‘Mummy,’ said Sascha, in his piercing urgent voice, ‘the cat’s got kittens. I have to go.’ He went. Irene took the phone.
‘Darling,’ she said, ‘I hope you’re not too upset. Men will be men; that is to say, babies.’
‘Why should I be upset?’ asked Alexandra. ‘In particular? Apart from being widowed; all that?’
‘You have heard of the Doctrine of Parsimony?’ asked Irene.
‘No,’ said Alexandra. ‘Couldn’t we talk about the cat having kittens? How many?’
‘Eight,’ said Irene. ‘But where did I go wrong in your education?’
‘You sent me to stage school,’ said Alexandra.
‘The Doctrine of Parsimony is a version of Occam’s razor,’ said Irene, who had been to Cheltenham Ladies’ College in its severe prime and then to Oxford. ‘Both suggest that the simplest solution is likely to be the true one; or the most useful. If, as you say, there is a mad woman roaming the edges of Ned’s life –’
‘His death –’ said Alexandra.
‘– it is likely that Ned gave her some encouragement. Think of Fatal Attraction.’
‘But she’s so fat and horrid,’ said Alexandra.
‘You mean why should Ned be interested in her while he had you?’
‘Exactly,’ said Alexandra. ‘Besides, we loved each other. He wouldn’t do anything like that. He had a great integrity. He didn’t cheapen himself, ever.’
‘That’s as may be, but you’ve been away an awful lot,’ said Irene. ‘Men don’t like it. If the wife leaves an empty bed a husband’s first impulse is to fill it.’
‘I’ve been working,’ said Alexandra. ‘What was I supposed to do? It’s not my fault if I’ve had to earn. Ned got me the part in the first place. Do you think I’ve liked being away from home? We couldn’t even have Sascha’s fourth birthday on the proper day because I had a matinee. And the poor little boy hated coming up to London at weekends. He missed all his friends’ parties, but what could we do? And then Ned died on the dining-room floor, just fell down and died, and I wasn’t even there.’ She cried.
‘Stop blubbing,’ said Irene, who’d always wanted to go on the stage but had been thwarted, or so she said, by an early marriage and Alexandra’s birth. ‘You owe it to your public not to blubber. You’ll spoil your looks. And it upsets me. I feel so helpless. I don’t like leaving you alone. Likewise, I don’t want to bring Sascha back to The Cottage, into such an unhappy house as it must be at the moment.’
‘But I miss him,’ wept Alexandra.
‘Stop thinking about yourself,’ said Irene. ‘I’ll keep Sascha with me until after the funeral, and that’s that. It’s the best thing. And when is the funeral? Why is nobody saying? Is it going to be a cremation? Really they’re the best, except there’s always a problem about the ashes.’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ wailed Alexandra. ‘I can’t bear to think about it. Hamish is going to see to all that.’
‘You’re the widow,’ said Irene. ‘You really ought to take some responsibility.’
‘You’ve had so much practice, I suppose,’ said Alexandra, bitterly. ‘You know all about it.’
‘Actually,’ said Irene, who had indeed buried two husbands out of four, one of them Alexandra’s father, ‘I do.’
‘Was our house full of whispers when my father died? And rustlings, and movements out of the corner of your eyes? Things you thought you almost saw, but didn’t really? It’s got so spooky here.’
‘It was perfectly quiet and ordinary,’ said Irene. ‘I made sure he died in hospital. But when our cat Marmalade passed away it was just as you describe until she was safely underground. Sascha made a little tombstone in the garden. I expect he told you about that. No? I’d keep seeing Marmalade on the stairs, but when I looked again she wasn’t there.
As I was going up the stair,
I met a cat who wasn’t there,
She wasn’t there again today,
I wish to God she’d go away.
The eyes play tricks. These are Marmalade’s eight grandchildren we’ve just had. I suppose you don’t want one for comfort? No? Probably wise. You’re never in one place long enough. The sooner Ned is buried the better. Or burned. As for this Lucy Lint, be careful. People like that can be dangerous. If Ned was God what does that make you?’
‘Mary?’
‘No, darling, the devil. In this Lucy Lint’s eyes. Do be careful! Wasn’t there a Lucy Lint in A Doll’s House?’
‘Christine Linde,’ said Alexandra. ‘She plays the doleful widow, a woman who has to earn her own living. Daisy Longriff was playing her – and understudying me. Now Daisy’s playing me, and they’ve got a girl out of wardrobe to do Mrs Linde. Her big chance.’
‘That’s a bit spooky,’ said Irene. Then she had to go because her current husband wanted her to find one of his golf shoes which the puppy had no doubt run off with, and Sascha had tried to put one of the kittens in the dryer. Alexandra, usually so independent, missed her mother and whimpered.
Alexandra put Mozart’s Greatest Hits on the CD player, very loud. That dispersed a fear or so but added to her melancholy. She put Lucy’s diary and address book in a drawer among Ned’s papers – then she took them out: there was too much intimacy there – and put them on an open bookcase, where they touched nothing important. She would turn her mind to them when she felt like it. She stored it up in her mind as a kind of treat. Having them in her possession increased her control over the situation. She felt empowered, as would a witch who had just stolen the clippings from her enemy’s toenails.
Dr Moebius called. Ned’s body would be back in Mr Lightfoot’s morgue during the course of the afternoon. He hoped Alexandra did not take his insistence on a full autopsy as unfeeling. It was important that the forensic labs didn’t cut corners.
‘Only skulls and breastbones,’ said Alexandra.
Dr Moebius did not laugh. He repeated that the cause of death was myocardial infarction; he confirmed that there was no sign of cerebral haemorrhage. He asked if Mrs Ludd would like some sleeping pills? He seemed to have forgotten his recommendation of herbal tea.
‘What brought my husband’s heart attack on?’ asked Alexandra. ‘So suddenly, and without warning?’
‘These things just happen,’ said Dr Moebius. ‘Or there may have been some undue excitement.’
‘Like someone coming to the door you didn’t want to see?’ suggested Alexandra.
‘Possibly,’ said Dr Moebius. And he told her that someone you didn’t want to see might well increase the heartbeat, and a simple increase could indeed be enough to trigger an infarction. She should think of the many middle-aged men who died when getting up to make an after-dinner speech; or in the middle of sexual congress. He asked when the funeral was, and said he would do his best to get there. Ned had been a charming man, and an excellent patient. That is to say, he seldom came to the surgery. It might have been better if he had come. His blood pressure might have been high for years but no one would know now.
Alexandra said the day of the funeral had not yet been decided. ‘Don’t leave it too long,’ said Dr Moebius. ‘An overnight stay at a morgue can cost as much as a five-star hotel. Am I being too practical? I’m sorry.’
‘That’s OK,’ said Alexandra.
Dr Moebius asked when Alexandra was going back to work. She said a week today. He was shocked and said she’d need more time than that – and wasn’t there the child to think about? Alexandra said too much thought might be counterproductive: she did not know yet what her financial position was going to be; time off for widowhood might prove an impossible luxury.
‘Surely –’ said Dr Moebius.
‘“Surelys” went out the windows years back,’ said Alexandra.
‘These days we all do what we have to, not what it would be nice to do if we could.’ She asked if Lucy Lint had been in the house when he was called in on the Sunday morning, and Dr Moebius said that was so; apparently she’d turned up to walk the dog and found Ned dead –
‘Abbie found him dead,’ said Alexandra.
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Dr Moebius. ‘The one who runs the language school. She was there as well. She’s very careful, very responsible. But Mrs Lint was particularly distressed and made quite a nuisance of herself.’ He’d given her a sedative and she’d left. If Mrs Ludd happened to see her, would she ask Mrs Lint to drop by to see him? She might find herself suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘Why should she?’ asked Alexandra. ‘She’s not exactly family. Just an acquaintance.’
‘She’s very sensitive,’ said Dr Moebius. ‘We are not all made of stone.’
Meaning I am? wondered Alexandra, detecting censure in his voice. She told herself not to be paranoic. Dr Moebius said he had to make an emergency visit to the language school and brought the conversation to an end.
Alexandra called Abbie and told her she’d broken into Lucy’s home and how she’d found a shrine to Ned there, and how eerie it was. Abbie said she thought Alexandra had gone maddoing such a thing, but she, Abbie, couldn’t come now because the doctor had given the student an injection earlier, and the lad was now reacting to that far worse than to the suspected wasp sting, which had probably never happened, and she’d had to ask the doctor to visit yet again. Should she ask Vilnato go over to The Cottage, if Alexandra was upset?
‘No,’ said Alexandra. ‘I’m just fine, thank you.’ Then she asked Abbie if in Abbie’s opinion Ned and Lucy had ever had an affair.
Abbie shrieked down the phone and said, ‘Why should Ned look at anyone else when he had you?’
‘He looked at Vilna,’ said Alexandra, ‘according to Vilna.’
‘Vilna’s like that,’ said Abbie. ‘Hopelessly Balkan. She thinks every man’s a sexual vampire. Take no notice. What does it matter anyway, Alexandra? Ned’s dead. Over. Don’t these things fade into perspective?’
‘Actually no,’ said Alexandra. ‘They don’t seem to. Since I can’t discuss the matter with Ned, or ever have any explanation from him, let alone excuses, or any resolution to do better in future or any apology, and since there is no way more recent times could ever push back past times into irrelevancy, why then no forgiveness is possible. I can’t play both sides of the argument on this matter, speaking for him as well as for me. It isn’t possible.’
‘I don’t see why not,’ said Abbie. ‘If Arthur can play three-dimensional chess with himself, you can forgive a husband posthumously for a trivial and stupid affair –’
‘You mean there was one?’ Alexandra was quick.
‘I mean nothing of the sort,’ said Abbie. ‘I swear on the cross that to the best of my knowledge and belief nothing untoward happened between Ned and that little bitch Lucy.’
‘On the cross?’ demanded Alexandra. ‘I thought you were a Buddhist.’ But she laughed. Then she said, ‘Did Ned ever say anything to you about seeing a therapist called Leah?’
‘Of course not,’ said Abbie. ‘If he didn’t tell you why would he tell me?’
‘You mean he was?’
‘Alexandra,’ said Abbie. ‘Stop all this. You’re brooding and paranoic. Can’t you just grieve peacefully, and think of the real Ned; do all that stuff you’re meant to do: reconciliation and incorporation and all that?’
‘I expect I am a little mad,’ said Alexandra.
‘You certainly are.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What are friends for?’ asked Abbie. ‘It’s OK. Just lean on me.’