Bridesmaids Revisited (11 page)

“Who was he?”

“Grew up in Knells, still lives here, in fact. Owns the photography place on Hawthorn Lane with his partner Arthur Henshaw. Richard and Sophia were great friends. You did know she was quite a talented painter herself? It must be where you get your gift.”

“But I never did anything after winning that one art competition when I was still a schoolgirl.” I was about to ask if there had been anything of a romantic nature between my grandmother and this Richard Barttle but at that moment Rosemary and Jane came into the kitchen and the conversation naturally turned to Ted and Edna.

“She’s still with him at the hospital,” Rosemary said briskly.

“And being very brave, of course.” Jane seemed completely spent as she sat down in the chair Thora had vacated at their entrance. “He looked horrible. All covered in blood from the gash in his neck. Probably caught himself in the jugular, I doubt that he’ll make it.”

“It’s Edna I feel sorry for.” Rosemary removed a large casserole dish from the oven and set it down on a trivet. “She insisted we come back here, saying we could be sitting in the waiting room for hours without news. She seemed to really want to be alone. So we got a taxi home. But Tom stayed.”

“If she could remain married to Ted all these years, she can get through this, whatever turn it takes.” After opening several cupboard doors, Thora found the jug she was looking for. “Can’t imagine any other woman putting up with him, it’s as much as I can do to deal with him puttering around the garden a couple of days a week.”

“Thora,” gasped Jane, “you do say the most dreadful things. You should be consumed with remorse. I heard you shouting at him this morning, something about him digging up your tulip bulbs.” She tucked a strand of yellowish-white hair into the coil pinned at her neck with a large black bow. It looked like a butterfly in mourning, but its wearer seemed to be perking up a little.

“I wasn’t shouting,” Thora corrected. “Ted was the one doing the yelling. Perhaps I roared once or twice. It was raining and Dog was leaping about in mud when I was trying to put the bulbs back more or less where they had been.”

“A mercy he didn’t uproot your comfrey or lemon balm.” Jane managed a wan smile.

“I’ll say!”

“Thora’s devoted to her herbs,” Rosemary informed me. “Thinks they’re the answer to every ill known to man.”

“The lotion I made up for Frank-up-the-lane’s late wife, Jessie, helped her arthritis,” countered Thora.

“I doubt anything you would make up could do much to help Ted. But it won’t do any good to dwell on the situation.” Jane set down her glass. “We must try to stay strong for Edna. And for Ellie. This has hardly been the best of starts for her visit.” I was about to reply that it wasn’t as though Ted’s injury had been planned, but that didn’t sound right, and anyway Jane was still talking. “I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you, my dear. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to be here when your mother brought you down for the day all those years ago.”

“You weren’t.” I was vaguely aware of Rosemary setting the casserole in the middle of the table and Thora coming up behind her with a couple of steaming serving dishes.

“I had appointments that day with my solicitor in Cambridge and with my bank manager. If I could have postponed things, Ellie, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I was so looking forward to seeing Mina. None of us had really got to know her when she was growing up. Sadly, her father didn’t welcome us to the house.”

“Making it such a surprise that he left it to me,” said Rosemary.

“Did that for spite.” Thora now sat back down at the table. “William Fitzsimons didn’t like his two older children any more than he liked Mina.”

“Even so, it always struck me as peculiar that he left the house outside the family. And that’s what he did, because your mother”—Jane looked at Rosemary—“was Reverend McNair’s sister, making you no relation of William’s. But perhaps he hoped it would rankle more with his disinherited offspring if he willed the place to someone they knew, as opposed to a stranger.”

“I was sure you were here that day.” I had been sitting and puzzling over the matter. “But perhaps I remembered it that way because Mother said there were three of you. And afterwards, when that day got fuzzier in my mind, I filled in the missing bridesmaid.” The word popped out and I felt my face flame. But there was no point in leaving it dangling like a man on the end of a rope. “Mother always spoke of you as the bridesmaids. I never understood why.”

There followed a pause in which all three women looked at each other.

“I don’t imagine Mina talked about us often.” Rosemary, who was seated next to me, placed a substantial serving of fish pie on my plate and urged me to help myself to vegetables.

“No, she didn’t, but I hope you won’t take that personally. She never mentioned her father. I hadn’t heard his name until today. And all I ever knew about her mother was that her name was Sophia and she had died young. Now I have to fit a great-grandfather and a great-grandmother into the picture. But so far I can only think of them as Reverend and Mrs. McNair.”

“Hugo and Agatha,” supplied Jane.

I took a spoonful each of parsnips and brussels sprouts and added a larger helping of carrots; they smelled delicious, being sprinkled with finely chopped mint and chives, presumably from Thora’s herb garden. “It wasn’t until I talked to the people with whom Mrs. Malloy is staying that I found out Mother grew up in this house. Somehow I thought you three had always lived here.”

“Growing dustier and more cobwebby with every passing year?” Thora passed me a jug of parsley sauce.

It was pretty much what I had thought. “I found the house scary when I was here as a child.” I speared a carrot with my fork. Jane nodded. “Children are very susceptible to atmosphere. It’s something we tend to outgrow, although lately I have begun to wonder if it’s because we stop keeping an open mind.”

“The house did look much the way you described it, Ellie, at the time of William Fitzsimons’s death.” Rosemary pushed her rimless glasses further up her nose. They had slipped down when she bent to unfold her serviette.

“I wonder if what I sensed,” I found myself saying, “was Mother’s dislike of this house.”

“Loathing,” said Thora, “would have been my reaction if I’d had to live here with such a father. In many ways Mina had it worse than Sophia did. At least Sophia only got stuck with William for a year. I’ve sometimes wondered if she wasn’t glad to die in that car crash.”

I stared at her, hearing Dog crunching in his bowl of food.

“What did you think happened?” Jane asked me.

“Somehow I got it in my head that she had died giving birth to Mother.”

“Understandable.” Thora was pouring parsley sauce over her fish pie. “That would explain your mother’s unwillingness to talk about Sophia, wouldn’t it? Feelings of misplaced guilt, you know. And I wouldn’t put it past her father to have made it seem the accident was Mina’s fault.”

“Sophia was leaving William,” Jane said, “ending their marriage of less than a year. And of course she had her precious baby with her. In her desperation to get away from him, she was driving too fast. Her car hit a tree out on some road in the middle of nowhere. It was hours before they were found. Mercifully, Mina only suffered a few bruises. It was too late for our dear friend Sophia.” Jane’s angular face puckered. “That vile man wrote to her friend Richard Barttle, giving him all the details. I’m sure William persuaded himself he was only doing his painful duty in relaying the precise details of her death. But it was obvious—Richard showed us the letter—the grieving widower relished letting it be known that in forsaking the holy estate of their marriage, Sophia had brought about her own destruction and nearly killed her child.”

I looked around the table at the three women. Now was the time to pose the question that Rosemary had declined to answer on the phone last night.

“What did you mean in your letter about my grandmother? Why would she wish to make contact with me from beyond the grave?” There was no immediate answer and I pushed on. “I’ve met Hope, the woman with the psychic powers, as one of the neighbors described her, and it isn’t hard to make the leap that she’s somehow involved as a go-between.”

“We first met her a few weeks ago,” Jane said, toying with her food. “She’d just moved into a house between here and Lower Thaxstead and was in the lane walking her dog. Thora made a fuss of him, he’s such a sad-eyed beast, and after a few minutes’ chitchat, invited Hope inside. It really was uncanny some of the questions she asked about the house, almost as though she’d been here before, in the old days before Rosemary did it up. Then she said she sensed a presence and it was clear she was talking about Sophia.”

“No one else? Her vibes didn’t extend to my mother?”

“She spoke of a baby girl swaddled in shadows being brought here from a foreign country.”

Jane laid down her knife and fork, at which point Rosemary remembered she hadn’t led us in saying grace. She apologized for the oversight, said it was all the more important today in light of Ted’s calamity, laid down her knife and fork, folded her hands, and bowed her head. The rest of us followed suit. Rosemary was as direct with God as I imagined she was with everyone else. She thanked Him for the food left on our plates as well as for that of which we had already partaken without first asking His divine leave. She requested that His will be done concerning Ted Wilks, that Edna be granted strength and comfort, and that He provide guidance in the matter which had brought me to the Old Rectory.

“Why is it called that?” I asked after a moment of silence. “Is there a new rectory?”

“Not for St. John’s, dear.” Jane dabbed at her lips with her serviette. “The parish offered William Fitzsimons the opportunity to buy the house. That’s how it was his to leave to Rosemary. Since that time it’s been the policy to provide the rector with a housing allowance and have him live in the home of his choosing. It’s proved to be more economical and certainly our present rector’s wife prefers it that way. She’s the Danish-modern sort.”

“To answer your question, Ellie,” Rosemary cut in, “this house became known as the Old Rectory when the Methodists built a new one alongside the church they erected at the turn of the century. William grew up a Methodist; it’s where he acquired his strong views on the evils of drink. I’ve often wondered what brought him over to the Anglican side. And now if no one wants a second helping of fish pie”—she stood up—“I will clear away. Perhaps, Jane, you will fetch the pudding.”

While these tasks were being performed, Thora asked after my father and whether he had ever remarried.

“Not yet. But I think he’s on the verge. He’s quite smitten with a very nice German woman named Ursel Grundman. He did a lot of traveling after Mother died, just couldn’t seem to settle down.”

“Such a tragedy, her dying from that fall.” Jane was carrying a Pyrex bowl of custard and another of stewed fruit.

“Who would think a person could be killed going down a flight of railway steps?” Thora shook her snowy-white head as she returned to the table.

“Mother’s injuries weren’t all that serious. She broke her leg, but there were complications. An embolism that went to her heart.”

“So young.” Jane sounded on the verge of tears.

“Only in her mid-thirties.”

“We should have come to the funeral.” Thora placed a hand on my shoulder. “We wanted to, but Rosemary was ill at the time and we didn’t feel we could leave her.”

“It’s a long time ago,” I said as I spooned stewed fruit into my pudding bowl.

“Such a lovely girl, Mina.” Jane had joined the other two at the table. “I will always be sorry we saw so little of her and that I wasn’t here when she brought you down that day. But she and your father—they were blissfully happy, I hope?”

“Devoted.”

“And now he can take comfort in his precious grandchildren.”

“He hasn’t seen much of them, as I said, he’s been abroad a lot. But I think he intends to make up for that, now that he is more settled.”

“The acquaintance who helped us get in touch with you said she had heard you have twins,” Rosemary said, and then added casually, “Sophia’s mother was a fraternal twin.”

“They do say, Ellie, that twins run in families.” Thora passed me the custard that had developed a skin from having been left sitting, and I spooned it aside before adding a helping to my fruit. I didn’t like skin at the best of times and now felt I couldn’t face it even to be a gracious guest.

Talking about my mother, thinking of her growing up a little lost soul in this house, had completely unsettled me. I wanted to get away, not just from the table, but from the bridesmaids and whatever melodramatic nonsense they had afoot. I wanted to be safely back at Merlin’s Court, working myself to exhaustion wallpapering Rose’s bedroom.

The conversation seemed to have dried up. The bridesmaids had to be wondering what was happening at the hospital.

“You must be anxious for word from Edna,” I said.

“It would be a relief to hear something.” Rosemary busied herself setting cups and saucers on a tray. “Perhaps you would like to freshen up. There’s a downstairs loo, just through there.” She nodded towards the opening into the conservatory. And glad to be moving, I went out into the jungle of potted plants in search of a door. Thora had told me after Rosemary and Jane had gone outside with Edna that the parrot was the same one that had been here on my previous visit. And that it threatened to outlive them all. It now squawked at me from behind a veil of greenery. “Cat will get your tongue! Cat will get your tongue!”

“Oh, shut up!” I muttered. There was a door behind the piano, but when I opened it there was nothing inside but the Hoover and a couple of spare lightbulbs on a shelf. After peering around some more and coming up short, I decided that Rosemary must have meant that the loo was out in the hall. Sure enough, when I stepped from the slate floor onto the pine planks, I saw a door under the sloping rear of the staircase. Unfortunately it didn’t yield the desired view of a toilet and a sink. It opened onto a flight of rough-hewn stone steps leading steeply down to the murky depths of a cellar. Not a place I wanted to visit on the spur of the moment. Retracing my steps into the conservatory, I stumbled over one of the cats, either Charlotte or Joan, and in reaching out to save myself from a spill, grasped hold of a doorknob. Here at long last was the loo, just outside the kitchen, where I would have been able to spot it but for a rubber plant that, from the size of it, had to be as old as the parrot.