Bridesmaids Revisited (15 page)

“Gwen and I aren’t what you could call close,” Edna went on to say. “Even though it was me years back that told her about the job working as a nanny for the children of the man she’s now married to. But family is still family when all’s said and done. And there’s no one else left. My brothers and sisters are gone. I keep thinking how it would have been if Ted and I’d had children. Such a comfort they can grow up to be, but we weren’t blessed, so there’s no use going on about it. I’ve got to think myself lucky for having my husband all these years. Some would say he put me through a lot, and so he did, but that’s most marriages, isn’t it? Take the rough with the smooth.”

“Men do have their funny ways,” was Thora’s response and I wondered if she was thinking about her Michael, who for all his devotion to her had gone back to his wife.

“Even my last two husbands had their off moments,” Jane agreed. “The one who was an archaeologist started digging through neighbors’ dustbins after he retired. Looking for broken pieces of pottery and piecing them together so he could determine how much wear they’d had and whether they’d been dropped by accident or smashed in a fit of rage. And the one who was an accountant not only counted sheep out loud before going to sleep but separated them into groups according to age, sex, and sheared and unsheared, and gave the fastest ones a handicap of five hundred paces. Then there was my first husband, who bought me a ring and a fur coat the day before he went off with another woman.”

Edna smiled mistily. “Luckily, I never had to worry about that sort of thing with Ted.”

No, because he was too busy worrying about you having a man on the side, I thought. Looking at her now, even with her woebegone face, she was still a pretty woman. In her youth she must have been all peaches and cream. Her figure was pleasingly rounded. And her thickly curling hair, which had gentled into a shade between gray and brown, had probably been fair. She got up from the table and I noticed her slight limp, wondering as I had done on first seeing her come into the conservatory whether it was an old injury.

“Edna, what have you done to your foot?” asked Rosemary, rousing herself from staring into space.

“It’s nothing, Miss Maywood. Just a slight sprain. I felt something twist when I skidded on a patch of wet grass running back into the house. One of the doctors at the hospital took a look at it. Tom insisted, and I was told to rest it as much as possible, but they always say that, don’t they, just to try and keep you happy.” Edna continued her halting way over to the cooker, where she set the kettle on to boil.

“I can see the bruise through your stocking.” Thora came up behind her and turned off the burner.

“Nothing to fuss about, Miss Dobson.” Edna belied this reassurance by leaning up against the sink and biting down on a wince. “I just won’t be able to move as fast as usual for a few days and going up and down stairs may be a bit of a bind, but I’ll manage pretty much the way I always do.”

“Meantime, I’m going to make you up one of my poultices.” Thora put an arm around her shoulders and led her inexorably into the conservatory. “You lie down on the sofa with a couple of cats for hot-water bottles, while I go out into the garden to pick some comfrey and cook it up to a nice green mess on the stove. Nothing like it for drawing out a bruise.”

“Well, if you insist.” Edna sounded more than ready to give in. “But what about your dinner? I left a nice macaroni and cheese in the refrigerator, but I’d planned to grill some rashers of bacon and tomatoes to go with it. Miss Maywood asked for something simple seeing that you ladies all have a lot to talk over with Mrs. Haskell; still, I do feel I’ll be letting you down if I leave you to fend for yourselves.”

Thora’s soothing murmurings drifted into the kitchen and we could see her bent back as she tucked Edna up on the sofa with its canopy of greenery.

“Ellie, I completely forgot! Who was at the door?” Rosemary asked.

“It was someone for me.” I sat down.

“Your husband?” Jane looked up. The black bow had slipped low on her neck and her winged glasses were askew as if she had shifted them to wipe her eyes.

“No, someone looking for Mrs. Malloy, whom I took to stay with friends in Upper Thaxstead.”

“The man she spoke to me about on the phone?” Thora was back in the kitchen. “The one she didn’t want to know where she was? What was his name now?”

“Leonard. I didn’t tell him anything, except to get lost.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I expect so,” I lied. “I told him she was miles away from here, which is, strictly speaking, the case. Upper Thaxstead isn’t just round the corner.”

“You don’t think—” Thora fixed me with those brown eyes, made even darker in contrast to the fringe of snow-white hair that just cleared eyebrows. “You don’t think, Ellie, that he thinks she is here?”

“I believe I convinced him that wasn’t the case.” I felt awful fibbing like this. But it didn’t seem fair to make Leonard an ongoing issue. I almost wished he would figure out, by one sneaky means or the other, that Mrs. Malloy was at Gwen and Barney Fiddler’s house and then she could make her own decision whether to fall into his arms or strangle him with his imitation-silk tie.

“Well, we should have realized it wouldn’t be Edna at the front door.” Rosemary finally spoke, while handing me a roast-beef sandwich. “We always leave the conservatory unlocked for her during the day, so she can come in round back.”

“And of course Dog wouldn’t have barked if it had been Edna. We just weren’t thinking.” Jane removed her glasses and gave them a polish with her serviette before dabbing at her eyes. “It breaks your heart, doesn’t it? Edna’s always been such a gem, and just look at her now, still thinking of us with all she’s going through, Ellie.”

“It would be nice if she could finally find some real happiness.” I lowered my voice as I picked up the remains of my roast-beef sandwich. It was smothered in horseradish just as I liked and I polished it off feeling a little ashamed of enjoying every mouthful. But I reminded myself that I needed to keep my strength up. The macaroni and cheese might be a long while in coming. This thought was bolstered when Rosemary suggested that Jane and I accompany her back to the sitting room. That way we wouldn’t be in the way while Thora made up the poultice, and our talking wouldn’t disturb Edna, who might even now be dozing off.

“It may seem heartless but we do have to get back to the matter which has brought you here,” Rosemary said when we again were seated—she in what I was now sure was officially her chair, and Jane and I on the sofa.

“I imagine Hope has suggested conducting a séance.” I managed to sound quite matter-of-fact and both women looked relieved.

“It would seem the obvious course of action.” Rosemary reached sideways for the footstool on which I had sat earlier and propped her sensibly shod feet on it. “At first I was against the idea. I’ve always thought such things a lot of twaddle. Dangerous twaddle at that, where susceptible minds are involved. But Jane has been all for it from the time the suggestion came up, and even Thora has agreed. I am not sure if it was Hope who first put the idea into words or exactly how it happened. But the long and the short of it is that I have decided to participate if you will, Ellie.”

“I explained to Rosemary”—Jane turned around on the sofa to face me—“that we didn’t have the right to deny you the opportunity of hearing what your grandmother wants to say to you.”

“Added to which,” I couldn’t resist saying, “you’re hoping that whatever it is, it will somehow help in this situation with Sir Clifford.”

“There is that, dear. We’ve been wondering, at least Thora and I have, if Sophia will ask you to go and see him and try to talk him out of destroying Knells. An appeal from you, the granddaughter of the woman he loved, might just do the trick, don’t you think?”

“Not really, if he loathes the very thought of her memory, which seems to me entirely likely, seeing that she threw him over to marry William, a man she claimed to detest.”

“But only think of the circumstances!” Jane took my hands and pressed them between her own. “Her father dead, her mother distraught, and then Sophia’s own tragic death less than a year later.”

“That may be the part he can’t forgive.”

“But we can’t be sure of that, dear. He may well have come to realize that she was a victim of life in Knells, perhaps more so than he was himself. It could be that he wants to take revenge on the village on her behalf. And if you were to explain to him that existing, as she surely must, in a place where all is love at its sublime forgiving best, he might realize she wants him to let all the old resentments go. Otherwise”—Jane was warming to her theme—“he could put his immortal soul in jeopardy, thus making it impossible for him to rejoin her in the next world.”

“Jane is an incurable romantic,” said Rosemary from her chair.

“Would I have been married three times otherwise?” A giggle followed these words, but Jane’s face quickly sobered. “But there’s more. I’ve been having these dreams. Some of them nightmares, where everything gets mixed up so that I only remember bits and pieces on waking. But always there’s this sense of urgency, a need to get to some truth that I should know, if only I could step back far enough to look at the full picture. Ever since Hope came to this house I, too, have sensed Sophia’s presence and I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that we—Rosemary, Thora, and I—have failed her in some vitally important way. Then there are those times” —Jane smiled ruefully—“when I’m not sure of anything.”

I felt exactly the same way, except on one point. I was hungry despite the roast-beef sandwiches, and I had not a doubt in the world after eating Edna’s fish pie for lunch that the macaroni and cheese would be delicious if not quite up to Ben’s culinary standard. He always used white cheddar along with a smaller addition of Camembert. The secret ingredient was a crumbling of Stilton. And speaking of secrets, despite the bridesmaids’ apparent openness, this house seemed full of them.

It was now nine o’clock, if the clock on the sitting-room mantelpiece was telling the truth, and I saw no reason to think otherwise as it had an open honest face. Thora had brought our supper into the sitting room. As I had expected, the macaroni and cheese was extremely tasty. It didn’t come accompanied by bacon and tomatoes, though. Thora explained that she wanted to get in and out of the kitchen as quickly as possible, seeing that Edna had dropped off into a deep sleep after having the poultice applied to her foot and secured with a bandage torn off an old sheet.

“Everything is old in this house,” she said to me. “The people, the furniture, Dog and the cats. But we’ve been happy here. The Old Rectory has become a contented house again. For all that Reverend and Mrs. McNair weren’t the sort of parents who understood young people, Rosemary, Jane, and I had some enjoyable times staying here, going to tennis parties and riding our bicycles into Rilling. Everybody cycled in those days, but now the traffic’s so bad we worry when Edna takes the bike to go up to the fish shop in the High Street, even though she goes the back way up Church Road and along Hawthorn Lane.”

The conversation at that point naturally turned back to Edna and what she was likely to do now that Ted was gone. Rosemary brought up the possibility that she would move in with Gwen. But Jane shot down this idea, saying that the two women only saw each other once a month on one of Edna’s Thursdays off. And when she had on a couple of occasions happened to see them in a tea shop in Lower Thaxstead, Gwen had looked as though she were there only under duress. Jane added that it was of course possible that the woman always had a face like a jug of sour milk, which had somehow led the conversation round to our all having a cup of tea. Thora went out to make it and returned with a loaded tray, which contained a plate of rock buns and jam tarts. Edna, she reported, was now awake but had insisted she couldn’t possibly eat or drink anything. Her stomach was all in knots.

After the teacups and plates had been handed out, Jane began talking about Ted’s funeral, whether or not he would be cremated and when it was likely to take place, and if the inquest would cause much of a delay, and so on. Rosemary bore this for about five minutes before asking me about Ben and the children, but eventually this topic led to their being presently at Memory Lanes. And a silence settled on the room. Everyone sitting thinking her own thoughts, until Jane finally brought up the séance.

“Ellie has kindly agreed to our idea that it take place tomorrow evening,” she now said as I swallowed my last mouthful of jam tart. “I told her that Hope, when she was here earlier today, had suggested seven o’clock. Unfortunately it won’t be dark then, but that’s the problem with having one of these things in summer.”

“I’m not sure a dark windy night is necessary,” responded Rosemary tartly, “but what do I, or any of us for that matter, know about the rules pertaining to summoning up spirits? And from what she told us Hope isn’t entirely sure herself, not being a professional medium.”

“Describes herself as a ‘sensitive.’” Thora got up to remove the tea plates from our knees and placed them on the cabinet from which the bottle of elderberry wine had been produced earlier. “Said she offers no guarantee of getting Sophia to speak to us. I for one got the feeling she’s not entirely comfortable with performing the procedure.”

“You make it sound as though she’s going to take out someone’s appendix.” Jane gave a rather shaky laugh.

“If she were, there’d be other doctors standing around in gowns and masks ready to take over if things went wrong,” said Rosemary. “But I don’t know what any of us could do if the séance got out of hand and the room was invaded by demons flapping about us in droves, sucking out our souls and leaving us to spend the rest of our lives glued to our chairs like zombies.”

“Perhaps we should all wear garlic necklaces,” suggested Jane.

“I think that only works with vampires,” I said.

“Then what about a crucifix?”

“Why not hope that Sophia shows up on her own?” Thora was now gathering up our cups and saucers. “And not talk about it any more tonight, or we’ll all have nightmares.”