The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  She put her hand on my shoulder, pasting a smile on her face that did not match the urgency of her voice. ‘You’d be far better off, you know, coming to stay in London with me. Why don’t you hop on a bus after the clinic? Instead of sitting here in Oxford under siege, we could go out to supper and have a jolly time. God only knows I’ll need some cheering up after an afternoon with old Ben. I can’t tell you how offputting it is when a man you would have died for turns into the village idiot.’ As she lit up a cigarette, she laughed. When I didn’t join in, she went silent, then took a long and thoughtful drag. ‘You don’t trust me, do you?’

  ‘Not a hundred per cent, no.’

  She gave a little snort. ‘But you trust Danny?’

  ‘Not entirely, no. It’s more that I understand her point of view.’

  In a hard voice, Bea said, ‘Do you honestly think she isn’t in it for the money?’

  ‘If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s her altruism.’

  Bea stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Well then, suit yourself. If there isn’t anything else you’re dying to tell me, would you mind getting out of my car? Sorry to be rude, but they need me in court.’

  ‘I hope it all goes well,’ I forced myself to say. ‘And don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.’ But even as I got out of the car and waved Bea goodbye, I knew I would not be.

  When you lose your bearings, you’re the last to know. You think the world has changed while you’ve stayed the same. Then something happens that refuses to bend with the lie. For me, on this occasion, it was walking into a building I had always disliked and dreaded visiting, and, for no apparent reason, no longer disliking it. And I knew that was wrong.

  Even as it flooded through me, I knew I should not have felt such relief to escape into a lobby of preoccupied strangers. The notice boards ought to have depressed, not comforted me. The arrangement of plastic chairs in the waiting room ought to have looked coldly rather than alluringly impersonal. I ought to have deplored the fact that the coffee from the canteen was expensive but tasted like dishwater. Just as I ought to have been saddened by the briskness with which the sister on duty stared right through me.

  Instead I was thankful to be nothing more than a name and a number to her. To know that the consultant – unless he had very, very good manners – did not recognise my name either and so would have forgotten me by lunchtime. That he sent me on for a blood test not out of kindness or a sense of family duty or because he knew it would make a loyal ally out of me but because he sent all his patients on for blood tests. Because it was his job.

  I felt all this, and at the same time, I knew what it meant. Only a marked person sees salvation in anonymity. But even the hospital wasn’t safe, because they were all there, all the papers with the headlines announcing that Rebecca had spoken from the grave, implying that Max’s second wife was as crazy as the first, if not quite as talented or flamboyant. I could feel my face grow hot as I passed them. Why hadn’t anyone told me about what was going on in court? Why were they all intent on attributing to me motives I didn’t have, on missing the point? Why were they all twisting my words, using my words out of context to make the whole country laugh?

  ‘Beckfield?’ said the driver when I got into my taxi. ‘Well, I hope it’s not the far side, love, because the road’s virtually blocked, I’m told, because of that poet’s as murdered his wife.’ I got out at Home Farm and took the back way into the house.

  When I opened the front door and heard scampering footsteps, my first thought was that I had an intruder. But it turned out to be Janet. She put me into bed with a cup of tea, sat down and made up a shopping list, which she promised to get to me by three. I dozed off.

  I woke up, not knowing what time it was, and for a moment unable even to remember where I was. I must have stared at the magnolia tree outside the window for thirty seconds before I realised it was my magnolia tree. When I heard someone pottering about the kitchen, I thought it was Janet again. But then I heard Danny, talking to someone. I got up, put on my slippers and my robe, and went out to the kitchen.

  The moment Danny saw me, she threw her arms around me. ‘Oh, you poor, poor dear! How brave you were last night! Have they been beastly to you? I came up as soon as I could. Are you all right?’

  I looked into the hatch and saw that the person Danny had been speaking to was Jack Scully.

  He had a glass of neat whisky in front of him and was struggling to get ice cubes out of an ice tray. ‘I thought you were American,’ he said to me.

  ‘I am American,’ I replied.

  ‘OK, so then tell me, what made you give up on the idea of ice?’

  ‘I haven’t. It’s just that—’

  ‘How old is this stuff?’

  ‘I have no idea. To be honest, I don’t even recognise it.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’ He handed the tray back to Danny.

  ‘What do you want me to do with it?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Jack said. ‘Donate it to the Ashmolean.’ He laughed at his own joke. Then he beamed at me. So did Danny.

  ‘I suppose this looks rather odd,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ I said. I looked at Jack. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘The sixty-four-thousand dollar question, really,’ he said, ‘is what you’re doing here.’ He knocked back his whisky without taking his eyes off me. Handing the glass back to Danny, he said, ‘You wouldn’t mind pouring me another, would you?’

  ‘Not at all, my dear,’ she said. ‘So long as you promise to let me drive.’

  ‘No, honestly, that’s fine by me. I wanted to die today anyway.’ He turned to me again. ‘You were asking what I was doing here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, actually, I don’t know if you’re going to believe me, but it was Danny’s idea. She thinks you’re in danger.’

  ‘That’s what everyone thinks,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t explain why you’re here.’

  ‘I’m certainly not going to be here long if that’s your attitude.’ He turned to Danny. ‘I thought you said you told her.’

  ‘Well,’ said Danny. ‘Not in so many words.’

  He slammed his drink down. ‘Then why the hell did you put my whole future at risk by dragging me out here?’

  ‘Jack, darling—’

  ‘Don’t you Jack-darling me, you airhead! Whose side are you on anyway? I mean, look at those people out there.’ He pointed at the huddle of men, women and cameras milling outside Danny’s cottage. ‘Do you realise what they’d do if they knew I was in here? For all I know, maybe they do know already. I’m beginning to think I’ve walked into a trap.’

  Danny put her hands on her mouth. ‘How can you say such a thing? How can you so much as think it?’

  ‘You told me she was willing to talk.’

  ‘No, Jack, darling. I said that if we both sat down with her and explained how she was in danger and why, she would—’

  ‘Warning bells!’ Jack said with barely suppressed hysteria. ‘I hear warning bells!’ He headed for the back door. When Danny tried to block his way, he pushed her aside. Through the window I watched her chase him through the walled garden.

  I followed them out more slowly; I could no longer walk at my usual pace. I got to the courtyard of Home Farm just in time to see the back of Danny’s car indicating a right turn towards Oxford. Jasper the dog was poised mournfully at the back window.

  A group of the press people walked down the road to join me. ‘As usual, you’re just a few seconds too late,’ I said. I went back to the house the front way, through questions and cameras. When I remembered that I hadn’t brushed my hair, I made an extra effort to look dignified.

  It was dark when Danny rang from a call box to apologise. ‘I’m afraid I can’t explain everything right now,’ she said, ‘but I’m ringing to say you must take great care. Above all, you must not on any account let Max into the house.’

  ‘Why would he even bother to try?’ I as
ked.

  Before she could answer, her money ran out. When the phone rang a few seconds later, I thought it was Danny again. Instead I got ten seconds of silence and a dialling tone.

  The phone rang again. This time it was a woman asking for Harry. When I said I didn’t know anyone called Harry, she accused me of being a liar. I hung up. She rang again. I took the phone off the hook, and then the phone in Rebecca’s study began to ring. I put my phone back on the hook, and the phone upstairs stopped. A few seconds later, my phone began to ring again. I picked it up and it was a man this time. ‘Don’t make a deal with them before speaking to us,’ he said. I said I didn’t know what he was talking about and he laughed and said, That’ll be the day.’ I took the phone off the hook again and tried to convince myself there was no real danger.

  The only danger was that I would get sucked into other people’s fears. The best way to avoid that was to stay busy. Keep the light on. Have the radio playing and the television on at the same time. Check the windows, draw the curtains, check the phone to make sure it still had a dialling tone, push a chest out to block the front door.

  I was not up all night listening for noises. There was just one bad patch between one and two when I could hear something – it could have been one of the people from the road, but it was probably just a dog – rustling in the bushes under a window. What decided me was a package from an old college friend that arrived the following morning.

  I had lost touch with her four or five addresses ago. She had heard about my sudden change of fortune from another friend who had bumped into Mrs Van Hopper who had been through London and heard the gossip. In a cheerful, guileless way that seemed to sum up everything I had once loved and hated about this friend, she wrote how very proud she was to have someone she knew hit the headlines. ‘I feel like you’ve put us on the map.’

  Her first postscript read, ‘Congratulations on making it!’ Her second postscript read, ‘I’m sending you a book that I found very comforting when I went through something similar two years ago.’ The title of the book was The Dilemma of the Alcoholic Marriage, and it made me want to cry. I looked out the window, at all those people and cameras that were trying to look in, and I looked around me, at these walls that could keep nothing out, and I went upstairs and packed my bag.

  I did not take everything – just my photographs, my manuscripts, my sumak and the three maternity dresses I owned that had not belonged to Rebecca. I knew that if I took more, my audience in the road would put two and two together. I took the car back to the hospital and then called a taxi, which I had stop at the bank on the way to the bus station. I did not take out a huge amount of money, only enough to cover a ticket home. Home being any point on the other side of the Atlantic. That was all I could say about home by then, that it would never be on this side.

  When I got to Heathrow, I pushed my cart to the departure board in Terminal Three to work out what choices I had. I had still not worked my way down the first column of flights when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  It was Max.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  I was happy to see him. After all I’d been through, all the pain he’d dragged me through, all he had to do was put his hands on my shoulders, put his arms around me and kiss my forehead, run his hands through my hair and kiss my eyes. I can only fear what this says about me. But it’s the truth.

  All I can say is that I didn’t let him know the truth.

  ‘You’re right to be angry,’ he said as he drew back. ‘If you had had me followed, I would be angry, too. But my motives are not as dire as you seem to think.’ He took my hand. ‘Listen. I’m not going to stop you leaving if you decide to leave but I think there are some things you should know in any event and so I’m asking you to give me one more night. One last Saturday night and then the choice is yours.’

  I hesitated.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I shan’t even claim the baby if that’s how you want it. I’m not Bea, you know. I don’t put much faith in heritage and blood lines. Especially not mine. But I’ll keep my promise about support in any event.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Please.’ When that had no result, he ran his fingers though my hair. ‘Please? You need to know these things. You must know I meant it because you do know how hard it is for me to say please twice.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘Good,’ he said, suddenly efficient again. ‘Now hurry. We’ve only twenty minutes to make our flight and it’s in the next terminal. He took my hand and pulled me into the connecting corridor. I had to run faster than was comfortable. When we got to Terminal Two, he craned his neck and said, ‘Tell me the moment you see Crawley.’

  Crawley, it emerged, was the one who had been following me. Now he was holding a passport and two tickets at the check-in desk closest to customs and immigration.

  ‘You have your passport, don’t you? Good. I thought so. And oh, yes, I almost forgot. You might as well give Crawley your car keys so that he can collect the car from the hospital car park before it gets clamped.’

  A quarter of an hour later, we were sitting on the runway on an Air France airbus waiting to take off to Paris.

  An hour after that, we were at Charles de Gaulle Airport. We took the train to the Left Bank to avoid the rush hour. From the Luxembourg Gardens we walked to the hotel where we had spent our honorary honeymoon. When we got to the room – and it was the same room, the one with the French doors giving out onto the walled garden – he said, in an agitated but still matter-of-fact voice, ‘I wanted to come here so that we could start at the beginning again, at least physically, if not in spirit. Would you like to shower? I’ve booked a table at Les Fontaines. I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t want to go anywhere there might be a risk of being recognised. The booking is for half an hour from now. That gives us about a quarter of an hour for your shower if you want it.’

  The restaurant looked just as I remembered it. Pink tablecloths, small vases with yellow and blue flowers on the tables, all empty, and a gigantic vase with giant lilies on the fountain in the centre. The manageress and her three waiters were gathered at the zinc counter, as nervous as amateur actors who fear their opening night will be to an empty house. Their eyes lit up when they saw us. When they recognised Max, there followed warm expressions of surprise. ‘But if we had known it was you,’ they said, ‘we should have reserved a table by the window.’ Max insisted that he was enchanted with the table in the corner. By the time they had seated us, another six couples were waiting to be seated. Soon every table was full. All around us, serious-looking men and women were discussing the menu as if it were the most important business of the day. Sitting in their midst, Max looked all the more haunted and lost.

  ‘Order anything you like. Anything,’ he said. I ordered langoustines and then confit de canard, and so did he. When the order was placed and the carafe of muscadet brought to the table, he gave me a puzzled look, took a deep breath and, not quite looking me in the eye, said, ‘I was always going to tell you this. It was a question of finding the right time. I’ve put it off because I thought it would compromise you and add to your difficulties, and also because, in making your life worse than it already was, it would result in your leaving me before I could sort things out. However, since you’ve come to that point without even knowing, there’s no reason for you not to know. In any event, it should help you understand why I’ve been such a bad husband to you over the past few months.

  ‘I love you. I want to start all over again with you after this case is over. If you let me, that’s what I want to do. I can say this to you now as we sit here face to face. I shall tell you the truth. For most of the past few months, I haven’t known what I felt or what I wanted. I’ve been in hell. Locked inside a crypt. It began with an accidental discovery. Here. I shall let you put two and two together.’ He delved into his briefcase and got out a typescript which he pushed across the table. These are the early pages of The Last Supper. Not the part I published in Granta but the next part, in ot
her words, the last part I did before Rebecca’s accident. Read the passages I’ve underlined.’

  I did. ‘They sound familiar,’ I said. ‘Have you shown them to me before?’

  ‘No. But you’ve read them before.’ Now he reached into his briefcase and brought out a book. It was the Tamara Nestor Graham novel. ‘Read the passages I’ve marked for you. Actually, you’re the one who marked them, for use in your famous essay.’

  I read the marked passages. They were identical. I looked up, unable to phrase a thought.

  In a trembling voice, he said, ‘She’s up to her old tricks. She can’t do anything without basing it on something she’s stolen from me. Tamara Nestor Graham is Rebecca’s new persona and I’m quite sure she’s back in London for the trial and planning an appearance but I have no idea what her intentions are or what her plan might be.’ He reached out for my hand. ‘Although I have my premonitions.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Now the first courses were arriving. All around us, serious men and women were unable to keep themselves from smiling at their terrines and their salads and their soups and their artistically arranged seafood, but Max stared at his huge plate of langoustines as if it were a pile of unanswered business letters. ‘Imagine what it’s like,’ he said, ‘to have spent years and years thinking you’ve killed someone – not deliberately, mind you, but through neglect, misplaced idealism, self-will, the usual sins of omission – to have spent years and years looking at your orphaned children and thinking, If only I hadn’t said that, if only I hadn’t done this, they might still have had a mother … to have spent years and years hating everything about yourself that makes you who you are, and then to find out that in fact you didn’t kill her, that she staged her own death to give herself a fresh start, that she’s still at large and has it in her power to wreck whatever new life you have been able to build from the ruins with a flick of the finger.