Bridesmaids Revisited (12 page)

When I came out again I heard all three women in conversation in the kitchen. It struck me that this would be a good time to take my suitcase, handbag, and raincoat up to the second landing, where Rosemary had said my room was, so that they wouldn’t be left taking up space in the narrow hall. Moments later I was heading up the stairs and reached the first landing and the second without looking to right or left, only to be assailed by the scent of orange blossom. Air freshener, I thought. Probably it was a little musty up here. I set the case down on the floor and noticed a trail of confetti leading towards the door on my left.

And it was then that I heard a voice begin to sing softly: “Here comes the bride ... Dum-dum-dee-dum-dum ... Oh, how she cried ... A pity she died!” Feeling faint, I had to brace myself before looking around. There was no one there. It had to be a joke, I told myself. One being played against Jane. I would repeat the story and she would be thrilled to bits that I also had experienced what she called her “emanations.”

Saved by the doorbell. Dropping my handbag and raincoat on top of my case, I sprinted downstairs.

When I reached the hall Thora was standing outside the sitting room.

“Ellie, come and meet the devil’s emissary, Miss Chambers. Rosemary says you knew we were expecting her sometime this afternoon. But we hoped it would be later, around four o’clock.” She glanced at her watch. “Cod’s wallop! It’s almost that now. When we heard the doorbell we thought it would be Edna.”

Thora took my arm and guided me into the sitting room. It would have been churlish to shake her off; she had been nice to me even to the point of confiding about Michael, who had gone back to his wife. So I dredged up a smile and tried to forget what had happened upstairs as I followed her through the wide doorway.

A woman was seated on the bulky but comfortable-looking sofa. She had a clipboard-style notepad on the lap of her tailored ivory linen suit. But for her expression, which was decidedly businesslike, she might have been a fashion model, like my cousin Vanessa. She had the face and features for the job. Dark eyes under perfectly arched black brows and a sweep of smooth golden-brown hair that curved just above her suit collar. Jane was seated across from her in a striped velvet chair whose fringed trim might have been the cats’ handiwork. Rosemary was standing in the middle of the room with a coffee cup in each hand.

“Ellie,” she said, glancing my way, “Amelia Chambers has graciously paid us a visit. I don’t think she will be staying long but we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

“Good afternoon,” I said dutifully, to which the visitor responded by crossing her long legs and murmuring something inaudible. At which point I felt justified in having disliked her on sight. No woman should get the face
and
the legs. And the legs meant she had the perfect figure, because legs like those were never found anchored to a tub of lard. It was the law of the jungle, as Mrs. Malloy would have said. A little late, but I could now empathize with Mrs. M. on meeting the new Gwen. Trim as a whistle and with a faultless complexion. Miss Chambers did not even have the age factor against her. She was about my age. In her early to mid-thirties. I hoped she would snag her stockings with the heel of one of her shoes that matched the ivory suit to perfection and probably cost the price of a small car.

Whatever had come over me? Such hostility towards a woman I didn’t know from Eve. And then I realized. Apparently, I hadn’t got over my childish susceptibility to atmosphere. Amelia Chambers had taken one look at me and loathed me on sight. She couldn’t have made it clearer if she had got up and slapped me across the face. The antipathy was there not only in those crossed legs but also in every line of her body.

“Ellie’s grandmother was my first cousin,” Rosemary was saying, “which I suppose makes us second cousins or first cousins once removed, I’m never sure which it is.”

“I’m more knowledgeable on the intricacies of business.”

Ms. Chambers tapped her notebook with the pen attached to it by a cord. “It’s understandable, of course, Miss Maywood, that you would wish to have a younger member of the family present during this conversation. I understand that anything requiring a signature can be emotionally taxing for older people.”

“I’m here for other reasons,” I told her.

“I don’t believe I caught your last name?” Her smile looked expensive. No over-the-counter lipsticks for her.

“I didn’t provide it.” Rosemary finished handing around the coffee cups, did not offer milk or sugar, and took her seat.

“It’s Haskell,” I said.

“I’ll make a note of it.” The pen was applied to the notepad.

“Mrs. Haskell. And you?”

“Ms. Chambers.”

“Just for my files.” My smile came from a cheap lipstick I’d had for years, but I liked the color.

“Ellie, come and sit here.” Thora patted a chintz-covered footstool comfortably big enough for two between her chair and Jane’s.

I did as I was told, being careful not to slop my coffee in Ms. Chambers’s direction. Heaven forbid that she should get stains on the ivory linen suit or, worse yet, get splashed full in the face. Focusing on our mutual antagonism helped keep that awful wedding song out of my head. For some reason it had reminded me of the poem I had told Mrs. Malloy about, “Rosemary, Thora, and Jane. Lived at the end of the lane ...”

“May I ask, Miss Maywood, why the other two ladies are present at this meeting?” Amelia Chambers sat with her pen poised.

“They’re my friends,” said Rosemary.

“With a vested interest in your financial affairs, grounded in the expectation of an inheritance upon your death?”

“What a nasty thing to say.” Jane’s winged glasses looked ready to take flight along with the black bow at her neck.

“Why didn’t your boss come himself, instead of sending you to do his dirty work?” Thora’s growl now verged on a roar.

“He’s a very busy man.”

“That we understand.” Rosemary set down her coffee cup and raised a hand to calm her friends. “Even so, it might have helped smooth matters along had he been prepared to grant us more than five minutes of his invaluable time when we paid him a visit at his office in London. Particularly”—she undid a button and then redid it on her cardigan—“considering that we are old acquaintances.”

“Who is this man?” I was on the edge of my footstool. The wedding song had faded for the moment to a distant hum.

“Ms. Chambers’s employer is Sir Clifford Heath.”

“But”—I looked at a landscape painting on the wall and noticed that it needed straightening—“that’s the man who owns the Memory Lanes holiday camps. My husband and children are at the one in Norfolk, as we speak.”

“So you said.” Rosemary was working another cardigan button. “Presently, Sir Clifford Heath, as he now calls himself, is intent on turning Knells into one of his family-type fortnight-away-from-home places.”

“What do you mean, calls himself? Did he give himself the title?”

“Unfortunately not, Ellie. Her Majesty the Queen knighted him. Poor overworked woman. I expect someone put the sword in her hand when she wasn’t looking and she found herself tapping him on the shoulder without having a clue if he was the undergardener or the Pope. It’s the rest, the Clifford Heath part, he’s invented. That wasn’t his name when he lived in Knells.”

“Not that people aren’t entitled to change their names if they don’t like them,” conceded Jane before I could speak. “And none of us begrudge Sir Clifford his success. He was always clever and must have worked exceedingly hard.”

“We can also see, whilst not admiring his tactics, why he would put Knells on his hit list.” Thora’s voice had softened to its usual deep tones. “Wasn’t always treated well here. And there were other factors, sufficient to make any proud man bitter. But to take revenge upon an entire village, the majority of whose inhabitants weren’t around in his day, that’s beyond the pale.”

“Sir Clifford’s motivations are none of my concern.” For some inexplicable reason, Miss Chambers was looking at me and her smile would have been enough to frighten children under the nearest table, the more so because it was as exquisitely tailored as the rest of her.

“Oh, I think you are being too modest.” Rosemary could smile with the best of them. “You are his
personal,”
emphasis on the word, “assistant.”

“And what is that supposed to mean, Miss Maywood?”

“One assumes you are more than a well-paid secretary.”

“My duties are extensive.”

“I’m sure they are.” Rosemary actually chuckled. Quite nastily, too. “You are, as you must be fully aware, a very attractive young woman.”

“If you are implying ...” Ms. Chambers forgot herself sufficiently to grind her perfect teeth.

“Merely that you are a visible asset to your employer.” Rosemary adjusted her glasses on her nose. “What did you think I meant?”

“That Sir Clifford and I have a romantic relationship.” Ms. Chambers had lost some of her poise. I thought I could see a wrinkle in her linen skirt and the hand that gripped her pen was not one hundred percent steady. “It’s none of your business, but to set the record straight, Sir Clifford is my stepfather. He married my mother when I was a teenager. They divorced a few years later, but he provided for me while I was attending university. Afterwards he hired me for a relatively junior position and I worked my way up. That’s it in a nutshell.”

“Very kind of him.” Rosemary got up to refill her own coffee cup and sat back down without bringing the pot around to the rest of us. Something, I was sure, she would normally not have done.

“I’m very good at what I do.” Ms. Chambers made a couple of strokes with her pen across the notebook.

“Commendable!” Thora said.

“I’m sure your dear mother will be proud,” Jane twittered.

My empty coffee cup sat adrift on my knees like a raft from the
Titanic
waiting for would-be survivors to jump into it. The air throbbed with tension.

“It’s time”—Amelia Chambers drew up her jacket sleeve and looked at her watch—“more than time that we get to the purpose of this meeting. I’m to inform you that Sir Clifford regrets your refusal to accept his more than generous purchasing offer for this house, Miss Maywood. The result is unnecessary aggravation to yourself. Surely something a woman of your age does not need, given the futility of the situation. Sir Clifford will ultimately have his way. All other properties in Knells belong to him. He has permission from the appropriate national and local authorities to proceed with the conversion of Knells into the next Memory Lanes. In other words, Miss Maywood, you remain the one minor stumbling block. But I am to tell you that you will be removed.”

“By legal means?”

“Of course.” Ms. Chambers tucked away her pen in the top of her notebook. “Sir Clifford is a law-abiding citizen.”

“But not a kind one,” I said.

“Ellie”—Rosemary held up a hand—“we really don’t want to keep Ms. Chambers here longer than necessary. The message to be delivered to her employer is that I am prepared to reconsider my position. And that I hope, in light of his former connection to Knells, he will grant me a week in which to do so. Now”—she rose to her feet—“given my rapidly advancing years I feel in need of a nap. Thora and Jane,” she said, turning to them after setting her coffee cup down on a table, “I am sure you could both benefit from one also.”

“Dropping on my feet.” Thora, who exuded the vigor of a woman eager to get back to the garden and chop down a couple of trees, stifled a yawn with her hand. Jane did likewise. And before Ms. Chambers had half-completed her protest that Sir Clifford had expected the papers signed this afternoon, she was somehow marshaled out to the hall, handed her umbrella and coat, and nudged out the front door.

“One has to be firm with that sort of person.” Rosemary returned to the sitting room with the rest of us crowding in behind her. “And fortunately we had her sufficiently unsettled under that flawless persona that she wasn’t dying to be invited to stay for tea.” Rosemary returned to the chair she had vacated moments before.

“Aren’t you going to lie down?” I asked her.

“Certainly not.”

“What about your nap?” I didn’t like to add that she looked in dire need of a rest.

“Surely, Ellie, you realized I only said that to speed Ms. Chambers on her way.” Rosemary smoothed out the arm cover on her chair while Thora and Jane watched her from where they were now seated on the sofa. “We have to explain to you about Sir Clifford Heath and why he is the reason we asked you to come.”

“But I thought you said it had to do with my grandmother?” I sat down feeling betrayed.

“And so it does,” said Jane. “It’s about them both—Sophia and Hawthorn Lane.”

“Who?”

“That’s who Sir Clifford began life as, so far as we know. It’s possible, I suppose, that his mother took the time to call him something before she abandoned him when he was no more than a few days old on the doorstep of a house in Hawthorn Lane. A sad beginning.” Jane dabbed at her eyes.

“I think it would be best if one of us took over telling the story. It will speed things up and make it easier for Ellie to follow.” Rosemary addressed the sofa. “You do it, Thora. Jane will flutter about and I am a little tired.”

“Very well,” said Thora. “The foster agency that took him on decided, for want of any other ideas, to name him Hawthorn Lane. A rotten thing to do.” She grimaced. “Never allowed him to escape his beginnings. He was a dark-haired, dark-eyed baby and people got the rubbishy idea he’d been dropped off by gypsies. Hawthorn went from one foster home to another, some here in Knells and some in the other villages around here. No one ever wanted him for long. Every time a penny went missing he was out the door. Gypsies are thieves, people believe, so it was bound to be him. Wasn’t surprising he grew more troublesome and rebellious, until he was packed off to a reformatory school. Sophia told us all about him when she and Rosemary, Jane, and I were at boarding school together. She was in love with him even then. Most people would say that a fourteen-year-old girl couldn’t be in touch with the real meaning of the word, but it was one of those Cathy-Heathcliff relationships. Two souls connecting from the very first moment of meeting. That’s what Sophia called him—Heathcliff. It was her secret name for him. Only told us because we were her closest friends. Said he deserved his own name. One given to him by someone who loved him till death and beyond.”