She invited Sophie and William to dinner.
Her own sensitivity prompted the invitation. She could accept the irregular couple on her premises but not on theirs. She understood that the prejudice was absurd; though she was prepared to indulge it, she was not prepared to admit it.
Late in the afternoon, Sylvia knocked at the door, opened it and looked in.
‘Will you be in this evening, Ella? Wow, you have been making some changes. How does Connie feel about it?’
‘He helped me to move the furniture.’
‘Favourite inmate, you are. You won’t be for long, by the way, if you keep the stove going for hours. What are you doing, cooking a casserole?’
‘It’s all right. We have an arrangement. Fifteen cents an hour, or part thereof. He’s more worried about cleaning the oven than about the gas. I’ve promised to see to that. Mrs Abercrombie doesn’t do ovens.’
‘He’s a good soul, really. What I came in for, if a man named Ross rings and asks for me, will you take a message, or take his number and say I’ll ring back?’
‘Yes. No trouble. If there’s a call, I’ll leave a note on the pad.’
‘You’re an angel. Have a nice dinner.’
Guarding the telephone was quite the easiest way of becoming an angel Ella had encountered.
Sophie and William arrived soon after – if that was William. Love and money together might not have turned the frog into a prince, but they certainly brought the story to mind.
New clothes made a difference, of course. He was wearing real shoes. The silky red hair which had given the incongruous touch of prettiness he now wore in a stark basin cut which made him look like a character in a historical film.
Could one tell a man one loved his new hairstyle? Probably not.
‘William’s put on his television gear in your honour,’ said Sophie, making Ella aware that she was showing an unflattering astonishment.
‘Every inch the famous author,’ she said.
‘That is rather premature,’ William said.
Ella remembered Rob’s words. ‘Sometimes you think he’s joking and then you realise that he’s dead serious.’
William was holding a rectangular parcel and awaiting his moment.
Before he handed it to her he swooped boldly and kissed her on the left eyebrow.
Claiming bridegroom status, thought Ella, smiling to herself as she took the parcel. Faint heart never won fair lady, as they said.
Her smile widened in pleasure as she unwrapped two framed prints – finely drawn, delicately coloured, precisely detailed illustrations of botanical specimens: The Waratah and The Flannel Flower.
‘Found them in a junk shop. They looked like your sort of thing, so I had them reframed for you. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of vandalism, though. There are page numbers in the corners, they must have been cut out of a pretty valuable book. I hope you don’t have a conscience about that.’
‘None at all,’ said Ella serenely.
‘No. I wouldn’t have done it myself, but seeing that it’s been done …’
‘Where do you think I should hang them?’ she asked.
‘I brought picture hooks and wire. Sophie couldn’t remember whether there was a picture rail.’ He found this inattentiveness surprising. ‘We brought the hooks and the wire in case there was one.’
‘They are in my bag, with the wine,’ said Sophie. ‘I am developing squaw characteristics.’
Ella was holding a print against the window wall.
‘What do you expect, dear, when you carry those great bags about with you? Asking for trouble, I should have thought.’
‘Do I detect a certain animus against men, Ella?’
She turned to look at him, saying briefly, ‘Not if they’re braves.’
Sophie’s little crow of laughter announced the morning.
‘One of Mum’s remarks. I haven’t heard one for months. You sound like yourself again.’
‘Well. That’s the place for them, isn’t it? You must have been thought-reading, William. You even have the colours right.’
‘Nice curtains, Mum.’
‘I think they go well. We’d better leave the pictures till after dinner. If you’ll put a match to the fire and open the wine while I serve up.’
Cooking being still a suspect activity, she was eager to take her dishes out of the oven before the lodgers arrived.
‘Cute little teawagon, Mum.’
‘It’s what they call a traymobile. It has to be a side table.’
Serving dinner at a table as small as a large desk, while preserving the formality due to the meal, required thought.
‘There is room for the plates and the glasses and the pepper and salt. Everything else will have to come from the side table.’
Sophie was studying the traymobile.
‘Saint Vincent de Paul?’
‘That’s right. But the mahogany chair is from a real antique shop. At a real price.’
William occupied the mahogany chair at one long side of the table. The traymobile was drawn up against the other, within Ella’s reach for serving.
The arrangement did well enough. There was no note of pathetic makeshift to harrow the feelings unless one looked for it. As she had foreseen, the food monopolised the young people’s attention, so that there was little conversation till they had reached the fruit and the cheese.
‘Ooooh, that was lovely, Mum,’ said Sophie, suiting her tone to her childish display of appetite.
‘I’m limited to casseroles, I’m afraid.’
‘They’ll do.’
‘And to feeding two of you at a time.’
‘And that’ll do, too.’
At this emphatic rejoinder Ella turned to her in alarm.
‘You haven’t quarrelled with David and Martha?’
‘The sooner big brother realises that I’m not twelve years old, the better.’
William said, almost with humour, ‘I am afraid to go there. I think he may challenge me to a duel. I did not know that brothers still felt so chivalrous about the honour of their sisters.’
‘Mum, what’s eating him? If he’s just carrying on like this about William, then truly, he is sick. And he isn’t. Narrowminded, pigheaded, overbearing, but not sick.’
‘Sophie dear, please make it up. I really can’t bear it if you two are estranged. It seems as if that’s the last thing, as if everything had come to pieces.’
‘Oh, we’re not estranged. He told me what he thought of my morals and I told him what I thought of his intellect, delivering my last shaft from the safety of the doorway, as I thought I was in danger of physical violence, but whatever is eating him, he’ll have to get over it and I’m sorry he’s rude to you, William, but you have to forgive him, because he’s my favourite sibling.’
‘I can’t blame him for thinking me an unsuitable match for you,’ said William. ‘I bear him no grudge on that account.’
‘I didn’t get to the match bit. The climate didn’t seem propitious.’
‘He’s been under a lot of strain lately, you know, and I don’t think he’s happy in his job.’
‘But he wouldn’t be taking that out on me. That’s the kind of stupidity … I don’t know. We’ll just have to give it time and stay firm. If anyone asks, Mum, please make it clear that I don’t accept invitations without William.’
‘Is that for Max and Caroline, too?’ asked Ella, seizing an opportunity while she considered the implications of Sophie’s announcement.
‘I’m not expecting any invitations there. Catch Caroline giving her blessing to an irregular union!’
After a considerable pause, Ella said thoughtfully, ‘She seems to have become more tolerant lately.’
‘I am sitting here,’ said Sophie wretchedly, ‘wondering how to get my big foot out of my big mouth. I am truly sorry, Mum. But do you know, even if it wasn’t Dad, I don’t think I’d approve. Funny the things you find out about yourself. I suppose I’ve been too close to that one.’
William looked happy.
That was the story with all her children, thought Ella. They knew a true lover when they met one and they looked no further.
This match, after all, was promising well.
‘Caroline’s entitled to accept her father and his domestic arrangements,’ she said. ‘I hope you will, too, in time.’
No mention of Caroline’s shameful intimacy with Louise. Speak no evil …
‘I went there to dinner last week. Max drove me up there to give Becky her rug. If you’d seen Becky when I walked in! She was delirious.’
Becky.
‘Well, if they ask us nicely. I suppose if you can, I can.’
William said with some feeling that he was prepared to accept any friends he could get.
‘You are sure to have a friend in Martha,’ said Ella.
That brought the conversation to William’s work and the prospects for the new book, a topic which, with the placing and hanging of the prints, occupied them for the rest of their visit.
When they had left, Ella stacked the dishes on the traymobile, wheeled it across to the kitchen and set about the washing up with the feeling that the effort had been worthwhile.
Now for David and Martha.
She must stop shielding Sophie, who didn’t need shielding, at the expense of William, who did perhaps need it.
If the subject comes up, she promised herself, I’ll tell him just how well William has behaved. Next time, certainly. Without fail.