The Other Rebecca

by Maureen Freely

  Without ever taking his eyes off the screen, he put his finger up as if to silence me. The commercial break ended. He stood up, stretched and said, in a voice on the edge of cracking, ‘I’ll just check to see if the children are asleep.’ Returning to the foot of the stairs, he called into the sitting room to say that he was just going out to get something and would be back shortly.

  Five minutes later he returned with a cold bottle of champagne. He had trouble opening it because his hands were shaking. He knocked back three glasses in silence and then began to speak, in a hushed but urgent voice, about what he wanted to put behind him and what he hoped we could achieve together. It was the first time he had spoken to me in such depth about his marriage and Rebecca. I found, to my dismay, that the very mention of her name made me tremble.

  ‘I don’t know if you understand what I mean when I say we lived inside each other’s heads. I suspect you do understand, because of what you’ve been through. I don’t know what you’d call it, though. I’d say it was either love or insanity or both. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the results. I don’t want to live that way ever again. I want us to live in harmony, not unison, and I need to know if you agree.’

  I agreed. The trembling had got worse and now my teeth were chattering. He put his arms around me. ‘You’re afraid, and you’re right to be afraid. I’m afraid too. Every time I have to trust you just that tiny bit more, it’s as if I’m being stabbed in the chest. Because I know what can happen, just as you know what can happen. But I don’t want to hang back any more. I don’t want fear to win again. I want to make it work this time. I want to make my children our children. I want a life for them. I want to imagine a future for them. I want us to have children.’ He poured himself another glass. Tell me you want it too. Tell me. Tell me we’re both in this together. When you look ahead, tell me what you see.’

  I told him what I had already seen. Myself driving home in a car full of children, his children and our children, and arriving at the cottage, seeing him waiting at the door. He cried out as if someone had stabbed him, and then he tightened his grip on me, as if in resistance to an invisible abductor.

  I do not remember how and when we got to bed, but I remember waking up the next morning with the hollow glow of forgotten purpose. As I lay in bed and in his arms, the vision came back to me. We were going to get married. We were going to make a family, for his children and for our children. We were going to stitch up the gash, stop looking back, and move forward. Not live happily ever after right away, but soon enough.

  I sat down at the breakfast table feeling strong, feeling inspired. But already I was losing my nerve as I greeted the children, as I watched their faces turn stony upon hearing their father tell them the news. Even when I helped them gather their things for school, they refused to look at me.

  The summons from Bea was a welcome distraction.

  I did not have to tell her what I had decided. She already knew. Her words of congratulation were energetically – you might almost say triumphantly – gracious. But it was also clear, from the rapidity of her delivery, that she was in the midst of coping with a crisis she could not explain over the phone.

  It turned out to be Danny, who was sitting in the corner next to the Aga hugging her knees, rocking back and forth with anguished whimpers. Her hair hung over her face, leaving only her nose uncovered.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Bea efficiently. ‘Pour yourself a cup of coffee. I’m afraid poor Danny’s finding the thought of a wedding a bit too much to take. I hope you don’t mind my asking you over. I thought it would be best to bring everything out in the open.’ She turned to the rocking figure on the floor. In a louder voice, she said, ‘Danny, darling, do you think you can find it in yourself to join us at the table? It would help awfully.’

  The hulk whimpered and nodded, then pulled herself into an upright position and shuffled across the floor. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I speak for you,’ Bea said. As she blew her nose, Danny responded with a jerky nod. That said, I do hope you stop me if you think I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.’ Danny nodded again and sniffled.

  Now Bea turned to me. ‘It seems,’ she said, ‘that Danny has had a rather alarming dream. Or was it a visitation? I’m not quite clear on that. Well, anyway. The ghostly visitor was Rebecca, who had, apparently, been the first in the underworld to hear of your wedding plans, and who is now appealing to you, via her preferred medium, to change your mind. Have I got it right so far, Danny, or am I misquoting you?’

  ‘The thing that may not be clear,’ Danny now sobbed, ‘is her motive.’ Pushing her hair away from her face, she turned her bleary eyes to me and added, ‘It’s not jealousy, or rather, it isn’t any more. She did suffer a bit of it, naturally, but she has long since moved on and now she feels sisterly towards you. She wants to protect you. She doesn’t think you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for.’ Danny sucked in her breath. ‘She asked me to ask you if you, I know this sounds rather odd, but you must take it as a metaphor, she asked me to ask you if your muse wore a chastity belt. It’s an allusion to Heteroglossia, of course, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you.’ I sat there stunned as she blew her nose.

  I turned to Bea, whose expression was judiciously bland. ‘I think we’re more or less agreed that she was concerned about events having forced you into making a decision rather too quickly. Isn’t that right, Danny?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Although it does seem to me,’ Bea now continued, ‘that you and this ghost are rather alarmed about the possible consequences of this decision. If you can forget about the ghost for a moment, Danny, it does seem to me that you feel a bit, well, I hope you don’t find this word too strong, but you do seem to be worried about being supplanted.’ Danny opened her mouth to speak but did not get the chance. ‘Which I understand completely, darling, even though I must say it has no basis. Simply because no one could do what you’re doing with Rebecca’s papers. No one else has the background for it, or the application. Because you’re not exactly being properly rewarded, are you? It’s a work of love.’

  ‘It’s been easier these past few months,’ Danny said, ‘because I’ve had a partner in devotional absentia. This is the main reason why I would say that I’m not quite, or not only, the image of your suggestion, not, in other words, thoroughly caught up in the supplanting myth.’ Turning to me, she added, ‘I did tell Rebecca how highly I thought of you.’

  Her voice going only slightly drier, Bea said, ‘We are, of course, still referring to the night visitor.’

  There was a long silence, which Bea broke by asking, ‘Do you think you’ll be speaking to her again soon?’

  Danny shook her head. ‘I have no way of knowing.’

  ‘I was only asking, Danny, because it seemed to me that it would help to clarify matters if we could engage your night visitor in a broader examination of the matter to hand. The questions of the imagination are, of course, terribly important. But we’re also talking about children and trying to arrange things so that everyone involved can get on with it. I hope you don’t find my way of putting it too blunt, but it does seem to me that the view from the underworld can become rather obsessional, rather blinkered, as it were. It sometimes becomes necessary for those of us still on earth to remind them of practical matters. Are you with me, Danny?’ She half nodded. ‘Then do you think you can ask her next time you speak? I’m only suggesting this because it might just be possible that the apparition is in a position to pass on some useful advice. I’m suggesting this in the spirit of that adage about not repeating history through the careful study of it, and so on. If, indeed, our ghost is well disposed towards our new friend here, and if she can be brought round to the idea that she will be a suitable and even a helpful stepmother, then perhaps she can give us the wherewithal to learn from her mistakes. Do you follow me?’

  ‘Oh yes, I do, oh yes …’ Danny said, then gave herself up to wailing.

  ‘Do get a hol
d over yourself, darling! You’ll only be giving yourself a migraine if you continue carrying on like this.’

  ‘It’s the sinuses, actually,’ Danny sobbed, but she blew her nose and fell quiet.

  ‘That’s better,’ Bea said. ‘But I do think you should permit yourself a morning off and give yourself a rest. And perhaps later, when you’re feeling a bit better, you might try reaching to the Other Side with one of your other spiritual aids. Those crystals, perhaps, or carrot cards or whatever you’re meant to call them.’

  ‘Keep the dialogue going, in other words,’ Danny said weakly as she struggled to her feet.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Bea, as she herded her firmly towards the door. ‘Bye for now,’ I heard her say as she saw Danny out of the house.

  When she returned to the kitchen, Bea sighed and said, ‘I do apologise for putting you through that, but I thought it best to humour her. It’s best all round if she thinks she a part of things. But it was difficult to keep a straight face. I hope you didn’t mind. At least I got rid of her in record time. Now finally I can congratulate you properly. Goodness!’ she said, after she had pecked me on both cheeks. ‘Only three months to go and so much to do!’

  IV

  The Marriage Hearse

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  We were married just before Christmas. It was the register office with the immediate family on the Friday morning, and the church in Beckfield with the rest of the family – his family – on the Saturday. It was not quite the traditional wedding Bea had hoped for. I did not wear white and, since I did not have a father, it was Giles who walked me down the aisle. I had worried about a virtual stranger giving me away, but he was a man trained to rise to sudden and unusual occasions: he gave every indication of having known me since birth. This despite sticking religiously to the facts in the small, perfect speech he gave on my behalf at the reception.

  How relieved they were, the dark suits and extravagant hats, to see an orphan so graciously protected, an unknown so elegantly placed and defined. When they clapped at the end, it was as if in response to an acrobat on a tightrope. Their smiles relaxed when they saw Crawley move away from us to take the microphone at the front of the platform. They knew he would only appear to take risks. They knew how good he was at sounding outrageous while keeping the curtains closed. They laughed comfortably when he explained the circumstances under which he and Max had become best friends. They were both first years at Hertford: Max had assumed Crawley, ‘the Celt from nowhere’, was the porter. Shaken by his mistake (‘not because of what it revealed about his character, but because of the awkwardness it promised’), Max had made a point of inviting him to his rooms for tea. This second encounter proved even more revealing. ‘I found the lad heating up water in his electric kettle. I deduced correctly that he had never done so before from the fact that it was on the gas cooker. This time I did not pause to be polite. I have been saving him with my bad manners ever since. But every few decades, he does manage to do something even I cannot classify as a faux pas, and this new venture into matrimony is one of them.’ He turned around to wish me luck. ‘And believe me, girl, you’ll need it.’

  Max threw his head back to laugh at the thought. I remember how handsome he looked – too handsome, I thought proudly, to be mine. After Crawley had embraced him and wished him luck too, I suddenly lost my sense of occasion, forgot the audience and took his beautiful face in my hands and kissed him on the mouth. There were cheers, I remember. But they died away as Danny moved towards the front of the platform.

  Max kept his smile as Danny cleared her throat and shuffled her papers, but he tightened his grip on my hand. I was full of dread, too. But it was clear to me from their bright-eyed, frozen faces that the guests would have been disappointed had she acted sane. It was not as bad as we had feared. Danny never made it fully clear she was addressing us on behalf of a friend in the underworld. An outsider could have assumed she was speaking metaphorically, would not have caught all the allusions when she said every hero deserved a sequel, but that no sequel was worth its salt without a heroine who understood the living spirit. Neither would an outsider have known she was wearing the same dress she had worn at Rebecca’s wedding. As for Danny’s choice of poem, ‘Hamlet Without the Ghost’, it was so gruesomely inappropriate that she had the entire audience rooting for her, hoping against hope that no one would let the side down by heckling or giggling or exposing her bad judgement. I watched them watch her, a captive audience praying for a treasured clown who had ventured too far out on a limb. How relieved they were when she survived unscathed, how admiring that we had endured the recitation without betraying embarrassment. ‘Oh, you poor thing!’ more than one woman said to me afterwards. ‘We did feel for you. You were so brave.’ They thought I was just pretending to be unperturbed. If they had known how far away Danny and her ghosts were from me that day, if they had known how much I was enjoying my own wedding, if they had known how many times I looked across the marquee for a glimpse of my prize, if they had known that he could make me catch my breath even when he had his back turned to me – they would have been shocked.

  Even Bea would have been shocked. ‘It’s so lovely,’ she said to me after she had introduced me to the bell-ringer and we had run out of politenesses to exchange. ‘I am so enjoying myself. The trouble with weddings as a rule is that one only knows half the guests. One is for ever being torn away from one’s own friends to meet some gruesome stranger’s long-lost uncle. But today I know absolutely everybody. So you must use me, darling. If you find yourself stuck with a bore, you must let me know, and I shall find you someone better.’

  ‘She means it, you know,’ said the bell-ringer. ‘It’s a wonderful family, a family as keeps its word.’

  I nodded my appreciation. But I did not have to be led by the hand any more. I was beyond introductions now. I had even made a few friends. Some of these turned out to be real friends, the friends I’ve managed to keep. Max’s deputy was one, although of course I no longer think of her as Max’s deputy. Then there was St Tatiana and Bea’s daughter Herta. Like the others, these new friends of mine overestimated my discomfort and imagined me desolate because of lacking a family. So they kept close watch on me and dragged me away from anyone who even threatened to become tiresome. Leading me by the hand as they looked across the marquee, they would murmur, long before they could have had an idea where they were going, ‘I know just the person I must take you to meet.’ But I flattered myself that I knew even better. I had found my place now. I had signed up with the right publisher; the English edition of Happily Ever After was to come out the following May. I had also done my round of Christmas parties, read and in a few cases even reviewed the books people were talking about, and even weathered my first tabloid storm. I had grown accustomed even to being caricatured in Private Eye, but I had not fooled myself into seeing a connection between them and us, the ‘Other Rebecca’ in the cartoon strip and myself. Never had I been more secure in the knowledge of my unimportance. It was my position that had made me the object of attention, not my personality or my writing. If I had ever been ambitious for myself, I had never been less so than that day. Never more conscious of what I could do, and only I could do, for things and persons larger than myself. I was more than happy: I had a purpose.

  We went to the Randolph for the night – just the two of us – but when we left for Heathrow the next morning, the children were waiting for us in the limousine. It was my idea to take them along on the honeymoon. My idea, too, to take them to the obvious place, despite the obvious objections. Until Rebecca’s death, St John the Baptist had been their second home. It did not seem right or even healthy that they should be deprived of it for ever because it had been the last place she was seen alive. Better for them to look, accept, remember, pay their respects and move on.

  It was an eleven-hour flight to Curaçao and from there another hour and a half in a puddle-jumper. Max worked on an article about John Updike for the duration – even to the
point of staying behind in the Curaçao transit lounge during our three-hour layover. I did not just take this in my stride; I flattered myself that I understood it. Here was a man who did not know how to be close without giving up all pretence of distance. He hid behind books and assignments to protect himself. And not just from me, not just from his family – from his thoughts. To quote Crawley, his unborn poems. His miscarried books. He was afraid of what might happen if he committed his thoughts to paper, because of what had happened last time he had done so. It was Rebecca who had killed his confidence. It would be I who revived it.

  While he hid, I looked after the children. How full of myself I was! I imagined that the time I had put into them that autumn was paying off, and that they now truly accepted me. That some higher power had noted and then recorded in granite my attendance at football matches and parents’ evenings, Disney films and ice-cream parlours. I imagined a torrent of encouraging words from this ethereal judge with my every inspection of their school books, my every trip to skating rink, bookshop and swimming pool. It was as if I were floating above myself, celebrating my own performance. What a saint you are, I heard my panel of judges tell me. Who else could have thought up so many educational ways to throw dice? Who else could have managed to teach two restless children thirty basic words in Papiamentu? Made the history of the Dutch Antilles come alive from the window of a bus? Turned a small, almost windless journey between two arid Caribbean islands into a journey as dangerous as the first solo flight over the Atlantic? Every time William said something that proved he wasn’t thick, every time Hermione smiled in spite of herself, every time they lost themselves inside the mundane routines I had stretched into adventures, I felt I had won a battle.

  Surprise your father, I whispered to them as we walked across the tarmac at St John the Baptist airport. They did. They told the taxi driver where to go, and politely, too. William gave the destination, Hermione said please. Max was startled. ‘When did you master that?’ he cried. We all three laughed. When we got to their grandfather’s hotel, they streaked ahead so that they could surprise him, too.