‘Yes, and she had three extra fittings at Liberty, because she kept losing weight.’ Cord had torn off the corner of a nail and winced – Ben always remembered her, plunging the bleeding hand into her pocket again. ‘She used all her savings to afford it. She’d want to be buried in that. I know she would.’
Now, looking into the wardrobe, Ben wished he still had the dress, something of Madeleine’s to give to the girls, something that wasn’t old and tatty and stained. There was nothing really left of her, other than them. What else could he give them, to remember her by?
The sound of one toddler crying floated up to them, and he closed his eyes, briefly overwhelmed as he sometimes was by the thought of both of them, needing him so much. He breathed in, smelling her scent one last time. It was already fainter than before and he shut the wardrobe door with a slam, that he might preserve what little of it there was. Perhaps before he left for LA he’d open it again.
Althea was tying a knot in the second bag. She stood up, dusting herself off, and a letter fell to the ground from her handbag. She picked it up, hastily. Ben glanced curiously at it.
‘Downing Street?’ he said, anxious to change the subject, to chase his misery away, for one second. She stuffed it into her bag. ‘Why is John Major writing to you, Mumma? Is he asking you out on a date?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s not.’
‘What on earth is that?’ He scanned her face, touching her playfully on the arm. ‘Come on. Tell me!’
Althea twisted away from him, staring into the wardrobe. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, darling. Let’s talk about something else.’
‘They’re giving you a gong,’ he said. ‘That’s it, isn’t it? Which one?’
His mother shook her head again. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ She patted the back of her head, where the perfectly lustrous hair was, as always, coiled up into a chignon, and then she picked up the bin bag. ‘Let’s put this in the car.’
Ben looked at her, curiously. He reached over, took the letter from her bag, and she didn’t protest.
‘A Dame?’ he said, scanning the page. ‘They want to make you a Dame? Oh, Mumma. That’s wonderful. Dame Althea Wilde – oh, it does sound good. Dame Althea—’ He took her hand. ‘Can I cast you in my next film? You’d add some much-needed gravitas.’
She said, quickly, ‘No, no. I’ve said no. I telephoned them this morning. Before I came. I’ve turned it down. Please, please don’t mention it again.’
Her face was red. She took the letter, and folded it up, over and over again.
‘Mumma. Why?’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Is it Daddy?’
‘I told them maybe another time. They weren’t very receptive.’ She put the wedge of paper back into her handbag. ‘I don’t think you can ask to have it in two years’ time because you’re not in the mood at the moment. But I can’t take it. I can’t do that to him.’ She rotated her head smartly around; Ben heard the clicking of her neck. ‘He needs me.’
Ben stared at her thoughtfully. ‘What you mean is he needs you to not be as good as him.’
‘It’s not like that. He’s awfully proud of me. But at the moment, no. Hamlet was so bad for him. You know, we knew he was taking a risk, doing it like that, the council estate, the animal masks . . . but oh.’ She put her hands over her face. ‘I couldn’t tell him I thought it was risible, that the audience wouldn’t get it. I was too afraid to tell him the truth, and I should have done. Saved him from humiliation.’
‘It’s not your job to do that, Mumma.’
‘But now he hasn’t acted since apart from the peas advert, and that was a terrible mistake after Hamlet, it only made things worse. Why do they get at him like that, the papers?’ she cried, the words tumbling out of her. ‘As if things weren’t bad enough with Mads, and all that. To mock him like that – he’s not well . . . I’ve been away too much, with Menagerie. They want to do a Christmas special of On the Edge but I’ve said no . . .’ She heaved the bag over her shoulder; she was as tall as him, and she faced him. ‘He’s not well. And he’s so stubborn. He won’t go out with his friends for dinner, or see anyone, won’t call Cord to come and visit him, though he talks about her all the time – all he does is ask when she’s coming and she never does, of course. I’ve pretty much given up with her.’
Ben lifted up the other bag. ‘I don’t know why she’s being like this,’ he said, bleakly. ‘I know she cares. I know she does.’ The weight of the bag pulled at his arm; he felt as though it were Mads herself, dragging him down, and he stood up straight.
‘Who knows what she’s thinking,’ said Althea, her eyes fixed on something far away, out through the window with its wintry sky. ‘Go, darling.’ She turned back to him, suddenly urgent. ‘Go to LA. Take the girls. Get away from here. Don’t come back. I’ll come and visit you, often. I’ll come out next month, after you’ve got there. But don’t come back. Let them grow up there, give them sunshine, make them forget it, forget this.’ She made a whirlpool gesture with her hands. ‘All of this.’
‘I wouldn’t want them to,’ Ben said, gently. ‘I want them to know about us, where they came from.’
‘No,’ his mother said. ‘You’re wrong. Please don’t ask me why, and please trust me. You’re doing the right thing. I’ll be with you. I’ll come out often. But you must go. Daddy and Cord – they don’t need you. They’ve shown that. But your children – your children need you.’
Ben kissed his mother’s hand. ‘Mumma, you’re a wonderful wife to him. I’d have taken the gong, if I were you.’ She clasped his fingers. ‘I won’t tell him about it, or Cord.’ He hesitated, then picked up the second bag of clothes. ‘Cordy’ll come round, I’m sure. She’s just stubborn as hell.’
Althea looked up at Ben. ‘She’s her father’s daughter, my darling,’ she said, almost sadly. ‘You and I both know that.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
March 1993
‘Well, that’s very strange.’ Althea had appeared in the doorway, the phone receiver still in her hand, the curling wire of the phone stretched out behind her. ‘You’ll never guess who that was, darling.’
Tony heard, but ignored, the odd note in her voice. He stretched out in his basket chair and nestled further into his rug, looking down the long thin garden. He could see a blackbird wrestling with a plump worm in the white-gold light of the spring afternoon. ‘Don’t know.’
‘Guess.’
Tony’s head pounded, as it did so often these days when he was crossed, or not given his way. He said, ‘I don’t want to guess.’
Althea’s voice rose. ‘Just guess, darling!’ He turned to the doorway and she smiled at him, and there was something ghastly about her smile.
‘I don’t want to guess.’
‘Cord. It’s Cord.’ Althea’s voice shook. ‘She’s just got off the train at St Margaret’s. She’s coming here. She – she wants to see you.’
He started, and saw how pleased she was to have got a reaction out of him. He barely noticed her these days. Which was strange, she had screeched hysterically at him once, in a little showdown a few months after Mads had died. She was the only one left now, she’d pointed out, gleefully spiteful: wasn’t it about time he paid her a little more attention? And she was right: they’d all gone, over time. Not just the critics who’d abandoned him after Hamlet, or the willing, soft, pliable girls who wouldn’t go near an old, blistered, shaking man like him, or the jovial like-minded friends whom he’d pushed away for years now. Not just the parts, the offers, the ringing telephones and letters desperately offering astronomical fees for the tiniest of roles, no. The others had gone, those he loved.
Ben had gone, decamped to LA, to work on that imbecilic Robot Master franchise. He’d bought a house in Laurel Canyon. Said he might stay out there for a few years. He’d taken those wee girls with him.
Althea had been to visit him already, to look after the girls – Tony grimaced. She loved her granddaughters. An agonising, aching pain flowered in his chest, ma
king him wince, groan under his breath. Althea had no idea – or did she? Lately, she was unknown to him, as mysterious as she had been at the beginning of their relationship, when he wanted her so desperately, pursued her with the ardour of a man possessed, thought only of her, dreamed only of her, her long slim legs, her cool, off-hand tone, her quirky, drawling conversation. He had lost her, he supposed, years ago, the first time she betrayed him, but he’d been too busy screwing everything else that moved to notice . . . and what it had unleashed . . .
He shifted in his chair, trying to trick the pain away. It came often to him now, sometimes waking him at night.
Cord he hadn’t seen since Madeleine’s memorial service: a grim affair at the Norman church in the village with the ashes scattered on the beach afterwards, the end of summer.
He knew what Mads had told him, that night they’d had together. He remembered her saying it as they lay together on the narrow divan bed, wrapped in that Indian silk-screen printed throw. Julia’s empty urn lay on the floor by the door, which was ajar, banging very slightly in the breeze.
They had scattered Julia’s carefree spirit and her honest, solid body, now reduced to ash, to the winds and the seas. They had walked in silence down to the beach, following the sunset, and at one point Tony gazed at the setting sun for a second too long, so that his irises became clouded, his vision blurred; he was acutely aware, suddenly, of her slim frame beside him, of the intensity of her presence, of how she reminded him of Julia –
Julia running through the grasses to the beach, Julia clambering over the dragon’s teeth, Julia laughing as she sat on top of him, her white teeth glinting, her wild hair burnished to golden floss in the sun . . . her strong slim feet, running on ridged sand, the two of them on the porch steps, eating cherries, Dinah sitting on the wicker chair, listening to the radio, or reading aloud from her diaries, or watching them act together . . .
Althea had been an obsession, but Julia was his other half. And he saw it then, as the sun began to slip behind the land and they reached the beach hut, and the girl beside him turned, her hand on his arm, eyes full of tears, and said how much she loved him, how much it meant to her to have him there, how Julia had loved him . . . And he had kissed her, and she had pulled him towards her, and he had encircled her in his arms, and kissed her again . . .
And here she was looking up at him, gazing intently at him, and she was Julia and Madeleine but mostly, to him then, Julia.
It had been astonishing – intense, electric, her hair, her frantic, almost glazed expression – and he had felt, for the first time in years, like a real man again, as simple as that.
But afterwards, when he put his arm around her, as he tried to whisper in her ear, stroke her hair – no. It had been immediately wrong. He’d always been in control after any encounter like this, pacifying, soothing, comforting, flirting. But it was different. It was Mads. His daughter-in-law. He had screwed Ian’s daughter, a girl he’d known since she was a child. The girl who’d married his son.
The old lines he normally used . . . he trembled, covered with a fine pelt of icy sweat.
Sitting up afterwards, that long pale silvery mane of hers tumbling down her moonlit naked back and the disgust and guilt flooding him. Like the first time. That very first time all those years ago. And she’d said, ‘That’s all I wanted.’ Not adoringly, but matter-of-factly. Twisting the hair into a ponytail-thing again.
And he’d said, immediately, ‘Darling, we shouldn’t have done that. We mustn’t – we mustn’t do it again.’
She’d stood up and pulled on her underwear, hugged herself into her bra, winced as she rotated her shoulder blade, quite unselfconsciously. ‘You squashed me a bit. It’s jolly uncomfortable, that bed. I’d forgotten.’
‘Do you hear me?’ Tony felt sick. It was dark outside. The open door . . . the others back at the house . . .
She’d shaken her head, and pulled her sundress over her body. Her lips were pressed together when she emerged, and she was pale, her hair still tousled from where he had tangled it around his fingers, wrapped it over himself . . .
What have I done? Tony didn’t know what to say. He stared at her and thought to himself, But you’re the same. You’re the same as me and that’s why you understand it. You’re broken too.
‘Mads – when I saw you on the beach—’ He wiped his forehead. He was shaking. ‘I – I thought you were her. Julia. I shouldn’t have . . .’ He clutched her hands, as she stood in front of him. ‘Oh, God. What have I done?’
But she had simply said, ‘I wanted to. Don’t think about it. We won’t ever talk about it again.’
We won’t ever talk about it again. He’d caught her gaze once when Iris had begun to walk. He’d looked over at Madeleine, standing in the corner biting her nails and they had stared at each other, for a split second that told him what he had long dreaded – or wanted, he wasn’t sure. But she had looked away after a split second, begun wiping the table – she became obsessed with germs, after she had the girls.
Since they were born she had changed: even paler, even thinner than before, as though they had taken some life away from her. She was relentlessly, intensely concerned with them, and them alone. He knew it all came from this one night. It had driven her mad.
It was Ben who found his wife in the beach hut, curled up on the bed seemingly sleeping like a child. They all kept asking the same things: how had she got hold of the anti-emetic and the pentobarbital and why she would have done such a thing? But it was easy for her to get hold of, in her line of work, and he knew why, in fact Tony was the only one of them who wasn’t surprised. He understood Madeleine better than any of them. Better than her oldest friend, better than her husband. She was lost.
Tony’s eyes were heavy; he pulled the rug over himself as the pain shot viciously down his side. Through the open door he could hear Althea humming something in the kitchen. She was never in the kitchen, other than for the Cup-a-Soup or to make coffee. She never hummed, either. The house was quiet now, when once it had been full of lives, children, careers, visitors, friends.
‘Tony? Tony!’
He must have been dozing when she arrived, for suddenly Tony opened his eyes and there was his daughter in front of him. He couldn’t remember if she’d been there already – no, he thought.
‘H-hello, darling,’ he said, carefully. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
Cord nodded. ‘Hi.’ Her hands were plunged into a long navy coat; her nose was pink with the spring cold – she had always had a pink nose in winter, he remembered suddenly. All his memories now were of summers. Her dark hair curled about her heart-shaped face. Love, and pride in her, made Tony’s chest creak painfully. He felt nauseous; he was unused to company now. Suddenly he had a violent wish that she’d just go away: it was too much.
Althea stood behind them.
‘Darling, would you like a cup of coffee?’
‘No thanks, Mumma.’
‘Something else to drink, something stronger? I suppose we could have a little gin if we’ve got any—’ Althea looked at her watch.
‘No. Nothing, thank you.’ Cord perched herself on the edge of the table and cleared her throat. ‘I’m not staying. I have a concert tonight. The Messiah.’
‘I know that my Redeemer liveth,’ Tony said, with an effort, and the arching opening chords of the aria sounded in his ears.
‘That’s your favourite, isn’t it,’ Althea said brightly, and Cord and Tony both nodded at the same time and he knew what she was thinking of: the old Huddersfield Choral Society recording, almost worn out through excess playing every Christmas in the big, airy sitting room upstairs. They never went in there now.
‘The trumpet shall sound,’ said Tony, raising his hands to imitate the action of the trumpet. ‘Remember, Cordy?’
But his daughter looked away, and then she said, ‘I can’t stay. There’s a rehearsal in South Ken—’
‘Oh.’ Althea glanced into the mirror. ‘I see. Do you want a
nything to—’
‘Mumma, could you leave us, please? I’ll come and have a chat afterwards. But there’s something I need to ask Daddy. And I don’t have very long.’ She cleared her throat again: her voice was hoarse. He saw her stand up, put her hand on her mother’s arm. ‘Please, Mumma.’
When they were alone, Cord did not look at him. She just said, ‘Can we go for a walk? It’s a nice day. We could go to the park.’
Walking was agony now, but he didn’t want to say no to her. He shuffled to the coat rack and then down the steps, through the long garden and out on to the lane that led into Marble Hill Park. She walked behind him, in silence.
It was the Easter holidays; children were running and screaming in the playground at the bottom of the lane, overlooking the water. Tony looked at them with interest. ‘Children make so much more noise than you imagine, don’t they?’ he said. ‘I always forget that. Just playing, and it sounds like murder.’ He glanced across the swollen banks of the river to where Ham House stood in the gentle sunlight, its dramatic purple-and-black bulk brooding at the edge of the riverbank. ‘The foot ferry’s running again, look,’ he said, talking to fill her silence. ‘And they’ve done something over there, cleaned up those boats. That tramp who lived up there – I say, he’s gone.’
‘When was the last time you left the house, Daddy?’ she said, curiously.
‘Oh. I – not for a while, to be honest. Not been very well.’
With no emotion she said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’
He said, casually, knowing how to hook the bait, ‘They don’t know. It’s my side. I get these pains. They’ve scanned me. Nothing there but it lays me flat sometimes.’
‘Oh.’ Cord walked on, towards the park. He followed her, as fast as he could.
‘Have you spoken to your brother lately?’ he said, as she fell into step beside him.
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