for you?” The mask made his voice sound like it was being pressed through a sieve.
I slid down in the bed and folded my hands piously over my breast. “Ob course, darling.” No need to tell him that I had already figured that my illness should be good for a three-pound loss.
“Good, because I’ve noticed your clothes are beginning to hang on you.”
A lifelong ambition fulfilled!
“They’b stretched in the wash.”
He touched my hair. “Want a hot water bottle or would you rather I tucked Tobias in at your feet?”
“I don’t want him in here in cabse he catches it.”
“A mouse?”
“Silly-my colb.” Since Mr. Daffy and the train, I hadn’t enjoyed mouse jokes.
Ben glanced at his watch and moved my water jug a little closer. “Good thing this is one of Mrs. Malloy’s days. She can minister to your needs.”
His footsteps died away; the house settled into silence. Throwing off the blankets, I lurched over to the window, closed it, and pulled the curtains tight. Had Ben locked the garden door? I had been nagging at him about that lately. Was that pounding coming from inside my head or downstairs? I got back in bed and pulled the covers up to my poor nose. A fire would have been cosy. Nine o’clock said the bedside clock; time for Roxie to arrive and always time for Tobias to be on the scavenge.
At the end of our month’s trial period, Roxie had summoned me to the kitchen for her decision. Would she say the working conditions at Merlin’s Court weren’t up to snuff? After pouring us each a glass of gin from the supplies bag (wonderful stuff for buffing chrome and giving glass a sparkle), she had made her portentous pronouncement. The gossips could stop cackling and start laying eggs. She had observed Mr. H. was a decent gentlemen, as men went, except when one of his cooking experiments failed.
The buzzing in my ears became the revving of the Hoover outside my bedroom. The door pushed open and Roxie poked in her black and white head, bellowing over the motor.
“Hangover, Mrs. H.?”
Easing up on my elbows, I fetched forth a wan smile. “I gob a bit ob a colb.”
“So’ve I, but some of us have to stay on our feet. Anything I can get you? A scudsy book? Guinness and milk?”
“I dob’t-” Throwing a tissue over my face, I surrendered to a sneeze that rocked the bed.
“Don’t do to just lie down and die, you know. I had me appendix out, and I-” An explosion of annoyance. Her red butterfly mouth stretched into a shout and her brows rose into inverted commas above the very violet lids. “There goes the Hoover! Making off down the landing like a bleeding robot! Best catch it before it makes a break for the stairs.” Her muffled voice came back to me. “On the subject of stairs, Mrs. H., three times I have sprained me wrist polishing that loose bannister and I don’t have to tell you it’s against union regulations for me to work under such conditions.”
To my knowledge the only union of which Roxie was a member was the Mother’s Union. She had a few words to say on the subject of its sister organisation when she returned at 11:00 A.M. to plump up my pillows and spill water between my parched lips.
“Her Graciousness, Mrs. Amelia Bottomly, rang. Wants to fix a date for Mr. H. to do the cookery lesson for The Hearthside Guild.”
“I dob’t knowb when Ben could do it.”
“Don’t worry your woolly head. I swung me pencil over the calendar by the phone, and when it stopped moving, I marked the spot. Third Saturday in May. Twelve noon in the church hall. A word from the wise, Mrs. H. When you’ve been married as often as me, you’ll know we don’t ask men if they can spare the time. We tell ’em. Put on your trousers. Be there.”
That was all very well! My darling could be run off his feet, whipping up eggs here, pounding pastry there. The date in question was only three weeks away and Abigail’s premiere a week today; our calendar would begin to look used. It had begun to dawn on me recently that Ben and I had not become swept up in the social whirl as a couple. We were either together at home or he was out with Freddy.
“How about something to read?” Roxie reached into the pocket of her plum synthetic dress with the sequined neckline and brought out a paperback book. “Hoped I’d get to put me feet up and have a little wallow with me elevenses. But, no rest for the wicked.” From the reek of Eau de Lily of the Valley on Roxie’s breath I suspected she had already had elevenses. “Nothing like a corpse, I always say, to lift the spirits.”
“Ib’s a thriller, then?” A sneeze prevented my taking the book.
“I wouldn’t be talking about the corpse de bally, would I?” Roxie plopped down on the bed, making my lungs rattle, and lit up a fag. “I won’t spoil it for you, Mrs. H., but there’s this Victorian kitchen maid named Ethel who chops up the young master of the house on account of him making advances and turns him into chutney. Pots and pots of him. You’d think the old Earl and his Mrs. would be worried about sonny-boy, wouldn’t you? Not on your life- they think he’s gone foxhunting or wenching-and been delayed, but they’re delighted with Ethel, what with her working overtime.” Roxie dropped ash on the carpet and rubbed it in with her foot.
“What utter rubbish!” Contemptuously, I blew my nose.
“I didn’t say it was Shakespeare, Mrs. H.” Mrs. Malloy ruffled up like a chicken. “But who reads Shakespeare unless they’re made to? Don’t see chaps strap-hanging with their eyes glued to his stuff on the train, do you?” Roxie stomped across the room, tossed the cigarette in the grate, flung open the maroon velvet curtains, did a half turn, then with deliberation pulled wide her apron pocket to plop in the book.
“Thought you might be interested because it’s written by Mary Birdsong-otherwise known as Edwin Digby-your neighbor and a person with which I do have a nodding acquaintance through seeing him”-she heaved a breath-“at The Dark Horse of an evening.”
I took the book. One does have a moral obligation to support local talent.
Roxie was right.
“Hello, Ellie.” His was the tentative smile of the door-to-door salesman. Social or professional visit, I wasn’t pleased. No time to change from my flannel nightgown into something with rosebuds.
When ill at ease, attack. “Hello, doctor. I must be sicker than I realised-I don’t remember sending for you.”
“Your husband”-the doctor fussed around in the bag-“felt I should check you over. Ah, yes, here comes Mrs. Malloy. Would you like her to remain?”
I wasn’t going to like
“Could be worse, Mrs. H.” Roxie shuffled the mop around the bed. “Master could have sent for Dr. Bordeaux.”
“Open wide. Say, ‘Ah’!”
I hate surprises unless they have bows on them.
“Take a deep breath, please.”
The last straw would be if I lost my voice before Ben got home.
Refolding his stethoscope, Dr. Melrose stood flapping it around in his hands.
Roxie said with great relish, “Give it to us straight, Doc. Will this prove fatal? Because if so, I’ll think about finding meself another job.”
Dr. Melrose shook his head and paced. “No need for alarm, I assure you.”
Roxie struggled to conceal her disappointment.
“Ellie, I’ll prescribe something for the cold, but more important, I want you on a strict diet.”
His words came pretty close to proving fatal for him as well as me. Was nothing I had done in the service of starvation enough?
“You are to eat three well-balanced, man-sized meals a day, take two milky drinks and…”
That buzzing in my ears wasn’t just the colb, it was the giddiness of relief and shock. I liked Dr. Melrose (as much as I could like any man who knew as much as he about my inner workings), but I had never suspected he had
