The Thin Woman (18 page)

“And Mr. Grantham?” I put out my hands to take a cup.

“Dreadful man.” Rose did not apologize for not mincing words. “The big-I-am type, puffed out like a parrot, always wanting to impress the neighbours. Most people in them
days received afternoon callers once or twice a week, but Mr. Grantham insisted the mistress be at home every day of the week. My word, she did used to get vexed having to be dressed up and sitting in the drawing room for hours on end, entertaining them dowagers and debutantes. She’d rather have been baking or gardening or out flying a kite with Master Merlin.”

“Did they quarrel?”

“The mister and missus? Did they ever!” Rose straightened a doily on the arm of her chair. “Everything was show with Mr. G. I mind a time a great lady come to the house, got stuck in a storm, she had. Motorcars didn’t like bad weather in them days. And oh! you should have heard his nibs carrying on because the missus took her ladyship into the kitchen instead of the drawing room. They talked recipes and remedies and such. ‘Dead common,’ he called the missus, but her ladyship couldn’t have taken no offence for she sent a thank-you letter and a little present—an Easter egg, for little Merlin, I suppose. I remember all that because it was about the time Mr. G. got the notion to have the missus’s picture done. Not because he was so devoted but because it were the done thing. Trouble was he weren’t prepared to cough up for a proper artist—got a boy from the village, Miles Biddle. I remember his father was a clerk at the bank. Nice lad but his pictures was proper dreadful.”

“So that’s who did it. We were curious about the artist—we have the painting, but it was not finished.” I looked at Dorcas for corroboration, but she was busy stirring her tea.

“The rows that painting caused. The missus wasn’t good looking. Weren’t her fault, except according to Mr. G. what he wanted was one of them ladies in tall white wigs with them bits of black confetti stuck on their faces—like Marie Antonetti before they took her head off. Said the missus looked more like a servant than mistress of a big house. Joan the parlour maid told me that bit (she was cleaning dust out of the drawing room keyhole, so she said), then mister got started on Miles Biddle, would have it that the lad didn’t know his place.”

“Really!” I said. Perhaps Aunt Sybil couldn’t help being a snob; it was a genetic fault.

“All nonsense. Miles were too shy to be pushy—used to blush when missus spoke to him. Joan liked to take the mickey out of him, they was the same age, about twenty. She’d giggle and tell him what a prime bit of stuff he was, and off he’d scoot. Around the missus he was all right though. Too much so, according to Mr. G. when he found the lad wasn’t coming in through the tradesmen’s entrance.”

“And why not?” Dorcas bristled; I hoped she wasn’t feeling demeaned by all this talk of back entrances. “He may have been an inferior artist, but he wasn’t peddling trumperies door to door.”

“Don’t you worry none. The missus stood up for him. Said the lad was doing them the favour. Such a go-round, which she hated on account of young Merlin. Always her first thought he was. Used to have that cousin of his, Sylvia, or was it Sybil? over for long holidays to keep him company. Mucky little blighter she was. Her bedroom! The state of it. And when the missus would speak to her about it, she’d say the little dog had got in and done it. I ask you! Always so timid, but Mr. G., he liked Miss Sybil, but wicked as it is to say, I’ve often found that his type of man—the ones with prayer calluses on their knees—have a thing about little girls.”

Rose was refilling the teapot and I asked her why the portrait was never completed. Much to my disappointment she said she did not know. Shortly after the portrait was started it was discovered that Rose was suffering from tuberculosis and a year in a sanatorium was the result. When she was sent back home, she was told that Mrs. Grantham had died. For years she had worried that she might have passed on her disease to her mistress, particularly as her mum had taken a clamp-lipped attitude on the subject of the death and had ordered Rose not to ask questions. But once she married she began to hear rumours that had nothing to do with TB. Abigail’s death had been hushed up. Even the doctor would not talk; which could mean only one thing—suicide.

“And can’t say as I blame her, poor dear lady,” said Rose sadly. “Wouldn’t be anything for her to fear in the next world, would there? Not after the hell her husband put her through on earth.”

We left our new friend with promises of returning to visit her again soon. Outside on the pavement the sky was threaded with shades of pink and rose, deepening in places to damson and crimson. I love sunsets and was beginning to realize how much I had grown to care for Merlin’s Court and the rugged strip of coastline, to say nothing of the village.

Ben was in the kitchen when we got back and, surprise! Freddy had telephoned to chat and after thought, to hear how we were faring in tracking down the treasure.

“I told him nothing,” said Ben. “Nothing to tell, and I am not seriously concerned that if he got wind of where to look Freddy would dig a tunnel under the house. I simply thought it politic to keep quiet.”

“Did he say where he was? He wasn’t ringing up from this area, was he?” I asked edgily. I was about to spill part of the armload of butter, cheese, and sausages I was attempting to stash in the new refrigerator while Dorcas hung up our coats. Anyway, I was relieved when Ben said Freddy had rung from home, miles away from here. He wouldn’t be following up his phone call with a personal visit.

“His other reason for ringing was to ask for money.” Ben took the sausages from me. “He seems to think we are under a moral obligation to keep him in the style to which he would like to become accustomed. I promised him twenty quid but that’s his lot.”

“How soon the
nouveau riche
forget. Remember, Galahad, when you were scrounging an existence on bread and dripping and selling your smile to pay the rent. Freddy’s not a bad sort. Just because to us all hippies look alike doesn’t mean he isn’t an individual with his own worries.”

“You’re unusually magnanimous this evening.” Ben brushed past me on his way to the table with the bubbling pot, almost branding me on the arm. “But let’s get one thing clear from the beginning. I do not intend to support your
sponging relatives for the rest of their natural (or should I say, unnatural) lives. Has my mother been on the phone trying to put the touch on you?”

“Now wait just a minute!” I slammed the refrigerator door with such emphasis the motor revved up. “How did your sainted mother get into this? Did she leave us a fortune? No. She tossed her sonny boy out on his ear—a prey to the benefice of the first rich old man to cross his path.”

“So? No one’s perfect,” replied Ben equably as he lifted the casserole lid and inhaled deeply.

“Curing a cold?”

“No.” Ben wrinkled his brow, and sniffed again. In the voice of one deeply concerned he asked, “Do you think I went a little heavy on the garlic? Perhaps I should have omitted that last squeeze of onion juice.”

My mouth watered. I smiled slyly. “Now you mention it, I do detect a rather pungent quality not quite in keeping with that
pièce de résistance
, the steak smothered in béarnaise sauce that you conjured up for us last night. Hand me the ladle and …”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Ben replaced the lid. “Poulet en crême parmigiana is fatal to diets. You get a cos salad with fresh spring vegetables, chilled in lemon juice and tarragon.”

In this enlightened age deprivation wasn’t so bad, and possibly as male chauvinists went, neither was Ben. It was his indifference to my charms that I found infuriating. Why couldn’t life be the way it was in the TV adverts: A girl changed her shampoo and men came buzzing round like flies round a jam jar. Perhaps if I tried the bottle I had bought at the market I would wake up tomorrow morning to find my name was Rapunzel. A chubby one, perhaps, but who would notice under all that floor-length hair? On the other hand, what hair I had might all disintegrate and leave me worse off than before. Such was Ben’s prophecy when I gave him my impersonation of Uncle Ted’s sales pitch.

“Look on the bright side,” said the charming creature. “If your hair did fall out you would legitimately lose a few pounds. Whatever the charlatan told you, you certainly have a bountiful supply.”

I was ninety-nine percent sure that was a compliment but I had to probe to verify. “My ends need trimming and I have been toying with the idea of going blond. What do you think?”

Ben tossed his wooden spoon into the sink. For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, then he looked at me and said slowly, “You have beautiful hair—the kind that should be left to itself, thick and shiny. You ought to wear it down sometimes.”

What was such flattery worth when I practically wrung it out of him?

“Vanessa is the one in the family with gorgeous hair.”

The cosy shared mood vanished and even the bubbling percolator could not bring it back. Why had I dragged Vanessa between us? Was it because hearing from Freddy had reminded me that she and all my relations must be praying to their dark gods that Ben and I would fail at Merlin’s Court?

The thought plagued me even the following day. I had gone out into the grounds in search of Tobias, who had taken to straying farther afield than I liked. Nasty visions of boys with sling shots kept infiltrating my brain, so I abandoned my lavender furniture polish and went searching.

The afternoon sunshine was warmly fragrant with the scent of daffodils. They were almost over, but the last blooms gleamed soft and yellow. I was tempted to pick some for the house, but that would have invoked the ire of Jonas Phipps. None other than himself was ever allowed to cut flowers. I hoped Tobias had not sneaked into the cottage. I was not sure if cats frightened Aunt Sybil or if she merely disliked them. She would have considered it unseemly to display any strong emotion, even terror. My elderly aunt came out of the cottage in time to catch me spying through her sitting room window like a burglar.

“Anything wrong, Giselle?”

I burbled something incoherent about an afternoon walk and not wanting to disturb her if she was sleeping, ending in a rush with, “You haven’t seen Tobias, have you?”

“The cat?” From Aunt Sybil’s expression I gathered she considered it excessive to dignify animals with names. Her plump jowls bounced as she shook her head. “Don’t you think, Giselle, that all this concern and devotion could be somewhat better spent?”

I stared at her.

“We can’t all think alike.” Her tone implied this was a pity. “But I never could see showering affection on dumb animals; affection should be given to people.”

I almost forgot myself, so tempted was I to say bitterly that I never realized that human beings were each endowed with a premeasured amount of affection. Then I looked at her. She was a small dumpy woman in a frayed grey cardigan and thick lisle stockings that couldn’t quite hide the lumpy varicose veins.

“Tobias is an old friend,” I said mildly. “For a long time I didn’t have many. Aunt Sybil, I know you have been lonely, since Uncle Merlin …”

“But that doesn’t mean I have been sitting around moping. Merlin would not have wished that,” she said huffily. “Those water wings Mr. Hamlet kindly purchased for me, though the pink and yellow stripes are a bit loud, really help my technique in the water. I don’t know why people would ever wish to swim without them. I’m onto the butterfly now. The breast stroke isn’t the excercise for me. I’m quite well enough endowed. Vanessa takes after me in that area. Lovely figure, but then, she eats sensibly.”

Why is it, I wondered, that people so often believe that if one eats sensibly, one will end up with perfect proportions? With my luck I would discover I was pear-shaped. “Vanessa never said ‘no’ to a currant bun in her life,” I said pettishly.

Aunt Sybil did not seem to hear me. “Such a lovely girl.” She paused, looking vague. “I don’t really see any harm in mentioning that she took me out to lunch yesterday. She,
her mother, and Lulu all came down for the day, but they wouldn’t go up to the main house. Afraid, I suppose, that they would not get a proper welcome. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. I think they asked me not to, but I wondered if you might have seen us. We saw you and that Dorcas woman at the Hounds and Hare, but the place was such a squash you may have missed us. Astrid had asked for a table in the corner away from the glare from the window.”

That feeling of being watched, of someone listening … and earlier in the market, was that my imagination, too? “Did either Maurice or Freddy come?” I asked.

“We were expecting Freddy,” she said, “but he didn’t show up and Maurice can’t afford time away from work. Up to his neck in debts.” Clucking, her yellow false teeth slipped a little.

From the past came a memory—the day of the funeral and a snippet of conversation that I had put down to pure spite on the part of Aunt Astrid. She had said the rumour was out that Uncle Maurice was on the verge of bankruptcy. I would have to talk to Ben. Since the reading of the will, I had not been comfortable thinking about Uncle Maurice. The stuffy boorish middle-aged man had been denounced as a philanderer and seducer of young girls, and I had remembered with a maidenly blush his accidental arrival in my bed. But even the lecherous have to eat, and I did not like to think of Aunt Lulu having to forego her thrice-weekly outing to the hairdresser’s. Yes, I would talk to Ben, and together we could consult Mr. Bragg about the possibility of releasing some funds.

Aunt Sybil dutifully asked me in for tea, but I think she was relieved when I refused. I rather doubted that she had any clean cups. Leaving her, I continued my search for Tobias among the shrubbery, but without success. My hope was that he had returned to the house in my absence. I hurried down the gravel path to the house, when, rounding a curve, I came suddenly upon a tall, expansive oak. Surrounding the trunk was a wooden bench, and asleep on it was Jonas, his head nodding over a furry bundle—the errant Tobias. I would have been hard put to guess who was snoring or purring
more loudly. I left them in peace and went into the house smiling. Poor Aunt Sybil! From the kitchen window I watched her come trotting through the garden, a basket on her arm, peering at the ground. Surely she wasn’t …? But I saw her bend and pick up something small and pop it into the basket. Aunt Sybil was having escargots for supper. Ugh!