Withering Heights (5 page)

“You have a point, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben looked less like a bottle left in the middle of the floor for someone to trip over.

“That’s the ticket.” Mrs. Malloy teetered over the chair he had vacated. “You stop worrying about being remembered five hundred years from now for your
Poulet a la
Whatsit. Go on writing recipes for the sort of food that keeps people coming back for more at Abigail’s. No one can touch you, Mr. H, when it comes to your Welsh rarebit. The one that’s a lovely shade of pink because of the diced beetroot you put in it. And then there’s the Dover sole with the Gruyere sauce and the steak-and-mushroom pie with the vermouth. Who needs anything fancier than that?”

Tobias charged the feather duster she had discarded. At his approach it came to life and put up quite a fight.

“You’re the voice of reason, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben smiled at her. It was good to see the light back in his eyes, but I wished I could have been the one to put it there. “How about a glass of sherry? Would you like another one, Ellie?” It was impossible to tell whether or not he was still irritated with me.

“I think I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

“Same here,” Mrs. M surprised me by saying. “Just the thing with that sky darkening up like it’s getting set to storm again. A good thing I gave in and agreed to stay the night or I could have got caught in it good and proper.”

Not if she had left earlier, I thought, and immediately felt guilty.

“In these heels”—she looked down at her spindly shoes—“I need to see where I’m putting me feet or I could trip on the bus steps and break me neck.” This reference to Madam LaGrange’s warning about the perils of bus stops should have reminded me of her other prediction.

Having closed the window and drawn the curtains, Ben said he would make the tea and be back in a jiffy. On his way out of the room he paused to touch my hair lightly, and the world shifted back into place.

“Was it just the magazine business that got to him?” Mrs. Malloy inquired, the moment he was out the door. “Or did the children get upset when he left them with his parents?” Here was the reason she had refused the sherry and most uncharacteristically opted for tea. She had known Ben would offer to get it, thus providing us with a few minutes of private chitchat.

“All three of them always enjoy being with Grandpa and Grandma. They love staying in the flat above the greengrocery. They think it a great adventure to help out at the cash register and hang up the bananas.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think.” Mrs. Malloy’s pious expression would have suited the vicar when leaning over the pulpit to announce that more help was needed for the foreign missions. “Children don’t need a holiday near as much as their mum and dad do. So how about you and Mr. H taking off for a few days instead of staying cooped up here?” Her gaze shifted around the room. “It can get depressing, Mrs. H, with the walls closing in and always the thought of how much dusting there is to do.”

For which one of us? Although that might be a moot point now that Tobias had disemboweled the feather duster.

“Where would we go at such short notice?”

“Well, Yorkshire do spring to mind, seeing as Melody lives there. But I’m not just looking out for meself. Think on that
good bracing air you get in the dales and up on the moors!” In a moment she would start humming a casual tune.

“Mrs. Malloy,” I said gently but firmly, “I told you this afternoon that Ben and I have things we want to get done around the house while the children are gone.”

“You’d only be away a couple of days. And like I told you, where Melody lives isn’t far from Haworth. You could go and see the parsonage where the Brontes lived.”

“I’ve been there. Seventeen times. I used to make a semiannual pilgrimage before I married Ben.”

“Well, maybe he’d like to see it.”

“Perhaps.” I was wavering, and Mrs. Malloy was every bit as good as Tobias at moving in for the kill.

“I just hate the thought of facing Melody on me own. She can be very intimidating in her way. Tossing out facts: what was said, where it was, and, as if that’s not enough, the date and the hour when it happened.”

“What does she look like?” It was impossible not to be curious.

“A moth-eaten stuffed rabbit.”

“No resemblance then to yourself?”

Mrs. Malloy was looking understandably outraged by this tactless suggestion when Ben came back into the room with the tea tray, which he placed on the Queen Anne table between the sofas. Nicely within reach of Mrs. M and myself, should we feel inclined to reach for a second slice of his delectable chocolate raspberry cake. Scratch that thought. How many digestive biscuits had I eaten that afternoon? Never mind. I could already feel the pounds creeping on. Exercise was needed if I didn’t want to wake up in the morning to face a blimp in the mirror. Getting to my feet, I handed Mrs. Malloy the cup of tea Ben poured for her. The brush of his shoulder against mine sent a thrill coursing through me.

Was it possible we would have our romantic rendezvous in the bedroom after all? It was that time of day when dark stubble shadowed his face, adding a hint of mystery to familiarity. The smile he gave me, as he handed me my cup, made my heart beat faster. Perhaps he was only thinking that it felt good to have our squabble behind us, while I was seeing myself slipping into the sea-foam green nightdress before unpinning my hair so that it fell in a languorous silken swirl down my back. There was that bottle of expensively seductive perfume on the dressing table that I reserved for the worthy occasion, there were the candles that glowed amber when lighted . . . and now there was Mrs. Malloy’s voice breaking into my highly personal dream.

“No one makes a cup of tea like you do, Mr. H!”

His smile became a roguish grin. “You’re too kind, Mrs. Malloy.”

“It’s all in the way he drops the teabags in the pot.” I eyed him impishly.

“Flattery!” He picked up his own cup and saucer. “I suppose you two still think I’m in desperate need of cheering up.”

I sat back down, avoiding eye contact with the cake sitting so prettily on its paper doily. “What Mrs. Malloy thinks you and I need is a few days’ holiday in Yorkshire while the children are gone.”

“Why Yorkshire?”

“I’ve got a sister there,” supplied the voice from the chair opposite mine.

“That we could take her to see,” I explained to Ben, “in between all the wonderful exploring you and I could do.”

The expression on his face wasn’t promising. “I’d no idea you had a sister, Mrs. Malloy.”

“We haven’t seen or spoken to each other in close on forty years.”

“Isn’t that sad?” I leaned forward. “Don’t you think, darling, that it’s important for Mrs. Malloy to take the initiative and try to put things right by going to see Melody?”

“Melody?” he echoed, looking as nonplussed as I had felt on first hearing the name. “Does she sing or play any musical instruments?”

An understandable question. It would be the only excuse to call a woman of middle years Melody.

“Tone-deaf. Always was. Of course there’s no saying as how she hasn’t taken up the tambourine or one of them play-themselves pianos in the last forty years. It’d be comforting to find out she’s got more in life than her typing job for that solicitor.” Mrs. Malloy continued to make inroads on the generous slice of chocolate cake on her plate.

“You must go and see her.” Ben strode over to the windows and back. “It doesn’t do to let these old quarrels go on and on. And it will make a nice trip for you and Ellie.”

“What about you?” I set my cup rattling back in its saucer.

“I’d be a third wheel.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

He came and perched on the arm of my chair and placed a hand on my shoulder. “As you said, it will only be for a few days and I could use that time to start getting recipes together for another book, before I lose my nerve and decide I’m a has-been.” His laugh brushed my ear. Obviously he wanted me to take a lighthearted view of things. To be a good sport. Instead, I felt hurt and in no mood to don the sea-foam green nightgown anytime that night. Only for Mrs. Malloy’s sake did I put on a good front.

“We could leave in a couple of days.”

“Why not tomorrow?” He returned to the coffee table to pour more tea.

Couldn’t he get rid of me fast enough? Not being carved
out of stone, I did the only thing a woman could do—cut myself the largest slice of cake that would fit on my plate.

“It would make for a bit of a rush.” Mrs. Malloy pursed her purple lips. “And of course I do want to look me best so as to look ten years younger than . . . well, look nice for Melody, that is. But I suppose if we was to set off late-ish in the morning or early afternoon, I could manage to get meself organized.”

“Don’t you want to phone or write to her first?” I asked.

“She’d find reasons not to see me.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Better to catch her on the hop.”

“That’s settled, then.” Having finished with the teapot, Ben sat down on one of the sofas and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankles with an elegance of movement that should have charmed me back to good spirits.

“You didn’t tell me much about what happened at your parents’,” I said, addressing the ceiling, “other than that they were well and pleased to see you and the children.”

“Mum and Pop were pretty much as usual.” Ben shifted Tobias out from behind his head while balancing his cup and saucer deftly in his other hand.

“What did they have to say?”

“The usual sort of thing. This, that, and the other. Who’d said what to whom after church on Sunday. You know how they are.”

“It’s interesting,” I told the pair of candlesticks on the mantelpiece, “that a man can explain in excruciating detail to a fellow enthusiast how he screwed the knob back onto the bathroom door, but he can’t describe to his wife anything above the barest minimum of what happened during a visit at which she wasn’t present.”

“One of them quirks of nature.” Mrs. Malloy looked ready to expound on this but, perhaps sensing my mood, closed her
mouth. Ben, however, seemed blindly unaware that I was irritated. Probably his mind was otherwise occupied, concocting a recipe for a rejuvenated version of bubble and squeak that would leave the reviewer for
Cuisine Anglaise
begging for a personal taste test.

He cupped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “Mum put on a great lunch when we arrived. Roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings. The conversation mostly revolved around Tom and Betty winning the lottery and no one hearing from then since.”

“Just who are Tom and Betty, if I may be so bold as to inquire?” Mrs. Malloy had her nose, along with her pinky, elevated as she sipped her tea.

“The Hopkinses,” I said. “Tom is Ben’s cousin. It’s his daughter, Ariel, who enjoys gothic novels.”

“Oh, right! I remember you kindly let me post a parcel of them to her.”

“Tom isn’t a first cousin,” Ben explained. “Our mothers are second cousins; I think that’s how it goes. They probably wouldn’t have stayed in touch but for the fact that they are both Roman Catholics and at one time attended the same church. I’d never met Tom until the year I began working at my Uncle Sol’s restaurant in Tottenham Court Road.”

“I’ve never heard about him!” Despite not letting on until today about Melody, Mrs. Malloy naturally expects to know more about our relatives than we do.

“He died before I met Ellie. The nicest, kindest bloke, who always hoped I’d follow in his footsteps. Mum asked me to put in a word with him about Tom, who was out of work, and Uncle Sol hired him on at the cash register. He was there for about a year until he got a job with more money as a mechanic. He was great with his hands and could spot why things didn’t work”—Ben massaged his jaw to conceal a
yawn—“but I didn’t see much of him even when we were working together. I had my own life and he had a girlfriend he was pretty crazy about.”

“No bothering to keep in touch?” Mrs. Malloy has a strong sense of family, when it isn’t hers.

“How was I supposed to know he’d one day win the lottery? They didn’t have them in those days. If someone had tipped me the wink, I’d have made him my best friend.”

“Has your mother managed to get hold of their new address?” I asked him, ignoring the witticism.

“Afraid not. Of course she assumes it’s Betty, not Tom, who’s afraid that if his relatives know where to find them they’ll all show up with their hands out, hoping for a share of the lolly.”

“From the stories past winners tell, that does happen with disastrous results,” I said. “The millions disappear and bankruptcy looms.”

“Would Betty be the girlfriend from when you was working with Tom, Mr. H?” Mrs. Malloy pulled a passing Tobias onto her lap and proceeded to arrange him into a furry blanket. It was getting a little nippy. I found myself thinking longingly of bed for a variety of reasons, one of which sprang from the fact that Ben smiled at me tenderly while answering Mrs. M.

“No, that wasn’t Betty. Perhaps it was a pity the other relationship didn’t pan out. From the couple of times I met her, she seemed exactly what he needed. A real go-getter and as pretty as they come. Tom called her his wild Irish rose.”

“What went wrong?” I asked.

“She wasn’t a Catholic, which was a must for his parents. They put up a stink. Over their dead bodies would their son marry out of the faith. They had someone else lined up for him in no time, a girl he’d known from their first days in
kindergarten. They’d gone on retreats together and even dated a few times as teenagers.”

“Betty?” Mrs. Malloy and I said together, in the hopeful voices of children expecting to have stars drawn beside our names on the chalkboard.

“No, Angela. She and Tom married but only had a few years together.” Ben waited for a rumble of thunder to subside before continuing. “There was a car accident and she was killed. She wasn’t even thirty, and to make matters as bad as they could be, Tom was driving.”

“How awful!” I pressed a hand to my throat.

“Bad weather conditions. Tom was lucky to get out of the crash with only minor injuries.”