Muriel Pulls It Off (21 page)

Speechless, she perched upon the chair provided by Marco, all but touching the frock of HRH Princess Matilda; wedging herself between the Princess and Peter. Roger was presented by Phyllis who had ushered them both into the room to the chair on Mambles’s other side ’twixt her and Hugh.

Nearly all, during those first moments of Roger and Miss Atkins joining the table, of their eight eyes met. Roger’s grey ones held Flavia’s flickering dark ones for a second, then they roved and caught those of Muriel who let her own drop.

Mambles (never forgetting the General who returned after the war) addressed them all for she did not wish for time to elapse or for her power to dwindle.

‘So. Mr, er, Roger, I shall call you. Can we be told what this is all about? For a start what has any of it got to do with you?’ Roger was not sober and, in spite of the cavalier attitude he adopted in the presence of Mambles, was exceedingly intimidated.

‘Justice Ma’am. Quite simply justice.’

‘Justice for whom if I may ask?’

Here he failed to reply.

‘Quite so.’ Mambles was in her element.

‘You don’t know. Now I shall question Miss Atkins.’

She turned to the gibbering female on her other side and asked, ‘Do you, too, wish for justice?’

‘Indeed, Your Honour. I have been informed that I have a right.’

‘Have you consulted a lawyer?’

‘No Madam. Only Mr Stiller. We paid him a visit this morning and he advised a word with Mrs Cottle before further procedure.’

‘So. That is what you are doing now. Having a word with Mrs Cottle. Go ahead. Tell her, in front of all of us, what it is you wish to say.’

The woman, near to retching, appealed across the table to Roger but Mambles interposed. ‘No. Tell Mrs Cottle what it is that you are after.’

Miss Atkins wriggled on her seat and turned in torment to Muriel who offered mercy.

‘Please Mambles. Can’t you see she’s terrified.’

‘Sorry Muriel. None of your shilly-shallying. Carry on Miss Atkins.’ She spoke as someone with something up her sleeve.

‘As I said, I had been informed that I might be entitled to my uncle’s estate - or a part of it.’

Before Muriel could say a word, Mambles again seized the reins.

‘Your informant was wrong. You have no claim whatsoever,’ adding with semi-mocking steeliness, ‘I happen to know. Cunty told Mummy that you have never at any time had any claim whatsoever on Muriel’s property.’

Miss Atkins whimpered.

‘Cunty’s sister, another Miss Crunthard, who you may well remember, lives in the same village as the other Atkins household.’ She swigged and drew herself high. ‘Your foster parents; that is to say you took their name when you went to them at the age of thirteen but were never legally adopted. You might have been had you not been a bitter disappointment to them both.’ Muriel ached with clemency and Mambles took pity.

‘Muriel. When this dies down and you have full control of your fortune, I suggest that you make Miss Atkins a little pressie. Ten thousand pounds will do. At the very most. Now, I don’t think we will hear much more from these two visitors. Show them out.’

She spoke imperiously and looked as if she had never been happier. Looked as though the evening was making up for the many moments she had wasted whilst wishing to have been born an only child.

Both hangdog and neither sober, they left to drive the distance to London in Roger’s hired car. That was that.

Mambles stared at each male member of the gathering in turn. ‘I know that you are each saddled with the name of “Cottle”. In my view it is not particularly euphonious and I’m quite certain that Muriel is heartily sick of it. She would do well, in gratitude for her inheritance, to take up the maiden name of her Aunt Alice - whatever that may be. I might have suggested the name of Atkins had it not been for that grizzly Atkins relation who has, I hope, now left the premises.’

She then announced that it was time for bed. Cunty was summoned and Jubilee removed from her lap where he had sat, inert, during the period of his mistress’s arbitration. Monopoly, who had also lain silent but in a corner of the room, gingerly approached Hugh but did not stop beside him; merely enquired.

Muriel and Cunty took both dogs out for their evening adventures and, when they returned, there was no sign of human life in the house. Everybody, without exception, had retired to bed and Muriel was confused, imagining that Peter, at least, might have stayed up for her.

She lit a cigarette, speculated as to what her aunt’s maiden name might have been and fell to wondering whether Mambles had done right at the same time as appreciating that she had put an end, if only temporarily, to the presence of Roger and Miss Atkins.

She was happy about the solution regarding Hugh; if a shed could be found for him, that was. But Peter. She did not fully understand how matters had been resolved. In any case it was odd that he had not waited up for her. Extremely odd. Smoking her cigarette to the butt, glancing about her and tugging at Monopoly, she said goodnight to Cunty who had been collecting some necessity from the kitchen, and trod the stairs with muddled brain.

Slowly she prepared for bed, hoping to recapture all that had been said. Monopoly curled and writhed in his basket as owls, nocturnally alert, hooted and again she wondered whether, in erecting beams above her head, the workmen had worn smocks.

As she lay in puzzlement, the door of her room slowly opened. Although the turning handle made no noise, she witnessed the outline of the invader by the light of the moon for her curtains were not closed. A tall man, Peter or Hugh, (which, she could not distinguish) entered; not that Monopoly showed interest or even bothered to stir. Rotten watchdog.

Lying, worrying about workmen and smocks, Muriel failed to focus. Whatever was happening was happening. It had nothing to do with her. She offered neither encouragement nor resistance. Hugh was shortly to be banished to a kennel. There was nothing for them to discuss. The matter was dead.

Her awakened mind, as the figure drew near, retraced events to a night, years back, that she had passed in a temperance hotel during a cold
snap in Norfolk following a family wedding. She, in her early twenties, had lain stock-still as the door to her bedroom opened. On that occasion she had not known, until it became obvious, which of two potential suitors approached; not had she particularly cared. She had always tended to passivity. She did remember, though, that the man who joined her in that hotel room had been Hugh.

Now it was Peter who sat upon her bed. That was excellent for had he not said, in general conversation, that he doted on her?

‘So’, he said as she extricated herself from nightwear, ‘Muriel pulls it off.’

Susanna Johnston is a former features writer for
Tatler.
Her books include
Five Rehearsals, Collecting, The Passionate Pastime, The Picnic Papers
(with
co-editor
Anne Tennant) and
Parties: A Literary Companion
. She contributed to
The Enlightenment House,
edited by Alvida Lees Milne, and she also edited
Late Youth: An Anthology Celebrating the Joys of Being Over Fifty,
published by Arcadia to great acclaim in 2005 and now on its third print run.