The Widows Club

Surprise! Magdalene was back.

Another couple moved to the top of the stairs. And another. Would anyone notice if I kicked off my shoes? “So pleased you could come… Yes, there is a room for coats at the end of the hall…”

My voice just went down the wrong way. Coming toward us was Vanessa, her mink-clad body entwined around Rowland Foxworth’s arm. He surely was horribly embarrassed. What man wouldn’t be? Family decency had decreed I invite my relations, but only she had taken the embossed white card literally.

“Darling Ellie!” She closed in, her eyelashes brushing my face. “You look ravishing. I could count every one of your ribs from downstairs. Can you believe the change, Rowland?”

Instantly I gained a stone. A good thing I was not bothered about what Rowland thought of my feminine appeal. A married-happily married-woman doesn’t need that kind of reassurance; besides, I had more important things on my mind. Magdalene was gone again.

Rowland patted his pockets for his pipe, dislodging (unintentionally?) Vanessa’s hold on him.

He turned to her. “Ellie never changes in my eyes.”

An intake of breath. Was it mine or Vanessa’s?

“How’s Ben?” Absently Rowland touched a hand to his silver hair. Vanessa studied her fingernails. Magdalene’s face wavered at my left. I introduced her to Rowland. Those grey eyes of his, that beautiful mellow voice, touched me physically. I experienced, to my eternal shame, a thrill of adulterous pleasure, in addition to the lesser sin of cousinly conquest.

“Quite a pretty girl.” Magdalene squinted for a better look as Vanessa and Rowland passed down the hallway. “A bit like Angelica Brady. This one’s your cousin, you say? Did Ben meet her before or after you and he had settled things?”

7:15 P.M. The party was a smashing success. Cigarette smoke beclouded the air, as here and there someone emphasised the point in a witty monologue with a fiery tip. Freddy kept popping into the room to take little bows. With his hair up and under his chef’s hat, he looked borderline respectable. From all sectors of the room came accolades about the food.

Freddy was doing a backbend to hear what Gladys Thorn was saying to Millicent Parsnip about the flaming cheese. Would someone please mention Ben’s name! I was miserable that he wasn’t the focal force here this evening, wretched about the rift between us, guilty that things had gone well without him, angry that I should feel guilty when I already had enough on my plate, and-this is the bad part-fully aware that the aforementioned guilt was an emotional blanket caused by the knowledge that I had looked upon the Reverend Rowland Foxworth with lust aforethought. That the experience lasted a scant fifty seconds was no consolation. I had eternally dishonoured my wedding vows.

Vanessa glided up to me and said we ought to have a little talk on a subject whereof she was an expert and I a beginner-men.

“You’ll destroy your marriage, Ellie, if you don’t stop ogling Rowland in public. And I’d hate to see you lose Ben. One doesn’t meet men like him every day-er-at escort services.”

She glided off to stand near the windows, best profile on view. I stopped grinding my teeth, as I realised how long it had been since I’d opened up a magazine and had to close it on her face.

Rowland was at the punch bowl next to Charles Delacorte, who was picking his way through the sandwiches. I crossed the room toward Amelia Bottomly and Millicent Parsnip. I could not look at Rowland without seeing into my soul and knowing that, despite my sense of shame, I didn’t want Vanessa or any woman to have him. Rowland must keep only unto me, his heart a shrine to my unattainability. It was devastating to discover, at twenty-eight, that one was a low woman.

7:30 P.M. I sat by the desk in the office, holding the phone, listening to the brrp-brrrp. No answer. Common sense told me that if Ben had suffered a relapse, Eli would have telephoned. But guilt had a louder voice than sense. It told me I was being punished. Something was wrong.

7:35 P.M. The party hummed along. The smoke was making me feel sick. I went the long way around Vanessa to the windows, intent on opening one, but Magdalene, in the midst of talking animatedly to Sidney, was apparently struck by the same idea. She parted the curtains, reached for the latch, then froze. What was it? An attack of some sort? Arthritis, perhaps.

“Ellie, dear”-Sidney gripped my arm as I started after Magdalene-“I want you to be one of my first customers to know that my life is suddenly in bloom. I’m floating on air. Bound to crash sometime, but might as well dance in the sun while I can! Some months back I put an advert in the classifieds of The Daily Spokesman, expressing my heartfelt wish to meet a female who thinks personal hygiene and bingo important-”

“Sidney, I think I read it.” I peered between heads searching for Magdalene, who had again disappeared.

7:40 P.M. I nudged the punch ladle against the floating ice ring garlanded with fruit flowers. Roxie passed me carrying a tray of munchie-morsels; she walked with exaggerated care along an invisible line. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped. It was Froggy, I mean, Shirley Daffy.

“Mrs. Daffy, I do hope you will have good news soon concerning your husband. It is, after all, only a few days since… he went out jogging.”

Her eyes popped with emotion. “I’m being sensible about it. It doesn’t do any good to get in too much of a fidget over what you can’t alter. And I make myself get out as much as possible.” She touched the brooch puckering the front of her brown crepe frock.

“How pretty!” I said to fill up a pause. “What is the significance of the blackbirds?”

“Crows, actually.”

“Really!” I started to say more but Mrs. Bottomly appeared and rather rudely snatched Mrs. Daffy away. I found Mrs. Hanover beside me, replenishing her plate.

“Any more of the chicken tarts left? Oh, goody! One does find them tasty.” She helped herself from the now scanty array. I would have to do some artistic interspersing with parsley.

“Mrs. Haskell!” Her very false teeth made her smile a bit unreal too. “We do so miss your husband of an evening. Such a lovely pair, him and Frederick! I can’t tell you how relieved were all the regulars when that dart incident didn’t turn out serious. A bit of a dark horse is Sidney Fowler. But I wouldn’t think, not for a moment, that he meant to hurt Frederick. Would you, Mrs. Haskell?”

7:45 P.M. I was getting almost as edgy about Magdalene as I was about Poppa not answering the phone. I would have asked Sidney to look for her, but he was talking to Mrs. Bottomly on the far side of the room. From her gestures she appeared to be unhappy about something. Last week’s wash-and-set? The towering pompadour did look a bit top-heavy.

Roxie paused at my shoulder. “How’s it going, Mrs. H.?” She thrust her fingers into the midst of her silver tray and bunged two sausage whatevers into my hand. Not to make the guests feel left out, she did the same to the man with the handlebar moustache standing next to me. “Makes a person do some hard thinking, doesn’t it, Mrs. H.?”

“About what, Roxie?”

“The horrible abomination of human nature. For instance, that Miss Thorn, over by the fireplace, born with her knickers on.”

“Shhhhh!” Luckily, there was no one else at the buffet table. Handlebar moustache had gone.

“As for our Mr. Sidney”-she minced out the name-“people think they’ve got him pegged. Don’t you believe it!” Roxie popped a sausage thing into her mouth. “Now what I want to know is why you invited that Dr. Bordeaux. Mark my words, that hollow-eyed look comes from sleeping on a marble slab.”

“Shhhhh.” I couldn’t get the parsley to sit right.

Roxie rammed herself against my elbow. “Believe you me, he’s no social asset. Only look-every time he and that kiddie with him take a step close to Ladyship Peerless, she footsies the other way. Course, who can blame her, Mrs. H. Him turning her ancestral home into Bedlam!”

“Nonsense!” I gave up and ate the wayward sprig of parsley. “The Peerless is a private nursing home for nervous disorders. And Lady Theodora is a sensible woman. She has no grudge against Dr. Bordeaux. He didn’t steal the place. Her brother sold it.”

Guests eddied past. I smiled, exchanged a few words, and poked at the roses in one of the silver vases. A