The Trouble with Harriet (13 page)

“Maybe not,” I said as Ben busied himself at the sink. “But, Daddy, wouldn’t it be best to leave the urn here?”

“Giselle, I’m surprised at you. Harriet so enjoyed an outing.”

“I know, but—”

“And when I think of how happy she was at the prospect of surprising me with that car, it breaks my heart all over again.” Daddy murmured something about putting on his ascot and navy blue blazer and disappeared into the hall.

“Oh, I do love to see a grown man cry,” Mrs. Malloy positively simpered. “It gives you hope, doesn’t it, that they’re not all beasts only interested in getting their Sunday dinner on time? So’s they can be off to the pub with their mates. Sensitive and sexy all in one package. You don’t get to see that every day of the week.”

“My father? Sexy?” I gaped at her.

“Why not?” Ben inquired without turning around from the sink. “I plan to go on being wildly desirable after I turn sixty.”

“I can see why Harriet fell for him like a ton of bricks,” Mrs. Malloy murmured dreamily, “and I could just sob me eyes out to think the two of them didn’t get to live happily ever after. Or,” she said, trudging into the alcove, where we kept the buckets and mops, “I could get a grip and think about putting the moves on him meself.”

Half an hour later, her languishing sigh replayed itself in my head as I drove through our wrought-iron gates with my father beside me and the urn in the canvas bag on his knee. It wasn’t that I thought it impossible for a man of over sixty to still be attractive to the opposite sex. And I didn’t doubt that a woman could develop a fondness for Daddy over time. But to think of him as a man who would make female hearts beat like drums and their legs turn to jelly was an adjustment!

The sky was overcast, and as the cliff road narrowed, I had to concentrate on its twists and turns. There were rocks and shrubs on one side and the drop-off to the sea on the other, with only the occasional strip of iron railing to mark the most dangerous places. Even so, the thoughts kept coming. Had I really heard anything about Harriet that justified my disliking her? Was it only the jealousy on my mother’s behalf that had sparked my suspicions that there had been something fishy about her relationship with my father?

Daddy hadn’t said a word as we drove along. But suddenly he gave a strangled gasp and cradled the canvas bag to his chest in the manner of a mother protecting her newborn infant from a pack of advancing hyenas. We had just passed the rather spooky old inn, now a B and B operated by Mrs. Potter’s sister, and were within yards of the Old Abbey’s gates when we saw a bicycle wobbling along just ahead of us, smack in the middle of the road. I saw a flash of rounded back and a flutter of white hair before I spun the steering wheel to the left, grazed the brick wall, and felt the car slide around in slow motion to face the cliff’s edge, as if hoping for one final glimpse of the sea.

The moment I had the car safely back on the appropriate side of the road, Daddy changed his tune about wanting to live and began talking about how there would have been something sublimely apt about meeting his end in the very same manner as had his beloved Harriet. Luckily, my hands were laminated to the steering wheel or I might have been tempted to strangle my own father. Every part of me was shaking, including my teeth.

“Look, Daddy,” I croaked as my foot hit one of the pedals, killing the engine. “I’m really not in the mood for this. Heaven may be a very nice place to visit, but I really don’t want to live there right now. I wouldn’t get to see Ben or the children. So if you don’t mind, I would like to savor this reprieve instead of wallowing in regret that I’m not in a watery grave.”

“Forgive me, Giselle.” He studied my face somberly. “Your continued existence means a great deal to me. Such being the case, I must endeavor to temper my grief with more awareness of your feelings. I shall strive to be cheerful.” He spoke with resolution and nobility. “Harriet would have wished it.”

“I hope our near miss hasn’t shaken her up too badly?” My voice verged on the hysterical as I looked at the canvas bag he was still clutching as if it were a baby yet to be weaned. “But is it too much to ask that just this once you think of the living?”

Before he could reply, a face appeared at the open car window. The face of a man holding on to a bicycle that was almost as elderly as he.

“Having car trouble?” he inquired kindly. “Not that I can be of much help, I’m afraid. No mechanical knowledge whatsoever. But I couldn’t pass by on the other side of the road without at least offering you a blessing.”

“That’s awfully nice of you, Mr. Ambleforth.” I produced a smile and refrained from mentioning I had narrowly missed running him over and killing my father and myself in the process. To have disturbed the tranquility of his expression would have seemed truly wicked. “I do hope,” I continued, “that you and your wife have recovered from your late night.”

“Which night was that, my dear?”

“Last night,” I said, wishing I hadn’t brought up the subject. I was about to introduce Daddy to him when the vicar nodded his venerable white head.

“Ah, yes. So kind of you to have invited us to your home for an evening of chamber music. We appreciate these overtures to welcome us into the lives of our parishioners. My wife,” he said, recalling himself with commendable effort to modern times, “is very partial to the cello. Or am I thinking of compost? Kathleen has always been an extraordinarily keen gardener. She’s won a great number of prizes at flower shows for her daffodils. No, I do believe—am indeed quite sure—it was for her marigolds. It is a great blessing to have a green thumb. One remembers, of course, what Jesus had to say about the lilies of the field. Or was it the ... ?”

I seized the pause to say that my husband and I would love to have him and his wife over for dinner one evening soon while my
father was staying with us. And Daddy, assuming his most lugubrious expression, leaned around me to extend his hand out the window.

“Morley Simons, not of this parish.”

“A sheep from another fold,” Mr. Ambleforth murmured.

“I have, in fact, never been much of churchgoer, Vicar.” Daddy addressed the clerical collar. “But one reaches a time in life when the attractions of the hereafter are undeniable. It occurs to me that perhaps I have been remiss in not warming a pew on the occasional Sunday morning.”

“He who is last shall be first, my son.”

I had always thought that concept just a little bit unfair, and now, being already peevish, I wished the two men would go off to the nearest pub for a beer and a word of prayer. That way I could go on alone through the gates of the Old Abbey.

“Perhaps I could call in and see you during office hours, Vicar,” Daddy suggested. “My spirit is much in need of the soothing balm that you men of the cloth are paid to administer. My dear daughter Giselle may have told you of my recent agonizing loss ...”

Hearing the sound of approaching traffic, I suggested, somewhat belatedly, that Mr. Ambleforth step onto the verge. He did so without appearing to be in fear and trembling for himself or the bicycle. After a couple of cars had gone whizzing past us, he wisely announced that he would proceed to the Old Abbey, where he intended to repose among the monastery ruins and commune with the spirit of St. Ethelwort.

“We’re going there ourselves,” I told him. “Up to the house, I mean. I have an appointment with Lady Grizwolde.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Ambleforth, “a most charming young woman. Such a very great pity that she and Sir Casper have not been blessed with offspring. One cannot but suppose that the legend holds true.” And on this tantalizing tidbit he pedaled off and soon passed through the gates in the brick wall.

“What a decidedly odd sort of chap,” my father remarked, clasping the urn in its canvas bag more tightly as I turned the key in the ignition and we followed at a cautious pace in the vicar’s wake.

Within moments we were on a tree-lined drive, the house rising up before us. Built in the reign of George II, it appeared at first glance to be the sort of house that a child would draw. Its beauty was all about purity of line and exquisite proportion. The brick had weathered to a buttery yellow, and the roof was the color of a pair of moleskin gloves, changing to lavender in places where brushed with shadow. I was breathing a sigh of relief that the Victorians had not done terrible things to it with factory-sized additions when I almost ran over Mr. Ambleforth’s bike, which had been abandoned smack in my path. Hitting the brake and killing the engine for the second time that morning, I glanced to my right and saw the ruins of St. Ethelwort’s monastery.

Such places tend to come into their own at night, with moonbeams silvering the maze of broken-down walls and the jutting remnant of a stone staircase. But I experienced a thrill at seeing this one in daylight. The vicar sat entranced under what was left of a Gothic archway. Meanwhile, Daddy looked far from happy. I could see his point. All this jostling had to be most upsetting to Harriet. It was amazing she had succeeded so far in keeping her lid on! I was just about to get out of the car and lean the bike up against a tree when a man appeared from behind some shrubs.

He had a pair of pruning shears in his hands, and when he came up to the window, I decided that he had to be at least ninety. His face was wizened and yellowed, his back so bent that he probably hadn’t seen the sky in a decade. But his birdlike eyes were as inquisitive as those of a child, and every other step he took was a little hop.

“Good day to you, missus.” His nose almost touched mine as he leaned into the car. “Are you the one come to see Lady Grizwolde about fancying up the old place?”

“That’s right. I’m Ellie Haskell.”

“Aye, that’ll be you.” It hardly seemed possible, but more lines crinkled his face as his bright eyes searched mine. “I’ve been on the lookout for you. And if you won’t take it as impertinence, I’d like to put a word in your ear about not changing too much up at the house. It might not go down well, you see. I’ve worked here since I was a boy, no bigger than that there tree stump,” he said, pointing it out with the shears. “I knows what I’m talking about.”

“Sir Casper will be upset that Lady Grizwolde wants to redecorate?”

“Not him; he’s all for it. Anything to make her ladyship smile pretty at him; that’s the master’s way. It’s
him
that mustn’t on no account be vexed.” The little old man cowered against the car as he glanced toward the ruins where Mr. Ambleforth still sat.

“The vicar?” I gave a surprised start and accidentally elbowed Daddy, who had hitherto sat oblivious to the conversation. “What does redecorating the Old Abbey have to do with him?”

“Nowt.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“It be old Worty I’m talking about. Him that built the old monastery where all you now see is rubble.”

“Oh, you mean St. Ethelwort!”

“To be giving him his proper title.” The old man gave another of his funny little hops, almost catching himself in the chin with the point of the shears. “Growing up around this place, I got to thinking of him the way I did my uncle Ned that I was named for, half-fond, half-fearful, if you get my meaning. Do things to suit the old boy’s fancy is what I says about old Worty, and no harm done.”

“What sort of harm could he do?” I discovered I was shivering, just as I had in the market square when talking to the Gypsy.

“It all goes back to when the old house was here,” Ned informed me. “The one as was built after Henry VIII went and got rid of all the monks. The lady of the house in Elizabethan times—I’ve forgot her name—saw a vision of the saint in the chapel one night. And it’s said she made him a solemn vow, and in return he promised there’d always be Grizwoldes at the Old Abbey. But Sir Casper’s father—him that was Sir Walter—went and broke faith. And Old Worty showed he wasn’t the sort of saint you can thumb your nose at. Not without getting your comeuppance you can’t.”

“Mr. Ambleforth was saying, when we met him on the road just now, that it was a pity Sir Casper and Lady Grizwolde haven’t been blessed with children. And you think that’s because Sir Walter upset St. Ethelwort?” I looked expectantly into Ned’s face. My father sat with remarkable placidity at my side. It occurred to me later that he was content for me to extend my visit to the Old Abbey indefinitely in the hope that Harriet’s relations would have come and gone before we got back home.

“Sir Casper’s first wife didn’t bring no children, neither, though it be said she broke her heart and her health trying.” Ned lifted his eyes heavenward.

“What was it the Elizabethan lady promised St. Ethelwort?” I asked.

Either he didn’t hear me correctly, because there was a clap of thunder close by, or he chose to give a garbled reply. “Sir Casper’s mother. She was German, and like they say, blood will tell.”

“But what does any of this”—I approached from a different angle— “have to do with Lady Grizwolde’s plans to redecorate the house?”

“Old Worty, being already vexed, mustn’t be put out more. He don’t like change.” Stepping back from the car, Ned cupped a hand over his eyes and peered in the direction of the house. “Every time her ladyship moves something to a new spot, like a picture or a vase, it gets put back where it was before. Always in the middle of the night. And it wouldn’t be Sir Casper doing it because Lady Grizwolde’s wish is his command. Neither would it likely be his cousin Miss Finchpeck. Afraid of her own shadow, poor lady. I thinks that’s her standing out on the steps looking this way. So I’d best not keep you no longer.”

“It’s been interesting talking to you,” I said.

“Looks like its starting up to rain.” Ned wiped at his forehead. “You leave the keys in your car when you get up to the house, lady, and I’ll park it in the garage for you. I’ll do the same with Vicar’s bike. Not that a mite more rust will make it a whole lot of difference.” Shifting the offending vehicle to the side of the drive, he stood watching as I got the car moving, with a jostle or two that caused the canvas bag to bounce up and down on my father’s knee.

I drove the tree-lined distance to the forecourt. Two stone lions guarded the base of the steps leading up to the front door, where a thin, gray woman hovered with a watering can in her hands.