Dinner Along the Amazon (2 page)

In the kitchen, Bertha Millroy behaved in the same morose fashion, as though touched by the same hand. And indeed their mutual despondency was based upon a kindred misgiving. And Mrs Renalda Harper Dewey was the instigator of that misgiving.

Mrs Renalda Harper Dewey, widow of Harper Peter Dewey the First (killed in the battle for Caen, August 1944, the year after Harper P. Dewey the Second’s birth) was a lady who lay in bed till nine o’clock every morning because of the night before. It used to be that she would lie abed until eight and then it became an occasional night before—but now the lie-abed was until nine and had ceased to be occasional.

This morning there had been a note on the flat top of the balustrade on the landing. On the note were written the words “Ten o’clock—thank you” in rather indistinct watery blue ink. “Ten o’clock, thank you” and that was all.

Bertha put on the kettle.

“I don’t want any tea,” said Harper Dewey.

“You don’t drink morning tea because you want to, Master Harper Dewey,” said Bertha Millroy in her flat voice, “you drink it to assist nature.”

The kettle boiled.

Bertha warmed the teapot.

They were silent.

Bertha threw out the water into the sink and put tea leaves in the pot.

The robins moved across the lawn outside the kitchen window.

Harper watched them.

Bertha poured boiling water over the tea leaves, turned off the stove and put the lid on the teapot. One, two, three, and sat down.

“Ten o’clock indeed,” she muttered—and then she poured tea into their cups.

One of the robins was listening to a worm under the dew. Harper watched. The robin’s head was cocked to one side as it listened. Then it ran a few steps on tiptoe and caught the worm noise again—this time nearer to it. The robin waited. Harper waited—Bertha Millroy waited—and then the robin stabbed the ground with its beak—caught the worm and tossed it into the sunlight. Harper shivered.

“I don’t want to assist nature,” he said, and he pushed his teacup away.

The thought of having to wait until ten o’clock to see his mother was unbearable to Harper. He had never had to wait that long on any other morning that he could remember.

There was a procedure—one which took place every day—which they followed, commencing with the preparation of Mrs Dewey’s breakfast tray. Bertha would serve up the eggs into the plate and pour coffee into the silver thermos bottle and Harper would butter toast. Then Bertha would take the tray and Harper would take the paper and they would mount the stairs to the second floor. Outside his mother’s door Harper had placed, long ago, a small chair with a cushion on it, where, at this stage of the procedure he would sit, while Bertha went into the bedroom to awaken his mother.

Then he would listen to all the sounds which came from his mother’s room. First of all Bertha Millroy pulled the curtains after which, every morning, she would say, “It’s nine o’clock, Mrs Dewey,” (this morning she would say “ten o’clock”)—and Harper’s beautiful mother would reply in a sleepy voice, “Thank you Bertha, let me have my wrapper.”

After this he would count to himself the various stages of her awakening which he had trained his ear to recognize, although in his whole life he had never witnessed them.

First of all his mother rolled over from her side onto her back. Then there was the sound of Bertha mincing to the bedside. The sitting up came next. This was a combination of three sounds. The plumping of pillows, a slight voiceless sound which his mother uttered as she was helped into a sitting position (simultaneously there would be a grunt from Bertha)—and finally Bertha saying pleasantly “There.”

After the sitting up came a pause. “Now,” Bertha would inevitably say, “here we are.” And she could be heard mincing across the room to where she’d lift the breakfast tray and mince back again to the bed, accompanied on the return journey by the tinkle of ice against the walls of the orange juice glass and sometimes a harsh clank when the coffee thermos hit the plate of eggs. “Thank you” followed that and then silence.

Next, coffee being poured and the paper being opened and Bertha stepping to the dressing table to get the brush and then, sometimes but not always, a few listless strokes of the brush through his mother’s hair.

Then Bertha would emerge from the room, somewhat triumphantly, and she would say as she appeared, “Call if you want—don’t if you don’t,” and then she went downstairs.

At this juncture Harper’s turn came.

“Good morning, mother.”

“Good morning, Harpie. You sit there like a good boy till I’m ready—then you can come in dear.”

“All right.”

He knew that he wasn’t allowed inside until she’d gone into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, he knew this explicitly, but for some reason or other she felt she must tell him again and again every morning and so he let her.

After she had gone into the bathroom he would go into the bedroom and sit on the bed and look at the pictures in the paper and listen to the bath water running into the tub. Afterwards, when he heard the water running out of the tub he would go to the highboy (it had been his father’s) and open the middle drawer.

Inside the middle drawer there was always the Colt revolver lying on a white tea towel—and beside it lay two boxes of cartridges. But the Colt revolver held no interest for him at all. He knew what it was there for and he respected this, but aside from respect he felt nothing. It guarded a treasure, which lay under the white tea towel, contained in two boxes—one which had velveteen on the outside and another which was leather. These were his mother’s jewel cases. This was the treasure.

Although Harper had no idea, had no conception of the value of these jewels he believed them to be the most beautiful objects he had ever seen. Actually their value was enormous (but Harper wouldn’t have understood the meaning of value—he only understood that they were beautiful).

There were earrings and finger rings and necklaces and brooches. There were strings and strands of pearls and an emerald on a golden thread. There was an opal ring and a sapphire ring of such gigantic proportions that Harper wondered always how his mother ever wore it. And there was a diamond set in the midst of emeralds and yellow sapphires that truly dazzled the beholder with its radiance.

Every day, Mrs Renalda Harper Dewey wore either one piece or several pieces of this jewelry and Harper every day would take out the two boxes and stare at the contents trying to guess which piece or pieces she would choose. Very often he was right in his choice because he had a certain insight into the inflection of his mother’s voice which she employed when she called to him in the hallway.

However—in the last two months this had become a source, not of pleasure to him but of anguish, for something was happening—an extreme mystery—which no one could explain to him no matter how often he asked about it. Certain of the smaller pieces of jewelry were disappearing.

The first piece had disappeared over six months before, just after Christmas. It had been a small brooch of silver, studded with tiny diamonds. It was in the shape of a spider’s web and the diamonds had represented dewdrops. Harper had been especially enamoured of this piece and when he found it gone he was panic-stricken and searched the entire room for it. But then his mother said to him: “I sold it,” in a cold beautiful voice, and he was heartbroken. She said she’d sold it to finance a gift for her own mother. But she didn’t tell him what the gift was and he had never heard his grandmother mention it.

Since then, other pieces had gone—none without immediate notice from his loving eye—but, as they went the cold beautiful voice delivered credible reasons as excuse—Granny’s insurance—Mary Flannagan’s wedding present—old Aunt Alice’s silver anniversary—and more.

During the last two months there had been a marked increase in the loss which could not be ignored or brushed aside as more “expenses for gifts.” And since it was two months since the first note which read “Nine o’clock please” had appeared on the landing, Harper Dewey with a sinking heart (but with a mind that could not prompt him to an exact reason) somehow, perhaps instinctively, put two and two together and made four.

As for Bertha Millroy, there was no mystery to her—whatever it was—she knew.

So that now, when there lay between their cups of tea—between their two pairs of moving hands which drummed with speculation on the kitchen table—a note, which read “Ten o’clock, thank you,” their eyes could not meet and they could not voice their distress for they were filled with fear.

Bertha Millroy wondered just how Harper would discover and she said a word to God asking him “not to make her do the telling.”

At nine-thirty Harper Dewey was in the back garden with his pet guinea pig when he heard Mrs Jamieson, the lady from next door, knock on the side door of the house.

He heard Bertha shut off the taps at the kitchen sink and a moment later Mrs Jamieson’s voice.

She sounded angry and at once had to be subdued with an admonition from Bertha.

“M’am, you must be quiet. Mrs Dewey is asleep.”

“Asleep, is she? Well that’s more than I can say for myself thanks to her last night.”

“Come in m’am and explain your trouble. Can I give you some tea Mrs Jamieson?”

The side door slammed.

Harper went inside through the sunroom and stood listening in the dining room to what was being said beyond the kitchen door. He still had his guinea pig in his arms.

“That woman!” expostulated Mrs Jamieson—who had grey hair and an enormous Norman nose. “That woman!!”

“Now, Mrs Jamieson, you must quiet down and explain yourself. There’s nothing we can do until you say your piece. Here’s a cup of tea. Here. Now say it.”

Mrs Jamieson clanked a teaspoon around the inside of the teacup.

“She came to me last night. Last night at two o’clock in the morning!”

She paused, relishing her role as informer.

“Last night at two in the morning? That don’t even make sense,” said Bertha.

“You’re darned tootin’”—Mrs Jamieson was of the old school—“You’re darned tootin’ it don’t make sense. That woman.” She made a clucking noise in her throat. “Drunk!” she pronounced. “Drunk and disorderly and all unkempt…” She left off as though the spectacle was too much for her meagre vocabulary to deal with.

Bertha heaved a deprecating little sigh. “Oh dear me,” she muttered.

“You should have seen her, Millroy—I can only tell you. Why she didn’t even know where she was at. Drunk! Why I’ve never seen anyone so drunk. She had her hair all down around her ears and her lipstick all smudged and them pretty earrings of hers—why she’d lost one. You know the pretty ones of pearl? Well, almighty, if one wasn’t gone and the other hanging there like it’d drop any minute. And she smelt so of liquor I had to hide behind the door. She couldn’t focus neither. And the things she was trying to say. I could barely make them out but they was insults I wouldn’t like to think that boy of hers would ever hear. She thought I was a stranger, see? She thought she had her own house and that I was some fool prowler that’d gotten in to steal her things. Why, she behaved just like some—Well—I hardly like to say it Millroy—but she was talking and—she looked just like some harlot from over to New York City.”

There was a short, empty pause.

“Oh I felt so sorry for her,” murmured Mrs Jamieson in genuine distress. “I felt so sorry for her—but I just had to say it.”

“Say what?” asked Bertha.

“I told her to go to hell,” said Mrs Jamieson. “And I slammed my door.”

Another pause.

“I never used such language in my life. It was just awful.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Oh, then she staggered down the walk and I watched to make sure she got the right house and then I went to bed. But I never got to sleep.” Her voice rose. “And there she is—sleeping up there—almighty it’s enough to make anyone curse.”

“Mrs Jamieson, she’s sick, you mustn’t get angry with her. She’s sick.”

“Well, what’s she got to be sick about anyway—any more than any of us. Any more tea?”

“I guess she grieves her husband. I don’t know.”

Harper listened while Bertha poured out more tea for Mrs Jamieson.

“I guess I grieve my husband—but I don’t tell the world that I do. No, Millroy, she’s not got the right to…”

Harper went upstairs.

He listened from the top step to make sure that Bertha was still busy with the neighbour woman and then he tiptoed down the hall to his mother’s room.

The door was closed and he had to shift the guinea pig in his arms to open it quietly. Just before he went in he said “shh” to his pet and muffled it against his thin chest.

The light coming through the chiffon curtains was dense and murky and at first he could only see his mother’s shape roughly hewn out of bedclothes and shadows.

All that Mrs Jamieson had said in the kitchen had not made sense to Harper. All of it he had not understood—but he had fathomed that his mother was sick and that she had been bad and he knew that he had to see her to set his mind at rest.

He stepped to the bedside—but just as he did he heard Bertha’s feet upon the stairs.

He went and stood in the corner.

Bertha came into the room. She set the tray down on the highboy and smoothed her apron out like crisp brittle armour and, as she did every day, pulled the braided cord that sprung the curtains from the windows. The sunlight leapt into the room, and pounced, like a beast of prey, onto the big double bed—onto the candy-pink sheets and onto the figure that lay beneath them. Harper, who at that moment was frozen with terror at being discovered in his mother’s room, gave a startled cry—like a mouse being caught in a trap.

Bertha took the situation in hand immediately.

“Shut them eyes,” she said, stepping briskly to the side of the bed (like a nurse Harper remembered when he was in hospital, like a nurse going to save someone from falling out of bed, like a nurse going to pull the sheet off a corpse so that the doctor could look at it and tell why it had died). “Shut them eyes and don’t say a word.”

Harper left the room. And all the while he sat in the hall, holding his guinea pig—all the while his mother was being helped into a sitting position—all the while the hair was being brushed and the lipstick spread and the tea poured out—Harper Dewey saw what he had seen—like a vile photograph forced before his eyes. His mother’s face pressed against the sheets—his mother’s mouth all open and showing where she had no teeth—his mother’s eyes which had no brows—and all of this, all of this ‘face,’ was the most insipid colour, a horrid yellowy white—pressed against the pink sheets like an advertisement for sickness.