Worst Fears (22 page)

“Even so,” said Alexandra, “I’m his wife and have his child and the Courts will protect me. The world isn’t daft.” But she didn’t like the smug expression on Jenny Linden’s face, and the wretched one on that of Jenny Linden’s husband, as if he knew only too well what was going to happen next. Hamish peered enigmatically at his knees. Alexandra looked back at Sheldon Smythe, but his large eyes were closed. The room was growing darker. Thunder-storm.

“I shall of course contest the will,” added Alexandra, “if someone will allow me to see it.”

“But since you aren’t mentioned in it,” said Sheldon Smythe, “it is a document which bears no relevance to you. You are here by Mrs. Linden’s courtesy.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Alexandra. “But Sascha must be mentioned, and I’m Sascha’s mother.”

“Sascha’s name appears nowhere on this document.”

“But I’m Ned’s wife,” said Alexandra. “And Sascha’s Ned’s child. I don’t understand this.”

“Alexandra,” said Hamish, “it so happens that I found Ned’s marriage certificate to Pilar in his papers. We’ve checked it out. There’s been no divorce, and Pilar is still alive. Ned’s marriage to Chrissie, his subsequent divorce, his marriage to you, have neither legal meaning nor effect.”

“I told you,” said Jenny Linden to Dave. “It wasn’t adultery. Ned told me all about Pilar. Why didn’t you believe me? I don’t go with married men.”

Dave laughed and stopped holding his wife’s hand. His white hair was damp with sweat. It curled around his face and made him look like an unhappy child at bathtime. His sleeves were rolled up; he wore no jacket. Still he was hot. Sheldon Smythe wore a suit but managed to look cool. Hamish wore a navy blazer with a handkerchief, Ned’s favourite red-and-white-spotted handkerchief, neatly folded, perfectly creased, tucked into the breast pocket. Ned kept handkerchiefs to blow his nose on, not for decoration. He preferred them unironed. They were softer.

Alexandra supposed that Theresa, under Hamish’s instructions, must have ironed the scrap of fabric, carefully stretched the bevelled handsewn edges, wrinkled from the washing machine, with the hot metal; folded exactly, passed, folded again, passed. Theresa liked ironing. Alexandra had given Ned the handkerchief in the early years of their marriage. She was suddenly angry. Her house, her home, her very past, all picked over, ransacked. Turn your back for a moment, let down your guard, show yourself defenceless, and you could find yourself ethnically cleansed, betrayed by once friendly friends and neighbours greedy for what was yours: others lying in your bed, sitting in your chairs, looking out at your view, and yourself wandering homeless, nothing but a refugee. Toad in
The Wind in the Willows
, returning after a spell in prison to his family Hall, to find it noisy with carousing hostile stoats and weasels and himself barred entrance.

Alexandra said to Hamish, “I suppose all this is because I wouldn’t fuck you.”

Sheldon Smythe said, “No bad language, please.”

Hamish said, “It was my duty. I am obliged to disclose all evidence. These are legal matters.”

Jenny Linden said that poor Ned had been trying to sort out the Pilar business, no one was to blame him. He’d only been nineteen. He’d always thought it would somehow go away, but Leah had explained how life blessings needed transparency to shine through, and that Pilar was a shadow of opaqueness in his life. Once he’d been properly divorced from Pilar, he’d be in a position to marry her, Jenny.

“What about me?” asked Alexandra.

“You were bored with the relationship, it was obvious. Ned felt it. It really hurt him for a time. You’d be better on your own. You had your career. It was all that mattered to you.”

Sheldon Smythe coughed, and said should they all get on, he realised it was difficult for everyone.

Alexandra said to Jenny, “Actually, Ned was the one to get bored. He was bored by you, irritated by you, did everything he could to get rid of you, but hell you were stubborn, complained to me about your smelly armpits, invited Abbie into his bed and double-booked, making sure you came round to get a good view.”

Jenny Linden screamed and leapt at Alexandra, but her husband caught her, pinioned her arms, and set her back in her chair. He was very strong, and a little manic. Alexandra felt a little surge of sexual response: it occurred to her that it would be quite fun to seduce him, Jenny Linden’s husband, just for the hell of it. But that would be descending to their level.

Sheldon Smythe called in his secretary ostensibly to take notes, but perhaps because he felt he needed another witness; or an extra pair of arms in case someone else needed pinioning. Alexandra recognised her as Becky Witham to whom she’d taught drama at the local school. Couldn’t move, couldn’t act, but always helpful. Alexandra gave a little laugh.

Alexandra said, “Even so, folks, bigamously married or not, I have Ned’s child. The Courts will see me right.”

Jenny Linden shrieked. “Bitch! That’s not Ned’s child. That brat is Eric Stenstrom’s child, everyone knows. You foisted him on poor Ned. You are the foulest woman in the world. No wonder you didn’t come to the funeral.” Dave Linden twisted her wrists, and she yelped.

There was silence. Sheldon Smythe opened a file which lay on his desk. In it were letters in Ned’s handwriting: the ones on top quite fresh, the ones below on yellowed paper. The top one started, “Dear Hamish.”

“So you weren’t lying,” said Alexandra to Hamish.

“I never lie,” said Hamish.

“You don’t take after your fucking brother, then,” she said. “Perhaps your mother did get out one night.”

Hamish advised Alexandra to behave; she was going to be in considerable need of his help in future.

“In a letter here to his brother,” said Sheldon Smythe, “Mr. Ludd writes to say he believes that you, Mrs. Ludd, are pregnant by a man other than himself; the Mr. Stenstrom Mrs. Linden refers to. Mr. Ludd was obviously very distressed.”

Jenny Linden was calm again. She even apologised.

“Leah says Kali is very strong in me. I’m a conductor for male as well as female currents. I should be sorry for you, Alexandra, I pass through anger and out the other side. It’s just you wasted so many of Ned’s years.”

Jenny Linden turned to her husband and looked up at him with moist and gentle eyes. He loosed his grip on her arm: he raised one of her hands to his lips and kissed it, as if in apology. Jenny Linden directed a triumphant glance at Alexandra, as if to say, “All this and a man too!”

“Problem is,” said Alexandra, “you only have to look at Sascha to know he’s Ned’s child.”

“Eric Stenstrom is very much the same physical type as Ned and myself,” said Hamish. “We’re all old Aberdeen family: Viking stock.”

“Thank you, Hamish,” said Alexandra.

“It does rather seem to be your type, Alexandra,” said Hamish.

“Ned was scarcely cold and Alexandra was already making advances to poor Hamish,” said Jenny Linden to Sheldon Smythe. “She was dancing about in front of him naked.”

Alexandra didn’t deign to reply. She was like Brer Rabbit with the Tar Baby. The more she struggled the tighter she would get stuck. She should not have come here on her own. She should have brought a lawyer. She contented herself with saying, “Ned acknowledged Sascha as his own, he’s named on the birth certificate, and Ned supported him. That’s enough for any sensible person.”

“But Ned did not acknowledge him as his own, you were the one who registered the birth, and you have done all the earning since the child was born according to Mr. Hamish Ludd here.”

“Thank you Mr. Hamish Ludd,” said Alexandra.

“Sometimes I think she’s on drugs,” said Jenny Linden. “She’s so frivolous. She has no idea how distressed Ned was about her being pregnant by another man. She’s just completely self-centred. She can’t bear to hear the truth spoken.”

“Mr. Ludd left the child nothing in his will,” Mr. Smythe observed. “Which a Court would find significant. Had you been legally married, your child would have a claim on the estate, as would you, whether Ned was the genetic parent or not. As the marriage is bigamous, the question of paternity is certainly relevant. Of course we’ll have to take Counsel’s opinion, and you can fight the will through the Courts by all means, if you can afford to, but so far as I can see nothing stands between my client Mrs. Linden and her inheritance.”

“Except justice,” said Alexandra, “common sense and tissue typing.” There was a short silence.

“You can’t tissue-type from ashes,” said Hamish.

“You shouldn’t have had Ned cremated,” said Jenny Linden. “Serves you right.”

Alexandra saw Ned walking up his hill through the forest. It was dark, and the trees set closely together. It was almost impossible to find a path. She could only just see his back through the fog. No wonder he hadn’t looked back. That was probably better than this.

“Poor Alexandra,” said pudgy little Jenny Linden, kindly, “all this must come as a shock to her.” She spoke to her husband.

“I didn’t mean to fall in love with Ned,” she said. “He put some kind of spell on me. I was obsessed for a time, but it’s over now. I’m glad we’ve been able to talk it all out properly, in a group like this. I wish Leah could have been here. She would have been proud of us. And Ned did the decent thing in the end, Dave, he left me the home. We must treasure it and look after it, in his memory. Ned liked you, Dave. He never said a word against you.” Becky Witham’s eyebrows were raised: she was trying not to meet Alexandra’s eye.

“There’d have to be a lot of changes made,” said Dave. “Before I’d consent to live in that morgue of a place. It would have to be brought up to date. My sound systems can’t stand too much dust. All that would be expensive.”

“We can always sell off some of the antiques,” said Jenny.

Alexandra stood up.

“Will someone section this woman under the Mental Health Act? Fetch the men in white coats?”

“That earthenware Dog of Fo,” said Jenny, taking no notice, “that white sort of blob with mad eyes, is worth £7,500. Ned told me so.”

“It used to be ‘ours,’ ” said Alexandra. “So now presumably it’s mine. What are you talking about?”

“I know it’s difficult for you to take this in, Alexandra,” said Hamish. “As difficult as it was for Chrissie, once upon a time. I was very fond of Chrissie. I looked after her for a time, when Ned was finished with her.”

“Poor Hamish,” murmured Alexandra. “What it is to be a younger brother. All you ever get is left-overs.”

Sheldon Smythe coughed. He had taken out another folder: this one was of blue cellophane. He said that Mr. Ludd had bequeathed the contents of the house to Mrs. Linden, as well as the house itself. He, Sheldon Smythe, understood that these included antiques of considerable value.

“I was able to trace receipts for most of the good stuff,” said Hamish, “here and there in the muddle. All of them were made out in my brother’s name only, and were paid for out of his bank account, not the joint account.”

“But I was the one who put money into Ned’s account,” said Alexandra. “His royalties had drifted away to almost nothing.”

“That was your choice,” said Hamish, bleakly. “You can’t give money away and then say what’s bought with it is yours.”

“Ned hated the way she gave him money,” said Jenny Linden. “He said Alexandra used money in all sorts of ways, to control, and manipulate, and buy love, but mostly, Leah says, to ease her guilt, because of Sascha.”

Sheldon Smythe said it was doubtful that Alexandra Ludd could persuade a Court that the contents of The Cottage were matrimonial property, in spite of her having cohabited with Mr. Ludd for years. But she must see her own lawyer.

Jenny Linden smiled. It seldom happened but when she did her face lit up. Alexandra could see what Ned saw in her. Perhaps she looked like that when he and she were love-making. A transformation of Ned’s making: ascent of the Holy Ghost; in triumph and elation both. Saving graces!

She asked Sheldon Smythe when the will had been made. Hamish asked if that was a proper question. Sheldon Smythe said he saw no reason for secrecy. Mr. Ludd had made the will some three years ago. Alexandra said she expected he’d have been in soon enough to change Jenny Linden’s name to Abbie Carpenter. Like musical beds when the music stopped, whoever was in the right one got to unwrap the parcel. Jenny Linden stopped smiling and glowered.

A
LEXANDRA LEFT SHELDON SMYTHE’S
office and walked the three miles home. The temperature had dropped suddenly. It was noon but the sky was dark. There were specks of rain in the air: the wind had got up. She had goose pimples on her bare arms. Thunder cracked in the distance. Worst fears. She thought perhaps the answer to worst fears might not, after all, be high hopes but best wishes. High hopes could be dashed; best wishes simply remain. The world turned on a pin; it kept sticking: you needed to help it along.

Alexandra offered her best wishes to Ned. She could see he was badly in need of them. She could not offer him forgiveness, since there was no such thing. Best wishes she could manage. If Ned had believed Sascha was not his son, if Ned believed the betrayal was hers, Alexandra’s, then he was not so much to blame: she must have appeared as hateful to him as he had lately to her. More fool he that he had let Jenny Linden persuade him of it, more tragic for him, and her, Alexandra, that he had died believing it. A sore point in the universe which could never heal: a wound forever open. Pitiful that a proper love could be so fragile, so easily undermined, but how could she, Alexandra, have hoped to make up, single-handedly, for a childhood which, if it produced Hamish, had produced Ned as well? She was naive and self-important to have thought she could.

Good times while they lasted, that was the most she could say, hurling best wishes after Ned, into the heart of the forest, where he wandered, lost in limbo. She was sure he was lost. It was too dark for him. But now she could see him. A lightning flash all around her, all around Ned too, lighting his way. Best wishes. Four seconds between thunder and lightning. The storm was four miles away. She called Ned’s name. He turned and saw her and smiled. A dream but not a dream. You did not sleep as you walked home, trying to put your life in order, a life now in total disarray.