Withering Heights

2

Our drawing room at Merlin’s Court lends itself to tranquillity. It was early evening, and the storm had ceased several hours before. Sunlight skimmed the polished surfaces. The scent of roses drifted in through the open latticed windows, and the portrait of Abigail Grantham, first mistress of Merlin’s Court, smiled serenely down from above the mantelpiece. Unfortunately, there was nothing remotely tranquil about Ben’s mood that evening.

He was seated in the fireside chair across from mine. A softly lit table lamp dramatically highlighted his profile. He was looking dangerously attractive in faded blue jeans and a worn sweatshirt: a lethal combination, as I had often told him. He was wearing his reading glasses, which only added to his appeal. But far from sending loving glances my way, he appeared oblivious to my presence. Eight years of marriage had accustomed me to these occasional down moments. Even so, this was to have been a special evening. If he resented Mrs. Malloy’s spending the night, that wasn’t my fault. I had just persuaded her she’d be better off mulling over a reconciliation with Melody in her own house when he’d walked in and announced that it had been hell driving home in the storm and anyone with any sense would stay put for the evening. She had graciously agreed with him and gone upstairs immediately to lay out guest towels for herself.

The silence thickened. Ben’s dark head was bent. He was gripping a glossy magazine with agonized intensity. It was the latest issue of Cuisine Anglaise, the one that contained the review of his soon to be released book, A Light Under the Stove. As I had told Mrs. Malloy, I had thought it extremely complimentary. I even thought it improved the seventh or eighth time Ben read it aloud to me. Alas, being prey to the tortured sensibilities of a man of letters, he had fixated on one line-the one that described his prose as somewhat floury.

My attempts to convince him the comment was not as damning as he thought had fallen on determinedly deaf ears. Reminders that his other books had done extremely well had failed to cheer him. Sensing that he needed time to savor the savage belief that his writing career, if not his life, was over, I focused on my regrets. It seemed my hopes for a romantic evening were doomed to disappointment.

Such a pity! Ben had, without raising a dark sardonic eyebrow in my direction, reminded me why I had known on first meeting him that there would be no joy in my remaining an unattached overweight female with a bunch of finely tuned neuroses. So much had happened since. I know longer needed two mirrors to get a good look at myself. But I still thrilled to the image of him striding across the moors with the wind whipping his black hair to a wild tangle. The intent set of his shadowed jaw, the opal fire of his blue-green eyes, and the way his mouth curved in wry amusement all mocked the impudent folly of the elements in enlisting him as an opponent.

A wife, however, knows when it is time to reenter the fray. I didn’t put on a pair of boxing gloves, not having any readily to hand, but I did speak sternly. “Darling, put that magazine down; you’ve been wallowing long enough. It’s bad for the complexion.”

His response was a weary grimace.

“Do I have to take it away from you?”

“No.” He tossed Cuisine Anglaise across the room. I sucked in a breath as it narrowly missed the yellow porcelain vase on the secretary desk before landing in a flutter of pages on the bookcase. Watching him slump back in his chair caused my patience to dwindle.

“It isn’t a bad review, and even if it were it’s not the end of life on earth.”

“You’re right.” He spoke in a toneless voice.

“Think about it! How many people read that silly magazine anyway?” It was of course the absolutely wrong thing to say, totally insensitive and unsympathetic. But I wasn’t used to dealing with Ben in this attitude of pale sorrow. I would much have preferred him to leap three feet in the air and clutch at his head before pounding up and down the room, as was customary when he was severely upset. Turbulence I could deal with, knowing I only had to count to ten and it would be over. I would straighten any pictures that had been sent askew, and whatever was wrong would get sorted out over a cup of tea or, when the rare situation warranted it, something stronger.

“Cuisine Anglaise has a wide circulation, Ellie.”

“Among people who call beef boeuf.” I couldn’t keep my hoof out of my mouth. “And they aren’t the sort to buy your cookery books by the dozens.”

“Thanks a lot!” Removing his reading glasses, he set them down with painstaking precision.

“It was meant as a compliment, Ben. Your strength is real food, eaten by real people, not trendy fashion food for the beautiful and bored. You appeal to the average person. Getting meals on the table isn’t a form of artistic expression for them. More likely it’s a matter of Mum and Dad getting the children to eat what’s put in front of them rather than dropping it on the floor for the dog or gagging on it until they’re ordered out of the room.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before I wrote the damn book? I could have stuck to advice on putting frozen dinners in the microwave,” said Ben. “That wouldn’t have required any ‘floury’ prose.” His smile did not take the edge off the words. But I didn’t have the sense to stop while I was behind. I was too upset that our evening had been ruined and he’d hardly told me anything about his overnight with his parents or how well the children had settled in before he started for home.

“You’re not the only one to get less than bubbling praise at times.” I stirred restlessly in my chair. “But I don’t go to pieces when a client finds fault with a room design I’ve spent days working on.”

“It’s not the same, Ellie. Being criticized in print is far worse-”

“Than being told to my face I’ve done an inadequate job?” I got to my feet and had the sherry decanter in hand when Mrs. Malloy came teetering into the room, again with the feather duster. I had been picturing her snugly tucked up in the guest room with my copy of Lord RakehelPs Redemption. But here she was, a possible bright spot or at the very least an interruption, in an otherwise bleak moment. Tobias followed in her wake. Sensing disharmony, which he had made clear in the past was not good for a cat of advancing years, he settled on the bookcase and turned convincingly to stone.

Ben, who had risen for our overnight guest if not for Mr. Tobias, pointed an outraged quivering finger. “He’s sitting on Cuisine Anglaise!”

“Good!” I flared. “He’ll stay sitting on it if I have anything to say about it!” Having poured myself a liberal glass of sherry, I returned to my seat and did my own impersonation of cat staring into space.

“One look through Cuisine Whatsit the first time it arrived for you was enough for me, Mr. H!” Mrs. Malloy swayed with the breeze, or possibly the effects of a nip of gin in the kitchen, on her ridiculously high heels. But it was clear she had summed up the situation, as behooved a woman who had once commandeered Milk Jugg’s private detective agency. “As if I want to eat at those restaurants they write about. The ones where they put marigolds on your salad and hold up the bottle of wine so you can bow to it! And me a Christian woman! Idolatrous, the vicar would call it!”

With Ben standing there like a bottle of sauce, I felt compelled to stem the flow of Mrs. M’s tirade. “Cuisine Anglaise is the periodical of choice for the person with the professionally trained palate.”

“Biffy for them!” Mrs. Malloy’s bust having inflated to a dangerous size, I waited uneasily for the sound of an explosion. “If the review wasn’t all that complimentary about your new cookery book, Mr. H, I’d be pleased as Punch. Your recipes are for the sort of meals that taste lovely and give you a warm, dreamy feeling when you remember them years later. It’s the same with books. Shakespeare may be good for you, but like I was saying to Mrs. H earlier, it don’t warm the cockles of your heart like a nice story about a wicked housekeeper and the family ghost appearing of a nighttime at the windows.”

Had she said that? My eyes went to the portrait of Abigail. Her serene smile promised as clearly as if she had spoken that her ghost would never show up at any of our windows. Enormously comforting! Thrilling as such things are to read about, one does not necessarily wish to experience them in real life.

“You have a point, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben looked less like a bottle left in the middle of the floor for someone to trip over.

“That’s the ticket.” Mrs. Malloy teetered over the chair he had vacated. “You stop worrying about being remembered five hundred years from now for your Poulet a la Whatsit. Go on writing recipes for the sort of food that keeps people coming back for more at Abigail’s. No one can touch you, Mr. H, when it comes to your Welsh rarebit. The one that’s a lovely shade of pink because of the diced beetroot you put in it. And then there’s the Dover sole with the Gruyere sauce and the steak-and-mushroom pie with the vermouth. Who needs anything fancier than that?”

Tobias charged the feather duster she had discarded. At his approach it came to life and put up quite a fight.

“You’re the voice of reason, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben smiled at her. It was good to see the light back in his eyes, but I wished I could have been the one to put it there. “How about a glass of sherry? Would you like another one, Ellie?” It was impossible to tell whether or not he was still irritated with me.

“I think I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

“Same here,” Mrs. M surprised me by saying. “Just the thing with that sky darkening up like it’s getting set to storm again. A good thing I gave in and agreed to stay the night or I could have got caught in it good and proper.”

Not if she had left earlier, I thought, and immediately felt guilty.

“In these heels”-she looked down at her spindly shoes-“I need to see where I’m putting me feet or I could trip on the bus steps and break me neck.” This reference to Madam LaGrange’s warning about the perils of bus stops should have reminded me of her other prediction.

Having closed the window and drawn the curtains, Ben said he would make the tea and be back in a jiffy. On his way out of the room he paused to touch my hair lightly, and the world shifted back into place.

“Was it just the magazine business that got to him?” Mrs. Malloy inquired, the moment he was out the door. “Or did the children get upset when he left them with his parents?” Here was the reason she had refused the sherry and most uncharacteristically opted for tea. She had known Ben would offer to get it, thus providing us with a few minutes of private chitchat.

“All three of them always enjoy being with Grandpa and Grandma. They love staying in the flat above the greengrocery. They think it a great adventure to help out at the cash register and hang up the bananas.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think.” Mrs. Malloy’s pious expression would have suited the vicar when leaning over the pulpit to announce that more help was needed for the foreign missions. “Children don’t need a holiday near as much as their mum and dad do. So how about you and Mr. H taking off for a few days instead of staying cooped up here?” Her gaze shifted around the room. “It can get depressing, Mrs. H, with the walls closing in and always the thought of how much dusting there is to do.”

For which one of us? Although that might be a moot point now that Tobias had disemboweled the feather duster.

“Where would we go at such short notice?”

“Well, Yorkshire do spring to mind, seeing as Melody lives there. But I’m not just looking out for meself. Think on that good bracing air you get in the dales and up on the moors!” In a moment she would start humming a casual tune.

“Mrs. Malloy,” I said gently but firmly, “I told you this afternoon that Ben and I have things we want to get done around the house while the children are gone.”

“You’d only be away a couple of days. And like I told you, where Melody lives isn’t far from Haworth. You could go and see the parsonage where the Brontes lived.”

“I’ve been there. Seventeen times. I used to make a semiannual pilgrimage before I married Ben.”

“Well, maybe he’d like to see it.”

“Perhaps.” I was wavering, and Mrs. Malloy was every bit as good as Tobias at moving in for the kill.

“I just hate the thought of facing Melody on me own. She can be very intimidating in her way. Tossing out facts: what was said, where it was, and, as if that’s not enough, the date and the hour when it happened.”

“What does she look like?” It was impossible not to be curious.

“A moth-eaten stuffed rabbit.”

“No resemblance then to yourself?”

Mrs. Malloy was looking understandably outraged by this tactless suggestion when Ben came back into the room with the tea tray, which he placed on the Queen Anne table between the sofas. Nicely within reach of Mrs. M and myself, should we feel inclined to reach for a second slice of his delectable chocolate raspberry cake. Scratch that thought. How many digestive biscuits had I eaten that afternoon? Never mind. I could already feel the pounds creeping on. Exercise was needed if I didn’t want to wake up in the morning to face a blimp in the mirror. Getting to my feet, I handed Mrs. Malloy the cup of tea Ben poured for her. The brush of his shoulder against mine sent a thrill coursing through me.

Was it possible we would have our romantic rendezvous in the bedroom after all? It was that time of day when dark stubble shadowed his face, adding a hint of mystery to familiarity. The smile he gave me, as he handed me my cup, made my heart beat faster. Perhaps he was only thinking that it felt good to have our squabble behind us, while I was seeing myself slipping into the sea-foam green nightdress before unpinning my hair so that it fell in a languorous silken swirl down my back. There was that bottle of expensively seductive perfume on the dressing table that I reserved for the worthy occasion, there were the candles that glowed amber when lighted… and now there was Mrs. Malloy’s voice breaking into my highly personal dream.

“No one makes a cup of tea like you do, Mr. H!”

His smile became a roguish grin. “You’re too kind, Mrs. Malloy.”

“It’s all in the way he drops the teabags in the pot.” I eyed him impishly.

“Flattery!” He picked up his own cup and saucer. “I suppose you two still think I’m in desperate need of cheering up.”

I sat back down, avoiding eye contact with the cake sitting so prettily on its paper doily. “What Mrs. Malloy thinks you and I need is a few days’ holiday in Yorkshire while the children are gone.”

“Why Yorkshire?”

“I’ve got a sister there,” supplied the voice from the chair opposite mine.

“That we could take her to see,” I explained to Ben, “in between all the wonderful exploring you and I could do.”

The expression on his face wasn’t promising. “I’d no idea you had a sister, Mrs. Malloy.”

“We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in close on forty years.”

“Isn’t that sad?” I leaned forward. “Don’t you think, darling, that it’s important for Mrs. Malloy to take the initiative and try to put things right by going to see Melody?”

“Melody?” he echoed, looking as nonplussed as I had felt on first hearing the name. “Does she sing or play any musical instruments?”

An understandable question. It would be the only excuse to call a woman of middle years Melody.

“Tone-deaf. Always was. Of course there’s no saying as how she hasn’t taken up the tambourine or one of them play-themselves pianos in the last forty years. It’d be comforting to find out she’s got more in life than her typing job for that solicitor.” Mrs. Malloy continued to make inroads on the generous slice of chocolate cake on her plate.

“You must go and see her.” Ben strode over to the windows and back. “It doesn’t do to let these old quarrels go on and on. And it will make a nice trip for you and Ellie.”

“What about you?” I set my cup rattling back in its saucer.

“I’d be a third wheel.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

He came and perched on the arm of my chair and placed a hand on my shoulder. “As you said, it will only be for a few days and I could use that time to start getting recipes together for another book, before I lose my nerve and decide I’m a has-been.” His laugh brushed my ear. Obviously he wanted me to take a lighthearted view of things. To be a good sport. Instead, I felt hurt and in no mood to don the sea-foam green nightgown anytime that night. Only for Mrs. Malloy’s sake did I put on a good front.

“We could leave in a couple of days.”

“Why not tomorrow?” He returned to the coffee table to pour more tea.

Couldn’t he get rid of me fast enough? Not being carved out of stone, I did the only thing a woman could do-cut myself the largest slice of cake that would fit on my plate.

“It would make for a bit of a rush.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her purple lips. “And of course I do want to look me best so as to look ten years younger than… well, look nice for Melody, that is. But I suppose if we was to set off late-ish in the morning or early afternoon, I could manage to get meself organized.”

“Don’t you want to phone or write to her first?” I asked.

“She’d find reasons not to see me.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Better to catch her on the hop.”

“That’s settled, then.” Having finished with the teapot, Ben sat down on one of the sofas and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankles with an elegance of movement that should have charmed me back to good spirits.

“You didn’t tell me much about what happened at your parents’,” I said, addressing the ceiling, “other than that they were well and pleased to see you and the children.”

“Mum and Pop were pretty much as usual.” Ben shifted Tobias out from behind his head while balancing his cup and saucer deftly in his other hand.

“What did they have to say?”

“The usual sort of thing. This, that, and the other. Who’d said what to whom after church on Sunday. You know how they are.”

“It’s interesting,” I told the pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, “that a man can explain in excruciating detail to a fellow enthusiast how he screwed the knob back onto the bathroom door, but he can’t describe to his wife anything above the barest minimum of what happened during a visit at which she wasn’t present.”

“One of them quirks of nature.” Mrs. Malloy looked ready to expound on this but, perhaps sensing my mood, closed her mouth. Ben, however, seemed blindly unaware that I was irritated. Probably his mind was otherwise occupied, concocting a recipe for a rejuvenated version of bubble and squeak that would leave the reviewer for Cuisine Anglaise begging for a personal taste test.

He cupped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Mum put on a great lunch when we arrived. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings. The conversation mostly revolved around Tom and Betty winning the lottery and no one hearing from then since.”

“Just who are Tom and Betty, if I may be so bold as to inquire?” Mrs. Malloy had her nose, along with her pinky, elevated as she sipped her tea.

“The Hopkinses,” I said. “Tom is Ben’s cousin. It’s his daughter, Ariel, who enjoys gothic novels.”

“Oh, right! I remember you kindly let me post a parcel of them to her.”

“Tom isn’t a first cousin,” Ben explained. “Our mothers are second cousins; I think that’s how it goes. They probably wouldn’t have stayed in touch but for the fact that they are both Roman Catholics and at one time attended the same church. I’d never met Tom until the year I began working at my Uncle Sol’s restaurant in Tottenham Court Road.”

“I’ve never heard about him!” Despite not letting on until today about Melody, Mrs. Malloy naturally expects to know more about our relatives than we do.

“He died before I met Ellie. The nicest, kindest bloke, who always hoped I’d follow in his footsteps. Mum asked me to put in a word with him about Tom, who was out of work, and Uncle Sol hired him on at the cash register. He was there for about a year until he got a job with more money as a mechanic. He was great with his hands and could spot why things didn’t work”-Ben massaged his jaw to conceal a yawn-“but I didn’t see much of him even when we were working together. I had my own life and he had a girlfriend he was pretty crazy about.”

“No bothering to keep in touch?” Mrs. Malloy has a strong sense of family, when it isn’t hers.

“How was I supposed to know he’d one day win the lottery? They didn’t have them in those days. If someone had tipped me the wink, I’d have made him my best friend.”

“Has your mother managed to get hold of their new address?” I asked him, ignoring the witticism.

“Afraid not. Of course she assumes it’s Betty, not Tom, who’s afraid that if his relatives know where to find them they’ll all show up with their hands out, hoping for a share of the lolly.”

“From the stories past winners tell, that does happen with disastrous results,” I said. “The millions disappear and bankruptcy looms.”

“Would Betty be the girlfriend from when you was working with Tom, Mr. H?” Mrs. Malloy pulled a passing Tobias onto her lap and proceeded to arrange him into a furry blanket. It was getting a little nippy. I found myself thinking longingly of bed for a variety of reasons, one of which sprang from the fact that Ben smiled at me tenderly while answering Mrs. M.

“No, that wasn’t Betty. Perhaps it was a pity the other relationship didn’t pan out. From the couple of times I met her, she seemed exactly what he needed. A real go-getter and as pretty as they come. Tom called her his wild Irish rose.”

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“She wasn’t a Catholic, which was a must for his parents. They put up a stink. Over their dead bodies would their son marry out of the faith. They had someone else lined up for him in no time, a girl he’d known from their first days in kindergarten. They’d gone on retreats together and even dated a few times as teenagers.”

“Betty?” Mrs. Malloy and I said together, in the hopeful voices of children expecting to have stars drawn beside our names on the chalkboard.

“No, Angela. She and Tom married but only had a few years together.” Ben waited for a rumble of thunder to subside before continuing. “There was a car accident and she was killed. She wasn’t even thirty, and to make matters as bad as they could be, Tom was driving.”

“How awful!” I pressed a hand to my throat.

“Bad weather conditions. Tom was lucky to get out of the crash with only minor injuries.”

“The poor man! He must have been devastated.”

“I’m sure he was. I wrote to him, of course, but I didn’t go to the funeral because he wanted the immediate family only.”

“Grief takes people in different ways,” Mrs. Malloy proffered sagely.

“Quite shortly afterward, he met and married Betty. The family thought it indecently quick. Maybe that’s another reason she’s glad to be shut of them.” Ben attempted to mask another yawn, a sign for me to get to my feet and begin gathering up the tea things. Time for bed.

I was thinking it was nice that Mrs. Malloy had Lord Rake-hell waiting for her upstairs when an ill wind blew my cousin Freddy into the room. With his long hair, beanpole figure, and dangling skull-and-crossbones earring, he never projects the image of a young man about town, but women-including Mrs. Malloy-for some impenetrable reason dote on his every leer.

“Hello, my nearest and dearests!” He spread his arms wide, his scraggly beard parting in an ecstatic grin.

“Keep creeping up on us like this and I’ll ask for your key back.” I eyed him severely. “You almost made me drop the teapot, and it’s irreplaceable. Woolworth’s doesn’t sell this pattern anymore.”

“You’re all wet from the rain. You need to dry off, Freddy dear.” Sounding ridiculously motherly, Mrs. Malloy looked around as if hoping to find an assortment of freshly aired towels at her elbow.

“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Ben asked the source of the wet footprints.

“I thought with the children gone from the nest, an evening down at the pub might be in order. Who’s game?” Freddy swept us with his beneficent gaze.

“Well, I would be,” said Mrs. Malloy, “but the thing is I need to get a decent night’s sleep, so’s to be up with the birdies to get me packing done before setting out for Yorkshire to see me sister.”

Before Freddy could say he didn’t know she had a sister, I explained I was accompanying her and also needed my full ration of slumber. That left Ben to take the hint and graciously bid Freddy adieu. But that didn’t happen.

“Sure, I’ll come along.” No sign of a yawn anywhere close to his face now. He exuded energy. “You don’t mind, do you, Ellie?”

“Of course not! I’ll be happy knowing you’re having fun.” And then I’ll go to bed and look at the ceiling, I thought.

“ ’Right then! We’ll be off.” He kissed the top of my head. “Ready, Freddy?”

Did he have no idea that I wanted to pull off his ears? In all fairness, probably not. The sunny smile I gave him would have done wonders for my acting career, had I had any aspirations to go on the stage. As Mrs. Malloy had so profoundly said, it didn’t do to be a spoilsport.

“Are you sure you’re all right with this, Ellie?” He had turned around and taken hold of my hand.

“Absolutely.” I prodded him toward the door. “I’ve got a book, Lord Rakehell’s Redemption, that I’m dying to read, if I can just lay my hands on it. I’m hoping there’ll be a murder. That’s always the best part, isn’t it, Mrs. Malloy.”

When would I learn to keep my mouth shut?