The Trouble with Harriet (20 page)

Where, oh, where, I thought wildly, was my father? When I was a child, he had been rather good at appearing when desperately needed, even abandoning the book he was reading, probably Tolstoy, to come and sit on my bed during a thunderstorm. It was only after I was in my teens that he got the idea that it was only my mother I needed and that he was more hindrance than help to me in my aspiring role as a woman. Tobias jolted me back into focus by landing on my lap. Cyril was talking about ice cream.

“That’s the only exception to our eating habits. On a very hot day we sometimes treat ourselves to a small vanilla cone each.” For the first time I saw a flicker of expression in his eyes. Was he instantly regretting this outburst? Had he unleashed in his sisters a wild urge to offer further glimpses into the lives of the Hopper family?

“Oaklands,” said Doris.

“You were speaking of it,” Edith reminded Aunt Lulu.

“So, I was.” Auntie dimpled prettily. “It’s hard not to, because I had such a wonderful time there. It was partly like going to a business convention and having your mind constantly stimulated by new concepts and the reworking of old ones. And also like being on holiday. Getting up when I wanted. Going to bed without being told to do so by Maurice. They are very forward thinking at Oaklands.”

“Harriet was at a place of that name,” said Doris.

“Years ago.” Edith actually nodded her head.

“Was she in treatment?” Aunt Lulu leaned forward in her chair with hands clasped.

“No.” Cyril fixed his black eyes on each sister in turn.

“She wasn’t a ... a therapist?” Auntie no longer looked quite so eager to bond.

“She worked in the cafeteria. Isn’t that right, Edith?” Doris looked to her sister for confirmation.

“And helped with the cleaning. Harriet said it was hard work, but worth it because of all she learned along the way.”

“About making beds,” interposed Cyril, “with hospital corners.”

“Harriet is ... was a wonderful person.” This was Edith talking now, and for the first time I saw something real in her face. “We grew up together on the same street. It was a rough neighborhood, and she always took care of us. Stopped the other kids from making fun of Cyril, Doris, and me. And we’ve never let anyone say a word against her. Have we, Doris?”

“Not ever.”

“She was always clever. Ever so good at sums. And popular, too. She was always chosen to be in the school plays.” It seemed Edith might keep going until someone removed her batteries. I got the feeling that Cyril would have liked to have done so. What was he afraid of? I wondered as I caught Ben looking at the clock.

Just at that moment, the door opened, and in came Daddy, followed by Freddy. Instantly, all animation, such as it was, left Edith’s face.

“Those are Harriet’s relations?” My father, apparently having taken Freddy up on his offer of brandy, directed a zigzagging finger at the Hoppers before advancing toward them in a series of narrowing circles that brought a couple of side tables and their lamps into peril. Tobias very sensibly got off my lap and retreated behind the curtains.

“Yes, Morley.” Ben rescued him before he could send the coffee table into the fireplace. “These are Harriet’s cousins, Cyril, Edith, and Doris Hopper. Ellie and I have been waiting for you to tell them about the situation regarding the urn.”

“You left me to do it?” Daddy ignored the extended wooden hands and tottered back to Freddy, using him as a lamppost to cling to while looking understandably aggrieved.

“To do what?” Aunt Lulu asked, her feet tap-dancing on the floor.

“To explain.” I looked around as if hoping the words would drop into my hand. “To explain that he isn’t able to give them Harriet’s ashes at this moment. Because ... he can’t” was the very best I could do with the Hoppers looking at me as though they might suddenly come to life.

“We feel dreadful about this.” Ben disconnected Daddy from Freddy, marched him forward, and lowered him into the nearest chair. “But the truth is”—so often the words of someone telling anything but— “Morley is in such a precarious emotional state, we’re afraid that he might go right over the edge if we forced him to give you the urn today.”

“But we must have it. Harriet is ...” Edith’s voice went from a whisper to a whimper.

“Harriet is our cousin,” Cyril finished for her.

“Our very dear cousin,” contributed Doris.

“In death as in life!” Her brother added the exclamation point.

“I understand your feelings, but my father-in-law was deeply in love with her, and her tragic death has left him heartbroken.” Ben gripped Daddy’s shoulder, and I knew he was daring him to speak. “You only have to look at him to see that he’s extraordinarily fragile.”

“He looks drunk to me.” Aunt Lulu tiptoed over to take a peek.

“Don’t be daft, Mumsie,” Freddy flared at her, and she sat back down. “I only gave him a drop of brandy when he turned violent and tried to shove me out a second-floor window after I tried to persuade him to give up the urn. I’ve spent nearly half an hour calming him down, and I don’t want anyone, especially my own mother, putting themselves at risk by setting him off again.”

“Sound thinking.” Ben maintained his restraining hold on Daddy, who did look as if he were about to lunge out of his chair.

“I don’t like violence.” Cyril trod back into line with his sisters.

“He always cried when the other boys hit him,” said Doris.

“And then Harriet had to go and beat them up.” Edith nodded her wooden head.

“It would be terrible if my father did get physical and we had to ring for the police.” I sent him a look that dared him to speak.

“Terrible, indeed! The last thing Harriet would”—Cyril’s voice cracked— “would have wanted.”

“I’m sure Daddy will be better in the morning,” I said bracingly as the brother and sisters edged toward the door. “And the good thing is that you are staying close by. You hadn’t planned on going home tonight?”

“No, not till tomorrow.” It might have been one or all three of them talking.

I followed them out into the hall. “Then why don’t we leave it that either my husband or I will bring the urn to you tomorrow morning? Daddy can come, too, if he’s again in his right mind. I know he would love to talk to you about Harriet. And now, if you really think it best to leave, I’ll drive you back to Cliffside House.”

A needless gesture, because they insisted that they had arranged for a taxi to pick them up just about this time and they would walk down the drive to meet it. From the looks on their faces as they sidled out the front door, I was pretty sure that the Hoppers would have preferred no further encounters with any members of my family. And as I watched them toddle away, I couldn’t find it in my heart to blame them for wondering just what sort of people their Harriet had got herself mixed up with.

“Thank god! I was spared from embarrassing myself!” My father wended his inebriated way across the hall to the stairs. It was clear to me that despite his acknowledgment of heavenly intervention, he was wallowing in self-congratulation. “Had I not brilliantly followed your lead, my dear Giselle, as a lesser man might have done,” he proclaimed, “the vicar’s theft of your car would have been revealed. And those strange little people would have spent an agonizing night wondering when, if ever, Harriet would be returned to those of us who worship the ground she once so gladsomely trod.”

I took it as an encouraging sign that he did not seem bent on doing any immediate agonizing himself. Indeed, he struck quite a jovial pose as he lolled against the banisters. In all likelihood, the reprieve would be short-lived. The effects of the brandy would dissipate, and gloom would reclaim him. But every step he took back to life and hope must surely do him some good. Or so I told myself as I helped him up the stairs to his bedroom.

His suitcase was on the floor by the wardrobe, and a pair of his shoes protruded from under a chair. But it didn’t yet feel like his room. That wasn’t to be expected. But neither should I have felt Harriet’s presence so strongly, especially with the urn being gone. Did her perfume linger on the shirt Daddy had laid over the foot rail of the bed? Or was I imagining that dusky summer evening fragrance? No, she was here, I decided while walking around him to turn back the coverlet. I could feel her. Did that mean her love for my father and his for her had truly made them one in spirit?

Rubbish! I gave the pillow an unnecessary thump. That a love affair ended tragically did not make it Romeo and Juliet. Daddy dropped with a wallop onto the bed, and something other than annoyance fueled me as I heaved his feet up with the rest of him. It was my mother’s voice inside my head: “It’s been a long day, with no time to sort anything out in your head. No wonder you’re cross, darling. Why don’t you go for a nice long walk to blow away the cobwebs?” For a moment I was sure I felt her hand on my shoulder, until I realized I had backed into the edge of the door that I’d left open. But then I had let out a yelp.

“Did you speak, Giselle?” Daddy inquired in a drowsy voice from the bed.

“No, I just screamed.”

“Ah, well, that’s good!”

Much he cared. I sighed as I spread the coverlet back over him. But I didn’t nurse a sense of ill-usage. Suddenly my mind filled with a picture of Harriet working at Oaklands. Was it the same Oaklands where Aunt Lulu had so recently gone for treatment? A little bell went off inside my head. Something Daddy had said about his time with Harriet. The memory wiggled around like a tadpole, slippery and elusive. Never mind, I decided as it disappeared back into the pond. And instantly I remembered. Harriet had talked to Daddy about an aunt who she thought might have lived in, or near, Chitterton Fells and how her married name had been Oaklands. Or maybe that’s what her house had been called. If Daddy’s retelling was accurate, Harriet’s reminiscences had been a bit of a rigmarole.

“They were very strange people,” he murmured as I reached under the coverlet for his feet to remove his shoes.

“Who?”

“Harriet’s relations.”

“Most peculiar.” I did battle with a knotted lace.

Had Harriet been thinking of the time she worked at Oaklands when she spoke of the aunt? Was there even an aunt? Or had Harriet made her up on the spur of the moment when Daddy mentioned that I lived in Chitterton Fells? Had she used the name Oaklands because the inclusion of pieces of the truth made her conversation more believable to her own ears?

“What were they called, Giselle?”

“What were what called, Daddy?” I was now wrestling with the second shoelace.

“Those people who came for Harriet.”

“The Hoppers. Cyril, Doris, and Edith.”

“I have vast difficulty, Giselle, believing that the Hobbits, if that’s what you called them, could be even distantly related to my wondrous Harriet.”

Perhaps not. Were they instead her accomplices? It was the first time I had considered Harriet’s knowing involvement in whatever Daddy had got mixed up in. He had closed his eyes, and after placing his shoes under the chair alongside his other pair, I bent and kissed his cheek and slipped from the room. Let him have a good long sleep. Maybe by the time he woke up, the urn would have been returned.

I stopped to use the phone in the gallery and got my mother-in-law on the first ring. If she sounded harassed, it was in a happily important sort of way. I knew, without having to be told, that the twins were hanging on her skirts and she had baby Rose in the crook of one arm. Grandpa was cooking supper, she told me. Sausages for the second night in a row, but with chips this time and baked beans. She had made a steamed pudding with lots of treacle and was about to make a big jug of custard.

At this point, Tam got hold of the phone. He’d seen five cats on a wall while out taking a walk with Grandpa, and Abbey hadn’t been good. Whereupon his twin seized the phone. Having explained why she had thrown her doll out the window, she spilled the exciting news that Grandma had done her hair in plaits and was going to buy some pink ribbons tomorrow. And now she had to go and play. But Rose wanted to talk to me.

I went downstairs into the kitchen, where I found my husband. A few moments later, Ben was putting a cup and saucer into my hands. I knew I could count on him for some much-needed pampering. But what I hadn’t counted on was seeing Freddy and Aunt Lulu. He did have his cottage, and surely there were at least a few things there for her to pinch. Such as that awful photo of me in the hall.

“Hello, Ellie.” My cousin turned a woebegone face in my direction. “You wouldn’t happen to have room in the fridge for Mumsie, would you?”

I looked at Ben, who shifted Tobias off the rocking chair and sat down before breaking the news: “Freddy and Aunt Lulu have been having an altercation.”

“Couldn’t they have it somewhere else?”

“That’s not very hospitable, dear.” Auntie helped herself to a ham-and-tongue sandwich from the plate on the table. “There’s no fun in having a quarrel without people to cheer on one side or the other.”

“But Freddy would be listening,” I pointed out.

“No, he wouldn’t. He only talks. What I say goes in one ear and out the other.” She took a contemplative bite of the sandwich. “This is delicious. You’ll have to give me the recipe, Ben.”

“She says that sort of stupid thing, hoping I’ll decide she’s too daft to merit any effort to get through to her.” Freddy looked ready to strangle himself with his ponytail. “But it won’t work. There will be no more accepting rides from strange men and no more bragging about what fun it is to be a kleptomaniac.”

His mother looked at him sadly. “Sometimes I wonder if I brought the wrong baby home from the hospital.”

“Do you really?” My cousin suddenly radiated hope. “Think, Mumsie, and this time I won’t be cross. Did you pretend to go in to have your tonsils out and sneak off with me while the doctors and nurses weren’t looking?”

“I don’t think so.” Aunt Lulu pursed her little-girl lips. “No, dear, it couldn’t have happened that way. I gave birth to you at home. Afterwards I could never think what to do with those big sugar tongs I took out of the midwife’s bag.”