“If I’m upsetting you, I’m sorry.” Mrs. M. showed
her contrition by removing my empty glass and filling it with orange juice. “Here, take this to steady your nerves. If you must know, the real reason I can’t stand the woman is the way she treats you. Think about it! She wouldn’t even come to your wedding.”
“I thought at the time it was because I was Church of England. But now I realize the ceremony would have brought back too many memories of the wedding she never had.”
“She never appreciates a
thing
you do.” Mrs. Malloy shook her two-tone head. “Lord knows you’ve got your faults, Mrs. H., but do you ever hear me complain?”
“Never,” I lied.
“The woman’s only happy when she’s miserable! So she should be over the moon the way things turned out. Mark my words, she’ll be crocheting herself a hair shirt before this day is over.”
“We have to make allowances.” I took a sip of orange juice and felt stronger.
“There’s no talking to you.” Mrs. Malloy wiped her hands off on the nearest dishtowel. “So don’t come crying to me when you’re worn to a frazzle and Mr. H. has followed in his father’s footsteps and left you for a woman who doesn’t have circles under her eyes. Nipped off to work in a hurry this morning, didn’t he?”
“There was an emergency at the restaurant.”
“A likely story.”
“He was upset at having to take my car and leave me at the mercy of the buses. As soon as he has a free moment Ben is going over to the Dark Horse to have a talk with his father about patching things up all around.”
“Or you’ll have your mother-in-law with you for the rest of your life. For it’ll be you who goes first, see if it isn’t! By the bye, where is Mrs. Sunshine, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
“Upstairs, giving the twins their baths. She said she
would take over that job in future along with giving them their religious instruction and—”
I broke off when a
rat-tat-tat
came at the garden door and a horribly distorted face peered through the pebbled glass.
“No need to jump out of your skin,” Mrs. Malloy scolded. “It’ll be that Freddy come to cadge breakfast.”
Brightening considerably, I went to open up. My cousin would listen to my tale of woe, make his usual ribald comments, and I would get things back in proportion. Only one problem! The man on the step wasn’t Freddy. He was a neat little man with hair parted down the middle and a pair of owlish glasses.
A new milkman perhaps? Caught off balance by this further disruption in the cosmic order, to say nothing of being caught in my bare feet and dressing gown, my smile may have promised more than I intended. Say, six pints a day—instead of the usual four.
“Mrs. Haskell?”
“Yes!” A glance at his pinstripe suit forced me to reevaluate his profession.
“I am Peter Savage.”
“You’re selling something?”
“Unfortunately not.” He was studying me as if I were a painting in the Louvre.
“Then who …?”
“I’m a vagrant,” he replied, very much in the way that someone might have announced he was a bank manager.
On closer inspection, I saw that Peter Savage’s suit could have done with a pressing and he was wearing one navy sock and one grey with brown shoes, but he was clean-shaven and his teeth were as white as the kitchen sink. Humanity demanded that I ask him in and provide a hearty breakfast. Common sense insisted I do nothing of the sort. Merlin’s Court was set well back from the road, a good ten minutes’ walk from its nearest neighbour, the vicarage. And upstairs I had two babies, a mother-in-law, and Jonas, who would unhesitatingly
defend my honour, to the death, with an umbrella taken from the hall stand.
“I’m looking for odd jobs.”
“Are you?” I said.
“Your cousin Freddy Flatts kindly provided me with a letter of recommendation.” Mr. Savage dug a hand into his pinstripe pocket and produced a folded sheet of paper.
“I’ll bet my bloomers it’s a forgery,” contributed Mrs. Malloy from the rear. But I recognized Freddy’s writing when I unfolded the note, which did indeed ask me to extend the man a helping hand.
“Please come in.” Beckoning him inside, I closed the door, racking my brains for something for him to do.
“I could mow the lawn,” he suggested.
“Sorry,” I said, knowing Jonas would pack his suitcase if I let anyone touch his lawn mower. “We’re letting the grass grow.”
“I’m good at windows.”
Perfect, I thought. And then remembered that Mr. Watkins, the window cleaner, was due to come that very morning. And from what he had told me last time, Mr. Watkins had already lost Lady Kitty Pomeroy as a client on account of her fault-finding.
“If he really wants to make himself useful”—Mrs. Malloy sized up the applicant through narrowed rainbow lids—“he could murder your mother-in-law, Mrs. H. I’m sure you’d pay handsomely.”
“Always one for her little joke,” I told Mr. Savage. “Why don’t you sit down and have some breakfast before we plan your workday?”
“How kind you are!” He might have been addressing an angel floating down from heaven as he seated himself on a chair, feet together, hands neatly folded in front of him on the table. “Porridge will do very nicely, with perhaps a couple of rashers of bacon to follow. Only one sausage, and the egg not too well done, thank you so very much.”
“Fried bread and tomato?” Mrs. Malloy’s voice was sweeter than a bowl full of sugar.
“I mustn’t be a bother.”
“What, you? Never!”
Bang
went the frying pan on the stove,
slap
went the bacon onto the working surface,
crack
went a couple of eggs into a bowl. Talk about actions speaking louder than words. Mrs. M. was telling me in no uncertain terms to goof off, take a pew, rest my feet while someone else did the work. In order not to feel like a complete parasite, I smoothed out the tablecloth and laid out the cutlery before sitting down across from Mr. Savage.
“I suppose you’ll want orange juice?” Mrs. M. bumped the refrigerator door shut with her rump and came at us with the glass jug.
The gentleman cocked his head. “Is it fresh squeezed?”
“I stomped the fruit with me own bare feet”
Plonk
went the jug in the middle of the table; a tidal wave of juice foamed over the lip and Mr. Savage nervously gripped the arms of his chair.
“Thank you, Mrs. Malloy.” I darted her a look as she returned to her frying pan, which was spitting and hissing as if flaming mad.
“So how do you know Freddy?” I asked our guest.
“We met in the course of my business, Mrs. Haskell.”
“You mean before …?”
“Oh, no! In my former life I was a schoolmaster living in Harold Wood, Essex, and I don’t know that your cousin was ever in that vicinity. We struck up a friendship a little over a month ago when I was busking—”
“What?”
He removed his glasses to polish them with his serviette. “Doing my song-and-dance act outside the bus station. Freddy stopped to toss some change in my cap. He told me I sounded as good as the original recording artist.”
“A nice compliment.”
“Not really.” Mr. Savage rearranged his knife and fork. “He had spotted me as a fraud. And I trust that you, who are so beaut—benevolent, will not think too badly of me. I had, you see, a radio in my pocket and was lip-syncing.”
“That must have taken a certain skill.”
“Only courage, in standing up to the hoots and hollers whenever I cut from a song for a late-breaking news bulletin, or an advert for fish fingers. But your cousin couldn’t have been nicer. He agreed to give me singing and guitar lessons.”
“Here’s something to keep your vocal cords going!” Mrs. Malloy planted a steaming plate in front of him. The bacon was pink in the middle and golden around the edges. The fried egg resembled a little mobcap, white and puffy with a pretty edging of lace, the fried bread was done to a golden turn, and the tomato sent up little rosy wisps of steam. When my plate arrived—Mrs. Malloy is the old-fashioned sort who believes in ladies last—I would have been tempted to offer her a job if she hadn’t already worked for me.
“You forgot the sausage.” Mr. Savage tempered this criticism with a forgiving smile. “Never mind. I can fill up on toast if you’d be kind enough to make some. And lemon marmalade, if you please. My mother made me eat orange marmalade as a child, and I’ve never liked it.”
“Will there be anything else?” Mrs. M.’s voice came down on his head with the force of a frying pan.
“I think we are ready for tea, aren’t we, Mrs. Haskell?” From the sound of him, we might have been an old married couple sitting in a tea shop with our menus propped up against the sugar bowl and our shopping bags blocking the aisle.
“Here’s the pot.” Mrs. Malloy plonked that down, complete with one of Mum’s crocheted cozies. “I’ll let you pour your own! I’m off to relax for half an hour, scrubbing the bath.”
“She’s one in a million,” I said, absently doing up the top button of my dressing gown as the hall door slammed with such force it practically blew the tablecloth over our heads.
“As is your cousin Freddy.” Mr. Savage polished off the last grease spot on his plate and uttered no more than a token protest when I offered to trade him my full platter.
“Freddy understood completely when I told him I had always hated teaching arithmetic to children who shot spitballs at me and set off stink bombs in the classroom, and how one day, just like that, I decided to pack it in, pack my bags, and set off to follow my dream of becoming a rock star. I planned to hitch rides, but realized after the first ribald toot that a hitchhiker’s thumb, like a green one, is something you either have or you don’t. So I hopped on a bus, took it as far as it went, got on another, and ended up in of all places Chitterton Fells.”
“Do you have a family, Mr. Savage?”
“My mother.” He sliced into my tomato, sending up spurts of red. “There’s no denying I took the coward’s way out in leaving a note on the mantelpiece and creeping out of the house at dead of night. But you’d have to know Mother. She still walked me to school every morning and picked me up afterwards.”
“A little overprotective” was all I could say.
“She made me hand over my paycheque and gave me just enough pocket money for essentials.”
“So you weren’t able to bring much cash with you.”
“I thought I was headed for fame and fortune, but since my radio scam was uncovered I haven’t picked up enough loose change to buy new strings for my guitar, let alone eat enough to get my daily allowance of vitamins and minerals. So this morning I came to see Freddy and he was so kind as to send me here. But when he described you, I never guessed, never dreamed that you would be such a vision of … kindness.
Dammit!” Mr. Savage blushed and washed out his mouth with tea. “I’m stammering like a sixteen-year-old. But that’s the way I feel sometimes—as if my whole life is opening up for me. Did I tell you that your cousin has offered to give me music lessons so I can get back on the road?”
“For a lifetime cut of the take, I suppose.”
“He told me he is himself a musician and had played with several reputable rock groups.”
“Did he mention that they had all gone under?”
“What’s that?” His expression put me in mind of Abbey’s and Tam’s when I went to shut off the nursery light.
“I said”—I cleared my throat—“that they were all from Down Under. Has my cousin offered to put you up at the cottage?”
“He talked about it, but very kindly pointed out my practicing would keep him awake at night. He suggested I might be more comfortable in the rooms over the old stable.”
What could I do but assure him he was most welcome and hope that Ben wouldn’t have my head when he got home?
Mr. Savage’s spectacles glistened. I swear there were tears in the grey eyes that matched his suit when he said, “I will serenade you in the very first song of my own composition.”
“That would be nice.” Ben had once written a soup recipe for me, which had been lovely in its way.
“It will be a paean to your nobility of spirit and bounteous benevolence.” Mr. Savage’s tears were burned off by the radiance of his smile. He reached across the table for my hand and would perhaps have raised it to his lips if the table had been shorter or his arm longer. My fingers had only so much stretch.
Pop
went my dressing gown seams.
Ping
went a couple of buttons across the room. The chill I experienced when this garment parted down the middle was unsettling, but it was nothing to the icy quiver that seized me when
I looked up to see my mother-in-law standing in the doorway.
“Don’t let me interrupt you, Ellie.” She forced a brave smile even as she sagged against the wall. “And don’t worry that I will say a word about your goings-on to my poor son. Doesn’t he have enough to suffer with his father deserting him?”
How could I come across as anything but fast when I informed Mum that my acquaintance with Mr. Savage was barely an hour old and he followed up this unwise confession with the news that I had invited him to move in? It being expedient to get rid of the man, I sent him off to inspect his quarters, and the moment the garden door closed on him I set about clarifying matters with my mother-in-law.
“The man was living at the bus shelter.”
“I’d rather not know all the gory details.” Mum tottered to a chair and covered her face with her hands.
“He will be staying only until he becomes a successful rock star.”
“This is all my fault! The sins of the mother shall be visited upon the child.”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” I soothed, dragging a chair around to sit beside her. “I know things look bleak at the moment, but you and Dad have thirty-eight years invested in each other.”
“Don’t mention that man’s name to me.”
“Mum, he went for a swim—”
“An
illicit
swim.”
“Agreed! But he didn’t go to bed with Tricks.” I tried to put my arm around her, but she flinched as if struck. Eyes bright with tears, she stared through me as if I were a pane of glass.
“I should have listened to my parents when they begged me not to marry Elijah.”
I started to say that she
had
listened, that she
hadn’t
married him, and that
this
was the root of the entire problem, but I bit down on the words.