Dr. Bordeaux had turned as inclement-looking as the weather. What sort of lives did Jenny and her family endure, under the domination of this man?
13
… “Ellie, I sense something momentous happened at The Dower House?” Primrose quivered and gripped her shawl.
“No.” I fiddled with my spoon. “The sitting room to which Jenny took Ann and me was brim full of charming simplicity-the floors were natural pine, the chairs were cane-seated and ladder-backed, the curtains at the window nooks were yellowed lace. There were several rather nice prints, a seascape and portraits of Sarah Siddons and David Garrick.”
“Any mirrors?” The pages of Hyacinth’s green notebook fluttered shut.
“No.”
“Are you saying, Ellie,” Primrose touched my hand, “that there was something rather unsimple about the mood of that room? The feel?…”
When I replay that visit in my mind, I don’t see movement. We’re all frozen in place. Jenny pouring tea, the old woman-so like an old-world nanny she only needed a frilled cap on her white hair, stooping to adjust the rug covering the invalid who lay on the sofa before the blazing fireplace. The nanny’s gnarled hands are fixed in the act of holding back a corner of the quilt so Ann and I can glimpse the pallid face on the pillow, a face that must have been very beautiful once. It is impossible to tell her age. She might be in her forties or sixties. There are lines on her face but they may have been put there by pain. The auburn of her hair could be artificial, but the most striking thing about her is her eyes. They are empty. I can’t tell their colour. A record is going around and around on one of those marvellous old gramophones with the horns. A pain-drenched voice sings, “You are my rainy days, my rainy days, my rainy days…” over and over until Jenny lifts the mechanical arm and turns the machine off.
Jenny said her mother had been ill about ten years. The nanny’s face seemed to disintegrate. “My darling wasn’t struck down by the Lord.” Her voice filled the room. “It was him-him. But he didn’t kill her. She’s in there safe and sound. It’s all right, Vania, my dove. Nonna’s got you.” She was crooning into the unseeing eyes.
Jenny sat without moving. So did Ann. Upon entering the room, she had felt rather faint again. Dr. Bordeaux, when he came to tell us the car was functioning, said she must have suffered a delayed reaction to her fright over the dogs. He was patently anxious for us to leave, a feeling I heartily reciprocated.
When I looked back at the house from the end of the driveway, Jenny stood motionless at the window, watching us. I had the feeling that she would have liked to call me back. Poor kid.
And poor me. I know science has decreed in its infinite wisdom that we don’t catch colds from getting chilled, but it seems a bit coincidental that I woke one morning a fortnight later feeling as though there was standing room only on my chest.
The Friday (24th April) I was stricken, Ben was due to go to Lodon to meet his editor, A.E. Brady. Instead, he received a letter respectfully requesting that their appointment be changed to the following Monday. In my weakened condition, it seemed to me my spouse reacted with an undue petulance to this deferment. But I refrained from saying so because a) Ben’s reaction to my visit to the Peerless Nursing Home and my description of Dr. Bordeaux and his doggies had provided our marriage with enough zip for a while (he thought my “riotous imagination” was “endearing”); b) I had chosen to work that week on my unbecoming tendency to be critical (suppressing the conviction that damp hose had contributed to my illness); c) it hurt to talk.
I must not give the impression that Ben was unsympathetic to me or my snuffly nose. Before leaving for Abigail’s that morning he hovered by my bed offering-eagerly-to rub my chest with Vicks.
“How do you feel, sweetheart?”
“My nobse hab grown and my legs are melting like candles.”
“Poor precious. You do look pretty foul.”
“Kimb ob you to say so.”
His voice was muffled too. “Ellie, you do understand why I am wearing this surgical mask? My God, can you imagine anything worse than my being struck down nigh on the eve of Abigail’s premiere? Sure, Freddy could handle the simple stuff. His latest lamb chops Strasbourg are a credit to me, but he could never cope on his own. He’d only do a marginally better job than you, El.” He kissed the back of my head. One of my least favourite places for being kissed but-cough, cough-in my unappealing state I settled for crumbs.
“And, darling”-he smoothed out the silvery grey sheet-“you will promise to eat the meals I have left prepared for you?” The mask made his voice sound like it was being pressed through a sieve.
I slid down in the bed and folded my hands piously over my breast. “Ob course, darling.” No need to tell him that I had already figured that my illness should be good for a three-pound loss.
“Good, because I’ve noticed your clothes are beginning to hang on you.”
A lifelong ambition fulfilled!
“They’b stretched in the wash.”
He touched my hair. “Want a hot water bottle or would you rather I tucked Tobias in at your feet?”
“I don’t want him in here in cabse he catches it.”
“A mouse?”
“Silly-my colb.” Since Mr. Daffy and the train, I hadn’t enjoyed mouse jokes.
Ben glanced at his watch and moved my water jug a little closer. “Good thing this is one of Mrs. Malloy’s days. She can minister to your needs.”
His footsteps died away; the house settled into silence. Throwing off the blankets, I lurched over to the window, closed it, and pulled the curtains tight. Had Ben locked the garden door? I had been nagging at him about that lately. Was that pounding coming from inside my head or downstairs? I got back in bed and pulled the covers up to my poor nose. A fire would have been cosy. Nine o’clock said the bedside clock; time for Roxie to arrive and always time for Tobias to be on the scavenge.
At the end of our month’s trial period, Roxie had summoned me to the kitchen for her decision. Would she say the working conditions at Merlin’s Court weren’t up to snuff? After pouring us each a glass of gin from the supplies bag (wonderful stuff for buffing chrome and giving glass a sparkle), she had made her portentous pronouncement. The gossips could stop cackling and start laying eggs. She had observed Mr. H. was a decent gentlemen, as men went, except when one of his cooking experiments failed.
The buzzing in my ears became the revving of the Hoover outside my bedroom. The door pushed open and Roxie poked in her black and white head, bellowing over the motor.
“Hangover, Mrs. H.?”
Easing up on my elbows, I fetched forth a wan smile. “I gob a bit ob a colb.”
“So’ve I, but some of us have to stay on our feet. Anything I can get you? A scudsy book? Guinness and milk?”
“I dob’t-” Throwing a tissue over my face, I surrendered to a sneeze that rocked the bed.
“Don’t do to just lie down and die, you know. I had me appendix out, and I-” An explosion of annoyance. Her red butterfly mouth stretched into a shout and her brows rose into inverted commas above the very violet lids. “There goes the Hoover! Making off down the landing like a bleeding robot! Best catch it before it makes a break for the stairs.” Her muffled voice came back to me. “On the subject of stairs, Mrs. H., three times I have sprained me wrist polishing that loose bannister and I don’t have to tell you it’s against union regulations for me to work under such conditions.”
To my knowledge the only union of which Roxie was a member was the Mother’s Union. She had a few words to say on the subject of its sister organisation when she returned at 11:00 A.M. to plump up my pillows and spill water between my parched lips.