ALEXANDRA DROVE ROUND TO Jenny Linden’s house. She found a parking space just outside and reversed into it, bumping Jenny Linden’s car out of the way to do it. The sound of crunching metal brought people to their windows and doors, caused babies to cry, and bedroom lights to go on. Only in Jenny Linden’s house did everything stay dark and quiet. But Alexandra had seen a pale, frightened face appear momentarily at the top window, then disappear.
She banged again and again at the door, using the big, heavy knocker to advantage. It was iron, antique, mid Nineteenth Century, in the form of a fish. Alexandra realised it was just the same as the one on her own front door. But that door was large and solid: this door was small and flimsy, and rattled and shook with every blow. Compete with Alexandra as she might, Jenny Linden would never get it right. Neighbours peered all down the street to see what was going on. It was past midnight.
It was not Jenny Linden who opened the door but her husband, Dave, in striped pyjamas and dressing gown. Alexandra remembered him from Kimmeridge.
“Go away,” he said. “You’re disturbing the peace. I will not have Jenny upset. You’re persecuting her. I shall call the police.”
Jenny Linden appeared at his elbow, wearing a discreet pale blue nightie, its hem showing beneath a woollen dressing gown in dusky pink. “Don’t be too hard on her, Dave,” said Jenny Linden in her sweet little voice, her restraining hand on Dave’s arm. “Poor Alexandra, she’s having a hard time. She won’t give herself permission to grieve.”
“You’re too good to her,” said Dave. “You’re not fit to be out on your own.”
“Oh dear!” said Jenny Linden, peering out into the night. “Someone’s gone into the back of my car. Does that mean they have to pay, Dave?”
“Certainly does,” said Dave. “You go back in and get your beauty sleep. I’ll see to this.”
Jenny Linden nodded, smirked and went back in. Dave barred the door.
“How’s the herpes, Jenny?” called Alexandra after her, loud and clear.
“Just get out of here before I call the police,” said Dave. “You’ve done us enough mischief.”
“Me?” asked Alexandra, taken by surprise.
“So much the career girl, so eaten up with ambition,” said Dave, “you couldn’t even control your own husband.”
“I never thought it was a wife’s role to do that,” said Alexandra. “But I can see yours sees it differently. There’s some new stuff called Zorimax. Very good for herpes, they say. Your wife caught it from Eric Stenstrom and passed it all round the neighbourhood.”
Dave seemed taken aback. She was glad it was not she who was, for once.
“Because if you two are getting back together again,” Alexandra said, “it’s the kind of thing a husband needs to know.”
“Jenny needs looking after,” said Dave, automatically, but his eyes had lost hers. He seemed bewildered.
“I thought Stenstrom was gay,” said Dave.
“Jenny proved otherwise,” said Alexandra.
“Bitch!” said Dave, and slammed the door in Alexandra’s face. A sigh of response, a ripple of appreciation, went round the cluster of neighbours.
Alexandra pulled the iron knocker off the door—it was down to its last feeble nail-hold—someone’s DIY job—and threw it in the gutter, untangled her car from Jenny’s and drove all the way to her London flat. She could spend no more nights under the same roof as Hamish. She was exhilarated.
But soon Alexandra felt uneasy. What had she done? The best and safest place for Jenny Linden might well be in her husband’s arms. Some people could get away with acts of malevolence; Alexandra never could. If she tugged someone’s hair at school, a teacher would spot her. If she didn’t pay a fare, she got caught. A policy of pleasant talking, optimistic outlook and an easy blindness to inconvenient fact had got her through life, or so she had thought, very well. She’d left it to Ned to be nasty, so she could be nice. Now Ned was dead and she, Alexandra, was left with the consequences of her own emotional idleness; she had encouraged Ned to be nasty to others and in the end he’d turned his nastiness on her. She had thought herself the famous, the beautiful, the bountiful Alexandra Ludd, immune from disasters which afflicted others, but of course she was not. She was like some charming villa in a hot climate, set in a ravishing and luxurious garden, built on stilts, and termites had been gnawing away at the stilts for years—termites from a whole assortment of nests: Resentment, Envy, Jealousy, Lust, Ambition, Malice, Spite (and the termites from Resentment have the strongest jaws, the most powerful bite of all)—and now see, the whole edifice was about to tumble into mud.