by Fay Weldon
“Never,” said Alexandra, “I am too proud. I never knew I was so proud.” She’d thought of herself as a humble little thing, dismissing her celebrity as meaningless, a by-product of the world’s folly. But that turned out to be Ned’s view: a cloak worn as a disguise, chosen by him, not both of them together. When it came to it, she was not one to go to a husband’s funeral and put up with the clamorous weeping of a host of other women who turned up to claim him too. Especially if they were as plain as Jenny Linden, or as vulgar as Daisy Longriff, or as countrified as Abbie Carpenter. The audience—for so she saw the mourners—would wink and nudge and stare and wonder what Ned saw in them when he had Alexandra waiting at home and she would be the more humiliated and demeaned, and they, resentful of her success, would rejoice at her come-uppance.
“Who would you want him to have as a mistress?” Sam asked. “Princess Di?”
“Not even for Princess Di,” said Alexandra, “would I have gone to Ned’s funeral.”
Sam remarked that she, Alexandra, was a hard bitch. He seemed to admire her.
Alexandra said she wished she had had Ned buried, not cremated. Then she could have slipped into some graveyard by night, and sat there and come to terms with the corruption of the flesh; and the slithering in and out of worms. It was more difficult to sit and contemplate an urn of ashes. Sam said they mostly came not in urns but in navy blue boxes tied with gold band: his mother had been returned to him like this. When were they going to actually burn the body? Did Alexandra know?
Alexandra said she thought they already had: just some minutes ago, when she had fainted. Sam said that was pure fantasy. Alexandra agreed. She had become better at agreeing over the last week. It preserved energy. She asked Sam whether the advance bookings were good or bad. “Good,” he said.
“Daisy Longriff gives a good performance?” asked Alexandra, only just able to stop herself adding, “better than mine?” Sam said that Daisy Longriff’s performance was crap, but the advance bookings were good, very good. He suggested that Alexandra didn’t speak to Management direct but let Harry Barney do it. Technically, Alexandra had no right to take time off for a bereavement: she was in breach of contract. Nor had she produced a medical certificate within the three days allowed, which would have been her most sensible course of action in the circumstances.
“But they’d never stick by the letter of the contract,” said Alexandra. “It would be inhuman.”
Sam pointed out that theatrical management was inhuman by definition. “The show must go on” was a management diktat which kept actors on the stage through air-raids and terminal illness, and management in profit. Frankly, he doubted Alexandra would have Nora’s part back.
“Why did no one warn me?” asked Alexandra. “Remind me about the medical certificate; at the very least?”
Sam hummed and hawed and finally said he supposed it was because everyone wanted a long run, and transfer to a bigger theatre, and with Daisy Longriff as Nora it might just happen. Times were hard.
Alexandra agreed that they were.
Daisy Longriff drifted in. She was wearing Alexandra’s great-grandmother’s wedding dress, which Alexandra had lent the theatre. It was white silk and had a low neckline and a full skirt. This was the dress, worn in the Tarantella scene, out of which Alexandra’s bosom had fallen on the First Night. She wondered why Daisy was wearing it, since it was by now seven-forty and in the opening scene Nora comes in from a shopping trip in a small Norwegian town. She did not ask Daisy. She did not want to know the answer.
Daisy said she’d heard Alexandra had fainted in the lobby. She hoped she was all right. She, Daisy, sympathised: she had been all the way to poor Ned’s funeral and back that day, and she was completely wrung out. But the show must go on. Alexandra said she supposed it must. Daisy said wasn’t it strange, when Ned had been alive she’d felt really guilty about Alexandra but now he was dead all that had stopped. She just felt glad she’d been able to offer Ned all that wonderful intensity of sexual experience. Life was so short! Alexandra said she was glad Daisy was glad. Sam tried to hustle Daisy away, saying he’d heard the call for beginners. Daisy told Sam to stop trying to be tactful, it was embarrassing, she and Alexandra understood each other.
“If you wear that dress for the opening scene,” said Alexandra, “what do you wear for the Tarantella?”
“A mini-skirt and black boots,” said Daisy, “and that’s all. She’s trying to win back Torvald from Dr. Rank.”
“Oh I see,” said Alexandra, “and I suppose Nora’s a lesbian at heart?”
“Of course,” said Daisy. “That way the whole play makes sense. It’s a revelation! Poor Ned will turn in his grave, but he’s dead. I have to be careful, or I start crying.”
“Ned doesn’t have a grave,” said Alexandra, “he’s just ashes.”
“You are too literal, Alexandra,” protested Daisy. “Ned always told me how literal you were.”
And she bounced away to go on stage, her bosom already out of Alexandra’s great-grandmother’s wedding dress. “We’d better find you your seat,” said Sam.
“I don’t think I’ll bother,” said Alexandra.
She spent the night at Angliss Street. There was no sign of Chrissie, but Chrissie’s clothes were in the wardrobe and Alexandra’s had been placed on the spare bed. The furniture had been re-arranged, slightly. It was apparent to Alexandra that Chrissie did not mean to go away.
She dreamed of Ned. She was at The Cottage, standing on the path outside the kitchen window. She looked in and saw Jenny Linden making tea and Ned at the table, with Sascha on his knee. She shouted and shouted at the window but nobody could hear, and nobody saw her. She screamed really loudly with a terrible effort—she was the woman in the stolen Munch painting—and woke up to hear herself making only a little squeaky noise.
She drove back early to The Cottage. She stopped in Eddon Gurney to buy milk and a local newspaper. Inside was a feature on Ned’s funeral, a double-page spread, with a large photograph of Jenny Linden weeping, and underneath the caption “Alexandra Ludd mourns.” Someone must have pointed out the mistake in time, so it had not made the national press.
Coming across the page by accident, Alexandra laughed.
31
ALEXANDRA LAUGHED SO HARD, in fact, she almost fell off her chair. It was small, hard and shiny. The day was really hot, and she wore a skimpy cotton dress and no stockings, so the hard plastic stuck to the back of her thighs. She was glad enough to fall off.
“You’re hysterical,” said Hamish, crossly, but she showed him the photograph and he all but laughed himself. They were sitting waiting in Sheldon Smythe’s offices.
“If you’d been at the funeral,” he said crossly, “it wouldn’t have happened. You’re going to be sorry in due course. It was a terrible thing to do. No one doesn’t go to their husband’s funeral, no matter what happened in the past.”
“I’m sorry, Hamish,” said Alexandra. She could see the virtue of contrition. “But so many people! And the press were there in force. I took one look and slipped away. I just couldn’t face it.”
He forgave her.
“You’ve had a hard time,” he acknowledged.
Sheldon Smythe’s offices were up from the supermarket, down from Mrs. Paddle in the stationer’s, next to Mr. Lightfoot’s. Now Ned’s body was no longer in the morgue, the curve of the road seemed less numinous; quite everyday and ordinary; business-like. Sheldon Smythe was new to the area. He came out of his offices, and though a stranger to Alexandra, offered her his condolences. He had read the obituaries, he said. He was a small, dapper man with a round face and heavy eyelids. “A great loss,” he said. He had read an account of the funeral in the local paper. A great and special event, apparently. He seemed already to have met Hamish, which surprised Alexandra, but she did not care to show it.
When Hamish and Alexandra followed Sheldon Smythe into his inner office, she found Jenny and Dave Linden sitting with their backs to the wall, ho
lding hands. Again, she declined to show her surprise.
“Something funny?” asked Jenny. “We could hear you.”
“Fairly funny,” said Alexandra. The hot weather was breaking. Through Sheldon Smythe’s window she could see really black and powerful clouds gathering. Filing cabinets lined up against plastered walls which sheer age had rendered barely straight. Spiders were plentiful. The computer on the desk seemed incongruous, out of place. Once this had been someone’s living room, lit by candle or, later, oil-lamp, at first heated by nothing at all in the days when people kept close to one another for warmth—later by a fire in a grate. Alexandra wondered what dramas had been enacted here in the past; she feared to consider what might happen today.
“Why is Jenny Linden here?” asked Alexandra, to the company in general.
“Mrs. Linden is here because Mr. Ludd’s will affects her,” said Sheldon
Smythe. He tended to close his eyes when he spoke. They drooped as if thought wearied him. He rocked to and fro in his chair, a habit Irene had always warned Alexandra against. Presently he would snap one of the back legs but what business was that of Alexandra’s?
“We find ourselves in a strange situation here,” said Sheldon Smythe.
And he explained to Alexandra that her husband had bequeathed The Cottage to Jenny Linden.
“He can’t do that,” said Alexandra sharply. “It’s the matrimonial home.”
Sheldon Smythe remarked that the property had never been put in Alexandra’s name, presumably by intention. There was no reason to believe Mr. Ludd had ever been anything other than in his right mind.
“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.”
