Bridesmaids Revisited Read online

  “That’s the idea,” I said. “They want me to stay for a few days. They suggested a week, but I really couldn’t. I’ve so much to do here; I promised Ben I’d finally finish Rose’s room. I’ve got the walls to paper, her chest of drawers to strip and refinish, her little table and chairs to sponge-paint, and the floor to stencil to match the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party design on her toy chest.”

  “We can’t always think of ourselves first, Mrs. H.; from the sound of them, those three women have to be getting up in years. Poor old things! Maybe they want to talk to you about leaving you a little something in their will.”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what’s it all about?” Mrs. Malloy stopped looking soulful to shoot me a piercing glance. It was my moment to produce the letter but I found myself suddenly reluctant to do so. The kitchen was warm and cozy with the firelight gleaming on the copper pans hung around the Aga. It was the sound of the wind howling around the house, in an unlikely manner for June, that chilled me inside and out. For a moment I was a little girl again, feeling my hands grip the sides of my chair when a strange woman bent down to kiss me.

  “Spit it out, Mrs. H.; why do these old girls want to see you?”

  “Rosemary said my grandmother wants to get in touch with me.”

  “Well, I think that’s nice, I do.” Mrs. Malloy could be family-minded when she chose, but she quickly remembered to take umbrage. “Course it cuts me to the quick that I’ve never heard mention of her neither until now. What happened? Had a falling-out with your old gran, did you? Cut you off, did she, when you upped and married Mr. H. against her wishes?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “She’s dead.”

  Mrs. Malloy paused to add a drop more gin to her tea. “Now that would tend to put a damper on things. Cuts down on the chances for a nice long chat, doesn’t it? Been gone long, has she?”

  “Since my mother was tiny. A baby in arms, I think. She didn’t speak about it much.”

  “Funny that, her being so close on the subject. It causes me to wonder if maybe these old girls, Rosemary and the other two, haven’t really come to grips with your gran being gone. Could be they’ve got it into their heads, wishful thinking like, that she’s not really dead. Just popped out for a packet of biscuits and will be back any minute, the way I kept thinking about Leonard.”

  “But what if she truly isn’t dead?” I asked. “What if the family made it up? To conceal a truth that they considered worse, such as her abandoning my mother to run off with a married man or pursue a career they considered unfit for a woman?”

  “Or it could be”—Mrs. Malloy pursed her magenta lips— “that the old girls that live down the lane aren’t quite with it mentally. Perhaps they haven’t been eating right, not getting their three squares a day and forgetting to take their vitamins and minerals. An old auntie of mine started going around saying she was worried sick that she’d find herself in the family way. Well into her seventies she was at the time. But her doctor got her sorted out and she was back to being right as rain. It was her daughter, Ethel, as wasn’t. She’s the one that found herself in the family way, because Auntie had been sneaking her birth-control pills and replacing them with the iron tablets. Good for the baby, was how Ethel had to look at it. Forced herself to make the best of things, she did. And that’s what you and me have got to do. It’ll do me good to get away for a bit to this Knells place in Cambridgeshire. That way, when Leonard comes knocking on me door, I won’t be there to fall in his arms, and you’ll be glad of the company.”

  “You’re a dear,” I said, getting up and giving her a peck on the cheek. “But you’re not coming, because I’m not going. I’ll find out what the scoop is by talking to Rosemary or one of the other bridesmaids over the phone.”

  “Okay, Mrs. H., spill the beans. Why don’t you want to go?”

  “I’ve told you! I’ve so much to do. Ben hasn’t taken the children to Memory Lanes so I can go off gadding.”

  “Don’t give me that.” Mrs. Malloy tapped an impatient foot. “There’s something going on inside your head that you’re not telling me about, otherwise you’d be bursting with curiosity to find out about your gran.”

  “I am, but for some silly reason I’m afraid.”

  “And that’s just why I’m not letting you go on your own.” Mrs. Malloy spoke as though I were one of the twins, to be gently but firmly dissuaded from climbing into the laundry chute. “It’s clear to me you don’t know these women from the man in the moon. So who’s to say that this business of your grandmother isn’t something they’ve cooked up between the three of them for reasons nice people like you and me couldn’t even begin to guess at?” She gave a nicely executed shudder. “Just standing here I can feel the spooky vibes all the way down to me toes.”

  And as she was fond of saying, those toes of hers didn’t lie.

  Chapter Two

  I thought I would have trouble falling asleep that night. I had been puzzling about the bridesmaids’ reason for their invitation on and off throughout the day, although I can’t say that I had allowed Mrs. Malloy and her toes to scare me. She was as partial to gothic romances as I was myself. The kind where any locked door concealed a diabolical secret. And every cup of tea was suspect.

  But when I got into bed it was to think how vast and empty it felt without Ben. Was he missing me, too? Were the twins and Rose? I tried to picture them at Memory Lanes, but even when images came they slid one into another and became fuzzier until I felt myself getting muffled up in sleep. Then I heard a bell ring, and keep ringing, and struggled up thinking that it must be Ben at the door with the children. They must have realized they could not stay away from me for more than a day and were at the door. By the time it took me to get my feet on the floor I was wondering why Ben hadn’t used his key. And then I realized it wasn’t the doorbell ringing, but the telephone. Heart hammering, I fumbled across the bedside table and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” I stammered.

  There was a pause, which seemed to go on forever before a voice spoke in my ear. “Don’t come to the Old Rectory.”

  I was struggling to ask “Who is this?” when I dropped the phone and upon picking it up heard a buzzing in my ear. We had been disconnected.

  It was several minutes before I was able to lie back down. I was so shaken I wasn’t even sure whether the speaker had been a man or a woman. And now I doubted I would be able to close my eyes for the rest of the night. But after I stared at the ceiling for a while the phone call began to take on a dreamlike quality and the feeling of menace receded. Perhaps it was one of the bridesmaids calling. Probably if I hadn’t dropped the phone she would have added the word “tomorrow” to her admonition. That it would better for me to delay my visit for a couple of days until the hole in the roof could be repaired. So that I wouldn’t be tripping over buckets set out to collect the rain the weather forecaster had predicted. Or so that the silver could be polished, or the ironing finished. I would call them in the morning ... I fell back asleep.

  And the following morning I did call, to be assured that, no, neither Thora, nor Jane, nor Rosemary had phoned and that of course I was to come as planned. Perhaps I had dreamed the mysterious phone call? Putting my suspicions aside, I crept out of the house at the cockcrow, secure in the belief that Mrs. Malloy would still be safely tucked up in bed. But when I opened the doors to the stables, which now did duty as the garage, I was greeted by the self-appointed grand dame of Chitterton Fells hefting an enormous suitcase into the boot of the bottle-green Rover that Ben had given me for Christmas. Before I could finish converting a yawn (I am not by nature an early riser) into a gape, she had squeezed my modest-sized travel bag into the limited space remaining and climbed into the front passenger seat. Resisting the urge to slam down the boot lid with sufficient force to send the car into orbit, I got in beside her and gripped the steering wheel in what I hoped was a menacing manner.

  “Nice of you to show up.” Mrs. Malloy opened her fake alligator handbag and pulled out a map. She was wearing a raincoat, as was I, but unlike my sensible beige affair hers was a wild-cherry red. “I was afraid”—she contorted her purple lips into a grimace—“as I’d be forced to take the bus.”

  “Don’t even think of it,” I said, backing the car onto the drive in a series of hopefully sickening lurches. “I’m more than happy to take you straight back home. As I thought I made plain yesterday, you are not coming with me to Knells to visit the bridesmaids. This is a family matter which I intend to handle, or mishandle if you’d rather, all by myself.”

  “That’s you all over.” Mrs. Malloy was spreading the map across her cherry-red knees as I spun the car around in a shower of gravel and shot down the drive. “Selfish to the core you are some of the time. You’re afraid one of those batty old women will bop me over the head in the dead of night just for the fun of it, and you’ll be left to do your own housework for the rest of your days. All alike, you upper-class types are, just like my Leonard used to say.”

  “Me! Upper class!” I narrowly missed colliding with the copper beech to my left. “You’re the one who’s always harping on about how your ancestors came over with the Normans.”

  “So they did.” Mrs. Malloy dug in her stiletto heels and belatedly fastened her seat belt. “Only if you’d been listening properly you’d have realized I was talking about the Normans of Bethnal Green. Alfie and Myrtle was the mum and dad. I lost count of the children. A lovely hardworking family of poachers from the sound of them.”

  “Poachers? In Bethnal Green?”

  “Well, you don’t think they wanted to put ‘pickpocket’ on them job application forms! And I don’t see how it was their fault there aren’t all that many rabbits hopping around bus stops or down around the train stations in London these days.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so,” I found myself saying as we passed my cousin Freddy’s cottage at the end of the drive and went out through the iron gates onto the cliff road that wound down to our left towards the village of Chitterton Fells. That was the trouble with Mrs. Malloy. Few knew better than she how to divert a conversation until returning to the point of contention became more effort than it was worth. But in this instance I did manage to fumble my way back to Leonard.

  “What about him?” she asked as I eased to my side to let a bus pass without either vehicle going over the cliff. Something which would have annoyed the people at the town hall who were tired of putting up new railings every six months.

  “I’m wondering why Leonard’s opinion on any subject under the sun should matter a grain of rice to you,” I said.

  “Now what are you going on about, Mrs. H.?” If Mrs. Malloy sounded snooty it may, in all fairness, have been due to the fact that she was sucking on a peppermint humbug.

  “You just said something about his take on the upper classes.”

  “Did I?”

  Even while keeping my eyes directly ahead in order to watch the approaching traffic light, I could tell she had gone all misty-eyed. So I bit my lip and waited for her to rally.

  “Well, that goes to show, don’t it? That man’s right back inside my head, and if I wasn’t to get away from home for a few days there’s no saying what I’d do if he was to show up at me door doing the old sob-and-dance routine.”

  She swallowed, from the sound of it the whole peppermint, and placed a tremulous hand on my knee. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, Mrs. H., after what I told you about Leonard and his womanizing; but I only have to get thinking about him saying: ‘Come on, Roxie old girl, lend me fifty quid for old times’ sake’ to go all weak at the knees. That sort of sweet talk did it for me every time when we was together. What it all comes down to, Mrs. H., is that it’d be nothing short of wicked for you to drop me off back home to wait like a mouse with one leg in a sling for the cat to show up.”

  “We’ve already passed the turnoff for your house,” I pointed out, stopping for another traffic light.

  “So we have.” Mrs. Malloy offered me a peppermint, which I stoically refused even though I was dying of hunger, having skipped breakfast in my haste to be off before she showed up. “Speaking of cats ...”

  “Were we?” I passed a lorry that didn’t seem to know whether it was coming or going.

  “Being the thoughtful sort I am, Mrs. H., I just wanted to say I hope you was able to make arrangements for Tobias. Poor little love,” she added with all the insincerity at her disposal, having disliked my beloved cat from the word go. “It would just break me heart to think of him meowing his way around that house starving to death.”

  “Freddy’s taken him down to the cottage.”

  “And there’s a dear young man if ever there was one.” Mrs. Malloy did not go so far as to dab at her eyes, but I got the picture. “A son any mother would give the earth for. All that lovely long hair and the earring. Of course”—adjusting the map on her knees—“from what I’ve seen he doesn’t have any tattoos, but give him time; they all mature at different rates and the lad’s not yet thirty when all is said and done. Truth is, I’m rather surprised, given his lovely nature and all, that Freddy didn’t insist on going with you on this nice little visit to the wacky old ladies.”

  “There is absolutely no reason to think that Rosemary, Thora, and Jane aren’t perfectly sane, sensible women.” I kept a grip on my temper and a lookout for the entry onto the motorway that should be coming up shortly if I hadn’t gone the wrong way around the roundabout two miles back.

  “Well, if you say so, Mrs. H.,” the woman who should have been looking at the map said in her most conciliatory voice. “How did they sound when you phoned them? You did ring them up, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, of course I did. Last evening.” We were now on the A40 or it could have been the Ml6 for all I knew; anyway, there was a lot of traffic all moving purposefully along as if intent on arriving eventually at someplace or other, so it seemed best to keep going. Especially as I’m not particularly good at doing U-turns at a hundred kilometers an hour. “I spoke to Rosemary, told her that I could come today if that suited, and that was pretty much it. When I tried to talk to her about Grandma, she said it would be best to leave all that until I arrived and had had several cups of tea.”

  “And you thought that was all perfectly normal!” Mrs. Malloy scoffed.

  “She was very likely thinking about my phone bill; older people are conscious of running up the charges.” I knew I didn’t sound very convincing. But that was only, I told myself, because, like Mrs. Malloy, I was addicted to romance novels with a gothic twist. Having read about innumerable heroines being lured back to decaying houses under one preposterous pretext or another, it was pitifully easy for me to foresee a dark turret with bars on the windows and an iron key that went clang in the night as part of my immediate future.

  What I couldn’t hope for was to have my head turned by a dark, stormy-eyed hero ensconced in the drawing room, nursing a glass of Madeira along with his chagrin at having a mad wife in the attic. The only man for whom I would have risked life and limb was presently in Norfolk with our children. When he had telephoned at ten-thirty the previous evening I hadn’t had the heart to put anything but a cheerful spin on the bridesmaids’ invitation. Poor darling! He had sounded exhausted from a surfeit of fun listening to one woman playing the harp and another singing “There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind” for two hours straight, in the assembly hall. This treat had been followed by cocoa and biscuits, at which time, Reverend Ambleforth, our abstemious vicar, had been heard to whisper that he could have done with a stiff teaspoon of brandy.

  Besides, had I sounded the least bit uneasy, Ben would have told me I was under no obligation to visit the bridesmaids. He might even have reminded me how I had promised to finish my redecorating. With all that in mind I had focused on what Ben had to say about Rose’s antics. And how much Abbey had enjoyed the boat ride on the river that afternoon. And how Tam had even more enjoyed almost falling in. Afterwards I wasn’t sure that I had said anything about my grandmother, other than that Rosemary, Thora, and Jane were girlhood friends of hers. And wasn’t it rather sweet of them to get in touch with me after all this time? Ben wouldn’t have thought the phone call I’d received later anything of the kind. But I was forgetting—that must have been a dream.

  Mrs. Malloy broke into my thoughts. “I can see you’re looking worried to death.”

  “I’m concentrating on the road.” I smiled at her, because seeing that she was here it seemed silly not to be pleased she was coming with me. If the bridesmaids thought it peculiar, so be it. I could always say she had been poorly and needed a change of air. They were of the generation to believe in that sort of thing. Or I could say I couldn’t risk leaving her with the silver for fear she would polish it down to the nub. No mention of the nefarious Leonard would pass my lips. He was entirely Mrs. Malloy’s business, I was thinking self-righteously, when she nearly caused me to swerve off the road.

  “I must say it was nice of Gwen to offer to put me up at short notice, but as I’ve always said, Mrs. H., there’s no friends like old friends when all is said and done.”

  “Gwen? Who’s Gwen?”

  “She and me went to school together. A plain, spotty-faced kiddie she was, but no fault of hers is what I’d tell her. I used to help poor Gwen with her homework. She wasn’t none too bright neither, especially when it came to doing her sums.

  “Any rate, the long and the short of it, Mrs. H., is you made it more than clear I wasn’t welcome to stay at the Old Vicarage, or whatever it’s called, for fear of putting the old girls out. So I cast me mind back and remembered how when you said they lived near Rilling something rang a bell upstairs. And last night it came to me as how Gwen had got a job there after being sacked from Woolworth’s for never being able to remember the price of licorice allsorts. Such a fuss her parents made when she finally took her thumb out of her mouth and told them she was going away to work.”