The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  She pretended to be equally intimidated by the accomplishments of her other guests. The obituary one of them – which one of them? – had written about Cousin Beryl had been ‘gloriously tactful, I don’t know how you did it’, while the notice another had received for his fringe production of Hamlet had been splendid, ‘although I don’t know what I think about the word “fringe” – I’m sure I was expecting all the actors to be wearing women’s wigs’. As she threw out her words of encouragement like so many bouquets, it was never clear to me which member of her audience was the musician who was hoping to play later that month at Bayreuth, or which one was ‘truly fortunate’ to have missed out on the lead in ‘that play about that ridiculous woman psychiatrist who had that dippy theory about breasts’, or which had been a saint at the funeral of someone who was a household name to everyone but me.

  ‘I hope we’re not being too boring for you,’ she said to me as she took me by the arm into the dining room. ‘You and Max must be dreadfully tired, you must be longing to get back to the cottage. How’s your leg?’ she asked, but I faltered – thrown by my first sight of the dining room, which, with its stern portraits and its transparent pyramid centrepiece, was, like all the other rooms that Rebecca had used as grist in The Marriage Hearse, so familiar and yet at the same time so strange. And so I missed my cue. Unfazed, Bea sailed on, helping everyone else with their missed cues, seating her guests and directing the butler while she continued her bright chattering.

  She put me between her husband Giles and a sombre man with long eyelashes who sat with his head cocked to one side like a bird, and whose face brightened like a child’s when he smiled, which was not very often. I got off on the wrong foot with him by mistaking him for the obituarist. He explained that the obituarist was Bella, ‘the dark-haired girl next to Sebastian’. He was a pianist, he said. And he was planning to play at Bayreuth? ‘No, actually, I rather doubt it. You must be mixing me up with Dan,’ he said, and sank into what I would later learn was called a deep gloom.

  The blonde girl sitting on his right then claimed his attention. I was left to my own devices just long enough to serve myself. Then, as soon as the butler had moved on, Giles extricated himself from his other dinner partner with an emphatic ‘Yes, that would be lovely’ and directed his gentle beam at me. He asked me easy, general questions about Paris. Had the weather been fine? Had we had good luck with the museums or had we arrived too late? Had I managed to reconcile myself to the Pompidou Centre? Had we had time to fit in a quick look at the Louvre pyramid? August was such a tricky time for food in Paris – had we managed to find anything open? Had Max looked up his godfather? No? Well, that was understandable, he was rather a bore, and he lived in the sixteenth. Was there any literary community to speak of in the Latin Quarter any more, or was it just a fiction propagated by wishful foreigners? Slowly and gently, he led the questions around to my own writing. Had I been pleased with the reception of my first book? How was work progressing with my new one? Was I the type of writer who liked to discuss work in progress, or did I prefer to let the works speak for themselves?

  ‘I have no idea if they can speak for themselves,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a very high opinion of my talent.’

  Giles responded with a soft laugh. ‘That sounds very healthy. And all too rare! I’m sure most of your peers could stand to learn from you.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt it,’ I said. ‘My opinion of my abilities may be low, but it probably should be even lower. I can’t imagine what Max sees in me.’ I realised too late that the entire table was listening to me.

  Mortified, I looked down at my fork, which was, I realised, in what the other guests would think of as the wrong hand. I put it down on the plate too swiftly, and it made a clatter that startled the long-lashed man on my right out of his deep gloom. Across the table, another young man cleared his throat. It was Max who broke the silence by asking if anyone at the table knew when Bertie was due back from Antarctica. Grateful for his intervention, I tried to follow the ensuing conversation, but because I didn’t know who Bertie was, I quickly became lost.

  The butler came and removed the plates. Pudding came and went without my daring to accept anything that might involve my using a utensil the wrong way. I made a few more attempts at conversation but was left each time with a vague feeling of failure. My confidence fell even further when we were invited to take our coffees into the garden to enjoy the sun that had just broken through the clouds and was likely to disappear again shortly. Finding myself next to the person I thought was Bella the obituarist, and hearing her discussing what seemed to be a recent scandal at a newspaper, I asked her, just for the sake of discussion, if it was legally possible in Britain to speak ill of the dead. Her response was a gasp.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ asked the burly young man sitting next to her as he grabbed her arm. He had a different accent from the rest; I did not know where it was from or what it signified. He leaned over and took hold of my collar. ‘Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do,’ was my reply.

  ‘I don’t believe you for a minute,’ he retorted. ‘Someone put you up to this, and you’d better tell me who it is.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be a bore, Wayne,’ said another young man. ‘She has no idea what you’re talking about. Leave her alone.’

  Wayne, the burly young man, jumped to his feet. The girl I had mistaken for Bella the obituarist tried to pull him down again, saying, ‘Please, darling. Let’s just drop it. It doesn’t matter one way or the other. You know it doesn’t.’

  But he wouldn’t listen. As he brushed the grass off his clothes, he said to her, ‘This is the last time I am going to let your toffy parents impugn my work ethic’ He marched off into the house, while the girl who was not Bella ran after him pleading.

  I looked around at the other strange faces in my circle. ‘What did I say to upset him so much?’ I asked no one in particular, sending them all into a communal blush. They averted their eyes to stare at the grass. I lifted mine just in time to see the burly young man walk up to the bench where Max was seated with his children.

  The burly man spat out an angry tirade which he punctuated by pushing a forefinger into Max’s chest. When he did this, Max grabbed his arm. He stood up, towering over the man. Blanched with anger, Max said in a voice loud enough for us all to hear, Then I suggest we go and ask him.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s go,’ said the burly man. The two went inside, crossing with an alarmed-looking Danny at the French doors. Max nodded in the direction of the children. Danny gave a half nod back and bounded across the lawn to them.

  Time for our walk,’ she announced brightly.

  ‘Can we take bread for the ducks?’ asked the boy.

  ‘You might just find that I’ve already thought of that,’ said Danny. ‘Check my pockets.’

  As she led them down the garden, the raised voices emerged from the sitting room. Now it was Giles’s steady monotone – dignified, conciliatory but firm. Now it was the angry man demanding an apology. Now it was Max’s loud, short and sharp retort, followed by a high-pitched reproach from the woman who was not Bella. The angry man interrupted bier. There was a sound of moving furniture, a slam of a door, and operatic screaming from not-Bella. Around the front of the house, a car started up, reversed at high speed and headed at even higher speed down the drive, while in the sitting room, not-Bella burst into tears, screaming, ‘How could you do such a thing to me? How could you even suggest it? What a bloody cheek!’

  Meanwhile, out in the garden, we sat like statues on the grass. One young man made a noble effort to redirect our attention to the bench where Max had been sitting with the children. Did we not think that it was a lovely colour? What was it really – Dutch blue? Azure? Aquamarine? Didn’t we agree that it was the same colour as that bench next to the folly at Something House? His voice tailed off into mute dismay when a haggard-looking Bea came out through the French doors and dropped herself on the bench we were discussing. Two girls in ou
r group ran up to her. One put a consoling arm around her. The other ran into the sitting room, from which hysterical crying was still emerging. I was left with the long-lashed, and now gloomier than ever, pianist from lunch, and the musician I assumed was the Dan who would be playing at Bayreuth later in the month – though I did not dare ask.

  A glass shattered. Both men startled at the sound. They lifted their eyes to look at me, then looked down again. The one I assumed was Dan cleared his throat, as if to say it was up to me to come up with a conversational opening. I scoured my mind for a suitable topic. Something musical, I said to myself. Something musical …

  ‘Have you ever been to Valldemosa?’ I asked. It was a reckless question, as I myself had only ever driven past it. Fortunately, neither of the men seemed to have heard of it. So I was able to explain. ‘It’s in Mallorca, just down the road from Deia, which is where I was living. It’s where whatshisname, it’s just slipped my mind now, I don’t know why … it’s where that famous composer ran off with Georges Sand … It’s on the tip of my tongue. You must know who I mean, it begins with C.’

  The long-lashed man sighed, then lifted himself laboriously up off the grass but not out of his gloom. ‘I take your point,’ he said mysteriously. ‘And I think it’s an excellent idea.’ He turned to the man that was possibly Dan and said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think the time has come for Chopin to come to the rescue.’

  Off he went in the direction of the sitting room.

  ‘I’d try a different way in if I were you,’ shouted the man who could be Dan. The long-lashed pianist stopped for a moment, then nodded and headed round to the front of the manor. A few moments later, the crying and shouting from the sitting room was drowned out by a crashing sonata from the grand piano.

  The first to register the change was could-be Dan. He heaved a great sigh and said, ‘That’s a bit better. And about time, too.’ He stood up, stretched his arms and legs, and headed across the lawn to speak to Bea and the young woman consoling her. Their conversation started out looking serious and concerned but slowly grew more light-hearted. Meanwhile, the other little groups on the lawn defrosted just as ours had. Daughters, cousins and friends began to intermingle again – and took turns going into the sitting room to contribute to the argument, which played itself out like a silent movie on a crank, first frenzied, then dull and mechanical, and finally with the limpness of spent passion as the piano player followed Chopin to ever greater heights.

  After about ten minutes, the music stopped. The sound of swearing floated over the lawn from the direction of the courtyard, followed by the sound of a car trying to reverse out of mud. Everyone froze, but then the piano started up again. The performance resumed.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘You poor thing,’ Bea said as she took my arm and led me into the kitchen. ‘You must be so tired! What a gruelling afternoon!’

  The daughters, cousins and cousins’ friends had all left now. The cook and the butler were drying glasses at one end of the long wooden table while at the other end sat the two children. William, the boy, was kicking an unlaced shoe against one of the table legs as he took obedient but unenthusiastic nibbles out of a scone. His sister, Hermione, was drawing fingernail sketches on the side of a large, frosted jug of orange squash. When Bea reached across her plate to retrieve a key from a hook, the girl looked up at her great-aunt dismissively, as if she were a salesman who had arrived without an appointment.

  Bea gave her a sharp look but said nothing. Instead she put on a pair of reading glasses, retrieved a notebook and a pencil from the basket on the sideboard, and began to tick off items on a list. ‘I’ve bought you a few basic supplies,’ she said to me as she flitted about filling the basket with bread and milk and butter and orange juice and instant coffee. ‘We can see to the rest tomorrow. Would you be a dear, Hermione, and run upstairs for your knapsacks?’

  ‘Why?’ Hermione asked.

  ‘Because I’m taking you back to the cottage.’

  ‘Why can’t Daddy take us?’

  ‘Daddy has to speak to someone rather important on the phone.’

  Hermione made a face as she rose slowly from her chair.

  ‘Don’t be greedy. He won’t be long. Let’s see if we can have the cottage all nice and airy for him by the time he arrives. Shall we give it a try?’ Hermione gave the question some thought, then nodded severely. ‘Off with you, then,’ Bea said. She propelled Hermione upstairs with a firm, friendly push.

  A few minutes later we were heading down the path to the cottage with our baskets, knapsacks and suitcases.

  ‘Janet’s been in a few times,’ Bea told me as she turned the key in the lock of the low green wooden door. Although I had no idea who Janet was, I nodded. ‘But I haven’t been in to check things since she left on holiday,’ she went on. ‘So I’m afraid you may be knee-high in dust.’ She pushed against the door. It would only open a quarter of the way. Bea peered in. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Newspapers, and rather a lot of them.’ She turned to me. ‘As you’re so much thinner than I am, would you mind awfully squeezing in and moving them for us?’ I was halfway in when she added, ‘And if you want to be an absolute dear, would you mind putting them well out of harm’s way?’ As I gathered the half-dozen or so newspapers into a neat pile, I noticed photographs of Max on two or three of them. Bea poked her head in. ‘Under the stairs would be fine for the time being.’ Her voice was loud and confident, but her eyes were anxious. ‘That’s super,’ she said in an even louder voice when I had done as she had asked. She swung open the door. ‘Now we have plenty of room. Could you be a poppet, William, and hand me that case?’

  I have tried many times to remember how that cottage looked to me on the first evening – whether I was struck first by its strange layout or by the rich green light coming in on all sides through its many doors and windows. Whether it was the damp that struck me first, or the lowness of the ceilings, or the smallness of the primitive kitchen, or the rows and rows of built-in bookshelves, or the jumble of old children’s shoes and muddy boots piled up under the coat rack in the entryway. All I do remember when I retrace my steps is Bea’s voice as she took me on her guided tour of practicalities. Here was the unspeakable kitchen – she didn’t know why Max put up with it. This was the cooker that worked, and this was the cooker that did not work but that Max used as a counter. Here was where he kept the plates, there were the saucepans, there, in the far corner, was the mouse’s entrance. ‘I’ve tried to do something about it, but he won’t hear of it. Perhaps you can use your magic to convince him otherwise.’ Had I noticed that there was something rather important missing? Yes, she said without waiting for my reply, I had noted the absence of a refrigerator. I would find it next door in the utility room, underneath the new washer-dryer. (‘I call it the wrinkle-dryer, because that’s all it does.’)

  ‘I do hope Max will give you a free hand with the cottage. It would be such fun to do it up.’ As she took me from room to room, throwing open doors and windows, and emptying wastebaskets, she pointed out the things she said she was longing to get her hands on. This included just about every piece of furniture in Max’s large bedroom-cum-study except the velvet armchairs that sat on either side of the fireplace. What Bea hated the most, she told me, was his ‘post-hippie bed’. It was a seven-foot-square mattress draped unevenly over a five- by six-foot set of springs, covered with a purple quilt that clashed with the red calico curtains that ended half a foot short of the windowsills. ‘Although I do like the idea of a large working fireplace. Pity we can’t seem to stop it from smoking. And the parquet floor is lovely, but -’ she tapped the place where it was buckling – ‘I am somewhat troubled by this tree root.’

  The armchairs needed covers put on them, ‘because actually they’re very valuable’ and so did just about everything in the sitting room. ‘But first things first.’ She turned to William and Hermione, who had been tailing us with sullen curiosity. ‘Who’s having the first bath?’

  ‘
I don’t want to take a bath,’ said Hermione. ‘I want to arrange Daddy’s shells and see to the feedbags.’

  ‘And so you shall,’ said Bea. ‘I’ll let you go first. We’ll do your hair quickly and then you can get out as soon as you like. Then William can take as long as he likes, and as it’s Sunday, William, and seeing as it’s your father’s first day back, I’ll let you play Waterloo. If you promise not to touch the telephone showers, and I don’t have to explain why, now do I?’

  But she did, for my benefit. This was another of the cottage’s idiosyncrasies. It had two bathrooms, neither of which was in proper working order. The tiles needed regrouting: if you so much as breathed on them, water came pouring down into the kitchen, ‘not to mention on Max’s prized wrinkle-dryer’. Hot water was sometimes a problem, as the boiler was temperamental. But today, she announced after she had got the bath running, it seemed to be ‘rising to the occasion. Although you must get Max to check the level tomorrow. He may have to order more oil.