Femmes Fatal (2 page)

“You don’t have to entertain the man. A cup of tea perhaps. But definitely no cake. These days cake undoubtedly constitutes sexual harassment.”

“What a blessing.”

“My apologies for gadding off to work.”

We studied each other, Ben with hands sunk in the black silk pockets, I sunk in gloom. Was love’s minuet reduced to this? Each of us tiptoeing around the other’s feelings? He moved to the door, hand on the brass knob.

“Coffee’s made and the babies …”

“I know.” A half hour earlier I’d heard him go in to change Abbey and Tam. All things considered, he deserved better than a love life that had gone from gourmet to thaw-and-serve.

“How about frozen dinners tonight, dear?” I said, but he was gone in pursuit of the bathroom.

Time for the mistress of the manor to get going. Motherhood had taught me a minute saved is a minute earned. Nudging the wardrobe open to unhook my dressing gown, I backed away from the mirror on the door, my raised hands warding off the evil vision in the manner of a vampire assaulted by sunlight. Lucky vampires!
They
cast no reflection. Was that flannel-faced, flannel-garbed woman really me? Had youth and beauty fled without a backward glance?

My poor hair, what there was of it! I could stuff a sofa with what had come out on my brush since the birth of the twins. Twisting the now pathetic strands into a plait, I homed in on the bags under my eyes. Mouth quivering, I reminded myself there are worse things—baggy knees, for instance—and then made the mistake of looking down. The case was desperate. Time to get serious about my diet. No meals between meals, no more hedging. How could I face the handsome Reverend Rowland Foxworth tonight at the Hearthside Guild with a nose like this? The mirror drew me back with all the hypnotic power of the one belonging to Snow White’s stepmum.

“Ellie …” Ben’s reflection rose up behind me, handsome as all get-out in his cuff-linked shirt and pleated trousers.

“Oh, God! My nose. It’s moved so far over to the left I should never wear anything but red.”

“My adorable nincompoop!”

Great, now my mind was going. Peering around me, Ben bared his teeth at the mirror. Concerned, I suppose, that they weren’t a perfect match for his ultra-white shirt. A false alarm, needless to say.

Those lips now met mine in a kiss of sorts. But neither of us had our hearts in it. Mentally, he was already at Abigail’s, plotting a curry that would prove the cure for the common cold. I was lost in bitter reverie. Damn, life is a sexist institution. Pregnancy had not achieved the ruinous effect on Ben that it had on me. If anything, his manly charms were enhanced. His shoulders had broadened and I could swear he was a couple of inches taller. Careful, an inner voice warned, as sure as the winning raffle ticket is always the one lost, you will lose Ben.

One morning I would awake to find a note posted on the bedroom mantelpiece, informing me that he had gone home to Mother. The next forty years would be spent forwarding his mail and explaining to the twins why I had driven their father from the nest. “Daddy was all growed up, my sweets, he was too big to go on living at home.”

Dear God, something must be done! Perhaps if I took lots of steaming hot showers … These pathetic musings ended when I turned to find Ben gone. His footsteps echoed with a dreadful finality on the stairs. Some muffled words floated up to me before the front door thumped shut.

“Have a nice day, hubby mine.” What an idiot I was! Did I suppose my words would chase after him to the car? Were I a wife worth the name, I would rush after Ben and stand in the courtyard beneath the blaze of mullioned windows. The wind would ruffle my night
gown about my ankles and play tag with my hair; my eyes would turn the colour of the sea on a rainswept day, and he would take the memory with him. A sweet and secret thing, a rose pressed within the pages of a book. Memories maketh marriage.

Perhaps I wasn’t dead from the brain down, but I wasn’t about to find out. When I sped from the room, it was in answer to a cry from the nursery.

“Coming, my darlings!” Amazing that some N.S.P.C.C. official had not already come banging on the door. Never could I convince myself that the babies cried because they were hungry or had wet bottoms. Almost putting my foot through my flannel hem, I entered that Mother Goose room with my throat full of butterflies. True to form, I fully expected to find a masked man with a bulging sack tossed over his shoulder—a latter-day Mr. McGregor, that dreadful man who made away with Peter Rabbit’s papa. Does a mother ever learn to feel safe where her offspring are concerned? Would I be fretting that Abbey and Tam were at the mercy of a wicked world when they were sixty? Would I ever let them go downstairs alone, let alone outdoors?

My heart turned over at the sight of their drooly sweet faces pressed against the bars of their cots. Abbey’s stood at the daytime side of the room, under a sky-blue ceiling, painted with Smiley Sun and clouds with lambs’ faces. Tam occupied the nighttime side, where the Cow, sporting a buttercup necklace, jumped over the Moon. Oh, to have arms long enough to scoop up both my babies at once! What’s a mother to do? Tam’s squeals competed with the springs of Abbey’s cot as she did push-ups.

“Gentlemen first today.” Avoiding my daughter’s eyes, I stepped past the window alcove wherein stood the toy box that Jonas built, cleverly disguised as the Old Woman’s Shoe. There—I have mentioned the man’s
name. Jonas, who goes by the title “gardener” at Merlin’s Court, had bunked off the previous week with Dorcas, our erstwhile housekeeper. This wasn’t a spree to Gretna Green, for Jonas is in his seventies and Dorcas has foresworn men. Purportedly they were helping out a friend of Dorcas’s who was laid up with a bad back—or a good book, more like. Dorcas I could believe; she is a great one for pounding the sickbed pillows and ramming a thermometer in your mouth—or wherever comes handiest. But Jonas? I hadn’t bought his story of feeling impelled to pitch in with his pitchfork in Mrs. What’s-Her-Name’s garden. I had spied a furtive look in his eyes and for one shocking moment actually suspected him of running away from home. He told me some cock-and-bull story about Mrs. Pickle, the vicar’s daily, having designs on him. Ridiculous! But what other reason was there? Jonas lived the life of Riley here at Merlin’s Court. I coddled him along with the twins and never took advantage of his affection for them. When he offered to fetch them down from their naps, I told him to stay put and drink his Ovaltine. When he offered to take them for a wheel in the pram, I went with him to make sure he didn’t get out of puff coming up the hill. Jonas must live forever, for the thought of Merlin’s Court without him was unbearable.

“Right, Tam, my darling?”

My clever boy was in my arms almost before I reached for him, his grip on my nose explaining why it was off-centre.

“I’ll trade you a finger.”

He grabbed the one I held up and crowed with delight. Nuzzling him close, I crossed to pick up Abbey. They were squirmy as seals and getting too big for me to hold both at once, but as I breathed in the milky-new smell of them, I told myself I was the wickedest woman on earth.

Your life is a fairy tale, Mrs. Haskell, you ungrateful witch. You live in a castle straight from the realms of the brothers Grimm. So what if sometimes you feel like the princess who turned into a frog? Some sensible exercise, a change of shampoo, the removal of all edible food from your diet and you might begin to feel Fully Female. Now where had I heard those F words? Probably some advert for a douche.

The twins, straphanging from my ears, gurgled replies that made a lot of sense to each other. Occasionally I did feel something of a third wheel. Maternal pride aside, they were adorable with their periwinkle blue eyes and red-gold hair, just beginning to turn from down into feathers of the real stuff. Neither looked much like me or Ben. But I didn’t worry that they were changelings; they were born in this house on a snowy evening not fit for man nor beast to be abroad. Ben had been a tower of strength, reminding me when it was time for a contraction. Heaven forbid we should miss one.

Speaking of Daddy, he would now be at Abigail’s, too busy among the stainless steel pots and copper bowls to cling to the memory of my wanton indifference. Suffused with shame and the inability to breathe with my wee ones choking me, I settled on the window seat and embarked on our geography lesson for the day.

“See the garden with its pretty trees? Beyond the iron gates is Cliff Road. And below the cliffs is the sea. Sometimes the sea sounds like a growlly tiger, other times it sounds like Tobias Cat slurping milk, and sometimes the sea cries like you do when you are hungry. This morning … shhh, the sea is sleeping. Mustn’t wake it.”

Applause.

“Ouch!” I removed Abbey’s hands before she made bonemeal of my face. “Our closest neighbour, a quarter of a mile down the road, is nice Reverend Foxworth.
He is vicar of the historic St. Anselm’s church which dates back to Norman times. Understand, my darlings, I am not speaking of Norman the Doorman, star of kiddy television.”

For those unacquainted with said character, he was by day the mild-mannered doorman of Tinseltown Toyshop, but when shadows lengthened and the Closed sign appeared on the door, he turned into Norman, Defender of Wronged Toys. Decked out in his Hermes helmet and waterproof cape (only soap or water could bring his undoing) and chased by goblins with—you’ve got it—water pistols, he scaled buildings and shinned down chimneys, proclaiming “Never fear, Norman’s here!” Yesterday I’d missed the rescue of Dolly Dimples because Miss Thorn, the church organist, had knocked on the door at the crucial moment. Ostensibly she came selling raffle tickets to raise money for a new altar cloth, but I knew her prime motive was to find out why I had missed services three … or it could be four … Sundays in a row. Miss Thorn is one woman who does have eyes in the back of her head.

Her spectacles had misted up when she spoke of the reverend’s most recent sermon, while her thin, knobby face achieved a kind of radiance.

“A moment of epiphany, Mrs. Haskell. Reverend Foxworth’s text was St. Paul to the Corinthians, you know the one—faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. I had goosebumps everywhere, Mrs. Haskell, even on my … derriere. I could hardly sit still on my stool.” A titter behind her hand. “I wanted to rise up, clench my fist and shout ‘Right on, Vicar!’ ”

I told her I really would have to get to church more often.

“Such a
freeing
experience!” Miss Thorn’s eyes were now magnified to mushrooms behind those specs. “I felt like Eve after the Fall, throwing off her fig leaves and
crushing Adam to her breast. For the first time I feared I had been wrong not to marry. One does what one can spreading joy here and there …” A pause, during which we both paid homage to all those who had fallen in the line of duty at Miss Thorn’s feet. What her secret was I didn’t know. She had to be the most excruciatingly plain woman I had ever seen, but even Jonas admitted to a quiver below the belt when Miss Thorn tittered. “What I am saying, dear Mrs. Haskell, is that when I was a girl, I spoke as a girl and loved as a girl, but now that I am a woman, I must cast off girlish things.”

Like other women’s husbands? And for this I missed Norman the Doorman.

“
You
are responsible, Mrs. Haskell.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” A blush stained her cheeks a delicate shade of chartreuse. “It was at your wedding, seeing you so radiant, that I knew the time had come to blow out my old flames and strike a match.” Hands clutched to her concave breast. “You and your Heathcliff are still as much in love as ever?”

Words wouldn’t come, even to ask who was the lucky chap destined to win her hand. Now, as I sat on the window seat in the nursery, Miss Thorn’s words still rang in my head, echoing my own dismal sense of failure. Ben was a man in a million. Somehow, somewhere, I had to find my way back to him, to the passion that once was ours … but first things first. The babies. The difficulties inherent in carrying them downstairs in one armload would be obvious to Pooh Bear. Naturally, the double trek appealed strongly to the exercise fiend in me, but would have been tough on the baby left clinging to the bars of the cot. So, Necessity being a mother too, I had taken to using the twin pack—a front-and-back pack, given to us by my cousin Freddy who works for Ben at Abigail’s.

“Won’t be a tick, my loves!” I stashed both babies in the nearest cot, fished the pack off the changing table, and looped it over my head. I felt like a parachutist ready to jump for God and country. A deep breath to inflate my lungs before positioning Tam in the front pouch, then hoisting him around to the back. If this didn’t beat pumping iron any day! Now in with Abbey. A jostle to get them even, a moment to adjust Tam’s foot, a final check to make sure my flannel nightdress was hitched above safety level, and with Abbey sucking on her fist, all systems were go.

We headed out onto the landing, that wainscotted gallery lit in daytime by the stained-glass window at the turn of the stairs and further brightened by the photo of my mother-in-law, Magdalene Haskell, on her prie-dieu. Were her eyes more reproachful—make that
resigned
—than ever this morning? Taking the first stair, I remembered! That letter I wrote to her and Pop Haskell last week was still on the study desk, waiting for Ben to add his imprint. Me and my scruples! I should have forged his kisses. My half-dozen pages were now hopelessly dated; Ben no longer had a cold, the twins were no longer sleeping through the night and I was no longer going on the shopping trip to Peterborough with the Hearthside Guild.

Any fool knows a staircase is no place to let one’s mind doodle. Halfway down, Abbey jerked on my nightdress, Tam grabbed my hair—snapping my neck like an asparagus stalk—and all three of us squealed as I swayed and grabbed for the brass rail of the iron staircase. In that moment my life flashed before me. I don’t mean past glories and despairs, but the ongoing now—the twins’ breakfast and bathtime, the grocery shopping that must be done if we were not all to get scurvy, and the ironing of all those adorable little outfits that must not be left languishing in the airing cupboard an hour
longer if they were to be worn twice. Clutching the banister as if it were the mast of the
Hesperus
, my vision cleared. Why, whatever was that at the foot of the stairs?