He came and perched on the arm of my chair and placed a hand on my shoulder. “As you said, it will only be for a few days and I could use that time to start getting recipes together for another book, before I lose my nerve and decide I’m a has-been.” His laugh brushed my ear. Obviously he wanted me to take a lighthearted view of things. To be a good sport. Instead, I felt hurt and in no mood to don the sea-foam green nightgown anytime that night. Only for Mrs. Malloy’s sake did I put on a good front.
“We could leave in a couple of days.”
“Why not tomorrow?” He returned to the coffee table to pour more tea.
Couldn’t he get rid of me fast enough? Not being carved out of stone, I did the only thing a woman could do-cut myself the largest slice of cake that would fit on my plate.
“It would make for a bit of a rush.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her purple lips. “And of course I do want to look me best so as to look ten years younger than… well, look nice for Melody, that is. But I suppose if we was to set off late-ish in the morning or early afternoon, I could manage to get meself organized.”
“Don’t you want to phone or write to her first?” I asked.
“She’d find reasons not to see me.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Better to catch her on the hop.”
“That’s settled, then.” Having finished with the teapot, Ben sat down on one of the sofas and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankles with an elegance of movement that should have charmed me back to good spirits.
“You didn’t tell me much about what happened at your parents’,” I said, addressing the ceiling, “other than that they were well and pleased to see you and the children.”
“Mum and Pop were pretty much as usual.” Ben shifted Tobias out from behind his head while balancing his cup and saucer deftly in his other hand.
“What did they have to say?”
“The usual sort of thing. This, that, and the other. Who’d said what to whom after church on Sunday. You know how they are.”
“It’s interesting,” I told the pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, “that a man can explain in excruciating detail to a fellow enthusiast how he screwed the knob back onto the bathroom door, but he can’t describe to his wife anything above the barest minimum of what happened during a visit at which she wasn’t present.”
“One of them quirks of nature.” Mrs. Malloy looked ready to expound on this but, perhaps sensing my mood, closed her mouth. Ben, however, seemed blindly unaware that I was irritated. Probably his mind was otherwise occupied, concocting a recipe for a rejuvenated version of bubble and squeak that would leave the reviewer for
He cupped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Mum put on a great lunch when we arrived. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings. The conversation mostly revolved around Tom and Betty winning the lottery and no one hearing from then since.”
“Just who are Tom and Betty, if I may be so bold as to inquire?” Mrs. Malloy had her nose, along with her pinky, elevated as she sipped her tea.
“The Hopkinses,” I said. “Tom is Ben’s cousin. It’s his daughter, Ariel, who enjoys gothic novels.”
“Oh, right! I remember you kindly let me post a parcel of them to her.”
“Tom isn’t a first cousin,” Ben explained. “Our mothers are second cousins; I think that’s how it goes. They probably wouldn’t have stayed in touch but for the fact that they are both Roman Catholics and at one time attended the same church. I’d never met Tom until the year I began working at my Uncle Sol’s restaurant in Tottenham Court Road.”
“I’ve never heard about him!” Despite not letting on until today about Melody, Mrs. Malloy naturally expects to know more about our relatives than we do.
“He died before I met Ellie. The nicest, kindest bloke, who always hoped I’d follow in his footsteps. Mum asked me to put in a word with him about Tom, who was out of work, and Uncle Sol hired him on at the cash register. He was there for about a year until he got a job with more money as a mechanic. He was great with his hands and could spot why things didn’t work”-Ben massaged his jaw to conceal a yawn-“but I didn’t see much of him even when we were working together. I had my own life and he had a girlfriend he was pretty crazy about.”
“No bothering to keep in touch?” Mrs. Malloy has a strong sense of family, when it isn’t hers.
“How was I supposed to know he’d one day win the lottery? They didn’t have them in those days. If someone had tipped me the wink, I’d have made him my best friend.”
“Has your mother managed to get hold of their new address?” I asked him, ignoring the witticism.
“Afraid not. Of course she assumes it’s Betty, not Tom, who’s afraid that if his relatives know where to find them they’ll all show up with their hands out, hoping for a share of the lolly.”
“From the stories past winners tell, that does happen with disastrous results,” I said. “The millions disappear and bankruptcy looms.”
“Would Betty be the girlfriend from when you was working with Tom, Mr. H?” Mrs. Malloy pulled a passing Tobias onto her lap and proceeded to arrange him into a furry blanket. It was getting a little nippy. I found myself thinking longingly of bed for a variety of reasons, one of which sprang from the fact that Ben smiled at me tenderly while answering Mrs. M.
“No, that wasn’t Betty. Perhaps it was a pity the other relationship didn’t pan out. From the couple of times I met her, she seemed exactly what he needed. A real go-getter and as pretty as they come. Tom called her his wild Irish rose.”
“What went wrong?” I asked.
“She wasn’t a Catholic, which was a must for his parents. They put up a stink. Over their dead bodies would their son marry out of the faith. They had someone else lined up for him in no time, a girl he’d known from their first days in kindergarten. They’d gone on retreats together and even dated a few times as teenagers.”
“Betty?” Mrs. Malloy and I said together, in the hopeful voices of children expecting to have stars drawn beside our names on the chalkboard.
“No, Angela. She and Tom married but only had a few years together.” Ben waited for a rumble of thunder to subside before continuing. “There was a car accident and she was killed. She wasn’t even thirty, and to make matters as bad as they could be, Tom was driving.”
“How awful!” I pressed a hand to my throat.
“Bad weather conditions. Tom was lucky to get out of the crash with only minor injuries.”
“The poor man! He must have been devastated.”
“I’m sure he was. I wrote to him, of course, but I didn’t go to the funeral because he wanted the immediate family only.”
“Grief takes people in different ways,” Mrs. Malloy proffered sagely.
“Quite shortly afterward, he met and married Betty. The family thought it indecently quick. Maybe that’s another reason she’s glad to be shut of them.” Ben attempted to mask another yawn, a sign for me to get to my feet and begin gathering up the tea things. Time for bed.
I was thinking it was nice that Mrs. Malloy had Lord Rake-hell waiting for her upstairs when an ill wind blew my cousin Freddy into the room. With his long hair, beanpole figure, and dangling skull-and-crossbones earring, he never projects the image of a young man about town, but women-including Mrs. Malloy-for some impenetrable reason dote on his every leer.
“Hello, my nearest and dearests!” He spread his arms wide, his scraggly beard parting in an ecstatic grin.
“Keep creeping up on us like this and I’ll ask for your key back.” I eyed him severely. “You almost made me drop the teapot, and it’s irreplaceable. Woolworth’s doesn’t sell this pattern anymore.”
“You’re all wet from the rain. You need to dry off, Freddy dear.” Sounding ridiculously motherly, Mrs. Malloy looked around as if hoping to find an assortment of freshly aired towels at her elbow.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Ben asked the source of the wet footprints.
“I thought with the children gone from the nest, an evening down at the pub might be in order. Who’s game?” Freddy swept us with his beneficent gaze.
“Well, I would be,” said Mrs. Malloy, “but the thing is I need to get a decent night’s sleep, so’s to be up with the birdies to get me packing done before setting out for Yorkshire to see me sister.”
Before Freddy could say he didn’t know she had a sister, I explained I was accompanying her and also needed
