DURING THE MORNING ABBIE called on Vilna. Abbie and Arthur had been asked to a Hunt Ball and Abbie needed something to wear. Vilna had said she’d be glad to lend Abbie something from her own extensive wardrobe, and how did it happen that she, Vilna, had not been asked to the Hunt Ball? Was it perhaps because her husband was in prison? Or because she couldn’t help talking about the poor little foxes? Abbie said it was more likely to be the latter.
Abbie stripped down to her sensible white bra and pants, and her run-proof knee-highs, and stood by Vilna’s built-in cupboards while Vilna handed her garment after garment and Abbie shook her head. Too tight, too bright, not her, whatever.
“I am the one who should be miserable, not you,” said Vilna. “I am generosity itself. These people come to my dinner parties and eat venison off plates which cost £250 each and drink the best champagne out of Venetian goblets, and they are happy enough to do that; it is all take, take, take, and not give, give, give. They do not know how to behave. They do not invite me in return. Well, I forgive them. I am like that.”
Abbie said she, Abbie, was not particularly like that. She was having a hard time forgiving Alexandra. At first she, Abbie, hadn’t believed Jenny Linden when she said Alexandra was having an affair with Eric Stenstrom. She thought Jenny was looking for excuses because of her relationship with Ned.
“Why should a woman in love need excuses?” asked Vilna. “If she loves, she fucks.”
Abbie sighed. Vilna’s mother Maria pottered around the room, dressed in peasant black, with wrinkled grey stockings and wide flat brown shoes. She was making sure her daughter gave nothing valuable away to her treacherous friends. Maria fingered the gold tassels on the curtain’s ropes, pretending to be protecting the furniture from the danger of fading in the sun’s glare. She tutted and sighed and clicked with her false teeth. Vilna ignored her. Abbie had learned to do the same.
But if Alexandra had been having an affair with Eric Stenstrom all along, Abbie’s work had been wasted, her sympathy misplaced, complained Abbie.
“I lugged that body about,” said Abbie, “laundered those disgusting sheets—everything was all over them, everything—I got the doctor, got the ambulance, got Jenny out of there before Alexandra came; I kept Alexandra company, upset Arthur by staying away; and then Alexandra can’t even tell me the truth, can’t even be honest with me, so I feel like a fool when even that ass Hamish seems to know more than I do. What’s he doing, poking around in all those private papers? Alexandra is so hypocritical! Eric Stenstrom all this time. Poor Ned. No wonder he had a heart attack. Alexandra is the real murderer, not Jenny at all.”
“Eric Stenstrom,” pondered Vilna. “What a dreamboat!” Much of Vilna’s English, as Abbie observed to Arthur, came from old Hollywood films.
“What does Alexandra have that I do not?” And Vilna pulled in her flat, well-exercised belly yet further, thrust out her silicone breasts (Alexandra swore) and smiled her big white teeth into the mirror. “Pot-bellied; dull little English face; though I must say her bosom isn’t bad, as everyone knows; and now Eric Stenstrom on top of that. And Alexandra will inherit the house and those dull bits of furniture everyone talks about, and not have to put up with Ned. I said yes to Ned once but he couldn’t get it up. No woman can put up with that.”
“I don’t believe you, Vilna,” said Abbie. “I just don’t. Because you want a thing to have happened doesn’t mean it has. And don’t be too sure Alexandra will inherit the house.”
“Why should she not?”
“There may be debts to be paid,” said Abbie. “Who knows? She doesn’t have much head for business. She doesn’t notice much. Is there anything just plain navy blue? I like navy blue.”
“Dreadfully dull on its own, darling,” said Vilna. “Navy needs white and gold to amount to anything at all.”
“Alexandra practically threw us out yesterday,” Abbie complained. “If she goes on like this she’ll find herself with nobody.” Abbie decided that the gold braid and crimson tassel could be removed from a plain navy silk with a high collar and that would do well enough for a Hunt Ball with a lot of lesser gentry and prosperous farmers.
Maria left the room and Vilna took advantage of her absence. “Darling,” said Vilna, “there are no men round here, and now even Ned’s gone and Clive’s in prison, and I haven’t for ages. What about you and me—?” Her bony little hand stole round to squeeze Abbie’s languid breast in its sensible bra.
“Don’t you do that,” shrieked Abbie, pushing the hand away.
“Oh, you English,” said Vilna. “How you narrow your lives! Arthur is a new man. He would not care even if he noticed.”
“He’s my husband and I love him,” said Abbie. “Thank you for the dress but don’t you ever do anything like that again.” Vilna shrugged. She did not seem particularly upset by Abbie’s rejection of her advances.
“At least we English don’t have civil wars all the time,” said Abbie, quite unnecessarily, “and if you don’t like it here why don’t you go home?”
Abbie remembered to take the dress but slammed the door as she left, so that all the security alarms went off and the guard dogs barked, straining at the ends of their chains. Vilna liked foxes but disliked dogs.