The Thin Woman (5 page)

“I’m sorry. And your father?”

“Off finding himself. At the moment he’s fanning in New South Wales. When last I heard, he had two—sheep, not farms—and if I know Daddy’s luck the ewe undoubtedly is on the pill. He’s great really; next year he may decide to be a fireman, or a circus clown.”

“Which validates my theory that lovable as they may be, parents are the real children.” Ben accepted a cup of
coffee from the mob-capped waitress who was twitching round him in a disgustingly familiar way. Time for Mr. Haskell to remember he had a living to earn. I had provided him with all the scintillating details of my family history, bar Vanessa; now Bentley T. Haskell—This Is Your Life.

He began by informing me that he had been disinherited, disowned, and dispatched to the devil by his parents. Another ancestral home gone west? This one turned out to be a greengrocer’s shop in Tottenham.

I could picture those poor parents, hands gnarled by hard honest work, pelting the prodigal out the door with handfuls of carefully trimmed cabbages, then bolting the door and hanging up the Closed sign. But why?

His offence was interesting. Mum and Dad had not taken kindly to the idea that their son was a practising atheist.

“Practising?”

“I helped stage a rally outside the Hallelujah Revival Chapel, one of those narrow, venomous sects that still believe in burning heretics at the stake. In this instance they had refused to bury a small child in consecrated ground. If that kind of piety is religion I don’t need it.”

“Your parents are very devout?”

“Very. Dad is an orthodox Jew and Mother a staunch Roman Catholic. To give the old folks their due, they have a great marriage. They have spent the last forty years consumed with missionary zeal, each trying to convert the other. We have a mezuza by the front door and a statue of the Blessed Virgin on the mantelpiece. Mother told me she baptized Dad years ago while washing his hair, and he continues to introduce her to his friends as Ruth, although her name is Magdalene.”

“Then I’m surprised they gave up so quickly on you. There must be more to your eviction than the Hallelujah Revival March. What other sins did you commit?”

Peering round for the waitress who had gone in search of the bill, Ben said in quite an amiable tone, “I’m surprised
you don’t trip over your nose going down the street. What makes you so sure my misdeeds were many?”

Fascinated, I watched as, with the merest flick of one finger, he brought Nell Gwyn trotting to heel. She picked up the money, which I had laid on the table, with maddening slowness and finally padded off again, wagging her tail.

“Out with it!” I exclaimed. “The suspense is giving me indigestion. What did you do, kidnap the mayor’s daughter? Forget to return your library books?”

“My primary mistake was being born an only child. My parents put all their eggs in one basket. Mother was nearly forty when I was born. She never could have any more children.”

Probably afraid to, poor woman, I thought. “Your mother must be getting up in years,” I suggested slyly.

“Nearing seventy.”

Which made Ben about thirty, one of my favourite ages for other people, particularly single men.

“Go on,” I said.

“All right, if you must know, I wrote a book—a very graphic book—modern.” He searched for a word suitable for ladies’ ears. “Robust?”

“That’s an adjective favoured by wine connoisseurs and girls with my kind of figure. Wouldn’t pornographic be more apt?”

“Not in my opinion.” His black brows came down again in that haughty manner that immediately turned those paperback heroes into swashbuckling demons. Bentley Haskell looked like a kid who couldn’t get his ball back.

“Has this masterpiece been published?”

“Don’t sneer. I’m now well into my second draft.”

“Aha! In other words you are not yet a household word. Why couldn’t you wait until the thing came out in hardcover before dumping it in your parents’ laps? What’s so admirable about that kind of honesty? Were you trying to teach two old people a new set of dirty words?”

Ben looked injured. “I thought they’d like it! Besides, I had to get Mother and Dad off my back. They kept pushing
me to go to work for my uncle Solomon. He owns a restaurant near Leicester Square.”

“Sounds a fine opportunity, a nice family business.”

“Sure, at one time it was what I wanted. I trained as a chef in some of the best hotels in Europe and the United States; but then the writing bug bit me while I was working in Paris last year and I turned my creativity in another direction. Bending over a hot oven for the rest of my life no longer appeals.”

A cook? Could I never escape from food?

Sympathizing with someone who could blithely turn his back on Cordon Bleu was not in my nature. “I suppose,” I said tartly, “that working for Uncle Solomon, even part-time, would have meant compromising the integrity of your artistic aspirations. Do you live in a garret?”

Ben folded his serviette and dropped it on the table. “I’m not starving, thanks to good old Eligibility Escorts and women like you.”

“You mean ‘robust’ old maids.” I lumbered to my feet and grabbed my bag. “But you are too wishy-washy to damn well say so.”

“What foul language!” His shocked voice followed me out into the entry-way. “My mother never permitted me to mix with girls who swear.”

The man was not even mildly funny. We stepped out the pub door into biting cold, in silence more frigid than the weather. We were on the road when he remembered the hot water bottle, jerked the car round, and disappeared back into the pub.

The second half of the drive was twice as miserable as the first. Night had clamped down and even with the car’s brights piercing the swirling vapours it was impossible to see ten feet ahead. Ben was an expert driver, but I could sense he was having trouble staying out of ditches. As we drew nearer the coast, the wind striking our faces was harsh and stinging with salt. Snow was blowing off the trees, drifting into big white bolsters. Perhaps it was as well Ben and I were not talking. Aunt Sybil expected us around seven.
The hour was now nearly 9:30. We drove through the town of Walled Minsterbury and kept moving northeast. “Once we reach the village of Chitterton Fells, will you be able to give me directions to your uncle’s house?” Ben’s voice broke our long silence with such a rasp that I, drowsy with cold, lurched sideways against the steering wheel, sending us into a spin.

Ben took a word out of his own book (I couldn’t blame him for being upset), elbowed me roughly aside, and with some difficulty straightened the front wheels.

“Before killing both of us—do you know the way?” If ever a girl needed to redeem herself, this was the time. But I am one of those unfortunates who under normal circumstances cannot find their way to their own front gate without a road map, and these circumstances were not normal. I couldn’t see Ben, let alone a signpost.

“You are not going to like this,” I remarked chattily, “but I haven’t been there since I was twelve.… Don’t snarl at me!” I glowered into the dark. “In weather like this, people put out a hand and never see it again.”

“Thanks a lot,” sneered the invisible man. The car did a bounce, a skid and, like a revolving door, slid very slowly into a tree, or a telegraph pole, or some other vertical obstruction that had no business standing around in the thick of drifting fog and whirling snow.

Not often, but occasionally, being heavy is a definite plus. I now did my fair share of pushing, shoving, and cajoling that car out of the ditch. My efforts earned me a reluctant word of praise from Ben. He called me a “pal.” One hour later, my feet now slabs of frozen fish, we had that empty-headed vehicle back on the road. Huffing and puffing, my companion-of-the-night and I climbed back aboard.

I was prepared for the fact that my hot water bottle had died of exposure; the shock was finding the battery was about to do the same. The engine gave one Drief bronchial cough, sputtered twice, and wheezed its last breath. My horoscope had not predicted my day would end this way. But there I was crunching down a barren country road, torn and muddy
silk skirts lashing about my ankles under a coat that didn’t do the job, and clinging to the arm of a man who hours earlier had been a total stranger.

“Keep going,” Sir Galahad muttered through clenched teeth, “we are bound to reach a village or at least a house before the turn of the century.”

A tree loomed up—one of its scraggy branches reached out to claw my cheek. It was all too much. I was finished—a broken woman.

“Light ahead!” shouted Ben. He went into a wild war whoop that nearly knocked me over, but this was no time to pick an argument. To our right I saw the house emerge like a dark apparition with blinking yellow eyes. Involuntarily I turned, and Ben’s arm moved around me in the embrace of comrades who together have come through direst peril.

“Let’s go, Ellie!” He squeezed my hand and we ploughed on, arriving within minutes at a pair of drunken iron gates.

“Civilization!” he yelped.

“Better than that,” I said. “A pair of homing pigeons couldn’t have done better. This is Merlin’s Court.”

CHAPTER
Four

“One would think,” grumbled Ben, “that a house this size could afford the luxury of a doorbell.”

“Patience! Uncle Merlin’s grandfather—builder of this mediaeval fantasy—disliked the obvious.” I came squelching up behind him across the narrow moat bridge, feeling like a deep-sea diver trying to retrieve his land legs. “Somewhere to the left of you is a gargoyle. He’s the knocker.”

“This? I thought the house was sprouting fungus! What do I do? Belt him one?”

“Moron! You yank his tongue out and watch his eyes roll round.”

Ben grimaced and did as he was told. We stood huddled on the step, stamping our feet, listening to the unholy din clamouring inside the house, like a shower of falling crockery.

“Who’s out there?” queried a distrustful voice from beyond the door.

“Aunt Sybil? It’s me, Ellie!”

“You go first,” said Ben at his most gentlemanly. “Then if something dark and rubbery hits you over the head, I can run for help.”

A bolt creaked and a wedge of pale light gradually widened. “My dear! We had quite given up expecting you. Merlin went up to bed an hour ago.” Aunt Sybil peered short-sightedly out into the night. “And this must be your gentleman friend. Come in, come in, before that wind takes off the door. My gracious! You look …”

“Please”—Ben extended a hand to my bewildered great-aunt—“don’t put it into words. Ellie and I both know we look like visiting vampires.” We were now in the hall, a shadowy cavern lit by a couple of bilious, wall-mounted gas lamps which threw into ghastly relief a pair of moth-eaten fox heads grinning hungrily at us.

“Dear, oh dearie me.” Aunt Sybil gave me one of her slack kisses. “A hot bath for each of you would seem best, but we are having trouble with the boiler. Old Jonas, the gardener, who is supposed to see to such matters, is a little poorly at present. A nuisance, but then every cloud … we might have had him planting himself, muddy boots and all, in the drawing room, just like one of the family. Doesn’t know his place and Merlin is too soft with him. Now let’s see, do either of you need to go upstairs”—she paused delicately—“or would you prefer coming straight to the drawing room fire?”

Remembering, despite the years since I had visited, the ghastly chill of the upper regions, I voted for instant warmth.

“Good idea,” agreed Ben, removing his coat and adding it with mine to the tumbled array atop the trestle table. “I think I am beginning to mildew.”

“Merlin will be so disappointed to have missed your arrival.” Aunt Sybil went ahead of us. From the rear she looked rather like a small disapproving rhinoceros, her dark silk dress riding up over her rump in a concertina of wrinkles. Bad weather was no excuse for unpunctuality with Aunt Sybil.

When I was a child the drawing room had always reminded me of a funeral parlour. Time had not improved it. Here, as in the hall, the lighting flickered dimly, produced by one gas lamp and a scattering of candles. Dark, cumbersome furniture crowded every patch of floor space.
A nicely morbid addition was the picture over the mantel—a young maiden on her deathbed, lips serenely smiling, a rose clasped in one waxen hand while the Greek chorus sobbed in the background. My relations were arranged in a semicircle before the fireplace looking for all the world like players in a Victorian melodrama. But that was the wrong way round. They were the audience—Ben and I the actors.

“Good gracious, Ellie!” snorted Aunt Astrid, as stiff-necked as her boned taffeta blouse. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Looks like a very large drowned rat,” supplied Freddy unimaginatively. He should talk. Leaning up against the mantelpiece, he could easily have been mistaken for a dirty floor mop except for the gold skull and crossbones puncturing his ear.

I decided to cut corners. “Okay!” I said, yanking Ben into the middle of the room. “So I’m soaked through and, unfortunately, I did not shrink in the wash. Now can we all say hallo nicely?”

“Must you be so belligerent, darling!” Vanessa uncoiled herself like a skein of silk from the chair closest to the fire and fixed her luminous topaz eyes on Ben, who I am ashamed to say was grinning foolishly. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your delightful friend?” she pouted. “Or am I jumping to conclusions? Even wringing wet, he doesn’t seem your usual type, Ellie dear.”