The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) (19 page)

But the major and Dr. Margot weren’t due back for ten days. The Churches didn’t have ten days.

Blake couldn’t argue with Mr. Dickson the way Dr. Margot could. It wouldn’t be proper. He meant to present his case as objectively as he could, politely reminding his employer that the credit for his own return to health, after nearly a year of recuperation, owed a great deal to Nurse Sarah Church. Of course, Mr. Dickson’s generosity had made that possible. Blake’s savings would never have covered a year in a rest home.

The whole situation was delicate. Blake watched the yellow cream swirl in the surface of his coffee, and pondered what he could say. He would wait until Mr. Dickson had breakfasted, and had read his paper. It would be best, perhaps, to speak to him as they drove to the office, with only Mr. Dick to listen. If he made a good case, Mr. Dickson could telephone to the mayor this morning. There was no time to waste.

Poor Sarah! She had been too quiet as he drove her to her home the night before. Following her directions, he had steered the Cadillac into a tidy neighborhood of two-story brick homes, each with a patch of lawn in front and a garden in back. Her family’s home had a garage, which set it apart from its neighbors, and a well-aged but clean Ford parked inside. When he pulled the motorcar up to the curb, and climbed out to hold her door, her mother appeared in the lighted doorway, wearing a printed apron and a worried expression. He bowed to her, and touched his cap. Mrs. Church lifted one hand in an uncertain gesture.

Sarah had said, “I’m sure my mother would love to give you a cup of tea, Mr. Blake.”

“Thank you, no. It’s late, and I know you have to be at the clinic in the morning.”

“I expect you’re tired, too. I’ll explain to her. Thank you for driving me.”

He touched his cap again. “I’m always at your service, Nurse Church.” He had stood watching until she was safely through the door, then remained a moment longer, eyeing the surrounding neighborhood, and wondering who the men were who had insulted this family.

He was, he thought now, as he pushed himself up and walked toward the kitchen, reasonably tolerant when it came to himself. His dear little Sarah was another matter entirely.

Hattie was already at the stove, cracking eggs into a wide cast-iron skillet. In another pan, slices of ham were frying, filling the kitchen with smoky fragrance. Loena was setting flatware on a tray, and Leona was filling the toaster with thick slices of the bread Hattie had baked the day before. Thelma was arranging small plates on a tray for the nursery.

Blake tied a big cotton dishtowel around his waist, and picked up a spatula to help Hattie at the stove.

The knock at the swinging door that led from the hall made everyone pause, and automatically turn to Blake for a response. He said, “I’ll go,” and crossed the kitchen. Before he opened the door, he remembered to pull off the dishtowel and drape it across a chair.

He found Mr. Dickson standing in the hall, his heavy features drawn. “Sir?” Blake said, surprised. “Coffee will be—”

“Is Mrs. Edith in the kitchen?” Mr. Dickson blurted.

Foolishly, Blake glanced over his shoulder, although he knew perfectly well Mrs. Edith wasn’t there. Every face was turned toward the doorway, the maids with wide eyes, Hattie lifting her dripping spatula from the scrambled eggs.

Hattie dropped her spatula, and bustled across the kitchen. “Mr. Dickson, is something wrong? Mrs. Edith maybe needs me upstairs—”

“She’s not there,” Dickson said harshly. “I thought she might be with you.” He rarely spoke to the servants in such a tone, and Blake and Hattie exchanged a glance.

Blake said carefully, “Mr. Dickson, I don’t believe any of the staff have seen her yet this morning. Would you like me to come—”

Dickson, in another unusual gesture, turned his back before Blake finished his sentence. “Goddammit,” he muttered. “She’s gone. Slipped away while I was asleep.”

Blake, with a movement of his head, indicated to Hattie and the rest of the staff that they should go on about their business. He stepped out into the hall, and let the door swing shut behind him. “Mr. Dickson, I’ll come up and check the rooms. She could be in Mr. Preston’s bedroom.”

“I’ve looked,” Dickson growled. “She’s not there, and she’s not with Ramona, or in the nursery. Or in the Parrishes’ rooms. If she’s not in the kitchen, she’s not in the house. And—” He had started toward the front door, but he stopped, and faced Blake with his hands on his hips. His chin jutted, and his eyes were flinty. “Her handbag is gone, Blake. And her valise, the little brocade one the children gave her. That young woman who was with us at dinner last night has also vanished. Her bedroom door is open, and the bed is rumpled up, but it’s empty. I have to surmise they left together.”

“I think we should ask Loena where the sapphire was,” Blake said. “You’ll remember—”

“Oh, goddammit. You’re right. She spoke of taking it to Preston, didn’t she?” He groaned, and Blake felt a stab of sympathy. Dickson rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, and said, with an air of resignation, “Send Loena out to me, will you? I’ll have her check, since she was the one who saw it. Then you’d better get the car out. Pack a bag, too, Blake. And better ask Hattie to fix sandwiches or something. We’re in for a long drive.”

C
HAPTER
18

Margot rose at a shockingly late hour in the narrow bedroom under the eaves of the Parrish ranch house. There were three bedrooms in the rickety, sun-faded building, but only one bathroom. Frank had teased her she should be thankful it was indoors, and she assured him she was. The elder Parrishes were out of their beds by the time the first sunlight glistened on the fields of the Bitterroot Valley, so although Margot wasn’t used to sleeping in, she stayed in bed, listening to the house wrens chattering under the eaves. Only after she heard the older Parrishes descend the steep staircase to the first floor did she throw back the quilt and slide her feet into a pair of borrowed slippers. Even her dressing gown was on loan.

Her mother-in-law had clicked her tongue over the paucity of luggage her son and his wife had been able to bring with them. Jenny and Robert Parrish had driven their battered Model T out to Fort Missoula, where there was enough open space to land the airplane. The propeller had barely stopped spinning before they started eagerly across the field. Margot and Frank climbed down to meet them. Robert shook Frank’s hand and kissed Margot’s cheek, his lips dry and leathery against her skin. Jenny, too, kissed Margot, then folded her son into a long embrace that made Margot’s eyes sting with sympathy. They brought down their modest valises and Margot’s medical bag, and crossed the uneven grass of the field. Jenny clung to Frank’s good arm as if she couldn’t bear to let him go.

Once they reached the ranch house, Jenny showed Margot up the stairs to the bedroom she and Frank would use. It was at the front, facing west. The slanted roof cut the space nearly in half, but the window, tucked under the eaves, gave a beautiful view of the valley and the bulk of the mountains beyond.

When Margot had set down her valise, her mother-in-law took her to her own bedroom, where she opened her closet with an apologetic air. “Not much call for nice clothes, here in the country,” she said. “I’m a mite smaller than you, too, Doctor, but I hope you’ll help yourself.”

“Please call me Margot, won’t you?” Margot said.

“Of course. If you like,” the older woman said, but Margot noticed she didn’t do it. She just didn’t call her anything.

The wardrobe held the simplest of clothes. There were a few dresses, the nicest of which Margot remembered her mother-in-law had worn to their wedding in Seattle. There were a couple of thick jackets that looked as if they were meant for snow. Everything else looked like clothes any workingman could have worn, and Margot hesitated, unsure what to do and not wanting to offend.

She said, “You know, Mother Parrish, I’m sure I could get by.”

“In those trousers?”

Margot glanced down at her flying clothes, and laughed. “Well, no. But I brought a skirt and two shirtwaists.”

Jenny Parrish shook her head. “Oh, no, dear, you don’t want to ruin your nice city clothes. Here now, here’s a dressing gown I hardly ever wear. It’s clean,” she added.

“I can see that. Thank you,” Margot said, feeling helpless.

Jenny dug out a pair of worn but comfortable leather slippers from the bottom of the wardrobe, and from a drawer she pulled a pair of faded denim trousers. The fabric was a lighter weight than the canvas ones Margot had worn for the airplane. Margot chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to wear these,” she confided, and Jenny laughed.

“Best thing for mucking out barns,” she said. “Of course, that’s about the least ladylike thing you could possibly do.”

“Oh, no,” Margot had said. “I’ve done far less ladylike things at the hospital, I’m afraid.”

She wished, a moment later, that she hadn’t referred to her profession, but her mother-in-law appeared unaffected. Unlike Ramona, Jenny Baker Parrish was well acquainted with the gritty side of life, and would have been, Margot suspected, impatient with Ramona’s squeamishness. Jenny only nodded, saying, “Such important work you do.” They smiled at each other then, and Margot’s awkwardness began to ease.

It had been an auspicious beginning to what was turning out to be a wonderfully successful visit. That first day, Frank showed Margot the beloved places of his boyhood, meadows and lofts and streams where he and his friends had fished. The next morning, the two of them tramped through the hot July fields, following Robert as he supervised the haying crews. Robert was tall and lean, like his son. His face was deeply seamed by the sun and wind, and he had more silver in his hair than Frank, but no one seeing them side by side could have mistaken their relationship.

Frank and his father fell into a discussion of the hay crop, the weather, and what price beef on the hoof would bring in the coming winter. Margot lost interest. She sniffed, savoring the sweet smell of freshly cut hay. She listened to the men calling to one another through the dry air. She lifted her head into the wind that blew up the valley, and took off her hat to let it ruffle her hair, and she waded through the thigh-high hay, happy for the protection of the denim trousers. They were surprisingly comfortable, and afforded her a freedom of movement her skirts never did. She wondered if she dared buy a pair to take home.

She was in awe of the great draft horses that pulled the hay wagon. There had been a carriage horse at home, when she was a girl, but the two gray Percherons were nothing like that slim-legged, bad-tempered bay. The Percherons had magnificent feathers draping their wide feet. Their heads were broad, and their eyes large and deep and thickly lashed. They smelled of sun and straw, and their hides shone like silver in the brittle sunlight. She soon discovered they were the gentlest of creatures, careful of where they stepped, tolerant of her cautious attempts to stroke them. The men went in at midday for their dinner, and Frank led the horses into the shade of the barn so they could cool off. He gave Margot a couple of wrinkled apples from the root cellar, and she offered them to the big horses. Their thick, velvety lips tickled her palm as they accepted the treat, making her giggle like a child.

Jenny Parrish’s work-worn hands and sunburned cheeks gave testament to the never-ending labor that was her life. Margot never saw her idle. She was either cooking, or weeding her garden, or, at night when she and Robert settled down in their back room to listen to the wireless, working on a pile of mending.

Margot was no cook or seamstress, and she ruefully explained to Jenny that she couldn’t tell a weed from a vegetable. Jenny had waved that off, saying she hadn’t expected her to come to do chores. Margot learned there was a shopping list, though, and suggested she and Frank drive into Missoula to get what was needed. On a breathless day, with heat shimmering in transparent waves over the hay fields, the two of them piled into the Model T and drove the dusty, rutted road into town.

Missoula was nothing like Seattle, but the setting was beautiful. It lay in a circle of blue, distant mountains. The Blackfoot River threaded right through the town, edged with blackberry bushes and willows with branches that drooped right to the water. Fishermen stood in the shallows near the banks, their fly rods catching the sunlight as they flicked back and forth.

The town boasted a single skyscraper, the Wilma Building. Frank pointed it out as they drove past. The rest of the buildings were one- and two-story structures, some of them unchanged since the previous century. Frank parked the Model T in front of the Mercantile. Its shady interior smelled of grain and coffee and, somehow, hay. In fact, Margot thought, everything in this sunbaked state smelled like hay. She wondered what it smelled like in the wintertime, when the hay crop was stored away and the fields were buried in snow.

Frank wandered the aisles of the Mercantile with Jenny’s list in his hand, while Margot took a seat at the soda fountain counter. The soda jerk greeted her, and suggested a root beer. She watched him pour syrup into a tall frosted glass and then fill the glass with soda water until it was crowned with foam. He put a straw in the glass, and served the drink on a napkin, watching as she took her first sip. The bubbles stung her nose, and when she sneezed, the soda jerk grinned at her.

Margot couldn’t remember the last time she had been to a soda fountain. In the summers, Blake sometimes made sassafras root beer on the back porch, but his brew wasn’t nearly as strong as this one. When Frank joined her, she made him have a root beer himself. Feeling as carefree as a girl on an outing with her young man, Margot drank a second one. It made her burp as they left the store. Frank cast her a surprised look, and both of them were laughing as they climbed back into the Model T.

They drove back late in the day, arriving just as the haying crew was assembling for supper. Margot and Frank ferried the supplies in, cans of Maxwell House Coffee, enormous cans of Monarch Baked Beans, and a big sack of flour. Jenny, her lined face damp with perspiration from laboring over the stove, nodded toward the pantry. “Just put everything in there, will you? Frank knows where things go.”

Frank opened the door to a cool, dim room lined with fragrant cedar shelves. Margot, with the flour sack in her arms, followed him in. When she had wriggled the sack onto one of the shelves, she straightened, and gazed around her with a little exclamation of pleasure. “Why, Frank! What is all this?”

He grinned at her, and put an arm around her shoulders. “I meant to show you this. These are my mother’s remedies.” He pointed to an overhead pole. It ran the length of the room, and was festooned with bundles of dried herbs. “Let’s see, that’s mustard, I think. That’s coneflower, and there’s a bunch of marigolds. These dry all summer, and then in the winter she makes ointments and things. ‘Simples,’ she calls them, like her grandmother did.”

Margot ran a finger over a row of jars filled with preparations of various colors. They were clearly labeled in Jenny’s small handwriting—
lemon balm tea, eucalyptus powder, chamomile, mint leaves
. There was a dark glass jar with a warning cross on its label. It read
Foxglove
.

“Foxglove—that’s digitalis,” Margot marveled. “It looks as if she understands the risks.”

“She has a book she refers to all the time,” Frank said. “Doctor can’t always get out here, so people come to her for help.”

“I’d love to have a look at that book.”

“I’m sure she’d be happy to show you. The pages are all stuck full of cards and papers with recipes collected by her mother, her grandmother, a few friends. Even some she got from the Flatheads.”

“Those are the Indians?”

He nodded. “There’s a bark they use, if I recall. And bear fat, but it smells so awful Pop and I won’t let her bring it into the house.”

Margot smiled, and turned to go back to the kitchen. “I’m no cook, but I can at least help your mother serve,” she said. “Maybe after supper she’ll show me the book.”

Jenny, she had learned, never sat down when the hired hands were eating. She bustled back and forth, her hands full of bowls and dishes and plates, while her husband, the regular hired hand, and the four extra men of the haying crew ate at the oilcloth-covered table. Margot found an extra apron, and started rinsing the used bowls as they came back from the table. Jenny didn’t argue. “That’s a big help,” she said. “Thanks.”

Frank joined Margot at the big double sink. By the time the crew finished, said their good nights, and went off to the bunkhouse, the dishes were done. He and Margot and Jenny went to sit at the table with their own supper while Robert drank coffee and made notes in a ledger with a fountain pen. “Good crop,” he said to his wife. “Half again as big as last year.”

Jenny said, “Now if we could just have an easy winter, we’ll get ahead a bit.”

Margot felt Frank shift restlessly beside her, and she cast him a surreptitious glance. He was frowning as he cut his pot roast into slices and drenched them with Jenny’s dark gravy. She knew he felt guilty about leaving his parents to work the ranch without him. She had heard Robert comment on how well the Carnes arm worked, and she didn’t think she had imagined the longing in his voice, though he gruffly went on to a different subject a moment later.

She started on her own meal, beef from the ranch, sweet corn, a platter of fresh vegetables from Jenny’s kitchen garden. She couldn’t imagine how her mother-in-law managed it all. She had no help, either inside the house or out. “Mother Parrish,” she said warmly, “this is the best pot roast I’ve ever had.”

“Now, now,” Jenny said, smiling. “I’m sure that cook of yours—Hattie, isn’t it?—I’m sure her pot roast is wonderful.”

Frank laughed. “No, unfortunately. It’s not.”

Margot said, “Frank’s right, I’m afraid. We love Hattie, but—”

“She’s getting better,” Frank said loyally. “You have to admit that.”

Margot touched his hand. “That’s because you like simple food. It’s what she’s best at.”

“I know. Margot’s right, though, Mother. Wonderful supper.”

“Well, I’m sure you two are just real hungry. I’m always worn out after a drive up to the city.”

Margot hadn’t really thought of Missoula as a city. There had been none of the hurry and bustle of Seattle. Frank had pointed out to her, as they flew over the mountains and dropped down toward the valley, the other towns lying along the course of the Bitterroot River. They were far smaller even than Missoula, hardly more than villages. It was no wonder, she thought, that the Parrishes and their neighbors had to be self-sufficient. She could only imagine how hard it all must have been without an automobile. The trip into town with a horse and wagon must have taken hours each way.

In fact, the remoteness of the Parrish ranch, and their distance from the others, surprised her. This visit was her first experience of rural life. She loved the great silence of the nights, the wide spaces that met her eyes when she stepped outside. She didn’t know if she could tolerate the isolation for any great length of time, but it was a pleasure for the moment.

As Jenny sliced thick pieces of apple pie and served them, Margot said, “Mother Parrish, Frank tells me you’re the woman people turn to when there’s no doctor available. Your pantry is full of wonderful things. Did you collect them all yourself?”