by Fay Weldon
A week later the coroner declared an accidental overdose, but I, Gwinny, doubted that very much, as did many. So many people benefited from her death. Lucy, Dowager Countess of Dilberne, even held a celebratory party; Sebastian, released so suddenly from blackmail, rose from his sickbed and regained his full health. English Heritage, I imagine, refrained from actual cheering – being so well mannered and stiff-upper-lipped – but would have been quietly delighted that their precious Dilberne Court was to be saved, at last, from the succession of titled Dilberne ladies – most recently Isobel and Adela – who had done their best over the previous century to do what the Germans would call Verschlimmbesserung: to make worse by improving. Rozzie’s way was to simply raze it to the ground.
To my mind it was murder plain and simple, the chief suspect being Victoria. Through history the eldest sons of the nobility often enough die mysteriously so that the second in line can inherit. Since the amendment in 2020 to the Succession to the Throne Act, 2013 which abolished gender discrimination as it related to the peerage, it will no doubt extend to the dangers faced by the eldest daughter. A great deal of money, power and prestige is involved.
Rozzie’s suit being discontinued by reason of her sudden death, Victoria was safely now a Viscount and would inherit the property, titles and duties of the Earldom and have a seat in the Lords when Sebastian died. Her wife Amy would then become a Countess and if they had children, provided they were begotten by ‘natural means’ and not with the assistance of genetic technology, they would in their turn inherit. A lot of wives have murdered a lot of other wives to secure the succession of their children.
Or else Victoria and Amy did it together. Having persuaded Rozzie to join them in some kind of ‘let’s all be friends’ New Year’s Eve drugs party it would have been easy enough for either of them to add a handful of Ritalin tabs to the cut-glass Dilberne water jug for Rozzie then to inject more as midnight struck. Victoria and Amy would have crushed and snorted a smaller dose themselves to keep Rozzie company on her journey to heaven or hell.
But I did not want to add to the complexity of the affair by suggesting any such thing to the authorities. Accidental death would do: better than a suicide verdict any day. If the police started any real investigation they would have turned up far too many stones for comfort.
As it was, the press and associated media had had more than enough of a field day, first with the hilarious scandals associated with the Dilberne Spillage Case, with its ‘Oh the spinning, the spilling, the spurning, the spurting of the spunk’ quote from his young Lordship back in 1979 as reported to them by his ancient duffer ‘friend’ Monty. The lovely young girl protagonist Rosalind and her older female antagonist Dicky Vikky (you could tell whose side they were on!). And now the Daily Mail’s drone pictures through the open window of 3 Belgrave Square of the body, young, naked and beautiful, a real sleeping beauty with the added attraction of being dead (and on her birthday too, January 1st 2021) which went spectacularly viral on social media. Mr Ipswich tried but said there was no way of stopping it.
The room Rozzie died in had been the then Viscount’s bedroom in 1895, which was, if I am to put two and two together, one of the very rooms in which Arthur would have bedded the parlourmaid Elsie and, later, the lady’s maid Grace. It had a curtained double bed – and I doubted the mattress had been changed or the curtains washed for a hundred years, that very grunginess being one of the reasons, I expect, that Victoria allocated Rozzie the room in the first place.
Lawyers had advised that having the same address for the appellants would do much to suggest to the court that there was no undue animosity between the appellants. Also, of course, the room was on the second floor at the front and so open to paparazzi drone camera attack. I suppose Rozzie herself might have opened the window to hear the New Year’s bells, whistles and sirens, as Victoria suggested, but I don’t think that was at all in Rozzie’s nature. She hated crowds. I think it was to facilitate such a drone attack.
Rozzie’s mother was allowed in to see the body and I went with her. Of course it was dreadfully upsetting for both of us. But now the freehold of the knocked-through 23 and 24 would, with a little of Mr Ipswich’s help, revert back to us. And old Mallory, at ninety-eight, would not be driven out of the Dower House to suit Rozzie’s stated desire to flood the market with thinking, feeling robots.
I cried a little, Xandra cried a little, but somehow the child Rozzie had switched to the wholly Millennial Rozzie, wholly calm, wholly composed and totally ruthless, stretched out upon the bed, cold and bare, too perfect to be entirely human. We mourned for something long past.
The Millennial had come of an age. The Bardo Thodol had reached out to claim its own, perhaps alarmed with what it had done. In the House of Lords Rozzie might well have had power enough to have started World War Three.
A flash of the old schizotypal personality disorder it may be – that someone somewhere must be seen to be in charge and know what they’re doing – but forgive me. It was only a flash. Since Anthea came back into my life – I have Rozzie to thank for that and I am truly grateful – the personality disorders have faded and gone, following in the footsteps of Clive’s last rose of summer.
The Bardo Thodol is a figment of a fevered imagination; the Goddess Flora has nothing at all to do with Rozzie’s existence; the fact that Simkins died the day I dismantled Apollo’s shrine is a mere coincidence; and if Mother Mary smiled at me last time I was at mass, it was a trick of the light. I have returned to the religion of my childhood. I no longer cast a horoscope or even consult my stars in the evening paper.
Xandra has lost her only daughter, but enjoys the trust and respect of those who work with her. Clive has lost the child he was so determined was his, but seems energised to actually finish the work he started so long ago. He promises to give it to me to read soon, which I rather dread. They are trying to adopt, but fear the adoption people will reject them on grounds of age, both of them being into their sixties. I would add smoking, swearing, drug taking, TV noise, unmodulated cris de jouissance (they are still at it) and a degree of political incorrectness to the list, but I daresay social services will figure it all out.
The necessary tale has been told; I have written enough; I will write no more.
I will cycle up to Anthea’s and Philip’s big house in Hampstead for Sunday lunch. Anthea is sixty-seven and still working as a clinical psychologist, Philip her husband is a Freudian analyst. I tell no-one more than I need, or I think they need to know. They are all very proper. But they make me very welcome; indeed they seem to love me. Anthea’s daughter Flora will be there – the name only a coincidence – Anthea tells me she always loved it – and Flora’s two little daughters Chloris and Phoebe, my great-granddaughters. So many girls! And on we all go.
Just now I thought I saw a cat’s tail whisk round the corner, a flash of white and ginger, brown and black. Simkins Three, the calico cat? But that also can only be imagination.
I, Gwinny, am very happy.
Postscript
Thanks very much, oh Wedding Guest, for your patience. Understand and forgive them all. And as Coleridge said, waking from some opium dream…
Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turns from the bridegroom’s door.
And as I say, mildly misquoting Coleridge’s last verse…
He goes like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He’ll rise the morrow morn.
We hope yo
u enjoyed this book.
About Fay Weldon
Also by Fay Weldon
About The Love & Inheritance Trilogy
An Invitation from the Publisher
About Fay Weldon
After hard times and odd jobs as a lone parent, FAY WELDON became one of the top advertising copywriters of her generation. She moved to TV drama (writing the pilot episode of the iconic series Upstairs Downstairs), then turned to novels – including classics like The Life and Loves of a She Devil and The Cloning of Joanna May. Her later sequence of novels about the Dilberne family, the Love and Inheritance trilogy and Before the War, draws to a close with this final instalment, After the Peace. Fay’s been honoured as a CBE for services to literature, and is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Find me on Twitter
Find me on Facebook
Visit my website
Also by Fay Weldon
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
Non-Fiction
Find out more
Visit Head of Zeus now
About The Love & Inheritance Trilogy
The Love & Inheritance trilogy is a family saga set between 1899 and 1906. The aristocratic Dilberne family lurch from wild wealth, to bankruptcy, and back again, their fortunes dependent on the new steam-powered automobiles, Spiritualist gatherings and Christmases at Sandringham. But as the century turns, the rigid rules of society begin to soften...
Following lives and loves upstairs and downstairs, and brimming with Fay Weldon’s trademark wit, wisdom and warmth, this is a trilogy to treasure.
Find out more
Find out more
Find out more
The whole trilogy is available in a single omnibus edition
Find out more
Visit Head of Zeus now
An Invitation from the Publisher
We hope you enjoyed this book. We are an independent publisher dedicated to discovering brilliant books, new authors and great storytelling. Please join us at www.headofzeus.com and become part of our community of book-lovers.
We will keep you up to date with our latest books, author blogs, special previews, tempting offers, chances to win signed editions and much more.
Get in touch: [email protected]
Visit Head of Zeus now
Find us on Twitter
Find us on Facebook
Find us on BookGrail
First published in the United Kingdom in 2018 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Fay Weldon, 2018
The moral right of Fay Weldon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (E) 9781784082093
ISBN (HB) 9781784082109
ISBN (XTPB) 9781784082116
Author Photo: Niels Ahlmann Olesen / Scanpix
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
Visit Head of Zeus now