Bridesmaids Revisited (18 page)

“So do I.”

“Merciful heavens, there’s something else I’ve been forgetting! You had a couple of phone calls.”

“I didn’t hear it ring once.”

“Perhaps you were in the shower.”

“That must have been when.”

“And the pipes make that terrible rumbling.” Jane shook her head sending the black bow at the nape of her neck even more off kilter. “The first call was from your husband. Of course I offered to fetch you, but he said in such a gentlemanly manner that if you had gone up to bed I wasn’t to disturb you.”

Disappointment flooded through me, to be followed almost immediately by relief. Perhaps it was better this way.

“I didn’t feel I could insist, even though I knew you’d be sorry to have missed his call. He sounded—ever so nicely—in a bit of a hurry.”

Oh! Ho! Couldn’t wait to get back to another poetry reading or musical recital! Could it be that the charms of Memory Lanes were beginning to grow on him? Of course, I reasoned with determined fairness, he might not be having a whale of a time without me. It could be that one or all of the children were clamoring for his attention.

“He said to tell you that everything was fine and that he will try and get back in touch tomorrow, but not to worry if he doesn’t because every moment is jam-packed. If you should need him, there’s an emergency number you can ring which I have written down on the pad by the phone downstairs. The other call was from Richard Barttle.”

I looked at her.

“He was a very dear friend of Sophia’s.”

“I remember. Doesn’t he have a photography studio in Knells?”

“That’s right, with his partner, Arthur Henshaw. They are both such kind men.”

“Why did he want to speak to me?” I had finished my cocoa and set the cup and saucer back on the chest.

“For old times’ sake, I suppose—because you’re Sophia’s granddaughter and because he knew your mother—not well, her father wouldn’t have allowed that, although Richard was the best man at the wedding. But I think that was a matter of necessity; William didn’t have any friends of his own living nearby, at least none that I ever heard of or saw, and Richard was on the spot.”

“I wondered before I found out about Sir Clifford,” I said, reaching for another biscuit, “well, the thought crossed my mind that Sophia might have been in love with Richard.”

Jane sat back down on the bed. “No, that was Rosemary.”

“But he didn’t feel the same way?”

“Not because he was in love with Sophia. They were only very dear, one might even say best, friends. She was always aware that he was a friend of Dorothy’s.”

“Who’s Dorothy?”

“Silly of me”—Jane smiled ruefully—“you’re much too young to have heard of that old-fashioned expression. Being a friend of Dorothy’s means that a man isn’t interested in women in ... that way, if you understand me.”

“You’re saying Richard is gay?”

Jane now looked thoughtful. “I believe Sophia knew from the time he first realized it, and with her feelings for Hawthorn entering the picture, it increased the bond between them. They were both part of the village but at the same time outsiders, going against the tide.”

“Was it very difficult for Richard?”

“It had to have been, if taking a drop too much drink was enough in those days to send someone straight to hell; but he stuck it out here. Moving away, he once told me, would simply have meant moving his problems with unkind-minded people to a new location. He’s a strong, stubborn man. And a decent one. That tends to shut down the snickering and nasty remarks. Besides, society is a bit more open-minded now. The sad thing is that it was his mother, to whom he’s been the most devoted, caring son, who kicked up a stink when he and Arthur Henshaw moved in together.”

“You’d have thought she would want him to be happy.”

“Alas, not old Mrs. Barttle. She’s that type, Ellie, the sort that thinks there isn’t a man alive good enough for her son. Arthur hadn’t been to the right schools or come from money. Worse”—Jane’s smile reappeared—“he had a tattoo on his arm of another fellow’s name, rode a motorbike, and wore his hair long—tied back in a ponytail. And that was years before it was common.”

“He sounds a bit like my cousin Freddy, only he doesn’t have a tattoo. But he does have an earring. I’d like to meet this Arthur.”

“That’s why Richard rang. He wants to see you while you’re here and said to ask if you would go round, perhaps tomorrow morning, to his place. He and Arthur have a very nice flat above the photography studio. I’m sure they’ll take you up there for a cup of coffee. They always grind their own beans, so it’ll be a bit of a treat for you and make a break in your day. Now I really must let you get back to your book, dear, if you aren’t ready to fall asleep.”

“I think I am,”

“Then I’m gone.” She whisked out the door but didn’t quite close it behind her. Remembering what Thora had said about the cats being likely to come in and pounce on me, I pushed back the covers. I was fond of cats. I had my own dear Tobias at home. But I wasn’t up to them tonight in groups. So I staggered, for I had suddenly come over dreadfully sleepy, across the room. It stretched out before me like the fog-covered moor on which Phoebe the governess had managed to get lost. Had there been a passing carriage, with a masked driver at the reins, I would have hailed a lift back to bed. But I forced my legs onward. At last! I leaned against the wall and after considerable fumbling pushed the door shut and pressed down the old-fashioned iron latch. Only to see it pop up again in slow motion. After watching, in total befuddlement, my hand reach out to meet with the same response, I suddenly saw a key in the lock. It grew bigger and then it grew smaller. After a couple of failed attempts I managed to turn it before stumbling back to bed. My last thought as I spiraled into sleep was that Mrs. Malloy had told Thora on the phone that I was to be sure to lock my door.

I felt heavy and sluggish even in my dreams. Part of the time I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming or awake. I was lying in bed and people kept coming in and out of the room but I couldn’t lift my head to speak even when it was Ben standing over me. Only it wasn’t Ben, but another dark-haired man with hawkish features and burning black eyes. My mouth tried to form the words that I was glad he was out of his wheelchair but that I wasn’t Phoebe the governess, at which he threw back his head and uttered a fiendish laugh that turned into a gurgling in the shower pipes. Then he leaned forward and kissed me. It was a tender kiss, but one seared with passion, and he said of course I wasn’t Phoebe the governess or Ellie the housewife, I was his beloved Sophia. I tried to tell him he was wrong. Wrong about everything. I hadn’t agreed to marry William, not even with my father lying dead in his coffin; not until the bridesmaids had talked me into it, or perhaps they had wanted me to marry Ted, I was so tired I couldn’t quite remember. Then he lay down beside me and stroked my hair and told me the other girls had meant nothing to him and he had never promised any of them the family jewels.

I told him, without any sound coming out, that there had never been anyone else for me and that William had only wanted to make love using the method prescribed for missionaries and that the poor benighted savages out in the Belgian Congo had been very kind to me. And that a wonderful black midwife had delivered my beautiful baby girl, but I wished she hadn’t named her after William and that it frustrated me that I didn’t know my own child’s middle name. While he was kissing me again and I was struggling to say that he mustn’t, because I did love my husband after all, a fog rolled in. And I was back at Merlin’s Court, slogging up a stepladder with a tin of paint. Only, when I looked inside, it wasn’t real paint. It was food coloring with the red and the green and the yellow and blue all swirling together, and I knew it would look terrible on Rose’s bedroom wall. It would frighten her when she woke up at night, so I stepped off into the fog and knocked over the paint pot, which was now somehow filled with garlic powder.

But it didn’t smell like garlic powder, which was good, because it now covered the floor. Spreading and rising like desert sand as I fought my way out of bed. Because I knew now that I was in the bedroom at the Old Rectory and Rosemary would be upset if I didn’t sweep it up. I went and opened the trunk, looking for a broom, but there was nothing inside but a couple of cats eating a fish pie, so I closed the lid and got back into bed, which was odd seeing that I was already there. After that there were no more dreams until I heard a voice mutter in my ear, “Go away. First thing tomorrow morning, otherwise I’ll be forced to kill you, just like I did your dear mother.”

I lay absolutely rigid. There was no doubt at all that this time I was awake. My mind was clear. Every part of me was prickling with fear, but when I opened my eyes I couldn’t see or hear anything. Not so much as a whispering shadow, although when the voice had spoken I had felt evil breathing down my neck. I was having trouble breathing myself and suddenly realized why. The patchwork quilt, along with the sheet, was covering my face.

Shoving them off, I scrambled out of bed. With the curtains closed it was pitch-dark in the room. It took me a while to find my way to the door and fumble for the light switch. There was no bedside lamp. And there was no one in the room but me. Unless, I thought, as I blinked several times to adjust to the brightness, whoever it had been was hiding in the wardrobe.

I looked, certain as I did so, that whoever it was would have gone out the door with all possible speed. But when I checked the key, it was still turned in the lock. I fleetingly considered the window. It turned out to be unlatched. But I would have heard it being opened and closed when the intruder made his or her escape, presumably by way of a ladder propped against the house wall. A ladder that would have needed to be removed—hardly a speedy task. And before that stage of the game, whoever it was would have had to take vital extra moments to redraw the curtains. What about the bathroom? I had to keep moving, I couldn’t let myself dwell on what the monstrous voice had said about my mother. Not now. Not yet. If I did, I would start crying or go into a huddle. Time enough after I figured out how the entry and exit had been achieved.

The bathroom idea didn’t pan out. The window was above the toilet, which would have made for easy access, but it was a round one, not much bigger than a dinner plate. A person might possibly be able to stick his head through it when it was open. Nothing more. He’d be left looking as though he’d been put in the stocks. I returned to the bedroom and sat down on the trunk at the foot of the bed for a moment before looking towards the spiral staircase. Could it provide the answer? Catching up my nightgown so as not to trip, I nipped up the pie-shaped steps. Two whirligig rounds and I was on a wooden platform, level with the attic floor. Dangling to my left was a string which when pulled provided light equal to that of the bedroom.

The space was well organized as such places go. There were several shelves stacked with boxes mounted on one wall, an old sofa positioned against another, and several other pieces of furniture grouped together in a corner. Along with a rolled-up carpet, a couple of lamps, a galvanized iron washtub, an enormous mirror, and a trunk similar in size to the one in the bedroom below. Otherwise the floor was clear for me to cross to the row of narrow windows that overlooked the lane. I realized that none of them would lead out onto a fire escape, unless one had sprung up like Jack’s beanstalk. It was the sort of thing I would have noticed from the front gate.

But I hadn’t paid much attention to whether there was a tree conveniently close to the house wall. There was one, in fact there were two, but they were spruces, and even had a person been able to climb down their twig-sized branches, their tips didn’t come within six feet of the window ledges. I sat down on the trunk, not caring that it was coated in cobwebs and the back of my nightdress would be filthy as a result. The horror of that evil voice muttering over me as I lay in bed could not be held at bay any longer. My mother murdered? Why? It had always been dreadful enough accepting the unfairness of her dying from an accidental fall. So pointless! So unlikely! All she had done was break her leg—nasty, painful, but not the sort of thing people died from.

It was at that moment that I began to wonder if I had dreamed that voice, just as I had dreamed that Hawthorn Lane—for that’s who it was, I’d decided—had kissed me and lain down next to me on the bed. Because it didn’t make any sense. A push down a flight of railway steps wasn’t any sort of way to try and murder someone. Even had Mother fractured her skull she would most likely have recovered. And what could possibly have been the motive? She hadn’t been in touch with the bridesmaids or anyone connected with the Old Rectory for years. But, the stubborn part of my mind insisted, that voice had sounded so real; there had been nothing fuzzy or dreamlike about it. Through all the other parts I had felt that heavy inertia. Could the difference be, the rational segment of my brain suggested, that I’d dreamed the voice when I was on the very edge of sleeping and waking? Surely that was the sensible—the only—explanation. Hadn’t I already thought that I had got out of bed and looked in the trunk and found it full of cats?

I imagined myself telling the story to Ben, the one person who was always prepared to bend over backwards to take me seriously, and it wasn’t hard to picture the look on his face. No one else would hear me out without thinking I was at least somewhat disturbed to be taking such nightmares seriously. And that’s of course what it had been. I was growing more convinced by the moment. I had already faced up to the fact that there appeared to be no way that anyone could have got in and out of my room, because of the locked door. I had fallen asleep after a stressful day, during which a man had died in a freak accident. My subconscious must have made a connection with my mother’s death because she had been on my mind from the moment I received the bridesmaids’ invitation. And to top everything off I had been reading that silly gothic novel, inventing my own characters as I went along. The wicked old nanny, for one! I’d even given her a croaky voice in my head. Yes, I was feeling better by the moment; it must have been the nanny I had conjured up in my half-waking state. Even the sheet and patchwork quilt covering my face had a logical explanation. I must have pulled them up myself when I thought I was getting back into bed after looking in the trunk.