That night, as Alexandra lay sleepless in Sascha’s narrow bed, Hamish came into the room. He was wearing Ned’s dressing gown and nothing beneath it. He had lighter body-hair than Ned’s, and thinner, longer legs, but warm flesh, not marble. He offered comfort, there was no doubt about that: he was good-looking; some essence of Ned was there. The need to keep life going, to overlay death with sex, was strong. She lay still. He sat on the end of the bed. She moved her feet out of the way.
‘Anthropologists tell us,’ he said, ‘that in many tribes when the husband dies the brother is expected to take over his role. I can’t sleep. Can you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If left alone.’
‘I feel Ned everywhere. I think this is what he wants us to do: to comfort one another.’
‘That may be wishful thinking, Hamish.’ She sat up. She slept naked, as was her custom. She pulled the sheet up to cover her bosom. Gently, he pushed it down. She could not be bothered to resist. So, she had breasts. What woman didn’t?
‘I find your modesty the titchiest bit hypocritical,’ said Hamish, amiably enough. ‘Since your bosom is so easily bared to the millions.’
‘About four hundred and twenty,’ said Alexandra, angered, ’and not even a full house, since no one at that stage expected the show to be a success. But I don’t mean to argue. Please go away.’
‘You’re going to need me,’ said Hamish. ‘More than you know. I think you’d just better give in and be nice to me.’
‘Once you pay the Danegeld,’ said Alexandra, ‘you never get rid of the Dane,’ and she avoided his hands, now on her breasts, and got out of bed. ‘If I’m nice to you now you might never go away.’
She stood naked. She didn’t care. Moonlight came through the window. She could see out to the garden, the privet hedge, the field. She wondered if Lucy Lint was out there, watching, trying to claim Ned’s ghost as her own.
‘You’re quite insane,’ Hamish said. ‘You should have seen yourself with that axe. Totally out of control. I’m well out of it. Look at you! Exhibitionist, pure and complete. What Ned described as the Curse of Thespianism Descended. Actresses are sexually easy, he told me in one letter. Good at sex, but it’s not important to them. Anyone will do. It’s what they do for relaxation, between the only acts they care about. Actresses are not like real women at all. Make-believe females, with no centre, no soul, no capacity for real emotion.’
‘Actors,’ said Alexandra, and ‘I don’t believe in your letters. I’ve never seen them.’ She was dressing. Pants, jeans, bra, T-shirt.
‘I won’t show them to you,’ he said. ‘They’d hurt you too much.’
She wondered where she was going to sleep. Abbie’s? Vilna’s? Both had seemed unfriendly. She needed sleep. She had to be fit to drive to her mother’s the next day. With Sascha in the house Hamish would probably leave her alone. She doubted that he was dangerous. He would finger and upset; his instinct was to find a vulnerable spot and hurt as much as he could, but he wouldn’t rape. He would not put himself so much in the wrong. No wonder Ned had kept him at a distance.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Hamish.
‘To spend the night with Lucy Lint,’ said Alexandra. ‘You know what we Thespians are.’