The Great Husband Hunt (41 page)

The years and perhaps the influence of Angelica had improved Edgar's sociability, if not his physique. He had turned into a sphere, though how this had happened still perplexes me. Food was a minor concern at Stoke Glapthorne and while we were guests there I was often reduced to going into the Tea Rums, after the day trippers had left, and taking some of the small, dry-muffins.

I can only think that Edgar had another feeding station, perhaps in London where he belonged to a great number of clubs and was sometimes obliged to go to a place called The Hyce in order to register his vote. He apparently had a very important role in the passing of laws, though I never saw him engaged in it. Somehow, in spite of short rations at home, he was able to maintain an enormous waistline and very good spirits.

He greeted us all warmly on our arrival and assisted Alan and Mortie in bringing up our bags while Angelica made soup from a yellow powder.

“One of the great benefits of going into tourism,” she said, “is that one can get a special card and buy in bulk. It's extraordinarily cheap and one only needs to shop once a month. You must come with me whilst you're here. There might be something you'd care to take back with you. This coffee frinstance. You simply add hot water, and this canister has lasted us months. How adorable Emerald is, and her little family. Quite adorable.”

Gelica never once commented on my youthful appearance. She petted Emerald incessantly and Mortie and Alan and Maxine, but beyond that her mind was filled with horses and discount cards. Edgar did whisper to me one evening, “Still got a good pair of pins on you,” but I believe I may have paid in advance for the compliment with the very fine single malt that had been my gift to him, and, anyhow, his persistently calling me “Polly” diluted the satisfaction.

As for Sir Neville, he rarely left his writing desk and when he did he seemed not to notice there were five extra people in the house.

“Merrick!” Angelica goaded him. “You remember Poppy. Reggie's bride?”

“No,” he said.

“Of course he does,” she said, as though he weren't there. “He pretends, so as not to have to talk. He even pretends not to remember Bobbity, and then he scribbles orf reams and reams. He recalls the name of every man who was in his regiment.”

The only time Sir Neville voluntarily broke his silence was to laugh, suddenly and heartily, at some secret regimental joke I suppose.

We drove in convoy across to the old places, Edgar with Mortie and Em, Alan and Maxine with me and Angelica. Past Bagehots first, with its smart new gates.

“Wrecked cars,” Angelica told me. “Those people have made millions of pounds out of wrecked cars. Extraordinary.”

Then on to Buckby, to the churchyard, where poor Reggie's grave stood neglected, and two places along lay my sister-in-law, Marigold Alice Bagehot Merrick, parted in death from her hunter.

“Not only would the parson not allow Fearless to be interred here,” Angelica explained, “neither would he permit ‘Bobbity’ on the inscription. I said to him, ‘Who's paying for the bloody hole to be dug? Who's paying for the inscription?’ But he's one of this new breed. They come from secondary modern schools and they don't at all understand country ways. Poppy! Here I am chatting on. Perhaps you'd like to be alone for a moment? With Reggie?”

But I didn't need to be alone. I had Reggie in my heart, and this was Emerald's moment. She had brought flowers to lay on her father's grave.

“Daddy,” I heard her say, “I brought Mortie to see you. I wish you could have known him. And Alan and Maxine. I wish you could have known them all. It doesn't seem fair.”

I hadn't planned on doing any weeping, but when you hear your child making introductions to a cracked headstone it's impossible to resist. I held her in my arms.

“Mom,” she said.

“Em,” I said.

Even the kids had ceased goofing around.

“Kleenex anyone?” Angelica asked.

As we left, Em plucked off one of the flowers she'd brought for Reggie and left it on Bobbity's grave.

Somehow, seeing what had become of Kneilthorpe was the worst. The old house and its gardens were gone, and in their place was something called The Thorpes. Little houses as far as the eye could see, with carports and patches of lawn and women in synthetics pushing bassinets. There was a Kneilthorpe Drive and a Merrick Avenue and a Batey Parade with a post office and food store and a hair salon.

I said, “Who was Batey?”

Edgar said, “Need you ask? The dreadful individual who built all this.”

I said, “I wish Merrick had asked for my help. I'd have sent money.”

Angelica shook her head. “Poppy,” she said, “you have no idea. It would have taken a fortune.”

I said, “I have a fortune. And I'd have liked to keep the place going, for Emerald and future generations.”

“One of these days,” I heard Mortie say to Edgar, “she's going to dip into the well and the bucket's going to come up empty.”

“Well, I wouldn't have wanted it,” Em said. “I have a home. Uncle Neville got some money and the land got used. Those people got to live in nice new houses. There's nothing wrong with that.”

I said, “This land was your heritage. Now look at it. A heap for the ants. No wonder Neville is a broken man.”

We looked in on Melton Mowbray, too, all quite ruined with self-service stores. You even had to pump your own gas.

I said, “Gelica, tell me to mind my own business, but is your place liable to be sold for an ant heap, too?”

“We've taken advice,” she said. “And if we expand the day-tripper side of things. Perhaps an aviary, or an orchid house, or a shop selling fudge. But then, one has to be flexible. We did receive an offer. Someone had the idea of turning the place into a sort of hotel. Health and beauty. Turkish baths and salad for dinner. Apparently there's money to be made doing that. But Edgar says ‘over my dead bod!’ So we'll probably go for the fudge.”

I said, “You and Edgar seem like a match.”

“He's a very agreeable sort,” she said. “And, of course, I completely depend on him for dealing with Merrick.”

I said, “Strange how we both ended up with another family's problems. You really had no obligation to take on Neville, any more than I did to…”

I hadn't raised the other business, but it seemed like the moment.

I said, “Murray's in Florida, you know? He sends his best wishes.”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Florida. Grapefruit segments.”

I said, “He never did marry. And now he has a pin in his thigh and he doesn't much care for company. I shouldn't complain, I guess. All I have to do is pay his rent.”

“Do you really?” she said. “Is he bankers?”

I said, “No. Just…eccentric.”

“No,” she said,
“bankers.
Is he bankrupt?”

I said, “Well, his father never made wise investments. Apart from marrying Ma. And anyway he gave money away like there was no tomorrow. That was his mentality. Give till it hurts. So there's nothing left. It doesn't seem to bother Murray, though. He just potters around in his own little world.”

Angelica said, “I'm glad you're taking care of things. I should hate to think of him being alone. I was awfully fond of him. Awfully. Susie Manners ran across him, you know? Flicky's sister? Nineteen forty-seven, I think. It was certainly after I'd had us annulled. He turned up in a Displaced Person camp in Epping Forest, searching for a friend. Susie was with the Red Cross.”

I said, “What friend?”

“No idea,” she said.

I said, “Gelica, do you think Murray is
that
way? Was it
that
kind of friend?”

I heard a little snigger from my grandson in the rear seat.

“Possibly,” she said.

I said, “Well, let's call up Susie and ask her.”

“Can't be done,” she said. “She married a South African. Durban, I think. Drowned swimming after a heavy luncheon. Sorry.”

I felt so frustrated.

I said, “Didn't you think to ask? I would have.”

“Poppy,” she said. “One moves on. You did. Even Merrick did. One can't sit around in the doldrums, wondering what might have been.”

I said, “If that's what you call moving on. I can't believe he didn't fight harder to keep Kneilthorpe. All that land, gone for hovels. Little boxes for unfortunates.”

Maxine said, “Grandma? What is an unfortunate?”

Alan said, “You are, sap head.”

He loved to torment her.

“An unfortunate,” I said, “is a person who doesn't come from a good family.”

Maxine said, “You mean the kind that dump their grands in hospitals when they get old and never visit them?”

Alan said “She doesn't mean that kind of ‘good.’ Good families are where the kids go to college and nobody gets into trouble.”

I said, “No. Unfortunates are people who have nothing. They live in tiny rooms and all share one bed and have fleas. And they can never go to Sardi's for a filet mignon or anything like that because they have absolutely no money.”

“Absolutely none?” Maxine said.

“Absolutely none,” I said. “They have to wear rags and eat dry crusts and mop their own floors because they can't afford help.”

“Those people weren't wearing rags,” she said. “They were wearing nice things.”

Angelica said, “Well, in England a good family is a family you can place. Because your people have known their people forever.”

Alan said, “But what if they've done bad things?”

She said, “Frinstance?”

“If your parents knew their parents and everything,” he said, “but one of them murdered somebody or cheated.”

“Ah!” she said. “Like the Vigos. Well, they're still a good family. Archie turned out a bad lot, but they're a very good family. George is eighth baronet, and his mother was a Conyngham. Do you see?”

Neither Alan nor Maxine did see, besides which they were all overlooking my point that the sign of an unfortunate was that he had nothing.

Maxine said, “Angelica, I'm going to be bat mitzvahed next year.”

“Are you darling?” Angelica said. “What fun.”

The modern way Emerald had raised her children, they expected to have their opinions listened to, and Maxine was like a dog with a bone on the subject of The Thorpes.

“Grandma says those people have fleas,” she harped on at dinner, “but they looked OK to me. I liked those little houses.”

I said, “You wouldn't say so if you had to live in one of them.”

“Did you ever live in one, Grandma?” she said. And everyone waited on my reply though they were all perfectly well acquainted with the story of my life.

I said, “I don't have to have lived in one. I visited enough of them, when I was helping the Misses Stone. When I was doing good works.”

“Did you Mom?” Em said. “I never knew that.”

“Stanton Street,” I said, “Orchard Street, Eldridge Street. We worked for The Daughters of Jacob, teaching them hygiene and reading.”

“So they could stop being unfortunates,” Maxine piped up.

Mortie was sharp with her. “Maxine,” he said, “I don't ever want to hear you use that word again. If people need help, help them. If they deserve respect, respect them. And if they don't, just stay away from them. But don't call them names.”

“Grandma does,” she said, but her face was burning, being corrected like that in front of company.

“Grandma…” Mortie began, but he pressed his lips together and went no further. He was in a sullen mood anyhow because it was Friday and Em said it wouldn't be appropriate to do the kiddush and the motzi and all that business in another person's house.

“What Daddy means is,” Em tried to soothe her, “anybody can have misfortunes. Some people can pick themselves up, and some need a hand, but misfortunes can come to anybody out of a clear blue sky.”

“Very true,” Edgar said. “Herd gets brucellosis. Bank goes belly up. One can be ruined. That's why one should diversify.”

Maxine commenced to glare at me, as though I was to blame for her receiving a telling off.

Alan said, “I think there are people you could call unfortunates. I don't think they're the people Grandma means though. People who don't have anyone are unfortunate. People who don't have family.”

Mortie liked that.

“Well said, son,” he said. “It's nothing to do with money in the bank, or fancy houses. If you have a place to go on Friday nights, see the candles lit, share a blessing with your loved ones, you have everything you need.”

He cast that particular fly for Emerald but she wasn't biting. I had raised her to know politeness is more important than discommoding other people with your prayers.

“And another point is this,” Mortie pressed on. “A great misfortune is for a person not to know who he is.”

“True, true,” Edgar nodded. “Like that whipper-in from the Asfordby. Remember, Gelica? He was in a fearful collision with a milk tanker. Unconscious for days and when he did come to he had no idea who he was. Not a clue. Hunter had to be destroyed as well, of course. Terrible business.”

Angelica said, “But he did remember, eventually.”

“Yes,” Edgar said. “He did. Although he was always rather odd afterwards.”

Maxine had ceased her glowering. She and Alan had found something amusing.

“A person who knows where he came from,” Mortie said solemnly, “need never feel lost. Roots are a blessing. If you know where you came from, you know where you are and you can decide where you're going.”

“True, true, true,” Edgar agreed. And Sir Neville let out one of his inexplicable hoots of laughter, recalling some gay remark from Mesopotamia I suppose.

“We're from the Boons,” Maxine announced.

“And from the Minkels,” Alan reminded her. “And from the Merricks, and the Waxmans.”

Miriam Boon had been a Waxman.

“So we know who we are, and we always have Friday night dinner, and we have money,” Maxine said. “We're real fortunates. Where exactly does our money come from?”

“From hard work and thrift,” Mortie said. “From corsets made on a kitchen table. And a factory built up from nothing. And a premier range of swimwear.”

“And mustard,” I said. “Don't forget Minkel's Mighty Fine Mustard.”

“Grandma,” she said. That child asked way too many questions. “How does the mustard get made?”