by Weldon, Fay
‘I didn’t know Ned had a local solicitor,’ said Alexandra, ‘let alone one called Sheldon Smythe. But I take your word for it.’
Hamish said he’d been named as executor in Ned’s will, now in Mr Smythe’s possession, which simplified matters. This surprised Alexandra, who seemed to remember that she and Ned had written out mutual wills, as married couples can, each leaving everything to the other, so what need was there of an executor?
Hamish said no doubt Sheldon Smythe, who had been Ned’s lawyer for a couple of years, would explain any anomalies at the meeting he had arranged for Tuesday, the day after the funeral. He hoped Alexandra would be feeling more of one piece by then: she would be required to attend.
He wanted Alexandra to make a comprehensive list of such friends and colleagues who would expect to be notified of the time, date and place of the funeral. Time was short: she should make use of the phone, and if necessary get friends to help out. Ned had been a popular man. Hamish, of course, lived a rather quiet life by comparison.
Alexandra said she’d imposed enough upon her friends, but Hamish called Abbie, introduced himself, and explained the problem. Abbie said she’d put her own life to one side and come round with a couple of students. They could work from Ned’s address book, if Alexandra was too upset to function.
‘Your brother-in-law is a cold fish and a bully,’ said Abbie to Alexandra when she came round. ‘Ned without charm.’
Alexandra said she didn’t care what Hamish’s failings were: he was alive, a Ludd, and functioning; she was grateful to him.
‘Are we asking Lucy Lint to the funeral?’ asked Abbie.
‘No, we are not,’ said Alexandra. ‘Are you mad?’
‘She’s mad,’ said Abbie. ‘And it might be safer to ask her than not. She’ll come anyway. If you invite her she’ll come in a good mood. If you don’t, God knows how she’ll behave or what she’ll say. And the media will be there.’
Alexandra said Lucy Lint came to Ned’s funeral over her dead body. Abbie laughed and said she hoped it didn’t come to that.
Hamish Ludd spent another four hours in Ned’s study going through Ned’s papers and making phone calls to Ned’s business colleagues. He arranged for Oxfam to come to collect such of Ned’s clothes as were recyclable, and for the waste collection to call to take away such as weren’t, on the Saturday. Alexandra was to do the sorting. He told her so when she brought him in some coffee. He sat at Ned’s desk and the light gleamed off his hair as it had off Ned’s. They both had good heads of hair, as had their father and grandfather before them. Scottish engineers, shipyard designers, in the days when there were shipyards.
‘I can’t do that,’ said Alexandra. ‘I can’t face making decisions. And Ned would be so angry. He collected everything: he hated throwing things away.’
‘The sooner it’s done the sooner you can restart your life,’ said Hamish. ‘Get it over. I take it you’ll want to stay in this house?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Alexandra, astonished. ‘It’s where I and Sascha live.’
‘You do have the apartment in London,’ said Hamish. ‘In Angliss Street. The one Ned owned with Chrissie. You do know about Chrissie?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Alexandra. ‘Ned’s first wife. We had to wait for the divorce to come through before we could marry. A dreadful, difficult woman. Why wouldn’t I know about her?’
‘You’re very touchy,’ said Hamish. ‘I don’t know what you do know, and what you don’t.’
‘I certainly knew about Chrissie,’ said Alexandra. ‘I had to live with all her things around me when I first moved in with Ned. In fact that’s one of the reasons we moved down here. Her spirit was everywhere in Angliss Street, ill-wishing us. It got better with time. I don’t even mind being on my own there, these days. I used to, at first.’
‘It was her house in the first place,’ observed Hamish. ‘Why should she go quietly?’
‘Ned bought her out,’ said Alexandra. ‘He was more than fair. They never loved each other. She trapped him into marriage, pretending to be pregnant.’
‘Oh yes, yes, yes,’ said Hamish. ‘All that. Perhaps she miscarried. And then you split the property, sold half at a vast profit, and kept the other half as your pied-à-terre. You know there was a still earlier marriage?’
‘That’s absurd,’ said Alexandra. ‘Ned may not have told me about Sheldon Smythe because it was simply too boring, but he would certainly have told me all about a marriage. In detail.’
But Hamish said she was mistaken. He had in his possession a letter from Ned dated August 1969, in which he asked his brother to break to their parents the fact that he’d got married. ’He was in Spain that summer,’ said Alexandra. ‘He went to Paris in 1968, when he was a student, and then went on round Europe.’
‘While dull old Hamish stayed behind,’ said Hamish, ‘and finished his degree. He wrote from Barcelona. Her name was Pilar.’
‘Perhaps I’d better see this letter,’ said Alexandra.
‘It’s at home in Edinburgh,’ said Hamish, and added that Ned often wrote to him when his life was in crisis.
‘I expect he did,’ said Alexandra. ‘He was a letter person, I was a telephone person.’
‘When Ned married Pilar, when he met Chrissie, when he met you, when he divorced Chrissie, when you had your boy. I have all those letters.’
‘Then you have something very special to remember him by, ’said Alexandra, politely. She could see she was under attack. Perhaps he’d been fond of Chrissie, whom she, Alexandra, had replaced. Such things happened. His eyes were red-rimmed. He had been crying. She felt inclined to forgive him. She asked if he’d ever met this Pilar, and he said no: there’d only ever been the one mention of her, in that particular letter, in August1969. Ned had returned from Spain on his own, in the summer of 1970.
‘I expect she existed in his head,’ said Alexandra, ‘and even on paper, just not in real life. Or perhaps he just wanted to frighten your parents.’
‘I always wondered,’ said Hamish. ‘Now we’ll never know.’ He remarked that in any case he’d found no documents relating to any such marriage or divorce amongst Ned’s papers, at least to date.
Alexandra said that might only mean he’d put them in a safe place and then forgotten where, as was his custom. But it could hardly matter now. It had happened, if it had happened, thirty years ago. Presumably Ned was legally married to Chrissie, or he wouldn’t have bothered to divorce her to enable him to marry Alexandra. She had been married legally, and widowed legally. She hardly imagined the law relating to marriage was like the law relating to antiques, in which it didn’t matter how many times a piece had been sold on: if it had been stolen possession reverted to the original owner. She, Alexandra, had an actor friend who bought a pair of Chinese vases in the Portobello Road for £5,000. He’d used them as props for his portrait in Hello!, they’d been recognised as stolen, and he’d had to return them. He ended up minus both vases and £5,000.
‘The penalty for vanity,’ said Hamish, primly. ‘The appetite for publicity to which all theatre people are prone. Your friend should have been more careful. And I believe the same principle does apply in matrimonial law. Any transaction consequent upon an illegal one is invalid.’
‘In that case,’ said Alexandra, ‘we had better be careful not to mention the mythical Pilar in legal circles in case they choose to grow rich at our expense.’
‘I can see,’ said Hamish, ‘that you would find a demotion from second to third wife disconcerting. At least a brother is a brother, and nothing can ever change that.’
‘It could certainly change,’ said Alexandra, ‘if your mother suddenly told you you’d been conceived outside the marriage. You’d become a half-brother overnight.’
Hamish smiled thinly and went back to his brother’s papers. Death, thought Alexandra, brings out the worst in everyone, and in this she included herself.
11
Theresa came back from holiday early. She had heard of Ned’s
death. She brought round a very solid potato and chicken pie as a gesture of condolence and reassurance, and wept quite a lot. Heavy tears fell down her wide, firm, young face. She had burned in the Majorcan sun: she was now bright pink. Grief did not help her complexion. She was very big, her waist as wide as Alexandra’s hips, but she had a train of youthful admirers, which she would swat away as if they were flies. She loved only Sascha, she said. Alexandra thanked Theresa for the pie and offers of help, but said she was OK on her own for a bit. Sascha wouldn’t be back until after the funeral. She would of course in the meantime pay Theresa her usual wages.
Hamish said, over supper, ‘I’m sorry we had our little tiff. We must both make allowances – I can see how upset you are. I never got to know you as well as I would have liked. Ned moved in circles so very different from mine. One makes assumptions about show-business people. You are very brave. And as lovely as your photographs. Just not very organised, and in need of help.’ He laid his hand upon her arm. For a moment she was startled, but it was a brotherly and consoling touch and she was appreciative. She was grateful that he’d recovered from his spasm of dislike for her, though she still had no idea what had triggered it. She was just glad he was there in the house. The place stayed quiet, and Diamond slept peacefully, without gasps and snorts of alarm.
Hamish went to bed at ten o’clock. He was tired, as he said, both physically and emotionally. Ned had been his only brother. Alexandra and Sascha were now his only family. His own had disintegrated. He was, he said, a typical product of the times: living alone, along with twenty-eight per cent of the population. He liked statistics.
It took Hamish an hour to get to bed. To wash, to think, to have a bath, to find soap; he borrowed Ned’s pyjamas, which Ned never wore. She could understand that. She’d been wearing one of Ned’s shirts all day. That would have to stop, she supposed. Hamish asked for a glass of water. She provided it. He had tucked himself up like a little boy. He looked after her pathetically, as if wanting a bedtime story.
When he had finally settled – worse than Sascha – Alexandra looked through Lucy’s address book. She found the address of an ‘L. Peacock’, in Clifton, Bristol. She looked up Peacock in the directory and found ‘Peacock, Leah’, and called the number. She counted the rings. Eight. Good. The woman was in bed.
‘Hello?’ enquired a soft, good-natured voice, though sleepy.
‘It’s Lucy,’ said Alexandra, using Lucy’s voice. ’I’m so unhappy.’
‘Lucy,’ said Leah, ‘don’t do this to me. I can bear some of your unhappiness, but not all of it.’
‘I loved him so much,’ said Alexandra/Lucy. ‘But he wasn’t mine to love.’
‘It’s the Whispering Guilt again, Lucy,’ said Leah. ‘Don’t listen to it. It means to fill your mind with poison. How many times have we talked about that? I want you to go to sleep. Now what is our sleep word?’
Alexandra put the phone down. She found a ‘Dave’ in the address book, but he turned out to be a plumber, annoyed at being disturbed. She used Lucy’s voice, gave Lucy’s address, and asked him to come round in the morning to fix a leak. Early if possible. She called Lucy Lint. It was some time before she answered. Good, again.
‘Who is it?’
‘This is Ned,’ Alexandra whispered. ‘From the other side.’
She called the second Dave in th ebook and got an answerphone. Dave Lint, Theatrical Lighting, freelance. He answered halfway through the message.
‘Hi,’ said Alexandra brightly. ‘This is Alexandra Ludd. I think we met once or twice, at parties. You’ve been up to The Cottage once or twice. And I think we once met at LymeRegis.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘It’s rather late. Do we have to talk now?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We do. I understand your wife suffers from unrequited love for my husband, now dead. That she’s been stalking him.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by unrequited,’ he said. ‘What was unrequited about it? Why do you think she and I aren’t together? I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry for you, but I don’t want you saying bad things about Lucy. She looked up to that bastard you married. He could talk her into anything. She believed everything he told her. I should have gone over and killed him myself; I always wanted to. She wouldn’t let me. How could you stand him, a woman like you?’
‘I loved him,’ said Alexandra.
‘And I love Lucy,’ he said.
He wept. Alexandra felt mystified. How could a man seriously be in love with dumpy little Lucy Lint?
‘I don’t want you to do anything nasty to her,’ said Dave. ’You’re a powerful woman. You could crush her, just like that. I’m not sorry your husband’s dead. I’m glad. He ruined my marriage.’
‘You don’t think,’ Alexandra asked, ‘that it’s all in your wife’s head? That she’s deluded? Obsessed? That what she tells you simply isn’t true? I don’t know what she’s told you but my impression is it’s all fantasy. I was calling you to ask her, for God’s sake, to lay off. My husband has just died. I can’t cope with your wife’s insanity as well. I want you to control her, keep her out of my way. People might even believe the dreadful things she’s saying. That Ned and she were having an affair.’
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ asked Dave Lint. ‘It’s really warped. Why are you pretending you didn’t know what was going on?’
‘Nothing was going on except what went on in your wife’s head,’ said Alexandra. ‘You’ve got to get her on some kind of medication and out of my hair.’
‘But they’d grope each other in front of you,’ said Dave Lint. ‘I saw them. You aren’t blind. You must have known. That was what turned them on. You and me having to watch them, having to imagine them together. She said it was her way of getting over it, I wasn’t to stop her. It made things worse. But why did you put up with it? Are you sick in the head or something?’
‘I never saw them grope each other,’ said Alexandra. ‘Ned always puts his arms around women. He was just being affectionate.’
‘Then they’d dance together,’ said Dave Lint, ‘and laugh together and look at you and me out of the corners of their eyes and their hands would be everywhere. And you were the one who sent our invitation out. “Dear Dave and Lucy, do come. Ned and I…” Through the letter box, down on to the mat: more torture. She’d agree you were a bitch to do it. I’d refuse to go; she’d put the pressure on: “Oh, Dave, oh, Dave, I love him so, let me get it out of my system. Then we’ll be together again.” So we’d go, and I’d see you watching –’
‘Ned always danced close to women,’ said Alexandra. ‘I never minded. I can’t even remember him dancing with Lucy. I’m sure you’re right and he did but I don’t remember. All this is in your head, Dave. She’s told you so many lies.’
‘Lucy doesn’t lie,’ said Dave. ‘Lucy never lies. You’re the one who’s mad, not Lucy. You’d go up to London knowing they’d be together. The moment you’d walk out the door she’d walk in. He died fucking her. He died fucking my wife. Too much excitement. Now leave me alone.’
He put the phone down. Alexandra went to bed. She slept in Sascha’s room. She wanted the smell of his soft child’s skin in her nostrils: next best thing to having his real presence. Abbie hadn’t washed the sheets on Sascha’s bed, thank God. It wasn’t so much a sleep as a passing-out, unconsciousness forced on her mind.
She woke with the phrase in her head, ‘When you walked out she walked in.’ Madness. Cold crept round the edges of Sascha’s small quilt. She went back to her own bed, and for a moment thought she could feel Ned’s warm presence, but it was only Diamond, who had somehow got upstairs again. She did not push him off the bed. Anything warm and alive would do.
12
In the morning, Alexandra called Abbie, and asked Abbie exactly where the body had lain when she found it. She’d assumed it was between the table and the window, but on no real grounds, she could now see. Abbie said Alexandra should try to forget this kind of detail:
wasn’t it better to be vague about the matter, especially since presumably Alexandra would go on living in The Cottage with Sascha and there was no question of selling? Though, if Alexandra did, Abbie and Arthur would be interested in buying: they might sell Elder House and give up the language school altogether: if she, Abbie, turned her back for a moment all hell broke loose. But Alexandra must not, must not, believe Abbie begrudged Alexandra a moment of her, Abbie’s, stay at The Cottage after Ned’s death; it was the least she could do for her friend. She shouldn’t even have mentioned ‘grudge’: of course it wasn’t in her head. Consider that last unsaid, cancel, cancel. Only five days since the death but it seemed like years.
‘Why should someone die of a heart attack?’ asked Alexandra. ‘Just like that? Wouldn’t something have to happen to set it off?’
Abbie said she didn’t know. There was hardly anything death-inducing in the first ten minutes of Casablanca. She repeated that Alexandra should stop brooding over the detail, forget the past, and get on with living. Had she had any more trouble with Lucy Lint? Alexandra said she hadn’t. Abbie said she thought Alexandra should return the address book and diary: otherwise Lucy Lint might get yet more obsessive and send in the police. What, as a matter of interest, was in the books?
‘Nothing much,’ said Alexandra. ‘What you would expect from someone with such a little life?’
There was a short silence and then Abbie said, ‘You shouldn’t talk about people like that, Alexandra. As if you were something special but they were nothing. I can see people could get infuriated.’
Alexandra was hurt. She supposed that if you didn’t have a husband to add a kind of veracity to your life, to bolster up your opinions – well, opinions that you and your husband shared; a general world-outlook, as it were, acquired over time – you might well find yourself under attack. She and Ned together were entitled to a general superiority, an assumption of centrality in relation to those around, but on her own it was a different matter.
