Bridesmaids Revisited (3 page)

“So they did.” Mrs. Malloy dug in her stiletto heels and belatedly fastened her seat belt. “Only if you’d been listening properly you’d have realized I was talking about the Normans of Bethnal Green. Alfie and Myrtle was the mum and dad. I lost count of the children. A lovely hardworking family of poachers from the sound of them.”

“Poachers? In Bethnal Green?”

“Well, you don’t think they wanted to put ‘pickpocket’ on them job application forms! And I don’t see how it was their fault there aren’t all that many rabbits hopping around bus stops or down around the train stations in London these days.”

“No, I don’t suppose so,” I found myself saying as we passed my cousin Freddy’s cottage at the end of the drive and went out through the iron gates onto the cliff road that wound down to our left towards the village of Chitterton Fells. That was the trouble with Mrs. Malloy. Few knew better than she how to divert a conversation until returning to the point of contention became more effort than it was worth. But in this instance I did manage to fumble my way back to Leonard.

“What about him?” she asked as I eased to my side to let a bus pass without either vehicle going over the cliff. Something which would have annoyed the people at the town hall who were tired of putting up new railings every six months.

“I’m wondering why Leonard’s opinion on any subject under the sun should matter a grain of rice to you,” I said.

“Now what are you going on about, Mrs. H.?” If Mrs. Malloy sounded snooty it may, in all fairness, have been due to the fact that she was sucking on a peppermint humbug.

“You just said something about his take on the upper classes.”

“Did I?”

Even while keeping my eyes directly ahead in order to watch the approaching traffic light, I could tell she had gone all misty-eyed. So I bit my lip and waited for her to rally.

“Well, that goes to show, don’t it? That man’s right back inside my head, and if I wasn’t to get away from home for a few days there’s no saying what I’d do if he was to show up at me door doing the old sob-and-dance routine.”

She swallowed, from the sound of it the whole peppermint, and placed a tremulous hand on my knee. “I know it’s hard for you to understand, Mrs. H., after what I told you about Leonard and his womanizing; but I only have to get thinking about him saying: ‘Come on, Roxie old girl, lend me fifty quid for old times’ sake’ to go all weak at the knees. That sort of sweet talk did it for me every time when we was together. What it all comes down to, Mrs. H., is that it’d be nothing short of wicked for you to drop me off back home to wait like a mouse with one leg in a sling for the cat to show up.”

“We’ve already passed the turnoff for your house,” I pointed out, stopping for another traffic light.

“So we have.” Mrs. Malloy offered me a peppermint, which I stoically refused even though I was dying of hunger, having skipped breakfast in my haste to be off before she showed up. “Speaking of cats ...”

“Were we?” I passed a lorry that didn’t seem to know whether it was coming or going.

“Being the thoughtful sort I am, Mrs. H., I just wanted to say I hope you was able to make arrangements for Tobias. Poor little love,” she added with all the insincerity at her disposal, having disliked my beloved cat from the word go. “It would just break me heart to think of him meowing his way around that house starving to death.”

“Freddy’s taken him down to the cottage.”

“And there’s a dear young man if ever there was one.” Mrs. Malloy did not go so far as to dab at her eyes, but I got the picture. “A son any mother would give the earth for. All that lovely long hair and the earring. Of course”—adjusting the map on her knees—“from what I’ve seen he doesn’t have any tattoos, but give him time; they all mature at different rates and the lad’s not yet thirty when all is said and done. Truth is, I’m rather surprised, given his lovely nature and all, that Freddy didn’t insist on going with you on this nice little visit to the wacky old ladies.”

“There is absolutely no reason to think that Rosemary, Thora, and Jane aren’t perfectly sane, sensible women.” I kept a grip on my temper and a lookout for the entry onto the motorway that should be coming up shortly if I hadn’t gone the wrong way around the roundabout two miles back.

“Well, if you say so, Mrs. H.,” the woman who should have been looking at the map said in her most conciliatory voice. “How did they sound when you phoned them? You did ring them up, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course I did. Last evening.” We were now on the A40 or it could have been the Ml6 for all I knew; anyway, there was a lot of traffic all moving purposefully along as if intent on arriving eventually at someplace or other, so it seemed best to keep going. Especially as I’m not particularly good at doing U-turns at a hundred kilometers an hour. “I spoke to Rosemary, told her that I could come today if that suited, and that was pretty much it. When I tried to talk to her about Grandma, she said it would be best to leave all that until I arrived and had had several cups of tea.”

“And you thought that was all perfectly normal!” Mrs. Malloy scoffed.

“She was very likely thinking about my phone bill; older people are conscious of running up the charges.” I knew I didn’t sound very convincing. But that was only, I told myself, because, like Mrs. Malloy, I was addicted to romance novels with a gothic twist. Having read about innumerable heroines being lured back to decaying houses under one preposterous pretext or another, it was pitifully easy for me to foresee a dark turret with bars on the windows and an iron key that went clang in the night as part of my immediate future.

What I couldn’t hope for was to have my head turned by a dark, stormy-eyed hero ensconced in the drawing room, nursing a glass of Madeira along with his chagrin at having a mad wife in the attic. The only man for whom I would have risked life and limb was presently in Norfolk with our children. When he had telephoned at ten-thirty the previous evening I hadn’t had the heart to put anything but a cheerful spin on the bridesmaids’ invitation. Poor darling! He had sounded exhausted from a surfeit of fun listening to one woman playing the harp and another singing “There Is a Lady Sweet and Kind” for two hours straight, in the assembly hall. This treat had been followed by cocoa and biscuits, at which time, Reverend Ambleforth, our abstemious vicar, had been heard to whisper that he could have done with a stiff teaspoon of brandy.

Besides, had I sounded the least bit uneasy, Ben would have told me I was under no obligation to visit the bridesmaids. He might even have reminded me how I had promised to finish my redecorating. With all that in mind I had focused on what Ben had to say about Rose’s antics. And how much Abbey had enjoyed the boat ride on the river that afternoon. And how Tam had even more enjoyed almost falling in. Afterwards I wasn’t sure that I had said anything about my grandmother, other than that Rosemary, Thora, and Jane were girlhood friends of hers. And wasn’t it rather sweet of them to get in touch with me after all this time? Ben wouldn’t have thought the phone call I’d received later anything of the kind. But I was forgetting—that must have been a dream.

Mrs. Malloy broke into my thoughts. “I can see you’re looking worried to death.”

“I’m concentrating on the road.” I smiled at her, because seeing that she was here it seemed silly not to be pleased she was coming with me. If the bridesmaids thought it peculiar, so be it. I could always say she had been poorly and needed a change of air. They were of the generation to believe in that sort of thing. Or I could say I couldn’t risk leaving her with the silver for fear she would polish it down to the nub. No mention of the nefarious Leonard would pass my lips. He was entirely Mrs. Malloy’s business, I was thinking self-righteously, when she nearly caused me to swerve off the road.

“I must say it was nice of Gwen to offer to put me up at short notice, but as I’ve always said, Mrs. H., there’s no friends like old friends when all is said and done.”

“Gwen? Who’s Gwen?”

“She and me went to school together. A plain, spotty-faced kiddie she was, but no fault of hers is what I’d tell her. I used to help poor Gwen with her homework. She wasn’t none too bright neither, especially when it came to doing her sums.

“Any rate, the long and the short of it, Mrs. H., is you made it more than clear I wasn’t welcome to stay at the Old Vicarage, or whatever it’s called, for fear of putting the old girls out. So I cast me mind back and remembered how when you said they lived near Rilling something rang a bell upstairs. And last night it came to me as how Gwen had got a job there after being sacked from Woolworth’s for never being able to remember the price of licorice allsorts. Such a fuss her parents made when she finally took her thumb out of her mouth and told them she was going away to work.”

“It must be hard to see your children go off on their own,” I said.

“You’re right, broke me heart to see George on his way. I could hardly stand watching him picking up the cases I’d tossed out the door after him. Mind you, Mrs. H., Gwen wasn’t fifteen. Thirty-five if she was a day.” Mrs. Malloy sucked on another humbug and continued talking out the side of her mouth. “But to be fair to her mum and dad, I had doubts meself as to how she’d cope getting herself up of a morning, let alone being a nanny to three little children. And them with a sick mother and a father that was helpless, as most men are if it don’t have to do with work.”

“I hope they treated Gwen well.” I was eager to get to the outcome. Was Mrs. Malloy coming with me to the Old Rectory or wasn’t she?

“Fiddler was the name and me luck being in I was able to get the number last night from Directory Inquiries.”

“But surely the children are grown by now,” I said, growing moment by moment more in dire need of a cup of coffee, to say nothing of bacon and eggs.

“The eldest must be forty, Mrs. H., and the other two well up in their thirties.”

“Unless they’re all extremely backward they can’t still need a nanny. But from the sound of it Gwen stayed on in Rilling.”

“She lives several miles outside. Closer to the village where you’re going.”

“Knells.” On catching sight of a Little Chef, I had decided to pull off the motorway and was now stuck within view of the parking lot behind a lorry whose driver appeared to be taking a catnap.

“Where Gwen lives is called Upper Thaxstead.”

“But surely she isn’t still with the same family, after ... how many years?”

Mrs. Malloy opened her mouth, then closed it. She wasn’t about to give me a chance to do my sums and work out her age as a contemporary of Gwen’s. “Course she’s still there,” she said as the lorry finally got moving and I was able to pull into a parking space close to the Little Chef entrance. Mrs. Malloy kept her patter going as we entered the restaurant. “Poor Mrs. Fiddler died from whatever ailed her—heart trouble I think it was—and after a decent interval Mr. F. married Gwen. I don’t suppose he felt as how he could do anything else. If she’d stayed on at the house, tongues would have wagged. And letting her go would have been like putting a kitten out the door and telling it to bugger off and fend for itself.

“You’ll have to remind me,” she said piously as we sat down at a table and picked up our menus, “that I’ve to thank Mr. Fiddler for behaving like a true Christian gentleman. Not that I expect it’s a real marriage, if you understand me. Separate bedrooms is my guess. Gwen couldn’t never bear the mention of sex. Said just the thought of it put her off her dinner for a week.”

“How long since you’ve seen her?” By now I could have eaten the menu and there wasn’t a waitress in sight.

“Not since she went to Upper Thaxstead.”

“Perhaps she’s changed.”

“You’ll have to meet Gwen. Born a repressed spinster she was. As I’ve said, not meaning to be nasty, plain as a suet pudding.”

A smiling waitress had appeared at our table like a nymph rising out of the deep. Mrs. Malloy ordered bacon, eggs, tomatoes, and fried bread along with a pot of tea and, because the nymph looked as though she had already worn out the soles of her feet, I made things simple by saying I would have the same.

The restaurant was quite crowded, and subdued waves of conversation flowed around us as I unbuttoned my raincoat and slid it onto the back of my chair. Mrs. Malloy had done the same and I was stunned to see that she was wearing a sweatshirt. This woman who I wouldn’t expect to be caught dead in anything less dressy than black taffeta and sequins. The sweatshirt was pale blue and read: I
WENT
TO
CAMBRIDGE
.

“Well, so I did.” Her heavy makeup cracked in a couple of places as she caught my eye. “What if it was only for a day trip, on the coach last summer? When in Cambridgeshire, try and fit in is my way of thinking ... All I’m asking, Mrs. H.,” she said, gusting a weary sigh, “is a few days’ peace and quiet where Leonard can’t get his paws on me.”

I poured us both a cup of tea from the pot the waitress had deposited in the center of the table and raised mine in salute. “Then here’s to hoping that things will be delightfully dull at Gwen’s. With any luck I’ll have an equally boring time with the bridesmaids.”

“You’re not looking forward to a chin wag with your grandmother’s ghost?”

Luckily my mouth was full with bacon and eggs and I couldn’t respond. We ate for a while in silence. The fried bread was golden crisp and the tomatoes sent up little wisps of rosy steam. As I plied my knife and fork I wondered what Ben and the children were doing. Had they already had breakfast? Were they wandering through sky-filled meadows picking buttercups and daisies with other happy Memory Laners? Was there a babbling brook for them to sit beside while birds trilled overhead and cottontailed bunnies in plush brown suits popped in and out of the hedgerows? My mind wandered round one green-shaded corner after another to a time and place I hadn’t visited in a long time, until Mrs. Malloy brought me back to the table with a jolt.

“Thinking about Mr. H., aren’t you?”

“What?”

“You’ve got that soppy, dreamy-eyed look on your face that only a man can put there.” She clinked her teaspoon against her cup the better to call me to attention.