the hollow silence.
“Carson Grant described Wisteria’s new hair as moonlight spilling into the dark places of his soul. Some men just have the knack of making a woman feel good about herself. You need to think about that, Mr. H, instead of fretting that you’ve made a fool of yourself. And,” she had to go and add, “your wife and me.”
“Now we’re here,” I said quickly-for fear Ben would shoot the car into reverse taking us back onto the road to nowhere, “I’ll get out and ask for directions to the nearest town.”
“Coming with you.” Sounds of Mrs. Malloy opening her car door. “You’ll need my arm to hold on to, Mrs. H, or if I know tuppence you’ll get yourself lost before putting one foot in front of the other. Stay put when you’re out and I’ll come and get you.” She is a woman who can’t bear to be left out of anything, however small, which is not to minimize her genuine, if often disgruntled, concern for my welfare. What I didn’t put much faith in were the four- inch heels she invariably wore except (possibly) to bed.
“No, you stay by your door,” I responded firmly, and on the wave of Ben’s dejected sigh exited the car, to be met as I rounded the bonnet by his fog-bulked presence. Given the feeling of standing in damp fur, it was a relief to feel his hand cover mine. Mother Nature, having eased up on us, was back to demonstrating how quickly and thickly she could knit up a gray angora blanket. The van had been absorbed into the mix of plain and pearl, and it was with relief that I felt someone speaking with Mrs. Malloy’s voice bump into my side.
“A good thing my vision has always been so good, Mrs. H!”
This was a surprise to me; she had always claimed the opposite when I would casually mention the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. But there are times when it doesn’t do to nitpick.
“I can see the outline of steps going up the building. And those blobs moving up them have to be the people that was in the van. There!” If she pointed, I couldn’t see her hand. “We just need to move straight ahead. Do you have hold of Mr. H?”
“His hand, I don’t know if the rest of him is tagging along. Are you there, darling?”
A response came in the form of a grunt.
We shuffled forward… or it was to be hoped that was the direction we were taking. I felt myself becoming increasingly disorientated until my foot touched an impediment that suggested we had reached the bottom step. Galvanized by presumably reaching this same conclusion, Ben reclaimed full use of his voice.
“Ellie,” he said with irritable vigor, “do not make excuses for the situation by complaining that the drive should have been better posted. And for God’s sake don’t agree to a cup of tea if they offer. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
“Not getting good vibes from the place?” Mrs. Malloy snorted dismissively as she tugged us onward and upward. “Some of us is too suggestible, is what I say. Seen in a good light it’ll be just another stately home… with a history of course, that I suppose could include murder and mayhem given its age.”
“We don’t know anything about its age,” Ben rebutted.
Not true, I thought with a lack of wifely loyalty. My impression during that thinning of the fog had been of eighteenth-century construction. Another sobering thought emerged. Were we shuffling up the steps of one of England’s stately homes? Would we be required to purchase tickets before requesting information of the admittance person in braided uniform? Excitement stirred. My work as in interior designer was often sparked by seeing how the upper crust lived. If as Mrs. Malloy had suggested we’d been preceded up the steps-which were certainly of a length to suggest awaiting grandeur-by the person (or people) from the van, it seemed likely they were already inside by now.
An eerie silence enveloped us along with the fog, broken only by the intermittent wheeze of our collective breathing and the tentative tap-tapping of Mrs. Malloy’s high heels. The damp chill had worked its way within my light jacket and it was a relief when my extended hand touched a flat wooden surface. Surely a door! Sir Edmund Hillary could not have felt greater triumph when stumbling to the top of Everest. Not to belittle his achievement in accomplishing his scenic hike, in the pleasant month of June 1953 all that was then required of him was to bask in the moment with his fellow ascender and plant the triumphal flag before nipping back down for a cup of cocoa. Far more taxing to my mind was the need to locate either a knocker or a bell.
“You know what I think,” gasped Mrs. Malloy over my shoulder, “it’ll turn out this isn’t an imposing house like I could feel properly at home in, but a bloody great block of flats. Talk about disappointing, Mr. H!”
I stood immobile-not only because I had been counting on touring a gallery of ancestral portraits after sipping tea from priceless Sevres cups in the formal salon, but also due to the daunting prospect of pressing any number of bells before making contact with a static voice inquiring after our bona fides in palpable fear that we were either bill collectors or the police. Whether Ben would have suggested turning tail must forever remain questionable because a sound reminiscent of Big Ben shredded the gauzy mantle of gray tranquility.
“Must have hit the buzzer with me knee,” came Mrs. Malloy’s voice. “It’s this reckless leg syndrome I’ve been plagued with ever since I heard about it on the telly.”
“Restless,” I corrected.
“Does it matter?” Ben snapped.
We might have gone on to discuss other medical ailments if the door had not opened inward with a grotesque creak to reveal a rectangle of yellowish light surrounding a figure, rather in the manner of a card depicting the image of a saint proffering hope of succor to all who wander parched and weary upon life’s barren plain.
“I’d a feeling there was more of you outside,” said a male voice that sounded more cockney than saintly, as the three of us scuffled an entrance accompanied by some elbowing in the ribs and trampling on each other’s feet. “Didn’t seem likely to me and Mrs. Foot that there’d only be them two that just arrived.”
Did a fog routinely bring in a stream of lost souls? I should of course have focused on what the man continued to say, but there was the distraction of Ben’s rigid discomfort and Mrs. Malloy’s jabbing me in the side as she adjusted her hat, which would have been a bit overdone even for Ascot. Added to which I am one of those shallow types as much drawn to the environments into which I find myself catapulted as to those who provide admittance. Rather than wondering if the man was the home owner and who were Mrs. Foot and
A snatch of a maudlin song warbled years ago by a greataunt infiltrated my head, something along the lyrics of:
One thing was clear. Either I had mistaken the exterior of the building as eighteenth century or this hall dated back to an earlier part of a revamped structure. Tudor? No, I thought, undoubtedly doing some wishful thinking… Lancastrian or even further back to Plantagenet times. The name Geoffrey of Anjou filtered back to me from childhood history lessons, but I chose to indulge myself with the image of Henry II sporting a sprig of yellow broom tucked into his crown. By the time Mrs. Malloy pointed out that I was standing there gawking, the number of living persons in hall had dwindled by one.
“I expect you hurt his feelings by not listening to a word he said.” She stood majestically, smoothing down the front of the emerald green taffeta jacket to which were pinned enough sparkling brooches to ransom half the nobility of Europe. Clearly she wasn’t speaking about Ben, who was pacing on the spot, but in recognition of my stupid look she clarified for me. “Him as let us in, and I’d have thought you’d have thrilled to every syllable, Mrs. H!”
“Who is he and what did I miss?”
“Mr. Plunket.”
“That’s his name?” Call me persnickety, but as a sobriquet for a member of the landed gentry this one left something to be desired.
