Dorothy Cannell - The Importance of Being Ernestine

“In a bad play?” Freddy shifted out of position so suddenly that Tobias let out an infuriated meow and disappeared under the bookcase.

“It was rather like that,” I conceded. “He seemed to grow more confident as he went along.”

“Getting into his part.”

“You could say that.” For the moment I had forgotten Ben.

“What sort of a gun?”

“I don’t know. I’m not up on the different kinds. But, now that you ask,” I stood up and sat back down, “it was rather like the one you had when we were children and played cowboys and Indians. But it could have been a real gun. It must have been…” I sat biting my lip, remembering how for a moment in time I had been taken in by the gun-shaped cigarette lighter Mrs. Malloy had tossed at me. It had been that sort of evening.

“Explain something to me, Ellie.” Freddy’s eyes narrowed, just as they had done when he was a ten-year-old Wyatt Earp pacing toward me with his hand at his holster. “Why would this bloke in the sunglasses try to frighten you into giving up on a case that no one in their right minds would have given the time of day if he hadn’t shown up?”

“Not a bad question.”

It was one that had been nagging at the back of my mind as I drove home.

I awoke to find another question staring me in the face: What about Ernest, the under gardener who fathered Flossie Jones’s baby girl? There had been no mention of him when Lady Krumley talked about Flossie living out her last days in a miserable bed-sitter. Was he a rotter who had bunked off rather than face up to his responsibilities? Or had Flossie shut him out of her life? Did he even know that the baby had been put up for adoption?

A moment later I lost interest in these speculations. Ben was not in bed beside me. A distant bonging of the grandfather clock let me know that it was 8:00 and that I had overslept by an hour. There was no reason for me to panic. He would be downstairs giving the children their breakfast after getting them up and dressed. We usually did this together and had become quite good at speeding things along without making anyone feel rushed. But if I didn’t wake with the alarm clock, he would let me sleep on before bringing me up a cup of tea. Usually on those days he would take Abbey and Tam to school and Rose to her playgroup. Even so, as I dragged on my dressing gown and headed barefoot for the stairs, I couldn’t stop myself from feeling abandoned. I had dozed off in the drawing room the previous night while still talking to Freddy. He was gone when I came drowsily back to my surroundings at 3:00 in the morning. And Ben was in bed and asleep when I climbed under the covers. The sensible thing would be to take him at his word that he had forgiven me, but I couldn’t. The mad idea crossed my mind that if I looked in the study I would find a note propped up on the mantelpiece, saying that he had gone away for a while because he needed time to think, the classic words to end a doomed relationship. I reminded myself, even as I pushed open the door, that Ben loved me, that our marriage was solid and he would never abandon his children, especially over something so trivial. The study was exactly as it had been when I showed it to him last night, except for a cold cup of tea sitting beside the computer. Really, I did need to get a grip on myself. But to be fair a lot of women might go to pieces after having a gun pointed at them, real or not. Shaking my head so that my hair, which I hadn’t combed, tumbled out of its pins, I entered the kitchen, which didn’t look as inviting as usual.

On chill, gray mornings such as this it helped to have a small blaze going in the red brick fireplace, but Ben hadn’t got one started. Nor was he there. Freddy was the one wandering around the table urging the children to eat up their cereal.

“I want porridge,” Tam had his elbows on the green and white check cloth and was blowing bubbles in his juice glass.

“Daddy always makes us porridge,” Abbey contributed wistfully.

“Love Daddy.” Rose dropped her spoon in her cornflakes and giggled with delight when milk splashed everywhere. Tobias sat happily licking his whiskers while Freddy appeared ready to tear his out. Indeed his beard already looked extra mangy.

“We all love Daddy,” I said, stepping up to the table, “but it seems we’ve got to manage without him this morning.”

“Mummy! Mummy!” squealed Rose.

“Your hair is so pretty.” Abbey reached up to stroke it. “Will I have to be all grown up before mine gets long down my back?”

“Can I have a boiled egg?” Tam asked.“With the army?”

“He means he wants his bread and butter cut up into soldiers,” I explained to Freddy while getting down a saucepan from the hanging rack above the Aga. “Where is Ben?”

“Gone down to Abigail’s. He said that if he stayed here he’d waste the whole morning at the computer. Obviously, he would have waited until you got up if I hadn’t done my cousinly duty in showing up to forage through the fridge. I’ve nothing in mine except a bottle of tomato sauce.”

“There are such places as supermarkets,” I replied, popping eggs into the boiling water.

“I’ve heard they charge money”-Freddy stood eating cereal out of the box-“and I don’t think that sort of thing should be encouraged. Call me an idealist, but someone has to make a stand.” He elbowed past me to munch on the slice of bread I had buttered for Tam.

“I suppose it’s a matter of principle with your mother,” I said before I could stop myself. “Enjoying getting things for free, I mean.”

“You mean pinching stuff?”

“It was wrong of me to bring it up.”

“A girl at school pinched me,” Abbey’s mouth trembled.

“She’ll go to hell for that.” Tam was gobbling up his egg, and Rose was looking around for hers. Abbey did not eat eggs. She said they gave her indigestion just like they did Mrs. Malloy. All three children were devoted to Mrs. Malloy, cheerfully believing that she had magic potions in her bag and flew around on the Hoover when they were in school to speed up the cleaning.

“Your mother’s a dear,” I said, handing Freddy a cup of tea. “And we all have our little foibles. I know you worry about her, but look on the bright side. She doesn’t smoke or drink…”

“People that smoke go to hell.” Tam licked egg off his face.

“Who told you that?”

“A boy in my class. His father says he hopes they all fry. Like a pan of chips. And choke on the smoke.”

“Did you ever smoke, Mummy?” Abbey clutched my hand in blue-eyed terror.

Freddy saved me from answering. “Some ghoul, that father! Puts the point across that there are worse things in life than dear old Mum’s little problem. Although I’ve got to admit, coz, that I do occasionally worry that it’ll all catch up with her, and she’ll end up in the clink.” He sighed heavily. “The thought of Dad cooking Christmas dinner for the next thirty years is not a happy one. I’ll be lucky to get a poached egg. He was fixing himself one last night when I phoned. And was in a very nasty temper about it. You’d have thought Mum had left him to fight the Battle of Waterloo all on his little lonesome.”

“Where was she?” I was gathering up plates and putting them in the sink.

“Down at some pub.”

“She’s entitled to a little outing.”

“Dad said she’d been there for three days.”

“That’s odd, considering as I was just saying that she doesn’t drink.” I spoke lightly, hoping Freddy wouldn’t see that I was worried. I was fond of Aunt Lulu and couldn’t believe Uncle Maurice hadn’t got off his rump to go and look for her. She could have taken a knock on the head during a brawl and be wandering the London streets senseless or gone off with the Guinness deliveryman. Or something worse, too terrible to contemplate, might have happened. “What exactly did your father say, Freddy?”