The Ladies of Missalonghi (17 page)

Right in front of her but on the other side of the glass that separated the tonneau from the open driving compartment, the chauffeur’s proudly shaped head sat upon his strong smooth neck; what lovely ears he had for a man, small and set right against his skull. He was handsome, as dark as Missy, and as alien. It took a brawny man to heft her around as easily as he had, and his hands on her breasts – she felt her nipples pop up at the memory of them, and squirmed achingly on the seat. What was his name? Frank? Yes, Frank. Frank Pellagrino. He used to work at the bottling plant until he got the post as Uncle Billy’s chauffeur.

A sidelong glance at Sir William revealed him sitting bolt upright, a very worried man.

“Do those forty shares make so much difference to us?”

“All the difference in the world, now we know Richard Hurlingford sold out a month ago.” Sir William sighed. “And it explains why the mystery buyer thinks he has sufficient clout to call an extraordinary meeting tomorrow.”

“The little fool!” snarled Alicia. “How could Missy be such a little fool?”

“I think we’re the fools, Alicia. I for one never even noticed Missy Wright, but I see now that I should have. And been more attentive to all the ladies of Missalonghi. Did you take in how she looked this morning? As if she’d got to the cream ahead of every other cat in the district. And did she say she had an appointment to be married, or was that my imagination?”

Alicia snorted. “Oh, she said it, but I suspect it was
her
imagination.” A more urgent grievance came to mind. “Silly old Auntie Cornie!” she muttered savagely. “Oh, how I wish I could have had the satisfaction this morning of sacking her when she came prattling about her shares and the time she was going to take off for her operation!”

“Well, why didn’t you sack her?”

“Because I can’t, that’s why! My hat shop may well end up my only source of income, if things at the plant keep going from bad to worse. And I’ll never find anyone else half so good to run the salon end of it, even if I paid them ten times what I pay Auntie Cornie. She’s – indispensable.”

“You’d better pray she never realises it, or she’ll ask for ten times what you currently pay her.” A tinge of satisfaction coloured his voice as he added, “And then, my dear, if you can’t afford it, you’ll have to go into the shop as your own sales dame. You’d be even better at it than Cornie.”

“I can’t do that!” gasped Alicia. “It would
ruin
my social standing! It’s one thing to be the creative genius behind a business of that nature, but quite another to have to peddle my wares in person.” She tugged at the lapels of her pale pink coat, her lovely face set into the lines of sullen discontent its construction made fatally easy. “Oh, Uncle Billy, suddenly I feel as if I’m walking on ice, and it’s going to crack any minute, and I’m going to go under!”

“We’re in a pickle, it’s true. But don’t give up, we’re  not finished yet. Pounds to peanuts, when the mystery buyer turns up to his extraordinary meeting tomorrow, he’ll turn out to be some self-made yokel easily manipulated by his betters. And for that sort of exercise, you will come in very handy.”

Alicia did not reply, merely flicked him a glance of mingled doubt and dislike; her eyes reverted to the back of the chauffeur’s head, a far nicer prospect than Sir William’s choleric countenance.

When Missy walked into the library she fully expected to find Una, even though it was not one of Una’s days. And sure enough, there was Una.

“Oh, Missy, I’m so glad to see you!” she cried, jumping up. “I have a surprise for you.”

“I have a few surprises for you too,” said Missy.

“Wait right there, I’ll be back in two flicks of a dead lamb’s tail.” Una vanished into the tea cubicle, and came out bearing a large white box and hatbox, each tied up with white ribbon. “Happy anything, dearest Missy.”

They smiled at each other in complete understanding and great affection.

“It’s a scarlet lace dress and hat,” said Missy.

“It’s a scarlet lace dress and hat,” agreed Una.

“I shall wear it to my wedding.”

“John Smith! You’ve picked exactly the right man.”

“I had to resort to trickery and deception to get him.”

“If you couldn’t get him any other way, why not?”

“I told him I was dying of heart trouble.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“That,” said Missy, “is splitting hairs. Can you come to my wedding?”

“I’d love to, but no.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t be appropriate.”

“Because of your divorce? But we’re not getting married in a church, so who can object?”

“It has nothing to do with divorce, darling. I don’t think John Smith would appreciate a face from the past at his wedding.”

That made sense, therefore Missy left it alone. And there was nothing really left to say; her gratitude was quite beyond words, her need to go quickly was great. Una stood watching her painfully, as if with her she was taking something so precious the quality of Una’s life would suffer ever afterwards – and that something was not so tangible as a scarlet lace dress and hat. On an impulse she didn’t understand, Missy returned to the desk, leaned over it and put her arm about Una’s shoulders, her lips against Una’s cheek. So frail, so cold, so weightless!

“Goodbye, Una.”

“Goodbye, my best and dearest friend. Be happy!”

Missy made the train with a minute to spare, and saw John Smith on the platform in Katoomba before the train came to a standstill. Thank God for that. He hadn’t changed his mind during his slow amble along the highway, then. And in fact when he saw her alight from her carriage, he even looked quite glad to see her!

“They’ll issue us with a licence and marry us today,” he said, taking Missy’s boxes from her.

“And I don’t have to be married in brown,” said Missy, retrieving her boxes. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll pop into the platform toilet and change into my wedding dress.”

“
Wedding
dress?” He looked down at his grey flannel work shirt and his old moleskin trousers in comical dismay.

She laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not traditional. In fact, I guarantee that you’re going to look a great deal more appropriate than I am.”

Her dress fitted perfectly. What an eye for size Una had! And what a wonderful colour! Her eyes swam with the strain of looking at it. Where on earth had Una managed to find a garment so elegant in style yet so wanton in colour?

The mirror on the wall seemed to own a touch of magic, for whoever it reflected, it lent a slight patina of beauty; adjusting her preposterous scarlet hat, Missy decided she looked very well. Her darkness was suddenly interesting, her thin body was suddenly merely slender as a young tree. Yes, very well! And certainly not spinsterish.

Once he recovered from the shock of that red, John Smith thought she looked very well too. “Now this is my sort of wedding! I look like a hayseed, and you look like a madam.” He tucked her arm through his gleefully. “Come on, woman, let’s get the deed over before I change my mind.”

They strolled into Katoomba Street, the cynosure of all eyes, and actually quite pleased with the sensation they were creating.

“That was easy,” said Missy after the deed was done and they were sitting together in John Smith’s cart. She held out her hand to see her ring. “I am now Mrs. John Smith. How nice it sounds!”

“I must say this time was a lot better than the last.”

“Was your first wedding a big affair, then?”

“It could have passed for a circus. Two hundred and fifty guests, the bride with a thirty-foot train that needed a whole regiment of runny-nosed little boys to lift it, twelve or fourteen bridesmaids, all of the men stuffed into tails, the archbishop of something presiding, a massed choir – God Jesus, at the time it was a nightmare! But compared to what followed, it was an idyll in paradise.” He looked sideways at her, one eyebrow raised. “Do you want to hear this?”

“I think I’d better. They say the second wife always has to contend with the ghost of the first, and that it’s a lot harder to fight a ghost than a living person.” She paused to gather her courage. “Was she – dear to you?”

“She may have been when I married her, I honestly can’t remember. I didn’t know her, you see. I only knew of her. She must have meant to have me, because I’m sure I didn’t do the proposing. I’m obviously the sort of bloke women propose to! Only I didn’t mind your way of proposing, at least it was honest and above-board. But her – one minute she was all over me like a rash, the next minute she was acting as if I had the plague. Blowing hot and cold, they call it. I think women think it’s expected of them, that if they don’t do it, they’re going to make life too easy for the bloke. Now that’s where I like you very much, Mrs. Smith. You don’t blow hot and cold at all.”

“I’m too grateful,” said Missy humbly. “Do go on! What happened after that?”

He shrugged. “Oh, she decided she was entitled to make all the decisions, that what
she
wanted was all that mattered. Once she’d landed her fish, the fish didn’t matter a bit. I was just there to prove she could catch a fish, to lend her respectability, to give her an escort here and there. She didn’t exactly have lovers, she had what she called cicisbeos, pansified twerps with gardenias in their buttonholes and a better shine on their hair than on their patent leather shoes. If anyone was ever branded by the company she kept, my first wife certainly was – her women friends were as hard as nails and as tough as old boots, and her men friends were as soft as butter and as limp as last week’s lettuce. She liked to mock me. In front of anyone, everyone. I was dull, I was stodgy. And she never kept our differences private, she’d get set on a quarrel no matter how public the place. In a nutshell, she held me in utter contempt.”

“And you? What light did you hold her in?”

“I
loathed
her.” Evidently he still did, for the feeling in his voice did not belong to an experience buried in the past.

“How long were you married?”

“About four or five years.”

“Were there any children?”

“Hell, no! She might have lost her figure. And of course that meant she was a great one for teasing, for kissing and cuddling, but to get my leg over her – it only happened when she got drunk, and afterwards she’d scream and howl and carry on in case anything came of it, then she’d pop out and visit the tame doctor they all patronised.”

“And she
died
?” asked Missy, scarcely able to credit that such a woman could have had so much consideration.

“We had a terrible fight one evening over – oh, I don’t know, something small and idiotic that actually didn’t matter a bit. We lived in a house that had a waterfrontage onto the Harbour, and apparently after I’d gone out she decided to go for a swim to cool her temper. They found her body a couple of weeks later, washed up on Balmoral Beach.”

“Oh, poor thing!”

He snorted. “Poor thing, nothing! The police tried in every way they knew to pin it on me, but luckily the minute she’d done shouting at me, I went out, and I met a friend not twenty yards down the road. He’d been kicked out of bed too, so we walked to where he’d been going, the flat of a mutual friend – a bachelor, the wily bastard. There we stayed until past noon of the following day, getting drunker and drunker. And since the servants had seen her alive and well more than half an hour after my friend and I arrived at our mutual friend’s flat, the police couldn’t touch me. Anyway, after the body turned up the post mortem revealed that she’d died of simple drowning, with no evidence of foul play. Not that that stopped a lot of people in Sydney reckoning I did kill her – I just got a name for being too smart to get caught, and my friends for being bought to alibi me.”

“When did all this happen?”

“About twenty years ago.”

“A long time! What have you done with yourself since, that it’s taken you so long to do what you’ve always wanted?”

“Well, I quit Australia as soon as the police let go. And I drifted round the world. Africa, the Klondike, China, Brazil, Texas. I had to live through almost twenty years of voluntary exile. Since I was born in London, I changed my name by deed-poll there, and when I did come back to Australia, I came as that bona-fide citizen of the world, John Smith, with all my money in gold and no past.”

“Why
Byron
?”

“Because of the valley. I knew it was coming up for sale, and I’ve always wanted to own a whole valley.”

Feeling she had probed enough, Missy changed the subject to the skulduggery going on at the Byron Bottle Company, and told her husband about the plight her mother and aunts were in because of it. John Smith listened most attentively, a smile playing round the corners of his mouth, and when she had ended her tale he put his arm around her, drew her across the seat against his side, and kept her there.

“Well, Mrs. Smith, I really didn’t want to marry you when you first brought the subject up, but I confess I’m growing more reconciled to it every time you open your mouth, not to mention your legs,” he said. “You’re a woman of sense, your heart’s in the right place, and you’re a Hurlingford of the Hurlingfords, which gives me a lot of power I didn’t expect to have,” he said. “Interesting, how things turn out.”

Missy rode the rest of the way home in blissful silence.

The next morning John Smith donned a suit, a collar, and a tie, all remarkably well cut and oddly smart.

“Whatever it is, it must be a lot more important than your wedding,” observed Missy without a trace of resentment.

“It is.”

“Are you going far afield?”

“Only to Byron.”

“Then if I’m quick about it, may I come as far as Mother’s with you, please?”

“Good idea, wife! Wait there for me until some time late this afternoon, and you can introduce me to my in-laws when I pick you up. I’ll probably have a lot to say to them.”

It’s going to be all right, thought Missy as she rode in her bright red dress and hat alongside her unfamiliarly elegant husband up to the top of the ridge. I don’t care if I got him by trickery and deceit. He likes me, he really does like me, and without even realising it himself, he’s already moved over a little to fit me in alongside him. When my year is up, I’ll be able to tell him the truth. Besides, if I’m lucky, I may well by then be the mother of his child. It hurt him badly when his first wife didn’t want any, and now he’s closer to fifty than to forty, so children will be even more important to him. He will be an excellent father, because he can laugh.