The Misremembered Man (14 page)

Rose broke up another rock bun on her side plate and looked back at the letter. “Now, Jamie, where were we with this lady?”

“I think we were coming to the books, Rose.”

“Yes, Jamie, I believe you’re right. That and the cookin’ bit. But y’know, the cookin’ being the most important thing, I’m leavin’ that to the last.” Rose got up. “Excuse me one wee minute, Jamie. I needa see if me buns have riz.”

She pulled the cat-faced oven gloves on again and opened the stove door. A gust of hot air burst into the already sweltering room. She carried one of the steaming trays over to the table and left it on the cooling rack.

“But I haven’ read no books, Rose! Maybe one or two on farming and the like.” The last was a lie. In truth, Jamie’s reading extended no farther than deciphering the heating instructions on a can of Campbell’s chicken soup now and again. “But I think she means them novels and things, her being a teacher like.” He looked longingly at the jam tarts.

“Now, they’re a wee bit hot at the moment, Jamie, but I’ll give you a bag o’ them to take home with you, so I will.”

She hung the oven gloves on a bracket above the stove: a laminated plaque of a bull’s head whose protruding horns served as hooks for items of kitchen apparel.

“Now, my Paddy has some cawntry-an’-western cowboy books down here, so he has.” She got down on bended knee and opened a cupboard to the right of the stove. “He doesn’t bother with the readin’ no more, his eyesight not being what it used to be.” She spoke into the depths of the dark cupboard. “And y’know what they say, Jamie: A blind hawk will never find his nuts in the dark.”

Presently she got up, her joints popping with the effort, her face as pink as the Sam McCready roses patterned across her generous bosom, and handed Jamie two shabby, yellowed paperbacks:
The Virginian
by Owen Wister and
Riders of the Purple Sage
by Zane Gray.

“Now that’s the books seen to, Jamie. Maybe you should take a wee read at them before you meet her, just in case she might ask you what they were about, and you wouldn’t like to be caught with your horns in the hay or your flies in the ointment, or whatever it is they say.”

Jamie studied the books, flicking through the pages and wondering why meeting this woman was beginning to resemble sitting an exam.

“That’s great, Rose,” he said, with a touch of resignation in his voice. “Thank you very much. So, there’s just the cookin’ left.”

“Yes, Jamie, the cookin’ is the most important part of the whole letter; that’s why I left it to last,” Rose said, taking a palette knife from a drawer and arranging the jam tarts on a bedoilied plate. “Now I’m no scholar meself, but them fancy words ‘culoon-in-ary process’ I suppose might be another way of sayin’ cookin’ and bakin’ and the like.”

She offered Jamie a tart and took one herself. She replaced her glasses and retrieved the letter, frowning.

“‘What dishes do you like making most?’” She read the salient sentence aloud again. “‘What ass-pect of the culoon-in-ary process interests you most?’”

Rose peered over her glasses.

“Well, d’you know, Jamie, aren’t you eatin’ the answer to that one?”

“Huh?” He looked in bemusement at the half-eaten jam tart on his plate.

“Them wee jam tarts. Well y’know, a monkey with no eyes in the back of his head could make them! Not that I’m sayin’ you’re a monkey, Jamie. Far be it from me to be sayin’ such a thing, if truth be told. But a jam tart and a rock bun you could make with your eyes closed and your hands tied behind your back, sitting on a lamppost in the middle of a field on a dark night, so you could. They’re that simple.”

She went to a cork board above the fridge and, from below a novena of a girlish-looking St. Joshua (
Patron Saint of Fruitless Endeavours
) standing in a plastic pocket, unpinned a cornflake packet coupon featuring a recipe for rock buns. She handed it to Jamie.

“There you are, you can hold on to that and study it. Now I’m gonna give my Paddy a wee drop more tea and then we’ll get down to the writin’ of it, so we will.”

She left Jamie in the kitchen in a profound study, wondering how the faceless Lydia could involve him in such demanding feats as reading books and learning recipes, before he even had the chance to meet her and speak to her.

Life was indeed strange. One minute you were contemplating ending it all with a rafter and a length of rope, the next you were studying a recipe for rock buns with a view to meeting a lady. It was all very strange indeed.

T
he Ocean Spray, a large, three-storied, detached guesthouse, was situated in a prime spot—facing the sea and catching the sun—on the main thoroughfare of the coastal resort of Portaluce.

Gladys Millman, sixty-five, glamorous widow, and younger sister of Elizabeth Devine, considered her establishment superior to others, due to its enviable location. Also on account of this, she felt justified in charging higher rates than her rivals. She prided herself on running a spotless guesthouse, demanded impeccable standards of herself and her workforce, and reserved a healthy contempt for those she considered to be of the lower, or indeed peasant, classes.

Whenever she encountered anyone she deemed a threat to this ideal—those from the farming community, factory workers, tradesmen, dowdy women over thirty and still unmarried—she would raise her rates even more, to scare them off. And if this ploy didn’t work, she would skimp on elements of their breakfast so as to compensate for having to endure such riffraff under her roof. So next morning, Farmer Murphy and his wife would have set before them—but probably did not notice—margarine instead of butter, shop-bought jam instead of homemade preserves, thinly diluted squash instead of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Gladys had started the business with her husband Freddie (Freddie had been an accountant and she a secretary) after their daughters Bertha and Lillian had graduated, married and left home to settle in Canada and California, respectively.

Within two years, the childfree, carefree couple had built up the Ocean Spray as a successful and respectable venture; the success was due to Freddie’s eye for profit and Gladys’s skill in the kitchen. But the idyll was not to last. One morning at breakfast, Freddie died suddenly of a heart attack, going face-first into his Ulster fry-up (a specialty of the house) as he and Gladys squabbled over the virtues of serving French toast instead of fried potato bread, Freddie arguing more forcefully for the cheaper potato alternative, which was a personal favorite and which—in a way—had unfortunately and most acutely been the death of him.

Gladys was a vain woman, proud of her appearance and her status as a successful entrepreneur. She had an admirer whom she saw from time to time—“my secret lover”—who encouraged and appreciated the efforts she made to look her best.

For she dressed elegantly, and although a bit on the plump side, remedied this by wearing well-sculpted undergarments and retaining a haughty carriage; she held herself as erect and regally as the reigning monarch. In fact, H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth was her role model; consequently, Gladys was a firm believer in the value of a well-positioned brooch and a many-stringed set of pearls to lift an outfit and add that important finishing touch.

As she sat at her beige, laminated dressing table with its griffin feet and gilt-edged mirror, Gladys was aware that, on this occasion, she must make a special effort with her appearance. Her sister and niece were arriving later in the day.

She had not seen Elizabeth for well over a year and was ever conscious of the competition that still existed between them regarding dress and appearance. Elizabeth could be uncommonly forthright in her opinions, and Gladys knew from experience that the best way to silence her—or indeed lessen the impact of her jibes—was to present her with few causes for criticism in the first place.

For this reason she was careful that morning to apply her makeup with a judicious hand, opting for the discreet Delicate Dawn foundation, instead of her usual Café Gold, going easy with the kohl pencil on eyelids and brows, and finishing with just a touch of Pink Frost on her full, sensuous mouth. Her sister was wont to say that make-up was “for the harlots of Rome,” an opinion fostered by her impossible late husband, the Reverend Perseus Cuthbert, whom Gladys had had little time for in life, and resented even more now that he’d passed over. Her sister, God help her, felt it necessary to keep his frightful spirit alive by rehearsing his tedious, chauvinistic mantras.

Her makeup completed, she swept her auburn hair into an elaborate French chignon and anchored it in place with several pins. Outside, the seagulls wheeled and dived in a blue sky above the metronomic push and pull of the Atlantic waves. Portaluce was a graceful place to live, its calm, natural beauty drawing the heart and eye to peaceful conclusions, notwithstanding the stresses of one’s life.

Gladys registered few of those delights, however, as she fastened herself into a shirtdress of pistachio silk, and slipped on her stilettos. The scene from the mansard window, like the elegant, pale fabric on her walls, had become a commonplace, admired from time to time but rarely dwelt on.

Her final touch was a set of diamanté stud earrings—a birthday gift from the doting Dr. Humphrey Brewster—and a matching brooch pinned in place over her opulent bosom. She stepped back from the mirror, well satisfied. Now she felt eager and ready to face the day, her staff and her fractious sister, when she arrived.

The fifty-mile journey from Killoran to Portaluce had been a lengthy one, not least because Lydia did not believe in driving her Fiat 850 faster simply because the distance was longer. The speedometer needle had rarely crept beyond 40 mph. Her caution in this regard, together with frequent rests for tea at various hostelries, and the fact that Elizabeth’s hemorrhoid cushion tended, for whatever reason, to leak air every half hour, and had to be inflated with the bicycle pump which Lydia kept in the trunk especially for that purpose, meant that the ladies did not arrive at the Ocean Spray until well after 4
P.M
.

Gladys was already on the doorstep when Lydia pulled her car into the reserved bay facing the guesthouse. On seeing her glamorous sister, Elizabeth felt moved to make the first of many caustic comments.

“Has she nothing better to do but stand there,” she said icily, “showing off her lungs in a dress like that? It’s far too tight for a woman of her age. You know I think Freddie was lucky to get away, and if you ask me, she was probably glad to be rid of him!”

“Mother, no one is asking you anything, and I’m warning you: If you start annoying Auntie Gladys, I’ll have a good mind to drive straight back home if the mood takes me.”

Elizabeth had no time to respond, for already Gladys was sweeping down on the arrivals like a great seagull, anxious to aid her sister, and air-kissing her with a shower of exclamatory greetings.

“Good to see you too, Gladys dear!” Elizabeth batted the hand away. “Now there’s no need for that. I’m not an invalid, you know.”

Gladys sniffed and dived toward the niece.

“And little Lily! How good of you to come.” She clasped Lydia in a heady embrace of clanking bracelets and wafting Opium scent. “And you look so
well
,” she lied. “A bit thin perhaps, but we’ll soon build you up. Now let’s all have tea. I’m sure you must be famished after that long journey.”

Elizabeth held fast to her malacca cane, wobbling on her patent Gabor heels as Gladys took them by the arm and steered them toward her great achievement: the Romanesque, wedding cake of an establishment that was her commercial enterprise and home.

“Oh, business is hectic as usual. Well, it is the season, I suppose, so one can’t complain.”

Gladys sat back on the cream damask sofa, one hand on her fine bosom, and crossed her shapely legs. She was conscious that between her and her two guests—the dowdy, cantankerous sister and the plain, flat-chested niece—there was no competition at all. She felt a flush of triumph and a stab of pity as she considered them both.

She was also aware that since her guests would be staying with her and taking up valuable rooms at no charge, the pair was at a considerable disadvantage. They’d be under an obligation to do her bidding and agree with most of what she said. Gladys liked to be in control of things and refused to have her authority eroded by either sibling or friend.

“But you know I do not have the luxury of delegating,” she went on, “simply because I just can’t trust anyone, and one simply can’t get the help these days. They have to be trained up first. You would not
believe
how ill-prepared some of these young women are for the domestic demands of life. Heaven help the poor unsuspecting men who find themselves married to suchlike, is what I say…”

A gentle tapping on the door had brought Gladys’s galloping discourse to a canter.

“Yes, come in, Sinéad,” she said without missing a step. A young maid entered bearing a massive, silver tray. “Good. At last, the tea.”

Gladys tapped a lacquered fingernail on the glass coffee table. “Just leave it here, please.”

The thin, ginger-haired girl, no more than seventeen, peppered in freckles and nervous as a rabbit, set the tray down very carefully, and straightened.

“Is that all yous will be wantin’, Miss Gladys?”

“Now, Sinéad, how many times have I said that ‘ewes’ are female sheep one finds in the field?” Gladys raised an Ava Gardner eyebrow. “They are not the plural pronoun one finds in a proper sentence.”

The girl’s face turned the hue of a boiled beetroot as she stood twisting her hands, as though wringing an invisible dishcloth.

“Sorry, I meant ‘ye,’ Miss.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Er, I mean ‘you,’ Miss.”

“I should hope so. ‘Ye,’ indeed!”

Gladys lifted the silver teapot and proceeded to pour, whilst Elizabeth looked on perplexed and Lydia felt a searing embarrassment for the young woman, reduced now to a cringing mouse by her employer.

“Now, could we try it again?”

The girl coughed. “Is that all you will be wanting, Miss Gladys?”

“Good, that’s better! And no, this looks fine for the moment.” Gladys scanned the tray for stray sugar grains, finger-marked spoons, blemished napkins or slopped milk, and seemed disappointed to find everything in order on this occasion. “Thank you, Sinéad. You may go now.”

The maid departed quickly and pulled the door quietly behind her.

“Do you see what I mean? Badly brought up. I not only have to teach them how to prepare food and make envelope-cornered beds, I also have to deal with poor grammar.” She handed Elizabeth a cup and saucer—gold-trimmed turquoise Denby, expensive, trendy, so unlike her sister’s nasty, old-fashioned Royal Doulton china. “But then I suppose, Lily dear, you would know all about that, having to deal with your pupils all day long.” She flashed a perfect, pretend smile at her niece.

“Well I think, Gladys, if children don’t read—”

“Now, how are you ladies going to spend your time?” Gladys asked, slicing across Lydia with the skill of a master swordsman. “Portaluce has really opened up since you were here last. We have our very own theater now: The Tudor Rose. So we could take in a play one evening, if you like.”

“Never had much time for plays,” said Elizabeth. “Perseus Cuthbert always said they brought the coarseness of life to the fore, and why should anyone want to celebrate such follies and put them on a stage for us to laugh and weep at anyway?”

She bit into her cucumber and Brie sandwich, pleased that she’d made her point so lucidly.

“Gosh, Elizabeth! If Perseus Cuthbert had had his way he would have outlawed entertainment altogether. Fun was a perversion in his eyes.”

Elizabeth noted the combative glint in her sister’s eye and opted, on this occasion, to ignore the insult to her dear husband’s memory. Lydia, watching the proceedings, saw the beginnings of a verbal tennis match, full of acerbic backhanders and searing rallies, hotting up between the two. She was in no mood to play ballgirl at that moment. She had a headache from the long drive, and Gladys’s perfume was making her nauseous; she wished to be released from the stifling room and from the clutches of her overbearing aunt. She got up.

“I think I really fancy a nice walk and some sea air. How about you, Mother?”

Elizabeth, to Gladys’s annoyance, acquiesced all too readily to her daughter’s proposal and returned her cup and saucer to the tray.

“But you haven’t finished your tea yet,” Gladys protested, thrusting upright on the sofa, her great bosom pushing out like the plumage of some exotic feathered creature.

Elizabeth, already on her feet, noted the abundant cleavage and thought if Perseus Cuthbert were present, he’d be throwing a blanket round her and exhorting her to “conduct” herself. She was dismayed that her sister seemed to get flightier the older she got, and wondered if there was a man on the scene. And, if there were, heaven help him!

“Why don’t you come with us too, Gladys?” Lydia said, trying to sound enthusiastic as she headed for the door.

“I have work to do, Lily dear.” Gladys rose from the sofa, miffed, and smoothed down her dress.

“Her name is
Lydia
, not Lily!” Elizabeth parried, determining after all to lock swords. She held her sister with a glacial, unblinking stare. There was a taut silence.

Lydia looked from the one to the other. She had rarely seen her mother so forbidding. “Look, I don’t really care what I’m called, really.”

“No, Lydia;
you
don’t, but
I
do. Shall we go?”

As the older sister made to depart, Gladys tried to soften the injury with a conciliatory comment.

“Chef has to prepare dinner for fifteen this evening and I must be on hand to oversee things,” she said. Lydia nodded but her mother ignored her.

And on that sour note they parted, Lydia wondering why her Christian name should have caused such enmity between the sisters. Perhaps this break in Portaluce, she thought, which her mother had so looked forward to, might not have been such a good idea after all.