The Trouble with Harriet (5 page)

“ ‘Perhaps not.’ She sat back down and watched me pick up my chair. ‘But it’s not easy being a woman traveling alone. You get lonely and grasp at opportunities for a friendly chat, especially when meeting someone from home. But you can’t be too careful when you’re fifty-seven years old.’ Her smile was suddenly back in place. ‘Oh, go on, you can tell me I don’t look a day over forty-nine.’

“I wanted to tell her that she was beautiful at any age but settled for saying: ‘I hope we can get to know each other better, Harriet.’

“ ‘No need to sound so humble, Morley.’ She gave me a playful tap with the handbag. ‘Why don’t we get out of here. It’s a perfect night for a stroll.’

“Such was the beginning of my all-too-short time with the woman who was to become the light of my life. The first of many rambles through the winding streets of Schonbrunn. We wandered through the parklike area, laid out with walkways, flower beds, and butterfly bushes, along the banks of the small river that meandered under buff-colored stone bridges, where Harriet said trolls hid out, plotting mischief. There was a whimsical side to her nature, a lightness of being that was the more remarkable given the fact that she had come to Germany to recover from health problems. Bravely, she wouldn’t elaborate except to say that she had made an excellent convalescence, thanks to the kindness of a pair of old friends who had invited her to stay for as long as she wished. On Glatzerstrasse in Loetzinn, a town some fifty kilometers from Schonbrunn.

“I did not visit their house with Harriet. She explained that both husband and wife were of a retiring nature. She was loath to impose upon their generosity more than need be. They had an elderly housekeeper who, in addition to doing the cleaning and laundry, cooked delicious meals. Harriet insisted that she had never been so cosseted in her life.

“ ‘ The place runs on oiled wheels,’ she told me one afternoon when we were seated in a cafe with checked tablecloths and pots of flowers on the wall. ‘It’s a far cry from my flat in Wimbledon. There I would have to make my own bed and do the washing up if I didn’t want to leave it until Mrs. Green came in on a Tuesday morning. You know how impossible it is to get good help in England. Well, maybe you don’t, being a man and having been gone AWOL so long. But trust me, Morley, it would be silly as well as wretchedly ungrateful for me to complain about life with Anna and Ingo.’

“ ‘Darling, complaint isn’t in you.’ I felt no hesitation in using the endearment. We had progressed a long way from that first evening in the biergarten when she had feared that I was looking for a mere dalliance. We had spent so many happy days and blissful nights together. ‘You won’t talk about your illness.’

“ ‘Hush!’ She leaned forward with that tantalizing revelation of womanly curves that never failed to make my soul sing. You promised not to bring that up again. No, I’m not upset, my gentle giant of love.’ Pressing a finger tenderly to my lips. ‘But I want to leave all that in the past. It you had met me a few months ago, you wouldn’t have looked at me twice, or if you had, you would have hopped onto the nearest camel and headed back to the desert.’

“ ‘Rubbish!’ My voice was gruff with emotion.

“ ‘Darling, I know we haven’t seen any camels in Schonbrunn, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any. We haven’t had our eyes about us when taking our walks.’

“ ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’ I had to grip the sides of the table to control my trembling. Her perfume mingled with the aroma of freshly ground coffee and hot plum cake to an intoxicating effect. The like of which I had not experienced even seated in Abu el-Pukabbi’s tent, being wafted from a steaming kettle of rare oils and spices at the hands of one of his junior wives. ‘What I meant, my Harriet ...’ I had to piece the words together from the lump in my throat. ‘I would have loved you even had you been wasted to the bone, hollow-eyed and completely bald.’

“ ‘That’s some declaration.’ Her hands went to her platinum-blond hair but fell before touching it, and her eyes—in some lights brown, in others hazel, but always beautiful—misted with tears.

“ ‘Damn me. I should be taken out and flogged for making you cry!’ I got one elbow in my strudel and another in her coffee cup in my attempt to clasp her shoulders and had to make do with her wrist. The man at the next table, a skinny fellow with a mustache too big for his face, picked up his newspaper, but I could feel him eavesdropping and experienced an uncharacteristic urge to get up and punch him. Some moments in life are sacrosanct and not to be impinged upon by the vulgarly curious. In England, of course, it wouldn’t have mattered, because as a nation we have the good breeding not to aspire to fluency in other people’s languages.

“ ‘Oh, Morley!’ If Harriet heard the man’s ears vibrating the newsprint, she gave no indication. ‘I’m crying because I’m happy.’ She righted the coffee cup and detached the strudel from my jacket elbow. ‘Also, I’m feeling a little guilty because of not having anywhere of my own to take you in return for all your’—her voice dipped to a whisper—lovely hospitality at Frau Grundman’s boardinghouse. Such a nice woman. So very respectable with her print frocks and her sister, who is housekeeper to the priest at the Christ Kirche in Loetzinn. And yet so agreeably ready to believe I am
your
sister. Not always tapping on the door with offers of an English cup of tea or hovering about in the hall to see what time I leave of an evening. Speaking of departures, my darling one, how long before you bid Schonbrunn adieu?’

“ ‘How long will you remain, my Harriet?’

“ ‘Until October or November. There’s no reason for me to rush back. Ingo and Anna are insistent that I stay until ...’ Harriet stared straight ahead for a moment. ‘Until I have eaten them out of house and home.’

“ ‘But you are well again?’ The man behind the newspaper couldn’t have heard me. I could hardly hear myself.

“ ‘Completely. There’s not the least need for a moment’s concern. A Gypsy told me so. A true Gypsy, she called herself, as opposed, I suppose, to the kind that has never set foot in a caravan except for a week’s holiday at Skegness. She came up to me when I was sitting on a park bench a few weeks ago, just before I met you.’

“ ‘Did she foresee me in your future?’

“ ‘She told me I would meet a marvelous man who would fulfill my destiny.”

“ ‘Any mention of wedding bells?’ Hope dangled just out of reach.

“ ‘She told me I had married at thirty, that there had been no children, and that he had left me eventually for a younger woman. She also pointed out that I didn’t do badly financially. Which was true. The bugger didn’t insist I take all of everything. But he did sign over a few investments that have kept me going in reasonable comfort. But enough about him. May he rot in peace.’

“ ‘He’s dead?’

“ ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Harriet shrugged her shoulders. ‘It was really very sad. He collapsed on his honeymoon with the baby-doll bride. It was at one of those spa places, the doctor said he must have overexerted himself playing squash.’

“ ‘Did the Gypsy say anything else about the future?’

“ ‘Oh, just the usual silly stuff about being careful of water and watching out for black cats crossing my path; nothing to worry about.’

“And, unforgivable fool that I was, I agreed with her.”

“Somehow I don’t think this bedtime story is going to have a happy ending.” Freddy broke the silence that had settled over the drawing room like a damp set of dust covers after my father’s voice faded away.

“Possibly you were helped by a very small clue.” I looked pointedly at the clay pot containing the mortal remains of the woman who had stolen my mother’s memory.

“Sorry, I forgot.” Freddy hung his head like a child who has been scolded by his kindergarten teacher for bringing a frog to school. Making himself look utterly ridiculous, given his six-foot height and the beard, to say nothing of the earring and ponytail. I wasn’t feeling particularly loving to anyone at that moment, including my husband, who was hovering over Daddy like Florence Nightingale with a brandy decanter instead of a lamp. Probably something metabolic. For surely a person’s kindness level can drop, in just the same way that one’s sugar level can plummet to dangerous lows in the absence of a bar of chocolate. Come to think of it, I had hardly eaten a thing all day. I had been too rattled at seeing the children off to do more than swallow a token slice of toast at breakfast. Lunch had somehow got lost in the shuffle of packing and changing the beds so that they would be fresh upon our return from the holiday, which, in Ben’s and my case, was now clearly not to be.

“I think Daddy should have something to eat before he attempts to finish telling us about Harriet.” I got up and stood looking around as if trying to remember where I had last put the kitchen.

“No, no! I couldn’t possibly swallow a morsel.”

“But you must,” cajoled Miss Nightingale, administering a few drops of life-giving brandy. “I don’t suppose you had much to eat on the plane.”

“Just one or two peanuts and a half inch of orange juice.”

“My God!” Freddy sounded close to tears. “I would think you must have lost a stone before reaching Heathrow.”

“Maybe I could force down a couple of poached eggs.” My father stirred valiantly into a semi-upright position. “With perhaps a daub, the merest smidgen, of hollandaise sauce. On lightly toasted granary bread, if you would be so kind.”

“Could you manage a few rashers of bacon?” I asked.

“If it will make you happy, Giselle.” His eyes closed, and Freddy whispered that he would stay with him while I helped Ben with the cooking.

He was really telling me that I needed to work through my emotions by clattering about the kitchen putting dents in Ben’s prized saucepans and dropping a bottle or two of milk. Freddy could always read me like a book. As he often said, he had the advantage of having read my girlhood diaries. Ben, on the other hand, was handicapped by the fact that he always liked to think, until faced with irrefutable evidence to the contrary, that I was a nice person.

“It breaks your heart, doesn’t it?” he said, opening the fridge and taking out a carton of eggs, two lemons, and a bunch of asparagus.

“What does?” I reached around him and hauled out a plastic container of bacon and a bottle of milk.

“To think of a man your father’s age falling head over heels in love, only to be pipped at the post by unkindly fate.”

“Awful!” I agreed.

The kitchen was my favorite room in the house. We had modernized it when we moved in, with granite working surfaces and twentieth-century appliances, but by leaving the old brick fireplace and adding a greenhouse window above the sink, we had ensured that charm wasn’t lost to convenience. Tonight, though, it failed to work its soothing magic on my troubled soul.

“You don’t sound overwhelmingly sympathetic,” Ben chided.

“Perhaps that’s because I’m thinking about my mother.”

“Sweetheart, I understand that, but you can’t expect your father to spend the rest of his life in mourning.” Ben was over at the sink snapping asparagus with frightening efficiency, which intimidated Tobias into thinking that shots had been fired signaling the start of World War III. He leaped from his chair at the table onto the sink edge and from there, as if yanked aloft by an invisible crane, onto the top of the Welsh dresser, where he sat looking austere. Sometimes I wished that I was a cat and could wilt the wheat sheaves on the wallpaper with a single glance.

“That’s all very well for you, Ben, when your parents are both alive and well.” I returned to the fridge for the makings of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and began slicing away with slaphappy imprecision. Freddy wouldn’t mind. So long as what he was given to eat didn’t try to bite him first, he was happy. Chewing on a crust, I glowered at my husband’s back as he finished rinsing off the asparagus and plopped it into the steamer basket of a saucepan, which he then shifted to the Aga cooker. I knew he enjoyed concentrating when he was making a routine mayonnaise, let alone a hollandaise, but the devil was in me. “Not that I begrudge you your intact family,” I chirruped.

“Mother and Pop may not be quite so spry after a week with the children.”

“My mother would have adored Rose and the twins.”

“I’m sure she would.” Ben abandoned his wire whisk with a not-too-obvious, longing glance, withdrew the double boiler from the heat, and came and put his arms around me. “Her death was a tragedy, but I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted your father to spend the rest of his life wallowing in misery.”

“She was a gentle, loving spirit, which leaves me to play the heavy. A burden,” I acknowledged, chomping down on another crust, “that I am only too happy to assume.”

“But Harriet’s dead, too.”

“That is no excuse for her making a play for my father.”

“He was the one talking about wedding bells.”

“She thought he was a wealthy playboy.” I removed myself from my husband’s embrace.

“A schemer worth her salt would have realized pretty quick that he lives in tents and cheap boardinghouses because that’s all he can afford.”

“Why did you have to say that?” Tears stung my eyes. “I’ve been struggling for the last hour to forget Daddy’s awful remark.”

“About what?” Ben took a couple of steps toward the Aga, thought better of it, and refocused his full attention on me.

“He said Mummy was the salt of the earth.”

“I’d call that a rather fine tribute.”

“Would you?” The tears now spattered down my nose. “Then I dread to think what you’d say behind my back if I were dead!”

“Ellie!” Bewilderment and exasperation were written all over Ben’s face.

“It’s the sort of thing a man says about his painfully plain secretary of forty years who’s never typed a word wrong, powders her nose with corn flour, and lives with her mother of a hundred and four.”

I resented having to explain something so obvious. My mother was anything but a salt-of-the-earth woman. She was completely useless in any practical sense. She couldn’t open a tin of soup without looking up the instructions in a cookbook. She thought making a bed required assemblage for which she hadn’t the tools. And she was hopeless with money. She thought it grew on trees.