Worst Fears

by Fay Weldon

  “You have me,” said Alexandra through her teeth. But Hamish’s arms grew tighter round her, and for a moment again she thought it was Ned back: there was the familiar shock of intent which went with the touch, the sense of inevitability, the sheer meantedness, but this was Hamish, not Ned. It was nothing: what she’d felt was just a kind of earthquake aftershock, the shadow of the old moon in the new moon’s arms; not the real thing at all.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t!” and drew away.

  “But if you were never faithful to Ned,” Hamish said. He grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him. He was the reverse side of Ned: the other side of a coin. Not very adult, not very male, not very nice. He pawed and picked at her; he didn’t assault her or engulf her. He was a fly crawling over the skin, not a wasp stinging.

  “Why are you being so fussy now? Haven’t we had enough of this grieving widow act? Is there something the matter with me? Do you want to be fucked by film stars, is that it? Got used to better than me? Aren’t I good enough?”

  Now she was pushing him away, having to, her hand on his chest, and his face crumpled again.

  “Everything’s gone wrong in my life,” he mourned, “everything. I want to go home. I hate this place. You have to forgive me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just wanted to be Ned, just for a moment. To be with you, to bring him back.”

  “Ned’s dead,” she said. “How it rhymes. How it fits.”

  “You’d better be nice to me,” he said. “You’d better. Or else.”

  He was like a child, back when Ned was twelve and he was ten. She ignored him. He went back into the study to sit amongst the piles of paper, once tidily confined, now scattered everywhere, in an order she suddenly saw might well not be rational.

  Alexandra went down to the mortuary and sat by Ned’s body. “Did you or didn’t you?” she asked him. “Why did you take me to Jenny Linden’s? I remember it so clearly: the kind of thing you would normally forget. Framed in my mind. She was a little flustered. She opened a bottle of wine. She said in her soft voice, ‘Well, might as well open this, I suppose.’ It was Barolo, I remember that. I wondered how she could afford it. Well, Ned? Well?”

  Ned was there, but somewhere else. Off on his journey through the forest, expiating the sins he had committed. She understood it now. Of course Ned hadn’t looked back. She wondered if Sascha would grow up to be like his father. That was the worst of it. If you hated the father, how did you not hate the child? When she touched his arm, she found it yet more compacted: the body seemed to radiate cold, to push her away. Ned was a metaphor turning to marble.

  Mr. Lightfoot came in to say Mr. Ludd was to have company: a Mrs. Partridge, a 75-year-old spinster, would be resting here for a day or so while the necessary decisions were made. He laid a hand on Alexandra’s arm. Since Ned had died, all kinds of people had touched her. They were being kind, but diminishing her in their minds to child status. “Forgive and forget,” Mr. Lightfoot said to Alexandra. “That’s the motto!”

  “I won’t,” she said. “This way I don’t let him die. If there’s no forgiving, there’s no forgetting.”

  18

  ALEXANDRA CALLED HER MOTHER. Was Sascha all right? She hadn’t seen him since last Saturday. Now she was worrying dreadfully. She missed him. Should she drive down tomorrow to visit?

  “It’s not sensible,” said Irene. “You sound too upset. Sascha’s perfectly happy playing with the kittens. Four marmalade, one white, and three tabby. He protects them from the father, who is a grotty tabby torn and wants to eat them.”

  “But I’m getting anxious about him; I just need to be with him. Can I speak to him, please?”

  “You’ve probably been ill-wishing the poor child,” said Irene. “Undue anxiety in regard to a child is often a projection of the mother’s own destructive impulses, and I quote.”

  “Oh God, Mother,” said Alexandra. “What have you been reading?”

  “A book,” said Irene. “Mother: Friend or Foe? It’s very interesting. I’m not sure you’re the best person to be his mother. But I take it with a pinch of salt. I know you must be feeling bad about Ned and that dreadful woman, and Sascha is so very like Ned. Same eyes, same chin. You might find yourself very hostile, unconsciously. Then accidents happen. I should leave him here a little longer. Perhaps not come down tomorrow. I don’t want him upset. He is Ned’s child, isn’t he?”

  “Mother!”

  “Well, Eric Stenstrom isn’t so unlike Ned to look at. Scandinavian eyes, strong chin, straight back. And it was all going on about the time you got pregnant with Sascha. I did rather wonder.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this. How does Eric Stenstrom even come into it? He’s gay. What is going on here?”

  “It would explain why Ned started an affair with this woman. He was humiliated. You playing opposite Eric every night for all the world to see. His Torvald to your Nora. All the critics could talk about was what a sexy production it was. In the scene when you dance the Tarantella: darling, when I saw it I practically had to avert my eyes, and I’m not easily shocked. I don’t know how poor Ned was expected to react.”

  “This is total insanity, Mother. The critics were beyond belief: even Ned laughed. The play isn’t about sex, it’s about female emancipation. Though you’d never have known it from reading the reviews.”

  “You could have fooled a lot of us, darling,” said Irene.

  “My dress slipped on the First Night and I finished the scene bare-breasted: it was that, or bring down the curtain, and for God’s sake what did it matter? I had shoulder straps put on the costume and it was the first and last time it happened. Who cares?”

  “It made your name, darling,” said Irene. “I’m afraid very few thought it was an accident.”

  “Mother, if you worry too much about what people think, you never get anything done. Ned would say that. And, please, how does it happen that now Eric Stenstrom’s name is coming up? What do you think you know about me and him? Because there’s nothing to know: ask him.”

  “I kept quiet about it, darling, but that horrid little girl who played Mrs. Linde—much too young for the part: why on earth was she cast? Someone’s girlfriend, I suppose—what’s her name?”

  “Daisy Longriff,” said Alexandra.

  “Daisy Longriff said at the First Night party that you and Eric were close. She said she would have been Nora and you Mrs. Linde but Eric had it switched.”

  “It was because I can act and she can’t,” said Alexandra. “There was nothing personal about it. But obviously she’d rather there was.”

  “She told me you’d lost your costume on purpose. It was a publicity stunt, and planned.”

  “I don’t believe this,” said Alexandra. “What a little bitch! Why did you listen to her? Do you have no loyalty to me at all? I always helped her all I could. I thought she liked me. At least no one will believe her. She’s making a dreadful mess of Nora, I hear. That’s something.”

  “She does the Tarantella scene nude,” said Irene. “The rest of the cast don’t like it, but on the other hand they’re taking bookings months ahead. Lexi, I really want to talk about Sascha’s future. If she does it nude, you’ll have to do it nude. Is this really what you want Sascha’s future to be? Bad enough to have an actress for a mother, but a stripper! He is a Romanoff—”

  “Jesus, Mother—”

  “I know what you think about that; but it’s true. The blood does flow. Ned would turn in his grave—”

  “He’s not in his grave yet, Mother. He’s lying down there in the morgue, turning to marble, and all you can give me is this junk—”

  She slammed the phone down. Picked it up, re-dialled. “And if you think you’re taking Sascha from me, Mother, you’ve got another think coming. I’m driving over to collect him tomorrow afternoon and that’s that.”

  “You mean poor little Sascha’s to go to Ned’s funeral? Just like that?” Oh, icy mother; remembrance of things past.

&nb
sp; “That’s no problem,” said Alexandra. “I’m not going to Ned’s funeral. Ned doesn’t deserve to have me there. If he can die in some slut’s arms, that slut can do the burying. I won’t.” Silence.

  “But you loved Ned.” Irene’s voice had lost its ice. She was alarmed. “He was your husband.”

  “So what?” said Alexandra. “So what? If he couldn’t remember it, why should I?”

  “There’ll be a dreadful scandal, dear,” said her mother.

  “The press will love it,” said Alexandra, bitterly. “It will be good for bookings, and I will be blamed for that too.”

  Alexandra put the phone down. She could hear Hamish heating soup in the kitchen. Friday today. Just the lawyer’s meeting on Tuesday. Then Hamish would go. Thank God. Herself and Sascha alone in the house till the following Monday, settling down, getting used to lack of Ned. Theresa could come over on the Saturday, so Sascha felt easy with her after the three-week break. Then she, Alexandra, would stay up in London for the rest of the run; coming back for Sundays: Sascha would need to stay at The Cottage because of nursery school. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for now. The run would end in time; then she’d be back as a full-time mother; heaven knew when she’d work again. Thank God for Theresa: natural, reliable, easy, kind. Ned would groan and say Theresa was more like an ox than a human being; was it good for Sascha to be so much in the company of an ox? Was it good for his brain cells? Would he lumber fatly through life? And Alexandra would say, Okay, Theresa goes and you do full-time parenting, Ned, while I earn, and Ned would say, Okay, okay, you win. Theresa stays. And both of them would laugh. Jenny Linden never made anyone laugh. She was too slow, too dull: her stolid flesh, the unlaughing, moist gap between her legs too eager, available and hungry to generate much mirth.

  19

  ALEXANDRA REMEMBERED SOMETHING. SHE called Abbie.

  “Abbie,” said Alexandra, without preamble, “what do you know about herpes?”

  Abbie said she was in the middle of serving apple pie to her students.

  She couldn’t talk now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to, anyway. Perhaps Alexandra should call Vilna. Abbie’s voice was cold.

  Alexandra called Vilna, who said she was insulted to be asked such a question. Why did Alexandra think she should know anything at all about the subject? Because she was a filthy foreigner? Vilna was in a bad mood.

  Alexandra went to see Dr. Moebius, who by some miracle had a free appointment, and reminded him of a time five years back when she was tested for the herpes virus. Ned had developed a herpes pustule on his penis. He had become angry and bitter: in fact, as she could now see, Hamish-like. Ned had avoided sexual relations with her, Alexandra, for a week. He had blamed his infection on her. He claimed she had spoiled his life. She had been with another man; no matter how she denied it, Ned would not accept it. He was, he said, bitterly hurt, upset, betrayed. What other reason could there be? Since it was not him, it must be her. Alexandra said the virus could be dormant for years; neither of them had exactly been virgins on marriage. Ned said the chances of that were small. No, Alexandra had betrayed him. Alexandra wept and smarted. Went without Ned’s knowledge to Dr. Moebius for a test: lo, she had no such virus! Ned would not accept the verdict. Dr. Moebius was a famous

  mis-diagnostician. Now the whole village would know their disgrace. Alexandra, too guilty, as she could now see, because of her secret scuffle with Eric Stenstrom to hold to her own opinion, was wholly wretched, but admitted to nothing. For five days the uproar lasted. Ned’s single pustule went: with it, his alter ego departed. Thereafter he was Ned again; friendly, rational and kind. Life went on as usual. The incident had been forgotten, drifted off into the past. Now she replayed it to Dr. Moebius, looking for explanation.

  Dr. Moebius looked at his watch. Could he perhaps refer Alexandra to a counsellor? Death should put all things in proportion. A herpes virus could not survive in a dead body. It needed warmth, and a way of getting out. Which it now didn’t have. But he did have patients waiting, with current rather than past problems to discuss.

  Alexandra asked if it wasn’t more likely that Ned had been in close contact with someone who had just been in close and frequent contact with someone with a flagrant herpes infection, than that, having been dormant for years, the virus had reactivated itself. Of course, said Dr. Moebius. And could she please ask Mrs. Linden to be in touch.

  “That bitch can rot in hell for all I care,” said Alexandra. Dr. Moebius looked startled. Alexandra left.

  She could “forgive” Ned for fucking Jenny Linden over the course of a year—a year in which she had been away a lot. Just. Jenny Linden the seductress; Ned lonely and jealous. But she could not forgive a sexual relationship which had been going on for some years; in which she, Alexandra, had been laughed at, manipulated, and insulted behind her back. No, she could not.

  She went home.

  20

  ALEXANDRA WENT UP TO her bedroom and stared at the bed. She pulled back the bedclothes and sheets and examined the mattress where it had troubled her shoulder. She thought, yes, a spring might well have broken. She got a pair of scissors and cut through the fabric and revealed the strange concoction of wadding and wires within, now bulging out like a hernia. It was like opening a body, like cutting skin: without the flawless restraining surface everything fell to pieces. Yes, a piece of wire had snapped. Now how had that happened? The strenuous efforts of Ned and Jenny Linden? She got the scissor blade beneath the fabric of the mattress and sheared it wherever she could. She found one broken spring, at buttock level.

  Alexandra went out to the Barn and brought back the axe with which Ned had split logs. Diamond followed her.

  She went back upstairs again with the axe and began to chop away at the base of the bed; some wood, some of it metal. She stove it in, in its middle. Diamond, witness to the life, barked and barked. She aimed savage blows at the curlicued brass rods which composed the headboard; they at least buckled and broke. That was satisfactory. But for the most part the bed just stood there, defying her. The axe blade merely slipped and slid where it met the metal of the frame. She would be lucky to avoid hacking herself by mistake. She didn’t care. Destruction was harder than she thought. But at least the bed was now unusable. The mattress beyond repair.

  Hamish was trying to restrain her arm. She whirled on him, axe held high. Then she dropped her arm, dropped the axe. “Are you on drugs?” he asked.

  She had to laugh. She went through the house finding everything of Ned’s she could—raincoats from the hall, binoculars, Wellington boots, the guitar left over from his hippie days, T-shirts from the “Save the Roman Cemetery” campaign, his entire Ibsen collection, the CDs, the old 78s, the video tapes he liked and she did not—and flung them into the bedroom. She carried up the stairs, on her own, the easy chair he favoured, far too heavy a task for anyone in a normal state of mind. She shoved that on top of the wrecked bed. She smashed the bathroom mirror because Ned had looked in it too often, and threw that in with the rest. She went to the linen cupboard and found the green sheets that Abbie had laundered, and tore them hem from hem with a little help from the scissors, and flung them in too. Then she locked the door and turned to see Dr. Moebius facing her, Hamish behind him.

  “Shall we calm down, Alexandra?” he said. “I could have you put away for this.”

  “I am perfectly calm,” said Alexandra. “And please call me by my proper name: Mrs. Ludd.”

  He was taking notes. She could see she should be careful. She was a widow with a child; a woman without a husband to give her authenticity. She was an actress, which suggested promiscuity and profligacy. If Social Services got involved she could end up with Sascha in care, at best with her mother, at worst with abusing foster parents. She was vulnerable. Society now required from her as a mother emotional correctness: she must subdue anger; she must practice understanding and forgiveness. She had better go to the funeral—hand in hand with Jenny Linden, if required. She smiled at
Dr. Moebius.

  “On second thoughts,” she said, “do by all means call me Alexandra. I know you’re here to help me. And you’re right, I need help.” A show of gratitude always went down well, when dealing with authority.

  It appeared that Hamish had called Dr. Moebius. After all, she had been running wild with an axe, a danger to herself and others.

  “I’m so sorry if I alarmed you, Hamish,” said Alexandra. “I was just trying to move the bed: I thought I’d give Sascha the bigger bedroom. Then the brass bed turned out to be too wide to get through the door. I wanted it in bits the better to re-assemble it, that’s all. As for the rest, I’m just getting Ned’s things in one place for sorting. Oxfam will be round any moment. There’s a lot here can be re-cycled.”

  Dr. Moebius was smiling now, and nodding. Even Hamish seemed pacified. It was easy, once you understood what was going on.

  “I’m seeing Jenny Linden this evening,” she told Dr. Moebius, easily.

  “Poor thing, she’s had such a hard time. I’ll try and persuade her to get round to see you. She and I really must be friends. We have so many memories to share. We can help one another through this hard time: make the journey through grief together. Perhaps we should give her a lift to the funeral, Hamish?”

  “That would be generous of you, Alexandra,” said Hamish, though he looked at her a little suspiciously.

  “I thought perhaps it would be best if little Sascha doesn’t come to the funeral.” Alexandra appealed to Dr. Moebius. “But what do you think?”

  “Seven is the lowest age we recommend for funerals,” said Dr. Moebius.

  “You’re right. Keep him away. Divert him. Then take the little chap aside, talk him through what happened. A mother’s instinct is often best. He’ll need extra mothering now. What we used to call TLC. Tender loving care.”

  “What do we call it now?” Alexandra asked, without thinking, but heard tendentiousness in her own voice and quickly continued, “I have some borage in the garden. Shall I make tea? You know the Ancient Greeks drank borage in times of bereavement? Borage is the solace for grief.”