Worst Fears (18 page)

“You don’t look too good,” said Chrissie. “You theatrical types, quite flimsy when it comes to it. I didn’t shed a tear when I heard Ned died. Danced a tarantella. But that’s your role, isn’t it? Throwing the tits around in public. I expect Ned liked that. Always a bit kinky.” She was eating her spaghetti now, with Sascha’s tomato sauce from the squeezy bottle. She didn’t offer Alexandra any.

“I’ll replace all this when you go,” she said, indicating the fridge, the cupboards. “Give you the monetary equivalent, if you prefer.”

“That’s okay,” said Alexandra. “Help yourself.”

“And you’re welcome to the little bedroom,” said Chrissie, generous in return. “Come and go as you like, treat it like home for a couple of months. No more.”

“What about the furniture?” asked Alexandra. “Even if what you say is so, it’s the matrimonial property. Ned’s and mine.”

“Most of it’s Ned’s and mine,” said Chrissie. “Or mine. I brought it to the marriage. I started out with quite a bit of money, but Ned spent it. Sometimes I think when it was gone, I had to go too. That also hurt. Did you bring him any money?”

“A bit,” said Alexandra. It had been quite a lot but she didn’t mean to tell Chrissie that. She was sorry she had brought grief even to such an uncouth woman as this. Perhaps she had not been so uncouth to begin with? Perhaps this was where Ned’s rejection led you?

“I’ll put your clothes through the dryer,” said Chrissie, kindly, “when they’re ready. Why didn’t you have a washer-dryer? I would have. They take up so much less space. You’ve got messages on the answerphone. I’ve changed the message out. No point hanging about.”

One message was from Mr. Quatrop, the Estate Agent in Eddon Gurney. His condolences to Mrs. Ludd, he didn’t want to disturb her at such a time, but there was a potential buyer for The Cottage, very keen; he thought she should know.

The second was from her agent, Harry Barney. Harry said Amblin’s casting director was over from Los Angeles, wanted to see her on Monday, only had Monday in London, but that was the day of the funeral: he’d said no on Alexandra’s behalf. Hoped she was okay. A little trouble at the theatre he had to talk to her about, but not to worry.

Alexandra punched out Mr. Quatrop’s number. Chrissie interjected. “Go ahead by all means. I’ve had the phone put on itemised, so we can sort out costs later. No problem.”

Alexandra pointed out to Mr. Quatrop that The Cottage was not for sale, so what was he talking about?

Mr. Quatrop said that Mr. Ludd had been in only a week ago, on the Saturday afternoon, talking about the possibility of putting the house on the market; of course it was too early for Mrs. Ludd to give the matter proper consideration, he was sorry to have bothered her, but no one wanted to lose a good prospect for want of asking. Poor Mr. Ludd. It made you think.

“Yes, makes you think,” agreed Alexandra. “You’re sure my husband wasn’t just checking out property prices?”

“Let me put it like this,” said Mr. Quatrop. “One gets a nose for this kind of thing. I viewed Mr. Ludd’s enquiry as the first step on the critical path which leads to a major sale, this one involving three properties.”

And he told Alexandra that Mr. Ludd had been toying with the idea of joining forces with Mrs. Linden to buy Elder House, the language school. He’d gathered from a hint here and a gleam in the eye there they hoped to develop the property after purchase as a centre for theatrical design. Mrs. Linden had to get to the stationer’s before it closed, and had gone off, so it might well have been that he, Mr. Quatrop, was the very last person to speak to Mr. Ludd.

“Mrs. Linden came in with my husband?” asked Alexandra, “to discuss the possible sale of The Cottage and Mrs. Linden’s cottage and the possible purchase of Elder House with the proceeds?”

“That is so,” said Mr. Quatrop. “I hope I haven’t upset you in any way?”

“No,” said Alexandra.

“I’ll be closing for the funeral,” said Mr. Quatrop, “as a mark of respect. Many local traders are doing the same.”

“How very kind of them,” said Alexandra.

“If you make long distance calls,” said Chrissie, “you should try the Mercury network. It’s cheaper.”

Alexandra called her agent at his home number, in Richmond. She thought it might steady her. She asked what the part under consideration was. Harry Barney said it was for the lead in a major drama feature, opposite Michael Douglas—high budget, high profile—the casting guy had been in the audience on the famous First Night, thought Ludd had star quality, wanted an English accent. But that was the way the cookie crumbled. The only person you couldn’t stand up for an audition was your husband’s corpse—Harry Barney coughed an apology.

“Sorry. Never could express myself in these matters. Too much emotion.”

“Harry, you loathed Ned.”

“Yes, in life. But not in death. He was one of us.”

“Why did you hate him?”

“Not as strong as that, sweetheart. I didn’t take all that business too well.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ned pulled strings to get Longriff the
Doll’s House
part. Everyone said it was going a bit far. Wife and girlfriend in the same production. I managed to get you Nora, but it was a struggle. She got it anyway, in the end. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Go slower, Harry. Ned and Daisy Longriff?”

“Well, yes. You knew, didn’t you?”

“No. But everyone else did?”

“Jesus, I’m sorry. Alexandra, shall I come over?”

“No, I’m just fine, Harry.”

“It wasn’t anything serious, Alexandra. Never was. It was you he loved. Just had a funny way of showing it. The girls simply lay down in front of him. Anything for a good review. Of course, like as not he wouldn’t give it. That’s what I really hold against him. If you’re going to be corrupt, go the whole way. Half-measures only hurt. The sex was nothing. A man’s a man, girl. That’s why I chose to be gay. And for me it’s a choice; I could give it up any time I wanted. Joke?”

“Joke, Harry.”

“That’s my girl, that’s my Ludd. Jesus, one day I might stop all this and settle down and marry you.”

“I’m flattered, Harry.”

“Ned’s trouble was he was eaten up with envy. Couldn’t write, couldn’t act, couldn’t direct. Just loved theatre. And you, you could stand on your head and do it all. Envy’s a terrible thing.”

“I can see that it is, Harry. Got to go now.”

“I’ll put your more personal things into the small bedroom, shall I, Alexandra? And such bits of furniture as I think aren’t mine?”

Alexandra said if Chrissie didn’t go at once, she was calling the police. She, Alexandra, wanted proper documentation, proper consultation with her legal advisors, before any decision whatsoever could be made in relation to the property. She had her and Ned’s child to think about. Would Chrissie now just go? And how had Chrissie got in in the first place, anyway?

Chrissie said she had a key, she’d always had a key, she’d dreamt for years of using the key again and now she had. Alexandra was a marriage-breaker, a bitch, a cow, a slag; she’d ruined Chrissie’s life without a thought. Now it was her, Alexandra’s, turn.

But Chrissie went.

Alexandra waited for the locksmith to come and change the locks. Then she went to visit her mother.

I
RENE PUT ALEXANDRA TO
bed in a nice bright attic room with eaves, its own television, a bathroom with fluffy pink towels and a view of the golf course. She gave her daughter buttered toast and Marmite, hot chocolate and two sleeping pills. Sascha plodded up the stairs and climbed in beside his mother. She held him in her arms and went to sleep.

She slept for fifteen hours until Sascha woke her by prising her eyes apart. He told her about the eight kittens. She told him Ned had died, gone to heaven, gone for a walk in a forest to look for God. Sascha asked if they could have one of the kittens. Alexandra said no, dogs didn’t like kittens and kittens didn’t like dogs. Sascha said yes they did. Couldn’t they send Diamond to go for a walk with Ned in the forest and not come back like Ned? Alexandra said yes, that wasn’t such a bad idea. She found she’d quite gone off Diamond.

Then she thought of Jenny Linden’s marmalade cat and said she’d only have a kitten if it was a tabby. Sascha cried and stamped.

Alexandra looked at Sascha and thought he was very like Ned. Really he was a stranger to her. She found it difficult to believe they were intimately connected, in the way people said. The fact was, she seemed to have suddenly un-bonded with Sascha. She hadn’t known that this was possible.

She presumed it would pass. It would have to. In the meantime she could act, as she was trained to do. She would play loving mother.

“Poor little Sascha,” she said, “but never mind. We’ll see Daddy again in heaven.”

“I don’t want to,” said Sascha. “I want to stay here forever, with Gran and the orange kittens.”

“But don’t you want to go home and see The Cottage and Diamond and all your friends?”

“I don’t have any friends,” said Sascha. “They take my toys and you make me share and then they get broken.”

“There must be some grown-ups you like,” said Alexandra.

“I like Jenny,” said Sascha. “She gives me toffees in the morning. You never do. She keeps them under the pillow especially for me. Oops.”

“Oops, what?”

“I wasn’t to say. There’s ghosts under the bed. They keep bumping in the night.”

Alexandra left Sascha doing somersaults on the bed, shrieking for joy in a way which would make Social Workers shiver, and crying, “Watch me, watch me!” and went down to breakfast.

“I told him,” Alexandra said.

“How did he take it?” asked Irene. She wore a yellow tracksuit and had been out jogging. She was stirring honey into yoghurt. Her husband Abe, the banker, sat stolidly reading the
Telegraph.
They seemed a very happy couple.

“I’m not sure he took it in,” said Alexandra.

Sascha came down and said, “Ned’s gone for a walk in a forest and he isn’t ever coming back, so I don’t have to go home. I can stay here. I don’t like Theresa. She’s too big.”

He went out into the garden.

“There’s no way,” said Abe, “that Sascha can go home with you now, not in the state you are.”

“What sort of state is that?” asked Alexandra.

“Bad,” said Irene. “Come back and collect him in a week, when you’re ready. We’re not trying to steal him from you.”

“I believe you,” said Alexandra. “I think.”

She drove back to The Cottage. She liked driving. She turned on the radio and thought of nothing. Then she heard a programme called
Theatre in London Today
and they were talking of Daisy Longriff’s performance in
A Doll’s House.
There was a discussion about Art and Nudity. Someone said it was like listening to
Hamlet
in Australian, and someone else said it was the most ravishing and intense performance he had ever seen. Someone said the theatre would be dark on Monday in remembrance of Ned Ludd, that Great Man of the Theatre, whose funeral was on that day: someone else said that was a rumour, to promote ticket sales. It was they said that Alexandra Ludd, probably the best serious female actor the country had, natural successor to Vanessa Redgrave
et cetera
,
et cetera
, was so prostrate with grief in their country home she might not be returning to the role. Well, thought Alexandra, now the bare-tits award goes to Daisy Longriff: I get to be serious. At last. But she didn’t think much. She switched to another programme. It was easier.

T
HERESA LIVED WITH HER
family in Pig Cottage, a small stone house standing on its own at the highest point of the Drovers’ Road, which led out of Eddon Gurney, over the hills to Selsdon, where there was a McDonald’s and a library. In the past in these parts, Ned had told Alexandra, the shorter valley roads would become impassable in winter: mud, mire and flood water could make them dangerous. Then the shepherds would drive their flocks along the summits of the hills, and so the Drovers’ Road came into existence—through high places barely fit for habitation: windy, bleak and far from water. Pig Cottage was reputed to be haunted—passers-by would report strange blue flickering flames burning within—but that was when it was derelict, and had no doors and windows, and the local farmer used it to sty his pigs. The methane from their slurry would on occasion spontaneously ignite. The Council had eventually requisitioned the place, allegedly to house the troublesome Nutwich family, though some said to annoy the water company. There was no electricity, no piped gas—but the Water Board, under new regulations imposed upon it by the Government, had been obliged to provide a water supply, at great cost. Mrs. Nutwich had eight children, of whom Theresa was the youngest but by no means the biggest. By some trick of the genes—her side, for the children were by different fathers—all were well above six foot tall, and broad, strong and pale with it: slow and amiable. Ned said it was nothing to do with genes: it was the pig slurry did it.

Alexandra could see the problem of remaining in the neighbourhood. Everywhere she went she would remember something Ned had said, or done, and be humiliated, because what she had thought special to her was not. Where she had seen him-and-her, Ned had seen him-and-her-her-her. She, Alexandra, was diminished by an equivalent fraction of the number of “hers.” If there were too many she might all but vanish away, dwindled to the point of invisibility.

Alexandra had dropped off and collected Theresa often enough. She had never been inside the house. The Nutwiches were known to be private people. But now the door was opened by a very pregnant young woman, fine-boned enough to snap, skinny and small except for the vast bump in her middle, tight under stretched fabric. She would be one of the boys’ wives; a privileged stranger. Alexandra hoped the birth wouldn’t prove difficult.

The room was small, square, cosy and stuffy; a three-piece suite in an orange checked fabric; comfy chairs drawn up round the TV; a round table, a Madonna in a gold frame, bleeding hearts on the walls. Over the table was her, Alexandra’s, best lace tablecloth (Belgium, 1835, approx. £230). A fire burned in the grate, glittering on Ned’s copper fire-tongs in their stand (1910 Arts and Crafts, £550). A Victorian birdcage with a canary in it, singing. So this was where the birdcage (1851, Great Exhibition style, £900) had gone. It had disappeared, mysteriously, from the Barn, though no one had been quite sure when.