The Thin Woman (27 page)

I toyed with my coffee spoon, and moistened my lips. “Could sh-sh, Sybil, have fallen off a bus or …?”

“My guess is that she has mistaken the day. Or she may have been taken ill after we left home and been unable to put us off.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” I wanted to drop my head down on the table and have a five-minute snooze, especially if Ben would join me.

“We’ll wait a while longer in case she did get on the wrong bus or train and ended up fifty miles from here.” He turned his best profile to the waitress and as on our first dining-out experience brought the waitress hurrying to his side. He ordered Irish coffee for both of us, seemingly unaware of my condition.

He was aware by the time he guided me out into the reception room half an hour later. The carpet was all soft, spongy waves flowing up against the double entry doors, and I was taking dainty little bites out of Ben’s shoulder. The seagulls inside my head were telling me to do it.

“Behave,” Ben hissed as a waiter passed us with an elevated purse-lipped stare.

“I can’t help myself.” I sagged against the man from E.E. as we swam through those double doors and got slugged in the face by the feisty salt wind with the sting of rain in its tail. “Ben,” I said meekly, “if you don’t take me in your arms here and now and kiss me with disgusting animal passion I will pitch myself down these steps and some innocent bystander is going to have to scrape me up with a spatula.”

“Don’t be an ass.” He sounded strange, and a long way off. “You don’t want to be a cheap thrill for all those holiday-makers down there.”

“No.” I turned my body against him and twined my fingers through his hair as though I had been doing that sort of thing all my life, instead of just reading about it in paperback. “I want to be a cheap thrill for you, you elusive little Pimpernel. What’s wrong with me? Don’t you care at all? Don’t I rave about your cooking? Don’t I appreciate how you slave at keeping grease spots off the kitchen wallpaper? Don’t you realize that under this brittle facade I really am worried about Aunt Sybil? We don’t know anything about this friend of hers, where she is …” I think I was crying in nicely maudlin fashion, but I couldn’t hear too well, over those damned seagulls—the ones racketing around inside my head.

“Oh, Ellie, the things I have to do to shut you up.” His breath brushed my face lightly, and he kissed me. It was possible that I had got this far under false pretences, that I had intentionally misrepresented my state of inebriation. I could not have been officially soused when his lips first met mine because I was really drunk now. I was floating, flying, seagulling on gossamer wings towards ecstasy.

“Disgusting!” a voice roared in my ears, and in exquisite slow motion I lifted my lips away from Ben’s, opened my eyes, and met the glare of a purple-faced little man in a pork-pie hat.

“Sir,” I said, “you have made my day, my life, actually. My greatest ambition has always been to make an obscene spectacle of myself.”

“Does that mean,” said Ben, “that you have changed your mind about those steps? Good, then let us go home and see if there is any word from your aunt. The drive back will take an hour and those clouds are shouting rain.”

The clouds weren’t the only blurred objects about to spill over. My eyes threatened deluge equal to Noah’s flood. Why had Ben done this to me, treated my drunken overtures as nothing more than a shallow display of momentary lust? Why
hadn’t he kissed me again to show the pork-pie man where to get off? Why had he refused to take advantage of me? I was capable of decent restraint, I could have waited until he got me to the car for something more meaningful.

Happily, the louse was not troubling to make polite conversation. He was listening to ribald rock and roll lyrics blasting from the car wireless and puffing away on a pipe, a new affectation. If only he knew how ridiculous he looked! Not a patch on the dear vicar, who was tall, kind, rational, and in every way ideal husband material. Poor Rowland, I really would have to give him a chance to declare himself. He deserved a nice girl like me. If I could not love him, because my heart had already been bestowed on the unfeeling creature humming cheerily away beside me, I could at least revamp his house, wash his socks, and be a mother to his children. My mind dwelt on a row of miniature Rowlands who paraded before my inward eye, all wearing tweed jackets, sharp creases in their knee-length trousers, and hand-knitted socks, courtesy of Aunt Sybil. A shutter came down, the small paragons vanished and were instantly replaced by a swarming tangle of boys and girls all with dark hair, tanned skins, and brilliant blue-green eyes—shinning down the bannisters, cartwheeling through the hall, creating a havoc of noisy laughter, muddy floors, and overturned chairs, under the approving eye of their gymnastics tutor, Auntie Dorcas. How sad for the precious poppets that their father, wicked philanderer that he was, refused to do the decent thing and many their mother.

Reaction set in. Temper gave way to depression as I considered that what I was suffering now would be nothing to the emptiness I would experience when Ben took his final walk—out of my life. At least now I could see him, wallow in his indifference. Why not test the powers of my endurance by turning the knife a little deeper? “I wonder what Vanessa will think of the new me?” I asked. “For years I have been telling myself she is not half the woman I am, but that line is a little redundant now.”

“Why do you do this?” Ben’s voice cut through the rapturous howling of rock music.

“Do what, pray tell?”

“Sneer at the way you were six months ago. You remind me of one of those born-again religious fanatics who view their past existence as so much dirty laundry. Tell me, Ellie, do you really see yourself as totally reincarnated?”

“You’ve always thought there was plenty of room for improvement.” I tilted my head back against the seat and let the salt wind blow against my face. Now I had an excuse for the stinging around my eyes.

“Have I?” Ben spun the wheel rather too sharply as we made a turn and the car gave an angry bounce. “What I have thought is that comparing yourself with someone like Vanessa is totally ridiculous. I told you what I thought of her at our first meeting.”

“Yes, that making a pass at her was irresistible.”

We had just passed the vicarage. Reaching over, Ben snapped off the radio. “Home sweet home,” he said. “Do you plan to conclude this halcyon day by sulking in your room?” With an angry flourish he swung between the iron gates, failing to negotiate the towering mound of dry cement that had not been there when we left.

“What the hell is that?” he bawled through the swirl of fine grey dust that blew up against the windscreen.

“If you ever paid attention to the mundane details of our every-day life you would remember that I arranged to have the gate supports fixed and at the same time resurface Aunt Sybil’s foot path. What galls me is that this was supposed to have been delivered and the work done last week. And it is not as though Messrs. Grimsby and Strumpet, Stone Masons, have been caught up in mass-producing tombstones. They told me summer is usually their slow season for cemetery work.”

Ben had backed up, manoeuvred around the pyramid, and stopped at the edge of the driveway. “While I’m cleaning off the windscreen,” he said, quite mildly, showing how little our tiff had meant to him, “why don’t you check Aunt Sybil’s cottage? One reason she did not show today might be that she has decided to return home, making a luncheon meeting with us superfluous.”

“Smart thinking,” I said coldly, and climbed out of the car. The cottage stood unlit and forlorn, but as I peered through the curtains, I had the odd feeling that Ben might be right in that Aunt Sybil had returned. Had something stirred, a shadow perhaps, to give me that sense of someone within? Whatever it was, no one answered my repeated knocks, and I told myself in no uncertain terms that I was becoming a basket case.

Ben parked the car under the archway and I went into the hall, where I met Dorcas coming downstairs wrapped from neck to foot in a plaid mustard-and-green dressing gown which would have turned anyone bilious. She looked like death warmed up. Groggily she informed me that she had been felled by a splitting headache and had been forced to take to her bed for the whole afternoon. She was still a bit woolly with sleep but feeling more the thing. At first the attack had been so severe she had felt disoriented and could barely remember climbing the stairs.

“Funny,” said Dorcas, rubbing a hand across her face, “had been feeling fine, getting on with the garden. Only stopped to take a five-minute time-out with a cupper from the thermos, then went to get up and felt like my head was full of glass splinters and my legs had left home. Must have been the storm coming on. Only time I get headaches is when the weather is about to change. By the way, Ellie, some woman rang up for you just after you left, told her you were out, but rang off before I got her name.”

“Sounds like Jill,” I said. “Always in a mad rush. I hope she calls back.” When I told Dorcas about Aunt Sybil not keeping our lunch date, she said she was not sure if she would have heard even if the phone had rung after she was taken bad. Too far under. But not to worry, she was back on her feet and on her way to the kitchen to serve Tobias his supper—if she could find him. Shortly after Ben and I left she had seen him exiting from an open window; with the weather about to turn nasty she was anxious to see if he had returned.

“Sorry about all this.” Dorcas rubbed a finger across her brow as if trying to erase the memory of pain. “That
headache hit me for six, nothing to be done but seal the room in darkness, crawl into bed, and try to sleep it off.” She winced and rubbed her forehead again. “Thought I heard Tobias yowling as I got up. Hope he hasn’t been in a fight.”

“Dorcas, you are the limit.” Opening up the bottle of brandy that stood on the glass cabinet, I poured a generous measure and insisted the invalid knock it back. “Here you are worrying about that gadabout cat, when you should be flat on your back in bed. Relax. To set your mind at ease, I will hunt him down.”

“Make me feel a lot better.” Dorcas pursed her lips, scrunched up her face, and took a tentative sip. “Do more for me than this brandy—can’t abide spirits—knowing Tobias is in the house.”

Ordering Dorcas to stay put, I went into the kitchen, filled Tobias’s bowl, rattled it suggestively a few times and when this ploy failed, went through the house, opening doors and calling for the old rascal. Ben was in the dining room setting the table.

“Dorcas still feeling lousy?” he asked.

“Migraine,” I replied succinctly. “And she’s working herself into a fizzle because Tobias may be prowling around outside, and it’s beginning to thunder.”

“Then there’s nothing to get worked up about.” Ben laid down another fork. “Tobias won’t linger outside once his whiskers get wet. He’ll turn tail and gallop home.”

But Tobias did not come in. As another vibrating roll of thunder tore the skies apart, I slipped on one of the raincoats hanging in the alcove by the garden door, picked up a torch, and ducked out into the courtyard. Its frail beam was useless. The gale bore down upon me, whirling me this way and that. Not looking where I was going, I almost tripped over the edge of the courtyard into the moat. I was saved from a damp spill by a brief flare of light, a sizzle of lightning making an angry red graph against the black.

“Tobias!” I called, but my voice didn’t travel. It hung in the air unable to penetrate the wind.

“Are you totally insane!” I couldn’t see Ben, but his hand caught me roughly by the arm and yanked me backwards. “That lightning came down damn close to the house. Forget your bloody cat, he’s got eight more lives than you have.”

“I can’t leave him out here,” I sniffled. “He’ll be scared out of his wits.”

“If he had any, he wouldn’t be out here.”

“Bug off, I have to find him.”

I tried to pull away, but Tarzan had me fast. “Dear Lord,” prayed Ben, “what sins have I committed that you cast this affliction upon me?” With these pious words he threw me over his shoulder like Santa’s sack of goodies and staggered back to the house, where he tossed me unceremoniously on the drawing room couch and ordered poor Dorcas to watch me. “Get out of that coat, you stupid girl. I’ll go and fix you and the invalid a hot drink.”

Dorcas finally was persuaded to go to bed, on the understanding that I would awaken her, whatever the hour, if and when Tobias reappeared. For the first time in several months Ben and I sat through an evening together. Saying he did not trust me to leave the drawing room, he brought our dinner in on trays along with a pot of strong black coffee. “If you are going to wait up half the night you need a stimulant.” He handed me the cup and poured in a swig of brandy. To my amazement, he solicitously attempted to cheer me up. “That cat’s an ingrate.”

“He’s never stayed out through a storm before.” Unable to finish my cup of coffee, I put it down and went to pull back the curtains, staring into the sullen darkness.

“You won’t see anything out there.” Ben sounded thoroughly exasperated. “Okay, all right! No sacrifice is too much for Lancelot here! I will don my Wellingtons and macintosh and sally forth into the raging elements. Don’t thank me!” He raised an imperious hand. “I enjoy a leisurely walk after dinner. Getting drenched will be an added bonus—I won’t need a bath tonight.” He sounded like Aunt Sybil.

Hopes raised, I paced, waiting for Ben’s return. The gilt hands of the Buhl clock on the Queen Anne desk scarcely
moved. It was stupid to feel this panicky about a cat, especially one used to fending for himself in the heart of London. Probably at this very minute he was holed up somewhere warm and dry. The stables—Jonas! What a fool I was not to have thought of him before. Tobias often paid the gardener a visit in his rooms. Would Ben think to try there? Possibly, and yet … I cast a vengeful glare at the clock; the suspense was suffocating me.

This time I did not take a raincoat. Head down, I ran the short distance across the courtyard. Even so, I was dragged back by the wind, my movements laboured as though I were a swimmer in turgid waters. Lifting the latch on the stable door was a battle. “Tobias,” I called, just in case he was hiding there. Which was silly; if he had made it this far he would have gone up to Jonas. Remembering the light switch at the bottom of the wooden steps I groped my way until my fingers caught on the nub of the switch. The stables sputtered into wavering yellow light.