by Weldon, Fay
‘The great modern sin,’ said Alexandra. ‘Being selfish.’
Abbie said that Alexandra must allow herself time to grieve, settle down in The Cottage and make it a happy home for Sascha. And be sure not to fall into anyone else’s arms too soon. But Alexandra would have all her friends around her to protect her. People who loved her.
‘Oh yes,’ said Alexandra. ‘Them. The jam’s burning.’
A smell of scorching filled the air, mixed with sweetness. Alexandra quite liked it. But Abbie squealed and rushed to attend to it. She heaved the great steel pan off the stove to the side of the sink, and as swiftly as she could transferred the still-bubbling, viscous contents to a succession of smaller pans: pouring when she could, ladling when she couldn’t. It was dangerous work.
‘Don’t burn yourself,’ said Alexandra. Abbie looked at her friend uneasily, and while she lost concentration slopped a splodge of still-scalding jam on to her sandalled toe and the bare and tender skin of her upper foot. How she hopped about!
‘You and Arthur and Ned and Lucy were planning a property deal, I hear,’ said Alexandra.
‘Who did you hear that from?’ asked Abbie, startled. She had ice in a plastic bag and was applying it to her foot.
‘Mr Quatrop,’ said Alexandra.
‘Oh,’ said Abbie.
‘What was I meant to do?’ asked Alexandra. ‘Or didn’t you think of that?’
‘We thought of it a lot,’ said Abbie. ‘Believe me, we worried about you all the time. But you would have had the London flat. You were always so happy there, Ned said. It was all just speculation. Testing the water. If you and Ned were to get divorced –’
‘Takes two to divorce,’ said Alexandra.
‘But Ned said you and he were talking about it.’
‘Always the humorist,’ said Alexandra.
‘Believe me, Alexandra,’ said Abbie. ‘I only wanted your happiness. Ned just didn’t deserve you. It was horrible, what was going on behind your back. You’ve no idea.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been simpler just to tell me?’ asked Alexandra.
Abbie abandoned the jam altogether and started crying, bending over her blistering toe. The sandal strap had stuck to it. ‘I didn’t have the courage. Nobody did. Somebody had to do something to bring things to a head, so I thought this was it. You might just about notice a For Sale sign going up. I don’t know why one does things. Ned could be so persuasive.’
‘But I would never have given my permission,’ said Alexandra. ‘Ned knew that. He knew how I loved The Cottage. It’s my home. What would I want to be involved with a Theatrical Design Centre for, Abbie?’
‘Perhaps he thought you wouldn’t want to be,’ said Abbie. ‘Perhaps he thought you’d just drift off to London and the Sloane Square house. Perhaps he thought he didn’t need your permission to sell.’
She kept her eyes lowered. Her foot was flaring nastily. The ice cubes hurt too much to keep in place. Alexandra thought a little before she spoke.
‘It’s possible the house is in Ned’s name only,’ said Alexandra. ‘I realise that. But he and I were married and have a child. Any court will recognise my claim to live in it.’
‘That’s OK then,’ said Abbie, flatly. ‘Lucy’s like a steam roller when she gets her tiny teeth into something.’
‘She got her teeth into Eric Stenstrom’s dick a year or two back,’ said Alexandra, ‘and turned it inside out. Did you know about that?’
Abbie said she didn’t, with an expression both so helpless and aghast that Alexandra believed her.
‘I saw your name up on Dr Moebius’s screen,’ said Alexandra. ‘I guess you went into the surgery in a real hurry when you heard my name linked with Eric Stenstrom.’
‘His partner died of AIDS,’ said Abbie. ‘Dr Moebius said I was right to worry. I wasn’t being neurotic. He said he’d hurry the results through for me. I was in such a state!’
‘Why? Because you’d fucked with a man who’d been fucked by a woman who’d been fucked by a man who might have had AIDS?’
‘Yes,’ said Abbie. ‘I’m so ashamed.’
‘I think you should get the plum tree cut down,’ said Alexandra. ‘It brings no one any luck.’
Abbie pulled herself together, hobbled to the sink, and started cleaning the bottom of the big steel pan of its blackened layer of caramelised cooked plums. Wasps began to congregate. Alexandra had one on her hand. Let it crawl.
‘You were with Ned when he died,’ said Alexandra. ‘It wasn’t Lucy at all. She came into the bedroom and found you fucking my husband, and that’s when he had his heart attack.’
Abbie had the bottom of the pan smooth. She dried it out carefully. Then she began to empty pan after pan of semi-liquid plum jam back into it.
‘Lucy’s excessive hysterics,’ said Alexandra, ‘your excessive house-cleaning. These things come to one.’
‘It was only the once,’ said Abbie. ‘Honestly. Only the once.’ Alexandra sighed.
‘I did it for you, Alexandra,’ said Abbie. ‘To break the Lucy spell.’ Alexandra laughed.
‘You couldn’t have borne it, Alexandra. I saved you from it. Having Ned die all over me. I’m glad for you it happened that way. I am your friend. I’d do anything for you.’
‘Thank you, Abbie.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic, Alexandra, on top of everything. You don’t know how important you are to me. Please!’
‘And you hung around to mock me and keep secrets, and conspire, having learned the habit from Ned, I suppose?’
‘I hung around to look after you, Alexandra; I knew you’d be devastated. Better you thought it was Lucy than me, your best friend. Best of all no one. But that didn’t work.’
‘You probably didn’t want to face Arthur too soon. You might have told him the truth.’
‘I do tend to blurt it out,’ said Abbie.
‘Yes, you do,’ said Alexandra. ‘I wish you didn’t. It was only another far-fetched theory of mine, waiting for denial. Now look. Does Vilna know?’
Abbie shook her head. She put the big pan and its contents on the stove and started swilling out the lesser containers. Boiling jam had splashed everywhere in Abbie’s haste to save at least some of the batch from contamination, from the taste of burning, and the sticky stuff had now congealed. Alexandra finally rose from her chair to help Abbie. She took a sharp, short kitchen knife and started easing off the deep purple drips from tiles and cooker.
‘And now the whole world believes Ned died in Lucy Lint’s arms,’ said Alexandra, ‘because she tells them so. She wants to own him in death as she never could in life. And she’s gother husband back and she’s laughing.’
‘Yes,’ said Abbie.
‘You played into her hands, Abbie,’ said Alexandra, ‘by not telling the truth.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Abbie.
‘And no one’s told Arthur,’ said Alexandra.
‘Of course not,’ said Abbie, shocked.
‘Well, well,’ said Alexandra.
‘It was you Ned loved,’ said Abbie. ‘He talked about you all the time. It’s just you were away so often and Lucy was therein front of him all the time, lying down with her legs open.’
‘I think she was very important to him,’ said Alexandra. ‘Atleast at one time.’ Worst fears!
‘But I wasn’t important,’ said Abbie, hopefully.
‘You were still in my bed,’ said Alexandra. The knife didn’t seem so short any more, and it squeaked against the ceramicas if it were very sharp. She raised it.
‘I was set up,’ said Abbie, ‘by Ned. I think he wanted to put Lucy off. He wanted her to discover us together.’
‘And he died in the set-up,’ said Alexandra. ‘He came and then he went.’
‘He came and then he went,’ repeated Abbie, and gave her friend a small, shy smile, which to her astonishment was returned. Alexandra lowered the knife and went back to the jam splashes.
31
Abbie hobbled out to see Al
exandra off. Now Abbie’s foot had been dressed and bandaged by her friend, she felt comforted, as scoured out of blame as her steel preserving pan had been scoured of caramelised jam. She hurt but she was OK.
‘If there’s anything I can do,’ Abbie said. The last of the plums had been dropping on to the roof of Alexandra’s car.
‘I’m serious about the plum tree,’ said Alexandra. ‘It ought to go. It brings bad luck.’
‘But the blossom is so pretty,’ said Abbie, ‘and the Japanese students like to draw it.’
‘Even so,’ said Alexandra. ‘Get rid of it.’
Abbie nodded.
‘There is something else you can do for me,’ said Alexandra, and explained.
Abbie wailed.
‘But I can’t, Alexandra. I would if I could, but I don’t have the time. How can I cope with a small child as well as everything else?’
‘By buying jam from the shop instead of making it yourself; that kind of thing,’ said Alexandra. ‘By giving up your domestic affectations, because that’s all they are. This is a world of convenience foods and microwaves.’
Abbie whimpered.
‘Sascha will be at full-time nursery school,’ Alexandra comforted her. ‘You’ll have Sundays and Mondays off while I’m home. Only five days a week till the end of the Doll’s House run. Then I’m home full-time. Until the next part comes along.’
‘But Sascha’s a handful, everyone knows!’
‘He’ll remind you of Ned,’ said Alexandra.
‘Oh don’t, don’t!’There were tears in Abbie’s eyes. ‘Please!’
‘But I won’t tell Arthur that,’ said Alexandra. She had lost ten pounds in the last week. Her eyes were larger than usual.
‘It’s blackmail,’ said Abbie.
‘I prefer to call it expiation,’ said Alexandra.
‘OK, OK, OK,’ said Abbie. ‘All right, I will.’
On the way home in the car Alexandra felt the familiar state of suspension descending; the landscape passed to either side as in a dream, not quite real. She was being propelled over water with a swift, smooth, silent motion, as clouds in a speeded-up film, towards the silent shore where Ned had disappeared: she was still in the light but the edge of the fog was near. Too near. She pulled into the nearest lay-by. She wanted to stay alive. Well, she supposed that was an advance. She slept a little. Woke. Worst fears, Leah had said. Expiation, she herself had said. Cows were being driven down the road: they were passing the car. It was in their way. They barged into its sides with their gaunt brown hairy flanks; concave where they ought to be convex; their monstrous udders swung from side to side, banged against their legs. Hormone supplements made the udders gigantic, stretched to bursting: they were on their way to be milked. Machines would do it – would offer relief – pull and relax, pull and relax. Heavy breath from black rubber nostrils patched the car windows with moist droplets. Huge red-veined brown eyes stared at her, not unkindly, but with a dreadful resigned and female melancholy. Our troubles are worse than yours.
These days farmers would just run the bull with the herd, not keep him trampling, macho and furious, tethered in the yard. In a field with sixty cows the bull is placid, properly serviced, properly servicing. Sex for all keeps everyone quiet. Perhaps that had been Ned’s notion.
The attacks of non-affect, of suspension, came less frequently and lasted for a shorter time than they had a week ago. Nor was the blocking-out of experience so intense. A boy with a dog followed up behind the herd: his task to drive the cows to the milking sheds, lucky old them. Woollen cap, muddy boots, old shirt, ancient trousers: long greasy hair, a sweet face. She even recognised him: Kevin Crump. She’d done some work five years back with the school drama class. Kevin had been its bright star. A good singing voice; a good stage presence, though always trouble with his lines. Now this. At least he had a job. She wound down the window.
‘You OK, Mrs Ludd?’ He was concerned for her.
‘Sleepy, that’s all,’ she said. ‘I took a bit of shut-eye. Dangerous to keep driving.’
He nodded. He found an old piece of paper in a pocket, abiro. He handed them to her through the window.
‘Could I have your autograph?’ he asked, tentatively. ‘Now you’re famous?’
‘Sure.’ She signed her name: the biro was on the brink of running out ‘Ludd’ didn’t seem to belong to her any more; it was appropriate that the word came faintly and she had to write over the two ‘d’s’ to make them legible. A mess. But so were his cows; not that it was his fault. So was she a mess, and it probably was her fault.
‘Thanks.’ He was hugely pleased, and passed on.
Worst fears. The curse of Leah.
Lucy Lint’s importance: Abbie’s unimportance. Alexandra had acknowledged that herself, without thinking. That it wasn’t sex, it was love. That Ned loved Lucy Lint. That at the sudden sound of Lucy Lint’s voice Ned’s soul would lurch. That when she came through a door his heart would lift. She could make him happy just by existing. That Ned would lie to and deceive Alexandra not because it turned him on sexually – that had been Lucy Lint’s interpretation, as she squirmed and wriggled and tried to hurt, and Alexandra had accepted it too easily, as the least hurtful of all options – but simply because Ned wanted to see Lucy, longed to see Lucy, had to see her, hear her, touch her, be with her. Because he hurt so when he was apart from her. That the hurt left when he was with her. That he had taken Alexandra to Lucy Lint’s house only because he couldn’t get rid of Alexandra and he had to see Lucy Lint, be with Lucy Lint, so the hurt would stop. And because in the light of this love she, Alexandra, counted as nothing. That Ned had loved Lucy Lint.
Worst fears.
That in the belief that a woman had to be beautiful, and sensuous, and witty, and wonderful, in order to trigger real love, erotic love, the kind of emotional drama that ran through to the heart of the universe, the hot line to the source of life itself, the in-love kind, Alexandra had been wrong. More, she had shown herself to be vain, and foolish, and shallow, and Ned had noticed. Not that his noticing had anything to do with it. You did not love necessarily where you admired: or cease to love when admiration failed. Love came and it went; it was there or it wasn’t. The blessing of the gods, and their curse.
Worst fears.
Lucy had not pursued, Ned had pursued. Ned had broken Dave and Lucy’s marriage; Dave was right. Lucy was a child, easily influenced; Ned’s victim. Ned in love. Now Ned was gone, Lucy was back with Dave.
Worst fears.
Best hopes? There were none. Start by saying Ned had fallen out of love with Lucy Lint: end by saying, but that instead of turning back to Alexandra, Ned had invited Abbie into his bed.
Alexandra started the car and drove back to The Cottage. On the way Mr Lightfoot’s private ambulance passed, travelling swiftly in the other direction. No doubt it had Ned’s body in it, with any luck neatly contained in a coffin (oak, current, £480), on the way to town for tomorrow’s funeral and cremation. The coffin would pick up a proper hearse at the other end: black, grand and glossy, but underpowered. A twenty-mile journey by hearse when you were dead made you a source of traffic hold-ups, especially up hills, and was discouraged by the police.
32
The day of the funeral dawned bright and clear. Abbie drove Vilna down. They had patched up their quarrel, at Alexandra’s insistence. Vilna wore a smart black suit with self-coloured braiding and a deep, scooped neckline. She wore a crimson gauze scarf to veil her bosom.
‘It isn’t modesty, darling,’ she said. ‘My tits are getting scraggy, like my neck. They must only show in candlelight. I have had to do without my special beauty treatment for so long. It is tragic.’
‘What is your special beauty treatment?’ asked Abbie. Arthur was travelling down separately in the school’s mini-bus, dropping two students off at the station on the way. Fond as he was of Vilna, Arthur said, he would find her a difficult companion on the way to a funeral. Her self-preoccupation would be troublesome
, when they were meant to be thinking about Ned. So if Abbie didn’t mind? Abbie didn’t mind. ‘Sperm,’ said Vilna. ‘Sperm is the best beauty treatment of all. Essence of male. I have been deprived of it for so long. I am falling to pieces. Wrinkles are appearing. What can I do? My mother spies on me. Clive pays her to, I know he does. It is a very bitter thing; one’s own mother to keep one prisoner.’
It was true, Abbie thought, that lately Vilna had seemed to age. Haggard was beginning to turn into gaunt; smooth olive skin to papery grey. And Maria always pottered about in the background, scarcely letting Vilna out of her sight.
‘Only another six months, Vilna,’ she said, ‘and Clive will be home.’
‘Supposing he’s forgotten how to do it?’ demanded Vilna. ‘Or has become a homosexual? That happens to men in prison. What then?’
‘I expect you could sue,’ said Abbie, ‘for loss of looks.’
Abbie concentrated on her driving. She was wearing Vilna’s navy blue with the hem tacked up. It would do. She could see herself in the driving mirror: shiny, wavy hair; bright eyes; agreeably healthy freckles. She was pleased with what she saw.
‘You’re looking good,’ said Vilna. ‘Hadn’t you noticed? Extra-special essence of dying man. Very rare.’
Abbie’s hands tightened on the wheel. She always drove carefully, both hands where they should be – ten o’clock and two o’clock, and no hand-over-hand on a sharp turn.