The Girl Next Door

by Rendell, Ruth

  ‘I don’t know. When I’m gone, will you tell Urban Grange? Tell them you’re his son? They don’t know you exist. Tell them you do, that’s all.’

  It had been a huge effort for her. She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the pillows. Michael thought for a moment she was dead, but the hand he held was warm and the fingers moved and pressed against his palm. He brought it to his lips and she smiled, a tiny ghost of a smile. Sitting at her bedside, still holding her hand, he thought about his poor pretty red-haired mother, unkind though she had been; he thought about father-like Chris, Zoe’s husband, who always had time for the lonely little boy; about Vivien, always Vivien, her death unbelievable for month after month, her ghost always with him.

  A nurse came up to Zoe’s bed. He relinquished her hand and the nurse took it, feeling for a pulse. She smiled, told him to stay for as long as he liked and she would bring him a cup of tea. Hours went by, he didn’t know how many. The tea had been drunk and another cup brought, her hand restored to his hand. And he too slept, still holding it, to wake up and find the nurse there beside him.

  ‘Your mum’s still sleeping,’ she said, embarrassed because her words had called forth more weeping and driven him to touch Zoe’s forehead with his lips before turning away.

  He was back with her when she died the following day, in the afternoon. She had had one last wish, uncharacteristic as it seemed, and he carried it out once he had registered the death and made the funeral arrangements. The first thing he did when he reached home was to tell Jane she was dead.

  ‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Jane. ‘Would you like a hug?’

  What can you say? It’s an offer you can’t refuse. He submitted to the hug. She told him she had passed the news on to her brother and Richard would be there next day. ‘To be a support,’ she said.

  Richard came, as cold and practical as his sister was emotional. Both returned for the funeral, sitting on either side of him in the crematorium, literally and physically supportive as each held an arm when the coffin disappeared into the fire.

  Only when they were both gone and the bedrooms vacated was he able to creep up to the top floor and open Vivien’s door, doing so literally in fear and trembling. He stood there, his hand still on the door handle, telling himself to expect a disarrangement of the room, the bed disordered, the flowers he had left still there but drooping and dead in a vase half full of smelly yellow water. Don’t be angry, don’t upset yourself. He opened the door and taking in the precious room, instead of distress was moved by gratitude and yes, by love. The dead flowers were gone, there was no mess, no dust, and lifting back the quilt, he saw she had even put on clean sheets. His good, kind daughter . . .

  These days he was always crying. Making up for not crying much as a child when he had cause to. What he needed was someone to talk to, someone who would listen and be kind but not – that childhood word – soppy. Impulsively, he picked up the phone and called Daphne’s number. A voice that wasn’t hers said no one was available to take his call and to try again later.

  The call he should have made, though what ‘should’ meant in this context was hard to say, was to his father’s luxurious sanctuary, Urban Grange. He didn’t even know where the place was. Asking Google to find it gave him something to do. That was easy. He hadn’t expected the website, page after page of advertising for the place. It was described as the most luxurious (there was that word again) haven for discerning seniors in the United Kingdom, a sanctum and a retreat, a grace-and-favour residence of seclusion, an exquisite Palladian mansion in the Suffolk countryside. Photographs abounded in hot colour. The gardens overflowed with blooms; other parts of the grounds with exotic trees and shrubs. There were gazebos, follies, temples and even a ha-ha. Each suite had its own small garden, approached from a glazed-in patio furnished with cane, quilted silk and silver. What did it cost? No mention was made of money. Money was vulgar. On the other hand, Michael thought, wasn’t it vulgar to show testimonials from satisfied residents? One was from a certain Dame Doris Perivale (‘Lovelier than any home I have ever had’), another from Prince Ali Kateh (‘Number one in palace category’).

  There was a phone number and an email address. He wrote the number down on the back of an envelope, the only piece of paper to hand, put it in his pocket and forgot about it. But he didn’t forget to phone Daphne again, and this time she answered.

  John Winwood had never been prone to worrying. If something to come was unpleasant, he pushed it out of his mind and ceased to think about it. This had not been possible in regard to his married (or unmarried) status. Back in the late 1940s, it troubled him if not all the time, for a few minutes and sometimes longer every day. His wife Anita was dead and he told people she had died. He was a widower. That was true and he knew it, none better, but he had no death certificate and never could have.

  He wanted to marry again. There was no one he had specifically in mind but several he was considering. The war had been a widow-maker. There was Margaret Lewis, whose husband had died in the Egyptian desert, another one called Beryl Nichols, who was left alone when Gary Nichols failed to return from Dunkirk, and a third called Rita, who served in the bar at the Hollybush and took off her wedding ring after Arnhem. Of these three, all of whom Woody more or less courted, only Mrs Lewis had money – real money, that is.

  He had sold Anderby and rented a small flat over a shop in Leyton. It was not the kind of place to which he could invite a woman. Certainly not Margaret Lewis, who lived in a big house in Chigwell. His money was running out but he stuck to his resolve never to work. His few years of labour in the factory and the abattoir had taught him never to get a job again but to find a way of living without employment. Another lesson he had learned was that a woman’s jealousy will cause her to behave recklessly and do things she would normally never have dreamt of. A man’s too, for all he knew. For all he knew because he had never been jealous. Rita was better-looking than Beryl and both were better-looking than Margaret. She had lain too long and too often in the sun of Nice and Corsica when her husband was alive, and her face and shoulders were creased up and blotched with the remains of sunburn. She was over forty and putting on weight. But she had money. She had a fine big house and a fine big car and a large income, from what source Woody had been unable to find out until the jealousy began.

  Their relationship had never been what Margaret called an intimate one, unlike the situation with both Beryl and Rita. He told Margaret she had driven him to spend nights with these two women because, he said, ‘A man has certain needs.’ Jealousy consumed her. She was foolish enough to stand in front of a mirror, call him over and point out to him the wrinkles and blotches while asking him if that was what sent him to those other women. Foolish perhaps, but not silly enough to have any effect on Woody. He closed his eyes to what the sun had done and Margaret’s silliness and asked her to marry him. There would be no other women if she married him, no looking at other women. Of course she said yes, leaving Woody in a state hitherto unknown to him, anxiety. Suppose the vicar or the registrar asked to see his first wife’s death certificate? He continued worried throughout his engagement, which fortunately for him lasted no more than six weeks. It was a vicar, not a registrar, and he didn’t ask.

  Margaret had always had money, was born to it, and so had Major Rory Lewis. Neither of them had ever worked in the sense that Woody thought of work. So Margaret never asked him why he hadn’t a job or a private income. She assumed that everyone in her circle had money. Eventually he told her he had nothing, for the house money and the jewellery money had come to an end. Margaret, still in love, said not to worry, as she had plenty for both of them. That was in their early days. She fell out of love and began to ration him. He had the Chigwell house and the Lagonda, and if she gave him ten pounds a week, wasn’t that all he could expect? There was no joint account and he couldn’t touch her private account. He sometimes thought of how he had strangled pretty Anita and sold her rings, but those days were gone. He was a
fraid that if he tried something similar with Margaret, the police would suspect him – they always first suspected the husband – and begin to investigate his past. They would ask when and where Anita had died and demand her death certificate. His old trouble returned. There were no answers. The only thing was to carry on as they were, Margaret calmly happy, he with his ten pounds a week. An idea of taking some of Margaret’s jewellery and selling it flitted across his mind, only to be dismissed as impractical with a wife who was still alive and who had learned from being married to him to be suspicious of almost everything he did.

  He was nearly sixty and she some five years older when she died. It was cancer, in nearly all cases in those days incurable. The surprises started at her funeral. A mystery woman (so called by Woody) turned up and seated herself in the front pew, the one set aside for relatives and close friends. She was about fifty, he thought, and she reminded him of someone. He couldn’t think who. She came to the wine and sandwiches party Margaret’s friend from Chigwell put on, but since she didn’t introduce herself to Woody, he thought no more about her. Until he awoke in the middle of the night and realised that the someone the mystery woman reminded him of was Margaret. A niece? Perhaps. He sent himself back to sleep by thinking contentedly about Margaret’s shares, her bank accounts, this house and the Jaguar that had replaced the Lagonda. Presumably she had made a will, but it was of no importance. Everything would come to him.

  The will turned up and it was a rude and distressing awakening. Woody got the house, that was all right, but nearly all the money (except for the ten pounds a week, which continued) and the shares and the car and the furniture went to a woman Margaret hadn’t seen since (the will said) ‘she was taken from my arms at the age of three months and given to a couple called James and Stella Brotherton for adoption’.

  Another woman who came to the funeral was Sheila Fraser, even richer than Margaret. Woody, as no one called him any more, did his usual researches and discovered the extent of her wealth. She wasn’t pretty or clever and she was obsessed with natural history. They had almost nothing in common, but it was she who pointed out to him the distressing incidence of hedgehogs among roadkill and made him promise to remember the Hedgehog Trust in his will. He was bound to die first as he was thirty years her senior. But he didn’t, of course. He saw to that. She had a miserable life with him but she never told him so, and he never noticed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FENELLA GOT COLD feet. That wasn’t what she told her mother. It wasn’t suitable, she said, for a granddaughter to tell her grandmother such things.

  ‘But it’s all right for a daughter to tell her mother?’

  ‘It’s a question of age.’

  ‘Well, thanks for giving me back my youth.’

  ‘You know what I mean, Mum,’ said Fenella.

  At least Judith wouldn’t have to look after her grandchildren and maybe she wouldn’t tell her mother. Maybe the occasion wouldn’t arise. She would have to wait for a suitable moment, some mention, for instance, of how happy Alan and Rosemary’s marriage had been as against that of people who lived together without marriage, a common subject of conversation. But no, that wouldn’t do. If perhaps her mother were to say that she was worried about her father, suggest he was becoming senile? It would be awkward and perhaps ineffective. She would, she decided, trust to the inspiration of the moment.

  Also to be thought of was what Rosemary would do. Have hysterics, cry, or even be silenced and tell her to go away, get out of her house, how dare she say such things about her father. It was a long drive from Chiswick to Loughton and Judith and Maurice had often grumbled about it, but this time it seemed to her very short. The pleasant hills and green folds of the forest were upon her within not much more than half an hour, and she was soon driving up the High Road. Many times had she done this since she first learned to drive at seventeen, and everything was familiar to her, for this part of Loughton hadn’t changed much – the Lopping Hall and the old police station, and turning off down Station Road, St Mary’s Church ahead. She was suddenly seeing her mission as serious, not the rather awful joke it had at first appeared to her; so serious that even at this late stage it might break up her parents’ marriage. Her children’s grandparents? Was it possible? She drove past her old school, that she had walked to every day in the days when teenagers thought nothing of walking long distances. Her mother had fetched her in the car when it rained. Sometimes, on the mornings her father went to work later than usual, he and she had walked down together and parted at the school gates, he going on alone to the station. She drove on up Alderton Hill, at the top turning left to her parents’ road, down to the block of flats that hadn’t been there or even thought of in those days. She parked in the designated slot they hadn’t used since they got rid of their car and looked up to their windows. Her mother had come out and was waving to her from their balcony.

  ‘Is Fenella all right, darling?’ asked Rosemary when she opened the door. ‘Not that I’m not delighted to see you, of course, but I did wonder if Fenella was unwell and was hiding something from me.’

  ‘Well I’m not hiding anything from you, Mum.’ It was true, or soon would be. ‘Fenella is fine and so are the children.’

  ‘They’re so sweet and good,’ said Rosemary, incredibly. ‘I’ll make the tea straight away.’

  ‘Mum, would you mind awfully if I had a drink instead? Just one because I’m driving. But if I could have a glass of wine . . . I’ll fetch it.’

  The possibility had only just occurred to her, and once it had occurred, as is often the case when an unprecedented alcoholic drink is in prospect, couldn’t be resisted.

  ‘Of course, darling. Why on earth not?’ Rosemary proceeded to explain exactly why on earth not. ‘It’s just that you are driving and it’s better not to drink at all. Anyway, don’t you think it’s a good idea to restrict one’s drinking to certain hours and to stick to it? That old saying about waiting till the sun is over the yardarm isn’t a bad principle.’

  But Judith was already fetching herself a full glass of Pinot Grigio. She sat down and gulped down more than a large sip, nearer a swig.

  ‘My goodness, you were thirsty, if that’s the word.’ Rosemary began on the wedding, though they had exchanged their individual opinions of it at least twice since the event. Judith’s verdict on her copper-coloured silk suit was again invited and Judith again said it was lovely and much admired. She was starting to feel sick and drank some more wine, not the best remedy.

  ‘Are you all right, Judy?’

  ‘Mum,’ she said, ‘I’m fine. Tell me something. Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Why on earth do you ask?’

  ‘I’d just like to know where you think he is. Sorry, I’m being a bit clumsy. Would you mind telling me where he is.’

  ‘Now, Judith, I did try to warn you. I think that wine is going to your head. It’s really affecting you. You’ve drunk half a large glass in two minutes and it can’t be good.’

  She thought, I could give this up, I could say I’m a bit drunk, I’m sorry, let’s change the subject. But there was no subject as yet.

  ‘Mother, listen to me. I am serious, very serious. Do you know where Dad is now?’

  It had reached her at last. She creased up her eyes, held her mouth open before she finally spoke. ‘Yes, of course I do. He’s gone to see Michael Winwood up in town somewhere.’ Her voice faltered. ‘You won’t know him, he was a childhood friend. One of those we’ve got to know again over that ghastly hands business.’

  ‘No, he hasn’t. I’m sure he hasn’t. Phone this Winwood man and find out.’

  ‘Oh Judy, I couldn’t check up on your father.’

  Judith decided after another swig of wine that she had better come straight out with it. ‘Freya and David saw him with a woman in a restaurant in St John’s Wood. It was about a month ago. They were holding hands. When they left, he had his arm round her. I’m sorry to tell you like this but I don’t know how else to do it and I
think you have to be told.’

  Rosemary sat quite still, then she began shaking her head. The head-shaking went on so long that it became alarming. When she spoke, her voice was quite unlike her usual tone, but high-pitched, almost squeaky. ‘It must have been someone else. Not your father, it couldn’t be your father.’

  ‘Tell me this Winwood man’s number.’

  It was doubtful that her mother would obey, but she did. She took the directory out of a drawer, lifted the handset off the rest and handed it to her daughter, mouthing the number silently as if some spy might be listening. Her hands clenched, then twisting in a wringing gesture, she sat waiting. For someone to answer, or perhaps in hopes that no one would?

  ‘Mr Winwood? This is Judith Hayland, Norris that was. I believe my father is with you. May I speak to him?’

  Judith was as certain as could be that he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t. Michael Winwood sounded as surprised as she had guessed he would be, but not suspicious. And after she had put the phone down, he still suspected nothing. Infidelity and its deceit and stratagems didn’t come within his experience. This was an area of innocence for him, and if he wondered a little, it was only to recall that if Daphne had agreed to his visiting her today, he wouldn’t have been at home to receive Judith Hayland’s call. But as the day passed, their brief conversation recurred to him, and he thought it a little odd that Alan Norris, who had never been to his house, to whom he must have given his phone number but certainly not his address, could have told his daughter that she would find him here. They were not friends, they had met only once – and that in George Batchelor’s house – since his father threw them out of the tunnels sixty years before. He didn’t want to think of his father, that immortal creature who seemed superhuman in his refusal to die. He had still not phoned Urban Grange, though the piece of paper on which he had written the number was still in his pocket, crumpled through frequent handling.