A New Lease of Death

by Ruth Rendell

  The old cow. It was her fault, everything bad that had ever happened to you was her fault – beginning with the beautiful pink dress.

  She was making it for you and she worked at the sewing machine all day that cold wet Sunday. When it was finished you put it on and Mummy brushed your hair and put a ribbon in it.

  ‘I’ll just pop over and show you off to Granny Rose,’ Mummy said and she popped over, but when she came back she was cross because Granny Rose was asleep and hadn’t heard when she’d tapped on the window.

  ‘Give it half an hour,’ Daddy said, ‘and maybe she’ll be awake then.’ He was half asleep himself, lying in bed, white and thin on the pillows. So Mummy had stayed upstairs with him, giving him his medicine and reading to him because he was too weak to hold a book.

  ‘You stay in the sitting room, Baby, and mind you don’t get that frock dirty.’

  You had done as you were told but it made you cry just the same. Of course you didn’t care about not seeing Granny Rose, but you knew that while she was talking to Mummy you could have slipped out into the passage and down the garden to show it to Tessie, now, while it was brand-new.

  Well, why not? Why not put on a coat and run across the road? Mummy wouldn’t come down for half an hour. But you would have to hurry, for Tessie always went to bed at half-past six. Auntie Rene was strict about that. ‘Respectable working class,’ Mummy said, whatever that meant, and although she might let you into Tessie’s bedroom she wouldn’t let you wake her up.

  But why, why, why had you gone?

  Elizabeth Crilling came out of the shop and walked blindly towards the Glebe Road turning, bumping into shoppers as she went. Such a long way to go, past the hateful little sand houses that were like desert tombs in this spectral form light, such a long long way … And there was only one thing left to do when you got to the end of the road.

  14

  It is lawful for Christian men … to wear weapons and serve in the wars.

  The Thirty-nine Articles

  THE LETTER WITH the Kendal postmark was awaiting Archery on the hall table when they got back to The Olive and Dove. He glanced at it uncomprehendingly, then remembered. Colonel Cosmo Plashet, Painter’s commanding officer.

  ‘What now?’ he said to Charles when Tess had gone upstairs to lie down.

  ‘I don’t know. They’re going back to Purley tonight.’

  ‘Do we go back to Thringford tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know, Father. I tell you I don’t know.’ He paused, irritable, pink in the face, a lost child. ‘I’ll have to go and apologize to Primero,’ he said, the child remembering its manners. ‘It was a bloody awful way to behave to him.’

  Archery said it instinctively, without thinking. ‘I’ll do that, if you like. I’ll ring them.’

  ‘Thanks. If he insists on seeing me I’ll go. You’ve talked to her before, haven’t you? I gathered from something Wexford said.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve talked to her, but I didn’t know who she was.’

  ‘That,’ said Charles, severe again, ‘is you all over.’

  Was he really going to ring her up and apologize? And why should he have the vanity to suppose that she would even come to the phone? ‘In the course of your enquiries, Mr Archery, I hope you managed to combine pleasure with business.’ She was bound to have told her husband what she had meant by that. How the middle-aged clergyman had suddenly gone sentimental on her. He could hear Primero’s reply, his colloquialism, ‘Didn’t actually make the old pass, did he?’ and her light dismissive laughter. His soul cringed. He went into the empty lounge and ripped open Colonel Plashet’s letter.

  It was handwritten on rough white vellum almost as thick as cartridge paper. By the occasional fading of the ink from deep black to pale grey Archery could tell that the writer had not used a fountain pen. An old man’s hand, he thought, a military man’s address, ‘Srinagar’, Church Street, Kendal …

  Dear Mr Archery, he read,

  I was interested to receive your letter and will do my best to provide you with what information I can on Private Herbert Arthur Painter. You may be aware that I was not called to give evidence as to character at Painter’s trial, though I held myself in readiness to do so should it have been necessary. Fortunately I have retained in my possession certain notes I then made. I say fortunately, for you will appreciate that Private Painter’s war service covered a period of from twenty-three to twenty years ago, and my memory is no longer what I should like it to be. Lest you should be under the impression, however, that I am the possessor of information sympathetic to Painter’s relatives, I must reluctantly disabuse your mind. In deciding not to call me, Painter’s defending counsel must have been aware that any statements I could truthfully have made would, instead of assisting their cause, have merely made the task of prosecution easier.

  That was it, then. There would follow only another loathsome catalogue to Painter’s propensities. Colonel Plashet’s very idiosyncratic style and writing brought home to him more forcibly than the cold print of the transcript had done, the kind of man Charles was prepared to accept as a father-in-law. Curiosity, not hope, made him read on.

  Painter had been serving with his Majesty’s Forces for one year when he entered my regiment. This was shortly prior to our embarkation for Burma as part of the Fourteenth Army. He was a most unsatisfactory soldier. We saw no action until we had been in Burma for three months, during which time Painter was twice put on a charge for being drunk and disorderly and sentenced to seven days’ detention for gross insolence on an officer.

  In action his manner and bearing improved considerably. He was a naturally pugnacious man, brave and aggressive. Soon after this, however, an incident occurred in the village in which we had our camp and a young Burmese woman was killed. A Court Martial was held before which Painter was charged with her manslaughter. He was found not guilty. I think I had better say no more on this matter.

  In February 1945, six months before the cessation of hostilities in the Far East, Painter succumbed to a certain tropical affliction which manifests itself in severe ulceration of the legs, accelerated, I am told by his complete disregard of certain elementary hygienic precautions and his refusal to take a proper diet. He became seriously ill and responded badly to treatment. There was at this time a troopship lying off Calcutta, and as soon as Painter’s condition allowed, he and certain other sick men were transported there by air. This troopship reached a United Kingdom port during the latter part of March, 1945.

  I have no further information as to Painter’s fate except that I believe he was shortly afterwards demobilized on health grounds.

  If you have any other questions whatsoever to put to me regarding Painter’s war service, you may be assured of my willingness to answer them to the best of my ability and discretion. You have my full permission to publish this letter. May I, however, ask your indulgence to an old man’s whim, and request a copy of your book when it comes out?

  Yours sincerely,

  Cosmo Plashet

  They all assumed he was writing a book. Archery smiled a little at the colonel’s grandiose style, but there was nothing to smile at in the brief lines about the Burmese woman’s death. The colonel’s guarded, ‘I think I had better say no more on this matter …’ told him more than a page of explanations.

  Nothing new, nothing vital. Why then, did he have this urgent sensation of having missed something of importance? But no, he couldn’t see it … He looked again, not knowing what he was looking for. Then, as he stared at the spidery loops and whorls, he was engulfed by a hot wave of trepidation and longing. He was afraid to speak to her, yet he longed to hear her voice.

  He looked up, surprised to find how dark it had become. The summer afternoon sky simulated dusk with its covering of slate-coloured cloud. Over the housetops away to the east it was leaden tinged with angry purple and as Archery began to fold the letter, a vivid flash of lightning shocked across the room, flashing the words on the paper into relief and ble
aching his hands livid white. The thunder followed it as he reached the stairs, and echoes were still curling and growling round the old building when he entered his bedroom.

  She could only refuse to speak to him. She wouldn’t even have to do that herself, for she could send the Italian butler. There was no question of her berating or reproaching him personally – she could do it with far more crushing effect by proxy.

  ‘Forby Hall. Mr Primero’s residence.’

  It was the butler. The Italian accent distorted every word except the name to which it gave true Latin emphasis.

  ‘I should like to speak to Mrs Primero.’

  ‘What name shall I say, sir?’

  ‘Henry Archery.’

  Perhaps she would not be with her husband when the message came. People situated as they were in an enormous house of many rooms tended to live individual lives, he in the library, she in the drawing room. She would send the butler back with a message. As a foreigner the butler would be without that intimate feel for the nuances of English and that would give her scope. She could tell him to say something subtle and apparently polite and he would not appreciate the cutting sting that underlay the words. He heard footsteps, echoing footsteps across the big hall Charles had described. The phone crackled, perhaps because of the storm.

  ‘Hallo?’

  Out of a bone-dry throat he tried to speak. Why hadn’t he rehearsed something? Because he had been so sure she wouldn’t come?

  ‘Hallo, are you still there?’

  ‘Mrs Primero …’

  ‘I thought you might have got fed-up with waiting. Mario took so long about it.’

  ‘Of course I waited.’ Rain burst against his window, smacking and sobbing at the glass. ‘I want to apologize to you for this morning. It was unforgivable.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgiven you – for this morning. You didn’t really take any part in it, did you? It was the other times that seem so – well, not unforgivable, just incomprehensible.’

  He could imagine her little helpless gesture, the white hands spreading out.

  ‘One doesn’t like to feel one’s been used, you see. It’s not that I’m hurt. I’m not likely to be hurt because I’m really very tough, much tougher than Roger. But I am a bit spoilt and I feel as if I’ve been kicked off my pedestal. Good for me, I expect.’

  Archery said slowly, ‘There’s so much to explain. I thought I could explain on the phone, but now I find I can’t.’ And yet the violence of the storm made it easier for him. He could hardly hear his own words. ‘I want to see you,’ he said, forgetting his promise.

  Apparently she had forgotten it too. ‘You can’t come here,’ she said practically, ‘because Roger’s somewhere about and he might not look on your apology in the same light as I do. And I can’t come to you because The Olive and Dove, being a respectable hostelry, doesn’t allow visitors in residents’ bedrooms.’ He made an inarticulate murmur. ‘That’s the second cheap thing I’ve said to you today,’ she said. ‘Oh, my dear, you wouldn’t want to talk in the lounge among all the fuddy-duddies, would you? I know, what about Victor’s Piece?’

  ‘It’s locked,’ he said, adding stupidly, ‘and it’s raining.’

  ‘I’ve got a key. Roger’s always kept one. Shall we say eight? The Olive will be only too happy if you have an early dinner.’

  He dropped the receiver almost guiltily as Charles put his head round the door. And yet the telephone call had not been clandestine but made at Charles’s instigation.

  ‘I think I’ve made it all right with the Primeros,’ he said, and he reflected on words from an unremembered source. God gave men tongues that they might conceal their thoughts.

  But Charles, with the quixotry of youth, had lost interest. ‘Tess and her father are just off,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll come down.’

  They were standing in the hall, waiting. For what? Archery wondered. The storm to cease? A miracle? Or just to say goodbye?

  ‘I wish we hadn’t seen Elizabeth Crilling,’ Tess said. ‘And yet now I wish I’d talked to her.’

  ‘Just as well you didn’t,’ said Archery. ‘You’re worlds apart. The only thing you’d have in common is your age. You’re both twenty-one.’

  ‘Don’t wish away my life,’ Tess said oddly and he saw there were tears in her eyes. ‘I’m not twenty-one till October.’ She picked up the duffel bag that served her as a weekend case and held out her hand to Archery.

  ‘We must love you and leave you,’ said Kershaw. ‘Doesn’t seem anything more to be said, does there, Mr Archery? I know you hoped things would work out, but it wasn’t to be.’

  Charles was gazing at Tess. She kept her eyes averted.

  ‘For God’s sake say I can write to you.’

  ‘What’s the use?’

  ‘It would give me pleasure,’ he said tightly.

  ‘I shan’t be at home. I’m going to Torquay to stay with my aunt the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘You won’t be camping on the beach, will you? This aunt, doesn’t she have an address?’

  ‘I haven’t got a piece of paper,’ said Tess and Archery saw that she was near to tears. He felt in his pocket, pulled out first Colonel Plashet’s letter – not that, not for Tess to see – then the illuminated card with the verse and the picture of the shepherd. Her eyes were misted and she scrawled the address quickly, handing it to Charles without a word.

  ‘Come on, lovey,’ said Kershaw. ‘Home, and don’t spare the horses.’ He fished out his car keys. ‘All fifteen of them,’ he said, but no one smiled.

  15

  If he hath offended any other … ask them forgiveness; and where he hath done injury or wrong to any man … make amends to the uttermost of his power.

  The Visitation of the Sick

  IT WAS RAINING so heavily that he had to dash from the car into the dilapidated porch and even there the rain caught him, blown by the gusty wind and tossed in icy droplets off the evergreens. He leant against the door and staggered because it gave with his weight and swung noisily open.

  She must have arrived already. The Flavia was nowhere to be seen and he felt a shiver of self-disgust and trepidation when it occurred to him that she was being purposely discreet. She was well known in the district, she was married and she was having a secret meeting with a married man. So she had hidden her conspicuous car. Yes, it was cheap, cheap and sordid, and he, a priest of God, had engineered it.

  Victor’s Piece, dry and rotten in drought, smelt wet and rotten now the rain had come. It smelt of fungus and dead things. There were probably rats under these knotted flaking floorboards. He closed the door and walked a little way down the passage, wondering where she was and why she had not come out to him when she heard the door. Then he stopped, for he was facing the back door where Painter’s raincoat had hung, and there was a raincoat hanging there now.

  Certainly nothing had hung there on his previous visit to the house. He moved up to the raincoat, fascinated and rather horrified.

  Of course, it was obvious what had happened. Someone had bought the place at last, the workmen had been in and one of them had left his raincoat. Nothing to be alarmed about. His nerves must be very bad.

  ‘Mrs Primero,’ he said, and then, because you do not call women with whom you have secret assignations by their surnames, ‘Imogen! Imogen!’

  There was no answer. And yet he was sure he was not alone in the house. What about knowing her if you were deaf and blind, jeered a voice within him, what about knowing her by her essence? He opened the dining-room door, then the drawing room. A damp cold smell came to meet him. Water had leaked under the window sill and formed a spreading pool, dark in colour, hideously evocative. This and the rusty veining on the marble of the fireplace recalled to him splashed blood. Who would buy this place? Who could bear it? But someone had bought it for there was a workman’s coat hanging behind the door …

  Here she had sat, the old woman, and bade Alice go to church. Here she had sat, her e
yes closing easily into sleep, when Mrs Crilling had come tapping at the window. Then he had come, whoever he was, with his axe and perhaps she had still been sleeping, on and on over the threats and the demands, over the blows of the axe, on and on into endless sleep. Endless sleep? Mors janua vitae. If only the gateway to life had not been through an unspeakable passage of pain. He found himself praying for what he knew was impossible, that God should change history.

  Then Mrs Crilling tapped on the window.

  Archery gave a start so violent and galvanic that he seemed to feel a hand squeeze his heart with slippery fingers. He gasped and forced himself to look.

  ‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Imogen Ide. ‘What a ghastly night.’

  She should have been on the inside, he thought, pulling himself together. But she had been outside, tapping, tapping, because she had seen him standing there like a lost soul. This way it altered the aspect of things, for she had not hidden the car. It stood on the gravel beside his own, wet, silver, glittering, like something alive and beautiful from the depths of the sea.

  ‘How did you get in?’ she said in the hall.

  ‘The door was open.’

  ‘Some workman.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  She wore a tweed suit and her pale hair was wet. He had been silly enough – bad enough, he thought – to imagine that when they met she would run to him and embrace him. Instead she stood looking at him gravely, almost coldly, two little frown lines between her brows.

  ‘The morning room, I think,’ she said. ‘There’s furniture in there and besides it doesn’t have – associations.’

  The furniture consisted of two kitchen stools and a cane-back chair. From the window, heavily encrusted with grime, he could see the conservatory to whose walls of cracked glass the tendrils of a dead vine still clung. He gave her the chair and sat down on one of the stools. He had a strange feeling – but a feeling not without charm of its own – that they had come here to buy the house, he and she, had come early and were reduced to wait thus uncomfortably until the arrival of the agent who would show them round.