The Ladies of Missalonghi Read online

  “Then you’d better hop to it, hadn’t you?” asked the stranger unsympathetically.

  The box of proprietary oats was sitting on the counter; Missy milked her sixpence out of the finger of her glove and tendered it, waiting in vain for Uncle Maxwell to give her any change and quite lacking the courage to ask him whether a small quantity of a basic commodity could cost so much, even dolled up in a fancy box. In the end she picked up the oats and left, but not before stealing another glance at the stranger.

  He had a cart drawn by two horses, for such was tethered outside the store, and had not been there when Missy entered. A good-looking equipage too; the horses were trim and sleek with a sensible dash of draft in them, and the cart seemed new, the spokes of its wheels picked out in yellow on a rich brown background.

  Four minutes to five. If she reversed the order of their arrival in Uncle Maxwell’s shop, she could plead the stranger’s rudeness and vast order as an excuse for being late, and thereby manage to fit in a dash to the library.

  The town of Byron possessed no public library; few towns in Australia did in those days. But there was a privately owned lending library to fill the gap. Livilla Hurlingford was a widow with a very expensive son; economic need allied to the need always to appear respectable had driven her to open a well-stocked book room, and its popularity and profitability had led her to ignore the general blue laws which closed the shops of Byron at five on weekday afternoons, for the bulk of her patrons preferred to exchange their books in the evenings.

  Books were Missy’s only solace and sole luxury. She was permitted to keep the money she made from selling Missalonghi’s excess eggs and butter, and she spent all of this pittance borrowing books from her Aunt Livilla’s library. Both her mother and aunt disapproved strongly, but having announced some years earlier that Missy should have an opportunity to put something by above and beyond the fifty pounds her father had bestowed upon her at her birth, Drusilla and Octavia were too fair to rescind their decree simply because Missy turned out a spendthrift.

  Provided she did her allotted share of the work – and did it properly, without skimping by a whisker – no one objected if Missy read books, where they objected strenuously if she voiced a desire to go walking through the bush. To walk through the bush was to place her debatably desirable person smack in the path of murder or rapine, and was not going to be permitted under any circumstances. Drusilla therefore ordered her cousin Livilla to supply Missy only with good books; no novels whatsoever, no scurrilous or scandalous biographies, no sort of reading matter aimed at the masculine gender. This dictum Aunt Livilla policed rigorously, having the same ideas as Drusilla about what unmarried ladies should read.

  But for the last month Missy had harboured a guilty secret; she was being supplied with novels galore. Aunt Livilla had found herself an assistant to run the library on Monday and Tuesday and Saturday, thus enabling Aunt Livilla to enjoy a four-day respite from the grizzling importunities of locals who had read everything on her shelves and visitors whose tastes her shelves did not cater for. Of course the new assistant was a Hurlingford, though not a Hurlingford from Byron; she hailed from the fleshpots of Sydney.

  People rarely took any notice of the tongue-tied and sadly inhibited Missy Wright, but Una, as the new assistant was named, had seemed instantly to detect in Missy the stuff of a good friend. So from the beginning of her tenure, Una had drawn Missy out to an amazing degree; she knew Missy’s habits, circumstances, prospects, troubles and dreams. She had also worked out a foolproof system whereby Missy might borrow forbidden fruit without Aunt Livilla’s finding out, and she plied Missy with novels of all kinds, from the most adventurous to the most wildly romantic.

  Of course tonight it would be Aunt Livilla on duty, so her book would have to be of the old kind. Yet when Missy opened the glass door and came into the cheery warmth of the book room, there sat Una behind the desk, and of the dreaded Aunt Livilla there was no sign.

  More than Una’s undeniable liveliness, understanding and kindness had endeared her to Missy; she was a truly remarkable looking woman as well. Her figure was excellent, her height sufficient to mark her out as a true Hurlingford, and her clothes reminded Missy of her cousin Alicia’s clothes, always in good taste, always in the latest fashion, always verging on the glamorous. Arctically fair of skin and hair and eye, still Una contrived not to appear half bald and wholly washed out, which was the fate of every Hurlingford female except Alicia (who was so ravishingly beautiful that God had given her dark brows and lashes when she grew up) and Missy (who was entirely dark). Even more intriguing than Una’s positive brand of fairness was a curious, luminous quality she owned, a delicious bloom that lay not so much upon her skin as inside it; her nails, oval and long, radiated this light-filled essence, as did her hair, piled in the latest puffs all around her head and culminating in a glittering topknot so blonde it was almost white. The air around her took on a sheen that was there and yet was not there. Fascinating! Lifelong exposure to none save Hurlingfords had left Missy unprepared for the phenomenon of the person with an aura; now within the space of a single little month she had met two of them, Una with her luminescence, and today the stranger in Uncle Maxwell’s with his fizzy blue cloud of energy crackling around him.

  “Goody!” cried Una at sight of Missy. “Darling, I have a novel you’re going to adore! All about a young noblewoman of indigent means who is obliged to go governessing in the house of a duke. She falls in love with the duke and he gets her into trouble, then refuses to have anything to do with her because it’s his wife has all the money. So he ships her to India, where her baby dies of cholera just after it’s born. Then this terrifically handsome maharajah sees her and falls in love with her on the spot because her hair is red-gold and her eyes are lime-green where of course all his dozens of wives and concubines are dark. He kidnaps her, intending to make her his plaything, but when he gets her into his clutches he finds out he respects her too much. So instead, he marries her and casts off all his other women because he says she is a jewel of such rarity she must have no rival. She becomes a maharanee, and very powerful. Then the duke arrives in India with his regiment of hussars to quell a native uprising in the hills, which he does, only he’s fatally wounded in the battle. She takes the duke into her alabaster palace, where he finally dies in her arms, but only after she forgives him for so cruelly wronging her. And the maharajah understands at last that she really does love him more than she ever loved the duke. Isn’t that a wonderful story? You’ll just adore it, I promise!”

  Being told the entire plot never put Missy off a book, so she accepted Dark Love at once and tucked it down on the bottom of her shopping bag, feeling as she did so for her own little money-purse. But it wasn’t there.

  “I’m afraid I’ve left my purse at home,” she said to Una, as mortified as only someone very poor and very proud can be. “Oh, dear! I was sure I put it in! Well, you’d better have the book back until Monday.”

  “Lord, darling, it’s not the end of the world to forget your money! Take the book now, otherwise someone else will grab it, and it’s so good it’ll be out for months. You can pay me next time you’re in.”

  “Thank you,” said Missy, knowing she ought not embark upon a course of action utterly against the precepts of Missalonghi, but helpless in the face of her lust for books. Smiling awkwardly, she began to back out of the shop as fast as she could.

  “Don’t go yet, darling,” pleaded Una. “Stay and talk to me, do!”

  “I’m sorry, I really can’t.”

  “Go on, just a wee minute! Between now and seven it’s as quiet as the grave, everyone’s home eating tea.”

  “Honestly, Una, I can’t,” said Missy wretchedly.

  Una looked mulish. “Yes, you can.”

  So, discovering that to refuse favours to those who held one in debt was quite impossible, Missy capitulated. “Well, all right then, but only for a minute.”

  “What I want to know is if you’ve se
t eyes on John Smith yet,” said Una, her sparkling nails fluttering about her sparkling topknot, her blue-white eyes glowing.

  “John Smith? Who’s John Smith?”

  “The chap who bought your valley last week.”

  Missy’s valley was not actually her valley, of course, it simply lay along the far side of Gordon Road, but she always thought of it as hers, and had told Una more than once about her longing to walk through it. Her face fell.

  “Oh, what a shame!”

  “Pooh! It’s a jolly good thing, if you ask me. Time someone got his foot in the Hurlingford door.”

  “Well, I’ve never heard of this John Smith, and I’m sure I’ve never seen him,” Missy said, turning to go.

  “How do you know you’ve never seen him when you won’t even stay to hear what he looks like?”

  A vision of the stranger in Uncle Maxwell’s shop rose in front of Missy’s eyes; she closed them and said, more positively than usual, “He’s very tall and solidly built, he has curly auburn hair, an auburn beard with two streaks of white in it, his clothes are rough and he swears like a trooper. His face is nice, but his eyes are even nicer.”

  “That’s him, that’s him!” squeaked Una. “So you have seen him! Where? Tell me all!”

  “He came into Uncle Maxwell’s shop a few minutes ago and bought a great many supplies.”

  “Really? Then he must be moving into his valley.” Una grinned at Missy wickedly. “I think you liked what you saw, didn’t you, little Missy Sly-Boots?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Missy, blushing.

  “So did I when I first saw him,” said Una idly.

  “When was that?”

  “Ages ago. Years ago, in fact, darling. In Sydney.”

  “You know him?”

  “Very well indeed,” said Una, sighing.

  The last month’s spate of novels had vastly expanded Missy’s emotional education; she felt confident enough to ask, “Did you love him?”

  But Una laughed. “No, darling. One thing you can be absolutely sure of, I never loved him.”

  “Does he come from Sydney?” asked Missy, relieved.

  “Among other places.”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “No. He was a friend of my husband’s.”

  This was news indeed to Missy. “Oh, I am sorry, Una! I had no idea you were widowed.”

  Una laughed again. “Darling, I am not a widow! The saints preserve me from wearing black! Wallace – my husband – is still very much alive. The best way to describe my late marriage is to say that my husband divorced himself from it – and me.”

  In all her life Missy had never before met a divorcée; Hurlingfords did not sunder marriages, be they made in heaven or hell or limbo. “It must have been very difficult for you,” she said quietly, on her mettle not to appear prim or shocked.

  “Darling, only I know how difficult it was.” Una’s light disappeared. “It was a marriage of convenience, actually. He found my social standing convenient – or rather his father did – and I found his pots and pots of money convenient.”

  “Didn’t you love him?”

  “My whole trouble, darling – and it has wound me up in a lot of trouble – is that I have never loved anybody half so well as myself.” She pulled a face and down went her inner light again, having just regained its normal intensity. “Mind you, Wallace was very well schooled in all the proper things, and very presentable to look at. But his father – ugh! His father was a dreadful little man who smelled of cheap pomade and even cheaper tobacco, and didn’t know the first thing about manners. However, he had a burning ambition to see his son sitting right on top of the Australian heap, so he’d poured a great deal of his time and money into producing the kind of son a Hurlingford wouldn’t baulk at. Where the truth was that his son liked the simple life, didn’t want to sit on top of the heap, and only tried because he loved that awful old man quite desperately.”

  “What happened?” asked Missy.

  “Wallace’s father died not long after the marriage came crashing down. A lot of people reckoned the cause was a broken heart, including Wallace. As for him – I made him hate me as no man should hate any woman.”

  “I can’t believe that,” said Missy loyally.

  “I daresay you genuinely can’t. But it’s true, all the same. Over the years since it happened, I’ve been forced to admit that I was a greedy selfish bitch who should have been drowned at birth.”

  “Oh, Una, don’t!”

  “Darling, don’t weep for me, I’m not worth it,” said Una, hard and brilliant again. “Truth’s truth, that’s all. So here I am, washed ashore for the very last time in a backwater like Byron, doing penance for my sins.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He’s come good. He’s finally found a chance to do everything he always wanted to do.”

  There were at least a hundred other questions Missy was dying to ask, about Una’s obvious change of heart, about the possibility she and her lost Wallace might patch things up, about John Smith, the mysterious John Smith; but the small pause which ensued after Una finished speaking brought time back with a jolt. A hasty goodbye, and she fled before Una could detain her further.

  She ran almost all the five miles home, stitch or no stitch in her side, and her feet must have grown wings, for when she came breathless through the kitchen door she discovered mother and aunt perfectly ready to accept the story of John Smith’s huge order as sufficient excuse for tardiness. Drusilla had milked the cow, Octavia’s bones being unequal to the task, the beans were picked and simmering on the back of the range, and three lamb chops sizzled in a frying pan. The ladies of Missalonghi sat down on time to eat their dinner. And afterwards came the final chore of the day, the darning of much-laundered and much-worn stockings and underwear and linens.

  Her mind half on Una’s painful story and half on John Smith, Missy listened rather sleepily to Drusilla and Octavia as they indulged in their nightly dissection of whatever news might have come their news-starved way. Tonight, after an initial period of mystified discussion about the stranger in Maxwell Hurlingford’s shop (Missy had not passed on what she had gleaned from Una), they proceeded to the most interesting event looming on the Byron social calendar – Alicia’s wedding.

  “It will have to be my brown silk, Drusilla,” said Octavia, winking away a tear of wholehearted grief.

  “And it will have to be my brown grosgrain, and it will have to be Missy’s brown linen. Dear God, I am so tired of brown, brown, brown!” cried Drusilla.

  “But in our straightened circumstances, sister, brown is the most sensible colour for us,” comforted Octavia, not very successfully.

  “Just once,” said Drusilla savagely, jamming her needle into her reel of thread and folding the invisibly mended pillowcase with more passion than it had known in its entire long life, “I would so much like to be silly rather than sensible! As tomorrow is Saturday, I shall have to listen to Aurelia endlessly vacillating between ruby satin and sapphire velvet for her own wedding outfit, asking my opinion at least a dozen times, and I would – I would dearly love to kill her!”

  Missy had her own room, timber-panelled and as brown as the rest of the house. The floor was covered in a mottled brown linoleum, the bed in a brown candlewick spread, the window in a brown Holland blind; there was an ugly old bureau and an even older, uglier wardrobe. No mirror, no chair, no rug. But the walls did bear three pictures. One was a faded and foxed daguerrotype of an incredibly shrivelled, ancient first Sir William, taken about the time of the American Civil War; one was an embroidered sampler (Missy’s earliest effort, and very well done) which announced that THE DEVIL MAKES WORK FOR IDLE HANDS; and the last was a passe-partouted Queen Alexandra, stiff and unsmiling, but still to Missy’s uncritical eyes a very beautiful woman.

  In the summer the room was a furnace, for it faced south of west, and in the winter it was an ice-box, taking the full brunt of the prevailing winds. No deliberate cruel
ty had been responsible for Missy’s occupying this particular chamber; simply, she was the youngest and had drawn the shortest straw. No room in Missalonghi was truly comfortable, anyway.

  Blue with cold, she shed her brown dress, her flannel petticoat, her woollen stockings and spencer and bloomers, folding them neatly before placing the underwear in a drawer and the dress on a hook in the wardrobe ceiling. Only her Sunday-best brown linen was hung up properly, for coat-hangers were very precious commodities. Missalonghi’s tank held only 500 gallons, which made water the most precious commodity of all; bodies were bathed daily, the three ladies sharing the same scant bath-water, but underwear had to last two days.

  Her nightgown was of prickly grey flannel, high to the neck, long-sleeved, trailing on the floor because it was one of Drusilla’s hand-me-downs. But the bed was warm. On Missy’s thirtieth birthday her mother had announced that she might have a hot brick during cold weather, since she was no longer in the first flush of youth. And when that happened, welcome though it had been, Missy abandoned forever any hope she might have cherished that she might one day find a life for herself outside the confines of Missalonghi.

  Sleep came quickly, for she led a physically active life, however emotionally sterile it was. But the few moments between lying down in this blessed warmth and the onset of unconsciousness represented her only period of utter freedom, so Missy always fought sleep as long as she could.

  She would begin by wondering what she really looked like. The house owned only one mirror, in the bathroom, and it was forbidden to stand and gaze at one’s reflection. Thus Missy’s impressions of herself were hedged with guilt that she might have stayed too long gazing. Oh, she knew she was quite tall, she knew she was far too thin, she knew her hair was straight and dark, that her eyes were black-brown, and her nose sadly out of kilter due to a fall as a child. She knew her mouth drooped down at its left corner and twisted up at its right, but she didn’t know how this made her rare smiles fascinating and her normal solemn expression a clownlike tragicomedy. Life had taught her to think of herself as a very homely person, yet something in her refused to believe that entirely, would not be convinced by any amount of logical evidence. So each night she would wonder what she looked like.