Bridesmaids Revisited (5 page)

“While taking ever such nice care of Mr. Fiddler.” Mrs. Malloy nodded approvingly. “And the kiddies, too, of course.”

This was all very pleasant, I thought, but I really should leave the two women to enjoy catching up on the years since they had last seen each other. I offered to take the suitcases upstairs. The exercise would have done me good after sitting for hours in the car just pushing the occasional pedal, but Gwen wouldn’t hear of it. She said Fiddler would take care of the luggage when he came home for lunch shortly. There was a nice steak-and-kidney pudding in the steamer and an egg custard baking in the oven, but if I wouldn’t stay to eat I must at least have a cup of tea to warm me on my way. Before I could decline she had skimmed ahead of us on her black scissor legs, the shocking-pink ribbon fluttering above her platinum topknot, into what she modestly called the front room. And after seeing Mrs. Malloy and me settled on a pair of extremely uncomfortable chairs that looked as though they might have come out of a monastery, she left us with the promise of returning in two ticks.

“Done all right for herself, has Gwen.” Mrs. M.’s gaze rested on a towering china cabinet displaying a mammoth collection of ruby-red cut glass. I, on the other hand, was more taken with the draperies. They were of a particularly strong shade of mustard, fringed with purple, and graced not only the windows, but innumerable alcoves along with the entrance into an equally overfurnished dining room.

“Nice fireplace,” continued the home-furnishings expert from
House Beautiful,
shifting in her seat to eye the mantelpiece, above which hung a portrait of Gwen decked out in sequins and pearls.

“You must be happy for her,” I said.

“Pleased as Punch.”

“Those must be the stepchildren.” I pointed to several eight-by-ten photos on the velvet-draped piano. “They look a pleasant bunch. A credit to their upbringing. It can’t have been easy for them getting over the death of their mother and accepting Gwen in her place, however fond they are of her.”

“You’re back to thinking about your own mum.” Mrs. Malloy lifted her feet onto a footstool hung around with tassels.

“It’s impossible not to identify, especially with this visit to the bridesmaids looming.”

“Life can’t all be bingo and nights out at the pub, Mrs. H., is what I say. That’s why in the thick of me own worries about Leonard I’m glad to be here. It’s clear as one of them plate-glass windows that for all this big house and her new looks, Gwen needs me something desperate.”

“Why’s that?”

“You mean you didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

“That haunted look of hers.”

“I can’t say I did.”

“Perhaps that’s because you didn’t know her when she was a kiddie,” Mrs. Malloy grudgingly conceded. “But I remember as if it was yesterday how she’d look when it was time to go to class and hand in the homework I’d done for her. It was like she was waiting for a policeman’s hand to come down with a wallop on her shoulder and a voice to boom in her ear: ‘You’d better come along with me, young Missy.’ “

“So she’s the sort to make mountains out of molehills,” I observed. “Perhaps she forgot to put clean sheets on your bed. Or is afraid you’ll realize she made the egg custard that’s supposedly baking in the oven from a packet.”

“Trust you to go minimizing things, Mrs. H. I tell you there’s something serious troubling Gwen. And it’s me duty to find out what it is and put her life back to rights before she works herself into needing another face-lift and loses a stone and a half she can’t afford to lose.”

“Being already a pitiful size six,” I was saying when the door opened. A man of medium height with iron-gray hair brushed straight back off his forehead and a pair of very blue eyes came into the room. Having been taught by my parents to rise when a grown-up of either sex walked into the room, and tending to forget that I might now be classified as a grownup myself, I stood up. Mrs. Malloy remained seated, but I could see her eyelashes flicker and her butterfly lips shimmer a deeper purple as she moistened them into a smile.

“Tell me you’re Gwen’s husband?” She was now crossing her legs at the ankles. They were good ankles, crisscrossed with the narrow straps of her high-heeled black patent-leather shoes. The man ceased shaking my hand to take appreciative note of them. Or perhaps he just had a kindly smile and a slight squint.

“You’ve hit it on the nose, I’m Barney Fiddler.” He proceeded to take her hand and hold it even longer than he had mine.

“Isn’t that nice!” His wife’s lifelong friend was practically purring. “I was afraid you was a plainclothes policeman come to give Mrs. H. a ticket for parking on the wrong side of the street.”

“Mrs. ... ?” He turned, without releasing her hand, in my direction.

“Haskell,” I supplied. “I’m on my way to visit some family friends in Knells.”

“And you kindly brought our Roxie here on your way.” He was back to gazing down at her.

“I do hope I won’t be in the way,” the wretched woman simpered.

“Such a very great pleasure to have you here, my dear. As you may imagine I have wanted to meet you for years. Gwen is forever talking about the best friend she ever had. And now we have this reunion of two delightfully grown-up little girls. Ah, and here is my darling now!” He turned at the clickety-click sound of footsteps, and hastened to remove a heavily laden tray from his wife’s hands and lower it onto the marble coffee table. “Good girl,” he said, patting her shoulder benevolently. “I see you used the silver teapot. Have to make this an occasion, don’t we? I’ll be mother and pour, darling, while you sit next to Mrs. Haskell on the sofa.”

Thus freeing himself to take the chair next to Mrs. Malloy’s when he was done passing the cups and saucers and little plates of ginger biscuits. There was no doubt that he kept glancing in her direction. The perfect host intent on making sure that her every need was anticipated.

“I didn’t hear you come in, Fiddler, but I’m sure you remembered to wipe your feet before crossing the hall. You’re as fond of that antique rug as I am.” Gwen was all black angles and platinum-blond hair as she sat down. “And it looks as though you’ve already started getting to know Roxie and have met kind Mrs. Haskell.”

“Yes, darling.” His voice was soothing. “She told me she’s going on to Knells to stay with friends.”

“Three women who were friends of her grandmother’s,” Mrs. Malloy informed him as she picked up her teacup and elevated her pinky. “Mrs. H. hasn’t seen them in years. Rather strange birds, if you ask me.”

I wanted to say I hadn’t, but settled for disclosing that they lived at the Old Rectory.

“What a coincidence!” Having finished being mother, Barney Fiddler sat down on one of the monastery chairs and looked from me to his wife, then back again. “Or perhaps it isn’t really. Knells is a very small village. Just the pub and a church or two, a small row of shops, and a few streets of houses. But even so ...” He paused to bite into a ginger biscuit. “Gwen must have mentioned her cousin Edna to you.” He was now addressing Mrs. Malloy, who pursed her lips and furrowed her brow.

“I can’t say as I remember.”

“There’s no reason I’d put Edna in letters. And anyway Roxie and I haven’t been in touch for quite a while.” Gwen sounded a bit snappish.

“But, darling,” responded her husband, “Edna was the reason you came to Upper Thaxstead. It was her that sent you the clipping of my newspaper advertisement for a nanny. Surely you spoke of her to Roxie at the time, darling? I thought you two girls shared everything.”

“I think it’s coming back to me, Gwen.” Mrs. Malloy looked eager to cooperate. “You said your parents wouldn’t have agreed to your leaving home before your fortieth birthday if you hadn’t been going to live near a cousin. A nice sensible older woman, that didn’t believe in going to the pictures on Sundays or wearing gobs of makeup.”

“Not a very accurate description of Edna.” Barney chuckled as he again handed round the plate of biscuits. “From what I’ve heard she was a bit of a lass in her day. One good-for-nothing bloke after another before she married. But that’s how these things go, isn’t it? She wouldn’t be the first or the last to take a turn or two around the paddock before getting on the straight and narrow.”

He had now fixed me with an intent blue stare. “You’re going to the Old Rectory, you said. Lots of stories told about that house over the years. There was the vicar who dropped dead over his Sunday lunch. And his curate that went out with his new bride to work as a missionary in the Belgian Congo and came back a widower with a child. We’ve heard a good number of the stories from Edna, haven’t we, Gwen?”

“I’ve never encouraged her to gossip. And, anyway, she’s not the sort. She’s a decent hardworking woman, past or no past.”

“I’m still not sure,” I said, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice, “about the coincidence. What connection does this cousin have to the people I am going to visit in Knells?”

“Edna works for them.” Gwen could not have made the admission more reluctantly. “Has done for years. Long before I came to Upper Thaxstead.”

“Does light cleaning.” Barney appeared blithely oblivious to his wife’s glum expression. “And she cooks the odd meal. At least that’s how it works now with the three ladies. She says she was on the go from morning till night working for the vicar.”

“The one that fell dead in his Yorkshire pudding?” Mrs. Malloy displayed a flattering interest.

“No, his son-in-law. The widower with the daughter. He took over the parish when he got back from being a missionary and stayed on till his death—some years after his daughter ran off to London to be a ballet dancer. I think Edna said she later married a cousin, one of the several-times-removed sort.”

“She did,” I said.

“Oh, you know about her?” Gwen had perked up.

“She was my mother.” I sat there taking in the realization that she must have grown up in the Old Rectory, unless her father had sent her to live with relatives. I’d had no idea; not when she had taken me to visit the bridesmaids, or afterwards.

“A truly lovely person from the sound of her.” Mrs. Malloy’s pinky finger flagged as she sipped her tea, but the rest of her remained every bit the lady ensconced at the Ritz. “Mrs. H. and I were talking about her earlier, as we quite often do. Me being so much a part of the family—not at all like household help in the usual sense of the word. Now, as to whether the same can be said of your cousin Edna in her situation, I couldn’t say.” She smiled kindly at Gwen. “But I’m sure those three ladies Mrs. H. calls the bridesmaids are grateful for all she does for them.”

“Why call them the bridesmaids?” Barney asked the obvious.

“It’s how my mother referred to them. I’ve no idea why.”

“And it would be her mother who died in the Belgian Congo?”

“I never heard where or how my grandmother died. All I know is that her name was Sophia.” My voice was stiff. The same was becoming true of the rest of me from sitting on the hard chair. I put down my cup and glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nearly one in the afternoon. It was more than time I got out to the car and on my way.

“It’s so sad when people are snuffed out in their youth,” Gwen said, sounding quite emotional. “Am I right in thinking, Mrs. Haskell, that your own dear mother, the ballet dancer, has also passed on?”

“Yes. She died in an accident. She fell down some steps on her way into the underground at Kings Cross ...”

“Tragic.” Barney leaned forward in sympathy. “What happened? Some sort of dizzy spell?”

“Darling, I’m not so sure Mrs. Haskell wants us to go on talking about this. It must bring back all sorts of sad memories.” Gwen got to her feet, where she teetered for a few seconds on her high heels before clicking over to the piano. From the array of photographs in fancy frames she selected the largest and returned to my side. “Perhaps you’d like to see what the children look like, Mrs. Haskell. Fiddler and I are very proud of all three, as I am sure you can well imagine. Of course, they aren’t children anymore, as you can see.”

“A nice-looking group.”

“They all went on to Cambridge, just like their teachers said they would from their very first days of starting kindergarten. No one ever had to help them with their sums. John got three degrees and Nancy and Patricia both got two each and all the best kind.”

“Wonderful.” I did not let my eyes wander from the photographed faces of the sober-minded-looking Fiddlers to where Mrs. Malloy sat in her pale blue sweatshirt with its embarrassing proclamation that she too had been to Cambridge. No wonder Gwen had eyed her with an enigmatical expression on first spotting it.

“I just wore this for laughs.” Mrs. M.’s voice bounced across the room in a series of thuds. “My son George never went to no university, no more than I did. But he’s made a huge success of himself has that boy, as Mrs. H. could tell you. Got his own factory, he has, for making exercise equipment. Still, I’m not saying there isn’t a need for places like Oxford and Cambridge, so long as there’s them that can’t make it on their own after being at regular school all them years and getting extra tutoring to help them get jobs. Late bloomers is what I think they’re called. Not meaning your brood, of course.” She beamed at her hosts.

Silence flooded the room. Even Barney looked a trifle disenchanted with Mrs. Malloy. For a moment, I thought I might be taking her on to Knells with me after all, but husband and wife rallied commendably.

“Dear Roxie! Didn’t I say, Fiddler, that the Queen couldn’t impress her? That’s because she’s studied at the school of hard knocks.”

“One of the toughest learning institutions going, darling. Only the strongest survive and not many make it through in such wonderful shape.”

“All those nasty husbands.” Gwen managed to look truly pained. “And now there’s this Leonard Skinner, the worst of the lot from the sound of him, trying to weasel his way back into her life. We won’t have it, will we, Fiddler? Roxie can stay here where we can spoil her to bits, until she’s sure of being well rid of him. She’ll have breakfast in bed every morning and lovely afternoon naps until she feels like her old self again.”