Babycakes (36 page)

“Did you say Mr. Hargis
rang
Teddy?”

“Right.”

“Why didn’t I hear it, then?”

“Well … I guess … well, I don’t know. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Anyway … if I can show you anything.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “I beg your pardon.”

“I mean … like … around the house.”

The woman’s laughter was a total surprise, like a tractor trailer honking on a hairpin curve. “My dear Moira … I came to Christmas parties in this house when I was eight years old.”

“Oh … I see.”

The woman picked up the Polaroid and aimed it toward the minstrels’ gallery.
Click. Whir.
She looked at Mona again. “I’ve been watching Easley’s sad decline for many, many years.” Shielding herself with a simpering smile, she removed the print and laid it daintily on the window seat. “He hasn’t told you a thing about me, has he?”

“No,” Mona replied calmly. “Actually, he hasn’t.”

“Well … that’s a pity.”

“Is it?”

The flat smile came back. “If nothing else, Moira, it would make your little
charade
so much easier. That’s all I meant.” She picked up the print and squinted at it. “The light is rather poor, I’m afraid.”

“It’s Mona,” said Mona.

“Mmm?”

“My name is Mona, not Moira.”

“Oh. Sorry.” She looked down at the print again.

“I take it you don’t need me.”

“Whatever for?” said the woman, smiling.

Mona marched out of the room. She didn’t break stride until she had gone the length of the house and accosted Teddy in the sitting room. “Why the fuck did you do that to me?”

Teddy looked up from his Martin Amis novel with a rueful smile. “Isn’t she a delight?”

“You could’ve told me she knows.”

“Well, I … she does, does she?”

“Yes. You didn’t know that?”

“No … well, I might have guessed. She doesn’t miss much. I’m sorry, Mona. People talk about me. I’ve never been able to prevent that, and … some of it’s bound to rub off on you. Has she left yet?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, “and I don’t care.”

“Neither do I.” He shoved his book aside. “I have a bit of that lovely hash left. Shall we take a stroll along the parapet and leave her to stalk the halls in peace?”

“Great idea,” she said.

She followed him upstairs to the water-spotted bedroom that led to the attic stairway. As they climbed, hunching toward a sliver of light, the roof beams of Easley arched above them like the blackened rib cage of some prehistoric beast. Teddy leaned against the parapet door; they were momentarily blinded by the white April sunshine.

Mona looked toward the western hills and drank in the spring-scented breeze. “This is sort of our place, isn’t it?”

Teddy’s eyes twinkled. “It is, rather.” He poked around in the breast pocket of his salt-and-pepper tweed jacket and produced one of his fat hash-and-tobacco joints. Lighting it with his Bic, he took a toke and handed it to her. “I should warn you about my father,” he said.

Eyeing him suspiciously, she took in smoke and held it.

“I don’t mean warn you, really. Just … an explanation.”

She nodded.

“Daddy … uh … has this mental thing.”

She exhaled.

“It’s quite harmless, I assure you. The doctors say he’s retreated from … the usual reality, as it were, and taken refuge in happier times … his happiest time, actually. He lives it over and over again. There’s a clinical term for it.” He took the joint back. “It escapes me at the moment.”

“What was his happiest moment?” she asked.

“Well,
apparently,
a fortnight he spent with the Walter Annenbergs.”

“The who?’

“Oh … I thought they were household words in California. Walter and Lee Annenberg. He was ambassador to the Court of Saint James’s when Daddy met him. They hit it off straight away, Daddy and Walter … so Mummy and Daddy spent some time at the Annenbergs’ estate in Palm Springs. And Daddy, I’m afraid, never quite got over it.”

“You mean …?”

He nodded. “He thinks he’s still there.”

She smiled at him. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

He shook his head, smiling back.

“He walks around Gloucestershire thinking he’s in Palm Springs?”

He shook his head again. “The Scillies.”

“What?”

“He walks around the Scillies thinking he’s in Palm Springs.”

“Oh.”

He offered her the hash again.

“No, thanks,” she said. “The tobacco makes me dizzy.”

“Most of his major symptoms have subsided, thank God. Mummy’s broken him of the white shoes, the golf togs, that sort of thing.”

“That’s good.”

“I just thought you should know. It can be bloody embarrassing sometimes.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I appreciate that.”

He heaved a long sigh, then turned and surveyed the landscape.

“Is that really Wales?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “It’s not, actually. But you can see it from the folly. The most distant ridge is the Black Mountains. You can see the Malverns too.”

She stood a silent vigil with him, then said: “I don’t understand it.”

“What?”

“How you can just … dump all this. Surrender Easley to that lard-assed bitch down there.”

He turned away. “I’m not surrendering Easley.”

“Well, what would you call it?”

“Mona …” He plucked a clump of moss off the parapet. “Easley is just a job. I’m bloody tired of that job. I know what you’re saying, believe me … but I can’t be two people at once.”

All but lost in the scenery, a white van bounced along the one-lane road from Easley-on-Hill. “If I’m not mistaken,” said Teddy, “that’s the caterers.”

“Looks like it,” she said. It made her a little queasy to realize that other people—lots of them—had been mobilized to act upon a split-second decision she had made one rainy night in Seattle.

Teddy heard the uncertainty in her voice. “Are you all right, Mona?”

“Sure.”

“The tobacco, eh?”

“Yeah. I think I could use a nap, actually.”

“Of course.” He gave her a kindly smile. “Get some rest.”

She patted him on the shoulder and climbed into the dark innards of the attic. When she got back to her room, she eased shut the door to the minstrels’ gallery, since she could still hear the ghoulish whirring of that Polaroid in the great hall. Sleep wouldn’t come, however, so she braced herself for conflict and headed down the hallway toward Michael’s room.

He was there, propped up in the window seat with an old
Country Life
opened against his knees. Wilfred lay on the bed—-stomach down, knee bent—watching him. When she cleared her throat, Michael gazed toward the door. “What’s this?” he asked. “More gruel already?”

She managed to smile. “I thought we could talk.”

“O.K.,” he said blandly.

Wilfred did a somersault on the bed. “And children should leave.” He headed for the door, stopping to give Mona a peck on the cheek.

“You aren’t a child,” she said.

“Twenty minutes,” Wilfred replied.

She crossed the room and sat in the armchair flanking the window seat. “He’s such a doll,” she said.

Michael shrugged. “Looks like it’s mutual.”

“Well … he’s got a big crush on you, I can tell that.”

He blinked at her, then looked out the window. “Is that a problem?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I worry about him … what he’ll do when I go home.”

“What about … his family?”

“There isn’t one. He was living with his father, and his father ran off. He killed a man.”

Mona frowned. “Sounds like Wilfred’s better off.”

“I don’t know. Is nothing better than something?”

She could feel him getting heavy and moved to avert it. “Works for me,” she smiled.

Remaining sober, he turned away from her. He had changed in lots of little ways, she realized. It was almost as if he had bequeathed his flippancy to Wilfred. He seemed cold and colorless, drained of his irony.

“Any messages?” he asked at last.

“Uh … for who?”

“Barbary Lane. No one’s heard from you for years.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” she said.

“A year and a half, then. How’s that?”

She could see Wilfred on the hillside, a tiny smudge of yellow and brown climbing toward the folly; he looked like a bumblebee from this distance. “I’ve been sorting things out,” she told Michael.

“I know,” he said. “Since nineteen sixty-seven.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Then don’t use that crummy excuse.”

“Mouse …”

“You could have dropped a postcard, for Christ’s sake! You moved and never gave us your new address. Your phone wasn’t listed …”

“I didn’t have one half the time.”

“You could’ve called us, then. Something. What is it. Mona? Are you cutting us off? What the hell is happening? Do you know how much you’re hurling Mrs. Madrigal?”

The last one stung a little. “Look,” she said, “I didn’t wanna check in with you guys until I had my shit together. You knew I wasn’t dead or anything. I just wanted to show up on your doorstep one morning out of the blue … with some incredible piece of news about myself.”

“And this is it?” His eyes narrowed in disbelief.

“What?”

“Marrying … ol’ Tinseltits.”

She felt both mortified and relieved. “No,” she replied quietly. “I didn’t plan on publicizing this.”

“Did you plan on telling
me?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Now.” She smiled feebly. “A little too late, huh?”

He looked away, fixing his gaze on the hillside. Wilfred had reached the folly and was now just a fleck of yellow beneath the duncecap roof. “In more ways than one,” said Michael.

“It doesn’t really mean anything,” she said.

“What?”

“This marriage. It’s just an arrangement to satisfy the immigration people, so Teddy can get a green card …”

“… and wag weenie in San Francisco.”

“I didn’t ask about that,” said Mona.

He stared at her, slack-mouthed. “How did this happen? I mean … how long has this been in the works?”

“About three weeks, I guess. Not long.”

“You met here or in Seattle?”

“Neither. The arrangements were made through … a sort of clearinghouse in Seattle.”

“A clearinghouse?” He almost spit out the words. “For
what?
Mail order brides?”

“Yes,” she replied flatly. “As a matter of fact.”

He gave an ugly little snort. “Does anyone
here
know about this?”

She flashed on that Fabia woman, snapping her way through the house. “Oh, yes,” she answered. “It appears to be Easley’s worst-kept secret.”

“It figures,” he said. “I’m always the last to know.”

His petulance made her impatient. “You weren’t supposed to know at all, Mouse. You weren’t supposed to be here.”

“When is it happening?”

“Tonight. In the chapel.”

“Swell.”

“It’s just the family. And a few of their friends.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll stay out of the way.”

“I didn’t mean that.” She felt better, just the same; the whole ordeal was embarrassing enough as it was. “It’s not like it really means anything,” she added. “People get married for immigration purposes all the time. It’s just a business proposition.”

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much is he paying you?”

“Oh … five thousand.”

“Not bad.”

“Well,” she acknowledged somewhat proudly, “it’s usually just a thousand or so, but this was a special case, and they thought I could handle it.” She couldn’t help thinking what a feeble boast that was. “The organization gets ten percent, of course. Like an agent. Anyway … it’s a fair price for all concerned.”

“Sure,” he replied. “It’s a double ring ceremony.”