Bridesmaids Revisited by Dorothy Cannell Page B

That was when Edna was brought in to help out. Don’t ask me why William Fitzsimons sounded as though he’d just made a shocking discovery! He had already been curate at St. John’s for two years.”
    “Didn’t Reverend McNair”—I kept forgetting I was talking about my great-grandfather—“have a problem with Edna’s mother’s drinking?”
    “Must have.” Thora leaned down to stroke Dog, who was now lying by her chair. “He was a crusty old man, given to violent outbursts of temper. Probably never should have married, let alone had a child. He and his wife had Sophia late in life. She always had to tiptoe around them both. Mrs. McNair was one of those interested in everyone’s business. Always out and about on her parish duties, but never making much time to see what was going on in her own family. Luckily for Sophia, they bundled her off to boarding school almost as soon as she was out of her pram. That’s where Jane and I met her—Rosemary, too. They were cousins. Sophia was in the form below ours, but was always grown-up for her age. I’m sure the reason her parents allowed her to have friends come and stay was to keep her out from underfoot. Rosemary they rather liked, because she was a niece and they thought her a good influence.”
    This was interesting but we had become sidetracked. “Why do you think Reverend McNair—my great-grandfather— didn’t give Edna’s mother the sack? I was talking to some of the neighbors when my car went into the ditch. And one of them, I think it was Frank or Susan, mentioned her drinking, all this time later, so there must have been quite a bit of gossip at the time about a woman with her tendencies working for the rector and his family.”
    “Probably why he kept her on.” Thora got up, opened the oven door, took a peek inside and then plugged in the old-fashioned coffee percolator. “Reverend McNair probably thought he could ‘save’ her.” She lifted a saucepan lid and gave the contents a stir. “Also, wouldn’t surprise me if thrift came into it. Gladys undoubtedly worked on the cheap. Would have had trouble finding another job.”
     Thora set down her wooden spoon. “Don’t think I’m saying that, Ellie, because Reverend McNair was of Scottish descent. My own mother was from Glasgow and a more openhanded woman you couldn’t meet. Always inviting Sophia to stay with us during the school holidays. Damn it!”
     Thora turned to face me, her brown eyes somber. “If only she’d come that last year. Perhaps then there wouldn’t have been a wedding and William Fitzsimons wouldn’t have taken her with him when he went out to minister, as he was fond of saying, to the poor benighted savages in the Belgian Congo. You can’t know how many times I’ve wished one of them had eaten him!” Thora sat back down at the table with a thump.
    I suddenly remembered Ben. “Did my husband say when he would ring back?” I said. “I meant to ask but then Edna came in and everything became a scramble.”
    “Promised to phone again this evening.”
    “Did he say anything else?”
    “They’re all having a wonderful time. Sent his love.”
    “Good.”
    “Sounds as though you’re missing him.”
    Thora’s dimples appeared. I found myself wondering if she had ever been in love. Perhaps the look I gave her posed the question.
    “I may be a Miss, but I haven’t missed out entirely. For more than ten years I lived with a man named Michael. We couldn’t marry because he was already married. His wife suffered from a mental illness and had been in an institution from before we met. Michael wouldn’t divorce her.”
    I looked at her.
    “And I’ll show you my etchings, I told him. But it happened to be true.”
    “Your story sounds the sort of thing that happens in books.”
    Thora’s expression gave no clue to what she was thinking. “Yes, in one of those gothic novels.”
    “I’ve read a lot of them,” I told her.
    “They all work out rather predictably.