The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  They quizzed me on his appearance. This yielded more suggestions, more dead ends.

  ‘You’re hopeless, my dear,’ Mrs Van Hopper said. ‘There you were, right in the centre of it all, and you noticed nothing. No wonder writing comes so hard to you. Don’t tell me you were reading, or, God forbid, knitting?’

  ‘Aha, oho,’ said Marco. ‘Mademoiselle LeFarge.’

  I did not join them in their laughter.

  ‘You’re beginning to annoy me,’ Mrs Van Hopper now said. ‘I don’t like you peering over my shoulder unless you have a useful suggestion, and judging from our last chess game, I can’t imagine that you have. Why don’t you run along and do whatever it is you do when you’re off duty.’

  ‘Do you have a lover?’ Marco asked.

  ‘If she has, she’s certainly done a brilliant cover-up,’ said Mrs Van Hopper. ‘Run along now! Be back at five.’

  During the two months I had been in Deia, I had written eight first chapters and thrown away seven of them. Now that I had one I could live with, I was gathering up my nerve for a second chapter. I had thought to spend the afternoon sketching and gathering my thoughts, but the sun grew too hot, the cicadas too loud, the smell of thyme too much like dust. I convinced myself I wasn’t ready yet. So I gathered up my things and walked down the steep, winding path to the cala.

  Although it was neither a Sunday nor a holiday, the little restaurant was packed. Only one chair remained, at the end of a long table occupied by acquaintances of Mrs Van Hopper. One of the men – a Macedonian playwright – waved at me to join the group. I sat down, somewhat tentatively, but already he had forgotten me and returned to a discussion with the young woman sitting opposite him. I recognised her as the one from the previous evening, the one with the blue hat. She was looking the worse for wear today: her slightly popping eyes were bloodshot, and she was catching her breath as if she had only just stopped crying. The Macedonian playwright seemed to be trying to distract her from her distress with a general topic. It was, I recall, on the subject of love declarations. Anyone who came out and said ‘I love you’ was by definition a liar. It was, he said, like Nixon saying, ‘I am not a crook.’ I remember trying to look intrigued by this conversation because no one else at the table acknowledged my presence.

  The other people at the table all had that blend of uniformity and uniqueness that people so often mistake for social poise. Bronzed, relaxed, smiling broadly as if in memory of the world’s best joke, they wore their odd, colourful clothes carelessly and their distinctions like necklaces. Although I had talked to very few of them, I knew their labels: the beautiful young woman between the playwright and the tearful blue hat was the daughter of a German poet; she lived in Paris with her young son. The Latin American painter sitting opposite – the child’s father – spent the summers with her and the winters with his real family in New York. His wife, a literary agent, was also at the table, along with her new lover, a young Australian who had been living in Deia for three or four years and, until now, supporting himself as a carpenter. Sitting at my end of the table was an American psychoanalyst who had retired on a pittance after a scandal and bought a big villa here after his war-profiteer father left him a few million; a Canadian writer who had settled in Paris after the war and squandered his fortune on a string of expensive wives; a journalist from London and his wife, who was from Senegal; a Portuguese Buddhist; a shoe designer from Madrid; an Italian film director; and a man who was said to be a member of the Spanish cabinet. The conversation flowed from French into Spanish into English into Italian and back into French; when the waiter passed by, the younger members of the group would break into Mallorquin.

  I didn’t dare move. With the usual paranoia of the insignificant, I had convinced myself that if I did they would suddenly notice me and ask me why I was there. It was only with the greatest willpower that I managed to eat my salad: I was sure they could hear the lettuce crunching. I was afraid to eat the olives because I wasn’t sure what to do with the pits. As I gathered my things and crept off to settle my bill, I gave myself a lecture. I was not being ostracised. It was all in my head. After all, wasn’t that the film star Michael Douglas standing with his son on that outcropping of rocks? He had arrived several minutes earlier by motorboat. My table wasn’t paying any more attention to him than it was to me.

  The lecture didn’t work. The only space I could find on the beach was just beneath the restaurant. There were, I was convinced, too many eyes on me for me to follow the custom and sunbathe topless, but as I lay there overcovered, I began to imagine that my audience was mocking me for my lack of nerve. I had been meaning to get some thinking done before I took my swim, or, failing that, at least some reading, but I could not concentrate, could not bear the groundless doubts that crowded my brain, and so I made my way over the seaweed-covered stones to the dock and slipped into the water.

  It was a third of a mile out to the point. Beyond were a series of protected pools and hidden coves known as the Naked and the Dead. It was here, crouching on one of the tiny bars of sand, that I found Max.

  ‘Oh, good,’ he said, looking up with a pleased smile. ‘It’s Not the Night Nurse.’

  ‘I hope I didn’t get you into too much trouble,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you did, but you mustn’t apologise. As my hostess told me only this morning, I’ve always had a nose for it.’

  ‘I should have stayed,’ I said. ‘Either that or been more assertive.’

  ‘Assertive. Hmm. I assume you mean you ought not to have let Lydia treat you like a doormat. Not to worry. Lydia treats all of us like doormats, and she still treats me like a twenty-year-old doormat. Gregory was my tutor, you see. Come out of the water. You could use some sun.’

  I found myself a natural chair in the rocks.

  ‘I’m going back there for the party tonight, and then I hope that will be it,’ he continued after I had made myself comfortable. ‘I can’t take another day of it. It was bad enough when he was a healthy man, but now … well, you saw for yourself what she’s turned him into. Although I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t the curse of – the price you pay for being too well known.’ He picked up a handful of stones. ‘He never admitted it, but he must be very disappointed in his children. Do you have children?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Married?’

  ‘He died.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I oughtn’t to have asked.’

  ‘He slit his wrists,’ I offered. ‘He was a writer, too. He had the opposite problem. He was afraid of being forgotten.’

  I almost went on, but then I stopped myself, shocked at my own words. In the six months since it had happened, I hadn’t talked about it with anybody who didn’t already know the details. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘That sounded callous.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ my companion asked.

  ‘That flip remark about his problem.’

  ‘I don’t think you meant it as a flip remark. In any event,’ he added, his voice suddenly hoarse, ‘that’s not how I took it.’

  I opened my mouth to change the subject, but I couldn’t. ‘I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to die,’ I now found myself saying. ‘He had done it before. But this time, the thing was we weren’t living together any more. I had moved in with a friend. He had been playing games, you know what I mean, I’m sure, upping the ante to get me back, so I didn’t take the warning signs seriously.’ I paused, then added, for no reason at all, ‘His name was Sasha.’

  ‘Had you been together long?’

  ‘Too long,’ I said. ‘You see, he was my stepbrother.’

  ‘Ah.’ His tan was not deep enough to conceal the fact that he was blushing. It was almost as if he was too embarrassed to ask me to stop. And so I left it hanging. There was a long silence. I wondered what had possessed me to reduce my ragged tragedy into an anecdote.

  I watched him grimace at the rocks. ‘Why exactly are you telling me this?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure.’


  ‘I suppose you want me to tell you that I understand?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not really. If I don’t understand, then why should you?’

  He winced, as if I had slapped him. There was another long silence. Then, suddenly, he managed to recompose himself. ‘I think we should change the subject,’ he said. He pointed at a pile of tiny shells. ‘Those are for my children.’

  ‘How many do you have?’ I asked.

  He looked at me sharply and, after a pause, said, ‘Two, a girl and a boy.’

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘With their aunt in Italy, which is a shame, because I think they’d be happier here.’

  ‘Then why aren’t they?’

  ‘Because my aunt had other ideas. She’s a bit like Lydia, only much, much nicer. She decided I needed some time on my own, although I suspect what she really wanted was to get me out of the way so that she could have them to herself. And then there was this profile I had to do – of Gregory – although God only knows what I’m going to say now. I’d rather not think about it today. The deadline’s not until the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you work for a newspaper?’ I asked.

  He gave me another sharp look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What does it mean to work for a newspaper in a manner of speaking?’ I asked.

  He looked at me quizzically and then broke into a smile, a smile so happy, so appreciative that I still return to the memory whenever I need to remind myself that his face is – or was once – capable of registering pleasure. ‘You honestly don’t know, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Honestly don’t know what?’

  Laughing, he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Then, letting it go, but still beaming, he said, ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s been a very long time. To return to your question, I work for a newspaper part of the week. I do their book page.’

  ‘And the rest of the week?’

  ‘I stay at home and write. And try to steal time alone with my children. Speaking of whom, I notice you’re wearing a money belt. Would you mind if I asked you to carry my shells?’

  I said I would take as many as I could.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ he said. ‘You won’t mind, will you, if I swim on ahead? I like going fast, or rather, I have never been able to swim slowly. I’ll wait for you in the restaurant. I’ll order us up a couple of coffees.’

  This time, when I walked into the restaurant and over to the small table where Max was waiting for me, I did have an audience. The same in-group that had ignored me at lunchtime was now taking turns to study us with surreptitious glances. By now he had told me he was a poet who also wrote novels and biographies; I gathered from the interest he was provoking that he was a well-known poet. I didn’t read poetry any more. Or biographies. Or novels written by English men. As I didn’t wish to advertise these facts, I didn’t ask him for his name.

  And so, in trying to save face, I failed to save him from Mrs Van Hopper.

  It was in the café in town, after supper, that same night. He came in with a group of people I recognised from the Forbidden Villa. When he caught sight of me, he interrupted the man who had been talking to him, made his apologies, and came over to our table.

  Mrs Van Hopper’s face turned purple with excitement when he asked to join us. ‘Oh, do, do, do,’ she said. ‘Please. Our pleasure.’

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ said Max, but before he could continue, Mrs Van Hopper interrupted him.

  ‘We’ve met before,’ she said. ‘But years ago, you probably won’t remember. A lunch party, at our mutual friends the Oswalds’. On their yacht. In that darling bay next to that hotel of your father’s. Rebecca was quite uncomfortable, as I recall. She was eight months pregnant.’

  Max stared at the table in front of him and said nothing.

  ‘I suppose you don’t see the Oswalds any more,’ Mrs Van Hopper persisted. ‘Not after that dreadful book. And quite right, too, if you ask me. We were all appalled, I assure you, and no one so much so as yours truly. Such disloyalty! I hope you don’t think it impertinent, but we can’t understand why you didn’t sue.’

  ‘I have no interest in what you think,’ said Max as he rose to his feet abruptly. ‘And I find your remarks vulgar and very rude.’ Turning to me, he said, ‘I‘m sorry, but ‘I’m going to have to leave. I hope you’ll forgive me.’

  With that, he was off. ‘Well, well, well,’ chuckled Mrs Van Hopper as her eyes followed him into the bar. ‘Who would have imagined? I suppose you’re going to tell me that this is your mystery house guest. Now, honestly! You can’t tell me you don’t know what he is.’

  ‘I know what he is. He’s a poet. He told me.’

  ‘Yes, dear, but he’s not just any poet. He’s Mad Max, you silly girl.’

  Mad Max. He was Mad Max. As the full horror of this news registered, I felt my face grow hot. How could I have failed to work that out? How well I had blinded myself! How badly I had repaid him for his kindness!

  Misunderstanding my paralysis, Mrs Van Hopper continued. ‘You must have heard the story. Even in Kansas City, the name Max Midwinter must ring bells. Not, by any stretch of the imagination, for his own slim volumes, but as God’s gift to feminism. As the man who turned his lovely wife from a minor literary light into an international martyr by inducing her to take her own life.’

  From my place at the table, I could see Max’s back as he stood, alone, stiff and unprotected, at the bar. Now I turned my chair so that I wouldn’t have to face him if he turned around. I didn’t want to have to face him ever again. I wanted to run, run and run, far away from Mrs Van Hopper, the Forbidden Villa and all my mistakes.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, in as steady a voice as I could manage, ‘actually, it wasn’t suicide. If my memory serves me, she drowned.’

  Chapter Four

  In my wrong-headed way, I had been right. I had seen this man before. But I hadn’t paid attention to him. He was not the star that evening. The star was Rebecca.

  I was still a student at the time. It was 1972, the year Sasha and I had spent in London. We had come up to Oxford for the weekend to visit a classmate who was a Rhodes scholar. He had taken us to a poetry marathon at the Oxford Union. The pretext was to raise money for a disaster fund – I forget which. The challenge, as far as the participants were concerned, seemed to be to get to the end of your poem without being jeered down by the spectators.

  The quality of the poetry was more or less what you would expect from a privileged, overeducated group of twenty-year-olds. Predictable irony, conventional surrealism, crude radical politics dressed up in foreign four-syllable words. Derivative anger from the women; desperate but, because unsuccessful, endearing macho posturing from the men. Their looks were far more impressive than their words. Despite their torn jeans, leather jackets and wild hair, they reminded me of angels. Despite their beautiful voices, they were brought down one after the other by their hecklers. These were far wittier and more original than the performers. Until they found their match in Rebecca.

  At first it looked as if they weren’t going to give her a chance to say a word. The jeering and foot stomping began before she even reached the podium, but she seemed to welcome it, or rather, she responded to it as though she were walking down a catwalk to applause. She was wearing a long red knit dress, a black suede hip belt, black suede boots and a black suede handbag with a fringe at the bottom. Her hair in those days was longer and curlier than in her best-known photograph, but she had drawn it away from her face for this occasion with a thick tartan ribbon.

  Her face was softer then, the famous cheekbones still concealed by the last of her puppy fat. She had not yet acquired her haunted inward gaze; her eyes were happy, open, interested. She appeared to have no sense of self at that moment, giving her full attention to the taunts coming from the audience. When she propped her elbows on the podium, it was with the expectant smile of someone who hopes to be amused. The worse t
he insults became, the more responsive her eyes, the more appreciative her silent laughter. It was as if she were sitting in a seminar, listening to a brilliant wit make some very naughty remarks at the expense of Virginia Woolf.

  How long this went on, I cannot say. Ten minutes, maybe even fifteen. Until the hecklers were running out of originality. Then, with the same detached confidence – as if she were sitting on a bus, lost in thought – she began to rummage through her handbag, eventually retrieving a lighter and a packet of Lucky Strikes. She lit up, looked up towards a far corner of the ceiling while she took a long drag, and then screwed up her face, as if considering a nagging mathematical paradox. When the crowd fell silent, she looked up sharply. She turned to us as artlessly as if we were not an audience at all, but a friend sitting on the other side of a restaurant table, and said, in a loud, clear but confiding Texas twang:

  ‘The understanding open wide like an eye towards truth in God, towards light, is confronted by that act of its own that blotted out God and so put blackness in the place of light. Against these acts of its own the lost spirit dashes itself like a caged bear and is in prison, violently instresses them and burns, stares into them and is the deeper darkened.’

  She took another drag from her cigarette, wrinkled her forehead again, and said, ‘Everything that is threatened by time secretes falsehood in order not to die, and in proportion to the danger it is in of dying. That is why there is not any love of truth without unconditional acceptance of death. But it takes so long to become young, doesn’t it? Courage faces fear and thereby conquers it, but where does that leave me? I don’t need to tell any of you furious little swots that my words are not my own but come to you through me courtesy of Hopkins, Weil, Picasso and Martin Luther King. I am suffering from the modern disease. I have lost the capacity to think for myself.’ She paused for effect and then she said, in a mock heroic whisper that carried better than any shout, ‘I have been smothered by the best minds of my generation.’

  It was the early version of her inversion of Allen Ginsberg. She delivered it as if she were making it up on the spot, even the infamous Women’s Catalogue of Unfeminine Graffiti. Every line was more outrageous than the one before, but no matter how funny she was, no matter how wicked her litany of trivia became, she never lost her seriousness of purpose. She never courted the audience – she didn’t have to, she has us as willing captives. She dared to go to the centre of things while the rest of us dithered on the periphery – what took our breath away that night was not just her nerve, but her sense of direction.