Bethany (24 page)

Alex, sensing my discomfort, had asked me why I didn't like her ‘talking'. I had been unable to reply. She asked me if I thought she had misinterpreted Simon's meaning. No, I didn't quite think that. All I knew was that I felt embarrassed. I agreed and yet somehow did not agree with what she was saying. I wished she would let me do the talking instead. Ego? No, it was not. What then? I did not know.

My ears had picked up what my brain refused to consider. Alex did not understand a word she was saying.

How often had she not understood when I assumed that she had? I recalled our angry arguments about history, evolution and philosophy. Arguments which had left me bruised and
perplexed because I could not see why subjects neither of us cared deeply about should generate so much feeling. Arguments in which I had felt like one of those mythical heroes grappling with an adversary who continually changed shape, becoming a lion or a tree or a pool of water. Arguments in which every weapon of logic I produced was shattered against an invisible wall. I had thought it to be a wall of obstinacy, and puzzled over the fact that time did not erode it, for Alex was usually susceptible to reason on issues which did not involve her emotions. But if obstinacy was only the protective covering for a huge deception in which incomprehension masqueraded as understanding, ignorance as wisdom … then no wonder my logic was rendered impotent, no wonder I was filled with an anger I could not explain. And no wonder Alex's defences were unbreachable. They had to be: there was everything at stake.

How had it started, I wondered. As a self-defence when she found herself among people with no greater native wit than she had but an immeasurably better education? Or much earlier, in the shadows of a childhood dominated by a terrifying mother whose fits of unreason had forced the child into a compensating wisdom too large for her years? And to what extent was it conscious? Surely one
knew
whether one understood a thing or not? And if one didn't, what purpose was served by pretending that one did?

I had almost forgotten Simon's presence.

‘Well?' he enquired.

‘You've explained a lot of things for me,' I said. ‘But I don't understand what she can gain from it.'

‘Respect.'

I pondered. No, it wasn't quite fair.

‘I think there's more to it than that,' I said. ‘And I think she does believe she understands, when she doesn't.'

‘She's convinced herself.'

‘No, listen,' I said. ‘After Alex met you she used to talk to people, people we knew who were in trouble. She would talk
about your ideas, repeat the things you said. I admit there always seemed to be something slightly wrong with it –'

‘She didn't understand what she was talking about.'

‘Right. But the point is that she wanted to help them. And some of those people were helped.'

‘Were they?' said Simon.

‘Yes.'

‘Whom has Alex helped?'

I scanned my mental list. Harry. Harry loved Alex, had done for years, with a devotion I had seen falter only once. That was the night she had ‘talked' to him. She had tried to tell him that the trap in which he found himself, compounded of tax debts, a second mortgage, a house he needed to sell and couldn't sell until he had finished the renovations he lacked the money to complete, and work which he despised and which took all his time – that this closing trap, from which he escaped every night into a sea of beer, was an illusion and could simply be ‘dropped'. He was so angry, this man whom I had never heard raise his voice, that at two o'clock in the morning he embarked on an investigation of a malfunctioning water heater with a noise that woke the entire house and probably half the street. Harry was still in debt and still drinking a gallon of beer a night.

Tessa? No, Tessa had learned nothing from Alex except a few useful attitudes with which to adorn her deviousness. However, leopards don't change their spots.

The girl from the village? I did not need to ask. If Alex had done anything there, it was harm. Alex had filled her head with fine phrases and lofty ideas, and the girl, emotionally disturbed and probably a little retarded into the bargain, had to my intense irritation fallen headlong in love with her.

‘No, she didn't help them. But she tried to,' I said.

‘She doesn't want to help people. She wants them to love her,' he said.

Oh, that was cruel. I started to protest, and stopped. It was uncannily close to my own thoughts.

‘She offers them help, but she gives them nothing. She pretends to help them, just as she pretends to understand. It's all an act, a superb act. They're taken in by it: it even took me in. Behind it there's nothing. Alex is a sham.'

I stared numbly at the ground. A few feet away the paving petered out in a little wilderness of weeds and bare cement. Was that why she never finished anything?

‘What does she do to people?' exclaimed Simon. ‘It's terrible.'

I tried to say something but could not find my voice. What was the point of trying to hold back this tidal wave of awful truth, which my instinct had known for years?

‘Look what she's done to Charles,' said Simon in a voice so low I could barely catch it. ‘That really is terrible, Kay.'

Charles? What did Charles matter among so many? They surged into my mind, all the forgotten people who had loved Alex. Writers, painters, lawyers, thieves, professional men and con-men, economists and forgers … She had had affairs with all of them, asexual affairs, affairs of the mind, affairs which never lose their power to obsess because the obsession is never gratified. Some of them still struggled to maintain their side of the friendship in spite of the wrath of their wives, for behind nearly every man who loved Alex there stood a woman half out of her mind with jealousy over a relationship she could neither compete with nor understand.

Then there were the waifs who had drifted into her net, the drug-addicts and the sexual misfits and the simple-minded. She had been kind to them and then, tiring of them, thrown them back into the sea where they no longer had the will to swim. Maurice was one of these. Alex had discovered him, feted him, dazzled him, and abandoned him, leaving me to stitch up the wound by writing his book. He could not understand how he had offended.

Help? Had she ever ‘helped' anyone who had not ended up devoted to her? Even Tessa, I now remembered. There had been a time when Tessa pursued Alex with a persistence that
became socially embarrassing. She had only set her cap at Alex's brother when it had been made clear to her that she could not have Alex.

‘It isn't even just people,' said Simon. ‘Look what she does to animals. Look what she did to Esther. That was the most horrible thing I have ever seen.'

Esther in Alex's arms, a centre of elaborate attention, when it was too late. Esther in the vet's surgery waiting for the knife, waiting for Alex, who had gone to London.

I felt sick. I had opened a door, and through it was blowing a wind, a gale, a hurricane.

We had spent just under £19, and there was £43 in the kitty. I switched on the calculator to check that I had divided the expenditure correctly.

Simon said, ‘Are you dividing it by three or four?'

‘Three,' I said. ‘Alex isn't here and she won't have any money anyway.'

‘In nine weeks,' said Simon, ‘Alex has paid her share three times.'

I switched off the calculator.

‘I know,' I said. ‘But if she doesn't have any money she doesn't have any money. I can divide it by four if you like, but all that will happen is that I shall end up paying half the total instead of a third. Which presumably isn't what you have in mind.'

‘We don't want you to pay for Alex,' said Simon. ‘We want Alex to pay for herself. For once.'

At the beginning, when it was agreed to split the expenditure four ways, I had felt the arrangement was unfair. I was still not entirely happy about it, but this was not the point. Alex had undertaken to pay a quarter of the expenses whenever she could. That had turned out to be hardly ever.

‘How can she pay?' I said.

‘She could sell some furniture,' said Simon. ‘Some of the furniture in this house would fetch a lot of money.' He indicated
the carved oak sideboard behind him. ‘I saw a sideboard like that priced at four hundred pounds.'

I wrestled with a moment of anger. That the sideboard was not worth anything like that sum, that it had been in Alex's family for many years, and that it was exactly right for the wide alcove in which it stood, were all alike irrelevant. Furniture did not matter.

‘I'd be surprised if it was worth that much,' I said. ‘And in any case, Simon, antique furniture takes time to sell. You can't just pop into town with it when you want some money.'

‘She could advertise it nevertheless.'

His eyes travelled over the room. To most people it would have appeared very sparsely furnished.

‘There are lots of small things that could be sold. Pictures. That mirror.'

A rather pretty oval Victorian mirror which we had bought for a pound at an auction.

‘Oh, the mirror's nice, Simon,' said Coral. ‘And it's useful.'

‘Okay, not the mirror, since someone likes it. Pictures. There must be dozens of pictures in this house.'

Indeed there were. Most of them were in my study stacked against a wall, affording a haven to spiders. They were a residue of Alex's foray into picture-dealing.

‘They aren't worth anything,' I said. ‘Except for one or two which might fetch a bit if she restored them.'

‘Then why doesn't she restore them?'

His eyes continued their journey, and came back to the sideboard. On it were a few modest ornaments, none of which would have attracted a second glance in a junk shop.

‘Well, it's clear there are a number of things which could be sold to raise money,' he said. ‘There is no reason why Alex should not pay her share. However, for this week I suppose we could make an exception. If Pete agrees.'

Pete, who had appeared sunk in thought since the start of the meeting, roused himself, smiled, and said ‘Yes.'

I divided the expenditure by three.

When we had disposed of the financial business, Simon said, ‘When are the oats going to be harvested?'

Alex had arranged for Mr. Pascoe to bring his combine harvester down to our field as soon as he had finished getting in his own crop.

‘Probably on Saturday,' I said.

‘And when will Alex be back?'

‘She said she'd be back today, but that doesn't mean she will,' I said. ‘She often doesn't come back the day she says she will.'

‘I see,' said Simon. He thought for a while. Then he said, ‘Until the problem that is facing the group is solved, there is no point in trying to deal with anything else. In the circumstances I don't think we can possibly have the oats harvested.'

I sat back in the chair and cleared my mind. There was no room for emotions. This was going to be a long evening.

Simon said, ‘Is there anyone here who doesn't know what the problem is?'

No one spoke.

Simon said, ‘There is a member of the group who does not want the group to work.'

He began to talk about Alex's behaviour. After a few sentences Dao interrupted.

‘It seems to me it is not right,' she said, ‘to criticise one who is not present.'

‘This is not criticism,' said Simon. ‘The intention is to help Alex. If the intent is right, no harm is done.'

The discussion continued. Alex was a farmer who did not farm, a builder who would not build, a businesswoman who could not be businesslike. She played at everything she did. She could not even handle the responsibility of having tenants. Everything she undertook ended in chaos; every job she started had to be finished by someone else, who would probably be told they had done it wrong. She was lazy: she got people to do things for her. She was mean: she liked to get things done on the cheap or if possible for nothing. She was
good at this, because she charmed people. However, her relationship with the people who did things for her always broke down because she continually changed her mind about what she wanted. She would then shift the blame for the failure on to them. She was never grateful for help. She behaved like a
grande dame
: when she had tired of charming people, she treated them like serfs.

She confused everyone with whom she had dealings because she changed her mind, went back on her word and broke promises. She could not be relied on to do anything she said she would do, or even to remember tomorrow what she had said today. She would change her version of the past to suit her present requirements. She did not pay her debts. She caused immeasurable trouble to countless people and appeared to think that none of it mattered in the slightest. She had managed to live in this way for thirty-eight years and would doubtless continue to do so for the rest of her days as long as the people around her made allowance for her eccentricities and went on carrying her as a passenger.

‘We cannot have passengers in this group,' said Simon. ‘There is too much to be done, and not much time. There is a world out there hungry for a new way of life, and we are waiting for Alex.'

He paused. ‘If I am wrong,' he said, ‘someone will correct me.'

Pete, Dao and Coral glanced at me. I said nothing. What could I say? He had presented me with a picture of Alex more coherent than any I had possessed. It was exact in detail, and contained intuitions which my own knowledge confirmed. The most striking was his phrase ‘
grande dame
': he did not know that Alex, brought up in the woods, kept a picture postcard of her ancestral home in an upstairs pigeon-hole.

I had listened with all my mind for a small mistake in the damning litany: there was none. There was not the slightest chink into which I could insert a denial and try to prise apart this monstrous edifice. I gazed at the dark Alex who was taking
shape before my eyes, and knew that for seven years I had been the victim of a conjuring trick. The lights shone on an empty stage: what I had taken for a shadow was the only flesh.