The Widow's Club (22 page)

This is all Ben’s fault, was my unwifely thought.

“Do you think …?” suggested Ann.

“No.”

We sat and listened to the trees drip.

Ann buffed the face of her watch, then pulled up the collar of her beaver coat. “We’ll be all right, Ellie.”

Easy for her to talk. Beavers dress for this weather.

Being females of passably quick brains, it occurred to us that there might be light at the end of this tunnel—er—avenue. We climbed out of the car and trudged forward until we emerged from groping shadow to a bleariness wherein drenched sky and earth merged. We stood at the edge of a semicircular sweep of lawn, ornamented by mossy statues and bordered by box hedges, glossy and olive-black with rain. Beyond the lawn rose a huge, granite slab of a house. Its windows were so heavily mullioned they looked barred; its double doors led out onto a pillared terrace.

Ann’s arm brushed mine. “Ellie, this has to be The Peerless Nursing Home.”

“A bit grim, isn’t it? I see why Lady Theodora didn’t repine—”

At that moment the huge doors cracked open to reveal a woman dressed as a nurse. Two dogs, one white, one black (quite small but with such oversized heads they had to be transplants), bombarded out from behind her, barking furiously.

Ann’s elbow jabbed me. She stumbled over my foot. “I don’t like dogs.”

I didn’t like the nurse. She had stepped swiftly back inside and closed the door. Gripping Ann’s arm, I warned her to keep her voice down. The animals ceased plunging up and down the terrace. They froze. Necks arched, muzzles pointing to the silvery haze above, they sniffed the air. The gloom of the place, as well as the chill damp, seeped
into my pores. Particularly menacing was the fact that the dogs’ eyes never once swivelled our way.

Until, that is, Ann blundered up against a tree. Hands moving in slow motion to her throat, she let out a moan and, before I could grab her, flung around and was gone, stumbling across the lawn.

The dogs came down the terrace steps like bullets.

“Ann, don’t! You’re encouraging them to play. If you will only …” I caught up with my elegant friend as she scrambled to climb the hedge. Her wits had completely gone. A forty-foot tree would have made better sense.

She threw off my hand. “Ellie, leave me alone!”

The air bristled with fur and canine breath.

“Heel, Virtue! Heel, Sin!”

The words were spoken calmly and conversationally, by a male standing several yards away. His face swam before my eyes. The danger was past. Tails whirring, sniffling with puppyish pleasure, the dogs now gamboled about the black-trousered legs.

“Home!”

Ann had grabbed me around the waist and was holding me in front of her like a shield. I didn’t blame her. My legs had gone peculiar. I wanted Ben. I wanted to sit by the fire, sipping Ovaltine, writing to Dorcas and Jonas.

All of a sudden Ben was no longer the husband who hadn’t quite measured up to his potential; he was the lover who had awakened me.

Slowly, Ann detached herself from me. The dark glasses cast semicircles of shadow and her face gleamed as though with rain, but she was steady on her feet.

“How can I be of help to you, ladies?”

There could be no mistaking those melancholy eyes, the black hair swept back from the high forehead. At close quarters Dr. Bordeaux looked more than ever like a poet suffering for his art. I could visualize those bone-white fingers clenching the quill—

I extended my hand, and he brushed it with his fingertips before letting it fall as though amputated. I blundered into explanations about the car. There was a clammy sort of fascination about this man. How many of the stories whispered about him were true? Perhaps a doctor’s license to practice was revoked only if the murder victims complained personally.

Dr. Bordeaux held Ann’s hand longer than he did mine. Was he taking her pulse?

“Do you have any idea what is wrong with your auto, Mrs. Haskell?”

“It won’t start.”

His eyes were black, not brown. I had never seen black eyes before. Yes, I could picture him tucking a little old lady into bed and murmuring, “Sleep, Mrs. Jones, a sleep unbroken by dreams or waking.” The spooky atmosphere of The Peerless Nursing Home grounds was clearly not conducive to my mental health.

“I will take a look at the car and see if I cannot have you both speedily upon your way. I wish I could invite you to wait in our reception rooms, but we are in the process”—he smoothed back his hair—“of varnishing the floors.”

With the dogs running in and out? I wondered. Ann said hastily that she would prefer to stay outside on their account.

Dr. Bordeaux glanced toward the massive house. “We are rather isolated here. And Virtue and Sin do make us all feel more secure. They are devoted to the patients; so much so that sometimes they don’t want them to go home.”

The wind knifed through my damp coat. I did hope that Mrs. Woolpack’s stay here would not be prolonged by severity of her illness or the dogs.

Dr. Bordeaux began walking toward the avenue. “Shall we set to work on your car, Mrs. Haskell?”

“This is very good of you.” I linked arms with Ann, to help her feel warmer, safer.

“Not at all.” He flexed his white fingers. “I quite enjoy fixing things. It relieves tension.”

What sort of tension? Professional or personal? In the gathering dusk, the statues on the lawn seemed to move. I imagined they became people on a train—a man with an invalid in his arms, an old white-haired woman hovering. A small girl with sandy plaits proffering pillows. Jenny.

“Hello,” said her voice.

She was moving between the statues. The wind tousled her plaits. Her eyes, those too grown-up eyes, looked
into mine, as they had done when I handed her my wedding bouquet.

“What are you doing here?” Her arms were wrapped around her thin chest; her blue-and-white check dress whipped around her legs. She never looked at Ann.

I explained about the car, all the while sensing Dr. Bordeaux’s contained impatience and … something else. He was displeased by this encounter.

“And what about you, Jenny?”

“I live here.”

“Oh!” My surprise was reflected in Ann’s face.

Jenny laughed. It was, I realised, the first time I had heard her laugh. “Not in the hospital.” She hugged her arms tighter. “I live at the Dower House. With Mumma and Nonna. Mumma was a friend of Uncle Simon’s”—her eyes flickered to Dr. Bordeaux—“before she got sick. And a few months ago when we had no other place to go, he brought us here. Would you like to come and meet Mumma and Nonna?”

“I would love to.”

“Ellie.” Ann tightened her hand on my arm. “I would appreciate the opportunity to sit and rest for a few minutes.”

“Jenny,” said the doctor sternly, “your mother will be resting.” The smile he tacked onto this statement only made it colder.

“Then, I’ll wake her.” Jenny lifted her pointed chin and flicked one of the plaits over her shoulder. “She needs company. And so do I. Apart from school, the only time I ever see people is when I go to the youth group or out on my bike.”

“Which school?” I asked.

“The Miriam Academy. It’s on the other side of Snaresby.”

“I know,” I said. “A friend of mine named Dorcas used to work there.” If Dr. Bordeaux let Jenny go to school and the St. Anselm’s youth group, her plight could not, I supposed, be too dire.

“Where’s your friend now?”

“In America.”

“Oh; I’d much rather stay at home and have Nonna teach me. She used to be Mumma’s governess. Then
later …” Jenny dropped her arms. “Are you coming? The Dower House is quite beautiful. The Peerless family used to send the old grannies and such to live there.” She was pointing to a gap in the trees beyond the hedge to the left.

Dr. Bordeaux had turned as inclement-looking as the weather. What sort of lives did Jenny and her family endure, under the domination of this man?

… “Ellie, I sense something momentous happened at The Dower House?” Primrose quivered and gripped her shawl.

“No.” I fiddled with my spoon. “The sitting room to which Jenny took Ann and me was brim full of charming simplicity—the floors were natural pine, the chairs were cane-seated and ladder-backed, the curtains at the window nooks were yellowed lace. There were several rather nice prints, a seascape and portraits of Sarah Siddons and David Garrick.”

“Any mirrors?” The pages of Hyacinth’s green notebook fluttered shut.

“No.”

“Are you saying, Ellie,” Primrose touched my hand, “that there was something rather
unsimple
about the mood of that room? The feel?…”

When I replay that visit in my mind, I don’t see movement. We’re all frozen in place. Jenny pouring tea, the old woman—so like an old-world nanny she only needed a frilled cap on her white hair, stooping to adjust the rug covering the invalid who lay on the sofa before the blazing fireplace. The nanny’s gnarled hands are fixed in the act of holding back a corner of the quilt so Ann and I can glimpse the pallid face on the pillow, a face that must have been very beautiful once. It is impossible to tell her age. She might be in her forties or sixties. There are lines on her face
but they may have been put there by pain. The auburn of her hair could be artificial, but the most striking thing about her is her eyes. They are empty. I can’t tell their colour. A record is going around and around on one of those marvellous old gramophones with the horns. A pain-drenched voice sings, “You are my rainy days, my rainy days, my rainy days …” over and over until Jenny lifts the mechanical arm and turns the machine off.

Jenny said her mother had been ill about ten years. The nanny’s face seemed to disintegrate. “My darling wasn’t struck down by the Lord.” Her voice filled the room. “It was him—him. But he didn’t kill her. She’s in there safe and sound. It’s all right, Vania, my dove. Nonna’s got you.” She was crooning into the unseeing eyes.

Jenny sat without moving. So did Ann. Upon entering the room, she had felt rather faint again. Dr. Bordeaux, when he came to tell us the car was functioning, said she must have suffered a delayed reaction to her fright over the dogs. He was patently anxious for us to leave, a feeling I heartily reciprocated.

When I looked back at the house from the end of the driveway, Jenny stood motionless at the window, watching us. I had the feeling that she would have liked to call me back. Poor kid.

And poor me. I know science has decreed in its infinite wisdom that we don’t catch colds from getting chilled, but it seems a bit coincidental that I woke one morning a fortnight later feeling as though there was standing room only on my chest.

The Friday (24th April) I was stricken, Ben was due to go to Lodon to meet his editor, A.E. Brady. Instead, he received a letter respectfully requesting that their appointment be changed to the following Monday. In my weakened condition, it seemed to me my spouse reacted with an undue petulance to this deferment. But I refrained from saying so because a) Ben’s reaction to my visit to the Peerless Nursing Home and my description of Dr. Bordeaux and his doggies had provided our marriage with enough zip for a while (he thought my “riotous imagination” was “endearing”); b) I had chosen to work that week on my unbecoming tendency to be critical (suppressing the conviction
that damp hose had contributed to my illness); c) it hurt to talk.

I must not give the impression that Ben was unsympathetic to me or my snuffly nose. Before leaving for Abigail’s that morning he hovered by my bed offering—eagerly—to rub my chest with Vicks.

“How do you feel, sweetheart?”

“My nobse hab grown and my legs are melting like candles.”

“Poor precious. You do look pretty foul.”

“Kimb ob you to say so.”

His voice was muffled too. “Ellie, you do understand why I am wearing this surgical mask? My God, can you imagine anything worse than my being struck down nigh on the eve of Abigail’s premiere? Sure, Freddy could handle the simple stuff. His latest lamb chops Strasbourg are a credit to me, but he could never cope on his own. He’d only do a marginally better job than you, El.” He kissed the back of my head. One of my least favourite places for being kissed but—cough, cough—in my unappealing state I settled for crumbs.

“And, darling”—he smoothed out the silvery grey sheet—“you will promise to eat the meals I have left prepared for you?” The mask made his voice sound like it was being pressed through a sieve.

I slid down in the bed and folded my hands piously over my breast. “Ob course, darling.” No need to tell him that I had already figured that my illness should be good for a three-pound loss.

“Good, because I’ve noticed your clothes are beginning to hang on you.”

A lifelong ambition fulfilled!

“They’b stretched in the wash.”

He touched my hair. “Want a hot water bottle or would you rather I tucked Tobias in at your feet?”

“I don’t want him in here in cabse he catches it.”

“A mouse?”

“Silly—my colb.” Since Mr. Daffy and the train, I hadn’t enjoyed mouse jokes.

Ben glanced at his watch and moved my water jug a little closer. “Good thing this is one of Mrs. Malloy’s days. She can minister to your needs.”