The Trouble with Harriet (3 page)

“Giselle!” He was finally up and peering at me over the rim of his Roman nose. “The prodigal returns at last, my darling child. Alas, you see before you the pitiful ruin of a broken man; but we won’t talk about me.” He crossed the Persian carpet with the lightness of step often seen in people of his bulk, but there was nothing buoyant about his expression. “Homecomings are meant to be gladsome affairs, Giselle. So let it be with ours! And, ah, what a comfort it is to see that you haven’t changed at all!”

It would have been tactless to point out that I had lost weight. “What’s wrong?” I asked, returning his hug. “Did your father’s legacy run out? Have you been forced to take a job?”

“Worse, far worse!” He sank down on the sofa, which gave an accompanying groan.

“You’re not ill?” I collided with the drinks trolley in my haste to sit down across from him.

“The flesh is strong, but the spirit is weak,” he proclaimed, waving his hands with a weary flourish before resting his head against a cushion and closing his eyes. “But you must not repine for me, my beloved daughter. All I ask is that I be allowed to return for a brief spell to the bosom of my family. I shall enjoy meeting your children. How many do you have now? Five? Or is it six?”

“Daddy, I haven’t had a litter since I wrote to you last month.”

“The mail has been slow in catching up with me.”

“Well, there are only the twins, who are almost four, and little Rose, who is eight months and really Vanessa’s child. Although Ben and I love her as if she were our own.”

“Vanessa?”

“Fitz-Simons.”

“The name does not clang a bell.”

“Well, it should.” I’m sure I sounded both alarmed and exasperated. “It was Mummy’s maiden name.”

“Was it?” My father exuded apathy.

“Vanessa is Uncle Wyndom’s daughter.”

“Winston?”

“Wyndom. He was Mummy’s older brother. Surely you remember? He made a great deal of money on the stock exchange, possibly a euphemism for something illegal. And when he lost most of it, he and Aunt Astrid and Vanessa had to move in with us for an intolerable month.”

“Was that when I left home, Giselle?”

“No, Daddy.” I stood up and looked at him for a panicked moment before lifting a lap robe off one of the sofas and tucking it around his knees. When his eyes closed, I told him to rest, said I would be right back, and slipped from the room to find Ben in the hall, just putting down the telephone.

“I rang my parents,” he said, “and spoke to Pop. Mother was putting dinner on the table. Probably sausages and mash. She knows that’s a favorite with Abbey and Tam. And I expect it will be jelly and custard for pudding.”

“Red jelly. In the shape of a cat. Your father told me, before they left, that it was waiting in the fridge.” My sigh blew all the way up the staircase.

“You are pining.”

“It does feel odd being without them,” I heard myself say. “But your parents dote on them.”

“Ellie, what’s wrong?” Ben’s eyes always showed more green than blue when he got that intense look on his face.

I pulled a chrysanthemum out of the bronze vase on the trestle table and snapped its stalk in two. “My only living parent shows up after being gone almost half my life and behaves in a most peculiar way—something you might have noticed if you’d been in the room with us.”

“But, sweetheart”—Ben spoke in the sort of reasonable voice that would have driven any emotionally needy wife to further dismember a hapless flower— “I kept out of the way to give you and your father the opportunity for a heart-to-heart chat. And it’s only been a few minutes.”

“Well, it seems like hours.” I perched disconsolately on the edge of the trestle table. “There’s something seriously wrong with poor Daddy. He’s in abysmally low spirits, describes himself as a wreck of a man, and can’t seem to remember anything.”

“Perhaps you were right, Ellie, about him being an impostor.”

“No. If he were a sham, he would have boned up on the family history until he could recite names and dates back to the Norman Conquest. Not only couldn’t he remember Uncle Wyndom, whom he used to call the abominable windbag”—my voice broke as I depleted the chrysanthemum of its last leaf— “he even seemed a bit fuzzy where Mummy was concerned.”

“Probably jet lag.” Ben drew me off my perch. “I couldn’t remember if I had one foot or two when we got back from America that time.”

“Is that where he came from?”

“He didn’t say. Come on,” he said, tucking my hand in his. “We’ll go back in together and find out what, if anything, is wrong and how long he plans to stay.”

“Your mother moved in once,” I reminded him.

“And it was only difficult while she was here.” Ben opened the drawing-room door, and we both peered inside like a couple of children uncomfortably aware that we were breaking a household rule. It was a long, rather narrow room, made graciously inviting by the Queen Anne furniture that I had rescued from the attic upon our coming to live at Merlin’s Court. A portrait of Abigail Grantham, who had been mistress here during the early 1900s, hung above the mantelpiece. Lamplight shed an amber glow. It mingled with the violet shadows cast by the mullioned windows on the ivory-silk wallpaper. That this was now a house for children was obvious. Their storybooks were scattered the full length of the window seat at the far end of the room. One of Tam’s lorries peeked out from under the skirt of the chaise longue. Abbey’s dollhouse stood on a table, and the walnut cradle we used when Rose was tiny remained in a corner. But my father wasn’t basking in the room’s pleasant ambience. His eyes were open but completely blank.

“Did you manage to catch forty winks, Daddy,” I asked as I bent to rearrange the lap robe around what parts of him it would fit.

“Alas, beloved fruit of my loins, sleep has failed me these many long days.”

“We’ll have to change that. Hot milk before bed and maybe some soft music playing in your room.” I stroked his shoulder and felt him wince.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing that will see me in my grave.” He sounded as though he were sorry about that. “A pulled muscle is all.”

“How did it happen?”

“I was about to go down the escalator at the underground station and had set my case down for a moment to get the kink out of my arm when a couple of chaps came up right behind me and one of them shoved me.”

“How awful.”

“Accidents will occur in this hurry-scurry world.” Daddy sounded nobly resigned. “And his companion, the shorter, stockier one of the two, did try to help by grabbing my suitcase. It was as I swung back around to grab at the rail that I wrenched my shoulder. But he got the worst of it.”

“Who?”

“The chap who pushed me. I missed the rail and got hold of his hand. He must have been off balance, because he went plunging forward, face smacking all the way down the escalator.”

“Was he hurt?”

“No, he was hopping about on one foot when I got to the bottom.”

“Would you like a couple of aspirin for your shoulder?” I asked.

“My Florence Nightingale! There is no pill on earth that can ease what ails me.”

“Why don’t we all have a brandy?” Ben propelled me over to the drinks trolley and, under an unnecessary clattering of decanter and glasses, whispered: “He does tend to emote. Not that I’m criticizing. It’s an admirable trait in a father-in-law.”

“And nothing new,” I mouthed back. “He always did. He was in a lift once with Laurence Olivier, and it sort of brushed off.”

Putting a brandy glass into my father’s flagging hand and quickly noticing the alarming tilt, Ben propped a cushion under his elbow. “There you are! And cheers!” he said, giving a tentative tap with his own glass. “To your welcome visit and our getting to know each other, Dad. Or would you rather I called you Morley?”

“Morley, thank you, Den.”

“Ben.”

“Are you sure? I always thought you were a Dennis.”

“I’ve got the most awful handwriting,” I hastened to say, and Ben was as quick to agree.

“Dreadful!”

“A sound biblical name.” My father took a lugubrious swig of his brandy.

“What is?” Ben was beginning to sound as worried as I felt.

“Benjamin.”

“Actually his full name is Bentley,” I said. “He was named after a rich relative’s car. His mother is quite open in saying she hoped the gesture might result in a little something showing up in the will. But that didn’t happen. And it didn’t matter because we were extraordinarily blessed in inheriting this house from Uncle Merlin.”

“Who?”

“Another relative on Mummy’s side.”

“Ah!”

“Daddy”—I rescued his brandy glass before it toppled in his lap— “you do remember Mummy, don’t you?”

He roused himself to blink at me. “Of course. A wonderful woman, the salt of the earth, with the most extraordinary flaxen hair.”

“It was auburn.”

“So it was. Ah, memories, what anguished delight they render! But it does no good to lament. Time marches blindly on, and I must make use of the present moment.” He wearily roused himself to a more upright position. “The time has come for me to introduce you to Harriet.”

“Who?” Now I was the one saying it as Ben poured himself a second brandy.

“She who is the exquisite torment of my every waking moment.”

“Daddy, for goodness’ sake, stop talking as if you have a part in the upcoming vicarage play.” I was only prevented from shaking him by the fact that my hands were already fully occupied with their own tremors. “Who is Harriet? And where is she?” I hurried to peer out the window, uselessly, as it happened, because it was now quite dark. “Did you leave her sitting in the car?”

“She is my suitcase out in the hall, Giselle.” My father’s face illuminated like a sun glimpsed after a long, hard winter as he rose an inch at a time to his feet. “And perhaps dear Vauxhall would be so kind as to pour me another drink while I go and fetch her.”

“A funny bloke, your father,” said Ben.

“Daddy an ax murderer! Whatever will the neighbors say?” I whimpered in Ben’s general direction. My knees buckled, and I had to grab hold of the knob to prevent myself from sliding down the door, which my father had closed on exiting the room as if eager to hail the first passing tumbrel. “I’ve seen those movies, you know, where a mild-mannered fiend of a man chops up the body of some unfortunate woman in the cellar of a seedy boarding-house and packs her up in a trunk.”

“Which he then sensibly abandons at a London railway station.”

“No wonder it was such a large suitcase.”

“Your father lives on the move, Ellie. Here, sweetheart.” Ben’s voice came at me from all sides. “Have another brandy to steady your nerves.”

“I never had a first.”

“Making this one all the more vital.”

“What we have to remember is that Daddy is new to this sort of thing.” I sipped at the glass he was holding to my lips, my mood almost as prayerful as if I had been taking communion at St. Anselm’s on a lovely, untroubled Sunday morning. “At least,” I said, crossing the room to fling myself down on a chair and kick out at a hassock with my feet, “we have to hope that poor Harriet is the first.”

“Ellie, you’re letting your imagination run riot.”

“You’d rather I sat here knitting?”

“Not really.” Ben’s shudder could be felt from across the room. “That sweater you made me was wonderful. I could take my own blood pressure by putting on one of the sleeves. But I’d rather you stuck to doing things you really enjoy.”

“Such as daydreaming about how I will redecorate Sir Casper and Lady Grizwolde’s ancestral home? Forget it. That plum job is over before it began. When word gets out about Harriet, I’ll never again be allowed to set foot on the hallowed grounds where an Ethelwortian monastery once stood.”

“Ellie, surely you don’t believe any of this nonsense you’re talking.”

“Well,” I hedged, “perhaps it is going a bit far to think Daddy chopped her up and put her in that suitcase. He could never take the top off his egg without help.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Harriet is probably still in one piece under presents for the children.”

“Sweetheart!”

“Chloroformed before he put the lid down and turned the key in the lock. Oh, don’t look at me like that,” I protested without looking around at him. “I know there can’t possibly be a body in there. But who or what is Harriet?”

“Perhaps she’s a photograph.”

“Of a woman other than my mother?”

“Or of your father’s pet budgerigar.”

“Daddy was never a great animal lover, but then again, look how he’s changed in other ways!” My heart leaped along with the rest of me, and I found myself standing up and heading for the door. “Of course! Harriet must be a pet. Wrenched away from her beloved master by the quarantine laws. Perhaps she’s a cat or a sweet little dog. The important thing is that darling Daddy is out in that lonely hall, probably breaking his heart right now. We should have followed him.”

“He asked us not to, but—never mind. Here he is now.” Ben gave my shoulder a squeeze as once more my father’s corpulence reduced the room in length and breadth. He bore himself heroically erect, but his fleshy cheeks drooped, and he clutched a canvas carrier bag to his chest with trembling hands.

“Thank you, my dears”—his full lips flattened into a melancholy smile— “for allowing me to perform the reverent task of opening my suitcase in benevolent solitude. Although it need hardly be said, I am never completely alone. She who is no longer at my side in earthly form does nonetheless hover ever near. A sanguine presence, more real than the stars or moon now lighting up the sky, more soothing to my troubled breast than—”

“Yes, Daddy.” I guided him over to the sofa and then watched Ben help him sit down. Both he and the springs murmured an acknowledgment. “You must tell us what’s happened and let us help you.”

“Bless you, Giselle.” He freed a hand from the carrier bag and wiped a dollop of tear from the corner of one eye. “You were ever a rare daughter. I spoke of you often, certainly more than once, to my Harriet.”

“Do you have a photo for us to see, Morley?” Ben spoke with painstaking eagerness, very much as if he had been appealing to Abbey or Tam for a glimpse of their latest artwork from nursery school. But my father did not delve instantly into the bag. Indeed, his eyes filled with more tears, which proceeded to roll unchecked down his voluminous cheeks.