“Out with what?” I asked, because nobody else did.
“That I didn’t want my old friends around my posh new ones. That I’ve turned into a raging snob and forgotten that until a few months ago, I lived in a small semi-detached and stood on my feet all day long hairdressing and went home at night to bang plates of baked beans on toast on the table and call it dinner.”
I hadn’t known she was a hairdresser. It explained why Tom thought she could have done something about Ariel’s greasy locks and why the little minx was so intent on not letting her. One more small rebellion for mankind.
“All that pent-up jealousy! It came pouring out of Frances’s mouth. How she and Stan have played the lottery faithfully ever since it started, and we’d bought one bloody ticket and won the jackpot. And how if we’d been any kind of friends, we’d at the very least have paid off their mortgage and bought them a new car, and if we’d been really decent we would have insisted on giving them half of what we won.”
“Oh, God!” Tom paced around the table. “I did say to you, Betty, that that’s what we should do. They’d have split with us. We’ve known them for years. They’ve been like family: Christmas and birthdays celebrated together. And with my mother gone, neither you nor I have any relations we’re close to.”
That put Ben and me in our place. Fortunately, it didn’t have any impact on his ability to slice mushrooms at lightning speed. I managed my discomfort by getting down plates and setting out cutlery.
“And I told you, Tom,” snapped Betty, “that we need to take our time deciding what we should do for other people. We’ve both heard the horror stories of what can happen when even the postman thinks he’s entitled to his cut.”
“I understand exercising caution, but not when it comes to the Edmondses. They’re the salt of the earth.”
“So Frances steals things!” Ariel gave one of her irritating giggles.
“Not from us.” Betty, looking suddenly deflated, sank down on the chair Tom had previously occupied. “Not once. Never! At other times, with other people, she can’t seem to help herself. It’s Frances’s particular quirk. We all have them.” She seemed pathetically small in the oversized green suit. Even her red hair looked too big. “Stop panicking, Tom. I got Frances calmed down by saying that of course she was welcome at the tea. I’d been concerned she’d find the rest of the company boring.”
“Does that include Ellie and Ben?” asked Ariel, through another giggle.
“Don’t be silly! Why have you still not washed your hair? The real reason I didn’t want them today is I’m afraid they’ll start telling their dirty jokes, and I can’t see that being our two vicars’ cups of tea.”
“Why does that matter if we’re in that disgusting room, with all those naked people on the ceiling?” All merriment had left Ariel’s face. She was back to her most disgruntled self.
“She’s speaking of the conservatory,” Tom said, catching my eye. “I don’t understand either. It’s like being in the Sistine Chapel.”
“Mrs. Cake says it was Lady Fiona’s favorite place to sit,” Betty responded.
“Then she’s disgusting,” blared Ariel.
“Her grandfather had that ceiling painted by a famous artist.” Betty pressed a hand to her brow. “When she married Mr. Gallagher, he thought it needed a little cloud cover, so she had that done. It’s a terrible shame there’ve been leaks from the bathroom above; we’ll need to get a plumber in to take a look, although Mrs. Cake thinks the damage may have been caused by one or the other of the Gallaghers allowing the bath to overflow.”
Betty stood up at the moment Mrs. Malloy came though the door to announce that her poem had ended up being twelve verses long. Did we all want to hear it from start to finish? Fortunately we were spared the solemn responsibility required of critics. Ben said that if there could be an exodus to the dining room he would bring in the food.
Lunch was, as expected, delicious. In addition to the omelets and my desired hubble-bubble, we had tomato basil soup and a spinach salad, followed by a luscious lemon souffle. Would tea that afternoon be an anticlimax? I offered to help with the washing up, but Betty insisted on taking that job. Ariel was given final marching orders to go and wash her hair. Mrs. Malloy, having put on her nylon and lace pinny, asked where she would find the paper doilies. Ben handed them to her. Tom wandered away like Mr. Gallagher’s ghost returning to the place where his body had been buried. I found myself remembering my unease in the west wing, as I crossed the hall to go upstairs and encountered Mavis coming down them with the bucket and mop.
“Hello,” I said, feeling a complete sloth. “Do you get to go home now and enjoy what’s left of Sunday with your family?”
She didn’t return my smile. “My husband’s a locksmith; he gets called out a lot on weekends. It’s always the time when people get stuck out of their houses and cars.” She didn’t add silly fools, but her expression made it clear.
“They must be relieved when he gets there. Are there any doors he can’t open?”
“Not Ed.” She thawed minimally. “I tell him he must have been a safecracker in a former life, or else it was in this one and he didn’t tell me. But no need to bother about any of that around here. You can walk in for the looking. I hope Ed”-her face closed down as she shifted the bucket from one hand to the other-“I hope my husband isn’t home wanting his dinner. Anyway, I’m ready to leave.” She came down the last of the stairs and brushed past me without answering my good-bye, and I went up to my room.
It was my intention to lie down on the bed for five minutes and think over the morning. But I fell almost instantly asleep and woke to find Ben bending over me, rubbing my shoulder and telling me it was gone two o’clock. Whereupon I staggered up, felt my way into the bathroom with my eyes half closed, and proceeded to splash my face with cold water. By the time I had pulled on a more afternoon sort of dress and redone my makeup and hair, he was gone. Would it be like this all week, I asked my face in the mirror, each of us playing musical rooms so we were rarely alone for any space of time? Was that how we both wanted it for the time being, while we each had other claims on our attention?
In the gallery I met up with Mrs. Malloy, looking resplendent as always, but I focused on the white lace-trimmed pinny.
“You don’t plan on wearing that at tea, I hope?” I said.
“ ’Course I do.”
“You don’t work for Tom and Betty. Admittedly, you’ve agreed to help out, as Ben has done, but to all intents and purposes he’s a guest and so are you.”
“No need to get on your high horse for me, Mrs. H! I know where you and me stand, but it strikes me I’ll get to do a lot more eavesdropping going around the room with a tray than sitting down next to one person.”
“You could be right, although I doubt you’ll get to hear Mr. Scrimshank confide to Lady Fiona that he’s embezzled her money and capped it off by murdering her husband when he became suspicious. That’s not exactly cucumber-sandwich conversation.”
“Well, there’s no telling what little nuggets I’ll pick up. By the way, have you been helping yourself to my toffees?”
“I haven’t been inside your bedroom.”
“Somebody has. The bed looked as though it had been bounced on, and that bag of toffees is half gone. Ariel, I suppose. And her talking about Frances Edmonds being a kleptomaniac. The child needs a good old-fashioned spanking. Still,” she mused soulfully, “like the poet says, a sweet’s a sweet for all that!” Concerned that this was a precursor to her asking if I’d like to hear her “Ode to Melody” in its entirety, I said we should get downstairs. To which she replied she’d take another scoot back to her room to make sure her eyebrows were on straight.