Femmes Fatal (11 page)

“Ah, lovely.” He smiled his blessing upon us from the hearthrug, while I felt the floor shift under my feet. Gladstone! Why, this had to mean that when I phoned the vicarage this morning to seek counseling for Mrs. Malloy and overheard what I thought was a radio program about the great prime minister, I had been sadly mistaken …

“Good evening, Vicar,” Ben gushed. “I’m Bentley Haskell, Program Chairman, and this is my wife Ellie.” Normally I would have given him a discreet kick in the shin for ignoring the vicar’s wife, but I was only vaguely aware of the startled look on her face. My mind had gone gallivanting back to Gladstone’s words to the
woman I had pictured as bonnetted and shawled, with a scarlet letter on her brow:

“In the name of what we once shared, I ask you to vacate these premises.”

And her reply:

“Not until I have spoken to your wife.”

I was brought back to the moment by the vicar’s eyes on my face. His gentle smile had dimmed.

“I am not the vicar.”

“You’re not?”

“
I
am,” said the wife.

Unable to meet her husband’s eyes, mine flickered downward, and I saw that what I had taken for a clerical collar was but a white polo neck worn under the grey cardigan. Futile to blame the vicar for wearing civvies.

Good heavens! This was akin to being pushed onto a darkened stage and finding oneself an actor in a Victorian melodrama. From the audience—I mean, the other members of the Hearthside Guild—came chortles at my bumble. But who in this quiet hamlet could have suspected? A female clergyman! St. Paul would turn in his grave. The congregation would go on strike over this, even if they did not take up their picket signs on Miss Thorn’s behalf. My brain stopped whirling and took a couple of steps forward and three back. Miss Thorn! Was she the woman from The Past? Was the vicar’s husband another notch on Miss Thorn’s black lace garter belt? Were old secrets and old sins about to take up residence in this house which heretofore had known no worse than an occasional puff of tobacco smoke and discreet glass of sherry? And which of them—the vicar or her husband—had dismissed the church organist on the trumped-up charge of being a back-door Methodist?

“I am afraid I have been teasing you,” the reverend lady smiled. “I am not a fully fledged vicar. I’m a lowly deacon sent here until a permanent
male
replacement can be found for Reverend Foxworth.”

“You don’t know St. Anselm’s,” I replied. “To us you will be the vicar in thought and probably name.”

“Something to drink?” asked Mr. Gladstone Spike.

Suspicion reared its serpent head. Rowland had not frowned on the occasional glass of Oh Be Joyful, but the new incumbent might have more exacting standards of sobriety. The Melroses gave nothing away. Neither was partaking of liquid refreshment. They stood by the harvest table holding hands—or, I should say, Mrs. Melrose, tonight wearing a sack dress that made her look more than ever like a female Friar Tuck, was holding the doctor’s hand. Hmmmm! What had we here? Far from appearing his usual sanguine self, Dr. M’s expression was reminiscent of mine when greeting him from a supine position with my feet in the stirrups. Neither of the Bludgetts was holding a glass. They were standing so close it was hard to tell which was wearing the Charlie Chaplin moustache. While I stood gawking, Ben asked for a glass of wine.

“Whatever you have in the cellar.” He exuded affability until I spoke up, having determined better safe than sorry.

“Have you forgotten, Bentley, that we’ve given it up except at Communion?”

He kept a grip on his smile.

“We’ll take tea,” I informed our hosts.

“Milk, no sugar, if you please.” My husband measured out the words as if they were ground glass to be stirred into my cup.

As for the vicar, I had no idea whether I had scored points with her or not. Her smile was as neutral
as her mode of dress. Would even the advent of a rival for her husband’s affections ruffle her finger-waved hair?

“Mind doing the honours, dear?” she said, addressing her spouse. “And how about the cake? Our new brethren will find they haven’t lived before sampling your chocolate madeira.”

See the nice man blush.

“Gladstone’s cakes always took First Place at the summer fête when we were at St. Peter’s in the Wode. Let St. Anselm’s cooks beware.” Now the vicar’s smile embraced all present, especially, it seemed to me, the Bludgetts, who bashfully emerged from their own little world. Even so, my Aunt Astrid would have ordered their immediate excommunication, public flogging having been abolished.

Woe to he who lusts after another man’s culinary success. With elaborate indifference, Ben prowled over to the table where Gladstone Spike now had the silver teapot well in hand. Black brows fused, my husband subtly sized up the competition posed by the chocolate madeira cake. Joined by Dr. Melrose, he accepted a floral cup and saucer and stood watching the wistful drift of steam go spiralling upward.

“The smallest sliver of cake, if you please,” I heard him say, adding that the evening’s speaker was due to arrive at any moment. The inference was that the concentration required by a big piece of cake might cause him to miss the grand arrival, thus putting the kiss of death on the evening’s proceedings.

What did one talk about to a lady cleric? I hovered in her shadow, pleating my bag strap until she made things easy for me.

“Please call me Eudora.”

“And I’m Ellie.”

“I understand we are neighbours.” She had large,
slightly protruding hazel eyes and I caught in them a flicker of the same surprise she had shown when I first entered the room.

“Yes!” I put my bag down on a chair and tried not to notice when it fell with a plop to the floor. “We live at Merlin’s Court. You can see the house from this window, which of course makes it absolutely dreadful that I missed church the last three Sundays, and I am not nearly dedicated enough to the Sewing Circle or the Friends of St. Anselm …” I paused, drew a shaky breath, and was amazed to find how much better I felt.

Correctly interpreting my smile, she said, “Helps to make a clean breast of things, doesn’t it?”

“It certainly does.”

“Which is why I hope to reopen the confessionals here at St. Anselm’s. There will be objections, I am sure, and cries of popery, but I intend to make waves.”

As Miss Thorn had found to her cost? But I couldn’t worry about that lady or lament that dear Reverend Foxworth was gone from my life. This room was aglow with the breath of life, the promise of new beginnings. For the first time in months I felt the stirrings of my old vitality. If Mrs. Eudora Spike could take on the male-dominated Church, then surely I could work at one marriage. What was it the Fully Female manual had said?
Light his candle and make love till you feel the burn
.

I turned my eyes to Ben, ready to begin now to feast upon his maleness, to caress his dark good looks with my eyes, my hungry breath … but Mrs. Melrose chose that moment to put a cup of tea in my hands. And I couldn’t say I was sorry for the intrusion. I had forgotten how exhausting desire can be.

“You two ladies have a nice chat.” Eudora left us to catch up with the rest of her flock, who had wandered
away to the other side of the paddock … I mean, the room.

From a distance I hadn’t noticed anything particularly different about Flo Melrose—other than the way she was cosying up to her husband. But standing next to her, I was startled by the new woman. The Friar Tuck hair had a bounce to it and the once doughy cheeks possessed a peachy blush. Even more startling was that the doctor’s wife wasn’t wearing a stitch under her sack dress … not so much as a fig leaf. You could tell from the flounce of her bosoms and the way the material grooved to her generous proportions.

“Gained weight by the looks of it.” Flo roared the whisper in my ear.

Heretofore I had quite liked the woman. Flo Melrose was the least snobbish person I knew. She would take a blind person across the road whether he wanted to go or not, and she had been there for me when I failed my Lamaze course. But I wasn’t about to take her comment with a simper.

“Wrong, Flo. I have not put on weight. I am one of those unfortunates who can never gain an ounce.” That was no lie, for I always go up in increments of five pounds. Deep sigh. “If you only knew how sick I get of chugging down those milkshakes.”

Her hearty laughter joggled my teacup. “Get off your high horse, Ellie. I wasn’t talking about you. I meant Ben. Those extra pounds look good on him. They’ve turned him from a yearling into a full-grown buck who’s earned his antlers.”

I stared from Flo Melrose to my husband in disbelief. Certainly he was forever standing before the mirror, sucking in his navel so that it touched his spine and bemoaning that his belly was going to pot. But who could take him seriously? Perhaps he had gained some
muscle, but what man worth his steroids could complain about that?

“Ellie, I would like your Ben to model for me.”

“What?”

“I’ve taken up painting again.”

“Wonderful.”

“Nudes.” Mrs. Melrose stood there, blatantly shaping the air with her hands while she stripped Ben down to the bare bones of light and shadow. “Ellie, three weeks ago a splendid thing happened to me. I joined Fully Female. Now, for the first time in my life, I am in touch with my own sexuality. At age fifty-two I finally see beauty in buttocks. I want to emblazon them upon canvas …”

At that propitious moment the door opened and Mrs. Malloy, with the glow of the evening star in her eyes, ushered in our speaker for the evening. Good grief. I didn’t know whether to laugh or ram Ben’s piece of chocolate madeira down his throat. This weedy chap with the face of a haddock was Mr. Walter Fisher, the undertaker!

“My most abject apologies, ladies and gentlemen.” He bowed, folding in two over the briefcase he clutched to his pin-striped middle. “Just as I was leaving the house I was called out on a job. A Mrs. Huffnagle, taken from us while in the bath. Another case of the accidental immersion of an electrical appliance.”

Oh, my heavens! That haughty matriarch who had swept past me in the waiting room of Fully Female this very afternoon! It seemed such an impertinent death—to be frizzled by a hairdryer or …

My eyes met those of Flo Melrose and Mrs. Bludgett with whom I had not yet shared a word. Some words don’t need to be spoken. They hum in the air. They vibrate. From the way Mr. Fisher said electrical appliance, I knew the ghastly truth.

Through a gap in the chocolate-brown curtains I glimpsed the moonwashed tombstones growing wild in that garden of death. What would be the epitaph on the imperious Mrs. Huffnagle’s stone?

An alligator didn’t ate her
.

She was done in by a vibrator
.

“What an evening, Mrs. H!”

“All right for you to talk, Mrs. Malloy,” I rounded on her as she pranced into the kitchen on the morning after the Hearthside Guild meeting. Lifting Tam from the high chair, I pressed his sticky face to mine. “My whole life is a lie!”

“If this is one of them born-again confessions, I say wait until the new vicar cuts the ribbon and officially opens the box.”

I ignored Tam’s tugs on my hair. “Contrary to public opinion, I am not Ellie Haskell, success story. I’m a woman drowning in tears and … sweat. My deodorant doesn’t work, my hair’s falling out, my clothes don’t fit, and worst of all, I may be going to prison.”

Eyeing me as though I were Jack the Ripper in drag, Mrs. Malloy removed Tam from my arms.

“Last week in the village square,” I cried wildly, “I was stopped by a woman doing a survey on frozen yogurt.
And I lied about my weight. Afterward I nearly phoned our solicitor, Lionel Wiseman, to ask him the penalty for falsification of a legal document, but I was afraid he would tell me I’d get six months, meaning I’d never get caught up with the spring cleaning.”

“Mrs. H, are you trying to make a point?”

“Yes.” I leaned against the washing machine that was still in the middle of the room. “I am admitting defeat as a human being. Even Fully Female can’t help me.”

“Rubbish!” Mrs. Malloy finished wiping my sonny boy’s face and stowed him in the playpen with his sister who was deep in gurgling conversation with the Peter Rabbit mobile. “What I rushed over to tell you was that you did right, Mrs. H, to drag me along to that place. When I got home afterwards, I did me homework. I read Chapter One of the manual, and believe you me, it opened up whole new vistas. As I was lying back in me bubble bath, sipping me Fully Female Formula, it come to me that Walter Fisher wasn’t mine for the taking. I’d have to earn his affections. I’d have to become the docile dove if ever I was to win his heart.”

Love truly is blind.

“I’ve given up the bottle, Mrs. H.”

“What? Turned teetotaler?” I could hardly believe it.

“Never!” Mrs. Malloy looked deeply affronted. “That wouldn’t do at all—would be against me religion.”

“But you said …”

“That I’d given up the bottle of indigestion mixture Dr. Melrose prescribed. From now on I’ll rely on me Fully Female Formula to keep me insides from corroding.” Having finished drying her hands on one of the nappies I had just brought in from the line, Mrs. Malloy’s lips curved in a dreamy damson smile. “Wasn’t
Walter a living doll last night? I tell you, Mrs. H, I stayed up half the night going over them lovely little verses he told us: