Mum's the Word (26 page)

Making a face at the watchful window, I switched off the light and, vowing this would be a quickie, slid out into the hallway, which was heavy with silence. Did the film
Melancholy Mansion
silently … endlessly … replay itself within these walls? Was death forever crouched at the crook of the stairs waiting for the murder victims? Would I, unknowingly, rub shoulders with any of the ghost characters—the blonde, the butler, or the schoolboy or … even my mother? That her part had been played in a nightclub didn't alter the fact that she was part of the history of this house. Suddenly, remembering her fatal fall down a flight of railway steps, I could not face the stairs.

Heading toward the lift, my footsteps echoed after me. I opened the outer door and viewed the hanging cage with a jaundiced eye. Only the craving got me aboard. What if it stalled? What if knives came slashing through the grid iron sides? Silence, craven adventuress! Grabbing the elasticated brass gate, I rammed it shut. With courage that astounded, I pressed First. An electrical hum glided up my arm as my insides lurched down. So far so good. No dead body dropping as a free gift into my arms. Downward and Onward. All clear on the hall front. Out into the sultry air.

Instantly I felt better. Mendenhall was a breeding ground for the fungus of imagination. Hurrying down the herringbone path, I skirted the rockery. Poor old Josiah! He should have chosen either a smaller house or a bigger island, if he didn't want his home to look too big for its britches. In half a dozen strides I was level with the herb garden wherein grew, according to Miss Rumpson, all the ingredients to enable me to hold onto Ben's love. We have an herb garden at Merlin's Court. Jonas is a great believer in the power of mint sauce with his roast lamb.

I had reached the boat house. Ah, yes! Here was the
Nell Gwynn
. A neatly wrapped orange square on the right hand shelf. Unfortunately, I had not enough puff in me to get it inflated this side of Christmas. Dropping my bag on the Melolite garden bench, I assured myself that borrowing a rowing boat without first acquiring permission was not contrary to any house guest rules I had ever read.

Urgency gave me the speed and strength of … one pregnant woman. Once launched I became again the pride of St. Roberta's rowing team. My oars moved with the steel rhythm of connecting rods on a steam engine. I inhaled deep breaths of river smell. Water the colour of stewed tea slopped and surged against the sides of the boat. I was free, I was racing to meet my destiny. No time to cry, Halt, who goes there, as a motor boat roared into view, sending up a geyser of spray. Pepys in pursuit or worse yet—the Coast Guard? Neither, thank goodness! Just some snooty river rats who wouldn't give the wave to a nameless rowing boat. Off in the distance a couple of white sails hung like pillow slips out to dry, but otherwise it was just me and the river.

By the time I tied the boat to a scrubby tree at the water's edge, I'd had enough of the nautical life and was ready to give anyone who looked at me sideways the back of my oar. But upon reaching Main Street, the fever that had driven me to these shores was back full force. No traffic moved. I saw no pedestrians. Again I seriously wondered if this was a town existing only in the imagination of the stranger passing through. Silly! The bearlike dog fenced in alongside the B. & W. Hardware Store was too real for comfort. Jaws slathering, he ripped chunks out of the night. Should I turn tail and flee back to Mendenhall?

Impossible! I sped past Jimmy's Bar. My footsteps echoing the thump-thump of my heart, I crossed at the traffic light and came with a rush of ecstasy and longing to the place.

But what was this? Confronting a Closed sign on a locked door, I could have wept with frustration. Martin's Mexican Café. The restaurant was exactly as I had imagined when Mary had mentioned it outside Jimmy's Bar—a flat-faced building with peeling boards and a straggle of plants clawing at the inside of the window. I smelled the spices, felt them seeping into my pores, tasted their burn on my tongue. When the craving had first taken hold, it had been for curry. But this wasn't England and I am adaptable. I clawed at the door. Tacos, enchiladas, tamales! All begging to be devoured one slow nibble at a time.

I sagged against the wall. Where was it written that I should suffer like this? All the pregnancy How-To books stressed the importance of giving in to this most basic of
urges. Easy for the books to say. Easy for those women not haunted by a fat past. For me had come denial, followed by that terrifying exhilaration. The urge has come upon me! cried this Lady of Shalott. I had been so pure since marriage: no food orgies. I had come to believe that passion for food had been sublimated by nobler desires. I had determined not to use my pregnancy as an excuse to backslide. And how easy to walk the straight and narrow during those days of morning sickness. Now, true to form, the sin without the satisfaction.

Drearily, I stopped using my hair as a face cloth and dragged myself into a walk which ended abruptly after half a dozen steps. I was at the door of the Lucky Strike Bowling Alley. Taped to this door was a sign that read:

I moistened my lips. What sort of a buffet? Was I putting one and one together and making four? Martin's Mexican might be closed for any number of reasons. Admit defeat! Return to your boat and head back to Mendenhall. As Child Ellie you may have been known as the Midnight Marauder for your successful nocturnal raids on the school pantry. But the woman you've become isn't brazen enough to walk in there only to have your legs mistaken for skittles. Remember, you have the Mangé name to uphold. You have your marriage to consider. Ben is already unhappy at being blamed for an affair he did not commit. You're going to fight this thing and win.

Ellie, come back! Don't do this! Don't gate-crash the Mud Creek Bowling Banquet!

A sport where you are meant to drop the ball had always appealed to me, but I had never been in a bowling alley before. And, to my untutored eye, the Lucky Strike resembled a bomb shelter down to its last candle. Overhead fans moved whirligigs of shadow over the empty lanes. Did the dim lighting indicate a desire for ambience or were they conserving on electricity? Immaterial, my dear Ellie! Cloaked in shadow I scooted unchallenged past the pay desk and ball racks.

The bar was mobbed. Did the entire population of Mud Creek leap at every chance to party? Cigarette smoke breezed my way. Voices flowed past me, gentle as the river I had so recently rowed. “As I said to her … after she said to me …” “I could have kicked her face in!” “But she sure is darling!…”

I recognized several faces from earlier in the day. Nelga from the dress shop. Heidi, our waitress at Jimmy's Bar. The Swedish blonde twins who had been such a hit until Theola Faith stole the fashion show. But here was a face guaranteed to kill my appetite if anything could. Sheriff Tom Dougherty sat on a bar stool, nibbling on a drinking straw. I shoved back a quiver of unease along with my hair. The prize might be worth the price.

The buffet table was laden to groaning. I could feel the vibrations in my feet. This was the sort of feed bash with
which pioneers must have fortified themselves when there was a forest to be cleared and a log cabin township to be raised before sundown. My palms turned clammy. My body flooded with wave upon wave of wicked wantonness. I was a lioness surveying her kill.

Set out among the down-home delights of baked beans, sweetcorn casserole, macaroni and cheese, and brown-sugar glazed ham, were two great platters of crunchy shells loaded up with spicy dark meat, crispy green lettuce, bright red tomato, and shiny black olives. I merged with the crowd, as safe from prying eyes as any taco thief could wish. Too safe. All around me, disembodied hands loaded up paper plates. Curses! My arms were pinned to my sides by the press of bodies.

Across the buffet from me were the Swedish blondes. Their giggles drifting upward like bubbles blown from a pipe, until … a unified gasp. Like a tiny pop. Eyeing each other with identical expressions of bemusement, they said, “Who's she?”

“Yes, don't think we've had the pleasure.” A beefy chap in a flannel shirt, fists doubled into boxing gloves, gave me the once over.

I flexed my lips.

One of the twins touched a sculpted nail to her flawless chin. “I feel certain sure I've seen her some place.”

“Same here.” An unspeakably handsome youth, his mouth carved into a sneer, picked me apart with his eyes. He who had notified me in Jimmy's Bar that I was wearing a price tag. Was I about to pay for being so lavish with makeup and flouncing my hair over my shoulders? The need to mask my hungry eyes had been consuming. Now it didn't take a mirror to confirm that in the eyes of these Puritans I looked a thoroughly bad lot.

“She was in Jimmy's lunchtime gone.” A female cattle rustler spoke, thumbs in her belt, salt-and-pepper hair slicked back. She wore leather wrist bands.

“You've got her tagged, Rema!” The flannel shirt man executed a middle weight boxer prance. “She's one of them! One of those crazies staying over on the island.” Eyes squeezing
from their sockets, he loomed across the table at me. “What's your game, dame?”

The twin on the left wrinkled her nose. “Why are you here spying on us?”

“I …”

“Does Mary Faith plan on putting this whole town in her next book?”

Relief at the question restored my voice. “Such a wonderful party!” I gushed. “You can't know how I would love to stay, but I only stopped by to inquire about bowling lessons and—”

Impossible to go on. I was drowned out by a surge of voices. Impossible to continue backing up. The crowd was closing in again, cutting off light and air. Was that buzzing the rush of blood to my head or the mounting fury of the mob? I heard, “Mangés” and “Dangerous weirdos.” Followed by “We don't need their sort in Mud Creek.”

“What's this, folks? A private party?” Enter Sheriff Tom Dougherty, hoisting up his gun belt. His thatch of grey hair shaken boyishly onto his forehead, the set of his mouth belying the vulnerability of his pouchy cheeks. Here was a man trained to read every twitching muscle and evaluate every flinch. Would he handcuff me before or after reading me my rights? Would he cross to the island and personally inform Ben that his wife was about to become a felon as well as a mother?

What had I wrought in my blind folly? Had I destroyed my love's every hope of becoming a Mangé?

The sheriff silenced the mob with a raised hand. His smile was chummy, but I feared his left eye wasn't narrowed because he had a cold. He was lining me up, for target practice. “Well, young lady! What brings you to the Lucky Strike?”

Hugging my shoulder bag as though it were the arm of a friend, I backed up against the human wall. “As I have explained, sir, I happened to be passing and popped in to inquire about a game of bowling. Finding the tracks shut down, I paused to admire the buffet.” I like to think I am not a great liar due to lack of practice. But I thought this one skirted the letter of the truth rather nicely.

“She's lying.” The cattle rustler tightened her leather wrist bands.

“Too right!” the twin on the right agreed.

“Not even cute about it.” Horrendously handsome young man speaking.

“Now hold your horses!” grumbled the sheriff. “Sounds to me the young lady may be speaking nothing but the blamed truth.”

What a lovely man. Had I not been in such a hurry to leave, I would have been tempted to kiss him. “Thank you so much!” I tried a sidestep. “Now, if you will excuse me—”

“Not so fast, honey!” A curvaceous woman in a leopard skin frock reeled me in by my bag strap. Her eyes worked the crowd. “Hey, you bunch of softies, get yourselves a good look at that face. She look the sort to care a hang about bowling? Not her. Doesn't have the class! She came skunking in here up to no good, or my name's not Bertha May Johnston.”

A dark and deadly hum of bees swarming. To think I had felt cheated in leaving Massachusetts—the seat of witch burnings and other Puritan terrors. I could feel the hot collective breath of my accusers. Their eyes branded a G for Gate-crasher on my forehead. A dubious look had crept into Sheriff Dougherty's eyes. Was he going over to the enemy? Would anything be served by throwing myself at his feet?

“Book her for unlawful entry!” The flannel shirt chap plopped a meaty hand on the sheriff's shoulder. “And hold her, old gun, until the rest of those Mangé cranks leave the island.”

A rumble of approval.

“You can't do this to me!” Something (perhaps the baby pressing on a nerve) stiffened my spine. “I'm a guest in your country.” Mustn't give them time to say they hadn't invited me. Better to rush in with the best of all defence pleas. “And I'm
pregnant
!” Whatever their response I would not break down. I look about as captivating as a crocodile with a toothache when I cry.