remember them years later. It’s the same with books. Shakespeare may be good for you, but like I was saying to Mrs. H earlier, it don’t warm the cockles of your heart like a nice story about a wicked housekeeper and the family ghost appearing of a nighttime at the windows.”
Had she said that? My eyes went to the portrait of Abigail. Her serene smile promised as clearly as if she had spoken that her ghost would never show up at any of our windows. Enormously comforting! Thrilling as such things are to read about, one does not necessarily wish to experience them in real life.
“You have a point, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben looked less like a bottle left in the middle of the floor for someone to trip over.
“That’s the ticket.” Mrs. Malloy teetered over the chair he had vacated. “You stop worrying about being remembered five hundred years from now for your
Tobias charged the feather duster she had discarded. At his approach it came to life and put up quite a fight.
“You’re the voice of reason, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben smiled at her. It was good to see the light back in his eyes, but I wished I could have been the one to put it there. “How about a glass of sherry? Would you like another one, Ellie?” It was impossible to tell whether or not he was still irritated with me.
“I think I’d rather have a cup of tea.”
“Same here,” Mrs. M surprised me by saying. “Just the thing with that sky darkening up like it’s getting set to storm again. A good thing I gave in and agreed to stay the night or I could have got caught in it good and proper.”
Not if she had left earlier, I thought, and immediately felt guilty.
“In these heels”-she looked down at her spindly shoes-“I need to see where I’m putting me feet or I could trip on the bus steps and break me neck.” This reference to Madam LaGrange’s warning about the perils of bus stops should have reminded me of her other prediction.
Having closed the window and drawn the curtains, Ben said he would make the tea and be back in a jiffy. On his way out of the room he paused to touch my hair lightly, and the world shifted back into place.
“Was it just the magazine business that got to him?” Mrs. Malloy inquired, the moment he was out the door. “Or did the children get upset when he left them with his parents?” Here was the reason she had refused the sherry and most uncharacteristically opted for tea. She had known Ben would offer to get it, thus providing us with a few minutes of private chitchat.
“All three of them always enjoy being with Grandpa and Grandma. They love staying in the flat above the greengrocery. They think it a great adventure to help out at the cash register and hang up the bananas.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think.” Mrs. Malloy’s pious expression would have suited the vicar when leaning over the pulpit to announce that more help was needed for the foreign missions. “Children don’t need a holiday near as much as their mum and dad do. So how about you and Mr. H taking off for a few days instead of staying cooped up here?” Her gaze shifted around the room. “It can get depressing, Mrs. H, with the walls closing in and always the thought of how much dusting there is to do.”
For which one of us? Although that might be a moot point now that Tobias had disemboweled the feather duster.
“Where would we go at such short notice?”
“Well, Yorkshire do spring to mind, seeing as Melody lives there. But I’m not just looking out for meself. Think on that good bracing air you get in the dales and up on the moors!” In a moment she would start humming a casual tune.
“Mrs. Malloy,” I said gently but firmly, “I told you this afternoon that Ben and I have things we want to get done around the house while the children are gone.”
“You’d only be away a couple of days. And like I told you, where Melody lives isn’t far from Haworth. You could go and see the parsonage where the Brontes lived.”
“I’ve been there. Seventeen times. I used to make a semiannual pilgrimage before I married Ben.”
“Well, maybe he’d like to see it.”
“Perhaps.” I was wavering, and Mrs. Malloy was every bit as good as Tobias at moving in for the kill.
“I just hate the thought of facing Melody on me own. She can be very intimidating in her way. Tossing out facts: what was said, where it was, and, as if that’s not enough, the date and the hour when it happened.”
“What does she look like?” It was impossible not to be curious.
“A moth-eaten stuffed rabbit.”
“No resemblance then to yourself?”
Mrs. Malloy was looking understandably outraged by this tactless suggestion when Ben came back into the room with the tea tray, which he placed on the Queen Anne table between the sofas. Nicely within reach of Mrs. M and myself, should we feel inclined to reach for a second slice of his delectable chocolate raspberry cake. Scratch that thought. How many digestive biscuits had I eaten that afternoon? Never mind. I could already feel the pounds creeping on. Exercise was needed if I didn’t want to wake up in the morning to face a blimp in the mirror. Getting to my feet, I handed Mrs. Malloy the cup of tea Ben poured for her. The brush of his shoulder against mine sent a thrill coursing through me.
Was it possible we would have our romantic rendezvous in the bedroom after all? It was that time of day when dark stubble shadowed his face, adding a hint of mystery to familiarity. The smile he gave me, as he handed me my cup, made my heart beat faster. Perhaps he was only thinking that it felt good to have our squabble behind us, while I was seeing myself slipping into the sea-foam green nightdress before unpinning my hair so that it fell in a languorous silken swirl down my back. There was that bottle of expensively seductive perfume on the dressing table that I reserved for the worthy occasion, there were the candles that glowed amber when lighted… and now there was Mrs. Malloy’s voice breaking into my highly personal dream.
“No one makes a cup of tea like you do, Mr. H!”
His smile became a roguish grin. “You’re too kind, Mrs. Malloy.”
“It’s all in the way he drops the teabags in the pot.” I eyed him impishly.
“Flattery!” He picked up his own cup and saucer. “I suppose you two still think I’m in desperate need of cheering up.”
I sat back down, avoiding eye contact with the cake sitting so prettily on its paper doily. “What Mrs. Malloy thinks you and I need is a few days’ holiday in Yorkshire while the children are gone.”
“Why Yorkshire?”
“I’ve got a sister there,” supplied the voice from the chair opposite mine.
“That we could take her to see,” I explained to Ben, “in between all the wonderful exploring you and I could do.”
The expression on his face wasn’t promising. “I’d no idea you had a sister, Mrs. Malloy.”
“We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in close on forty years.”
“Isn’t that sad?” I leaned forward. “Don’t you think, darling, that it’s important for Mrs. Malloy to take the initiative and try to put things right by going to see Melody?”
“Melody?” he echoed, looking as nonplussed as I had felt on first hearing the name. “Does she sing or play any musical instruments?”
An understandable question. It would be the only excuse to call a woman of middle years Melody.
“Tone-deaf. Always was. Of course there’s no saying as how she hasn’t taken up the tambourine or one of them play-themselves pianos in the last forty years. It’d be comforting to find out she’s got more in life than her typing job for that solicitor.” Mrs. Malloy continued to make inroads on the generous slice of chocolate cake on her plate.
“You must go and see her.” Ben strode over to the windows and back. “It doesn’t do to let these old quarrels go on and on. And it will make a nice trip for you and Ellie.”
“What about you?” I set my cup rattling back in its saucer.
“I’d be a third wheel.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
