Worst Fears

by Fay Weldon

  “Sorry,” she said, to anyone or anything which was listening, and felt the house prepare itself.

  “That’ll soon warm us up!” she called out to Abbie, and went into the kitchen for tea. Abbie settled in to tell Alexandra more about the funeral. Abbie was conscious of the frozen peas she had bought thawing in the back of her car, but said nothing about them. She was doing her best for her friend, who smiled a lot but seemed distracted.

  Soon Alexandra heard a roaring noise coming from the dining room.

  A whoosh, an echo, and a steady, windy, throaty noise continuing after.

  “Listen to the wind,” she said. “How it’s getting up.”

  “So it is,” said Abbie. “Howling round the chimneys.”

  “Abbie,” said Alexandra, “could we leave the house right now? Drive over to your place? Hamish might come back and I really don’t want to see him. I couldn’t face it! Or even Jenny Linden, to say how we can all be friends, or her husband Dave to marvel at how I ever got by in this kitchen.”

  “Okay,” said Abbie, “if you’re sure you don’t want to finish your tea. It seems a waste to me.”

  “I want to go now,” said Alexandra. “And it’s got so peculiar in here. Look how Diamond’s trembling.”

  “Old houses always move and shift,” said Abbie, “and make strange noises. You’ve got so much imagination, when it comes to things that don’t matter.”

  But Abbie got up from her chair and they left the kitchen together, and Alexandra went into the dining room for a moment as they left, careful to stay between Abbie and any sight of what was happening to the far wall.

  “Fire okay?” asked Abbie as they went out of the back door. Diamond shot out ahead of them.

  “Fire’s fine,” said Alexandra. “I threw an extra log on.” And so she had.

  Sparks hurled themselves into the blue-black sky from the dining room chimney. Spitter-spat of raindrops. Fire and rain must fight it out. Abbie didn’t look up to see them. The wind howled. Abbie and Alexandra had to lean into it to get to the car. The rain was fitful. They hardly got wet.

  Diamond chased them up to the top of the drive, barking. “Hang on a minute,” said Alexandra, and Abbie stopped the car. Alexandra opened the door and Diamond trod her into the seat with desperate paws, clambering through to the back.

  At the top of the drive they came nose to nose with Jenny Linden’s little car. Abbie had to brake suddenly to manoeuvre by, and managed to stall her engine. Hamish was driving. Jenny Linden sat next to him. Dave and Sheldon Smythe sat in the back. They gawped out of the windows at Alexandra. She waved cheerily.

  “All yours!” she mouthed, but she didn’t think they understood. She could see The Cottage in the side mirror. There was most certainly a chimney fire, and flickers of light running up and down the east side of the house, which might well be flames. It was a pity the others had arrived so soon. She could have done with an extra ten minutes. All it would have needed.

  There was a sudden hammer-blow of thunder and a brilliant flash of lightning, zig-zagging down from above. For a second it turned all their faces blue as corpses. It seemed there’d been a direct hit on The Cottage. Now the roof too was aflame: fire raced over the tiles, burning what? Old leaves, wooden beams, who was to say? Flames were now coming out of the side-window downstairs, too: marvellous, melodramatic red light reflected back from the clouds.

  “Divine intervention sometimes comes when it isn’t needed,” said Alexandra. “Shall we get going?”

  The occupants of the other car mouthed and shouted. Abbie, distracted, failed to notice she was still in reverse gear and drove sharply backwards into the other vehicle, blocking the entrance to the drive. No one was hurt: all were shaken: everyone got out and stood staring down at The Cottage. The wind whipped through the building from East to West, as windows cracked and broke; it carried flame upstairs to the bedrooms while the flame from upstairs travelled down. What a fire that was, devouring Ned’s papers, Ned’s clothes, twisting and blackening the frame of the brass bed; gnawing through the linen cupboard, charring the split ammonite so no one now would ever recognise it for what it was; shattering the crystal, making a nonsense of the settle, the Picasso, the refectory table; what price now all the polishing, the dusting? All gone. Only the fireback (1705) would survive this, rather more blackened than usual, but with its golden lads and lasses still surviving, still dancing through the disasters of the centuries. Everything else gone. All Sascha’s toys; everyone’s school reports, photographs of ancient relatives, grandmother’s love letters, books, books, books, more books. CDs would melt. Tears went up in steam. Ghosts fled. Ned’s house, never hers, like Ned, gone to embers, gone to ashes. The house wanted it. The rain held off.

  Sparks got to the Barn. If the house went, how could the Barn remain? Its thatched roof burst into a thousand flames. The wind roared. Everything in there went: from the wooden handles of the antique tools that should have gone to the Folk Museum but never did, to the bits and pieces of old furniture waiting forever for restoration. What price now, all that weight of conscience, the burden of things undone that should have been done: better everyone had just partied while they could.

  The Fire Brigade bulldozed Abbie and Jenny’s cars to one side, to allow them access. They made short work of them. Water from the hoses made the whole hillside smell like damp flesh and burnt dinner for days. There were no hydrants so far from civilisation. Ingeniously, the firemen drained the pond so the ducks were homeless, but the wind was too strong for them to do much about anything: they let the fire burn itself out, then simply damped everything down.

  Arthur, on Abbie’s hysterical return in a police car, was glad there was no loss of life.

  Vilna cried for the newts, sucked up from the pond by the firemen’s hoses.

  Mr. Quatrop rejoiced. Where there was a fire, there would later be development.

  The firemen said they suspected first a chimney fire—old crows’ nests were always a hazard—compounded by a lightning strike. Alexandra shared her guilt with God, which meant she felt none. The insurance company declined to pay up. Ned had not paid the last instalment due. A final reminder had come with the condolence letters, and been overlooked. Insurance companies are not moved by personal tragedy: they have seen too many.

  Gone. Worst fears. Along with them, Alexandra’s clothes, books, papers, past. Alexandra’s family photos, documentations, school reports, love-letters from Ned. And others, kept hidden. Alexandra’s pots, pans, plates, cups, saucers, sheets: things used and abused by Jenny Linden. “She walked in when you walked out.” So who wanted them?

  Alexandra’s cosmetics, favourite eyeshadows, mementoes from past shows. Gifts from friends. A suspender belt in black and crimson that didn’t fit. Alexandra’s address book and diary, and Jenny Linden’s too. Except Jenny Linden had her own copy. Pity. Like losing your handbag but a hundred times worse. Alexandra had taken her purse up when she left with Abbie just before the fire.

  “Strange,” Abbie had thought at the time, but didn’t care to pursue the thought thereafter. Too dangerous. A chimney fire compounded by a lightning strike. An act of God.

  Gone, Ned, with Alexandra’s blessing.

  Hamish took the ashes back to Scotland.

  A neat navy blue cardboard box, rather heavy.

  33

  ALEXANDRA CALLED HER MOTHER and said now she, Alexandra, was homeless, could she leave Sascha there by the golf course, with the kittens, where he was happy? She knew her mother to be a careful driver. She called Eric Stenstrom and said could he look in on Sascha every now and then, and gave him the address. Every good child deserves a father. She called the man from Amblin and said she would take the part. Yes, she would play opposite Michael Douglas. You bet.

  She called the theatre. She wasn’t going to argue about not going back to A Doll’s House, she wasn’t going to sue: let Daisy Longriff bare her breasts every night. Best wishes, Daisy! Since apparently Management had expected
her, Alexandra, to do that very thing should they be obliged to accept her return to the part, they on their side had broken the terms of her contract, so goodbye. She was on her way to Hollywood.

  Alexandra stayed with Vilna in the meantime. But declined to share Vilna’s bed. She gave Diamond to Kevin Crump: Diamond would be happy with a proper occupation, herding cows to the milking sheds. Kevin Crump had a broken arm following a hit-and-run accident with the tractor, but was now engaged to Sheldon Smythe’s secretary, and was happy.

  Alexandra best-wished everyone on her departure. Ned, again, and Abbie, and even Leah, and Vilna, and Arthur, and Dave Linden; Dr. Moebius, and Mr. Quatrop, and even Hamish, who kept calling and writing with remorse and apologies and whom she could not be bothered to despise or dislike, and Theresa, who, on hearing about the fire, instantly returned such of Alexandra’s treasures as she had taken—offering them as gifts, of course: the Belgian lace tablecloth, the Arts and Crafts fire-tongs, the birdcage and the glass bowl. She best-wished Mr. Lightfoot, and Mrs. Paddle and even Chrissie, and her mother, and her mother’s husband, whose name she had forgotten, and Sascha, and Sascha with all her heart, weeping but doing it, leaving her child because everyone was right on that subject. Sometimes grandmothers are better than mothers, with children. Best-wishing.

  She could not best-wish Sheldon Smythe, he was not worth it, and she could, but would not, best-wish Jenny Linden. She must be allowed some indulgence, some caprice. And she best-wished Ned again, because what was the point of not? Ned was dead. And she was off.

  About the Author

  Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Fay Weldon was born in England, brought up in New Zealand, and returned to the United Kingdom when she was fifteen. She studied economics and psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. She worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, and then as an advertising copywriter. She later gave up her career in advertising, and began to write fulltime. Her first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke, was published in 1967. She was chair of the judges for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. In 2001, she was named a Commander of the British Empire.

  Weldon’s work includes more than twenty novels, five collections of short stories, several children’s books, nonfiction books, magazine articles, and a number of plays written for television, radio, and the stage, including the pilot episode for the television series Upstairs Downstairs. She-Devil, the film adaption of her 1983 novel The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, starred Meryl Streep in a Golden Globe–winning role.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1996 by Fay Weldon

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  978-1-4804-1254-5

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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