Kehua! by Fay Weldon Read Free Book Online

found her gone. She must get the address book
     on a memory stick, answer a few e-mails which needed to be replied to that morning, take the box files marked ‘family’ and
     ‘legal’, and be off. If everything was in good order when Louis returned then he’d have nothing to complain about other than
     her actual absence.
    Beverley! What about Beverley? Scarlet remembered she was meant to be stocking her grandmother’s fridge that very morning.
     Beverley refused to have a live-in nurse while she convalesced, so it was left to her family to do it. ‘Family’ usually meant
     Scarlet, the others being so preoccupied with their own affairs. Her mother was skulking up in the North, Cynara was changing
     partners and her husband Jesper was now out of the picture, and Lola always looked blank if asked to help. Well, that was
     okay. Scarlet reckoned she could get round to Waitrose, buy and deliver at speed, try not to get into conversation, get back
     to pick up her bags and still be well on time to meet Jackson for lunch. She would ask Lola to pack for her. Lola would know
     what she needed. She shared Scarlet’s taste in clothes. Cynara had done what she could to educate Lola out of excessive femininity
     but had failed. One of Lola’s current complaints was that while she, Lola, wasn’t even allowed to show her tummy, let alone
     navel pierce, and everything had to be machine washable at forty degrees, D’Dora had brought with her all kinds of frilly
     and velvety sensuous things that had to go to the dry cleaners, not to mention – as Lola was pleased to point out – chains,
     whips, blackleather hoods and long red latex boots, which D’Dora claimed was a collection of Victorian erotica, more rare and valuable
     every year.
    So that was how Scarlet, an unwilling listener to Beverley’s life story, came that morning to be unloading ready-made meals
     from Waitrose into Beverley’s fridge, while Jackson went off to see his ex-wife and Lola packed, and did the chambermaid’s
     trick of stuffing a few of Scarlet’s more delectable undies beneath a cushion to steal later.
    Meanwhile the kehua hung unseen, folding and unfolding their shadowy wings like fruit bats, from the branches of the palm
     tree that exploded its fronds in Nopasaran’s atrium, and chattered in excitement. Something was happening in the McLean hapu,
     for whom they had responsibility. Louis was at his office wondering if he should call Scarlet or let her stew, and the widower
     Gerry, Beverley’s erstwhile sweetheart – whom we have yet to meet – was on the Faröe Islands, wondering whether a man would
     be wise to woo a woman who, however charming and wealthy, had already been widowed three times. Desire calls so often, yet
     practicalities and prudence intervene.

Back to the basement
    Find your writer fresh and rational this Monday morning, after a good night’s sleep and in charge of her material. Alas, it
     becomes apparent, those who hover around the brickwork, the old kitchen range, the wine cellar and the laundry tubs are also
     in fighting form, determined to make their presence felt.
    Rex dismisses what I hear as ‘auditory hallucinations’ and I daresay he is right. There is nothing other-worldly to be seen,
     just rather a lot to be heard. I am not saying any of these sounds exist in actuality; it’s just that I – defining ‘I’ as
     the sum of my senses, and how else can it be done? – hear things for which there is no obvious explanation. The laundress
     is back with a vengeance. I denied her existence last night and she is determined to make her point. I suspect that a hundred
     years ago or so she used to turn up on Monday mornings and has no intention of stopping, though a long time ago lost her corporeal
     form. I think she
liked
doing the laundry. I hear the sound of whooshing water and taps running – she is late enough in the house’s history for there
     to be taps, though there will have been many visiting