Nine o’clock saw us prominently displayed between two Grecian pillars under the diamante sparkle of the dining room chandelier. Hide as I might behind my napkin, I knew that everyone was staring at us. Far from keeping a low profile, Ben ordered in French off an English menu. The waiter, a man with black patent leather hair, vanished through the archway to fetch porridge for Ben and a boiled egg for me.
Leaning back in his chair, Ben tapped a spoon on the table. “Ellie, sweetheart, did you have to make such a big deal about wanting a small egg? I thought you were going to ask the poor man to weigh it.”
I came out from my napkin. “To me it is a big deal. A calorie saved-”
“Darling, are you becoming a little fanatical? You’re forever poring over colour pages in magazines, planning what not to eat for lunch and dinner.”
“That’s a gross exaggeration.” I smiled serenely for the benefit of the gawkers. “But I do have to keep one step ahead of the enemy.”
“How? By getting down to zero calories a day?”
“Detachment. I don’t look at what I am eating. I don’t think about it. Aromas still give me some problems, but I am working on that area. Aren’t you proud of me, darling?”
His smile looked a bit frayed. “Of course, but a man
I was about to ask if this meant he wasn’t going to give Mandy & Mindy Plumbers a chance to bid, but remembered those wise words in chapter four of
The waiter appeared at my side. Blast! This egg had to be at least five and a half inches around the fattest part of the circumference.
Ben studied the bowl placed before him. “This porridge looks unpleasantly damp.”
“I believe, sir, that is a feature of porridge,” the waiter replied.
Ben raised his spoon and sniffed the contents like a wine cork. “Is it also a feature of porridge to be thickened with spray starch?”
“Perhaps, sir, you wish to accompany me to the kitchen where you may advise our chef, newly lured from Windsor Castle, on how to prepare
I sank in my chair. People were coiled around the marble pillars, hands cupped to their ears. Ben would laugh, of course; he would explain to the waiter that he had been joking. Wrong! Instead, he patted my hand, spouted off something about professional integrity, said he would only be a minute and followed the waiter through a pair of swinging doors. I was left twisting my napkin into a rope and smiling with false conviviality at my egg. Was this what the books meant about The Morning After?
I forgave him because wives do. I had believed that marriage was like baptism. Sin was shed during the ceremony. Ben the fiance had been wonderful; Ben the husband would be a paragon. No more reading during meals, no more monologues on the quiche objective. No more laughing in the wrong place at my jokes. As I waited for him to come back to me, I readjusted my thinking. Some faults would remain, but I would begin to appreciate them. I hitched up my smile and stirred my coffee one time, two times… sixty-seven, sixty-eight times…
Because his parents’ situation was still up in the air, when Ben rejoined me, we decided to return that day to Merlin’s Court. And really I didn’t mind. I felt the house was missing us, wanting us back. Dorcas and Jonas probably already had the kettle on. But first things first. We left our luggage in the Hostelry lobby and took a bus to Tottenham. As we jostled off the bus behind a girl in rickety high heels-a cigarette dangling from one hand, a pushchair and toddler from the other-some of yesterday’s unease concerning my mother-in-law returned.
To be seventy years old and have one’s marriage fall apart, what could be worse than that? Even widowhood might be preferable. This woman had brought Ben into the world. She had bathed him when he was little, hitched up his short trousers, and she most assuredly would never have smacked his thumb out of his mouth as the girl was doing while she jerked the pushchair out into the street. In twisting round to glare at her, I missed my footing and my shoe flew off. Ben caught it and, like Prince Charming, bent to put it on for me, but found the heel had twisted off. While he set to fixing it, I stood like a flamingo as men and women scuttled past us, their heads bent against the snappish wind, pinpricked by rain.
“Almost got it.” Ben was tapping the heel down with its mate from the other shoe.
Stepping out of the way of oncoming pedestrians, I noticed a man leaning against the sooty brick wall of Haskell’s Fruit & Veg. He was thirtyish, had no neck, long hair, and a pimply face. He wore an upturned raincoat and was picking his teeth with his little finger. The nasty part was that his eyes were drilling into me. Even nastier, I thought I recognised him. If he wasn’t the man who had stood on the platform as we waited for the train to leave Chitterton Station yesterday, then he was his double. I was about to say something to Ben but as he handed me my shoe, a woman collided with us.
“Ever so sorry, loves.” She was tall and had that sticky, rust-coloured hair which looks as though it hasn’t been properly rinsed after a tint. She wore skintight jeans, a baby-pink sweater outlining twin pyramid bosoms, and she positively rattled with gold chains. The Pyrex dish she carried did not go with the rest of her, and she was staring at us with a blend of calculation and discomfort that seemed disproportionate to the collision.
“Why, Mrs. Jarrod!” Ben bared his white teeth and bit out the words. “Making sure Dad doesn’t skip any meals, I see.”
The Raincoat Man had disappeared.
10
… “A tall woman, you say.” Hyacinth laid down the green notebook. “Brash but good-natured, I would imagine. The sort who offers to clean your windows along with hers and thrusts half an apple pie at you whether you want it or not.”
“Very pushy,” I agreed. “She shoved a handful of pounds sterling at me and said to buy something pretty as a wedding present-a china poodle for the front window. Ben was livid.”
“Speaking of unattractive objects,” said Hyacinth, “did you mention the man in the raincoat to Bentley or his father?”
“No. He looked so much a cross between a gangster and a seedy private eye I did wonder if he might be a plainclothes detective. But I talked myself out of that idea. It was too unsettling. I persuaded myself that the man at Chitterton Station and the one outside the shop could not be one and the same…
We caught the early afternoon train home. Chugging along I sported a stiff upper lip, in conjunction with the stiff neck I was developing from the open window. As Ben slept, I contemplated the way the wind tousled his black hair. I thought about my missing mother-in-law and how brave Poppa had been that morning. I thought a little about Mr. Vernon Daffy and his narrow escape from certain death. But mostly I thought of home, waiting for my love and me-Merlin’s Court-safe, sane, unchanging.
I sat at the scrubbed wood kitchen table, Tobias on my lap, a smile stapled to my cheeks. The wheat-sheaf patterned wallpaper with its border of wild flowers blurred. The quarry tile turned chill beneath my feet. For Dorcas and Jonas had greeted Ben and me with the news that they were leaving Merlin’s Court. I was to be deserted. Had I been an old reprobate, I would have cut them both out of my will.
“Chicago, you say!”
“Knew you’d be pleased as punch.” Dorcas clapped me on the back.
Jonas stuck his thumbs under his braces and released them with a snap. “You’ll miss us. But t’is only temporary. Doesn’t do to get into a rut at my time of life.”
