The Importance of Being Ernestine (22 page)

“We are talking about a great deal of money.” Mrs. Malloy compressed her lips as if the mentioning of it were somehow irreverent.

“How lovely! And won't my parents be delighted!” The woman beamed over her shoulder as she led us to the house with its stained glass panels on either side of the front door and lace curtains at the windows.

“Your parents?” I was saying as we entered the hall dominated by a rather dark staircase with massive newel posts.

“They've lived here most of their married life—fifty-five years next month. My husband and I moved in with them when our kids were grown, and my Mum and Dad needed some extra help.”

“Could we speak with your parents?”

“Well, Mum's not home at the moment, but perhaps you can come back again. And in a minute I'll ask Dad to come in. I'd do it now, but he's out in the garden practicing his golf putting. A very keen golfer is Dad. He should have gone professional; people are always telling him that. But when he left school he had his widowed mother to support so he went into selling insurance, which is always a bit up and down. When he and Mum had a family—me and two brothers—they needed a bit extra, so they turned the upstairs and even the attic into bed-sitters, dad doing most of the construction work himself. “

“Well, fancy that!” Mrs. Malloy looked up the staircase in awe. “What, including the plumbing and electrical? Marvelous! I don't suppose your Mum has ever thought of passing him along to some other deserving woman?”

“Never in a million years,” the woman spoke with a laugh. “They got married when they were both nineteen and are still like a pair of lovebirds even in their seventies. By the way, my name's Janet Joritz, but everyone calls me Jan. Come on into the front room, why don't you? We can have a sit down, while you ask me what you need to know.”

“Do you remember the young woman and baby?” I asked as Mrs. Malloy and I followed her into a pleasantly cluttered room in the Victorian style, but with a large modern sofa and matching easy chairs arranged around a sensibly large coffee table. On this were scattered magazines and books and a piece of pale blue knitting that looked as though it had just been set down.

She urged us to be seated, and asked if we would like a cup of tea. When we declined, explaining that we had just had lunch, she took her own seat.

“You were asking if I remember them? The young woman and the baby?”

“And do you?” I asked. Unfortunately I had made the mistake of sitting next to Mrs. Malloy on the sofa. She accompanied a derisive chortle by an elbow in my side.

“What a question! Why, it's obvious from looking at her that Jan here couldn't have been more than a toddler herself at the time.”

“Why that is kind of you to say,” came the smiling response. “But I'd have been twelve or thirteen. Yes, that would be right.” Mrs. Joritiz was counting off on her fingers. “I'm fifty-two now. . . .”

“Who would have thought it! Why you don't look a day older than Mrs. H. here, and she claims to be in her early thirties.” Mrs. Malloy was really overdoing things. It took all my restraint as a grown-up and a phony private detective not to poke her with my elbow. Mrs. Joritz might be rather too trusting, but I sensed she was no fool. Had she not been caught up in the excitement of our visit, she would surely have found Mrs. Malloy's flattery highly suspicious.

I breathed easier when she picked up her knitting and began clicking away, and immediately I sensed something else: Mrs. Joritz didn't want to rush things. Here was an event to be savored and later dwelt upon and talked about at length. She wouldn't enlarge upon the part she had played. She didn't strike me as a self-centered woman; it would be more like re-watching a favorite television program. It wouldn't be the beginning or ending that mattered half so much as the middle.

“I don't think much about how I look. It's never been all that important to me. It's how you feel on the inside that counts, or so I tell myself, and having my granchildren helps keep me feeling young these days. This little cardigan I'm knitting is for my eldest granddaughter, Julie. She's seven and does she ever think she's grown up! Her mother, my daughter Susan, let her get her ears pierced. My husband didn't think it was right, but I told him no one thinks twice about it these days, anymore than they do when someone has a baby without being married. It's all different. And just as well if you ask me, when you think back to what girls like the one that died upstairs went through, cast off by their families and left to fend all on their own when the bloke that got them in trouble washed his hands of his responsibilities.”

“Sometimes these situations can be complicated.” I was thinking about Ernest who had wanted to marry Flossie and then remembered Sir Horace who couldn't or wouldn't accept responsibility for the child.

“Such a pretty girl, she was too. It was still there even when she took ill.” Mrs. Joritz laid down her knitting. “I suppose thinking back that's what made me realize looks aren't everything. That poor lass should have had the world at her feet.”

Mrs. M. had reached out her hand to some grapes in a bowl before realizing they weren't real. “But a nice decorative touch,” she proffered kindly, “cheerful but classy you might say, which gets me to wondering if that would describe Flossie Jones?”

“I didn't get to know her well enough to say. I just passed her coming in and out the door, that sort of thing. She wasn't unfriendly, but you couldn't expect her to go out of her way for a twelve-year-old girl. And it was clear she was hard up. She'd be weeks late with the rent; my parents were always a pair of softies when it came to putting anyone out. I remember when the baby was born the doctor coming in the middle of the night. That made for a lot of excitement. And then of course Mum and Dad talked about her being ill. That part happened very quick, the way it does with pneumonia. It was the same doctor that came then. A Doctor Green, he was, and it was him that arranged things for the adoption.”

“He did?” Mrs. Malloy and I bolted forward on the sofa in unison.

“There was this couple, patients of his, that couldn't have children; it's often the case, isn't it? Those that want them can't have them and those that don't find themselves in a pickle.” A sharp crack, as if from a ball hitting a window, cut Mrs. Joritz short and caused Mrs. Malloy's hat to slide from her head to mine. I had a suspicion that it did nothing for me, but before I could request an opinion Mrs. Joritz began chatting away in a nervous voice about how she had enjoyed her daughters' growing-up years. Some five minutes later the door opened and an athletically built, dapper gentleman entered the room, nonchalantly swinging a golf club.

“Oh, Dad! You didn't!” Mrs. Joritz addressed him in a softly rebuking voice.

“That's your father, sweetheart! Another hole in one!”

“Through next door's dining room window?”

“The exact same spot as last time.”

Mrs. Joritz pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Tell me you didn't smash any more of Mr. Warren's Royal Doulton character mugs? You know that man lives and breathes for his collection. He's finally got all of Henry VIII's six wives.”

“And a few moments ago one of them's had her head chopped off for the second time. Now don't go upsetting yourself.” Her father grinned. It was a very attractive boyish grin and knowing Mrs. Malloy's tendency to become distracted under certain conditions, I replaced her hat, pulling the brim down over her eyes. “It's alright, Jan. Mrs. Warren wasn't the least put out. She not only downright refused to let me pay for the window, she invited me to start practicing on her lawn, which does have the advantage of that little pond and the children's sandbox to make me feel more like I'm playing at the club. The woman hates those mugs. She says they're always leering at her. And she has nightmares about being up on the mantelpiece with them. But what will these two ladies be thinking of me, chewing on about my game.” He propped his club against a table and extended his hand, first to me then to Mrs. Malloy. “We haven't met previously, have we?”

“No, but isn't it nice that there's a first time for everything?” It was clear to me from Mrs. Malloy's limpid gaze that the image of Watkins, the butler, had been wiped from the horizon of her memory. She introduced herself with the bashfulness of a schoolgirl while making adjustments to the hat. Knowing she was desperate to get at her lipstick, I shifted her handbag out of reach.

“I'm Bob Songer.” He sat down, hitched up his crisply ironed trouser legs to display an inch of robin's egg blue sock and leaned toward us, eyes twinkling. “You must be new friends of Jan's, or we'd have met before. She's always been great about including her Mum and me when she has people in, never making us old folk feel underfoot, the way you hear of some people doing to their parents.”

“Dad”—Mrs. Joritz returned his twinkle—“you're forgetting it's your house.”

“That wouldn't stop some.” Mr. Songer's grin faded. “Mrs. Warren was telling me this morning how she'd read in the local paper about some ninety-year-old man that died from falling down a well.”

“Well, I never!” Mrs. M. avoided my eye.

“A nasty accident from the way it was written, but as Mrs. Warren pointed out, accidents can be made to happen. ‘Mark my words,' she said, ‘that old codger was in the way, getting on someone's nerves, always harping on about the old days. Probably couldn't remember if he'd had breakfast, but could describe down to the last button on his overall what the grocer's delivery boy looked like.” Mr. Songer's grin had a rueful curve to it this time. “There is no denying the tendency to live in the past as we age.”

“But not you, Mr. Songer!” Mrs. Malloy dipped her eyelashes.

“That's where having Jan and her husband here is such a blessing.” His face glowed. “There's always something going on with their family. She'll have told you about her daughters and how well they've done for themselves? Both of them with university degrees and married to successful and very nice men. Susan's husband is a barrister, and they have seven-year-old Julie who, though I suppose I shouldn't say it, is as bright as a penny. She's in a class with children two years older than her, and has no trouble keeping up. None at all. In fact she came top last term, isn't that right Jan?”

“Oh, Dad!” Mrs. Joritz blushed. “You really shouldn't boast. I'm sure to other people our Julie's just a nice ordinary little girl.”

“Not too many children can speak Spanish.”

“Dad she can count to ten; that doesn't make her fluent.” Mrs. Joritz picked up her knitting. “Of course she can do it backward as well as forward. And her teacher did say her accent is exceptional.”

“She also dances like a little fairy.” Mr. Songer's wide boyish smile displayed an excellent set of teeth for a man of any age. But Mrs. Malloy no longer eyed him with quite so much enthusiasm. Indeed, when he continued to tout little Julie's accomplishments I got the impression she was wondering what she had seen in him at the beginning of their now ten-minute-old relationship.

“Did Jan mention that the child is musical?”

“Not that I remember.” Mrs. Malloy's eyes were beginning to glaze.

“She plays the triangle.”

“How splendid,” I responded with genuine feeling. Hadn't I been overwhelmed with pride when Tam blew what sounded like two or three notes of “Ba Ba Black Sheep” on a comb wrapped in toilet paper?

“The only child to perform solo in the school concert.”

“Fancy!” Mrs. Malloy glanced around as if hoping to spy a well that she could tip him into.

“Gifted, I heard someone say.”

“Dad, that was her father.” Mrs. Joritz smiled fondly at him over her knitting.

“There's nothing like listening to stories about other people's kiddies.” Mrs. Malloy rallied to add, “Bless their little hearts. But me and Mrs. H. here don't want to go taking up your whole afternoon.”

“The boot's on the other foot!” Our hostess dropped the knitting and now looked acutely embarrassed. “Dad, I should have explained at once! These ladies are private detectives. They're wanting to locate Flossie Jones's baby. The one that was born here and given up for adoption all those years ago. I was just telling them, before you came in, about Dr. Green's involvement.”

“A good man,” replied Mr. Songer. “He told me he urged the young mother when she was dying to let him get in touch with the baby's father. He felt the man was entitled to be made aware of the situation—to take the child and raise it if that was his wish—but she refused to name him. And so the doctor talked to this couple who had been hoping to adopt for some time.”

“Do you know if Dr. Green is still alive?” My heart was thumping hard.

“I wouldn't think it likely. He was close to sixty at that time.”

“Never mind.” I tried not to sound as disappointed as I felt. “That would have been too easy, wouldn't it?”

“So it would.” Mrs. Malloy got to her feet. “But fortunately my partner and I have the experience to turn a dead end into,” she valiantly lifted her chin, “into a shortcut.” As this made no sense I began voicing my thanks to Mrs. Joritz and Mr. Songer for the information they had given us, only to be interrupted by that nice woman.

“But we haven't told you the name of the couple who adopted the baby. It was Merryweather. They managed to track our family down through a blanket I'd knitted for the baby that went with her when she was taken from here. I'd done several of the same pattern for the church bazaar.”