The Widows Club

rid of him on my account. You’ll have to do so soon enough, won’t you, when that first baby finally puts in an appearance.”

“I-”

“There I go, interfering when I swore I wouldn’t. What I have to remember is you’re a different generation. Ben was my life’s work, not a hobby.”

I counted to thirty. Ben must not come home, weary from a hard day of lunching with Mr. A. E. Brady, to discover I had wasted no time in having words with his mother. Shoulders hunched as she sipped her tea, she looked like a victim of daughter-in-law abuse. And so she was. I got up from the table, went into the pantry, came out with a hot water bottle, filled it from the still steaming kettle, tightened the stopper, and wrapped it in a wad of tea towels.

“What are you doing, Giselle?”

“Seeing that you don’t catch pneumonia.” I plucked a cardigan off the hook in the alcove by the back door. Drat! It had a hole in one elbow. “We have a party planned for Friday to celebrate the opening of Ben’s restaurant, and you must be in top form as guest of honour. Off with those shoes! We won’t bother about your stockings. They can steam dry. There!” I planted her dinky feet on the tea towel hummock. “How’s that?”

“A bit too hot, but-”

“No buts; pop on Ben’s cardigan over your own.”

“You knitted it for him, I suppose. Never mind, I’ll give you some lessons on ribbing.” Her back was curved and her arms were thin as drumsticks.

“Drink your tea, Magdalene, eat a biscuit, and then I want to know where you have been hiding yourself since the twenty-seventh of November.”

“Well, perhaps a small one, if Ben made them. I can see you are the sort of strong-minded young woman in vogue nowadays. Of course that was clear from the start. Ben couldn’t have wanted to be married in the Church of England. It wasn’t as though his father and I hadn’t given him enough faiths to choose from. It may come as a surprise to you, but religion was never a difficulty for Eli and me. There’s a lot to be said for the convenience, when husband and wife each have a different day of rest. Nothing was a major problem until…”

“Until Mrs. Jarrod?” I poured more tea.

“A bit before her, I suppose.” My mother-in-law tucked the beret down over her ears. “I blamed it on the rift with Ben. I don’t know, but I came over very nervy last summer. I kept getting this nasty feeling that I was being watched.” Magdalene looked through me with her sparrow eyes. “I wasn’t safe anywhere, even in the house, with the curtains pulled. Least that’s what I thought. Dr. Padinsky (brother of my parish priest) even had to give me tablets to help me sleep.”

“Did they help?”

“Yes… and no.” Her cheeks went pink. “I’m not like you young people; I don’t like discussing intimate matters, but to wrap it up as cleanly as possible-a wife falling asleep the minute she gets into bed and staying that way all night long doesn’t help keep the night fires burning.”

“Quite.” I crossed my legs, decided doing so emphasised the masculinity of the pin-striped suit, uncrossed them and crossed my arms.

“So I don’t entirely blame Eli for succumbing when that woman came flaunting her pickled herring at him. What nearly killed me was him telling me there was nothing going on. All the while standing there”-her lips drew in so tight I thought they would pop-“with that smile spread all over his face.”

“I would have spread him out the nearest window! Aren’t we talking about the man who cannot break his vow never to speak to his son again because truth is all?”

Magdalene seemed to forget whose side she was on-hers or his. There was pride in her voice as she said crisply, “Never one lie from Eli in all those married years. If a customer asked were the oranges soft, he’d say, ‘Yes! You want tough oranges? Go to the supermarket.’ You won’t understand, Giselle, but the carrying on I could have forgiven, if he’d only been a man about it. I’d have fetched Father Padinsky round to give Eli a dressing down and have moved into the boxroom until he came to his senses.”

“Where did you go?”

Her skin turned dusty grey. Thrusting her chair back, she stood. “The Convent of St. Agnes, very pretty and secluded, near Little Hampton.” She was scooping up plates, piling one on top of the other.

I got up and tried to take the china from her. “Ben and his father surmised you had gone on a religious retreat.”

She was bundling the china and cutlery into the sink. “They were wrong. I wasn’t on retreat. I did housework in return for sanctuary. Yes, Giselle, you were right in thinking me reduced to a charwoman. I picked the convent in Little Hampton because I’d never visited there and I was afraid Eli could track me down if I went to one of my favourites.”

“You should have come immediately to us.”

She looked at me as if to say, C. of E. and not very bright. “And this the first place he’d look?”

Thank God Ben had inherited none of his father’s sneakiness.

“Magdalene, did you like the Convent of St. Agnes?”

“It wasn’t like Maryville or Abbey Wood, but… I… can’t deny that I did.” She pressed a hand on the table, then began piling the sugar bowl on top of the butter dish. “The grounds of the convent are lovely. A nice view of the sea, and-like here-secluded. I grew so secure; I even began to think of petitioning the Holy Father for a special dispensation so I could enter. I can read your face Giselle, you think I’m a bit old to be a novice. But it’s women your age who keep saying it’s never too late to start a career.”

“Oh, absolutely! But wouldn’t it be rather hard on Ben, having to call you Sister?”

Magdalene either didn’t hear me or pretended she didn’t. She was clattering the dishes into the sink, butter, sugar, and all, while I stood by looking helpless.

What had happened within the walls of St. Agnes to send my mother-in-law fleeing back to the outside world? Those earlier words of hers-“landing on your doorstep like a stray cat”-somehow did not have the ring of a woman who had awakened one morning and thought, Today I will pay my son and his new wife a visit.

“Did someone recommend that particular convent?”

“I’d recently overheard someone talking about it and thought it sounded nice. When the coach let me off at the gates, I got such a warm, peaceful feeling and I was welcomed so kindly. I never for the minute suspected…” Her small frame trembled. “It wasn’t until last evening that I made my dreadful discovery.”

“Which was?” I was drying off the (still full) butter dish.

“Eli always accuses me of hearing only what I wanted to hear…”

My mind whirled with blood-spattered possibilities. I had once seen a film where the nuns at a convent on the Cornish coast had been in reality devil worshippers. They’d also been men. I took a step closer to my mother-in-law, instinctively hoping to shield her from her memories. That film-with the Reverend Mother whipping off her wimple and mask to reveal a goat’s head and rocking back and forth in uproarious glee, had sent me crawling under the cinema seats. Those being my fat days, I had become wedged.

“You can’t mean that they-the nuns of St. Agnes-were from the other side?”

“Oh, but I do,” she replied fervently. “They were Protestants.”

16

… “Ellie, how did you and your mother-in-law fill the hours until Ben’s return?” Hyacinth inquired.

“I took her on a tour of the house. It may seem as though my emotions were on a pendulum, but by the time she’d done the white-glove test to every piece of furniture in her path, I was ready to get me to a convent.”

“Were you able to find a bedroom to suit?” Primrose patted my hand.

“Magdalene insisted on one of the turret rooms, in fact, the one from which Freddy had threatened to leap. She commented several times on the thickness of the door, the sturdiness of the iron bolt, and the view from the