Collected Short Stories

by Ruth Rendell

  Mop said in a breathy hysterical voice, ‘Suppose she goes about in the night to every place where they’ve got one? She goes about and watches over them and makes it happen. She’s down there now doing it. Listen!’

  Glass against glass . . .

  ‘That’s crazy,’ I said. ‘It’s those books you read.’

  She didn’t say anything. We closed the door and lay in our beds with the bedlamp on. The light made it better. We heard the clock strike twelve. I said ‘Can we go to sleep now?’ And when Mop nodded I put out the light.

  The moon had gone away, covered perhaps by clouds. Into the black silence came a curious drawn-out cry. I know now what it was, but no child of eleven could know. I was only aware then that it was no cry of grief or pain or terror, but of triumph, of something at last attained; yet it was at the same time unhuman, utterly outside the bounds of human restraint.

  Mop began to scream.

  I had the light on and was jumping up and down on my bed, shouting to her to stop, when the door was flung open and Mrs Felton came in, her hair a wild heathery mass, a dressing gown of quilted silk, black-blood colour, wrapped round her and tied at the waist with savagery. Rage and violence were what I expected. But Mrs Felton said nothing. She did what I had never seen her do, had never supposed anything would make her do. She caught Mop in an embrace and hugged her, rocking her back and forth. They were both crying, swaying on the bed and crying. I heard footsteps on the garden path, soft, stealthy, finally fading away.

  Mop said nothing at all about it to me the next day. She withdrew into her books and sulks. I believe now that the isolated demonstration of affection she had received from her mother in the night led her to hope more might follow. But Mrs Felton had become weirdly reserved, as if in some sort of long dream. I noticed with giggly embarrassment that she hardly seemed to see Mop hanging about her, looking into her face, trying to get her attention. When Mop gave up at last and took refuge in the garden with Dr James on demons, Mrs Felton lay on the dining room sofa, smoking and staring at the ceiling. I went in once to fetch my cardigan – for Mrs Potter was taking me to the medieval town at Lavenham for the afternoon – and she was still lying there, smiling strangely to herself, her long brown hands playing with her necklace of reddish-brown beads.

  She went off for a walk by herself on Friday afternoon and she was gone for hours. It was very hot, too hot to be in a garden with only thin apple tree shade. I was sitting at the dining room table, working on a scrapbook of country house pictures Mrs Potter had got me to make, and Mop was reading, when the phone rang. Mop answered it, but from the room where I was, across the passage, I could hear Mr Felton’s hearty bray.

  ‘How’s life treating you, my old Mop?’

  I heard it all, how he was coming down that night instead of in the morning and would be here by midnight. She might pass the message on to her mother, but not to worry as he had his own key. And his kind regards to jolly old Margarine if she hadn’t, by this time, melted away into a little puddle!

  Mrs Felton came back at five in Peter Elsworthy’s car. There were leaves in her hair and bits of grass on the back of her skirt. They pored over the vinegar mother, moving it back into a cool dark corner, and enthusing over the colour of the liquor under the floating liver-like mass.

  ‘A tender plant that mustn’t get overheated,’ said Peter Elsworthy, picking a leaf out of Mrs Felton’s hair and laughing. I wondered why I had ever liked him or thought him kind.

  Mop and I were given rosé with our supper out of a dumpy little bottle with a picture of cloisters on its label. By now Mrs Felton must have learned that I didn’t need wine to make me sleep, so she didn’t insist on my having more than one glass. The vinegar mother’s vessel was three-quarters full.

  I was in bed and Mop nearly undressed when I remembered about her father’s message.

  ‘I forgot to tell her,’ said Mop, yawning and heavy-eyed.

  ‘You could go down and tell her now.’

  ‘She’d be cross. Besides, he’s got his key.’

  ‘You don’t like going down in the dark by yourself,’ I said. Mop didn’t answer. She got into bed and pulled the sheet over her head.

  We never spoke to each other again.

  She didn’t return to school that term, and at the end of it my mother told me she wasn’t coming back. I never learned what happened to her. The last – almost the last – I remember of her was her thin sallow face that lately had always looked bewildered, and the dark circles round her old woman’s eyes. I remember the books on the bedside table: Fifty Haunted Houses, the Works of Sheridan Lefanu, The Best of Montague Rhodes James. The pale lacquering of moonlight in that room with its beams and its slanted ceiling. The silence of night in an old and haunted countryside. Wine breath in my throat and wine weariness bringing heavy sleep . . .

  Out of that thick slumber I was awakened by two sharp explosions and the sound of breaking glass. Mop had gone from the bedroom before I was out of bed, scarcely aware of where I was, my head swimming. Somewhere downstairs Mop was screaming. I went down. The whole house, the house called Sanctuary, was bright with lights. I opened the dining room door.

  Mr Felton was leaning against the table, the shotgun still in his hand. I think he was crying. I don’t remember much blood, only the brown dead nakedness of Mrs Felton spread on the floor with Peter Elsworthy bent over her, holding his wounded arm. And the smell of gunpowder like fireworks and the stronger sickening stench of vinegar everywhere, and broken glass in shards, and Mop screaming, plunging a knife again and again into a thick slimy liver mass on the carpet.

  The Fall of a Coin

  The manageress of the hotel took them up two flights of stairs to their room. There was no lift. There was no central heating either and, though April, it was very cold.

  ‘A bit small, isn’t it?’ said Nina Armadale.

  ‘It’s a double room and I’m afraid it’s all we had left.’

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to be thankful it hasn’t got a double bed,’ said Nina.

  Her husband winced at that, which pleased her. She went over to the window and looked down into a narrow alley bounded by brick walls. The cathedral clock struck five. Nina imagined what that would be like chiming every hour throughout the night, and maybe every quarter as well, and was glad she had brought her sleeping pills.

  The manageress was still making excuses for the lack of accommodation. ‘You see, there’s this big wedding in the cathedral tomorrow. Sir William Tarrant’s daughter. There’ll be five hundred guests and most of them are putting up in the town.’

  ‘We’re going to it,’ said James Armadale. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

  ‘Then you’ll appreciate the problem. Now the bathroom’s just down the passage, turn right and it’s the third door on the left. Dinner at seven thirty and breakfast from eight till nine. Oh, and I’d better show Mrs Armadale how to work the gas fire.’

  ‘Don’t bother,’ said Nina, enraged. ‘I can work a gas fire.’ She was struggling with the wardrobe door which at first wouldn’t open, and when opened refused to close.

  The manageress watched her, apparently decided it was hopeless to assist, and said to James, ‘I really meant about working the gas meter. There’s a coin-in-the-slot meter – it takes five pence pieces – and we really find it the best way for guests to manage.’

  James squatted on the floor beside her and studied the grey metal box. It was an old-fashioned gas meter with brass fittings of the kind he hadn’t seen since he had been a student living in a furnished room. A gauge with a red arrow marker indicated the amount of gas paid for, and, at present it showed empty.

  ‘You turn this handle to the left, insert your coin in the slot, and then turn to the right . . .’ Nina had stopped listening, James was glad to see. Perhaps when the inevitable quarrel started – as it would as soon as the woman had gone – it would turn upon the awfulness of going to this wedding for which he could hardly be blamed, instead of the sq
ualid arrangements of the hotel for which he could. ‘. . . turn it to the right and wait until you hear the coin fall. Is that clear?’ James said it was quite clear, thanks very much, and immediately the manageress had left the room Nina, who wasted no time, said:

  ‘Can you tell me one good reason why we couldn’t have come here tomorrow?’

  ‘I could tell you several,’ said James, resigning himself, ‘but the principal one is that I didn’t fancy driving a hundred and fifty miles in a morning coat and top hat.’

  ‘Didn’t fancy driving with your usual Saturday morning hangover, you mean.’

  ‘Let’s not start a row, Nina. Let’s have a bit of peace for just one evening. Sir William is my company chairman. I have to take it as an honour that we were asked to this wedding, and if we have an uncomfortable evening and night because of it, that can’t be helped. It’s part of the job.’

  ‘Just how pompous can you get?’ said Nina with what in a less attractive woman would have been a called a snarl. ‘I wonder what Sir William-Bloody-Tarrant would say if he could see his sales director after he’s got a bottle of whisky inside him.’

  ‘He doesn’t see me,’ said James, lighting a cigarette, and adding because she hadn’t yet broken his spirit, ‘That’s your privilege.’

  ‘Privilege!’ Nina, who had been furiously unpacking her case and throwing clothes on to one of the beds, now stopped doing this because it sapped some of the energy she needed for quarrelling. She sat down on the bed and snapped, ‘Give me a cigarette. You’ve no manners, have you? Do you know how uncouth you are? This place’ll suit you fine, it’s just up to your mark, gas meters and a loo about five hundred yards away. That won’t bother you as long as there’s a bar. I’ll be able to have the privilege of sharing my bedroom with a disgusting soak.’ She drew breath like a swimmer and plunged on. ‘Do you realize we haven’t slept in the same room for two years? Didn’t think of that, did you, when you left booking up till the last minute? Or maybe – yes, that was it, my God! – maybe you did think of it. Oh, I know you so well, James Armadale. You thought being in here with me, undressing with me, would work the oracle. I’d come round. I’d – what’s the expression? – resume marital relations. You got them to give us this – this cell on purpose. You bloody fixed it!’

  ‘No,’ said James. He said it quietly and rather feebly because he had experienced such a strong inner recoil that he could hardly speak at all.

  ‘You liar! D’you think I’ve forgotten the fuss you made when I got you to sleep in the spare room? D’you think I’ve forgotten about that woman, that Frances? I’ll never forget and I’ll never forgive you. So don’t think I’m going to let bygones be bygones when you try pawing me about when the bar closes.’

  ‘I shan’t do that,’ said James, reflecting that in a quarter of an hour the bar would be opening. ‘I shall never again try what you so charmingly describe as pawing you about.’

  ‘No, because you know you wouldn’t get anywhere. You know you’d get a slap round the face you wouldn’t forget in a hurry.’

  ‘Nina,’ he said, ‘let’s stop this. It’s hypothetical, it won’t happen. If we are going to go on living together – and I suppose we are, though God knows why – can’t we try to live in peace?’

  She flushed and said in a thick sullen voice, ‘You should have thought of that before you were unfaithful to me with that woman.’

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘was three years ago, three years. I don’t want to provoke you and we’ve been into this enough times, but you know very well why I was unfaithful to you. I’m only thirty-five, I’m still young. I couldn’t stand being permitted marital relations, pawing you about, if you like that better, about six times a year. Do I have to go over it all again?’

  ‘Not on my account. It won’t make any difference to me what excuses you make.’ The smoke in the tiny room made her cough and, opening the window, she inhaled the damp cold air. ‘You asked me,’ she said, turning round, ‘why we have to go on living together. I’ll tell you why. Because you married me. I’ve got a right to you and I’ll never divorce you. You’ve got me till death parts us. Till death, James. Right?’

  He didn’t answer. An icy blast had come into the room when she had opened the window, and he felt in his pocket. ‘If you’re going to stay in here till dinner,’ he said, ‘you’ll want the gas fire on. Have you got any five pence pieces? I haven’t, unless I can get some change.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll get some all right. In the bar. And just for your information, I haven’t brought any money with me. That’s your privilege.’

  When he had left her alone, she sat in the cold room for some minutes, staring at the brick wall. Till death parts us, she had told him, and she meant it. She would never leave him and he must never be allowed to leave her, but she hoped he would die. It wasn’t her fault she was frigid. She had always supposed he understood. She had supposed her good looks and her capacity as housewife and hostess compensated for a revulsion she couldn’t help. And it wasn’t just against him, but against all men, any man. He had seemed to accept it and to be happy with her. In her sexless way, she had loved him. And then, when he had seemed happier and more at ease than at any time in their marriage, when he had ceased to make those painful demands and had become so sweet to her, so generous with presents, he had suddenly and without shame confessed it. She wouldn’t mind, he had told her, he knew that. She wouldn’t resent his finding elsewhere what she so evidently disliked giving him. While he provided for her and spent nearly all his leisure with her and respected her as his wife, she should be relieved, disliking sex as she did, that he had found someone else.

  He had said it was the pent-up energy caused by her repressions that made her fly at him, beat at him with her hands, scream at him words he didn’t know she knew. To her dying day she would remember his astonishment. He had genuinely thought she wouldn’t mind. And it had taken weeks of nagging and screaming and threats to make him agree to give Frances up. She had driven him out of her bedroom and settled into the bitter unremitting vendetta she would keep up till death parted them. Even now, he didn’t understand how agonisingly he had hurt her. But there were no more women and he had begun to drink. He was drinking now, she thought, and by nine o’clock he would be stretched out, dead drunk on that bed separated by only eighteen inches from her own.

  The room was too cold to sit in any longer. She tried the gas fire, turned on the switch to ‘full’, but the match she held to it refused to ignite it, and presently she made her way downstairs and into a little lounge where there was a coal fire and people were watching television.

  They met again at the dinner table.

  James Armadale had drunk getting on for half a pint of whisky, and now, to go with the brown Windsor soup and hotted-up roast lamb, he ordered a bottle of burgundy.

  ‘Just as a matter of idle curiosity,’ said Nina, ‘why do you drink so much?’

  ‘To drown my sorrows,’ said James. ‘The classic reason. Happens to be true in my case. Would you like some wine?’

  ‘I’d better have a glass, hadn’t I, otherwise you’ll drink the whole bottle.’

  The dining room was full and most of the other diners were middle-aged or elderly. Many of them, he supposed, would be wedding guests like themselves. He could see that their arrival had been noted and that at the surrounding tables their appearance was being favourably commented upon. It afforded him a thin wry amusement to think that they would be judged a handsome, well-suited and perhaps happy couple.

  ‘Nina,’ he said, ‘we can’t go on like this. It’s not fair on either of us. We’re destroying ourselves and each other. We have to talk about what we’re going to do.’

  ‘Pick your moments, don’t you? I’m not going to talk about it in a public place.’

  She had spoken in a low subdued voice, quite different from her hectoring tone in their bedroom, and she shot quick nervous glances at the neighbouring tables.

  ‘It’s because this is a pu
blic place that I think we stand a better chance of talking about it reasonably. When we’re alone you get hysterical and then neither of us can be rational. If we talk about it now, I think I know you well enough to say you won’t scream at me.’

  ‘I could walk out though, couldn’t I? Besides, you’re drunk.’

  ‘I am not drunk. Frankly, I probably shall be in an hour’s time and that’s another reason why we ought to talk here and now. Look, Nina, you don’t love me, you’ve said so often enough, and whatever crazy ideas you have about my having designs on you, I don’t love you either. We’ve been into the reasons for that so many times that I don’t need to go into them now, but can’t we come to some sort of amicable arrangement to split up?’

  ‘So that you can have all the women you want? So that you can bring that bitch into my house?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘you can have the house. The court would probably award you a third of my income, but I’ll give you more if you want. I’d give you half.’ He had nearly added, ‘to be rid of you,’ but he bit off the words as being too provocative. His speech was already thickening and slurring.

  It was disconcerting – though this was what he had wanted – to hear how inhibition made her voice soft and kept her face controlled. The words she used were the same, though. He had heard them a thousand times before. ‘If you leave me, I’ll follow you. I’ll go to your office and tell them all about it. I’ll sit on your doorstep. I won’t be abandoned. I’d rather die. I won’t be a divorced woman just because you’ve got tired of me.’

  ‘If you go on like this,’ he said thickly, ‘you’ll find yourself a widow. Will you like that?’

  Had they been alone, she would have screamed the affirmative at him. Because they weren’t, she gave him a thin, sharp and concentrated smile, a smile which an observer might have taken for amusement at some married couple’s private joke. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’d like to be a widow, your widow. Drink yourself to death, why don’t you? That’s what you have to do if you want to be rid of me.’