MORNING. WITH NED NOT there Alexandra could stretch across the bed. She took what consolation she could from this. Nor was Sascha there to stalk into the bedroom, as was his habit, with his straight back, curly blond hair and censorious blue eyes, to start the day earlier than either she or Ned wanted. She must learn to extract Ned from these sorts of mental equations. Erratum: earlier than she wanted, drop the Ned. A kind of chilliness crept in from the periphery of the bed. What would she do for sex now? What had she done before she was married? She could hardly remember. Sex, it seemed, was as forgettable as a dinner out; set-asideable as a floppy disc. Relationships got remembered: they were there on the hard disc. Alexandra had the feeling Ned lay on top of her, forbidding such thoughts: a heavy but intangible weight: a consolation. They had been married for twelve years: fifty-two weeks in the year, sex on an average, she supposed, of three times a week. Rather less lately, since A Doll’s House had disrupted their lives but paid off the overdraft; but then more often at the beginning of the relationship to outweigh that. Five times a week, say, in the first two years before they were married: four times a week after that—marriage did seem to have a dampening effect: five to six times during late pregnancy—pregnancy, for her, did the opposite. Twice a week, even once a week, in the months after Sascha’s birth—three times a week on average seemed a good but conservative bet. Twelve times three times fifty-two fucks. One thousand eight hundred and seventy-two. Jesus., No wonder, on the most basic level, she now felt bereft. And never once with a condom. How much of Ned had she not absorbed, literally? The broken spring was there again, between her shoulder-blades.
Alexandra heard a kind of keening noise outside. The bed no longer tempted her. She went to the window and looked out over the garden, the hedge, the field beyond, the duck pond. Early morning light made everything glittery, almost too bright to see clearly. Downstairs Diamond began to bark. She could see a figure lurking just beyond the hedge: someone was skulking, and wailing. She saw, as so often in the last few days, but did not absorb. The real world ran like a TV film you watched or didn’t watch, fitfully, according to mood.
Alexandra thought bereavement was like bonding: you grieved for the dead as you bonded with a newborn baby. There wasn’t much you could do about either. The response was bred into you; it was genetically determined, physiological, beyond your control. If a spouse died, or a parent, a child, a sibling, or to a lesser extent when a friend or colleague died, or to a greater extent again a king, a president, a pop-star or a religious leader, why then you grieved. You couldn’t help it. You hurt. You stopped, just as if you had a physical pain or a fever, to wait for healing. Tears flowed. You could not even see sufficiently to act. Grief was nature’s way, no doubt, of preserving the group against unnecessary death. That person did that. That person died. Don’t you do it. Don’t let that happen again in a hurry! Grief for the old is tempered, mild; grief for the young is acute, survival-friendly for the tribe. As is grief’s companion emotion, the desire for vengeance. Hang the killers! Bomb the bombers! Sue the doctors! No further justification needed, swoop over the hill to loot, plunder, rape; steal the Sabine women, replenish the tribe. Vengeance sucks up grief, buries it. Nature’s satisfied. The Gods demand human sacrifice, always did; the hideous divine maw sucks in the living, chomps down on warm flesh, kills, devours. Then healing Nature gapes open its mouth and new life pours out of it, raw and writhing, an endless, ever-multiplying stream. One day it will choke on the sheer volume of its production: it has to.
More wailing from outside. A peculiar keening; an ethnic chant. Alexandra took no notice.
You had to separate out the mourning from the death. Grief was not particular to Ned. Had she married another man, and had a child by him, and he had died last Saturday night, she would be in just this same state now. Others would say, in an attempt to explain the irrationality of the emotion, “Oh, you grieve for your own death. Another’s death reminds you of your own mortality. The closer that life was, the worse it is for you.” But it wasn’t necessarily so. Fear of death was reasonable: terror of the unknown, of the grim forest of non-being: but grief for oneself? No. Grief in advance for the others who in their turn will mourn you—should there be any—would be more appropriate. It was a terrible thing for anyone to be plunged without warning or their consent into mourning, but what could you lament for the dead themselves? Death came to everyone. If it came suddenly so much the better. Lucky Ned. Poor Alexandra.
Or people would say, “Poor Ned. He won’t be there to watch his child grow up.” But that didn’t wash either. Children grow up to grow away. The younger the child, the purer, the more exquisite the parental feeling. Not to be there to see your child grow up would be the blessing, not the curse. It was pointless to search for reasons: grief accompanies bereavement—it is nature’s stick—as joy accompanies birth—it is nature’s carrot.
Grief was luxurious, in the way porridge on a cold morning is luxurious, or a cold shower on a hot day, or water when you are thirsty, or a languid kiss between lovers: anything which holds you at that pleasurable point where the satisfaction of the senses and the need for survival meet. She would go with it, not fight it. It would cure itself, as a broken leg heals itself, with a little help from friends.
The wailing and keening below was louder now; so was Diamond’s barking. Just beyond the hedge, if she craned, Alexandra could see a brown hunched back moving to and fro. It seemed to be some kind of animal, roaming up and down as animals will, restless and miserable, in a confined space. But the confinement was wilful, unless the creature was on some kind of chain. And how could that be? Downstairs, trapped in the morning kitchen, Diamond hurled himself against the closed back door. He wanted out.
Alexandra dressed quickly, glad now of an occupation. Trainers, jeans, one of Ned’s shirts: denim; tough, rough fabric, which partly restored the feeling that she and he were one; and went down to the kitchen. She put Diamond on the lead and went out the back door. The dog pulled and tugged her round to the front of the house, to the privet hedge which divided garden from field. A human head rose into view on its far side. It was Jenny Linden, still keening; blotched face and puffy eyes.
“What are you doing here?” asked Alexandra. Jenny Linden stopped wailing.
“I only wanted to take the dog for a walk,” she said. She had a soft voice and a West Country lilt. She reminded Alexandra of Gollum in The Hobbit, a pale, white, underground thing; solid yet sinuous. Diamond wrenched the lead away from Alexandra’s surprised hands, and leapt at Jenny Linden. He leapt in welcome, in friendship not hostility, and Jenny scratched him under the ears in the way Ned was accustomed to do. Alexandra never did that. She did not want to break her nails.
Alexandra watched as Jenny fell on her knees, embracing Diamond.
“Oh poor dog,” she cried, “poor dog. Poor us!” Diamond licked Jenny’s face with enthusiasm and Jenny let him. Presently she became aware of Alexandra staring.
“Did I wake you or something? Leah says I have to let my grief out.”
“Leah?”
“My therapist. She taught me how to keen. Didn’t Ned tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“About Leah. I suppose he wouldn’t. You would have laughed. What am I going to do? I want to die.”
Her podgy face was puckered. She was in her mid-forties, older than Alexandra. Her short hair was unkempt and needed washing. She wore no make-up. She put her little white soft hand on Alexandra’s lean arm, and Alexandra felt the touch like an electric shock and pulled away. “I only came to see if I could walk Diamond,” Jenny Linden said. “He likes to get out early. But you don’t know that. You have to sleep late every morning because of the theatre.”
She raised her double chin to the heavens and wailed again. The early moon was still in the sky, palely loitering. It was a really beautiful morning, Alexandra noticed. Dew on the roses, a spiderweb glittering in the very early sunlight. Where was Ned? This was why you grieved for the dead, because they could no longer be part of the exhilaration of renewal.
“Glad that I live am I,” she sang at the other woman until she stopped her dreadful, Leah-recommended keening and stared in astonishment. Two could make a noise as well as one, and hers, Alexandra’s, at least was more disciplined and had some meaning. She had hated ululation at Drama School, though she could set up as good a classic wail as anyone else. Dirges seemed mindless, and she didn’t like that. She preferred a hymn, and offered one, dimly remembered, roughly quoted.
Glad that the sky is blue
Glad for the country lane
Glad for the fall of dew.
After the sun the rain,
After the rain the sun.
This be the way of life,
Till the work be done.
“Don’t be angry with me,” said Jenny Linden, though Alexandra could not see that she had displayed anger in any way. “I’m the one you should be sorry for.”
“Why’s that?” asked Alexandra.
“I loved Ned,” said Jenny, “and he died. You didn’t love him. There, I’ve said it.”
“You need treatment,” said Alexandra. Now she was angry. “But I have enough to think about at the moment, besides nutters. You’ll just have to look after yourself.”
“I understand your anger,” said Jenny piously. Then her little eyes gleamed with malice. “Ned always said you’d be angry and destructive when you found out. Dog in the manger!” she yelped, and turned and ran, little dumpy legs going one-two, one-two, little feet turning out, heavy bum jiggling, into the mists which still drifted round the foot of the poplar trees where the ground dipped. Ned and Alexandra had planted the poplars together when they first moved down to The Cottage. Twelve in a row, ten feet apart, a hard day’s work, but gratifying. Diamond had already shot off in front of Jenny Linden, barking. Crows rose in response: a black spiky crowd swelling over the copper beeches which shielded the field and The Cottage from the top road. Birds of ill-omen, so plentiful round here.
Alexandra went to the kitchen and made herself some coffee. The old packet was now finished. She threw it in the bin. Ned had opened it. It was in this way, she supposed, that traces of the dead removed themselves from everyday life. All that would be left would be his works on the shelf: books about Ibsen. Then no doubt his view of Ibsen would finally fall out of fashion. The books would drift off to the secondhand bookstalls, and on to a few, idiosyncratic, old-codgery shelves; and just a handful of people would be left to say, wonderingly, “Ned Ludd—that rings a bell,” and the bell would be for Ned Ludd, the Leicestershire village idiot, who in 1782 destroyed a stocking frame on the grounds that it was putting him out of a job, and after whom the Luddite rioters were named. Not Ned Ludd, the Ibsen scholar. Not even Alexandra Ludd, actress, who once used to get her name and her picture in the paper so often: Nora in A Doll’s House, at a time when women had decided to make Nora their mascot in their final drive to be free of male tyranny. Perhaps there’d be some reference to the Ludds for scholars, in the theatrical section of some CD-ROM. There’d be so little left for people to do in the future-present, they’d have nothing better to do than put up the past on the screen, and stare at it; listen to the voice saying: “Ludd, Ned,” and reading out the supporting text. No one would bother to read. Why make the effort?
Jenny Linden. Why had Diamond gone off with her so readily? It was out of character. Diamond was suspicious of most people, unless he knew them well. The house seemed eerily quiet: now that the dog’s broken breathing, wheezes and snorts were not there, she noticed them. Alexandra suddenly missed Sascha: the sudden determined rushings of his little feet, the energy in the air that meant he was about. It was too early to call Irene. But Sascha would be up: he would be in front of the television, staring at the Teletext he couldn’t read. It was, he averred, his favourite programme. He must come home as soon as possible. She wanted her arms around him.
She poured the coffee but did not drink it.
Jenny Linden. Jenny Linden never got asked to the Ludd parties. Why not? Others yet more foolish, yet more hopeless, got asked along. Jenny used her little podgy fingers and her enthusiasm to earn her living. She was the theatrical equivalent of an architectural model maker. She would sew, in miniature, the costumes the designer had in his or her head so that the director could approve, alter, enthuse or carp. It was a perfectly respectable occupation. It brought her in a living wage. She lived in a little period cottage in Eddon Gurney, opposite the prison. Ned had once taken her, Alexandra, to visit Jenny in her studio, which turned out to be her front room. He wanted Alexandra to see the costumes Jenny was doing for a production of Peer Gynt—an exact copy of those used for the London production of 1911. The visit must have been four years ago: she remembered being pregnant with Sascha at the time. Ned had rung Jenny in advance, to say they were coming. It had been a perfectly formal visit. Jenny had opened a bottle of wine, fluttered her pleasure at a visit which evidently meant a lot to her, and showed off the little dolls’ dresses with, to Alexandra, pathetic pride. Ned had asked if he could photograph them for his book on Peer Gynt and Jenny had said yes. What had happened since to give Jenny cause to say she loved Ned, Alexandra had no idea.
Except of course Jenny was the sort of person who loves everything and everyone at the same level. She would “love” her therapist, “love” her friends, “love” Ned because he had once taken some notice of her. Why would Jenny think she, Alexandra, didn’t love Ned? Erratum: hadn’t loved Ned. Because Alexandra hadn’t been there when Ned died? Jenny was probably the kind of woman who’d cling like a limpet just in case someone died and they weren’t there, and that way hasten their death.
She remembered Jenny saying, though she couldn’t remember where, or when, or in what company,
“I have this wonderful therapist. She gave me the courage to leave my husband,” and thinking “Lonely women are always saying that.”
Somewhere there had been a husband and a son, both rejected in the interests of Jenny’s talent. The husband a lighting director in the West End; yes, that was it. A technician, not an artist. Not even a critic. Jenny was the kind who longed aggressively for the peace of the countryside, to live next to nature; to discover her true self, that kind of stuff. Ned was in the country because there was somewhere to park and he could have a rest from theatrical folk.
Why was she even giving Jenny Linden two minutes’ thought? A mad woman, excited by death, roaming the edge of the territory. She wasn’t worth it. Alexandra had seen herself as duty bound to ask her round, from time to time—a neighbour in vaguely the same profession—and Ned would say, “For God’s sake, not Jenny Linden. She’ll bore everyone to death, and talk about animal rights.”
Alexandra wondered by what right she and Ned had felt it their entitlement to dole out social acceptability or otherwise round the neighbourhood. If the Ludds said people were okay, they were. Now Ned had gone, had toppled in death through the linking of a protective fence of their own devising—the one that kept the boring and pitiable out—and broken it, now heaven knew who’d come rushing in. And it might even serve Alexandra right.
Alexandra went to the living room and under the gaze of Leda entwined with her swan, and Europa petting her bull—both deities in porcelain, circa 1760, and a Dog of Fo, in salt-glazed stoneware, around 1730—took down Ned’s book on Peer Gynt. The book fell open on a photograph of Jenny Linden’s little set, little figures, tiny dresses. The caption read: “Photo: Ned Ludd. Jenny Linden’s brilliant and exquisite recreation of the 1922 production at the Old Vic.”
You could either assume Ned had gone back at some other time to take pictures of Jenny’s work on the 1922 production, or that the caption was wrong, or that Ned had been in error in the first place. Or that she, Alexandra, had misremembered 1911.
Alexandra heard a movement behind her and whirled, and there was Jenny Linden staring at her. In her, Alexandra’s, living room. “I brought Diamond back,” said Jenny Linden. “I came straight in. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I do, actually,” said Alexandra.
“I did so hope we could be friends,” said Jenny. “We both need someone to talk to.”
“A trouble shared is a trouble halved, that kind of thing?” enquired Alexandra.
“Don’t mock,” said Jenny Linden. “You’re very clever and smart, but it doesn’t help in the end. I know that book by heart. Peer Gynt & The Nordic Imagination. Ned was such a wise and wonderful man. I don’t suppose you even read it. Ned said you were never interested in his work.”
“Just get out of my house,” said Alexandra, but Jenny stayed where she was, with a kind of stolid, stubborn lumpenness, as if she hadn’t heard what Alexandra said, or perhaps Alexandra had only thought it, not spoken it.
“You’re upset,” said Jenny. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
Alexandra followed Jenny into the kitchen. Jenny was taking mugs from the cupboard, the teapot from the shelf, without hesitation, as if this were her own home. Diamond lay under the table, exhausted and panting, thumping his tail from time to time, and looking strangely guilty.
Alexandra advanced on Jenny and slapped her across the cheek. Jenny dropped a mug and stared, stupefied.
“You’re violent,” she said. “On top of everything. You really do need treatment. Ned was right.”
But still she didn’t go. She moved her little hands up to her pink cheek. Jenny Linden had a squidged-up face, as if the chin aimed up for the eyebrows, the ears longed to get to the nose. She had a puffy little bosom and a thick waist. Ned would not have looked at her twice. This woman was in some fantasy of her own. In twelve years Ned had only once disconcerted Alexandra, by yearning after Glenn Close, whom he admired for her intelligence and temperament as much as her looks.
“You’re just back here to lay your greedy hands on what you can,” spat Jenny Linden. “You don’t care about Ned. It breaks my heart.”
Alexandra kicked Jenny Linden’s shins hard. Jenny Linden hopped about and finally ran out of the kitchen door. Alexandra slammed it after her and locked it. Alexandra went to the phone and called Abbie.
“Jenny Linden’s been here,” said Alexandra. “Is she mad or what?”
“Oh dear,” said Abbie. “I’d better come over.”
“Tell me now, on the phone,” said Alexandra. But Abbie only repeated that she’d come over as soon as she could, with Arthur.
Alexandra inspected her house for traces of Jenny Linden, or others. She looked in the bathroom mirror, and for a second thought she saw Jenny Linden looking back at her, but it was just a trick of the light.
She felt disloyal to Ned for checking up on him; like this, after his death. “You’re too bad, Ned,” she said. “Whatever did you say to that dreadful deluded creature? There must have been something.” But there was no reply from Ned. It wasn’t that she expected words—how could she?—rather a momentary joining, a fleeting acknowledgement, some brief touching of his spirit with hers. A laugh that ought to be shared: a dismissal of doubt; a dismissal of Jenny Linden. “Dire Jenny Linden, gone completely round the twist!” Ned would have said, could have said.
Alexandra looked through cupboards, drawers, the kitchen shelves, the bathroom cabinet. She no longer knew what she was looking for. Everywhere familiar things, some worthless, some priceless, everything redolent of a present which had so unexpectedly turned into a past. Everywhere was Ned. She would have to remove so much—pack stuff up, burn some things, give others away, in order to reclaim the present for herself, forget the future.
Abbie had cleaned up before she, Alexandra, arrived: she’d emptied ashtrays, run the dishwasher through, even changed the sheets. Why? Abbie’s nervous mind, she supposed. And where was Ned’s toothbrush? Missing. Hers was there, and Sascha’s, but not Ned’s. The tooth mug needed cleaning: tooth mugs always did.
She went into the bedroom and looked through Ned’s sock drawer and for the first time wept without worrying about her eyes. She even knuckled them and howled. Then she found a red suspender belt with black lace trimmings amongst the socks. Her own, she supposed. Except she couldn’t remember ever owning such a thing. Perhaps before she was married? She tried it on over her jeans. It was too big for her. Even so, she couldn’t fasten it behind her back: she had to tug the clasp round to the front to do it. A kind of trick fastening: you slipped one bit of plastic into another at an angle, then flattened it and it snapped to. Except she couldn’t do it, even looking at it. She gave up and let the belt just fall to the floor. Wouldn’t you know how to fasten your own suspender belt? Not if it was years old, pre-marriage, pre-motherhood, in the stockings-and-suspender party days. You’d have forgotten. She supposed.
She looked under the bed: nothing: spick and span. There were the usual two suitcases there. They’d been dusted. Theresa the help had been away for the week in Spain. Theresa was 17 and as many stone. Theresa had trouble vacuuming under the beds: she didn’t bend easily in her middle. Abbie must have done it. The carpet was a little damp, towards the window. Had it rained? Alexandra couldn’t remember. When the rain was from the West, fine and strong, water could creep into the room between window frame and window, forcing itself in along with the delicate new tendrils of Virginia creeper. Perhaps that was it. But when she’d been weeding the pansies the soil had been dry, dry, dry.
Alexandra had a sudden clear impression that Ned had died on the bed, not downstairs at all. That for some reason nobody had told her this. But that was absurd. Why would they lie? Perhaps they’d thought it would make her reluctant to sleep in her own bed? They were wrong. She wanted to be where Ned’s last breaths had been. Perhaps such breaths lingered in the air and she detected them. She lay down upon the coverlet and fell asleep. Diamond crept up the stairs and lay beside her.
The phone woke her. She went downstairs to answer it. There was no extension in the bedroom. It was the Daily Mail asking her how she felt. She put the phone down. It rang again. The caller was the assistant to a broadsheet’s theatre critic, saying she was sorry to disturb Alexandra at a time like this, but could the paper have advance notice of the funeral: they would be sending a photographer: such a great loss. Alexandra put the phone down.
The doorbell went. A flashbulb popped in her face. She slammed the door shut, went into the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and crouched the other side of the door. The bell rang again. She opened the door quickly, brandishing the knife. But it was only a bunch of flowers from the local florist, cellophane wrapped. They were from Jenny Linden. “Forgive and forget,” it read. “In fond friendship, Jenny.” Alexandra threw them after the florist, and then, as they scattered over the path, noticed a man with a camera standing amongst the long artichokes, beneath the clothes line, where the green sheets from the marital bed had lately hung to dry.
“Just a minute there!” he called to her, so she quickly went inside and called the police. They said they’d send someone as soon as possible.
The phone rang. It was Abbie. She said she couldn’t get over because one of her Japanese students had choked on a plum stone and become hysterical. No, the girl was fine physically, just humiliated. The Japanese were like that. Abbie would come over in the afternoon. She’d hoped Jenny Linden would stay quiet and out of the way, but apparently not. The only thing to do with her was to physically throw her out.
“That’s what I did,” said Alexandra.
“She’s had a crush on Ned for years,” said Abbie. “She’s on the verge of psychopathic. She’d hang round in the garden a lot. He’s had to call the police. You know, like Fatal Attraction but without the sex. A total fan. A kind of sub-stalker.”
“Why didn’t Ned tell me?”
“It was embarrassing, I suppose,” said Abbie.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Alexandra.
“She was so pathetic. It was so ridiculous. I just thought she’d go away or be locked up or something, and we’d all forget it. I’d rather tell you this in person. It’s so cold like this. Can’t it wait till this afternoon?”
“No. It’s Wednesday. Hamish is coming this afternoon.”
“Thank God for that. At least you’ll have someone there to keep you company.”
“You called me at five-thirty on Sunday morning,” said Alexandra. “I was there by Sunday lunchtime. In that time you called the police, the doctor, me, Vilna, and the ambulance, and you cleaned my house from top to bottom, and washed my sheets.”
“I didn’t do any cleaning,” said Abbie. “I just changed the sheets and ran the old ones through the washing machine. If you run a residential language school it gets to be second nature. If in doubt change the sheets and serve food. Joke?” Alexandra laughed a little. “That’s better,” said Abbie.
“Then who did the cleaning?” asked Alexandra. “Theresa’s still away. It wasn’t her.”
“I expect Ned did. He’s not hopeless. You hadn’t been home since the previous Tuesday.”
“He doesn’t vacuum under beds if it means moving two suitcases. Sorry, delete doesn’t. Insert was not accustomed to.”
“Vilna might have done it,” said Abbie, ignoring Alexandra’s joke. “During the morning Vilna may have run round with the vacuum and the duster. People behave oddly when there’s a body in the house.”
“Abbie, that’s my body,” said Alexandra, and began to choke and cry. “And this is my house. I don’t want strangers like Vilna and Jenny Linden making free with it.”
“Oh God,” said Abbie. “I ought to be with you. I’m coming over. The Japanese girl will just have to do without me.” She put the phone down.
Alexandra went to the door and looked round. The photographer had gone; there was no sign of Jenny Linden. Flowers dozed in the sun. There was the gentlest of breezes. There were broad beans on the tall pole pyramids which needed picking. She’d try and do it this evening. Ned fretted if the pods stayed on the plants long enough to become stringy. She lived in a beautiful house, in a beautiful place. She was a widow.
She called the Eddon Gurney police station to say not to bother to send anyone up; everything was now quiet. They were relieved because they were understaffed; they’d take it off their list of calls; they expressed their sorrow about her husband’s death. Ned Ludd was such a loss to the community. Would she be staying in the house? “Of course,” she said.
They’d thought she might be selling, moving up to London altogether, to the bright lights. Wouldn’t have much time for slow country folk and their country ways. What was to keep her in the countryside now? Alexandra resisted the temptation to say if they talked less they might have got someone over earlier to chase the photographer out of her garden, but it is never wise to rile the police so she said, with truth, how much she loved the area, how after twelve years The Cottage felt like home; now that her husband had died she would need more than ever the support of the community, and so forth, and they said call if there was any trouble and they’d be up at once. To let them know.
Abbie called Alexandra to say she couldn’t come over. Now a young
Gulf Arab boy had bitten into a plum and got stung on the tongue by a wasp, and though there seemed no swelling they’d thought it best to call the doctor.
Alexandra suggested that Arthur cut down the plum tree.
“Abbie,” she asked. “There are still some things you haven’t told me. Jenny Linden was in the house on Sunday morning. Did she just turn up, or what? Or did you call her too?”
“Of course I didn’t call her. She was outside the house when I arrived,” said Abbie. “In the front, behind the privet hedge. Kind of lurking. Ned once told me she’d do that, in the very early mornings. Sometimes when he let Diamond out first thing Jenny Linden would be there, and she and Diamond would go off for a walk together. Well, it saved Ned walking the dog himself, didn’t it?”
“You mean Ned used her? She was obsessed with him and he used her? To walk Diamond?”
“It’s not so bad a thing, Alexandra,” said Abbie mildly. “When you think of other male sins. He felt bad about Jenny. Her life was so empty, he said. He tried all kinds of things to make her leave him alone. Being horrid, being nice, appealing to reason. Perhaps he thought if Diamond wore her out she’d give up. Diamond would wear anyone out.”
“How long has it been going on?”
“A couple of years, I suppose.”
“Years?” Alexandra was incredulous. “Who knew about this?”
“Most people, I suppose.”
Alexandra absorbed this.
“Extraordinary,” she said.
“Not really,” said Abbie. “If someone’s having an affair the partner’s always the last to know. No one likes to be the one to break the news; and anyway they think it will all go away, or even perhaps they’re wrong.
Of course this wasn’t an affair, don’t think that. Jenny just pestered him. She’s an obsessive.”
“But people like that can be dangerous,” said Alexandra. “Sometimes they even kill. I should have been told.”
“You’re an artist,” said Abbie, with just a hint of malice. “No one wants to upset you. You have to be away from home a lot: you can’t help it: not much fun for you to know there’s a mad woman stalking your husband.”
“It’s not a bundle of laughs,” said Alexandra. “Then what happened?”
“I opened the back door, Diamond ran out and went off with Jenny,” said Abbie. “Then I looked through the window and saw the body and came in and started making phone calls, then Jenny came back with
Diamond, right into the house, and saw the body and had hysterics and ran round like a mad thing all morning tearing her hair as if she were in some Greek tragedy. So I called Vilna because she’s good at seeing people off, and Vilna did; she saw Jenny Linden off. Vilna can be marvellous.”
“Well, whatever Vilna did then,” said Alexandra, “Jenny Linden’s come back. She’s unbalanced. One moment she wants to be friends, the next she hates me.”
“That’s what Ned said,” observed Abbie. “She’s unbalanced. That always seemed to be the worst sin in Ned’s eyes. He didn’t like nutty people. The only reason he liked me was because I was so observably sane, I sometimes think. Alexandra, I have to go. The doctor’s coming up the drive.”
“Dr. Moebius?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t he in his surgery?”
“Wasp stings to the tongue count as an emergency, especially if it’s an
Arab princeling with enough money to buy up all Eddon Gurney.”
Abbie went to answer the door to the doctor. The student with the stung tongue met her in the corridor and said, carefully, “I might have just imagined it, having seen the wasp fly away.” He got his tenses right and Arthur, who had also gone to answer the door, was pleased with him; Abbie less so. It was the School’s responsibility to pay for medical emergencies, and Dr. Moebius had been called out, and would charge. Dr. Moebius went away.
Alexandra left the house and drove the half mile to Vilna’s place. Vilna lived in a small mansion in a charming, olde-world village where property prices were the highest around. The house was called Pineapple Lodge because of two large carved stone pineapples, circa 1750, sitting on each of the gateposts which flanked the wrought-iron gates (Coalbrookdale, 1830) to the drive. The gate, once permanently open, was now permanently closed, and could be opened only by remote control from inside the house. Security devices were everywhere. Vilna’s husband was in prison. He was an Australian junk bond dealer who had run into trouble with the law three years back. Most of his properties had been sold, except for this one, originally purchased for Vilna’s mother, who had got out of Yugoslavia just before the country collapsed into little murderous parts, and could enter five songs, not one, for the Eurovision Song Contest. Here the two women, mother and daughter, waited until the time came when Clive would be paroled. Then their plan was to move to South Africa. In the meantime they made do with the West Country. Clive had many enemies, and they felt safer here. Strange faces in a remote country area were quickly spotted and obliged to account for themselves.
Ned and Alexandra had been to visit Vilna once or twice, but had been taken aback by the style and colour of the soft furnishings in a house rigorous in its original simplicity.
“It shouldn’t matter,” said Ned, “that the place looks like a Turkish harem, but it does. It makes it hard to take Vilna seriously.” The English countryside, everyone knew, was a place where mud must be taken into account, and dogs, and bicycles: where the furniture was oak or pine, antique, and where wealth was always understated. Ned said this was the Englishman’s traditional defence against the mob. Only the rich and knowledgeable could tell wealth from poverty. Even Mrs. Edwards, the live-in housekeeper, would complain at the store that her employers simply didn’t know how to behave. They were ostentatious and didn’t fit in.
The Cottage went for the most part unlocked—who could tell that that scrawl on the battered wall was a Picasso; that the old wood box was a Jacobean coffer, the coal scuttle a fine piece of Arts and Crafts in beaten copper; that the blackened fireback, circa 1705, was priceless? Vilna and Maria’s house, with its elaborately papered walls, its swathes of curtains, its plump sofas, its mahogany and walnut furniture, the plenitude of ormolu, and with TV and video everywhere in sight, was obviously worth robbing. Not just a casual village break-in, either. The real, planned stuff. What one villain owed to another. Clive Mansell’s family home.
So Vilna, not fitting in, was kept on the outskirts of the social life which centred round The Cottage and which easily embraced most of the eccentrics in the area—not quite excluded, not quite included. She would be asked to lunch, but seldom to dinner. That her husband was in prison was not held against her—he was a financial wizard, not any kind of common criminal, and had probably been framed anyway. So Abbie, who liked Vilna, and rather cared for vulgar cocktails clinking with ice served in elaborate glasses by the side of the swimming pool, told everyone, and many believed her.
Alexandra knew well enough that she herself was not exempt from local criticism. All right for Ned, although a newcomer to the area, to be a writer and critic. The occupation was familiar. There’d always been those about, moved down from the city: Thomas Hardy being an earlier example. Just about all right for Alexandra to be an actress, so long as she was a failed actress, a woman trying to get pregnant—for as such they defined her, once the receptionist at the surgery had spread the news. Alexandra was acceptable inasmuch as her husband was, and as long as she was unfortunate and could be pitied. But once her fortunes changed, once the run of A Doll’s House had started, once her picture was in the paper, once she’d had her photograph taken with Princess Anne—and since she now had a child and couldn’t be pitied and, worse, had more or less handed the child over to be looked after by Theresa the help—she was seen as flashy. Sussex would be a better county for her.
“Vilna,” said Alexandra, “what do you know about Jenny Linden?”
“I try not to think about her,” said Vilna. “Why depress oneself? She is quite mad. Why don’t you forget her?”
“Because she makes it difficult,” said Alexandra. “She keeps popping up. And because I have no idea what there is to forget. No one says anything clearly enough. If Jenny Linden was going round pestering my husband, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Darling, I don’t know you very well. We have been acquaintances, not friends. That has not been my doing. People round here are stand-offish. Abbie told me that word. Abbie is your friend: she should have told you. But she was too English. She thought if she looked the other way it would go away. She told me that.”
“I am sorry if I have seemed stand-offish,” said Alexandra, and she was. In the grim light of death anyone who lives seems valuable. Though the light quickly fades and we are back to normal. “I have just been so busy lately.”
“Did Ned encourage Jenny Linden in any way?” she asked. “Had he given her any reason to behave in the way she is?”
“You know Ned, darling,” said Vilna. “Always the ladies’ man.”
“No, I didn’t know him as that way at all,” said Alexandra stiffly, deciding she preferred Vilna as an acquaintance not a friend after all. “Ned was a very wife-and-child sort of man. A family man.”
“One can be so wrong about people,” said Vilna. “Even if married to them. I lived with Clive for four years and never knew he was a crim. I learnt that word from his friends. It is short for criminal.”
Vilna and Alexandra sat at the bar of the swimming pool and had drinks. Plum trees bent over the glass roof as if trying to get at the water below. The swimming pool, Alexandra realised, was where once the walled kitchen garden had been. The end wall of the room still incorporated some original Elizabethan brick. Everywhere else was gold and black mosaic.
“Isn’t this a fantastic pool? Otto Cavalier was the interior designer, darling, did you know?”
Alexandra said she’d never heard of Otto Cavalier, which didn’t go down too well. She returned to the subject of Clive, in which she felt safe.
“Nobody around here believes Clive is a criminal,” said Alexandra politely. “Not even his city colleagues. He was framed; he was a sacrificial victim. Everyone knows that. You mustn’t feel bad about it.”
“He is a crim,” said Vilna firmly. “I know that for a fact. An English judge said so and British law is the envy of the world. That is one of the reasons my mother and I came to this country in the first place. Your husband was not a criminal but he was certainly highly sexed. He would press any pretty woman up against a wall at a party; at least that was my experience. You would not want it otherwise, I suppose? Who wants a gelded horse when they can have the real thing?”
Alexandra, who had never thought of Vilna as pretty, just rather over made-up, decided Vilna was one of those women who are convinced that all men have designs upon them, so deluded are they about their own attractions. She did not have the energy to defend Ned’s reputation. She simply discounted Vilna’s account of him. “Tell me about Sunday morning,” she said.
“Abbie called me at about ten in the morning and I went round to The Cottage,” said Vilna, as if she had been rehearsed. “When I got there the ambulance was just leaving with the body. I was disappointed. I’d never seen a dead body.”
“I’m so sorry you were disappointed,” said Alexandra.
“Darling, I have offended you!” cried Vilna. “I am so tactless. Cancel, cancel, as they say! There was Jenny Linden running up and down like a cat in a seizure with hardly a stitch of clothing on. I could afford to run round like that; believe me, Jenny Linden cannot. Flop, bounce, wobble! I would be so ashamed. That woman could afford to lose at least thirty pounds.”
“No clothes on?”
“She had one of your nighties on. I think Abbie made her put it on, to save her modesty. But it was very light and lacey. Dr. Moebius gave her pills but they made no difference at all.”
“Dr. Moebius gave Jenny Linden pills?”
“It might have been a jab, darling, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Forget it, darling. Your husband is gone. All men are bastards. Find another one, better than the last.”
“I need to get things clear in my head,” said Alexandra. “I know you are all trying to protect me but I wish you wouldn’t. And my husband was not all men, he was not a bastard. I love him.”
“It is only a figure of speech,” said Vilna. “Customary in this country.”
“How exactly did you see Jenny Linden off?” enquired Alexandra.
“I hit her,” said Vilna. “Forget it. We’re on your side, Alexandra.”
“There isn’t a side to be on,” said Alexandra. “Jenny Linden is just a sodding nuisance. I don’t want her saying anything to the fucking newspapers. What has Ned dying got to do with her? I don’t want her coming to the funeral, the bitch!”
“There is no need to swear,” said the wild woman of the mountain tribes, primly.
“So why did you feel obliged to vacuum my house?” enquired Alexandra.
“Because at home whenever I am in a crisis, I clean,” said Vilna, “like many women, and because it needed it, and because I am your friend, and you were coming home to more than enough.”
“Yes, I was,” said Alexandra. “I did. Thank you.” The two women smiled at one another. Alexandra drank her cocktail with a straw bent in the middle, designed to bypass chunks of pineapple, little flags and maraschino cherries. It was absurd. “Where did Abbie find my lace nightie?” asked Alexandra.
“Darling, you are so suspicious. You must not let yourself become paranoic. I have no idea. Your cupboard, your drawer?”
“Under my pillow, I expect. Why did she have to do that? It moves Jenny Linden far too close to Ned. It makes me feel ill.”
“It was just something loose Abbie could throw over Jenny. Like a cloth you throw over a birdcage to keep its occupant quiet.”
“I came to thank you both for helping me out. I’m not quite myself at the moment.”
“You’re welcome,” said Vilna.
“When you saw the body in the morgue,” said Alexandra, “what did Ned look like? I’ve never seen a dead body either. Is it frightening?”
“He didn’t look very dead to me. He looked astonished. Death tautens the jaw, like a facelift. It is very flattering. I was sorry, seeing him lying there, I hadn’t said yes. It’s a criminal waste of opportunity, don’t you think, saying no? We’re on this earth for such a little time; we’re cold and dark for so long.”
“Say no to what? I don’t understand you.”
“He said he kept the door unlocked when you were away so beautiful women could visit him at night. It was an invitation.”
“Vilna, it was a joke. Ned talks like that.”
“He was not my type anyway. And he was married to you. And you are my friend. And the dog would have jumped up. You English and your dogs.”
“It saves security gates,” said Alexandra, “in the middle of the countryside.”
“Your husband looks very peaceful in death and younger than in life. Jenny Linden looked at his corpse and screamed.”
“Jenny Linden saw the body? How do you know?”
“As Abbie and I left the morgue, Jenny Linden was coming in. We nearly crashed into her. Abbie’s a bad, bad driver. We had to stop. They went on. While Abbie was inspecting the damage I heard Jenny Linden scream.”
“Everyone’s been to see the body except for me? Even Jenny Linden?”
“Alexandra,” said Vilna, “you didn’t want to come with us. That was seen as strange.”
“I was exhausted,” said Alexandra. “I was in suspension. You should have waited until I’d been. I can’t see any point in seeing the corpse, it’s been so picked over. I’d rather remember him alive.”
“Ned said you would often be very tired. Career women so often are. It is the penalty men pay in return for their wives’ salaries. I have never worked in all my life. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
She clicked her fingers and her mother appeared from nowhere with more drinks. She was wearing pink rubber sandals with very thick stockings. She went away again. Vilna did not speak to her.
“How does Jenny Linden get to The Cottage? Does she drive or does she walk?” asked Alexandra, choosing to ignore this last. “Or perhaps she comes on a broomstick.”
“She didn’t have her car on Sunday. After I’d hit her and she’d stopped running round and screaming, I had to drive her back. She wouldn’t have been fit to drive anyway. She clung to the doorhandle; she kept saying it was her house by rights, I had to drag her away. She complained no one was being nice to her. I said you were on your way, in all decency she had to stay away, and I offered her £200 to make sure she did. I thought that was about the right sum. Not too little, not too much. A tip.”
“You what?”
“Money’s nothing,” said Vilna. “I felt for you. Women like Jenny Linden can be dangerous. At home where people are sensible they are found dead in a ditch; knifed. Here you do not use knives, you use money. My mother and I follow the customs of the country. It is advisable. Do you want to see my new crown?” she asked. She opened her mouth and Alexandra looked inside.
“Very nice,” she said, and went to visit Jenny Linden.