Bridesmaids Revisited

  BRIDESMAIDS REVISITED

  Dorothy Cannell

  Chapter One

  I hadn’t thought about the bridesmaids in years. My only meeting with them occurred when I was about seven or eight years old and my mother took me to their house for the day. Their names had sounded to me like the start of a nursery rhyme: “Rosemary, Thora, and Jane.” From a child’s vantage point they had seemed middle-aged. But they could only have been in their forties. My memory of that day’s visit was a little fuzzy around the edges. The house was old with a gate that creaked. There was a parrot in a cage by the fireplace and a dark red cloth with a balled fringe on the table, and a jug of lemon barley water on the sideboard. I vaguely remembered sitting on the edge of a hard chair when the one in the kitchen bent to give me a kiss.

  Afterwards I asked Mother why she called them the bridesmaids. It was a long story, she said, best forgotten. So I stored that visit and my curiosity away like scraps of black-and-white photographs in some attic corner of my mind, where they gathered cobwebs along with other childhood memories. But when I was seventeen my mother was dead, and so many things I might have asked her would be forever left unanswered.

  Now on a wet and windy morning better suited to midwinter than June, I stood in the hall of my grown-up house, reading the letter that had just dropped onto the flagstone floor with the rest of the post. The handwriting was neat and precise. One sensed the ghost of a teacher, with ruler to hand, leaning over the shoulder of Rosemary Maywood, for that’s whom the letter was from. In opening she said she hoped it reached me and found my family and me in good health. Then she went into a paragraph of detail about how she, Thora, and Jane had managed to track me down, by way of talking to someone who knew someone who had a friend who knew Astrid Fitzsimons, the widow of my mother’s brother Wyndom.

  Why the bridesmaids had gone to such trouble was the burning question. I had to read page two to find out. Here Rosemary explained that her purpose in writing was to inform me that my maternal grandmother was anxious to get in touch with me. And, that she, Thora, and Jane would be pleased to arrange matters if I would come as soon as possible for a long-neglected reunion at the Old Rectory.

  How peculiar! My grandmother had been no more than a name to me and I had never imagined having any sort of contact with her. My immediate reaction was to rush into my husband’s study, where he was usually to be found at nine in the morning, already hard at work on his latest cookery book. Unfortunately I was out of luck today. Ben not sensing I was about to need him desperately had left at the crack of dawn for Norfolk. Even the children weren’t available to me. He had taken our four-year-old twins, son Tam and daughter Abbey, and sixteen-month-old Rose on a fortnight’s holiday so that I could finally finish my last bit of decorating. Therefore, I took the next best course of action, which was to head for the kitchen intent on confiding in my daily helper, Mrs. Roxie Malloy. Luckily she was just where I hoped to find her—seated at the kitchen table with a feather duster in one hand for appearance’s sake and a cup of tea in the other.

  “Make yourself at home, Mrs. H.,” she proffered kindly. “If you’re looking for Tobias, I just let him out into the garden. And don’t go telling me it’s not fit weather out there for man nor beast, because I already told him. If ever a cat had a mind of his own that one does. Meowed at me something dreadful he did until I just gave in.” She shifted perfunctorily in her seat. “When all’s said and done, there’s only so much a woman can be expected to put up with in these enlightened times.”

  “Very true,” I said.

  Ours was not the typical employer-employee relationship. Mrs. Malloy and I had been through a lot together since the day I changed my name from Miss Ellie Simons to Mrs. Bentley T. Haskell, and she showed up to help hand round plates of mushroom caps on toast points at the wedding reception. Over the years she had come to behave as though Merlin’s Court was her home and I was someone in the habit of dropping in unannounced in the hope that there might be a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the offing. She’d also made it clear that she didn’t think much of how I’d decorated the place, despite the fact that I’d been in the interior-design business before I married and had been working part-time for the past year or so.

  According to her, the kitchen’s quarry-tiled floor was hard on her feet, the glass-fronted cupboards looked silly with just a couple of eggcups sitting in them, and a fireplace in the kitchen was a nonsense. Nevertheless, as was the case this morning, she was usually the one to set a match to the logs at the first hint of a chill in the air.

  There was no denying that I was fond of her, but Mrs. Malloy could be a royal pain at times. Presently she was looking even more long-suffering than usual. But I wasn’t about to let her get started. Call me selfish, but I felt entitled for once to unload on her.

  Fetching a cup and saucer from the Welsh dresser, I sat down across from her and reached for the teapot. “Mrs. Malloy, I just received a rather disturbing letter.”

  “Well, if that isn’t a coincidence, one came for me this morning.” She nodded her jet-black head with the two inches of white roots. This was for her a fashion statement, along with the neon eye shadow, magenta lipstick, and the taffeta frocks. My cousin Freddy, who lived in the cottage at our gates, had once noted with an admiring grin that she managed to create the impression that life for her was one long cocktail party. Still, as she frequently informed me, there was a lot more to her than her glamour-puss image might lead one to suppose.

  “Don’t let me go dwelling on my problems,” she now continued magnanimously. “Just because my life is in ruins, there’s no call for you to bottle up whatever’s got you upset, Mrs. H.; you pour it all out, have a good snivel if it’ll help.”

  “Oh, no! You first,” I said, resolutely stuffing the envelope back in my skirt pocket. “It’s not bad news about George, is it?”

  “Who?” Mrs. Malloy frowned, putting a few more cracks in her makeup, which this morning appeared to have been applied with a trowel.

  “Your son.” We didn’t often speak of George, who had been married briefly to my alluring cousin Vanessa, Aunt Astrid and Uncle Wyndom’s daughter. Only to discover that the child he thought was his wasn’t. This being how Ben and I had come to have Rose with us.

  “That’s right; me one and only—the pride and joy of his mother’s heart. George is fine, thanks ever so for asking.” Mrs. Malloy let the feather duster fall from her hand and sat exuding a most unnerving humility. “Course, I don’t hear from him as often as I’d like, but it’s not to be expected, is it? Not from a busy man like him. Quite the businessman is my George. Anyhow, you can ease your mind, Mrs. H., the letter weren’t from him.”

  “But I wouldn’t mind if he wanted to see Rose,” I protested. “I understand how terribly hurt he was on finding out he wasn’t her father.”

  “We all get a reminder once in a while that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; not for none of us it isn’t.” Mrs. Malloy passed me the sugar bowl. “Look at yourself, left all alone while Mr. H. goes bunking off with the kiddies for a fortnight’s fun and games at that holiday camp place. Or so he says. Let a man off the lead for two minutes and there goes your marriage, you mark my words! It’s the story of me third husband, Leonard, all over again.”

  Her sigh created a whirlpool in her teacup. “Off he goes to the butcher’s one Saturday morning for a pound and a half of stewing steak—I remember particularly I’d been fancying a nice meat pudding—and that’s the last I sees or hears of him. Until this morning, some twenty years later, when he writes to say as how his reason for not coming home was the fault of a rare form of amnesia.”

  “Not the common or garden kind?” While sipping my tea I thought
about the bridesmaids. They hadn’t mentioned my mother, except in reference to that long-ago visit. Did they know she had died? Had they thought it in poor taste to mention the fact? Was the parrot still alive?

  “There was never nothing common about Leonard.” Mrs. Malloy’s eyes took on a dreamy glow. “A gent through-and-through he was. Always went to a proper tailor he did; no buying his clothes down the market for him. Hair styled every week with a lovely deep wave in front. And you couldn’t count the shoes in his wardrobe, polished the like you’ve never seen. Oh, yes, he was something to look at, was Leonard. Even when he was in the altogether, which is where most men come up short. Course”—her sigh would have done a whistling kettle proud—”he carried on something terrible with other women, but on the bright side, they was all classy types.”

  “That counts for something,” I conceded, wondering if I was right in thinking that Rosemary was the tallest of the bridesmaids.

  “It certainly does, Mrs. H., seeing as one of me other husbands went off with a real cow that was got up like a streetwalker. I’ll have you know, Mrs. H., that sort of thing takes a lot of living down for a woman like me that’s always taken pride in presenting herself right.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her butterfly lips, and pressed a hand to the cleavage revealed by her sequined neckline. “And when all is said and done, Leonard is my George’s father.”

  “Really? I thought your second husband was his father.”

  “Well, maybe it was that way.” She eyed me somewhat coldly. “It’s easy to lose track when you’ve been married as often as I have. What it comes right down to is that Leonard had his good points. And now here he is writing to say he wants to come home to me.”

  “With or without the pound and a half of stewing steak?”

  “There’s no need to take that snippy tone, Mrs. H. Can’t a man say he’s sorry?”

  “For keeping your meat pudding waiting twenty years?”

  “Put like that, I would be a fool.” Mrs. Malloy tottered to her feet, the very picture of tortured womanhood. Her black suede shoes had three-inch heels and were at least a couple of sizes too small for her. But I could tell that only a fraction of her anguish was physical.

  Draining my second cup of tea, I forced myself to stop thinking about the bridesmaids. “Of course it would be a mistake to even consider taking him back,” I told her. “I expect Leonard is down-and-out and needs somewhere to stay until he has another win at the dogs or whatever is his usual means of getting by. Try telling yourself how well you’ve done without him all these years and write back saying you’ve got amnesia. There’s been a lot of it going around lately.”

  “That’s easy enough to say.” Mrs. M. retreated into the pantry and emerged with a bottle of gin. For a moment I thought she was about to drown her sorrows by getting busy washing the windows. She was a great believer that gin was the best all-purpose household cleaner. Instead, she poured a good slosh into her teacup and sat back down at the table. “Leonard didn’t put a return address on the letter. And I know what that means. He’s going to show up on me doorstep in the next day or two and I won’t have the heart to send him away, not once I get a whiff of that lovely cologne he always wore.”

  “It wasn’t the hairspray that got to you?”

  “I’ll choose to ignore that crack, Mrs. H., seeing as how it’s understandable you’re down in the dumps.” Mrs. Malloy could at times take the high road. “Clearly it don’t need saying that I know better than most what it feels like having a husband bunk off to Greener Pastures. And what’s worse in your case is that he took the kiddies with him.”

  “The holiday camp is called Memory Lanes,” I corrected her.

  “Well, it said a lot about greener pastures in the brochure. Sounded more like a nudist colony to me than a place for decent family fun. But if it really is about sitting around the campfire singing songs in the rain, I doubt Mr. H. will be having the time of his life. It’s just another of the vicar’s potty schemes, if you ask me.”

  The Reverend Mr. Ambleforth was indeed inclined to be eccentric but, to be strictly fair, Mrs. Malloy must have been thinking of another brochure; one she had herself picked up at the travel agency. Also, it was the Reverend’s wife, Kathleen, who had organized the fortnight’s holiday in Norfolk. There were now several of these Memory Lanes holiday camps scattered around England. The brainchild of a financial wizard named Sir Clifford Heath.

  At first, like Mrs. Malloy, I gained the wrong impression. I had imagined that Memory Lanes provided all the joys of sleeping in leaky tents and whiling away the afternoons making daisy chains or learning to play “Little Bo Peep” on the dulcimer. The concept didn’t appeal to me much. I’ve never appreciated being organized into having a good time by a large woman with a badminton racket waiting to swat me if I failed to find a four-leaf clover, or whined about gnat bites.

  Initially I thought it said much for Kathleen’s forceful personality that she had persuaded a dozen men at St. Anselm’s parish that here was a thoroughly jolly way to spend quality time with their children. Leaving their wives at home to enjoy a relaxing couple of weeks turning out cupboards, repapering the kitchen, or whatever else gave them a sense of true domestic fulfillment.

  Ben, having always been a hands-on father, manfully assured me that he was genuinely excited about the trip. And after thumbing through the brochure provided by Memory Lanes, I began to think it wouldn’t be so bad. It turned out that Sir Clifford Heath’s vision incorporated village settings, complete with thatched cottages and cobbled streets, tearooms and haberdashery shops, duck ponds and bowling greens. The emphasis was on nostalgia, a return to a simpler way of life. Entertainment included poetry readings and musical evenings, nature walks, sketching and crocheting classes, cricket matches, and gatherings in the assembly hall listening to nineteen-forties-style programs on the wireless. To enable parents of very young children to participate fully in activities unsuited to their offspring, fully trained nannies were provided around the clock. Ben might well have the time of his life. It was selfish of me to wish he were here.

  The grandfather clock in the alcove under the stairs struck the half hour—10:30. Was it possible he had been gone for two hours? It felt like the tail end of the fortnight, not the beginning. I pictured myself going into the study and perching on the edge of his desk while he sat pegging away at the old manual typewriter that he refused to abandon for an electric one, let alone a word processor. I would sit absorbing those little things about him that I loved. His crisply curling dark hair, the intent line of his jaw, the endearing way his glasses slid further down his nose every time he hit the carriage return. Very likely he wouldn’t notice me at first. He would be in the thrall of his muse; totally absorbed in getting down on paper the ingredients and instructions for preparing Roasted Grouse with Prune and Walnut Dressing. I would wait until the keys slowed from a rapid clackety-clack to a tentative tap or two before interrupting him.

  “Darling,” I would say, very softly so as not to bring him back to reality with a jolt that would send his chair into a tail-spin. “I’ve just received rather an odd letter from the bridesmaids.”

  “Who?” He would look perplexed; charmingly so—with a lift of an eyebrow and a slight tilt of the head. And instantly life would be sane and serene again. The feeling that a goose had gone waddling over my grave would become something for the two of us to laugh about.

  “Rosemary, Thora, and Jane.”

  “Who?” Mrs. Malloy’s voice came back at me from across the kitchen table.

  “Oh, sorry!” I blinked and reached for my empty teacup. “I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud.”

  “It wasn’t speaking.” She could be a real stickler on some things. “It was more like singing. And not very good singing at that. The kind, like when you’re a kiddie and out skipping rope on the pavement.”

  “It’s a rhyme that popped into my head after I met them.” I spoke to her from the attic inside my head, parting the cobwebs an
d lifting out the memory. “Rosemary, Thora, and Jane, / Lived at the end of the lane, / One was thin, one was fat, / And one was very plain.”

  “And you was how old when you wrote it?”

  “Seven or eight.”

  Mrs. Malloy looked relieved. “Well, you’ve had time to grow out of it. Lots of kiddies go through a nasty stage. And now you’d better get what’s troubling you off your chest. For it’s clear to me, Mrs. H.”—glancing regretfully down at the feather duster lying by her chair leg—“that I won’t be able to get started working meself to death until you do. And to be fair, I do remember how just as I was drawing breath to tell you about Leonard, you started to tell me about some letter you’d got. It was from them, was it? These three women that I’ve never heard you mention in all the years I’ve worked for you?” She made a commendable effort not to sound overly miffed. “Now who exactly would they be, if it’s not too much of an impertinence to ask?”

  “Friends or they could be relatives of my grandmother. They live in a village called Knells, not far from Rilling. That’s in Cambridgeshire. They live together, have done for years, in an old house.”

  “At the end of the lane?”

  “Yes, it’s called the Old Rectory. I hadn’t heard from Rosemary, Thora, and Jane in years. Maybe they got in touch with Daddy when Mother died, but they didn’t come to the funeral. And now they’ve asked me to come and see them right away.”

  “Today?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “All that distance, at a moment’s notice!” Mrs. Malloy looked thoughtful as she graciously filled my cup, adjusted the spoon, and passed it back to me.

  “It’s not all that far. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of hours in the car if I stick to the motorway.”

  “Unless the weather continues as bad as it’s been these last few days. And I doubt you’re allowing for traffic. They all drive like maniacs down there, bound to with all those university kids out on larks.” She handed me a plate of biscuits and encouraged me to take two. “You’d end up having to stay overnight; there’s no sense in thinking otherwise.”