Lady Jean Read online

  ‘Did she?’ Freida said with a smirk, imitating Aunt Dizzy’s voice. Jean smiled thinly. She glanced across at the cleft chin two tables away. The man had turned to look about him and was discreetly picking his teeth with a fingernail while speaking into a mobile phone. He had close-set eyes. Jean immediately went right off him.

  They discussed seriously what could be done. The hotel management were being intolerant, as far as Freida was concerned. They charged a small fortune for Aunt Dizzy to be in residence. Yet it was obvious that professional help was soon to be needed. A nurse. Some full-time companion. A transfer to a home, a possibility they each knew that Elizabeth Barrie loathed and feared.

  ‘Of course you could install her at Acacia Road,’ Freida suggested. ‘Get rid of the Nun. It’s time she moved out.’

  Aunt Dizzy could never manage those stairs!’

  A stair-lift, then. Some of them take wheelchairs. She might need one. Like in that movie, oh, what was it called? Old. Black and white. Naked Edge? Gary Cooper. Some unknown actress used the chair.’

  ‘Her head fell off and rolled,’ Jean added.

  Freida laughed. They ordered steak and fresh oysters, ignoring the Indian cuisine. They shared an appetite for food which did not appear to have any effect on their weight. They were both thin. Freida claimed that in her case it was from a surfeit of sex. Jean knew she was lying. They were both prone to stress.

  ‘With cleft chins in mind,’ Freida suddenly said after their meals had arrived, ‘I’ve some dark news.’ She had glanced across at the man Jean had been staring at.

  Jean sniffed the oysters. She didn’t look up.

  ‘I’ve seen Wee Willy Winky.’

  Jean froze. She raised her sight and not quite looking Freida in the eye said, ‘Oh?’ and a shiver of something ran down through her. Not fear, not even apprehension. She began to lose her appetite.

  ‘At the Garrick. A new Hare play. Awful, dreadful play. No, I lie. I couldn’t understand it. Noticed Wee Willy at the interval. Nice suit, good cut. One minor celebrity blonde slut on his arm, trying to pretend she was his beloved by smiling up at him with gargantuan mouth and teeth like a mule’s.’

  Jean slid the polished prongs of her fork into an oyster shell and, painstakingly, teased the oyster out.

  ‘Did you speak to him?’ she asked after a pause. She stared down at the oyster, then placed her fork back down on to the plate.

  ‘Of course not! We left just after that. Sat in a wine bar. Couldn’t have sat through the rest of the play. It’s had a sickening rave in the Mail on Sunday. Mandy entertained me by relating every sordid detail of her abused childhood.’

  Jean continued to stare down at her plate. For a second she could have sworn that one of the oysters moved. She pushed the plate away and took a large swallow of her drink. The restaurant, which was full, suddenly seemed to become hushed. The only sound came from the ice cubes rattling in Freida’s glass.

  ‘We both knew His Private Smallness would come back one day, Jean. He may even get in touch. He might be curious as to how you’ve fared. Hate doesn’t last. Not always.’

  Jean looked up.

  ‘Who on earth is Mandy?’ she asked.

  TWO

  There is a framed poster that hangs in the downstairs hall at Acacia Road. It is a badly rendered head-and-shoulders drawing of Jean standing at a mock-ancient microphone, wearing a gardenia in her hair and looking as if she has overdosed on valium. The poster was created to promote Jean’s second collection of songs, The Barrie Blues. She’d hated the title. She had still been married to William. Back then she was compared to Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, before she became known as Lady Jean. The record company were patronizing until she started to make them a lot of money. For years Jean has hated the poster, but it was a gift from Freida, so it remains on the wall gathering dust. The glass is cracked in three places. William, eventually trapped inside grief, had taken it down one night and thrown it out into the street.

  It was the following day. Jean was sleeping late. Anthony Hibbert had not left until gone midnight. He sat opposite her in the morning-room collating sheets of handwritten notes Jean occasionally produced, recollections of her career and early life. There had once been talk of Jean writing a memoir or possibly a full autobiography. Since that had never happened Anthony Hibbert was sent along from the now less enthusiastic publisher with hope that he might write the book on her behalf, despite Jean’s insistence that, in the event, his name should not appear on the cover or anywhere inside the book. Freida had telephoned twice during the time Anthony Hibbert was there. She had once informed him in front of a roomful of people that she may well have been a lesbian all her life but he was the only man she had ever craved.

  ‘I am being pressured,’ Anthony Hibbert confessed to Jean over dinner. ‘There is hope that you might finish your notes by the end of summer. Along with the tapes of course.’

  Several conversations had been recorded, though they were a rare event and brief. Jean had lost interest in the entire idea, even of a ghost-written memoir, several months before. She kept encouraging Anthony Hibbert to call, as she enjoyed sharing dinner with him and he had a cleft chin. He was young. He was married to a presenter on the BBC World Service who was, according to Freida, reputed to be a temperamental cow. Jean was also mildly curious as to why Freida found the man so attractive. She didn’t. Jean liked him. She admired his easy manner along with his slow, genuine smile. A sad smile, revealing more than he realized. There was a delicacy about him. He created in Jean a maternal longing that she thought had been ended back when life became poisoned by guilt and her own grief.

  The house is hushed and seemingly empty now. Perhaps it is asleep. Jean is still asleep upstairs in her silk-sheeted bed. The Fallen Nun, whose real name is Catherine Truman, might be asleep or out. Someone presses the front door bell, then waits but soon goes away. On the roof two collared doves are bowing to each other and gently courting with melodic voices. The house sits solidly beneath the early morning spring sunshine. A stair creaks, then another. The giant Italian-made refrigerator in the kitchen switches itself on with a pleasant hum. A tall, ungainly young man with pale skin lets himself in the back door with a key he keeps around his neck on a length of black cord. He has two moles on his neck and several spots, at which he scratches numerous times a day. He has already checked the newly dug grave in the garden, wherein now lies Henry the Fifth, just to ascertain that nothing has been disturbed. He has brought with him half-a-dozen large, brown, free-range eggs and slices of expensive bacon wrapped in several layers of thick white paper. The paper is soaked through with bacon fat, some of which has rubbed off on to his jacket.

  Christopher creeps about the kitchen. His height gives a slight impression that the room’s furniture is not suited to it. He is over six feet tall. While the eggs and bacon are spitting satisfactorily in the large, ancient, heavy frying-pan he wipes down surfaces. He empties the small plastic-lined rubbish bin that Jean once threw at William, bruising his left shoulder. Christopher washes a few dishes. He carefully arranges the eggs and bacon on a plain white, chipped porcelain plate before sitting down and eating slowly, gazing about the kitchen and angling his head to listen for sounds from above. When a wracking cough intrudes into the quiet he swiftly gets up out of the chair and rinses the empty plate in the sink. When Jean eventually enters the grubby unmodernized room, still in her nightclothes and yawning, Christopher is busy again at the frying-pan. There is no sign that he has had a meal. The floor tiles are cold beneath Jean’s bare feet.

  ‘Two eggs, two rashers of bacon. I’ll make coffee,’ Christopher says, barely glancing in Jean’s direction. Jean does not reply. She turns to leave, now she has entered and let herself be seen. There is a scratching sound inside one of the walls.

  ‘Rats,’ Jean mutters. She closes the kitchen door behind her. As the door sticks, she slams it. William had once slammed the door on her and it has stuck ever since as there was damage to the
hinges that has never been fixed. She is fully awake now, knowing that Christopher will bring her breakfast on a tray to the morning-room. As she moves into it, the room seems to fold itself around her, like a spacious coffin. She steps across to the french windows and opens them wide. There is a sound like a sigh. Jean sits in her favourite chair. The pair of collared doves that were courting on the roof have now flown down into the garden. Jean has her eyes tightly closed. There is a creaking sound behind her to which she doesn’t react. The Fallen Nun appears at the foot of the stairs and glides by, moving silently down the hall to the front door. In the kitchen Christopher swears. He has burnt his left thumb on the frying-pan.

  By lunchtime Jean had dressed herself after a tepid bath and the ritual of makeup and brushing her hair. She sat in front of her dresser mirror for a considerable time, gazing at her reflection and examining the lines on her face, trying to decide if new ones had been added during the night. She tried not to let the thought of her being alone in the house deflect from the knowledge that spring had arrived. Summer was up ahead. There was no pressure for her to do anything she did not choose to do. She had grown accustomed to living alone. Though she did not enjoy it, there were compensations: sloth, drinking without being lectured, not having to look her best, not being reminded. And she was not entirely alone. There was Freida, Aunt Dizzy, Anthony Hibbert and others, including the never welcomed but tolerated and useful Christopher Harcourt. More and more over the past few weeks he had begun to appear on days other than the one she paid him for. Preparing breakfast for her was a new development. He had not asked if she wanted a cooked breakfast. He just turned up one morning and kept on doing so. Sometimes breakfast would be a freshly made fruit salad and perfectly browned toast or croissants, warm from the oven and dripping with Swiss butter. It did not appear to concern him that Jean might be dieting. It did not concern her that he also made breakfast for himself. She had noticed.

  ‘Rock melon, strawberries, a dash of lemon juice and fresh pear,’ he would say. ‘I’ll make coffee.’

  Where he managed to find such fruits, even out of season, was something she had never bothered to comment on. She did wonder if he had developed a crush on her or, more realistically, had come to regard her as a mother figure. Most of the time she accepted him being there as she did the furniture.

  The telephone rang as she sat thinking lazily of her greying hair and an invitation to lunch at her publishers.

  ‘Is that you, Jean?’ shouted the familiar voice. ‘It’s Elizabeth. Your aunt. Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘Only if you want to,’ Jean responded.

  ‘What?’

  ‘How are you, Aunt Dizzy?’

  There was a pause, a catch of breath and a loud sniff.

  ‘Did you invite me over? I can’t remember if it was you or someone else. Shall I order a taxi?’

  ‘You’re coming for the weekend, Auntie, don’t you recall? I’ll collect you tomorrow in the motor. Around noon, if you want. I suggested it yesterday.’

  ‘Did your

  Are you all right? You sound a little low.’

  ‘I’m fed up. I went downstairs to dine yesterday evening in the Silver Platter but was told I had to have the meal in my rooms and they’d send it all up. I spent over an hour getting ready. You’d think they’d be more accommodating, wouldn’t you, Jean, the rent I pay?’

  ‘Well, you did cause that scene, Auntie. In the foyer. Perhaps if you -’

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember telling you … I don’t recall any scene. You’ve mixed me up with one of your chums. How’s Freida? I am sure I heard that she’d died. Is that true?’ There was a split-second pause, then she added, ‘Somebody died.’

  Ten minutes after Aunt Dizzy hung up, the telephone rang again. It was the manager of the hotel. Quietly, in a calm, too-ingratiatingly servile voice, he asked if he could call in person as there was a matter he needed to discuss too delicate for the telephone.

  ‘Is something wrong, Mr Alder?’ Jean asked. She thought she heard a sigh.

  ‘I would prefer to talk to you in person. Would it be possible this morning? Around eleven thirty? I have an hour’s window, if that isn’t inconvenient.’

  Jean briefly wondered if Mr Alder was also calling on his mobile phone.

  ‘I was considering going out…’ she said, thinking aloud.

  ‘The matter will not take long. It is rather important or I would never have intruded.’

  ‘You’ve talked me into it. Would you like to stay for a bite of lunch?’ Jean asked. ‘Just a sandwich. I could easily rustle something up.’

  ‘That will not be necessary,’ Mr Alder responded in a slightly cooler voice. ‘And I do feel I need to warn you that your aunt has no knowledge of this telephone call.’

  ‘Well then, I shan’t tell her. I shan’t breathe a word to any living soul, Mr Alder. My lips are tightly sealed until you arrive.’

  Smiling to herself but annoyed, as soon as Mr Alder had replaced his receiver Jean tapped out Freida’s number.

  ‘Hello, poo-face, are you polishing your dildo?’ she said as soon as the receiver was picked up.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ came a cold voice, ‘I think you’ve a wrong number.’

  ‘Oh, I do apologize, I wanted to speak to Freida.’

  The receiver was thumped down. In the background Jean heard voices that did not sound exactly happy.

  ‘Darling! I haven’t heard from you in yonks! Are you in town for long? Come over straight this minute so I can ravish you on the kitchen floor. I haven’t had a good bonk in months.’

  There was another background sound of a door slamming shut.

  ‘Sorry, Jean,’ Freida briskly added. ‘That was Mandy. She’s been threatening to move in. A ghastly, depressing thought. She’s already criticized the wallpaper in the guest bedroom and suggested we get a new carpet for the hall. Damn all dykes. How are you? What’s wrong? You only call me poo-face when you’re upset.’

  Jean explained about Mr Alder’s call.

  ‘Do you want me to come over?’

  ‘No, I don’t see you need to.’

  ‘Please, please. It would give me the best excuse.’

  ‘Well, look. Come over later. I’m expecting Mr Alder around eleven thirty. Come around one. I’ll make lunch. It’s probably nothing, but he was rather offy on the phone.’

  ‘Definitely the anal retentive type. I suspected as much when I met the dear man.’

  Jean began to laugh. The one time Freida had met Mr Alder she had persistently squeezed his upper arm in a suggestive manner until he had begun to perspire. She had kept asking him if he loved his mother and whether he thought incest should be made more socially acceptable. Freida had taken an instant dislike to him.

  ‘I shall go out directly and spend as much as I possibly can in Kensington High Street before I arrive,’ she said. ‘Extravagance, dear Lady Jean, is what one needs after last night. It was tears before bedtime the entire evening. Mandy will have to down tools and depart. See you soon.’

  Jean sat out in the garden in one of the wicker chairs, close to Henry the Fifth’s grave. Christopher had done an excellent job of burial. On top of the small mound he had planted a miniature bush that had tiny white flowers. The other Henry graves were spread out along the perimeter of the walls. Some of them were now completely hidden from sight in the undergrowth. Mrs Meiklejohn had ventured out into her own garden. Jean could see only the top of her head as she slowly made her way down the central path. Mrs Meiklejohn was of short stature with a face like thunder and suffered from stiff joints. She favoured long pleated skirts, had been born in Stepney and failed to disguise her working-class accent.

  ‘Good morning,’ Jean called cheerfully. ‘A lovely Spring day!’

  Mrs Meiklejohn did not reply, or at least Jean did not hear a response. The woman was exceedingly dour. Her husband had been from South Africa. He had divorced her ten years ago and returned home. There’d been no children. Freida referred to Mrs
Meiklejohn as the Lady Maggot.

  Jean was languishing in the bath upstairs when she heard Freida arrive at one thirty. Freida had her own set of keys and still called out, as she entered, ‘Cooee, it’s the Devil’s Dyke,’ which was nothing short of tasteless.

  She had first used the expression back when Jean’s elderly parents were living once again at Acacia Road. They had, for many years, lived near Devil’s Dyke outside Brighton until they were unable to manage.

  Freida was sitting in the morning-room when Jean came downstairs. Surrounding her on the floor sat numerous cardboard shopping bags, each one sporting the name of an expensive designer shop.

  ‘Well, I see you’ve had a good time,’ Jean said in a clipped tone, leaning to kiss Freida on the cheek. ‘I’ve made sandwiches. Have you eaten?’

  ‘I am famished. I am poorer by such a disgusting amount I shall need therapy to adjust and at least two swift gins. Did the hotel homo show?’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word. It’s insulting.’

  ‘What, hotel? You are tetchy, sister. You’re annoyed at me, aren’t you? I know. I promise to stop yelling out when I let myself in. There, satisfied? Come, sit down, I’ll waive the gins while you tell all.’

  Jean sat down heavily. For a moment she passed her hands over her face, drawing them down and peering across at Freida over the tops of her fingers.

  ‘The hotel wants Aunt Dizzy out,’ she said bluntly.

  ‘Oh dear, oh, oh dear. I had a feeling it might be that. Has she been a naughty old girl again?’

  Jean drew her hands down into her lap where they sat writhing. She smiled at Freida’s expression of feigned concern.

  ‘Oh, it’s several things really. Aunt Dizzy’s age. They certainly aren’t happy with her any longer. And the hotel’s going to be closed for complete refurbishment. Three months. So Aunt Dizzy will have to move out in the interim. But in the long term, as Mr Alder so carefully explained, it would not be conducive to sound public relations if Auntie were to stay on.’