Worst Fears

by Fay Weldon

  “So where is the child now?” asked Dr. Moebius, sipping his tea, which was not, as it turned out, unpleasant if taken with enough organic honey, though heaven knew how control was exercised over the bees so they supplied only the relevant purest nectar. His notebook was still out, but at least closed. “I see no sign of him around. Is he asleep? Through all the furore?”

  “He’s with my mother,” said Alexandra, “I’ll be driving over to see him tomorrow. I do miss him so much! I’m making his new room ready for him. I thought if the house changed in little respects, the major respect—his father not there any more—wouldn’t be so horrendous for him.”

  “Very wise,” said Dr. Moebius. “But I do think perhaps you should see a grief counsellor.”

  “I know a good one in Bristol,” said Alexandra. “Leah someone or other.”

  “Leah?” said Dr. Moebius. “Does she do grief as well? Well, I’m glad. She’s very good.”

  21

  ALEXANDRA COULD SEE THE wisdom of doing what she was told. She felt an agreeable sense of cunning: what she imagined a vixen would feel, mid-winter, hungry, desperate but so full of plans she’d scarcely notice, staring through a hedge as a frosty dusk fell, and the silly hens were locked away by a slow man in Wellington boots, footfalls crackling on already icy grass; and lo, there was a new rat-hole in the side of the henhouse, and the she-fox could see it, and the man plodded back to the house—and now the moon and the night-hour gave permission—

  Alexandra looked up Leah’s number in Jenny Linden’s address book and called it up. She sat on the settle at the foot of the stairs, where she could see the back door, so often used, and the front door, so seldom used, and thought Ned would come in through the back any minute, but he didn’t.

  She could hear Hamish moving about in the study. What was he doing? He paced a lot, and wept a little judging by the state of his eyes. She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural: out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness. Widowhood was a normal state. Most married women endured it, unless divorce intervened. Perhaps that was the merit of divorce.

  “Hello,” said Leah, in her soft, ingratiating voice, with its hint of reproach. “How can I help you?”

  Alexandra imagined Leah, on no good grounds, to be a thin version of Jenny Linden: colourless hair falling limply and simply, au naturel. Leah would not have Jenny Linden’s stubborn, sexy helplessness in the face of her own passions, which men found so attractive. She employed some other, even greater power over others: she could murmur “worst fears” over the telephone and practically kill you. After that you would get better: turn the curse into a blessing but no thanks to her. “I am Alexandra Ludd,” she said.

  “I was expecting to hear from you,” said Leah.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Jenny has told me how distressed you are,” said Leah. “I imagined you would soon seek help.”

  “Why should I choose you,” asked Alexandra, “of all people?”

  “You already have,” said Leah. “You’ve been seeking to incorporate everything that’s Jenny: stealing her writings, speaking to me with her voice.”

  Jesus, thought Alexandra, these people interpret even attack as dependency. Give them a situation, they’ll twist it any old way to come out on top.

  “But you’ll deny my interpretation,” said Leah, who appeared to be able to read minds, even over the phone. “That too is natural. And don’t be surprised by the degree of your distress. The poorer the relationship to the deceased, the harder it is to move through the grieving process.”

  “You’re telling me this for nothing?” asked Alexandra. “Shouldn’t I be paying? I bet this wisdom doesn’t come cheap, either.”

  “Ned paid three sessions in advance,” said Leah. “If you want to step into his shoes, by all means do so. I loved him: I love all my clients. When one goes, it is as if a member of my own family goes.”

  “Bully for you,” said Alexandra. “Actually the postman’s in his shoes. Ned’s only got bare feet. His toes are quite, quite blue, and stiff, though shrinking. He has almost perfect feet: very straight toes. His mother, in spite of being Scottish, always made sure his shoes fitted.”

  There was a short silence. “I don’t quite follow you,” said Leah.

  “I shouldn’t think you would,” said Alexandra, confident in her own superior wit, her fox-like mastery of the situation.

  “You put too much faith in the intellect, Mrs. Ludd,” said Leah, sharply. “Ned always said so. Sometimes it is better to put cleverness aside, and let the feelings flow.”

  “I’ll do my best,” said Alexandra. “Thank you for the advice.”

  “I’m glad you’ve come to me for help,” said Leah. “And I’m so glad you speak of Ned in the present tense. He is alive and well in you, as he is in Jenny.”

  “Yes, isn’t that nice,” said Alexandra.

  “Jenny is doing very well, by the way. She is moving swiftly. I have been able to pass her on to the angry phase.”

  “I’d noticed,” said Alexandra. “So you reckon I should come and see you?”

  “I’m very booked up,” said Leah. “I don’t normally do telephone work, but I can see this consultation is useful to you.”

  “I hadn’t realised it was a consultation,” said Alexandra. “I thought it was a conversation.”

  “Oh no,” said Leah, firmly.

  “Well, perhaps I could take Ned’s next appointment,” said Alexandra, “since he won’t be turning up.” Diamond crouched at her feet, head on her lap, looking doleful. Jenny Linden had not been round to take him for his walk, or perhaps he wanted food, or missed Sascha. Or even, of course, Ned. Perhaps Diamond should go down, like everyone else, to view the body. But the cold in the morgue would get to his bones. It wouldn’t be fair.

  “He and Jenny would come for an appointment together on Tuesdays at 11,” said Leah.

  “That’s nice,” said Alexandra: the rat-hole wasn’t as big as she thought.

  She was wedged.

  “We would talk quite often about the possibility of Ned’s getting together with you again,” said Leah, with a hint of apology, but the merest hint.

  “How good of you,” said Alexandra. She could see the hens; she couldn’t get at them. She snapped and snarled. They squawked.

  “But your worlds had become so very different,” said Leah. “You had grown apart. Ned was a very spiritual man. I don’t think you realised. Do reconsider your choice not to attend with Jenny. Reconciliation is so important; you should join together in love for Ned.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” said Alexandra. “But I still don’t think I’ll take up the offer.” She withdrew from the rat-hole, to reconsider her position.

  “Of course, what Ned had to say to me in our sessions together must remain confidential,” said Leah. “Those are the ethics of my profession.”

  “You must send me a copy some time,” said Alexandra. She would gnaw away at its edges, enlarge the hole. “But perhaps you could see this as a joint consultation, Ned and me, his and hers, his spirit here in principle. His fucking ghost’s been banging round the house. I could probably still bring him along.”

  “Ned’s advance payments were for three individual sessions,” said Leah. “I suppose I could count this as one and a half.”

  “Yes, why not,” agreed Alexandra. “Good idea!”

  “Ghost is not a word we use,” said Leah. “It has unfortunate connotations. We prefer to say soul. And strong language doesn’t upset me, if it helps you in some way, but I am sorry to say it does upset the telephone company. So please refrain. I take it the anti-love expletives are used freely in your theatrical world.”

  “They do get bandied about a bit,” said Alexandra. “And Ned himself wasn’t averse to a shit, a fuck and a cunt.”

  Wood was splintering in her mouth. She was aware that she was starving. If she didn’t eat, she’d die. Cluck, cluck, c
luck went the silly hens.

  “In your company, perhaps,” said Leah, “but certainly never in mine, or Jenny’s. It is probably some residual violence of expression lingering in the air which prevents his soul from settling, as you say is the case; evil making itself apparent in the material world.”

  “Ah, that’s it!” cried Alexandra. “My fault again! It’s the bad language does it!”

  “Try to accept what I say, Alexandra,” said Leah. “Denial can cause cancer. We take the poison back into ourselves. I believe your father died of cancer.”

  “These hereditary problems are gender-linked,” said Alexandra, cunning again. The hole was big enough. There was a short pause.

  “And then of course,” said Leah, “on top of the growing spiritual incompatibility, there were your and Ned’s sexual difficulties.”

  “Oh, what were those?”

  “He felt you smothered him,” said Leah. “And of course, as I unblocked his animus and it could flow freely, he looked for more anima in his partner.”

  “You mean big tits?” asked Alexandra. “Ned talked to you in this detail? To you, a stranger. About his and my sex life?” Her voice, she found, had risen a pitch. Her mouth was bleeding, her fox-teeth were broken. How would she tear the meat once she had it?

  “I am his therapist,” said Leah primly. “That’s what therapists are for, surely? There is no shame.”

  “But I don’t know you!” cried Alexandra, before she could stop herself. Her pulse was beating faster; her heart was suddenly thudding. “You are taking even this away from me.”

  “I know sex was very important to you,” said Leah. “Ned would complain to me that after you and he had sex you would be so happy.”

  “Complain?” The man in the Wellington boots was plodding towards her. He had a gun. He raised it.

  “It made him feel manipulated; as if sex was all you wanted him for. And you were so often away. You would come home just for that, for penetrative sex, not loving sex.” Bang, bang in her head.

  “You prurient old cow!” shouted Alexandra, so that Hamish came running from the study.

  “I understand your anger,” said Leah.

  “No one understands my anger,” shrieked Alexandra.

  “This session is at an end,” said Leah. “Worst fears!” and put the phone down, and the fox slunk away; wounded, howling. She would never recover.

  “You mustn’t upset yourself so,” said Hamish. Alexandra put Leah on hold until, as Leah would have said, she could deal with it.

  22

  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 Jenny Linden 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 Jenny Linden,” said Alexandra. “You know what we Thespians are.”

  23

  ALEXANDRA DROVE ROUND TO Jenny Linden’s house. She found a parking space just outside and reversed into it, bumping Jenny Linden’s car out of the way to do it. The sound of crunching metal brought people to their windows and doors, caused babies to cry, and bedroom lights to go on. Only in Jenny Linden’s house did everything stay dark and quiet. But Alexandra had seen a pale, frightened face appear momentarily at the top window, then disappear.

  She banged again and again at the door, using the big, heavy knocker to advantage. It was iron, antique, mid Nineteenth Century, in the form of a fish. Alexandra realised it was just the same as the one on her own front door. But that door was large and solid: this door was small and flimsy, and rattled and shook with every blow. Compete with Alexandra as she might, Jenny Linden would never get it right. Neighbours peered all down the street to see what was going on. It was past midnight.

  It was not Jenny Linden who opened the door but her husband, Dave, in striped pyjamas and dressing gown. Alexandra remembered him from Kimmeridge.

  “Go away,” he said. “You’re disturbing the peace. I will not have Jenny upset. You’re persecuting her. I shall call the police.”

  Jenny Linden appeared at his elbow, wearing a discreet pale blue nightie, its hem showing beneath a woollen dressing gown in dusky pink. “Don’t be too hard on her, Dave,” said Jenny Linden in her sweet little voice, her restraining hand on Dave’s arm. “Poor Alexandra, she’s having a hard time. She won’t give herself permission to grieve.”

  “You’re too good to her,” said Dave. “You’re not fit to be out on your own.”

  “Oh dear!” said Jenny Linden, peering out into the night. “Someone’s gone into the back of my car. Does that mean they have to pay, Dave?”

  “Certainly does,” said Dave. “You go back in and get your beauty sleep. I’ll see to this.”

  Jenny Linden nodded, smirked and went back in. Dave barred the door.

  “How’s the herpes, Jenny?” called Alexandra after her, loud and clear.

  “Just get out of here before I call the police,” said Dave. “You’ve done us enough mischief.”

  “Me?” asked Alexandra, taken by surprise.
<
br />   “So much the career girl, so eaten up with ambition,” said Dave, “you couldn’t even control your own husband.”

  “I never thought it was a wife’s role to do that,” said Alexandra. “But I can see yours sees it differently. There’s some new stuff called Zorimax. Very good for herpes, they say. Your wife caught it from Eric Stenstrom and passed it all round the neighbourhood.”

  Dave seemed taken aback. She was glad it was not she who was, for once.

  “Because if you two are getting back together again,” Alexandra said, “it’s the kind of thing a husband needs to know.”

  “Jenny needs looking after,” said Dave, automatically, but his eyes had lost hers. He seemed bewildered.

  “I thought Stenstrom was gay,” said Dave.

  “Jenny proved otherwise,” said Alexandra.

  “Bitch!” said Dave, and slammed the door in Alexandra’s face. A sigh of response, a ripple of appreciation, went round the cluster of neighbours.

  Alexandra pulled the iron knocker off the door—it was down to its last feeble nail-hold—someone’s DIY job—and threw it in the gutter, untangled her car from Jenny’s and drove all the way to her London flat. She could spend no more nights under the same roof as Hamish. She was exhilarated.

  But soon Alexandra felt uneasy. What had she done? The best and safest place for Jenny Linden might well be in her husband’s arms. Some people could get away with acts of malevolence; Alexandra never could. If she tugged someone’s hair at school, a teacher would spot her. If she didn’t pay a fare, she got caught. A policy of pleasant talking, optimistic outlook and an easy blindness to inconvenient fact had got her through life, or so she had thought, very well. She’d left it to Ned to be nasty, so she could be nice. Now Ned was dead and she, Alexandra, was left with the consequences of her own emotional idleness; she had encouraged Ned to be nasty to others and in the end he’d turned his nastiness on her. She had thought herself the famous, the beautiful, the bountiful Alexandra Ludd, immune from disasters which afflicted others, but of course she was not. She was like some charming villa in a hot climate, set in a ravishing and luxurious garden, built on stilts, and termites had been gnawing away at the stilts for years—termites from a whole assortment of nests: Resentment, Envy, Jealousy, Lust, Ambition, Malice, Spite (and the termites from Resentment have the strongest jaws, the most powerful bite of all)—and now see, the whole edifice was about to tumble into mud.