The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  ‘As Max does, I believe, in “Unravelling the Minotaur”.’

  ‘Does he?’ I asked.

  She looked at me. ‘I take it you’re better acquainted with her work than you are with his.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I’m sure that will change.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ she said. ‘And actually, if I were you, I shouldn’t rush into it. It might be a bad time. Reading love poetry addressed to another woman can rather undermine one. I do believe, also,’ she said, her voice growing slightly louder and almost humourless, ‘as I’m sure you yourself believe, that Max’s best work is yet to come. There’s plenty for you to think about right now, my dear, in the land of the living. I should content myself with that for the moment, and let sleeping dogs lie.’

  But that night, I did have time on my hands, as Max was late coming home. And so I did go digging, despite the warning. ‘Unravelling the Minotaur’ was a strange poem, full of dark, despairing, archaic metaphors, and hard to construe as a description of love. There was no mention of a designing woman. Had Bea got it wrong? Remembering the beadiness of her gaze, I thought not. I had a sinking feeling I had just passed another test. I was not just artless now, but bad at being dishonest.

  And too fearful of my new role to entertain a doubt.

  III

  Cold Feet

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was, I thought innocently, a busy time of year. Having had no children of my own, I did not query the logic behind William and Hermione’s schedule. Or rather, I thought that what I was seeing was normal for Britain, at least normal for children of their class. They were not to be left to their own devices: Art Week was followed by cricket camp, which led on to a three-day cookery course somewhere near Brighton. They hadn’t been back for twelve hours before they were packed off to a Theatre Adventure in Chipping Norton. It began on a Monday and ended on Friday with an hour-long musical for the benefit of the parents. I went with Danny, as Max couldn’t take time off work. We took them straight from the theatre to a music camp in Cheltenham.

  I did not see much of Max either. By now he had started libel proceedings against Jack Scully and his publishers. This meant extra trips to London and evening phone conversations that interrupted supper and went on for hours. When he wasn’t on the phone he was reading, or, as he put it, being snowed under by the Booker. I did not know what he meant until I went into the newspaper with him one day and saw the mountains of books in his office. He had to go to Edinburgh twice that August. After we put him on the plane for his second visit, Danny and the children and I drove up to Bramble House, his mother’s place in Yorkshire, and it was during this trip that the doubts I had suppressed in order to keep my mind open took on a life of their own.

  Because it was a bank-holiday weekend, the traffic was bad, almost doubling what was to have been a five-hour journey. There was never a moment of silence in the car – when we were not listening to Radio Four or Max’s tape of The Wind in the Willows, we were playing I Spy, looking for unusual number plates, or singing rounds. But as one diversion led to another, I became increasingly aware that the good cheer was rehearsed, and that the children did not want me there. Whenever their good manners showed signs of cracking, Danny would remind them, a bit too pointedly, of the promise they had made her, of the sweets she had trustingly given them before setting out, when really she ought to have waited until afterwards. It was clear they had been bribed.

  Bramble House turned out to be a mansion made out of brick and set in a valley inside grounds so large that it was impossible, I later learned, for anyone to set eyes on it or its seemingly endless gardens without trespassing. It dated from the mid-nineteenth century. I did not realise at the time that this implied new money. When we arrived, the only person on hand was the Lithuanian nanny. The children seemed genuinely pleased to see her. She swept them off to the nursery. I did not see them again until the following afternoon.

  ‘Caroline – that’s Max’s mater and Bea’s sister – will have gone to sleep by now, so you’re spared that ordeal until tomorrow,’ Danny said. She led me across the front hall and into a large, white sitting room where a fire was already blazing. She opened what looked like a closet door and revealed a fully stocked bar. ‘I’m assuming you need a stiff drink as much as I do. Or at least you will once you’ve heard what I have to tell you.’

  As we sat nursing our whiskies in front of the fire, she filled me in on Max’s brother, or what she called ‘the latest chapter of the Jonathan Chronicles’.

  ‘I’m sure you know he’s a hopeless junkie, but did you know he’s also HIV positive? It may not surprise you to hear that they blame this on Rebecca,’ Danny said, adding darkly, ‘although, if you ask me, it was the other way round.’ Before she could explain, we were interrupted by an electric bell, which rang three times. ‘Goodness!’ Danny exclaimed. ‘Is it eight o’clock already?’ Jumping to her feet with an alarming smile, she led me back through the front hall to a long and dimly lit dining room where supper sat waiting for us on a sideboard. ‘It looks like magic, doesn’t it?’ she said as she dished out two overlarge servings. Then she explained that it wasn’t magic but martyrdom. ‘We are being looked after by a saint and her name is Tatiana.’

  Tatiana, she explained, was Jonathan Junkie’s brilliant but long-suffering wife, who lived at Bramble House full time and ran things while pretending not to. ‘But there the trouble begins,’ she said as she put her napkin on her lap. ‘White wine or red? And goodness, I forgot to give you bread. Shall I ring for some? Are you sure? You must let me know if you change your mind. So yes, now. Where was I? What we need next, I think, is a quick run-through of the cast of characters for the upcoming weekend. Tatiana is a wife in name only, alas. Our Jonathan also has a girlfriend – until such time as her ex-husband intervenes, this being the main complication of the mise-en-scène. Because, you see, Jonathan Junkie’s girlfriend – I suppose I ought to refer to her by name, although it takes an awful lot of courage to do so, seeing as her parents named her Lois, but let me try. Until six or seven months ago, Lois was the wife of Max’s mother’s gamekeeper. A nice man, but with rather an alarming temper. He kept the child. She ran off in the middle of the night, you see, leaving them both. There was some talk of her having been threatened with a hatchet, although God knows she may have been asking for it. It was all rather shocking, but now it seems to have died down enough for Luscious Lois to think it’s quite all right to come here for the bank-holiday weekend and have the child with her at the big house. So! What can I say? Watch this space!’

  Another concern, she told me, was that Luscious Lois was with child. If this turned out to be a son (‘and we shan’t even utter the dread thought HIV positive’), he could dispute the family’s decision to make Max the heir. ‘As a result of which, you may have the pleasure of seeing sparks flying back and forth between our selfless mistress in residence and the saintly wife-in-name-only. Who claims she’s not all that interested in money, she being so very, very White Russian, although a less grateful and appreciative chronicler than myself might point out that her noble plans make her a very expensive proposition altogether, and that anyone but Max is going to take a dim view of it. We’ll see the latest project tomorrow, I fear. It’s some sort of telecottage industry. It’s, meant to revitalise – or is the word “rationalise”? – the estate. She has named it Middlemarch without the slightest hint of irony, if you please. If we use all our resources, we may just be able to put off the inevitable hike until after lunch. I hope you brought your boots!

  ‘A word of advice: don’t ask Tatiana any question to which you would rather not have an answer on a scale with a Reith lecture. A second word of advice: please try not to mention Bea’s name in front of Caroline. The effect can be quite frightening.’

  She continued in this vein through three courses about the other assorted cousins and friends who were also going to be arriving for the weekend. As one background
intrigue about people I hadn’t met intertwined with another, I became more and more confused. Fatigue set in. After we had finished our meal, Danny rang the bell for the servants to collect our plates and led me back across the hallway to the sitting room for coffee. She tried to interest me in a game of table tennis. ‘Or billiards, if you prefer. There’s a room for that, too.’

  When I declined, and said I was ready for bed, her voice took on a faintly unpleasant twinge. Couldn’t I have another cup of coffee and revive my spirits? It was our only night without Max. He could be such a bore, and really, she thought, it would be better to get to know the others before he arrived. They were due in between eleven and midnight, ‘and they’re longing to meet you’.

  It was unclear to me why, after her introductory descriptions, she would think that I would want to meet them. I made the mistake of saying so. She reacted as if I had insulted her personally. Even after I assured her that I had been half joking, she was unable to be more than half friendly. After she had shown me to the vast room with its already turned-down four-poster bed, I tried to apologise again.

  She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Not to worry. It was just my folie de nostalgie running away with me. It was always such a treat, you see, when Rebecca and I could escape up here without the old bear. But I understand completely. You must have your beauty sleep and be ready for the challenges of the morrow. I have half a mind to follow suit.’

  But the other half of her mind won out. I was still awake an hour later when the next party arrived. Danny’s greetings were ecstatic. I heard them laughing and gossiping with her in the sitting room below. And although I told myself I had to be imagining things, I thought I heard the loudest laughter whenever Danny imitated my voice.

  I woke up at six, but waited an hour before setting out to look for the dining room. I stood in the middle of the front hall, transfixed by the forbidding busts on display, and tried to remember our itinerary of the previous evening. The third door I tried was the right one.

  The previous evening I had not been able to see the view, so my eyes went straight to it. First the lake, then the bridge, the folly, the hills, the distant ridge of rain clouds, then a harsh, overcultivated voice saying, ‘Don’t gape.’ I jumped.

  ‘Don’t jump. It’s unladylike.’ The speaker was sitting at the far end of the huge oval table: a faded, pastel-coloured beauty with stiffly coiffed blonde hair and rigid posture.

  ‘You must be Max’s new American,’ she now said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I suppose I am.’

  She looked me over. ‘Hmm. Well. What a curious choice! Though not the first, by any means. So long as the boy’s happy, I suppose I must go along with it. Are you making him happy?’

  ‘I’d say it was too early to tell.’

  ‘Hmph. I suppose you’re right. And in the long run, it may not matter. One can so easily exaggerate its importance. In that respect, it’s rather like death. You’ll find breakfast on the sideboard. I’m not sure I’d recommend the eggs.’

  Under her gaze, I helped myself to toast and coffee. I sat down, attempting a smile. It was not returned. There was a long silence while she went about the demanding task of buttering a wedge of toast perfectly. Then she said, ‘I understand you’ve been married before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And that it was a marriage without issue.’

  ‘We had no children, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Have you plans for children now?’

  ‘No, at least not in the near future. Although you never know.’

  ‘You’re quite sure of that, are you?’

  ‘Reasonably sure.’

  ‘Good. It’s so hard to tell these days. Your country is a closed book to me, I’m afraid. I cannot bear New York, although I did have a good time once in Newport. Might I have met your family in Newport?’

  I said, ‘I don’t come from that kind of family.’

  ‘What kind of family do you come from?’

  ‘Normal.’

  ‘Normal. How odd!’ she said. ‘And if you don’t mind my saying so, how like Rebecca.’ She rose from the table and left the room without another word.

  I finished my toast, went outside for a brief and aimless walk, and then, when it began to rain, went back to the desk in my room, where I submerged myself in my book until Danny knocked on the door at half past twelve.

  She took me down to the sitting room ‘to meet the rest of the cast’. Even to my doubting eyes, they did give every sign of ‘dying to meet me’. First to her feet was the woman I immediately recognised as St Tatiana. She was tall, with flyaway hair and intelligent eyes, and dressed in painting clothes. Next to her were two dreamily confident, carelessly polite young couples who seemed to be cousins. The pretty woman with permed hair and pink lipstick I took to be Luscious Lois. The gap-toothed man in hip-hop clothes who was emptying his pockets in front of the fireplace I took to be Jonathan. He had a large bottle of Coca-Cola sitting next to him. The others were all nursing Bloody Marys and laughing softly about their hangovers. But when Max’s mother appeared, they reverted to polite greetings, bright-eyed silence and crossword puzzles – except for Jonathan, who was distraught at having lost something.

  It turned out to be his syringe. He sat next to me at lunch and told me the whole story – how he had once enjoyed reading history books, but now had only the attention span for cartoons; how dangerous crack was, and how badly run the nation’s methadone programme; how he hated his parents; how much he missed his teeth. Although he spoke in a loud voice, no one but I acknowledged it. They spoke instead about Middlemarch, to which Danny and I were dragged as predicted as soon as we had finished lunch.

  The nanny and the four children were summoned from the nursery, outfitted in the boot room and equipped with tracking tools. It was already raining when we set out, but they paid this inconvenience as little attention as they had paid to the confessions of a drug addict at lunch. It took us an hour and a half of brisk walking before we reached our destination. All there was to see was a Portakabin, a makeshift toolshed, a few acres of turned earth, and posts marking the future foundations of a building. As Tatiana took us around these, she explained how it would look with such conviction that you could almost believe it was already there.

  She invited us to sit down in the mud and inspect her plans, which she had in her pocket. When I demurred, she gave me a withering look and then relegated me to the land of the invisible. Danny played along. The snub soon grew too much to bear. I went over to the brook, where the nanny and the children were building a dam. Here I caused more trouble by messing up some of their tracking arrows. As William tried to fix them, he burst into tears. ‘Why does she have to be here at all?’ he sobbed. ‘She’s no bloody use! No bloody use at all.’ I tried to help him. He pushed me away. Before I knew it, Danny and Tatiana had arrived to limit the damage. I was sent back to the house with the nanny. She complained all the way.

  These were very strange people, she kept saying. She itemised the bizarre customs she had witnessed and asked me to explain them. Was it all English people, or just these people, who blocked half the light coming through their tiny windows by putting their dressing tables in front of them? Why was privacy so important for them? Why didn’t they have showers? And this Jonathan – his mother was too easy with him. But at the same time, she was so strict with the children. They couldn’t bring this toy into the sitting room, and they couldn’t discuss that subject. ‘They can’t be children when they go into her presence. They can only be children when they are locked up in the nursery with me. Can you explain me this?’ she pleaded. Every time I said I couldn’t, she patted my back in commiseration or squeezed my hand. Her sincerity was almost frightening. ‘I wish you well,’ she kept saying. ‘But I have bad bone feeling for you.’ By the time we got back to the house, it was five o’clock. I ran up to the bedroom, expecting to see Max. Instead I found a note to say he would not arrive until the next day.

 
That evening I tried to redeem myself by joining in the after-dinner parlour games. But with every game I proved myself to be less of an asset to my team. ‘Don’t you play charades in America?’ Max’s mother asked me after one particularly dismal failure. After another, she peered at me over lowered glasses and enquired, ‘Are you dyslexic?’ Once she had retired at eleven, the disapproval grew more pointed. The first game we played was called What’s the Problem? I was invited to leave the room while they thought one up. When I returned, I had to guess. After an hour, I gave up. They told me they were apostles and I was Judas.

  When the laughter died down, someone suggested Wink Murder. I failed to understand the rules and so ruined the game. After that, we moved on to the table-tennis room, where I proceeded to lose badly against Luscious Lois while all the others watched. When they tired of table tennis and began a game of Tag Murder, I used the cover of darkness to crawl out of the room and up to bed.

  The following morning, I was once again the only one to join Max’s mother for breakfast. She informed me, as if it were my fault, that the nanny was ill. She was going to have to take her to the doctor on her way to church, during which time I was to be in charge of the children. Because it was a beautiful morning, I suggested that we follow the track they had made the previous afternoon. I took a picnic, which we ate next to the brook when we got to Middlemarch. I was in no hurry to return to the house, so when the children asked if they could continue digging their dam, I was happy to go along with it.

  There was a padlock on the shed door, but we were still able to get inside for digging utensils because it was off its hinges. They decided to join up what looked like a half-dug grave with the brook. While digging the channel, they unearthed a collection of bones which looked to have once belonged to an animal, but because they seemed to want more of a story, I went along with the idea that we had discovered the remains of a murder victim. I remember how William and Hermione looked at me. For the first time since we had been thrown together, I was showing interesting possibilities. And so, of course, I went too far.