Alexandra called her mother. Was Sascha all right? She hadn’t seen him since last Saturday. Now she was worrying dreadfully. She missed him. Should she drive down tomorrow to visit?
‘It’s not sensible,’ said Irene. ‘You sound too upset. Sascha’s perfectly happy playing with the kittens. Four marmalade, one white, and three tabby. He protects them from the father, who is a grotty tabby tom and wants to eat them.’
‘But I’m getting anxious about him; I just need to be with him. Can I speak to him, please?’
‘You’ve probably been ill-wishing the poor child,’ said Irene. ‘Undue anxiety in regard to a child is often a projection of the mother’s own destructive impulses, and I quote.’
‘Oh, God, Mother,’ said Alexandra. ‘What have you been reading?’
‘A book,’ said Irene. ‘Mother: Friend or Foe? It’s very interesting. I’m not sure you’re the best person to be his mother. But I take it with a pinch of salt. I know you must be feeling bad about Ned and that dreadful woman, and Sascha is so very like Ned. Same eyes, same chin. You might find yourself very hostile, unconsciously. Then accidents happen. I should leave him here a little longer. Perhaps not come down tomorrow. I don’t want him upset. He is Ned’s child, isn’t he?’
‘Mother!’
‘Well, Eric Stenstrom isn’t so unlike Ned to look at. Scandinavian eyes, strong chin, straight back. And it was all going on about the time you got pregnant with Sascha. I did rather wonder.’
‘I can’t believe you’re saying this. How does Eric Stenstrom even come into it? He’s gay. What is going on here?’
‘It would explain why Ned started an affair with this woman. He was humiliated. You playing opposite Eric every night for all the world to see. His Torvald to your Nora. All the critics could talk about was what a sexy production it was. In the scene when you dance the Tarantella: darling, when I saw it I practically had to avert my eyes, and I’m not easily shocked. I don’t know how poor Ned was expected to react.’
‘This is total insanity, Mother. The critics were beyond belief: even Ned laughed. The play isn’t about sex, it’s about female emancipation. Though you’d never have known it from reading the reviews.’
‘You could have fooled a lot of us, darling,’ said Irene.
‘My dress slipped on the First Night and I finished the scene bare-breasted: it was that, or bring down the curtain, and for God’s sake what did it matter? I had shoulder straps put on the costume and it was the first and last time it happened. Who cares?’
‘It made your name, darling,’ said Irene. ‘I’m afraid very few thought it was an accident.’
‘Mother, if you worry too much about what people think, you never get anything done. Ned would say that. And, please, how does it happen that now Eric Stenstrom’s name is coming up? What do you think you know about me and him? Because there’s nothing to know: ask him.’
‘I kept quiet about it, darling, but that horrid little girl who played Mrs Linde – much too young for the part: why on earth was she cast? Someone’s girlfriend, I suppose – what’s her name?’
‘Daisy Longriff,’ said Alexandra.
‘Daisy Longriff said at the First Night party that you and Eric were close. She said she would have been Nora and you Mrs Linde but Eric had it switched.’
‘It was because I can act and she can’t,’ said Alexandra. ‘There was nothing personal about it. But obviously she’d rather there was.’
‘She told me you’d lost your costume on purpose. It was a publicity stunt, and planned.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ said Alexandra. ‘What a little bitch! Why did you listen to her? Do you have no loyalty to me at all? I always helped her all I could. I thought she liked me. At least no one will believe her. She’s making a dreadful mess of Nora, I hear. That’s something.’
‘She does the Tarantella scene nude,’ said Irene. ‘The rest of the cast don’t like it, but on the other hand they’re taking bookings months ahead. Lexi, I really want to talk about Sascha’s future. If she does it nude, you’ll have to do it nude. Is this really what you want Sascha’s future to be? Bad enough to have an actress for a mother, but a stripper! He is a Romanoff –’
‘Jesus, Mother –’
‘I know what you think about that; but it’s true. The blood does flow. Ned would turn in his grave –’
‘He’s not in his grave yet, Mother. He’s lying down there in the morgue, turning to marble, and all you can give me is this junk –’
She slammed the phone down. Picked it up, redialled.
‘And if you think you’re taking Sascha from me, Mother, you’ve got another think coming. I’m driving over to collect him tomorrow afternoon and that’s that.’
‘You mean poor little Sascha’s to go to Ned’s funeral? Just like that?’
Oh, icy mother, remembrance of things past.
‘That’s no problem,’ said Alexandra. ‘I’m not going to Ned’s funeral. Ned doesn’t deserve to have me there. If he can die in some slut’s arms, that slut can do the burying. I won’t.’
Silence.
‘But you loved Ned.’ Irene’s voice had lost its ice. She was alarmed. ‘He was your husband.’
‘So what?’ said Alexandra. ‘So what? If he couldn’t remember it, why should I?’
‘There’ll be a dreadful scandal, dear,’ said her mother.
‘The press will love it,’ said Alexandra, bitterly. ‘It will be good for bookings, and I will be blamed for that too.’
Alexandra put the phone down. She could hear Hamish heating soup in the kitchen. Friday today. Just the lawyer’s meeting on Tuesday. Then Hamish would go. Thank God. Herself and Sascha alone in the house till the following Monday, settling down, getting used to lack of Ned. Theresa could come over on the Saturday, so Sascha felt easy with her after the three-week break. Then she, Alexandra, would stay up in London for the rest of the run; coming back for Sundays: Sascha would need to stay at The Cottage because of nursery school. It wasn’t ideal, but it would have to do for now. The run would end in time; then she’d be back as a full-time mother, heaven knew when she’d work again.
Thank God for Theresa: natural, reliable, easy, kind. Ned would groan and say Theresa was more like an ox than a human being; was it good for Sascha to be so much in the company of an ox? Was it good for his brain cells? Would he lumber fatly through life? And Alexandra would say, OK, Theresa goes and you do full-time parenting, Ned, while I earn, and Ned would say, OK, OK, you win, Theresa stays. And both of them would laugh. Lucy Lint never made anyone laugh. She was too slow, too dull: her stolid flesh, the unlaughing, moist gap between her legs too eager, available and hungry to generate much mirth.