Worst Fears (12 page)

Home, and all that went with it: where Sascha had been conceived and born; where Ned, in spite of all, had held her, loved her, nurtured her, as she had him. So many meals cooked, so many friends welcomed, so much good conversation. The books on the shelves, the familiar, exhilarating life of the mind, the world’s attention focused here, the conclusions of mankind dissected; the laughter exchanged, the wonders explained, marvels revealed. A good marriage; a good place to be, to have been. Where there are angels there will be devils too. Woodworm, Jenny Linden, crows nesting in the chimneys, greenfly, bad reviews, rejected manuscripts; minuscule enemies in comparison. The furniture, the precious pieces, Ned’s and her pride, built up over years, dusty finds in antique shops, shoddy bits from junk stalls, rescues from skips, neglected pieces inherited, which she and he would restore, beeswax-polish until they glowed with richness revealed; as if the pieces themselves acknowledged their rescue and lived again and were grateful. Memories were the real treasure: these no one could rob you of.

She wished she could remember more about the day at Kimmeridge Bay. Quite an outing, quite a party. Had her mother been there? Sascha and she had found a fossil ammonite, almost perfect: its simple spirals formed 500 million years ago.

Ned had had it polished and it was kept on the marble mantelpiece in the living room: where Ned had been watching
Casablanca.
Ten minutes of it. Then changed his mind.

Worst fears.

Alexandra put her mind back to them: she made herself. Ned has died. I am bleeding. I have the past, but no present; yet I will make a future.

If I were an actress impersonating me, if I was getting to the root of me, if I was doing, as a dramatic exercise, the worst fears, highest hopes part, I would say my worst fear is that Jenny Linden is not insane, that Ned and she were having an affair, that she was in bed with him, in our brass bed into which he had invited her, and that he died fucking her, so great was his excitement and pleasure. That for a time the jerks and pantings of the dying man echoed the jerks and pantings of a joy which once I thought was reserved for me but was not; and stopped, and he was dead.

There, it is said. It is the simplest thing to believe, and therefore probably true. The Doctrine of Parsimony, Occam’s razor. Thank you, Mother.

That Jenny Linden eased herself out from under my husband—does an erect penis go limp in death, or stiffen harder? To find out I would have to ask her, and I cannot bring myself to ask that. She would stare aghast at the clawing hand which so recently pleasured her, the popping eyes which just a while ago were clouded with passion and intent and now were blank, and she fell or crawled out of the bed. Wondered no doubt for a moment whether to leave like a thief in the night, but decided that the drama was too tempting to be left, and called Abbie. “Oh, Abbie, Abbie, come at once. A terrible thing has happened. Ned’s died in my arms.”

And perhaps, who knows, her husband Dave.

“Oh, Dave, Dave, what will I do? The man I love is dead. I’m so unhappy. Now I only have you.”

And Dave hadn’t come, but Abbie had. She came round at once, decided I, Alexandra, had to be saved, swore Jenny to secrecy, dragged the body off the bed as lately and repeatedly Alexandra had dragged Diamond, got the limp and heavy thing as far as the top of the stairs, couldn’t continue, covered the body with a blanket, called the doctor, called me, Alexandra, called Mr. Lightfoot, calmed Jenny as best she could, called Vilna to get Jenny out of the house, watched the body carried on the stretcher to Mr. Lightfoot’s ambulance. Abbie had taken the sheets from the bed and laundered them—what was on them: semen, blood, spittle, urine, excreta? Presumably everything burst out from a dying man. Was the stored semen gone or about to go when death intervened? Abbie the good friend. She’d know. Jenny would know. Alexandra would never know. She’d never ask.

Worst fears. There, that’s over. Nothing worse than that. Unless perhaps Jenny Linden was on top of Ned, not beneath. He liked that. It would have been nice if that had been reserved for me.

Saving graces.

None of it was like this at all. That Ned heard a noise in the night and got out of bed where he lay alone and peacefully, missing me, Alexandra, whom he loved, and found Jenny the mad woman in the house, had been alarmed, and had therefore died where he stood. (Yes, and that Abbie just put the sheets through the wash as a kind of nervous domestic tic.)

That Ned might have bedded Jenny Linden, if he did, not because he planned to but on the spur of the moment. (Yes, and had left Sascha with Irene and not joined Alexandra in London because he really did have work to do.)

Or perhaps Jenny Linden was blackmailing him, or she had hypnotised him, or he thought if he did it once she’d give up and go away in peace. (Yes, and Jenny Linden was an alien from outer space.)

And Ned was so overcome with guilt he had died mid-illicit-fuck. (Yes, and she’d tied him down and raped him.)

Worst fears:

That she, Alexandra, had been deceived by Ned in his life: that the grief she felt for him was wholly compromised, so it would never heal, never go away, because she had no idea what she was grieving for. And not knowing, and never being able to know, there was no “her” at all. That was the truly worst fear: her own non-existence. She was something elusive, a conjurer’s effect, produced by the trickery of someone, for the entertainment of others.

Which was what she did for a living, come to think of it. A living despised even as it was earned. Or as Ned would say, “The theatre would be okay if only it wasn’t for the bloody actors. Not you, my darling. Present company excepted.” As if it ever was.

Worst fears:

That God was not good. That the earth you stood upon shifted, and chasms yawned; that people, falling, clutched one another for help and none was forthcoming. That the basis of all things was evil. That the beauty of the evening, now settling in a yellow glow on the stone of The Cottage barns, the swallows dipping and soaring, a sudden host of butterflies in the long grasses in the foreground, was the lie: a deceitful sheen on which hopeful visions flitted momentarily, and that long, long ago evil had won against good, death over life. She who had flickered a little for Ned’s entertainment, brightly, to Ned’s temporary advantage, was herself as sour and transitory as the rest of a foul creation. That in receiving Ned’s flesh into her body, so often and with such powerful awareness of love—so that it seemed to be far more than physical excitation and a sacrament, a connection through to the source of the universe, the light which suffused all things, and was there, if you had eyes for it, in the glow of the sun against the stone walls, as well as in the dancing of butterflies—that in this she had been mocked.

Best Remembrance:

That it had happened, that connection, that joy, when, on the Monday night before he left London she and Ned had made love, not just sex, not just fucking; love. That was the truth of it. Afterwards he had looked straight into her eyes; Ned’s soft look, and said “I do love you.” She would hold to that. (Yes, but why the “do”—as if there had ever been doubt of it? And why did Ned sometimes say to friends, “Oh, Alexandra: so unobservant for such a clever person.” Well?)

Worst understanding: that Ned was no longer alive, for her to put these points to him, for him to put his arms around her, and hers round him, and in the sure warmth of that touch for them both to be reborn, in hope. He was gone forever: she was here alone.

Alexandra turned and walked home to face whatever had to be faced. Diamond was reluctant to go back. He wanted to walk forever.

H
AMISH, ABBIE AND VILNA
were sitting at the kitchen table when she and Diamond got home. Hamish was at the head of it, pouring tea carefully and precisely, unused to such an activity. Tea no doubt was normally something poured for him, in a living room. Hamish was a cup-and-saucer man, not a mug in the kitchen man. But he appeared to like being here, doing this. Hamish seemed to Alexandra to be like a small boy allowed to take the steering wheel of the family car and pretend to be in charge. She wondered to what degree Hamish had envied Ned. And Abbie her friend and Vilna, Abbie’s friend and her own familiar and surely harmless acquaintance, seemed suddenly not quite so trustworthy as she, Alexandra, had thought. They were sitting at her table as of right, but not invited: she felt wary. She wanted them to go, but how could she say so? They were her friends: this was her future family. When men died, or went, the women friends moved in to close the gap: consolatory comfort, female friends. That’s what friends were for.

She didn’t want to talk, she wanted to go to bed, but the brass bed was compromised, even by thought, by the merest contemplation of Jenny Linden’s occupancy of it, of Ned’s arms around Jenny Linden, even temporarily, even by mistake, even under duress, even regretted even as occurring; Jenny Linden’s naked flesh against Ned Ludd’s, forget the violence of his dying: a just penalty, you could see, for the violence of his own act against the heart of the universe. Summon up the Devil the Devil gets you—forget the body lying in the morgue, so much life and passion reduced to a marble penis forever firm against an icy groin—there could be no forgiveness. None. Her bed.

“You look like a ghost,” said Vilna.

“That’s Ned’s province,” said Alexandra, and laughed.

“This always was a house of laughter,” said Hamish. There was silence.

Then Alexandra said to Abbie: “Do you really think Jenny Linden’s mad?”

“No,” said Abbie.

“Do you?” asked Alexandra of Vilna.

“No,” said Vilna. Alexandra was glad they had given up pretending but wondered why they had decided to do so. She felt that some extra betrayal of her, Alexandra, gave them new pleasure. Their secret had given them power over her. Now they chose to exercise that power.

“At least none of you have to pretend any more. I know Jenny Linden was with Ned when he died. They were in the bed together upstairs.” She waited for them to deny it, but no one did. Not even Hamish. Worst Fears realised. Her survival now depended on Best Remembrance.

Hamish said, “I was telling them of the dreadful time you nearly went off with Eric Stenstrom, and how upset Ned was. He really loved you at the time.”

“How do you know about me and Eric Stenstrom?” asked Alexandra, taken off guard. “Only Ned knew that.”

Both Abbie and Vilna took in little sharp breaths, as if they’d been waiting to take them. Confirmation.

“Not that there was anything really to know,” Alexandra amended, quickly. Perhaps rather too quickly. “And what do you mean, Ned loved me ‘at the time’? Really, Hamish!”

There seemed to be shadows of Ned working through Hamish’s face, looking for a home. The eyebrows were the same, the set of the jaw.

The family resemblance seemed stronger now Ned was no longer there in the flesh to deny it. Alexandra realised she had probably in the past seldom been in a room with Hamish in which Ned was not there too.

“As for that time I ‘nearly went off with Eric Stenstrom,’ ” remarked Alexandra, “I certainly know nothing about it, nobody told me, how come you seem to know more than me?”

Why was she having to defend herself in her own home? Who were these people?

“Ned and I exchanged letters from time to time,” said Hamish. “As you know. We didn’t get to see each other much but we were very close. There’s a letter from him to me about you and Eric Stenstrom.”

“He shouldn’t have written about it, and you shouldn’t have spoken about it,” said Alexandra. “These things are private.”

“These are your friends,” said Hamish. “Surely there’s no harm in their knowing? And surely you don’t resent Ned writing to me? His brother? Wives don’t own husbands. And men aren’t without feeling, in spite of what you women like to say. If women claim the right to women’s talk, you can hardly grudge men their men-talk.”

Alexandra perceived again, and clearly, that Hamish simply didn’t like her. She said nothing, but from now on wanted not to confide in him.

She did not think there was any real damage he could do her, but she must think before she spoke.

“Anyway,” said Abbie, in her light, polite tones, “Vilna and I knew about Eric Stenstrom already.”

“Such a good-looking man,” said Vilna, in her most slurred and earthy voice. “I do envy you, darling. It’s the buttocks. I like a Hamlet with good buttocks.”

Eight years back Eric Stenstrom had played Hamlet in a Hollywood movie, dressed in tights more suitable for a ballet dancer on a stage a long way from the audience. He had regretted it but it had not been forgotten.

Hamish, Abbie and Vilna had been drinking wine. They had taken it without asking. It was the Barolo Ned most treasured, the ’86. They had formed a kind of cabal against her.

“Jenny Linden came over this afternoon,” said Abbie, “and told me all about you and Eric Stenstrom. So you really shouldn’t be shocked and surprised if Ned had his own entertainments. It’s hypocritical of you, Alexandra.”

“What could Jenny Linden possibly know about me and Eric Stenstrom?” asked Alexandra.

“What Ned told her,” said Abbie.

“I don’t believe that,” said Alexandra.

“Never trust a man, darling,” said Vilna.

Alexandra said she was tired, and suggested Abbie and Vilna leave. They did. Hamish had the spare room. She no longer wanted to sleep in her own bedroom. She slept again in Sascha’s bed. It occurred to her that perhaps Abbie and Vilna, like Hamish, had their own reasons for being resentful.

No. That way madness lay. Abbie was her friend; Vilna trying to be her friend. She, Alexandra, was exhausted and paranoic, and saw nightmares where none were, and in the morning everything would seem different. But it was a pity Eric Stenstrom’s name had come up.

A
LEXANDRA WOKE EARLY; BIRDSONG
was loud in the dawn. At seven-thirty there was a knock on the front door. Alexandra went down to answer it, in her blue and white silk dressing gown, Ned’s favourite. Presently, she thought, she would have to buy new clothes, so that everything didn’t keep relating back to Ned. She thought it would be the postman, wanting her to sign for a parcel, but it was Jenny Linden. She stood on the threshold, glum but defiant. She’d put on lipstick, though not very well. Her mouth seemed lopsided. She wore a nondescript padded jacket which made her look four-square, and a pleated skirt ten years out of date.