by Weldon, Fay
‘Only a joke,’ said Vilna. ‘You English have no sense of humour. What can one do but laugh?’
Abbie didn’t reply and they drove to the funeral in silence, broken only by Vilna’s directions as she followed the map drawn and distributed by Hamish; it was not noticeably to scale, in spite of Hamish’s reputation for precision.
‘Lucy told me everything,’ said Vilna, as they turned into the crematorium gates. ‘Now she is back with her husband, she is glad that Ned died on you and not on her.’
‘Lucy is a hopeless witness,’ said Abbie eventually, ‘about everything.’ It was going to be a popular funeral. Most of the parking spaces were already gone, and they were half an hour early.
‘She is,’ said Vilna, ‘and of course I shall say so to anyone who asks. I shall say that Lucy is too full of emotion to tell fact from fiction. That’s what I will say. Friendship is important, no? Even in this hopeless land? And we are friends, you and I, are we not?’
Abbie could see that this was going to have to be the case from now on. There could be no cutting Vilna; Vilna would have to be asked to the Hunt Ball – for which she, Abbie, more or less controlled the invitation list. Where she, Abbie, went – to a private view at a morgue, to a Private View at an art show, to a charity performance in the local stately home, to lunch at the Priory with the monks – Vilna would have to come along. She would be accepted into society, however local, however boring. That was to be Vilna’s price for secrecy, for helping to deny all to Arthur, just as looking after Sascha was the price Alexandra would charge. Abbie laid her hand on Vilna’s knee. It was not too high or unendurable a price.
‘We’re friends,’ she said. ‘Of course we are.’
Crowds gathered outside the chapel. Friends, relatives, hangers-on, the invited and the uninvited. The press were there: sudden flashes from unseen cameras; tiny tape recorders in hiding hands. Unobtrusive. ‘We do not wish to intrude into private grief – but –’ Theatre people, publishers, agents; the Preservation of Ancient Rights, Ancient Roads, Ancient Graveyards Committee people, quango people – Ned’s work on the Performing Arts panel: Ibsen people, Norwegian people. A man in his time can play many parts. People whom Ned had savaged in reviews; crocodile-tear people. Music people; ancient-instrument people. Inland Revenue people, incognito. Antique dealers, junk dealers. Actors of both sexes. All sexes. People from the Central Hospital for Venereal Diseases (Ned had organised a charity show). The chapel filled. There was no room inside for more. The doors were closed once the coffin was in. Loudspeakers were quickly rigged for those outside. The service was broadcast to the air, to the trees, to the circling birds, to other mourners altogether. For All the Saints, Lord of the Dance. An extract from The Master Builder. Hamish had decided well. Short speeches from friends.
Then ‘Sailing By’ as the coffin slipped in between the parted curtains, into the flaming furnace which by implication waited, but in fact did not. The actual burning of corpses was done in two sessions a week; but of course one body at a time, to keep the ashes separate. So it was claimed. No one, by tradition, believed it. Otherwise the weight of the ashes was too heavy a burden for the bereaved to bear.
‘Sailing By’ – a liquid, silly tune, played every half past midnight as the national radio station closed down, and had been since the beginning of radio time. An apology for silence, a sweetly soporific melody to rock you to sleep, to drive out thoughts of revolution, to drown protest with nostalgia. As common as the cinema organ is common: second-rate as a plagiarism must be second-rate, a sound to induce a groan in a musician and a sigh in the sentimental. Alexandra’s choice. Hamish had begged her: at least some intervention, some contribution, please! You were his wife: don’t leave all this to me, his brother. There was some consternation among the guests, a giggle or two, nervous: but the tune had its merits, the association soothed. Cremations were always like this. They lacked the solemnity of a graveside burial. There was always something tacky, mass-market, about them. But it was a good funeral, everyone agreed. And a memorial service still to come. Alexandra? Where was Alexandra? The press wanted to know. ‘Over there,’ her friends said, pointing. ‘Over there.’ But she wasn’t.
Lucy Lint was there, dressed in scarlet (as Leah advised), weeping and wailing, copiously, next to the aisle in the front pew.
Leah was there, dressed in pure white; a thinner version of Lucy. Dave Lint was present; his wife had insisted. But he stayed outside the chapel. Abbie was there, and Vilna, and Arthur. Dr Moebius was there, and of course Hamish. Daisy Longriff was there, crying softly and leaning on colleagues from the theatre. Dressed in black from tip to toe; stretch fabric over her beautiful bosom, vinyl elsewhere. The press took many photographs. Daisy posed all over the place; before, after and even during the ceremony.
The postman was there. He was wearing Ned’s shoes, beautifully polished. So was Mr Quatrop there, and Mr and Mrs Paddle from the stationer’s shop. Chrissie was there, and Hamish embraced her.
Those who knew this or that glanced at one another, raised an eyebrow, or looked carefully away, and were pleased enough that Alexandra wasn’t there: the whole event was embarrassing enough without the burden of her presence.
Irene wasn’t there.
Theresa wasn’t there.
All kinds of others weren’t there. The world went on. Alexandra, concerned with its continued turning, was in London seeing the casting director about the possibility of playing opposite Michael Douglas in his new film. He offered her the part, but she felt she had to decline. She couldn’t take her child to Hollywood, not at such a juncture in his life. Her home and her life were here in England. But it was nice to be asked.
On the evening of the day Alexandra missed Ned’s funeral, she went to see Daisy Longriff in A Doll’s House. The theatre was not dark, after all. She needed diversion. And she wanted her part back.
She supposed that Ned still maintained a corporeal presence on this earth. His body now lay on some other slab or trolley, still waiting for the furnace. The open season for viewing was over, that was all that had changed. No one would bother to keep the beret on over his split skull. Should his eyes fly open, no one would cover them. Appearances need no longer be preserved. With every day that passed he would, she felt, mind less. Nor would she know when the body was consumed by fire and turned to ashes. It scarcely mattered. Ned had left it long ago, in any case, was still trudging up the mountainside, through the grim forest. She suspected that without her blessing he would trudge for ever. Serve him right for not looking back.
Alexandra arrived at the theatre at seven o’clock. Performances started at eight, instead of seven-forty-five. Alexandra had missed only eight performances. In her absence management had been busy. There was someone new at the box office – a bad-tempered, middle-aged woman with a fleshy face and permed hair – who made her pay for her ticket, saying, ‘Alexandra who?’ and flicking through envelopes in order to be able to say in triumph, ‘Nothing here,’ deaf to Alexandra’s protests that there wouldn’t be anyway. It was true that Alexandra had arrived at the theatre without warning, but she took the unpleasantness as a bad omen. She had planned another four weeks’ absence, which would give herself and Sascha time to settle to a life without Ned. But if you could be so forgotten in eight days, forcibly retired to the country as a ‘serious’ actor–in other words worthy, dull and about to be given an OBE–what could not happen in four weeks?
There were already new red stickers plastered over the original tasteful stickers, which had been, all agreed, unspeakably dreary in classic greys, blacks and duns. ‘Daisy Longriff now as Nora’, and fresh quotes from critics, ‘Daisy Longriff’s Tarantella – the sexiest lead in town’ now hid ‘Alexandra Ludd’s Nora – a searing performance’ and ‘a Nora to remember, moving and powerful’.
Alexandra went back to the box office and asked what the advance bookings were like, but the woman with the permed hair did not seem to hear. I don’t exist, thought Alexandra. Ned ha
s taken me with him. Propelled on his penis, flying through the air, both of us dissolved into nothingness. It was strange that his prick seemed the only substantial thing of either of them which remained: that piece of flesh and muscle, that original source of warmth, still had enough power to transport her. Another pun, she thought, and fainted.
Sam the front-of-house manager helped her up and took her to his office. He had straight yellow hair and round glasses: he was a dead ringer for David Hockney.
‘Oh,’ said the woman from the box office. ‘Alexandra Ludd. Why didn’t you say?’
Sam seemed put out that Alexandra had not been to Ned’s funeral. He was sure she would regret it.
‘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 Lucy Lint, 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 rearranged, 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 Lucy Lint 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 Lucy Lint 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.
33
Alexandra laughed so hard, in fact, she 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 therein 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 Lucy and Dave Lint sitting with their backs to the wall, holding hands. Again, she declined to show her surprise.
‘Something funny?’ asked Lucy. ‘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 Lucy Lint here?’ asked Alexandra, to the company in general.
‘Mrs Lint 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 Lucy Lint.
