Worst Fears (14 page)

She switched the computer off. Breathed. Rested. Switched it on again.

Click, click, the computer went. It made the occasional little bleep. Hard disc in place. Mouse found. Even as Alexandra thought this—and how laboured the thoughts still were: one thing after another, plodding and careful—a real mouse, little, brown and quick, ran out from a cupboard in front of her, out of the kitchen door to where Theresa was blubbing and cleaning out the grate in the living room. The mouse seemed to exist as a demonstration of the way the spirit always tends to become flesh; the way a psychological phenomenon offers itself up in concrete form: the way verbal puns offer themselves for literal interpretation.

The quick and the dead. She was quick and Ned was dead. The egg-timer had vanished. She felt she could just about catch up, match event to word, word to thought, thought to conclusion, and conclusion to action. Theresa saw the mouse, let out a yell, straightened up, banged her head, shook the ammonite off the shelf, and it split. Not perfect any more.

D
URING THE MORNING ABBIE
called on Vilna. Abbie and Arthur had been asked to a Hunt Ball and Abbie needed something to wear. Vilna had said she’d be glad to lend Abbie something from her own extensive wardrobe, and how did it happen that she, Vilna, had not been asked to the Hunt Ball? Was it perhaps because her husband was in prison? Or because she couldn’t help talking about the poor little foxes? Abbie said it was more likely to be the latter.

Abbie stripped down to her sensible white bra and pants, and her run-proof knee-highs, and stood by Vilna’s built-in cupboards while Vilna handed her garment after garment and Abbie shook her head. Too tight, too bright, not her, whatever.

“I am the one who should be miserable, not you,” said Vilna. “I am generosity itself. These people come to my dinner parties and eat venison off plates which cost £250 each and drink the best champagne out of Venetian goblets, and they are happy enough to do that; it is all take, take, take, and not give, give, give. They do not know how to behave. They do not invite me in return. Well, I forgive them. I am like that.”

Abbie said she, Abbie, was not particularly like that. She was having a hard time forgiving Alexandra. At first she, Abbie, hadn’t believed Jenny Linden when she said Alexandra was having an affair with Eric Stenstrom. She thought Jenny was looking for excuses because of her relationship with Ned.

“Why should a woman in love need excuses?” asked Vilna. “If she loves, she fucks.”

Abbie sighed. Vilna’s mother Maria pottered around the room, dressed in peasant black, with wrinkled grey stockings and wide flat brown shoes. She was making sure her daughter gave nothing valuable away to her treacherous friends. Maria fingered the gold tassels on the curtain’s ropes, pretending to be protecting the furniture from the danger of fading in the sun’s glare. She tutted and sighed and clicked with her false teeth. Vilna ignored her. Abbie had learned to do the same.

But if Alexandra had been having an affair with Eric Stenstrom all along, Abbie’s work had been wasted, her sympathy misplaced, complained Abbie.

“I lugged that body about,” said Abbie, “laundered those disgusting sheets—everything was all over them, everything—I got the doctor, got the ambulance, got Jenny out of there before Alexandra came; I kept Alexandra company, upset Arthur by staying away; and then Alexandra can’t even tell me the truth, can’t even be honest with me, so I feel like a fool when even that ass Hamish seems to know more than I do. What’s he doing, poking around in all those private papers? Alexandra is so hypocritical! Eric Stenstrom all this time. Poor Ned. No wonder he had a heart attack. Alexandra is the real murderer, not Jenny at all.”

“Eric Stenstrom,” pondered Vilna. “What a dreamboat!” Much of Vilna’s English, as Abbie observed to Arthur, came from old Hollywood films.

“What does Alexandra have that I do not?” And Vilna pulled in her flat, well-exercised belly yet further, thrust out her silicone breasts (Alexandra swore) and smiled her big white teeth into the mirror. “Pot-bellied; dull little English face; though I must say her bosom isn’t bad, as everyone knows; and now Eric Stenstrom on top of that. And Alexandra will inherit the house and those dull bits of furniture everyone talks about, and not have to put up with Ned. I said yes to Ned once but he couldn’t get it up. No woman can put up with that.”

“I don’t believe you, Vilna,” said Abbie. “I just don’t. Because you want a thing to have happened doesn’t mean it has. And don’t be too sure Alexandra will inherit the house.”

“Why should she not?”

“There may be debts to be paid,” said Abbie. “Who knows? She doesn’t have much head for business. She doesn’t notice much. Is there anything just plain navy blue? I like navy blue.”

“Dreadfully dull on its own, darling,” said Vilna. “Navy needs white and gold to amount to anything at all.”

“Alexandra practically threw us out yesterday,” Abbie complained. “If she goes on like this she’ll find herself with nobody.” Abbie decided that the gold braid and crimson tassel could be removed from a plain navy silk with a high collar and that would do well enough for a Hunt Ball with a lot of lesser gentry and prosperous farmers.

Maria left the room and Vilna took advantage of her absence. “Darling,” said Vilna, “there are no men round here, and now even Ned’s gone and Clive’s in prison, and I haven’t for ages. What about you and me—?” Her bony little hand stole round to squeeze Abbie’s languid breast in its sensible bra.

“Don’t you do that,” shrieked Abbie, pushing the hand away.

“Oh, you English,” said Vilna. “How you narrow your lives! Arthur is a new man. He would not care even if he noticed.”

“He’s my husband and I love him,” said Abbie. “Thank you for the dress but don’t you ever do anything like that again.” Vilna shrugged. She did not seem particularly upset by Abbie’s rejection of her advances.

“At least we English don’t have civil wars all the time,” said Abbie, quite unnecessarily, “and if you don’t like it here why don’t you go home?”

Abbie remembered to take the dress but slammed the door as she left, so that all the security alarms went off and the guard dogs barked, straining at the ends of their chains. Vilna liked foxes but disliked dogs.

D
URING THAT MORNING ERIC
Stenstrom himself called Alexandra. “Alexandra,” he said in his throaty voice, “my dear. How are you?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “I suppose.”

“I hear all kinds of things are coming to light,” he said. “Things do when people die. When AIDS took my Petrie people turned up at his funeral and told me things I would rather not know. I sympathise. But now Ned’s dead, does it matter? He can do you no more wrong. That’s what I felt like when Petrie died.”

“It seems to matter,” said Alexandra. “A great deal. I am either who I thought I was, or not. In the end it is important to apportion blame. There must be a day of judgement. No Court will do it now, so I must sort it out myself.”

“At least all Petrie left me was herpes,” said Eric. “I’m not HIV positive. He spared me that. If I can forgive your husband, so can you. He complained about my tights when I was playing Oberon at the National. He said they were too small. What sort of theatrical criticism was that?”

“Ned’s sort,” said Alexandra. “And I am not talking about forgiveness. There is no such thing. It may seem easier to appease, or self-interest intervenes and one chooses to forget. Or time does it for you. But that’s all. Eric, there is a rumour going round down here that I’m having an affair with you.”

“If only you were, darling,” said Eric. “If only I was other, I’m sure we would be. And we did try once, don’t you remember, for the sake of my career? It was before I met Petrie, and fell in love.”

“We were both drunk,” said Alexandra. “Ned was away in Norway. Hollywood wanted us, as a team, for the re-make of
Gone With the Wind.
We were good together, they thought. Six years ago. What were we playing?”

“
A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream
,” said Eric. “You were Titania. This was our big Hollywood break.”

“We thought we’d be turned down,” said Alexandra, “because the producer was insisting on a heterosexual cast. And the attempt failed anyway so there was nothing to report. And Hollywood melted away, as it always does. For me, that is, not you. But I would rather that occasion wasn’t bandied about. You never mentioned it to anyone, did you?”

“What, mentioned my shame?” asked Eric Stenstrom. “Why should I do a thing like that?”

“You did, didn’t you!” said Alexandra.

“I tried once again with a woman,” said Eric, “and it worked. I may have mentioned the earlier attempt to her. It would have seemed only fair. We were quite close for a time. But it was a long way back. I can’t really remember.”

“Who was she?”

“Some little set designer. She made models. She wasn’t powerful like you: not a strong woman. She looked kind and she looked female and she looked like she didn’t matter. But when it came to it, it wasn’t any fun. I couldn’t face a straight future. I went back to Petrie.”

“What was her name?”

“I can’t remember,” said Eric. “It was years ago. But her name was next to yours in the address book.”

Alexandra put the phone down, and sat down herself on the carved settle,
circa
1670, oak, some woodworm eradication necessary. Now Ned wasn’t there to do it, she, Alexandra, would have to. She and he had been putting it off for long enough. She went out to the garden. The comfrey was out of control: it was rooting everywhere. Blackcurrants squelched on the bough, unpicked. Greenfly multiplied on the roses, blackfly on every yellow flower around. She wondered where she would scatter Ned’s ashes. Presumably they would contain the minerals needed for organic life. They would be wasted in such a fertile place: somewhere more desert-like would be preferable. Vilna’s front garden perhaps, where the walnut tree had been cut down, illegally, to make room for the guard-dog kennels; and lime from old dismantled walls had wrought havoc with the pH balance. That could do with a soupçon of Ned. In the meantime she would abandon all efforts to keep this lot in order. Vegetation was greenly rampant: winter would come and the riot of vegetation all vanish anyway, except for a few browned, sodden plants which had the nerve to struggle on. She left the garden and went inside; but the house felt hostile. She supposed that to be Hamish’s presence.

When Hamish came out of the study he was in a bad temper. He asked when lunch would be ready. Alexandra said she personally wasn’t hungry but there was canned soup in the cupboard and bread in the breadbin. He asked her if she had finished the funeral list, and she said she had got to the T’s. But not yet to the U’s onward. Hamish said if they didn’t go off today there was no point in sending them. He asked Alexandra to sign a cheque to Mr. Lightfoot for £1,500; pointing out that since the number of guests did not affect the bill it was a waste not to have as many as possible.

“A very Scottish way of looking at things,” said Alexandra, and Hamish berated her for such a stereotypical and Anglocentric response. She said she had meant the remark, which was casual, in the sense of “an endearing Scottish way” and that there had been nothing pejorative about it.

Hamish then moved away from the consideration of Alexandra’s idleness to the matter of her negligence. Why had she not persuaded Ned to go to a proper doctor? Alexandra replied that Ned hated doctors. It must have been obvious to everyone, said Hamish, that Ned was ill, that his heart was damaged. Alexandra said it was not obvious to anyone. Hamish observed that at least Jenny Linden had cared enough to persuade Ned to go to a faith healer: so someone must have known he wasn’t well.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” said Alexandra, and asked if it was Hamish’s habit to consult with Jenny Linden rather than with her. Hamish said he found Alexandra’s attitude truculent and Alexandra said no doubt that was projection.

Thus her rare rows with Ned had run, until one or other of them laughed, when the curse was lifted. Now she laughed but Hamish didn’t. He said he was glad she thought it was funny. The £1,500 would clear out her joint account with Ned; things were in a perilous state. Hamish remarked that it was as reasonable for himself to be in touch with Jenny Linden, as for Alexandra to be in touch with Eric Stenstrom. He revealed that he had picked up the extension and overheard the conversation.

“Then it will be apparent that Eric Stenstrom is gay,” said Alexandra, “as Ned was well aware, so you can stuff all this rubbish.”

“I put down the receiver at once,” said Hamish. “I do not listen in to obviously personal calls, and Ned in his letter referred to Stenstrom as a bi-sexual. As a consequence, Ned was understandably worried for your health, and his. It must have contributed to the strain and distress he endured.”

Alexandra asked if she could see this famous letter, and Hamish said no, in the light of her aggressive and unhelpful attitude he would not show it to her.

Alexandra asked Hamish if he could at least tell her the date of the letter: was it before the beginning of the
Doll’s House
run? Hamish said yes. Alexandra asked how many years before. One year, five, ten? Hamish said five. Perhaps.

Alexandra remarked that Ned, like everyone else in the theatre world, knew that Eric Stenstrom was single-mindedly gay, and probably HIV positive, though he denied it.

Hamish said gay was a false and confining definition: most gays, especially in the theatre world, were indeed bi-sexual, or so he understood. Alexandra said anyway Ned would hardly have gone on having sex with a
wife
whom he suspected of having an affair with a gay—or bi-sexual, who cared?—who was HIV positive and admitted to having herpes, now would he?

Hamish said but he understood from Jenny Linden that she, Alexandra, hadn’t slept with Ned since the child was born. Alexandra said that may be what Jenny Linden wanted to believe but it was far from being the case.

“You mean Ned deliberately deceived Jenny Linden?” asked Hamish. “Though I imagine it’s what men do tend to say in such circumstances.”