The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  ‘In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea if you took advantage of the hot-water supplies while they last,’ she said. ‘You’ll find Max’s bathroom upstairs, next door to the children’s. It’s the one with the hundreds of half-used bottles of shampoo and whatnot. Mind the labels – last time I used it myself, I mistook his organic lemon-lime essence of avocado shaving cream for bath foam. The effect was quite dreadful. I do apologise in advance for the disarray. You’ll see what I mean when you get up there. There never was a room in greater need of a woman’s touch.’

  My suitcase was still standing in the entryway. I zipped it open to get my towel, a change of clothes and my toilet bag. After I had found them, I zipped up the suitcase again, as if I were an overnight guest. I only realised how odd this was when I saw Bea’s worried eyes on me. ‘I think you’re very wise,’ she said loyally, ‘to wait until tomorrow to unpack.

  ‘You must take your time!’ she called up the stairs. ‘You’ve earned your rest!’

  Grateful for yet another opportunity to hide, I followed her instructions. As I soaked in my bath, I kept myself from thinking by acquainting myself with the disarray Bea had warned me about. There were, as she had said, more than a hundred plastic containers of shampoo, conditioner, lotion and oil. Some were concoctions I had never seen before from the Body Shop. Others had instructions in Spanish, French, German and Arabic. Many looked four or five years old. Most looked as if they had been bought by a woman.

  People say that poets and writers have no private life, that they expose themselves even when they hide behind the screen of fiction. But as well as I knew her work, it had never occurred to me before that Rebecca would be the sort of person with a weakness for new shampoos, or an aversion for using containers that were almost empty. It had never even occurred to me that she even needed to wash her hair, or do anything at all to maintain her appearance. I had always thought of her as fully dressed and brushed and freshly laundered. Why hadn’t Max thrown anything away?

  How did he feel when he sat in this bath looking at her things?

  How did I feel?

  There was a plaque on the wall behind the shampoos. It read, ‘That the birds of worry and care fly above your head, this you cannot change. But that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.’ As I listened to William play his strange war game next door in his bath, and to Hermione singing an unearthly tune in her bedroom, I told myself, One day, all these sounds will be familiar. One day, it will be me coming up the stairs to get the children into their pyjamas. One day it will be me choosing the bedtime stories. I remember having these thoughts, and yet I don’t think it had sunk in yet that in taking on Max, I had taken on his children, too.

  I listened to him say his goodnights, first to Hermione, then to William. I was still at the point where I was moved, and surprised, to hear how his voice changed when he sat down to read to them. How rich, soft and reassuring he sounded! He didn’t speak to me like that, I remember thinking, but on this occasion I thought this with detachment and no jealousy.

  I was puzzled when, after Max had gone downstairs, I could hear his voice continuing to ramble on. It was only after I came out of the bathroom that I worked out it was Hermione listening to a tape.

  I found him with Bea in the long, barnlike sitting room. They were at the mahogany dining table, drinking coffee, sharing a cigarette. It was still light outside. The leaves that pressed against the windows and the open garden door were a fluorescent green. But the light inside was failing. I tried and failed to turn on a lamp.

  ‘Would you mind flicking that switch next to the door, dear?’ Bea said to me. I did, and all the lamps in the room lit up at once. ‘Thanks awfully.’

  Bea had her glasses on. She was reading a newspaper. When she put it down, she said to Max, ‘It’s not quite as bad as I feared. I’d say go for an apology, and leave it at that.’

  ‘Mandy says—’

  ‘Mandy is the solicitor, I take it?’

  Max nodded. ‘Mandy says they’re unlikely to agree to an apology. She thinks they’re trying to provoke me into suing. She thinks they know something we don’t know.’

  ‘All the more reason to keep our heads down,’ Bea said.

  ‘Not really. That would make it look as if we’re hiding something. Don’t you agree?’

  Bea took off her reading glasses and gave Max a long and thoughtful stare. ‘Would you like me to make a copy of this outrage for Mandy, Candy, whatever her name is?’

  ‘Not unless she asks. She’s bound to have read it already,’ Max said.

  ‘Well, you must tell her about Wayne,’ Bea said, as she put her reading glasses back into her basket. Then she turned to me. ‘I must say! It was rather wonderful what you said to Wayne, by the way. I was dying to say so myself, but I couldn’t find the nerve. You are brave, my dear, and awfully clever, too. Did you know, Max? The Chopin was her idea too. It wasn’t Rupert at all. He told me.’

  Max said, ‘Oh, really? I hadn’t realised that. I thought he was just showing off as usual.’

  ‘You needn’t be so hard on the boy. Since Bertie’s been in Antarctica, he’s much improved. He’s in love with poor Herta, you know. It must have been awful for him to have to watch her with that brute Wayne. What an absolute nightmare that man is! All that nonsense about his impugned work ethic. It’s insufferable! Especially since I suspect you can’t impugn a work ethic at all. I’m going to check, you know. It’s on my list. Do you think Herta will give him up now?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the affair will stagger on for a while longer,’ said Max. ‘But there’s really no need for you to meddle in it. It’s doomed.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ she said. She sighed, stood up and put her cigarettes and her lighter back into her basket. ‘Because I can’t bear the thought of being grandmother to his children. Max, can you imagine anything more gruesome?’

  Max gave her a smile instead of an answer.

  Bea leaned over to kiss Max on the cheek. ‘At least Rebecca had good bones.’

  He winced. Bea didn’t notice because she was going around the room straightening the kilims. ‘You’re off at what godforsaken time tomorrow?’

  ‘The eight fifty-five from Islip,’ he said.

  ‘Then I shall be here by quarter past.’

  ‘Better make it later, as I’m sure they’ll all want to sleep in.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, but I’m taking you to the station, as we’ll be needing your car.’ She picked up her basket and headed for the door. ‘Bye for now,’ she called over her shoulder. Her voice trilled like a bird.

  ‘Thank God that’s over,’ said Max after the door had closed. ‘She’s wonderful. But tiring.’ He got out a tobacco box. ‘And I’ve been dying for one of these.’ He took out a piece of hash and some rolling papers. As he tore open a cigarette, he said, ‘You have no idea what Bea was talking about, do you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘to make a long story short, although you may have already gathered this, there’s another flap on about Rebecca.’ It was the first time he had mentioned her name to me. ‘Another biography, this one by that rather dubious cousin of hers. It’s a deeply dishonest book in all sorts of ways, and if that were all it was, I should have just ignored it as I ignored the other one, you remember, the one by Donald Oswald. The one that implied that the drowning was a cover-up, that Rebecca really committed suicide. This one goes further, I’m afraid, a lot further. It goes so far that the worry is people will believe it’s true unless I sue. The book itself doesn’t come out until September, but it was bought up by my paper’s chief rival, and brought out early, I assume, to bring circulation out of the summer doldrums. The first part was serialised last week, the second part came out today, and the third and final part will come out next Sunday – unless we stop it. I wrote a rebuttal in my paper. It was published today. I was urged to write it by the editor, but I think it may have been a mistake. We shall see. I’ll leave everything ou
t for you to read if you’re interested. I don’t like talking about it, as you can well imagine, but if you have any questions after reading it, you must let me know. I hope you don’t mind if I wait for you to ask.’ He lit a match and put it against the hash, then crumbled it in. After he had licked the papers and was rolling them into a joint, he looked up and said, ‘Would you like to choose some music? I don’t know what your taste runs to, but as mine is eclectic you ought to be able to find something that suits you.’ He put the joint down and gave me a quizzical look. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? Here we are, in this cottage, and I don’t even know what music you like.’

  ‘I’m happy with anything,’ I said.

  ‘Nonsense. No one’s happy with anything. If I got up now and put on disco or bubblegum or “Viva España”, you wouldn’t be happy.’

  ‘If you got up now and put on “Viva España”,’ I said, ‘I’d probably try to see what you saw in it. Or at least pretend. You forget what a hypocrite I am. I pretend to be agreeable to anything so that I can get people to reveal themselves.’

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Max said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to go look for your opinions in Lost Luggage. Would you like me to tell you who Wayne is?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Wayne is a journalist. He freelances, but mostly for the paper that is running the serialised biography. He’s engaged to my cousin Herta, in other words Bea’s daughter, or at least he was until today. Bea is sure that he is the source for a lot of the correct information the biography contains, but I don’t think so. Bea was very keen to pin it on him because she doesn’t like him. He probably overreacted today because he suspects correctly that Bea and Giles look down on him, but this was a tactical error. It will be easy for Bea to say to Herta, see, we were right, he’s nothing but a hack and not to be trusted. It’s all rather ugly. I wish it hadn’t happened. The only good thing that has come out of it is that Bea thinks you did something “rather wonderful”. I think we’ll leave it at that. It’s no bad thing that Bea has taken to you. Now I don’t feel so worried about having to leave you behind tomorrow. She looks after her own, does Bea, although in the long run, you may find that is a mixed blessing. Does Bill Evans suit you?’ he asked as he took an album out of its sleeve.

  ‘I’m sure he does,’ I said, but uncertainly, because I had never heard of him.

  ‘You’ve never heard of him before, have you?’

  I shook my head. Max threw back his head and laughed. ‘You Americans! You know nothing about jazz.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  He pulled me over and kissed me on the forehead. ‘Lesson number one: never explain. Lesson number two: never apologise. That is all you need to know and ever know.’ Still holding my hand, he lowered the needle onto the record. ‘I’ve put you through hell today and you’re still talking to me, and that’s all that counts.’

  Soft, soothing piano music swirled out of the speakers. ‘Do you like it?’ Max asked as he stretched out on the couch.

  ‘I think I do,’ I said.

  He lit the joint. ‘So whatever else goes wrong, at least it’ll go wrong while we’re enjoying the same music. Although you may draw the line at the World Saxophone Quartet.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because Rebecca did. They drove her spare. They were the reason why she bought me earphones. She said they sounded like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. She had no time for dissonance – unless, of course, she was complaining about it.’

  That I could imagine. I could imagine her standing there, right there in the low doorway, fresh from the bath, wearing a robe printed with large flowers, and shaking her beautiful mane of hair in exasperation with her husband, brilliantly witty in her disparagements, glowing as always with the courage of her convictions. While I …

  I sat down on the sofa next to Max and looked at this strange, beautiful man as he put his legs on my lap. Whatever standards you applied to him, he was out of my league. And yet here we were.

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’

  ‘If it’s about Rebecca …’ He took a long drag from the joint. ‘I’d rather wait until after you’ve done that reading.’

  ‘It’s not about Rebecca. It’s about me.’

  ‘What about you, then?’ He took a second drag, held it in, exhaled.

  I took a deep breath. In as loud a voice as I could muster, I asked, ‘What do you see in me?’

  He laughed. Then he leaned over and pretended to search my eyes. ‘I’m not sure. ‘I’ll have to think about it. In the meantime –’ he handed me the joint – ‘have some of this.’

  Chapter Ten

  I was in bed, under a duvet that was damp with heat. My head was resting on his chest. His arm enclosed me. I could hear something fizzling. I lifted my head and peeked over the edge of the duvet. It was the television on the chest of drawers in the far corner. We had fallen asleep in the middle of a programme on the Edinburgh Festival. Now the station had gone off the air. It was … what time? I scanned the dark room for a clock and found two. A digital display on the radio was pulsating 1:22, while the travel alarm on the bedside table said 4:19. I looked out through the gap between the curtains and the windowsills and tried to gauge the time from the sky. It was too light a grey for the middle of the night, but too dark a grey for the early morning, so I drew the duvet back over my head and draped my leg over his legs, closed my eyes and let myself drift. The next time I awoke I was still immersed in the duvet but lying on my other side, facing away from him. I could feel his legs bent against the backs of my legs, his arm around my chest, his penis pressed against the small of my back, his heart beating softly against my neck, his breath on the back of my ear.

  I opened my eyes only just long enough to see sunlight creeping underneath the thin, red-glowing curtains. The room had a warm, rosy haze over it. The television had changed from static to a show tune I could recognise but not name. I pulled the duvet cover up over my ears. I closed my eyes, and the next time I opened them, I was standing at a till in a bank, looking through the glass into the office where my teller and three other clerks were gazing at a computer screen, pressing keys, calling up list after list of numbers, looking over their shoulders at me, looking at each other, shaking their heads.

  Now one was heading towards me, smiling apprehensively, clutching my chequebook. Behind her, another was punching out a three-digit number on the telephone. I turned around. The security guard at the door was listening to a message coming in on the walkie-talkie. He was scanning the windows. He saw me. His eyes registered recognition. I picked up my handbag. He nodded at the clerks who had gathered at the till. He closed in.

  I closed my eyes. A phone rang. I opened my eyes and found myself alone in bed. The television was off now. The curtains were drawn to admit the midmorning sun. The phone that was ringing was not the one on the floor next to the bed. When I picked up the phone on the floor next to the bed, all I got was a dialling tone. The other phone, wherever it was, persisted for another twenty rings. When it stopped, I could hear the distant sound of a vacuum cleaner.

  I sat up, then put my head between my knees and concentrated on my breathing. It was all right, I told myself. It was just a dream. I was not alone. I had someone to care for me. Of all the problems I might have to face that day, the one I was not going to have to face was the one I had dreamed about. I was safe from the bank tellers. I had a roof over my head now. I had a protector.

  I looked at the row of strange shoes on the floor until my breathing had become regular. Then the ringing began again. It sounded as if it was coming from the room above me. I went upstairs to investigate, but when I turned the handle to enter the room where the ringing was coming from, the door wouldn’t budge.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s locked, my dear,’ said a soft voice behind me. I turned to find a plump, spectacled, grey-haired woman standing in the hallway outside the bathroom. She was holding a vacuum cleaner in the
stiff, dignified manner of a bassoonist. ‘I’m Janet,’ she said. ‘Your cleaner. You must be the new Mrs Midwinter.’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘we’re not married. Yet.’

  She gave me a long, steady beam that indicated suppressed amusement.

  ‘Why is the room locked?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the late Mrs M’s study. That’s her private line.’ As she spoke, the ringing in the locked room continued. ‘Does this happen a lot?’ I asked.

  ‘Only three or four times a week, I reckon.’

  ‘Why is it still there if no one uses it?’

  She gave me another gleaming smile. ‘It’s a rather long story, but I’m sure that if you broached the subject with Danny, she’d be more than delighted to tell you. As she may have mentioned already, she’s – but don’t let me ruin her story. You’ll be wanting some coffee.’

  ‘Now I hope I haven’t been making too much noise,’ she said as she put on the (to me, strange-looking) white plastic electric kettle. ‘You must be so tired after all your travelling. And I hear the birthday party at the big house yesterday was not without its moments of drama. He’s a dreadful man, that Wayne, now isn’t he?’ The kettle had already come to a boil. She poured the water into the mug, onto the waiting spoon of instant coffee. ‘Milk or sugar?’

  ‘Just milk, please.’

  ‘No, he’s my very least favourite of the fiancés, that one. I understand he made our Danny quite faint with alarm. I’ve dealt with the papers, by the way, if you follow my meaning.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure Danny will explain all that to you as well. She’s due over here later on. In the meantime, I have a rather long list of queries from Mrs M Major. I would advise you to sit down first and prepare yourself mentally while I warm up the croissants she left for you. Would you like some orange juice while you wait? I’m assuming you won’t be wanting to do your aikido or yoga or what have you. Danny is a great one for aikido. She says it’s very popular in the United States but I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me she was exaggerating.