The Widow's Club (17 page)

“And listen to his enthusiastic silence? Freddy and I have talked about including some of the recipes from the book on the restaurant menu—”

I opened my mouth but he was gone. Had I brought this exclusion on myself? I lay down on the bed and pressed my hands against my stomach. I was sure I had gained five pounds in the night. Ben had been muttering in his sleep about floating island pudding with a
crème de Lyons
sauce, but were I a model wife, I would be up cooking him a celebration breakfast. Would he notice if I diluted the marmalade? I was half out of bed when I felt the crackle of the newspapers. I might find some intriguing low-cal recipes in the Food Section … stuffed ox heart? Not on an empty stomach, thank you.

I flipped to the Employment Wanted section. Ben had been urging me to find someone to help out with the housework. A personal secretary was on the lookout, as was an accountant and someone wishing to teach trapeze, but I didn’t think any of them would be interested in domestic work. I would have to advertise. I turned the page; thinking about the day Dorcas had responded to our plea for hired help would start me crying. Better to read the Personals: “Lost—adorable Pekingese. Answers to Valentino. Reward.” And this—“Man seeks attractive mature woman for dating and beyond. Must be nonsmoker, teetotaler, and bingo enthusiast.”

How fortunate I was to have escaped the clutches of loneliness. The door inched open. Tobias entered, yawning with every outstretched paw. I patted the counterpane and he tumbled alongside me. “Want me to read Dear Felicity Friend?” Only cats and the happily married can fully enjoy advice to the lovelorn.

“ ‘Dear Felicity: I am desperately in love with a man who is married to another, a woman unworthy to untie his shoes. At night I lie awake, fantasizing about invading his place of work and ripping off my clothes. I have a superb figure and know him to be a connoisseur. I am prepared to do anything to get him. Signed,
Hot and Bothered
.’ ”

Tobias yawned mightily.

“Dear Felicity replies: ‘Dear Hot: Invite him to your home and rip off your clothes. That way you can butter the police up with crumpets and tea when they come to take you away.’ ”

I flopped back against the pillows and scanned a paragraph of moans from a woman with a mother-in-law who smothered her with attention. Some people and their problems! Now for the Confidential. “To Teary Eyes. Your problem will soon die a natural death.”

What sort of problem? Pain? Fear? Perhaps guilt—the guilt of a woman who has everything she could possibly want.

Dear Felicity, I imagined myself writing. I am married to the most marvellous, gorgeous, exciting man but there is something lacking in me. My first clue was that I don’t hear violins when we make love. And now I find myself missing, desperately, two friends who have gone away. Isn’t a husband meant to fill every need, every empty space of the heart?

From the Files of
The Widows Club

15th December

President:

Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Hanover, we thank you for accepting the place on the Fairwell Committee recently vacated by Beatrix Woolpack. Do join myself and the board in a celebration glass of sherry.

Mary Elizabeth Hanover:

Oh; how kind, Madam President. Words do rather fail one. When one has so long wished to give back to the organisation some particle of the kindness and support one has received! Oh, my! Harvey’s Bristol. Most salubrious. As one says to the customers at The Dark Horse, nothing like the best.”

(Applause from the board.)

President:

I must advise you, Mary, that we may not have an assignment for you until sometime after Christmas; Daisy Smith has seniority. But we trust you will, in the interim, prepare yourself emotionally and physically for the Grand Summons. You understand there must be no repeat performance of the train travesty.

M.E.H.:

Appalling. I hear Mrs. Woolpack is close to a breakdown, which I suppose says something for her. Dear! Dear! At our meeting last Wednesday, I had to cover my eyes when she stepped onto the dais, handed in her board resignation, was stripped of all honours and asked to step down as Chairperson of Dried Flower Arranging. One learns from witnessing something like that, although in my humble opinion she was fortunate to escape a harsher penalty.

President:

Now, now, Mary! You know as well as I, that we in The Widows Club are safe from being an S.T.B.R. ourselves unless we commit the Unforgivable Offence. Cheers, everyone!

… “Our dear mother used to say,” remarked Primrose as Butler set down a pot of fresh tea and crept from the room, “that the best way to stay happily married is to keep busy.…”

We were happy, but that was the problem. I couldn’t quite adjust. Take the morning in point. Instead of bustling down to the kitchen in my housewifely dressing gown, I was still in bed pondering whether Dear Felicity shunned the limelight because she was afraid of being cornered at Sainsbury’s cheese counter with questions on frigidity or because the elusive element improved readership. Edwin Digby, being a man of mystery in more ways than one, certainly added local colour. I would have to ask Rowland if he had ever asked either celebrity to open the church fete. That is, if I saw him before I had forgotten the question; Rowland didn’t stop by as often as he once did. I missed seeing him, and I hate to admit it, but I missed thinking about him. Marriage did have its curtailments.

A knock on the bedroom door and in came Ben with eggs Benedict and champagne. He really was wonderful. I was so ashamed.

To enhance the possibility that champagne did burn up calories, I did an exercise Jill had taught me: lifting and lowering my chin three times between bites. Ben eyed me askance a couple of times, but he was occupied balancing the tray on the bed and talking about
The Edwardian Lady’s
Cookery Book
. I stopped doing chins and felt a spurt of renewed interest in championing my husband’s career.

“Ben, perhaps this editor of yours, Mr. Brady, might wish to attend Abigail’s premiere and plug the book.” So much to be accomplished in a short time—and with Christmas in between. Some of the vigour fizzled. I was back to no Dorcas and Jonas.

“Remember last year?” sneered the Ghost of Christmas Past. All too clearly. Oh, the anguish of searching my client listing for the name of a single man who, for the price of a new window treatment, might accompany me to the office party.

I would invite Miss Thorn and Rowland for Boxing Day dinner. Moving the tray aside, I slid my arm around Ben, who was sitting on the edge of the bed talking about glacé pheasant Viennese style.

“Sounds delicious,” I said.

“So you said at breakfast.” He turned sideways, met my lips in a kiss, stood up and placed my plate of eggs Benedict on the floor. “Here Tobias! Thousands of starving cats in China.”

Those words hurt. They also made me mildly angry. My husband’s ego was upstaging my physical well-being. “Ben …” I stopped. The mirror showed that yesterday’s calories had settled on my hips. As I twisted this way and that, striving for a better angle, Ben caught me by the shoulders. His eyes shot blue-green sparks off the mirror.

“Ellie, no woman looks her best with her jaw out of kilter and a look of unspeakable horror in her eyes. You know what your problem is?”

“I fail the can’t-pinch-an-inch test.”

His voice softened. “You haven’t gone browsing in the shops for a while. You’re suffering withdrawal. Go into the village, squander money, have your hair done.”

I began brushing my hair. “While I’m about it, I’ll get a nose job and a tummy tuck.” My spirits lifted. “I’ll phone Sidney for an appointment; you and I can drive into the village together.”

Ben moved my hair aside and kissed my neck. “Darling, I wish I could wait for you, but Freddy and I are due to meet Mrs. Hanover, owner of The Dark Horse, in twenty minutes. We have to discuss sharing some deliveries of wine. But you’re free to take the car. We are going on the
motorbike.” A kiss on the other side of my neck. “How about joining us for lunch?”

“I don’t think so, thank you.”

“Is something wrong, Ellie?”

“Of course not.” I plunged the brush into my hair. “A passionate embrace ere you make your getaway might have brightened my day, but …”

“I’m sorry, Ellie. Unlike the heroes in those da—romance novels you are forever glued to, I can’t stand with my arm draped over the mantelpiece all day, looking delectable.”

He did have this habit of reducing everything to culinary terms! He took a step toward me, then retreated to the door. “Drive carefully, dear.”

Not “sweetheart,” not “my beloved”! The brush flew through my hair. “Don’t worry, Ben, I will rescue any car parts that fall off en route.”

“We aren’t quarrelling, are we?” He spun the door handle.

“Absolutely not,” I said with a pang of nostalgia for the old days when quarrelling with a vengeance meant a sizzling relationship, not a marriage with problems.

And that’s what comes of reading Felicity Friend.

This was my first visit to Sidney’s salon. My initial impression was that I had made a mistake. This wasn’t the sort of place that automatically made a girl feel pretty. The air was laden with hair spray and permy smells. The linoleum was maroon, speckled with grey; the lighting was harsh, and the washbasins lining one wall looked like urinals for extra tall men. The girl behind the desk had surely been employed as a warning against do-it-yourself glamour. Her hair was straw-coloured … straw.

“Hallo?” She beamed a gapped-tooth smile.

“Ellie Haskell. I have an appointment at—”

She looked me over. “Wouldn’t bother if I was you—look lovely the way you are, but if you’re sure …” She threw up her hands. “Sidney will be with you in a few minutes. Hang your coat on a peg and take one of them pink overalls. Quite like Vidal Sassoon, aren’t we? Coffee’s on the table.”

It came out of the pot like treacle, but the assortment of teacups and saucers didn’t come from Woolworth. Each
piece was different; some were old, all were pretty. I studied the urinal wall. Two girls in trailing skirts and lumpy sweaters were shampooing. Sidney, stationed between them, looked in this environment more than ever like a caveman. Gloom radiated from him. The woman whose hair he was swirling into puffs and coils was talking away at a furious rate. Rings flashed as she gesticulated. Her face shook like a blancmange which wouldn’t set.

I leaned sideways. It was Mrs. Amelia Bottomly. Better not to be seen by her. She would want to know if I had located any dungeons yet at Merlin’s Court.

“Psst! Mrs. Haskell!” A hairdryer lid flipped up and a blond head emerged. “Thinking about that brand-new gorgeous husband, eh? Remember me? Bunty Wiseman?”

“Yes—hello.” She was the young woman in the thigh-length, ostrich-feather coat at the reception, the one whose photograph had been on Lionel Wiseman’s desk.

“Bunty’s a nickname, but don’t ask me what my real one is, it’s too awful. Most times I let my hair dry natural, but I promised Li I wouldn’t walk down Market Street with a wet head.”

“Not the weather for it,” I said.

She wiggled her shoulders and flapped a hand at me. “Doesn’t fit the image of a respected solicitor’s wife. Balls, is what I’d say to that, only I’ve my eye on this nifty diamond dangle at Pullets Jewelers, so have to keep the old darling’s fur laying right.”

Mr. Wiseman’s wife? I had thought she was his daughter.

“Mrs. Haskell,” the receptionist’s voice cut in, “Sidney is ready for yooo.”

“Hold on.” Bunty had both hands on the dryer lid. “Teddy Peerless—she’s Li’s secretary—and I are lunching at The Dark Horse. Care to join us?”

“I …” Amelia Bottomly was coming our way, like a buoy bobbing on the ocean.

“See you. Twelve-forty-five.” Bunty clasped the hairdryer on like a crash helmet.

Mrs. Bottomly’s voice boomed, “Ellie Haskell!” The chins shook with apparent pleasure. “Tell me, dear, what do you think of Sidney’s handiwork? Makes me look years younger, don’t you agree? The man’s an artist. Well, they
so often are. The sweet things give us women the coiffures they would like themselves.” She lifted a mirror off a wall shelf, twitched a side curl, pursed her lips, and patted the chins into shape with the back of her hand. “You get my meaning, don’t you, dear? You
are
a married woman.”

“One who’s keeping her hairdresser waiting,” I said.

“And that certainly won’t do. Believe you me, a visit to Sidney is a health cure! I tell him everything from the pills I take for constipation to what I enjoy most in opera. Take my advice, dear, put yourself
totally
in his hands. If Sidney says cut”—she patted down a loop atop the mound—“then so be it. And, dear”—she jerked me back by the shoulder—“I will be phoning you about the Historical Society doing a home tour, and the Hearthside Guild is interested in having your husband put on a cookery demonstration. Nothing too Frenchified—a stew perhaps. I did try to catch Mr. Haskell a half-hour or so ago as he was going into The Dark Horse but he was lost in conversation with that cousin of yours who created such an uproar … ious diversion at your wedding. And now he’s moved in with you, I hear.”