“Look,” I said, moving closer, “he’s leaving. Seems a bit unsure whether he’s doing the right thing, keeps turning back.”
“Probably decided this train is never going to move.” Ben smiled in my general direction, but his eyes didn’t focus.
A good wife knows when her husband needs to be left alone with his thoughts. I polished my wedding ring. Whatever else changed, our love would endure. I also faced facts. If Mrs. Haskell’s whereabouts were not satisfactorily verified this evening, our honeymoon would be off in every sense of the word. I couldn’t expect Ben to respond to the pearl-pink nightie with his mother’s fate in limbo. I couldn’t respect him if he did. My hope was that the disappearance would prove to be a stunt. What better way to put the nix on a son’s budding marriage to an undesirable party than this? Anger warmed me a little. It held back the fear that something ghastly had happened to my mother-in-law. How many bridges are there in the vicinity of London with dark, oily waters thrashing below? I abandoned my sensitive resolve not to intrude on Ben’s need for solitude and grasped for his hand.
“I wish we could have reached your father on the phone to tell him we were coming.”
Ben put an arm around me, and the gap between us closed a little. “He must have had the receiver off the hook all day.”
“You do think he will stop this silly feud and talk to you in this crisis?”
“Ellie, you don’t know my father.”
True enough.
The train was making deeper rumblings. Doors at the far end of the compartment opened, channelling more cold, smoggy air our way. A white-haired woman dressed in black like an old-world nanny entered. She was followed by a man carrying a child-no, a woman. The woman’s head lolled away from his shoulder and someone coming in behind them reached out and moved it back, so that the auburn hair spilled down the man’s arm. The nanny was taking pillows out of a carrier bag and arranging them on the seat.
Ben tapped his watch, bringing my eyes back to his. One minute to go. We both looked out the window. A guard was passing at a trot, pushing a wheelchair down the platform-to the guard van, I supposed. My eyes slid back to the newcomers. The nanny and the invalid had taken the seats with their backs to us. The man was standing in the aisle. His was the face of a poet, the kind who writes about the pleasures of the grave. But he became of only incidental interest. The fourth member of the group now stood up. She was a small girl with sandy-coloured plaits-the girl to whom I had given my bouquet. Jenny Spender. She said something to the man and then caught my eye. I flushed, gave a small wave, and sank back into my seat.
“You know, Ellie”-Ben reached his arms above his head and stretched-“I am becoming increasingly confident that Mum is fine. What do you bet she’s on a retreat at some convent, having a thumping good holiday?”
“I’m sure you’re right, darling.” Who were they-the invalid, the poet, the nanny? Where were they going? What was their relationship to Jenny?
The train began to vibrate. The guard was moving backward down the platform, a whistle pursed to his lips, when two women erupted through the barrier, coats flapping, arms stretched to Neanderthal length under the weight of their luggage.
One of them, an enormous person, cried: “Guard, hold that train!”
A door behind us banged open; the two women came blundering down the aisle and made ready to park opposite us. Both were talking full steam ahead and looked so hot and bothered I was hopeful they wouldn’t notice our open window. The woman wearing the tartan coat and tam-o’-shanter looked vaguely familiar, but she glanced at Ben and me without saying anything. Presumably she was not one of our wedding guests. She was middle-aged with a pussycat sort of face, emphasised by up-tilted glasses. Even her hair was tabby-coloured, and seen close up, she was a little whiskery. The guard slammed the door, the whistle shrilled, and we were off, rocking away into the misty night.
Ben inched the window up a notch and stretched again. “Yes, I am growing convinced that this is all a storm in a teacup. Beatty Long always had it in for Mum.”
I eyed the two women and lowered my voice. “Why?”
Ben blew on his fingernails and rubbed them against the lapel of his jacket. “I was always a lot brighter than her kid, and-”
“Better looking too, no doubt.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But, Ben, it seems to me that the one being injured by this woman’s wagging tongue is your father. Your mother isn’t around to hear what is being said about her curtains.”
“Mum’s seventy years old. Why shouldn’t she take a nap-a dozen naps, if she wishes?”
“Yes, of course she may, but a change in routine, Ben…” A wife senses when it is best to change the subject. “Was your mother friendly with Sid’s mother when the Fowlers lived on Crown Street?”
“They were fairly matey until George Fowler ran off with another woman and Mum went to church twice a day for a week to pray for his return. Seems Mrs. F. didn’t want him back.”
An overnight bag rolled off the rack above the heads of the two women sitting opposite us. It might have hit one or both of them, but Ben lurched up and caught it.
“One of you ladies missing this?”
A warm glow flared inside me. He was so athletic, so suave, so mine. The large woman was rustling about in her bag; it was the tartan pussycat who spoke. “Thank you so much. I must not have put it up there properly. Rushing for a train always distresses me. As a rule, I try to allow plenty of time. But I had a funeral to attend this afternoon and one can’t hurry away, can one?”
“Allow me.” Ben replaced the overnight bag.
So that was why the woman looked familiar-she had been a mourner at the churchyard that morning. Her blackbird brooch looked familiar, too. Her friend was also wearing one on her coat. Either these brooches were the insignia of a bird-watching society or a hot item at the church bazaar. The woman in tartan took off her glasses and polished them. Her friend snapped her bag shut and leaned forward.
“The bride and groom, I presume. Giselle and Bentley Haskell, am I right? Splendid.” She gave a great billowing laugh. She was altogether a billowing sort of woman. Her bloated face shook with chins and her bosom was an entire feather bed more than a bolster. I pressed a hand to my waist. Never again must I let the words clotted cream pass my lips.
“I am Amelia Bottomly and this is my friend Millie Parsnip.”
“How do you do,” Ben and I chorused politely.
Who did she put me in mind of, other than a hand mirror of what I might have become? Queen Anne, after she was stricken with dropsy! That was it! That towering pompadour of greying brown hair, the heavy garnet and amber rings biting into the puffy fingers, the suggestion of pomp and circumstance in her manner. Her face was presently lathered with smiles, but the set of her mouth gave her away. Let anyone displease Amelia Bottomly and she would cry, “Off with his head!”
I smiled at Millie Parsnip, crushed into folds against the window by her friend’s bulk. “We crossed paths this afternoon in the churchyard.”
“So we did! And I have been wanting to meet you. You see, I have this sofa I wish reupholstered, and I wonder, Mrs. Haskell, whether you think a gold brocade would go well with my oriental rugs?”
Amelia Bottomly boomed a laugh. “Don’t be tiresome, Millie.” She hefted round in her seat to face Ben and me. “I missed the funeral. I’m a widow myself, as is Millie here, both lost our husbands about three years ago, so naturally I’m sympathetic, but I had to visit a friend who’s a patient at The Peerless Nursing Home. She’s been having a bit of nerve trouble-the change, you know.” She mouthed the last few words. “And it’s not as though I am acquainted with Mrs. Thrush, the bereaved. So hard, isn’t it, at times, to draw the line between concern and vulgar curiosity? Especially in a case, like this, of a fatal accident.”