Dorothy Cannell - Withering Heights

“You’re right.” He spoke in a toneless voice.

“Think about it! How many people read that silly magazine anyway?” It was of course the absolutely wrong thing to say, totally insensitive and unsympathetic. But I wasn’t used to dealing with Ben in this attitude of pale sorrow. I would much have preferred him to leap three feet in the air and clutch at his head before pounding up and down the room, as was customary when he was severely upset. Turbulence I could deal with, knowing I only had to count to ten and it would be over. I would straighten any pictures that had been sent askew, and whatever was wrong would get sorted out over a cup of tea or, when the rare situation warranted it, something stronger.

“ Cuisine Anglaise has a wide circulation, Ellie.”

“Among people who call beef boeuf .” I couldn’t keep my hoof out of my mouth. “And they aren’t the sort to buy your cookery books by the dozens.”

“Thanks a lot!” Removing his reading glasses, he set them down with painstaking precision.

“It was meant as a compliment, Ben. Your strength is real food, eaten by real people, not trendy fashion food for the beautiful and bored. You appeal to the average person. Getting meals on the table isn’t a form of artistic expression for them. More likely it’s a matter of Mum and Dad getting the children to eat what’s put in front of them rather than dropping it on the floor for the dog or gagging on it until they’re ordered out of the room.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before I wrote the damn book? I could have stuck to advice on putting frozen dinners in the microwave,” said Ben. “That wouldn’t have required any ‘floury’ prose.” His smile did not take the edge off the words. But I didn’t have the sense to stop while I was behind. I was too upset that our evening had been ruined and he’d hardly told me anything about his overnight with his parents or how well the children had settled in before he started for home.

“You’re not the only one to get less than bubbling praise at times.” I stirred restlessly in my chair. “But I don’t go to pieces when a client finds fault with a room design I’ve spent days working on.”

“It’s not the same, Ellie. Being criticized in print is far worse-”

“Than being told to my face I’ve done an inadequate job?” I got to my feet and had the sherry decanter in hand when Mrs. Malloy came teetering into the room, again with the feather duster. I had been picturing her snugly tucked up in the guest room with my copy of Lord RakehelPs Redemption . But here she was, a possible bright spot or at the very least an interruption, in an otherwise bleak moment. Tobias followed in her wake. Sensing disharmony, which he had made clear in the past was not good for a cat of advancing years, he settled on the bookcase and turned convincingly to stone.

Ben, who had risen for our overnight guest if not for Mr. Tobias, pointed an outraged quivering finger. “He’s sitting on Cuisine Anglaise! ”

“Good!” I flared. “He’ll stay sitting on it if I have anything to say about it!” Having poured myself a liberal glass of sherry, I returned to my seat and did my own impersonation of cat staring into space.

“One look through Cuisine Whatsit the first time it arrived for you was enough for me, Mr. H!” Mrs. Malloy swayed with the breeze, or possibly the effects of a nip of gin in the kitchen, on her ridiculously high heels. But it was clear she had summed up the situation, as behooved a woman who had once commandeered Milk Jugg’s private detective agency. “As if I want to eat at those restaurants they write about. The ones where they put marigolds on your salad and hold up the bottle of wine so you can bow to it! And me a Christian woman! Idolatrous, the vicar would call it!”

With Ben standing there like a bottle of sauce, I felt compelled to stem the flow of Mrs. M’s tirade. “ Cuisine Anglaise is the periodical of choice for the person with the professionally trained palate.”

“Biffy for them!” Mrs. Malloy’s bust having inflated to a dangerous size, I waited uneasily for the sound of an explosion. “If the review wasn’t all that complimentary about your new cookery book, Mr. H, I’d be pleased as Punch. Your recipes are for the sort of meals that taste lovely and give you a warm, dreamy feeling when you remember them years later. It’s the same with books. Shakespeare may be good for you, but like I was saying to Mrs. H earlier, it don’t warm the cockles of your heart like a nice story about a wicked housekeeper and the family ghost appearing of a nighttime at the windows.”

Had she said that? My eyes went to the portrait of Abigail. Her serene smile promised as clearly as if she had spoken that her ghost would never show up at any of our windows. Enormously comforting! Thrilling as such things are to read about, one does not necessarily wish to experience them in real life.

“You have a point, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben looked less like a bottle left in the middle of the floor for someone to trip over.

“That’s the ticket.” Mrs. Malloy teetered over the chair he had vacated. “You stop worrying about being remembered five hundred years from now for your Poulet a la Whatsit. Go on writing recipes for the sort of food that keeps people coming back for more at Abigail’s. No one can touch you, Mr. H, when it comes to your Welsh rarebit. The one that’s a lovely shade of pink because of the diced beetroot you put in it. And then there’s the Dover sole with the Gruyere sauce and the steak-and-mushroom pie with the vermouth. Who needs anything fancier than that?”

Tobias charged the feather duster she had discarded. At his approach it came to life and put up quite a fight.

“You’re the voice of reason, Mrs. Malloy.” Ben smiled at her. It was good to see the light back in his eyes, but I wished I could have been the one to put it there. “How about a glass of sherry? Would you like another one, Ellie?” It was impossible to tell whether or not he was still irritated with me.

“I think I’d rather have a cup of tea.”

“Same here,” Mrs. M surprised me by saying. “Just the thing with that sky darkening up like it’s getting set to storm again. A good thing I gave in and agreed to stay the night or I could have got caught in it good and proper.”

Not if she had left earlier, I thought, and immediately felt guilty.

“In these heels”-she looked down at her spindly shoes-“I need to see where I’m putting me feet or I could trip on the bus steps and break me neck.” This reference to Madam LaGrange’s warning about the perils of bus stops should have reminded me of her other prediction.

Having closed the window and drawn the curtains, Ben said he would make the tea and be back in a jiffy. On his way out of the room he paused to touch my hair lightly, and the world shifted back into place.

“Was it just the magazine business that got to him?” Mrs. Malloy inquired, the moment he was out the door. “Or did the children get upset when he left them with his parents?” Here was the reason she had refused the sherry and most uncharacteristically opted for tea. She had known Ben would offer to get it, thus providing us with a few minutes of private chitchat.

“All three of them always enjoy being with Grandpa and Grandma. They love staying in the flat above the greengrocery. They think it a great adventure to help out at the cash register and hang up the bananas.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think.” Mrs. Malloy’s pious expression would have suited the vicar when leaning over the pulpit to announce that more help was needed for the foreign missions. “Children don’t need a holiday near as much as their mum and dad do. So how about you and Mr. H taking off for a few days instead of staying cooped up here?” Her gaze shifted around the room. “It can get depressing, Mrs. H, with the walls closing in and always the thought of how much dusting there is to do.”