The Ladies of Missalonghi (19 page)

“She did, she did! She eloped! At
her
age! Oh, what a circus is going on at Aurelia’s! Hysterics and tantrums all over the place! Little Willie nearly tore the house apart looking for Alicia because he refused to believe what her note to him said, and Billy was roaring like a gale because he had to go to some important meeting at the plant when what he really wanted to do was set the police onto his chauffeur! They carted Aurelia off to bed as stiff as a board, and had to send for Uncle Neville when she kept holding her breath until she passed out, and then Uncle Neville gave her such a wallop across the ears because he was cross at being called out for nothing, and he called her no better than a spoiled baby, so that set her off screaming, and she’s still screaming! Oh, and Edmund is sitting on a chair just twitching, and Ted and Randolph are trying to pull him together so he can go to the meeting at the plant. But the worst of it is that Alicia and the chauffeur went off in Billy’s brand new motorcar, for all the world as if they owned it!”

Cornelia ended her breathless recital with a bellow of laughter, Missy joined her, and one by one the others came in to ring a peal of glorious mirth over the events at Mon Repos. After that catharsis everyone felt absolutely tiptop, and settled to a quieter but no less enjoyable dissection of Missy’s marriage and Alicia’s elopement, not to mention lunch.

John Smith arrived at Missalonghi just before five o’clock, looking very pleased with himself. He shook his mother-in-law’s hand with great affability, but refrained from kissing her, a piece of good sense she heartily approved of. The handshake he also offered Octavia disappointed her, but she had to admit, looking at him properly for the first time, that he was a fine figure of a man. Of course the suit aided her impression, as did the fresh haircut and neatly trimmed beard. Yes, Missy had nothing to be ashamed of in her choice of a life’s partner, and to Octavia’s way of thinking, his fifteen years of seniority made him just the right age for a husband.

He seemed a nice man on the inside too, for he made himself easily at home in the kitchen and sniffed at the scent of roast lamb appreciatively.

“I hope you and Missy will stay to dinner?” asked Drusilla.

“We’d love to,” he said.

“What about the road home? It isn’t going to be too risky after dark?”

“Not at all. The horses know it blindfold.”

He leaned back in his chair and raised one eyebrow at his wife, who was sitting opposite and just beaming at him with a pride in him his first wife had certainly never owned. What fools men were! They always went after the pretty women, when their intelligence should tell them the homely ones were much better bets. However, she looked all right in that bright red getup, not beautiful, certainly not pretty, but interesting. In fact, she looked like the sort of woman most men would want to get to know because they weren’t sure what went on inside. Attractive, bumpy nose and all. And as she sat there sparking with life, it was difficult to believe she could die at any moment. His heart twisted, an odd sensation. Tomorrow, tomorrow! Don’t think about it until it happens! You are beginning to dwell on it, and you mustn’t! Don’t think of her death-sentence as a cosmic revenge on you!

Maybe if he could make her happy enough, it wouldn’t happen at all. There were such things as miracles, he had seen one or two in his travels. Getting rid of his first wife undoubtedly fell into the category of a miracle.

“I want to talk to you ladies,” he said, dragging his eyes and his mind away from his present wife.

Three faces turned to him with interest. Drusilla and Octavia ceased fussing at the stove and sat down.

“There was a shareholder’s meeting at the Byron Bottle Company today,” he said, “and management of the company has changed hands. In fact, it passed into my hands.”

“
You?
’’ squeaked Missy.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re the mystery buyer?”

“Yes.”

“But why? Uncle Billy said the mystery buyer had outlaid the kind of money for shares that no one could ever hope to get back! So why?”

He smiled, not attractively; for the first time since meeting him Missy saw a different John Smith, a powerful and flinty John Smith, a John Smith who might not know the meaning of the word mercy. It didn’t frighten her and it didn’t take her aback; rather, it pleased her. Here was no defeated refugee from life’s insistent pressures, here was no weakling. On the outside he was so delightfully relaxed and easygoing, and there were people who might mistake that for weakness even after they knew him very well, perhaps intimately well. Like his first wife? Yes, she could understand how a wife might come to judge him as less than he actually was, if that wife was a rather stupid, self-centred kind of woman.

But he was answering her, so she paid attention to him.

“I had a bone to pick with the Hurlingfords. Present company excluded, of course. But by and large, I have found the Hurlingfords so damned smug, so sure that their quasi-noble free-settler English origins put them much higher than people like me who have the rattle of leg-irons on their mother’s side and full Jew on their father’s. I admit I set out to get the Hurlingfords, and didn’t care how much it cost me to do it. Luckily I have enough money to buy out a dozen Byron Bottle Companies without ever feeling the pinch.”

“But you don’t come from Byron,” said Missy, bewildered.

“True. However, my first wife was a Hurlingford.”

“Really! What was her name?” asked Drusilla, who was one of the clan experts on Hurlingford genealogy.

“Una.”

Fortunately Drusilla and Octavia were far too interested in what John Smith was saying, and John Smith himself was far too interested in saying it, to pay any attention to Missy.

She sat in stony stillness, unable to move the smallest part of her. Una.
Una!

How could her mother and aunt sit there so unresponsive to that name, when they had met her and entertained her in this very house? Didn’t they remember the biscuits, the documents?

“Una?” Drusilla was asking herself. “Let me see now...Yes, she would have to be one of the Marcus Hurlingfords from Sydney, which would make Livilla Hurlingford her first cousin and her closest relative here in Byron. Humph! I never did meet her, but she died a long time ago, of course. A drowning accident, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said John Smith.

Was that it, then? Was that why she glowed? Was that why every time Missy had needed her, she had been there? Was that why so many small incidents had happened so fortuitously in the library? The novels, all leading up to the one about the girl dying of heart trouble. The shares on the desk. The Power of Attorney forms. Una the conveniently handy Justice of the Peace. The impudence and the gay carelessness, so hugely attractive to one as repressed as Missy had been. The scarlet dress and hat
exactly
as it had flowered in Missy’s imagination, and exactly the right size too. The curious significance she had managed to give all her words, so that they sank into Missy like water into parched soil, and germinated richly. Una. Oh, Una! Dear, radiant Una.

“But her married name definitely wasn’t Smith,” Drusilla was saying. “It was much more unusual, like Cardmom or Terebinth or Gooseflesh. He was a very rich man, as I recollect, which was the only reason the second Sir William approved the match. Yes, I see how they would have insulted you, if you were he.”

“I was he, and they did indeed insult me.”

“
We
,” said Drusilla, reaching out her hand to clasp his, “are delighted to welcome you into this branch of the family, my dear John.”

The hard John Smith had gone, for the eyes resting on his mother-in-law were soft, amused in a gentle way. “Thank you. I’ve changed my name, of course, and I’d prefer you didn’t speak of all this ancient history.”

“It will go no further than Missalonghi,” said Drusilla, and sighed, assuming he had changed his name to sever all the painful memories. The sordid ramifications Missy knew of from John Smith himself were obviously not a part of Hurlingford history in Byron.

“Poor thing, drowning like that,” said Octavia, shaking her head. “It must have hit you hard, John. Still, I’m very glad things have turned out the way they have, the bottling plant and all. And isn’t it interesting that you’ve gone and married another Hurlingford?”

“It was a great help today,” said John Smith calmly.

“There are Hurlingfords and Hurlingfords, like any other family,” said Drusilla with truth. “Una may not have turned out the right sort of wife for you, so perhaps it’s better she died so young. Where Missy –
I
think she will make you happy.”

He grinned and reached his arm across the table to take hold of Missy’s cold clammy hand. “Yes, I think she will too.” He managed to kiss the trembling fingers in spite of their distance from where he sat, then he released the hand and gave all his attention to Drusilla and Octavia.

“Anyway, now I’m in control of the Byron Bottle Company and its auxiliary industries, I want to make some much-needed changes. Naturally I shall sit as chairman of the board of directors and Missy will be my vice-chairman, but I also require eight other directors. Now I need a group of busy, interested individuals who will be as concerned about the town and people of Byron as about the bottling plant itself. Today I received the necessary votes to enable me to restructure the board any way I want, and I want to do something so different that when I announced my intentions, I acquired a few more shares! Sir William, Edmund Marshall, the brothers Maxwell and Herbert Hurlingford, and some dozen others sold out to me when the meeting concluded. Their spleen got the better of their judgement, which only confirms what I’ve suspected for a very long time – they’re fools. The Byron Bottle Company is going to get bigger and better! It’s going to become more civic-minded, and it’s going to diversify its interests.”

He laughed, shrugged. “Well, no point in dwelling on the likes of Sir William Hurlingford, is there! I want
women
on my board, and I want to start with you two ladies and the Misses Julia and Cornelia Hurlingford. All of you have coped magnificently with your hardships, and you certainly don’t lack courage. It may be a radical departure to staff a board of directors with women, but in my opinion most boards already consist of women –
old
women.”

He lifted that magical eyebrow at Drusilla and Octavia, who were listening to him in spellbound silence. “So? Are you interested in my offer? Naturally you’ll be paid directors’ fees. The previous board paid each of its members five thousand pounds per annum, though, I warn you, I shall cut that figure to two thousand pounds.”

“But we don’t know what to do!” cried Octavia.

“Most boards don’t, so that’s no handicap. The chairman is John Smith, remember, and John Smith will teach you every rope. Each of you will have a specific area to deal with, and I know you’ll look at hoary problems with fresh eyes and new problems with the kind of unorthodoxy a usual board can’t match.”

He looked at Drusilla sternly. “I’m waiting on your answer, Mother. Are you going to join my board, or not?”

Drusilla shut her gaping mouth with an audible snap. “Oh, indeed I am! And so are the others, I’ll see to that.”

“Good. Then the first item of business you have to deal with is who we’re going to appoint to the remaining four board places. Women, mind!”

“I must be dreaming,” said Octavia.

“Not at all,” said Drusilla, at her most majestic. “This is real, sister. The ladies of Missalonghi have come into their own at last.”

“What a day!” sighed Octavia.

What a day, indeed. The last of it was going on outside the open back door, which faced west. So did Missy’s chair. She could see the great fanning ribbons of high cloud dyed as scarlet as her dress, and the apple-green sky between them, and the mass of blossom on the fruit trees in the orchard, drifts of white and pink gone pinker in that lovely waning sun. But her mind and her eyes, normally so receptive to the natural beauty of the world, were not preoccupied with that glory. For Una was standing in the doorway, smiling at her. Una. Oh, Una!

“Don’t ever tell him, Missy. Let him believe his love and care cured you.” Una chuckled gleefully. “He’s a darling man, darling, but he has a terrible temper! It’s not in your nature to provoke it, but whatever you do, don’t tempt fate by telling him about your heart trouble. No man likes to be the dupe of a woman, and he’s already had a fair taste of that. So mark what I say – don’t ever, ever tell him.”

“You’re leaving,” said Missy desolately.

“With knobs on I’m leaving, darling! I’ve done what I was sent to do, and now I’m going to take a well-deserved rest on the softest, fattest, pinkest,
champagniest
cloud I can find.”

“I can’t do it without you, Una!”

“Nonsense, darling, of course you can. Just be good, and especially be good in bed, and you can’t go wrong. That is, as long as you heed my warning –
don’t ever tell him the truth
!”

That exquisite radiance welling from within Una had fused with the last of the sun; she stood a moment longer in the doorway with the light pouring through her and out of her, then she was gone.

“Missy! Missy! Missy! Are you all right? Are you in pain? Missy! For God’s sake, answer me!”

John Smith was standing over her, chafing her hands, a look of desperate horror in his eyes.

She managed to smile up at him. “I’m quite all right, John, truly. It’s been the day. Too much happiness!”

“You’d better get used to too much happiness, my little love, because I swear I shall drown you in it,” he said, and caught his breath. “You’re my second chance, Missalonghi Smith.”

A chill breeze puffed in through the open door, and just before Drusilla reached to shut it out, it whispered for Missy’s ears alone, “Never tell him! Oh, please,
never
tell him!”

~

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