Aunt Dimity's Death (18 page)
Read Aunt Dimity's Death Online
Authors: Nancy Atherton
I don’t know what made me think we could rush through the correspondence. There were sixty-eight boxes full, for one thing, letters from my mother interfiled with those from Dimity in strict chronological order, but it wasn’t the quantity that slowed us down. It was the quality. I had expected the letters to be moving, fascinating, enlightening—and they were—but I had not expected them to be so entertaining. I found myself pausing frequently to reread certain passages, to translate my mother’s handwriting for Bill when he had trouble with it, and to read the best parts aloud.
I also found myself watching Bill. He never caught me at it—the slightest movement on his part would send my eyes scurrying down to whatever I was supposed to be reading— but it happened time and time again. Of all the strange things that had happened that day, his presence in the study was perhaps the strangest. Only that morning I had been ready to throw him out of the cottage, and now he was sitting peacefully across from me, his jacket and tie thrown carelessly over the back of the chair, his collar undone and his shirtsleeves rolled up, calmly stroking his beard while he read his way through this most intimate correspondence, as though he belonged there. With each passing hour, it became more difficult to imagine journeying into my mother’s past without him.
The seeds of the stories were scattered everywhere we turned. I think Bill was even more thrilled than I was each time a familiar situation or setting surfaced. He crowed in triumph less than an hour after we’d gotten started.
“I’ve found Aunt Dimity’s cat!” he exclaimed. “Listen to this:
“My Dearest Beth,
“My cat is terrorizing the milkman.
“You didn’t know I owned a cat, did you? That’s because I didn’t, until a week ago. I do now. The only trouble is that I’m not quite sure who owns whom.
“He showed up on my doorstep last Monday evening, a ginger torn with a limp and a very pitiful mew. A bowl of cream miraculously cured the limp, and after a night on the kitchen hearth, the mew was replaced by a snarl that caused the milkman to shatter a fresh pint all over my kitchen floor. I strongly suspect premeditation, since the cat promptly lapped it up.
“There’s not a plant in the house that’s safe from his depredations and he’s learned to sharpen his claws on the legs of my dining room table. I’ve lost my temper with him a dozen times a day. I know I should put him outside to fend for himself, Beth, but I like him. There hasn’t been a dull moment since he walked through my door, and he keeps my feet warm in bed. Surely that’s worth the loss of a few houseplants. Or so I keep telling myself.
“I have dubbed him Attila.”
Bill chuckled as he jotted the date of the letter in his notebook for future reference.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t close that notebook.”
“Why? What have you found?”
I shushed him and read aloud:
“My Dearest Beth
“My dear, why do we put ourselves through Christmas? If the Lord had known what He was about, He surely would have announced His son’s birth privately to a small circle of friends, and sworn them to secrecy. Failing that, He might at least have had a large family and spaced their arrivals at decent intervals
throughout the year. But no. In His infinite wisdom, the Almighty chose to sire but one Son, thus setting the stage for a celebration only a merchant could love.
“I have just returned from the vale of tears which is London the week before Christmas. Should I ever suggest such a venture again, you are encouraged to have me bound over for my own protection. Only the weak-minded would willingly enter the holiday stairwells at Harrod’s, of all places.
“Picture a trout stream of packed and wriggling humanity; picture the rictus-grins of clerks exhausted beyond endurance; picture my foot beneath that of a puffing and alarmingly well-fed gentleman.
“And picture, if you can bear to, my chagrin at having survived it all, only to depart empty-handed. [Enter Greek chorus, cursing Fate.] The torch, my sole reason, for braving the savage swarm, was not to be had, and I shall have to make do with candles until March, or perhaps June. Please God, the crowds will have thinned by then.
…”
“No wonder your mother treasured this friendship,” Bill said. “Can you imagine getting letters like that all the time?”
I told him the date of the letter and kept on reading. It was fun to run across those familiar-sounding passages, but I was even more captivated by the unfolding story of their everyday lives, and by their frequent references to the time they’d spent together in London.
“How do you like that?” I said at one point. “Dimity the matchmaker.”
Bill started at the sound of my voice. “What’s that?”
I glanced up. “Sorry,” I said, “but I just found out that Dimity introduced my mom to my dad.”
Bill blinked a few times, then grinned. “You don’t say.”
“It’s right here in black and white: ‘… that night in Berkeley Square when I introduced you to Joe.’ I knew they had met during the war, but not that Dimity was behind it. Well, they were a great match.”
“Do you believe in that sort of thing?” Bill asked.
“What, matchmaking?” I paused to consider. It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to. “I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. If you know the people well enough, if you think it might work—why not bring them together? What harm could it do?”
“None that I can think of,” said Bill.
“Why? Has your father tried it?”
“No,” he said, going back to his reading. “He’d consider it impertinent, bless him.”
It must be the “desiccated aunts,” I thought, the ones he’d mentioned that morning in the guest suite. Did they parade their favorite nephew before a bevy of suitable females? It might explain why his father thought he was shy around women. I felt a touch of pity for him, but the temptation to tease got the better of me. “Bill?”
“Yes?”
“Does your matchmaker consider you a tough assignment?”
He put down the letter he was reading and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you’re not married yet. Do
you
have something against matchmaking?”
Bill tilted his head to one side, as though debating whether to joke or give me a straight answer. I was a little surprised when he chose the latter.
“Not at all,” he said. “There have been a few romances along the way, but nothing that stuck. It’s a matter of time as much as anything. First college, then the Peace Corps—”
“You were in the Peace Corps?” I was impressed.
“For four years. I re-upped twice. Then came law school, then learning the ropes at the firm. No breaks for the son of the house, I’m afraid. And my job entails a lot of traveling, which makes it difficult to maintain any sort of ongoing relationship. But now that you mention it, maybe I am a tough assignment.” He held up a frayed cuff and shrugged. “Let’s face it. I’m not movie star material.”
“But I think you’re—” I broke off midprotest, realizing that I was on the verge of telling him that he was more attractive than any movie star and that the women who had rejected him had probably been shallow, vain, and dumber than doorstops. “I think you’re forgetting,” I said carefully, “that you were busy establishing yourself in your career.”
“Mmm, maybe that was part of it. Anything else you’d like to know?”
“No, no, I was just, uh, wondering….” I returned to my reading, but a short time later, I couldn’t help looking up again. “Bill?”
“Mmm?”
“What did you do in the Peace Corps?”
“I gave puppet shows,” he replied, still concentrating on the letter in his hand.
“Puppet shows?”
He put the letter down. “Yes. I gave puppet shows. I was sent to Swaziland—that’s the place in southern Africa, by the way, not the place
with the Alps—to teach English and after two years of using more traditional teaching methods, I added puppet shows.”
“What a great idea.” My mother had tried the same thing in her classroom.
“They were a big hit, education and entertainment in one neat package. I ended up traveling around the country in a Land Rover, giving shows in schools, churches, kraals, anywhere they sent me.” He lifted his hand and began to talk with it, as though it were a puppet. “
Sahnibonani beguneni.
”
“What does that mean?” I asked, delighted.
“Roughly? ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.’ That’s about all the SiSwati I remember after all these years. Oh, and:
Ngee oot sanzi, Lori
.”
“What’s that?”
Bill smiled. “Let’s get back to work, Lori.”
*
**
The news about my parents’ meeting was the biggest revelation, but even the small ones fascinated me. After demobilizing, Dimity had remained in London: busy, happy, and unexpectedly up to her elbows in children.
My Dearest Beth
,
You will think me quite mad, for I have decided not to return to Finch. Moreover, I have taken off one uniform and put on another. No, I have not taken holy orders—perish the thought!—but I have signed on with Leslie Gordon at Starling House, a quite sacred place in its own right.
I believe I told you of my friend, Pearl Ripley. She married an airman, young Brian Ripley, who was killed in the Battle of Britain. She was a bride one day, a widow the next, and a mother nine months later. I once questioned the wisdom of wartime marriages—even you waited until after the Armistice to marry Joe—but I have since come to admire Pearl greatly for making what I now feel was a very courageous decision. Surely Brian was fortified and comforted as he went into battle, knowing that he was so dearly loved.
Starling House is meant to help women like Pearl, war-widows struggling to support young children on a pittance of a pension. The kiddies stay there while their mothers work. Isn’t it a splendid idea? Leslie asked only for a donation, and I have
made one, but I think I have more to give these little ones than pounds sterling.
To be frank, I am not cut out to be a lady of leisure. Although I now have the means, I lack the experience. In fact, it sounds like very hard work. I suppose I could sit with the Pym sisters knitting socks all day, but I’d much sooner change nappies and tell stories and give these brave women some peace of mind.
Mad I may be, but I think it a useful sort of madness, a sort you understand quite well, since you suffer from similar delusions.
My mother’s “useful sort of madness” had sent her back to college in pursuit of a degree in education. Despite exams, term papers, and long hours at the library, she managed to write at least twice a month.
D
,
Midterms! Yoicks! And you thought D day was a big deal!
I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying all of this. Joe says that I’m regressing and I do hope he’s right. After all of those gray years in London, I think I’ve earned a second childhood, don’t you?
I’ve put student teaching on hold while I study. I’m not happy about it, but there are only so many hours in the day and I have to spend most of them in the library. I miss the day-to-day contact with kids, though. Makes me wonder when on earth Joe and I are going to have our own. We’re still trying, but nothing seems to work, up to and including the garlic you forwarded from the Pyms. Thank them for me, will you? And just between you and me—how would a pair of spinsters be acquainted with the secret to fertility?
The two friends talked about everything that touched their lives. As my mother grew increasingly despondent over the lack of a family of her own, Dimity wrote to her about “Mrs. Bedelia Farnham, the greengrocer’s wife, who delivered healthy triplets—Amelia, Cecelia, and Cordelia, my dear, if you will credit it—shortly after her forty-third birthday” and exhorted her not to lose hope. When Dimity wondered how she could bear to see another war-torn family, my mother responded with characteristic common sense:
Does the word “vacation” mean anything to you? How about “holiday”? I’ve copied the dictionary definitions on a separate sheet of paper, in case you have trouble remembering. Take one, and write me when you get back.
I’m serious, Dimity. It’s no good, wearing yourself down like this. It’s not good for you and it’s certainly not good for the children. I know I’m stating the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.
So take some time off. Paddle your feet in a brook. Read a pile of books and eat apples all day. Remind yourself that there’s joy in the world as well as sadness. Then go back to work and remind the kids.
*
**
I fixed sandwiches for a late afternoon lunch, and Bill’s disappeared so rapidly that I thought I had scored another culinary coup, until he happened to mention that he hadn’t had any breakfast. I hastily made him another, a thick slab of roast beef on grainy brown bread, and sent him into the living room to eat it, ordering him to leave me alone in the kitchen until I called for him. The letters could wait. It was time for me to heed Dimity’s advice and start making amends.
In no time at all, I produced a truly scrumptious double batch of oatmeal cookies. I was so proud that I was tempted to go upstairs and fetch my camera, to record the historic moment. It sounds foolish, I know, but if you’d burned as many hard-boiled eggs as I had, you’d understand.
I could almost hear my mother humming in the warm, cinnamon-scented air, and I hoped Dimity was around to enjoy it, but the best moment came when Bill took his first bite. A look of utter bliss came to his face and he closed his eyes to concentrate on chewing. Then, without saying a word, he picked up the cookie jar and carried it back with him to the study.
*
**
Later that evening, I tried my hand at onion soup and a quiche lorraine, and Bill seemed more than happy to test the results. He had three helpings of the quiche. Sometime after we’d finished our dinner break and gone back to our reading, he leaned forward and held a letter out to me. “Here’s
one I think you should read.” He shook his head when I looked up expectantly. “Nothing to do with Dimity.”