Worst Fears (9 page)

“Poor Hamish,” said Alexandra. “You’ve been crying. Poor you, poor me.”

She led Hamish into the dining room, pointed to the space between window and the refectory table, oak, 1860s, which seated 18 and at whose head Ned had so often sat.

“That was where he died,” she said. “Just fell down and died. He was watching
Casablanca
; he turned it off ten minutes in, came in here, for air, I suppose: and then clasped his heart and died. At least it was quick.”

“Um,” said Hamish.

“It must have been quick,” said Alexandra. “I can’t bear it not to have been quick. They don’t say and I won’t ask. I haven’t seen the body yet so what do I know? I slept through it, Hamish. How can you sleep through your own husband dying?”

“It would have been more remarkable if you’d woken up,” said Hamish. He was Ned’s older brother, by two years. He lived in Edinburgh, and wore a suit. His wife Sabrina had left him three years ago. He was a senior manager for the Edinburgh Health Authority. Ned would dismiss him as a dull old stick, but sometimes they’d all meet up in London for a meal. Ned and Hamish would talk about their childhood, and Alexandra would feel quite left out. He’d write on occasion to keep Ned in touch with family news—and sent an economical religious greetings card every Christmas and never forgot.

Perhaps he isn’t dull at all, thought Alexandra: perhaps it’s just another thing Ned said, which I accepted without question. Perhaps now Ned’s gone I shall have to go back to the beginning, to where I was when I first met him. Perhaps there are all kinds of things I now think which are really Ned’s thoughts, not mine. Judgements I make about people and things, not really mine but Ned’s and mine combined. Marriage is a terrible intertwining, a fearful osmosis; I will have to relearn myself.

They went into Ned’s study.

“Has someone ransacked the place?” asked Hamish. Alexandra said no, it always looked like this. The piles of paper made sense to Ned, no doubt, though to others they seemed random. There were shelves of box files but Ned seldom put anything in them. Anything that was there he would take out, in his struggle to locate some missing document, and might not be particularly careful in which file he put it back. She thought there would be life insurance documents somewhere, and so forth, but she couldn’t be sure where. Ned more or less kept up with correspondents; he was always taking letters to the post, but of course, anything difficult or complicated tended to get postponed. Wasn’t that the way everyone was?

“No,” said Hamish. He asked Alexandra if she wanted to be consulted about details, or should he simply go ahead and organise what had to be done. He would have to talk to banks, solicitors and so on, and if Alexandra still wished him to organise the funeral, as she had suggested on the phone, he must proceed with that forthwith.

Alexandra said Hamish was a manager by profession: let him go ahead and manage. At the moment she was all over the place: she doubted if she was in her right mind, she was sure Hamish’s judgement in most things would be better than her own. He should proceed as he thought fit.

Hamish said he was relieved. He had a week’s bereavement leave—a right not officially accorded to siblings, but in the circumstances it had been granted. He would need all that time to get this mess tidied up and in his experience consultation multiplied by at least five the time taken to accomplish anything at all.

“You creative people,” he said, surprising her, “put too much store by emotion. Emotion doesn’t get things done, it doesn’t bury the dead. Love can be shown by deeds, not words.” He trembled as he spoke.

“Of course it can,” said Alexandra. “And I am grateful to you.”

He sat down in Ned’s chair; he was the same shape and size as Ned.

“I’m not a particularly creative person,” said Alexandra. “I’m just on the stage. I get to be flamboyant. Ned was the truly creative one. That’s part of the tragedy. His life cut short before he could show the world what he really was! He was writing a stageplay, you know, as well as everything else. But he was such a perfectionist, so self-critical when it came to original work, he found it hard. And all I had to do was say my lines and prance about—”

But Hamish was not listening. He was already shuffling papers, with his back turned to her. It occurred to Alexandra that Hamish could have an opinion of Ned which was not altogether flattering, just as easily as Ned could have of Hamish. If Ned could say, “My brother? He’s a dull old stick,” Hamish could say, “My brother? Resentful bastard,” and both would have equal weight, in their own circles. The thought shook her.

Hamish called the undertaker, Mr. Lightfoot, and arranged a funeral for the following Monday. It was to be at eleven in the morning, and was to last an hour. Mr. Lightfoot was to advertise the funeral in the local paper and in
The Times.
Hamish would decide upon the wording. He made an appointment to discuss the type of coffin required and to establish an appropriate level of costs. He called Dr. Moebius and went into Eddon Gurney to collect Ned’s Death Certificate and register the death with the part-time Registrar’s office there, apologising for the delay. He had the certificate copied at the local stationers and the copies certified by Sheldon Smythe, Ned’s solicitor. All this, once accomplished, he told Alexandra.

“I didn’t know Ned had a local solicitor,” said Alexandra, “let alone one called Sheldon Smythe. But I take your word for it.” Hamish said he’d been named as executor in Ned’s will, now in Mr. Smythe’s possession, which simplified matters. This surprised Alexandra, who seemed to remember she and Ned had written out mutual wills, as married couples can, each leaving everything to the other, so what need was there of an executor?

Hamish said no doubt Sheldon Smythe, who had been Ned’s lawyer for a couple of years, would explain any anomalies at the meeting he had arranged for Tuesday, the day after the funeral. He hoped Alexandra would be feeling more of one piece by then: she would be required to attend.

He wanted Alexandra to make a comprehensive list of such friends and colleagues who would expect to be notified of the time, date and place of the funeral. Time was short: she should make use of the phone, and if necessary get friends to help out. Ned had been a popular man. Hamish, of course, lived a rather quiet life by comparison.

Alexandra said she’d imposed enough upon her friends, but Hamish called Abbie, introduced himself, and explained the problem. Abbie said she’d put her own life to one side and come round with a couple of students. They could work from Ned’s address book, if Alexandra was too upset to function.

“Your brother-in-law is a cold fish and a bully,” said Abbie to Alexandra when she came round. “Ned without charm.”

Alexandra said she didn’t care what Hamish’s failings were: he was alive, a Ludd, and functioning, she was grateful to him.

“Are we asking Jenny Linden to the funeral?” asked Abbie.

“No, we are not,” said Alexandra. “Are you mad?”

“She’s mad,” said Abbie. “And it might be safer to ask her than not. She’ll come anyway. If you invite her she’ll come in a good mood. If you don’t, God knows how she’ll behave or what she’ll say. And the media will be there.”

Alexandra said Jenny Linden came to Ned’s funeral over her dead body.

Abbie laughed and said she hoped it didn’t come to that.

Hamish Ludd spent another four hours in Ned’s study going through Ned’s papers and making phone calls to Ned’s business colleagues. He arranged for Oxfam to come to collect such of Ned’s clothes as were recyclable, and for the Waste Collection to call to take away such as weren’t, on the Saturday. Alexandra was to do the sorting. He told her so when she brought him in some coffee. He sat at Ned’s desk and the light gleamed off his hair as it had off Ned’s. They both had good heads of hair, as had their father and grandfather before them. Scottish engineers, shipyard designers, in the days when there were shipyards.

“I can’t do that,” said Alexandra. “I can’t face making decisions. And Ned would be so angry. He collected everything: he hated throwing things away.”

“The sooner it’s done the sooner you can restart your life,” said Hamish. “Get it over. I take it you’ll want to stay in this house?”

“Of course I do,” said Alexandra, astonished. “It’s where I and Sascha live.”

“You do have the apartment in London,” said Hamish. “In Angliss Street. The one Ned owned with Chrissie. You do know about Chrissie?”

“Of course I do,” said Alexandra. “Ned’s first wife. We had to wait for the divorce to come through before we could marry. A dreadful, difficult woman. Why wouldn’t I know about her?”

“You’re very touchy,” said Hamish. “I don’t know what you do know, and what you don’t.”

“I certainly knew about Chrissie,” said Alexandra, “I had to live with all her things around me when I first moved in with Ned. In fact that’s one of the reasons we moved down here. Her spirit was everywhere in Angliss Street, ill-wishing us. It got better with time. I don’t even mind being on my own there, these days. I used to, at first.”

“It was her house in the first place,” observed Hamish. “Why should she go quietly?”

“Ned bought her out,” said Alexandra. “He was more than fair. They never loved each other. She trapped him into marriage, pretending to be pregnant.”

“Oh yes, yes, yes,” said Hamish. “All that. Perhaps she miscarried. And then you split the property, sold half at a vast profit, and kept the other half as your
pied-à-terre.
You know there was a still earlier marriage?”

“That’s absurd,” said Alexandra. “Ned may not have told me about Sheldon Smythe because it was simply too boring, but he would certainly have told me all about a marriage. In detail.”

But Hamish said she was mistaken. He had in his possession a letter from Ned dated August 1969, in which he asked his brother to break to their parents the fact that he’d got married.

“He was in Spain that summer,” said Alexandra. “He went to Paris in 1968, when he was a student, and then went on round Europe.”

“While dull old Hamish stayed behind,” said Hamish, “and finished his degree. He wrote from Barcelona. Her name was Pilar.”

“Perhaps I’d better see this letter,” said Alexandra.

“It’s at home in Edinburgh,” said Hamish, and added that Ned often wrote to him when his life was in crisis.

“I expect he did,” said Alexandra. “He was a letter person, I was a telephone person.”

“When Ned married Pilar, when he met Chrissie, when he met you, when he divorced Chrissie, when you had your boy. I have all those letters.”

“Then you have something very special to remember him by,” said Alexandra, politely. She could see she was under attack. Perhaps he’d been fond of Chrissie, whom she, Alexandra, had replaced. Such things happened. His eyes were red-rimmed. He had been crying. She felt inclined to forgive him. She asked if he’d ever met this Pilar, and he said no: there’d only ever been the one mention of her, in that particular letter, in August 1969. Ned had returned from Spain on his own, in the summer of 1970.

“I expect she existed in his head,” said Alexandra, “and even on paper, just not in real life. Or perhaps he just wanted to frighten your parents.”

“I always wondered,” said Hamish. “Now we’ll never know.” He remarked that in any case he’d found no documents relating to any such marriage or divorce amongst Ned’s papers, at least to date. Alexandra said that might only mean he’d put them in a safe place and then forgotten where, as was his custom. But it could hardly matter now. It had happened, if it had happened, thirty years ago. Presumably Ned was legally married to Chrissie, or he wouldn’t have bothered to divorce her to enable him to marry Alexandra. She had been married legally, and widowed legally. She hardly imagined the law relating to marriage was like the law relating to antiques, in which it didn’t matter how many times a piece had been sold on: if it had been stolen possession reverted to the original owner. She, Alexandra, had an actor friend who bought a pair of Chinese vases in the Portobello Road for £5,000. He’d used them as props for his portrait in
Hello
, they’d been recognised as stolen, and he’d had to return them. He ended up minus both vases and £5,000. “The penalty for vanity,” said Hamish, primly. “The appetite for publicity to which all theatre people are prone. Your friend should have been more careful. And I believe the same principle does apply in matrimonial law. Any transaction consequent upon an illegal one is invalid.”

“In that case,” said Alexandra, “we had better be careful not to mention the mythical Pilar in legal circles in case they choose to grow rich at our expense.”

“I can see,” said Hamish, “that you would find a demotion from second to third wife disconcerting. At least a brother is a brother, and nothing can ever change that.”

“It could certainly change,” said Alexandra, “if your mother suddenly told you you’d been conceived outside the marriage. You’d become a half-brother overnight.”

Hamish smiled thinly and went back to his brother’s papers. Death, thought Alexandra, brings out the worst in everyone, and in this she included herself.

T
HERESA CAME BACK FROM
holiday early. She had heard of Ned’s death. She brought round a very solid potato and chicken pie as a gesture of condolence and reassurance, and wept quite a lot. Heavy tears fell down her wide, firm, young face. She had burned in the Majorcan sun: she was now bright pink. Grief did not help her complexion. She was very big; her waist as wide as Alexandra’s hips, but she had a train of youthful admirers, which she would swat away as if they were flies. She loved only Sascha, she said. Alexandra thanked Theresa for the pie and offers of help, but said she was okay on her own for a bit. Sascha wouldn’t be back until after the funeral. She would of course in the meantime pay Theresa her usual wages.

Hamish said, over supper, “I’m sorry we had our little tiff. We must both make allowances—I can see how upset you are. I never got to know you as well as I would have liked. Ned moved in circles so very different from mine. One makes assumptions about show business people. You are very brave. And as lovely as your photographs. Just not very organised, and in need of help.” He laid his hand upon her arm. For a moment she was startled, but it was a brotherly and consoling touch and she was appreciative. She was grateful that he’d recovered from his spasm of dislike for her, though she still had no idea what had triggered it. She was just glad he was there in the house. The place stayed quiet, and Diamond slept peacefully, without gasps and snorts of alarm.