie lay in bed and listened to the old house settling down for the night with the odd creak as it cooled, and as she thought about the Miriam Bird scene, she started to giggle to herself. The more she thought about it, the funnier it got. She couldn’t remember the last time she had lain in bed and laughed like that. Indeed had she ever lain in bed and laughed like that? No wonder her own face was so free of lines, because no emotion ever enlivened it. The press wrongly reported she had overdosed on Botox, but that wasn’t true. Not much in her life made her smile, and all her sadness was pushed down, hidden. A neutral mask was what she wore; indifference confused people, put them on the back foot. Indifference was control and control was power. Do not let anyone read your expression. That’s what she had been taught at St Bathsheba’s.

  She’d enjoyed smiling tonight. She’d enjoyed serving people with drinks and being a teensy bit mischievous. She’d enjoyed being Pom.

  Chapter 27

  She went for a run early the next morning after being awoken at a ridiculous hour by cacophonous seagulls. She filled her lungs with salt-fresh air and felt exhilarated and liberated. She passed a man with a frisky Golden Retriever and they exchanged good mornings; he didn’t have a clue who she was, just a woman on a beach running and that’s all she wanted to be to him. She didn’t want to think about real life outside this little bubble, but it was there, ready to break in at its earliest
convenience. She couldn’t live in one room of an old house for ever. She couldn’t pretend that Sophie Mayhew didn’t exist, because she did; it was Pom No-Surname who didn’t exist, and yet out of the two personalities, Pom felt the most real.

  As she jogged back to the house, she heard her name being carried on the wind but couldn’t see anyone. ‘Pom, Pom.’ Then she saw a small hand above the fence at the bottom of the vicarage garden. She ran across to find a grinning Luke.

  ‘Morning, Luke. And how are you today?’

  ‘I got my width badge at the swimming pool yesterday.’ The Cheshire Cat had nothing on that grin.

  ‘I heard. Congratulations, you are a real superstar.’

  ‘I’m getting a kitten,’ said Luke. ‘Will you come and see him?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Sophie. ‘Have you got a name for him yet?’

  ‘I’m going to call him Pom,’ replied Luke.

  Sophie smiled. ‘Really?’

  Out of the corner of her eye she detected a movement. Elliott on the back step, waving also.

  ‘Luke Bellringer, get your coat on for nursery now. Good morning, Pom.’

  ‘Good morning, Rev . . . Elliott,’ called Sophie.

  ‘Been running?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bye, Pom,’ Luke was walking three steps and then turning round again to wave.

  ‘Go on, Luke, hurry up. I will see you later. Have a lovely day.’

  ‘See you, Pom.’ Luke scurried towards his father, who picked him up and carried him into the house and Sophie felt a pang of something painful deep in her chest.

  She didn’t think about Henry much because it was too raw, even after four years, but whenever she wanted to, she could pull up the picture of his wisp of fair hair and his tiny hands, her lips against his soft little cheek as she kissed him goodbye. She tried not to let herself think about what would have happened had he lived, thrived, grown, because there was no point. There was no, ‘Well, Mrs Mayhew, just go back and try again’, because there never would be another chance to have a baby. It was a wonder she had conceived at all, the doctors told her. Her uterus was heart-shaped, less romantic than it sounded. Her womb malformed. Inside she was as imperfect as the outside was perfect.

  She had never really grieved for her son. Not properly. There had been a ‘formal period’ of grief for both families until after the funeral and then John had returned to work and it was business as usual, as if they all clicked back onto a ‘normal’ track, as if their grieving had been scheduled into a diary – but that wasn’t how it was for her. Newspapers had commented on the fact that she hadn’t been seen to cry in public. One of the broadsheets had carried a story about it, debating the public showing of sorrow, and though the editorial had been sympathetic, the photo they chose to use depicted her with a composed, almost bored expression in the front pew at her son’s funeral service, ‘inspecting her nails’ and she’d never forgiven them for it. How had they even got a photographer into the church to take it? She’d been looking at her bracelet, the teddy bear charm, remembering all the hope in her heart when she’d chosen it; not inspecting her bloody nails.

  She’d made the mistake of reading some of the comments under the story:

  Hard-hearted bitch . . .

  Has she chipped her nail varnish? Quick, get a doctor . . .

  Leave her alone, she’s just lost her son. Who are you to tell people how to grieve?

  She’d spoil her make-up if she cried . . .

  She should of cryed. It was her son FFS!

  They were right, she should have cried, but she couldn’t and she was as disgusted at herself for it. For months, she had felt scooped out and hollow but she had hardly cried.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing for a man to lose a son,’ said Angus Calladine, when he came to visit her in hospital.

  ‘If it’s not meant to be, there’s no point in worrying about things you can’t control,’ said Celeste Mayhew. ‘Having children is a privilege, not a right.’

  No one had held her, no one had put their arms around her – except for John, briefly – in the days following their son’s passing. ‘We’ll get through this,’ he had said, in the same breath as, ‘the press want to interview me. I’ve told them you’re not up to it. I’ll shoulder it, for us both. I’ll make sure they’re fully aware of how upset you are so there’s no misreporting.’

  When she reached the almshouse, she found a bag on the doorstep. Someone had left her a packet of croissants, half a pound of butter and a small jar of jam. A French breakfast from an anonymous well-wisher. That made her smile. She heated up a pastry in the oven and had it for breakfast with coffee whilst she sat at the window and looked out at the view; the sun sparkling on the waves, the clouds scudding across the sky driven by a strong sea breeze. One of them looked like a horse. In the ‘summer of Pom’ she and the others had lain on the beach and stared up at clouds, finding shapes in them. She hadn’t done it since.

  That afternoon, Sophie walked down the hill into the centre of Little Loste which consisted of the inn, a knot of houses, a general shop (‘Loste Things’) that served them all and a post office. A delivery of bread had just landed at the shop and she bought two still-warm rolls as well as some tins of soup and three newspapers, hoping that the shopkeeper wasn’t wondering why the Frenchwoman in the tracksuit had exactly the same facial features as the posh woman plastered across the front page of one of them.

  ‘I’ve put you an extra breadcake in the bag,’ said the shopkeeper matter-of-factly, expecting neither praise nor thanks.

  ‘Thank you, you are so kind,’ said Sophie, touched by his consideration for the stranger in the almshouse. She smiled at him. No one would recognise her if she smiled. She went back to the house and locked the door on the world – for now. She needed to be alone, to have the luxury of time to think, recalibrate. She didn’t want to read any more about John’s affair, but she thought she should in order to find a way through the whole mess. Before she opened up the first of the newspapers, she warned herself that any story would be a barrel of chaff and it would be her mission to find the odd wheat grains of truth in amongst it.

  Her eyes dropped to the page and she read all about herself, her husband and his mistress. She read hoping to find holes in the story, holes that Rebecca Robinson would slip through and disappear. ‘A friend’ said John was infatuated with Rebecca, her earthiness and hot-bloodedness. A columnist drew on the polarisation between the wife and mistress: the ice-queen and the hot raunchy lover. There was a comparison chart of ten points: Beauty, Intelligence, Sexiness, Wealth, Wit, Warmth, Class, Education, Fashion Sense, Exes (Rebecca’s list was as long as Sophie’s was short on that last one). ‘Warmth: Sophie the Trophy has the expression of a frozen fish. Is she even flesh and blood?’ She stopped reading because she was torturing herself; it had been a bad idea, not a helpful one. She lay on the bed and closed her eyes, tried to drift off. She never counted sheep but instead imagined she was making a dress from scratch: a bright yellow silk gown today. She fell into unconsciousness at the point of tacking in the first sleeve, then dreamed that she was at a family lunch and her own parents had made her sit by herself whilst they welcomed Rebecca into their midst.

  She barely moved for the two days after that and knew that she was in danger of sliding down into a pit of depression and self-recrimination. Thank goodness for the voice that spoke up occasionally when she needed it. The voice that resided somewhere in her core and chose not to interfere with her life except when she was teetering on an edge. It had made itself heard the day when Magda was half-drowning and the day in the hospital when she was standing at the side of her baby son in an incubator. This is not your fault, Sophie.

  The voice was a survival mechanism. There had been no one around for Sophie to turn to, so it had invented itself. A sensible, caring inner being ensuring its own preservation by protecting the whole. It knew that she was a good person, that whatever her outside seemed to show, inside she wasn�
��t cold or unfeeling at all. And now the voice was saying, Let’s go for a nice run, shall we? Let’s stop thinking about the opinions of people who don’t matter and lies written in newspapers. Let’s forget all about Sophie Mayhew and enjoy being Pom No-Surname today.

  She forced herself to take that run and felt better for it. She came back to find a bag on the doorstep once again, this time containing a cottage pie in a dish and some instructions for heating it up. On the back of the note was written: From Mrs Wilson. Please leave dish on doorstep in a bag when you’ve done with it and I’ll pick it up when next passing. She imagined Mrs Wilson, whoever she was, making the pie, taking it up in the rain for the poor woman in the church charity house simply because she wanted to. Neither Mrs Wilson, she thought, nor whoever had left the croissants a couple of days ago, would realise just how big an effect their small considerations might have: how they cheered her up when she most needed it, how they highlighted just how much kindness was lacking from her world. Miss Palmer-Price had got it wrong: kindness was not a weakness, it was an essential part of being a human being, a gift to be bestowed upon others, a strength.

  She had taken the pie out of the oven and was about to serve it up when she saw Tracey pass by the window en route to the front door, a fully-stuffed carrier bag in her hand.

  ‘Am I being a pest?’ she said, when Sophie invited her in.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I said I’d leave you alone.’

  ‘I could do with the company.’

  ‘Really? That makes me feel better then. Something smells good.’

  ‘A cottage pie from Mrs Wilson. There’s plenty if you’d like some.’

  ‘I can’t take your food,’ protested Tracey. ‘That would be ridiculous.’

  Sophie smiled and took an extra plate out of the cupboard. ‘Go on, it’s fine.’

  ‘Mrs Wilson’s cooking is really good. Had it come from anyone else but her, I would have stood firm. I shouldn’t really share it, she made it for you. I’ll bring something over to replace it because that would have done you two meals and—’