by Weldon, Fay
Or people would say, ‘Poor Ned. He won’t be there to watch his child grow up.’ But that didn’t wash either. Children grow up to grow away. The younger the child, the purer, the more exquisite the parental feeling. Not to be there to see your child grow up would be the blessing, not the curse. It was pointless to search for reasons: grief accompanies bereavement – it is nature’s stick – as joy accompanies birth – it is nature’s carrot.
Grief was luxurious, in the way porridge on a cold morning is luxurious, or a cold shower on a hot day, or water when you are thirsty, or a languid kiss between lovers; anything which holds you at that pleasurable point where the satisfaction of the senses and the need for survival meet. She would go with it, not fight it. It would cure itself, as a broken leg heals itself, with a little help from friends.
The wailing and keening below was louder now; so was Diamond’s barking. Just beyond the hedge, if she craned, Alexandra could see a brown hunched back moving to and fro. It seemed to be some kind of animal, roaming up and down as animals will, restless and miserable, in a confined space. But the confinement was wilful, unless the creature was on some kind of chain. And how could that be? Downstairs, trapped in the morning kitchen, Diamond hurled himself against the closed back door. He wanted out.
Alexandra dressed quickly, glad now of an occupation. Trainers, jeans, one of Ned’s shirts: denim; tough, rough fabric, which partly restored the feeling that she and he were one; and went down to the kitchen. She put Diamond on the lead and went out the back door. The dog pulled and tugged her round to the front of the house, to the privet hedge which divided garden from field. A human head rose into view on its far side. It was Lucy Lint, still keening; blotched face and puffy eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ asked Alexandra.
Lucy Lint stopped wailing.
‘I only wanted to take the dog for a walk,’ she said. She had a soft voice and a West Country lilt. She reminded Alexandra of Gollum in The Hobbit, a pale, white, underground thing; solid yet sinuous. Diamond wrenched the lead away from Alexandra’s surprised hands, and leapt at Lucy Lint. He leapt in welcome, in friendship not hostility, and Lucy scratched him under the ears in the way Ned was accustomed to do. Alexandra never did that. She did not like dog scurf beneath her nails.
Alexandra watched as Lucy fell on her knees, embracing Diamond.
‘Oh poor dog,’ she cried, ‘poor dog. Poor us!’ Diamond licked Lucy’s face with enthusiasm and Lucy let him. Presently she became aware of Alexandra staring.
‘Did I wake you or something? Leah says I have to let my grief out.’
‘Leah?’
‘My therapist. She taught me how to keen. Didn’t Ned tell you?’
‘Tell me what?’
‘About Leah. I suppose he wouldn’t. You would have laughed. What am I going to do? I want to die.’
Her podgy face was puckered. She was in her mid-forties, older than Alexandra. Her short hair was unkempt and needed washing. She wore no make-up. She put her little white soft hand on Alexandra’s lean arm, and Alexandra felt the touch like an electric shock and pulled away.
‘I only came to see if I could walk Diamond,’ Lucy Lint said. ‘He likes to get out early. But you don’t know that. You have to sleep late every morning because of the theatre.’
She raised her double chin to the heavens and wailed again. The early moon was still in the sky, palely loitering. It was a really beautiful morning, Alexandra noticed. Dew on the roses, a spider web glittering in the very early sunlight. Where was Ned? This was why you grieved for the dead, because they could no longer be part of the exhilaration of renewal.
‘Glad that I live am I,’ she sang at the other woman until she stopped her dreadful, Leah-recommended keening and stared in astonishment. Two could make a noise as well as one, and hers, Alexandra’s, at least was more disciplined and had some meaning. She had hated ululation at Drama School, though she could set up as good a classic wail as anyone else. Dirges seemed mindless, and she didn’t like that. She preferred a hymn, and offered one.
‘Glad that the sky is blue
Glad for the country lane
Glad for the fall of dew.
After the sun the rain,
After the rain the sun.
This be the way of life,
Till the work be done.’
‘Don’t be angry with me,’ said Lucy Lint, though Alexandra could not see that she had displayed anger in any way. ‘I’m the one you should be sorry for.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Alexandra.
‘I loved Ned,’ said Lucy, ‘and he died. You didn’t love him. There. I’ve said it.’
‘You need treatment,’ said Alexandra. Now she was angry. ’But I have enough to think about at the moment, besides nutters. You’ll just have to look after yourself.’
‘I understand your anger,’ said Lucy piously. Then her little eyes gleamed with malice. ‘Ned always said you’d be angry and destructive when you found out. Dog in the manger!’ she yelped, and turned and ran, little dumpy legs going one-two, one-two, little feet turning out, heavy bum jiggling, into themists which still drifted round the foot of the poplar trees where the ground dipped. Ned and Alexandra had planted the poplars together when they first moved down to The Cottage. Twelve in a row, ten feet apart, a hard day’s work, but gratifying. Diamond had already shot off in front of Lucy Lint, barking. Crows rose in response: a black spiky crowd swelling over the copper beeches which shielded the field and The Cottage from the top road. Birds of ill-omen, so plentiful round here.
Alexandra went to the kitchen and made herself some coffee. The old packet was now finished. She threw it in the bin. Ned had opened it. It was in this way, she supposed, that traces of the dead removed themselves from everyday life. All that would be left would be his works on the shelf: books about Ibsen. Then no doubt his view of Ibsen would finally fall out of fashion. The books would drift off to the second-hand bookstalls, and on to a few, idiosyncratic, old-codgery shelves; and just a handful of people would be left to say, wonderingly, ‘Ned Ludd – that rings a bell,’ and the bell would be for Ned Ludd, the Leicestershire village idiot, who in 1782 destroyed a stocking frame on the grounds that it was putting him out of a job, and after whom the Luddite rioters were named. Not Ned Ludd, the Ibsen scholar. Not even Alexandra Ludd, actress, who once used to get her name and her picture in the paper so often: Nora in A Doll’s House, at a time when women had decided to make Nora their mascot in their final drive to be free of male tyranny. Perhaps there’d be some reference to the Ludds for scholars, in the theatrical section of some CD Rom. There’d be so little left for people to do in the future-present, they’d have nothing better to do than put up the past on the screen, and stare at it; listen to the voice saying: ‘Ludd, Ned’, and reading out the supporting text. No one would bother to read. Why make the effort?
Lucy Lint. Why had Diamond gone off with her so readily? It was out of character. Diamond was suspicious of most people, unless he knew them well. The house seemed eerily quiet: now that the dog’s broken breathing, wheezes and snorts were not there, she noticed them. Alexandra suddenly missed Sascha: the sudden determined rushings of his little feet, the energy in the air that meant he was about. It was too early to call Irene. But Sascha would be up: he would be in front of the television, staring at the Teletext he couldn’t read. It was, he averred, his favourite programme. He must come home as soon as possible. She wanted her arms around him.
She poured the coffee but did not drink it.
Lucy Lint. Lucy Lint never got asked to the Ludd parties. Why not? Others yet more foolish, yet more hopeless, got asked along. Lucy used her little podgy fingers and her enthusiasm to earn her living. She was the theatrical equivalent of an architectural model maker. She would sew, in miniature, the costumes the designer had in his or her head so that the director could approve, alter, enthuse or carp. It was a perfectly respectable occupation. It brought her in a living wage. She lived in a little period
cottage in Eddon Gurney, opposite the prison. Ned had once taken her, Alexandra, to visit Lucy in her studio, which turned out to be her front room. He wanted Alexandra to see the costumes Lucy was doing for a production of Peer Gynt – an exact copy of those used for the London production of 1911. The visit must have been four years ago: she remembered being pregnant with Sascha at the time. Ned had rung Lucy in advance, to say they were coming. It had been a perfectly formal visit. Lucy had opened a bottle of wine, fluttered her pleasure at a visit which evidently meant a lot to her, and showed off the little dolls’ dresses with, to Alexandra, pathetic pride. Ned had asked if he could photograph them for his book on Peer Gynt and Lucy had said yes. What had happened since to give Lucy cause to say she loved Ned, Alexandra had no idea.
Except of course Lucy was the sort of person who loves everything and everyone at the same level. She would ‘love’ her therapist, ‘love’ her friends, ‘love’ Ned because he had once taken some notice of her. Why would Lucy think she, Alexandra, didn’t love Ned? Erratum: hadn’t loved Ned. Because Alexandra hadn’t been there when Ned died? Lucy was probably the kind of woman who’d cling like a limpet just in case someone died and they weren’t there, and that way hasten their death.
She remembered Lucy saying, though she couldn’t remember where, or when, or in what company,
‘I have this wonderful therapist. She gave me the courage to leave my husband,’ and thinking, ‘Lonely women are always saying that.’
Somewhere there had been a husband and a son, both rejected in the interests of Lucy’s talent. The husband a lighting director in the West End; yes, that was it. A technician, not an artist. Not even a critic. Lucy was the kind who longed aggressively for the peace of the countryside, to live next to nature; to discover her true self, that kind of stuff. Ned was in the country because there was somewhere to park and he could have a rest from theatrical folk.
Why was she even giving Lucy Lint two minutes’ thought? A mad woman, excited by death, roaming the edge of the territory. She wasn’t worth it. Alexandra had seen herself as duty bound to ask her round, from time to time – a neighbour invaguely the same profession – and Ned would say, ‘For God’s sake, not Lucy Lint. She’ll bore everyone to death, and talk about animal rights.’
Alexandra wondered by what right she and Ned had felt it their entitlement to dole out social acceptability or otherwise round the neighbourhood. If the Ludds said people were OK, they were. Now Ned had gone, had toppled in death through the linking of a protective fence of their own devising – the one that kept the boring and pitiable out – and broken it, now heaven knew who’d come rushing in. And it might even serve Alexandra right.
Alexandra went to the living room and under the gaze of Leda entwined with her swan, and Europa petting her bull – both deities in porcelain, circa 1760, and a Dog of Fo, in salt-glazed stoneware, around 1730 – took down Ned’s book on Peer Gynt. The book fell open on a photograph of Lucy Lint’s little set, little figures, tiny dresses. The caption read: ‘Photo: Ned Ludd. Lucy Lint’s brilliant and exquisite re-creation of the 1922 production at the Old Vic.’
You could either assume Ned had gone back at some other time to take pictures of Lucy’s work on the 1922 production, or that the caption was wrong, or that Ned had been in error in the first place. Or that she, Alexandra, had misremembered 1911.
Alexandra heard a movement behind her and whirled, and there was Lucy Lint staring at her. In her, Alexandra’s, living room.
‘I brought Diamond back,’ said Lucy Lint. ‘I came straight in. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I do, actually,’ said Alexandra.
‘I did so hope we could be friends,’ said Lucy. ‘We both need someone to talk to.’
‘A trouble shared is a trouble halved, that kind of thing?’ enquired Alexandra.
‘Don’t mock,’ said Lucy Lint. ‘You’re very clever and smart, but it doesn’t help in the end. I know that book by heart. Peer Gynt and the Nordic Imagination. Ned was such a wise and wonderful man. I don’t suppose you even read it. Ned said you were never interested in his work.’
‘Just get out of my house,’ said Alexandra, but Lucy stayed where she was, with a kind of stolid, stubborn lumpenness, as if she hadn’t heard what Alexandra said, or perhaps Alexandra had only thought it, not spoken it.
‘You’re upset,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
Alexandra followed Lucy into the kitchen. Lucy was taking mugs from the cupboard, the teapot from the shelf, without hesitation, as if this were her own home. Diamond lay under the table, exhausted and panting, thumping his tail from time to time, and looking strangely guilty.
Alexandra advanced on Lucy and slapped her across the cheek. Lucy dropped a mug and stared, stupefied.
‘You’re violent,’ she said. ‘On top of everything. You really do need treatment. Ned was right.’
But still she didn’t go. She moved her little hands up to her pink cheek. Lucy Lint had a squidged-up face, as if the chin aimed up for the eyebrows, the ears longed to get to the nose. She had a puffy little bosom and a thick waist. Ned would not have looked at her twice. This woman was in some fantasy of her own. In twelve years Ned had only once disconcerted Alexandra, by yearning after Glenn Close, whom he admired for her intelligence and temperament as much as her looks.
‘You’re just back here to lay your greedy hands on what you can,’ spat Lucy Lint. ‘You don’t care about Ned. It breaks my heart.’
Alexandra kicked Lucy Lint’s shins hard. Lucy Lint hopped about and finally ran out of the kitchen door. Alexandra slammed it after her and locked it. Alexandra went to the phone and called Abbie.
‘Lucy Lint’s been here,’ said Alexandra. ‘Is she mad or what?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Abbie. ‘I’d better come over.’
‘Tell me now, on the phone,’ said Alexandra. But Abbie only repeated that she’d come over as soon as she could, with Arthur.
Alexandra inspected her house for traces of Lucy Lint, or others. She looked in the bathroom mirror, and for a second thought she saw Lucy Lint looking back at her, but it was just a trick of the light. She felt disloyal to Ned for checking up on him; like this, after his death.
‘You’re too bad, Ned,’ she said. ‘Whatever did you say to that dreadful deluded creature? There must have been something.’ But there was no reply from Ned. It wasn’t that she expected words – how could she? – rather a momentary joining, a fleeting acknowledgement, some brief touching of his spirit with hers. A laugh that ought to be shared: a dismissal of doubt; a dismissal of Lucy Lint. ‘Dire Lucy Lint, gone completely round the twist!’ Ned would have said, could have said.
Alexandra looked through cupboards, drawers, the kitchen shelves, the bathroom cabinet. She no longer knew what she was looking for. Everywhere familiar things, some worthless, some priceless, everything redolent of a present which had so unexpectedly turned into a past. Everywhere was Ned. She would have to remove so much – pack stuff up, burn somethings, give others away, in order to reclaim the present for herself, forget the future.
Abbie had cleaned up before she, Alexandra, arrived: she’d emptied ashtrays, run the dishwasher through, even changed the sheets. Why? Abbie’s nervous mind, she supposed. And where was Ned’s toothbrush? Missing. Hers was there, and Sascha’s, but not Ned’s. The tooth mug needed cleaning: tooth mugs always did.
She went into the bedroom and looked through Ned’s sock drawer and for the first time wept without worrying about her eyes. She even knuckled them and howled. Then she found a red suspender belt with black lace trimmings among the socks. Her own, she supposed. Except she couldn’t remember ever owning such a thing. Perhaps before she was married? She tried it on over her jeans. It was too big for her. Even so, she couldn’t fasten it behind her back: she had to tug the clasp round to the front to do it. A kind of trick fastening: you slipped one bit of plastic into another at an angle, then flattened it and it snapped to. Except she couldn’t do it
, even looking at it. She gave up and let the belt just fall to the floor. Wouldn’t you know how to fasten your own suspender belt? Not if it was years old, pre-marriage, pre-motherhood, in the stockings-and-suspender party days. You’d have forgotten. She supposed.
She looked under the bed: nothing: spick and span. There were the usual two suitcases there. They’d been dusted. Theresa the help had been away for the week in Spain. Theresa was seventeen and as many stone. Theresa had trouble vacuuming under the beds: she didn’t bend easily in her middle. Abbie must have done it. The carpet was a little damp, towards the window. Had it rained? Alexandra couldn’t remember. When the rain was from the west, fine and strong, water could creep into the room between window frame and window, forcing itself in along with the delicate new tendrils of Virginia creeper. Perhaps that was it. But when she’d been weeding the pansies the soil had been dry, dry, dry.
Alexandra had a sudden clear impression that Ned had died on the bed, not downstairs at all. That for some reason nobody had told her this. But that was absurd. Why would they lie? Perhaps they’d thought it would make her reluctant to sleep in her own bed? They were wrong. She wanted to be where Ned’s last breaths had been. Perhaps such breaths lingered in the air and she detected them. She lay down upon the coverlet and fell asleep. Diamond crept up the stairs and lay beside her.
The phone woke her. She went downstairs to answer it. There was no extension in the bedroom. It was the Daily Mail asking her how she felt. She put the phone down. It rang again. The caller was the assistant to a broadsheet’s theatre critic, saying she was sorry to disturb Alexandra at a time like this, but could the paper have advance notice of the funeral: they would be sending a photographer: such a great loss. Alexandra put the phone down.
