Theresa called and dusted round a bit, crying. She didn’t like doing housework, feeling she was employed to look after Sascha, but was always prepared to help out in an emergency.
Hamish came out of the study and asked Theresa to clear out the utility room, and put the dog’s blanket through the machine; so Theresa sulked and told Alexandra she could stay only till midday. Alexandra told Theresa that Hamish was from Scotland and was used to telling people what to do, Theresa was not to take it badly.
‘He talked to me as if I was a servant,’ complained Theresa, but agreed to stay: she could do all the house except the utility room.
Alexandra herself put the blanket through the machine. Hamish was right. The blanket was thick with dog hair, and smelt of warm wet dog even when Diamond wasn’t in his basket. Diamond growled at Alexandra when she took the blanket away. Diamond was becoming more and more disaffected. He missed his routine, he missed Sascha, he missed Ned. Alexandra found herself mistrusting and almost disliking Diamond. The fact was, in going for walks with Lucy Lint, Diamond had betrayed her. Perhaps Alexandra wouldn’t keep Diamond, in spite of the fact that everyone obviously expected her to? Perhaps she would give him away? What sort of guard-dog was he, anyway, who wouldn’t bark at a knock at half past seven in the morning, but sleep until he was called? By Lucy Lint.
In the bottom of Diamond’s basket Alexandra found a chewed plastic bracelet – bright red. Not her own. Diamond cringed and looked guilty. Alexandra lifted the bracelet out and called Theresa and asked if it was hers. Theresa said it wasn’t hers though Alexandra was pretty sure it was. But why should Theresa lie?
Diamond took the bracelet under discussion in his mouth and went upstairs and stood outside the closed door of the master bedroom, and when Alexandra opened it went inside and laid the bracelet on the brass bed and stood with his head bowed in shame. It was Diamond’s habit thus to return chewed objects to the place of taking, when his misdemeanours were found out. Of course Diamond might have got it wrong, this time. Who was to say a dog had a perfect memory? Like humans, presumably they could get muddled.
Alexandra aimed a kick at Diamond: she couldn’t help it. Diamond yelped. Alexandra was instantly sorry and guilty. Diamond returned and licked her hand and growled. ‘Diamond’s guilt trip,’ she and Ned would say. Diamond’s self-humbling made Alexandra squirm and Ned laugh. Ned laughed a lot.
‘It isn’t mine, honestly,’ said Theresa. ‘Honestly. Cheap old thing. It might be Mrs Lint’s, from the look of it.’
It didn’t seem in the least Lucy Lint’s style, though, not at all. And the ‘honestly’ seemed wrong.
‘I expect Mrs Lint came here often,’ said Alexandra, as casually as she could. ‘When I was away? She helped Mr Ludd quite a lot with his work.’
Theresa was not deceived. All Alexandra did was to humiliate herself.
‘She’d come to work with Mr Ludd sometimes,’ said Theresa. ’They did those books together. But there wasn’t anything in it. I wouldn’t want you to think there was.’
‘I should think there wasn’t!’ said Alexandra. ‘Good Lord!’
‘He loved you so much,’ said Theresa, bursting into more tears: she was unrestrained in her weeping. ‘And you loved him, and now he’s gone. That poor little innocent boy, orphaned! It makes you think!’
‘It does indeed,’ said Alexandra, and left Theresa to weep alone. Even her tears seemed on a larger scale than the rest of humanity’s.
Hamish came out of the study and put his long thin arms round Theresa’s bulk to comfort her. She lay her giant’s head upon his shoulder, in trust. Ned would never have done that.
Of course guests sometimes used the master bedroom to leave their coats, at parties. The bracelet might have been pulled off with someone’s sleeve. Yes, that was it. Most things had a harmless explanation. The whole world, including Lucy Lint, could believe Ned was having an affair with Lucy Lint, and be wrong. Just as the whole world could believe she and Eric Stenstrom were having an affair, and be wrong.
Lately Alexandra had come to see her mind as a computer. It searched for distant and improbable connections. It took its time: what it was doing was difficult. There were not enough megabytes installed. The egg-timer that meant ‘wait, wait, I’m searching, I’ve got a problem’, was nearly always up on screen these days, thwarting her.
Alexandra found that lately she’d blinked more than usual. The thoughts and ideas that came to her no longer drifted vaguely and easily here and there: each one had to be caught, translated into words, registered. Each registering was indicated by a blink. Information, blink. But she had to use some kind of mind keyboard to type in problems and propositions. Hours, even days later, conclusions were reached. One came to her now.
‘How did Ned come to think I had some kind of sexual relationship going with Eric Stenstrom?’ Why, because Lucy Lint put it into his head that it was so. ‘Why did Ned not confront me with this?’ Because it suited him not to: because he was proud and would not lower himself to enquire. ‘Would I have taken the part of Nora opposite Eric Stenstrom’s Torvald if I thought for one minute Ned believed we had had, were having, or ever would have an affair?’ No. ‘If Ned believed I was betraying him with Eric Stenstrom, would he have fucked the next woman who practically lay down in front of him with her legs open?’ Yes. Probably.
She switched the computer off. Breathed. Rested. Switched it on again.
Click, click, the computer went It made the occasional little bleep. Hard disc in place. Mouse found. Even as Alexandra thought this – and how laboured the thoughts still were: one thing after another, plodding and careful – a real mouse, little, brown and quick, ran out from a cupboard in front of her, out of the kitchen door to where Theresa was blubbing and cleaning out the grate in the living room. The mouse seemed to exist as a demonstration of the way the spirit always tends to become flesh; the way a psychological phenomenon offers itself up in concrete form: the way verbal puns offer themselves for literal interpretation.
The quick and the dead. She was quick and Ned was dead. The egg-timer had vanished. She felt she could just about catch up, match event to word, word to thought, thought to conclusion, and conclusion to action. Theresa saw the mouse, let out a yell, straightened up, banged her head, shook the ammonite off the shelf, and it split. Not perfect any more.