Going Wrong

by Ruth Rendell

  Because they weren’t sending out invitations? Because that silver-edged card had never been there. He’d imagined it. He had got into a state and imagined it. The garden was green again, the waters of the pool lay still and gleaming, bearing dense sheaves of lilies, leaves that were green above, crimson-lined, their flowers a veined streaky rose or ivory. He noticed that the roses were over and he walked about removing the deadheads. It was quite quiet out there, tucked away in the mews, the traffic a distant throb. There was peace here and an air of healing. You would never lose your mind, have strange, inexplicable things happen inside your head and to your imagination, if you sat calmly here.

  After about an hour the phone rang. Intuition told him it would be Leonora, he knew it would be Leonora. It was years since she had phoned him but he knew it was she. He went indoors so fast that he knocked over the red lacquer table inside the door on which the Chinese vase had once stood. His heart thumping, he picked up the phone. It was Celeste. Had he forgotten he was taking her to her friend’s party? There was going to be dancing on a terrace above the river at Richmond. Only he’d said he’d phone her and he hadn’t.

  Guy had forgotten. He knew he ought to go, it was the sort of thing he enjoyed, he’d accepted the friend’s invitation and promised Celeste, but just the same he said he didn’t feel like it. He’d got a bug, he thought, some virus, or a migraine coming. She took it resignedly, she didn’t try to persuade him. After she had rung off, with the phone still in his hand, sick with disappointment, he thought he might as well take the opportunity and phone Georgiana Street.

  No reply. He made himself another drink and dialled Portland Road. He touched the red-lacquered wood—was it wood? No reply. Rachel might be already dead. Chuck would probably do it down in Brixton where Rachel worked. A lot of people said it wasn’t safe for a woman, particularly a white woman, to walk about alone in the back streets of Brixton. Guy had never quite believed that but he thought he might start believing it now.

  A scenario took shape in his head. The police would want someone to identify Rachel’s body. They’d call on Leonora or Maeve—Leonora most likely because she still lived in the same house as Rachel while Maeve did so no longer. Of course she’d ask William Newton to go with her, she’d be beside herself with grief and terror, but Newton wouldn’t go because he was squeamish, he was the kind of person who couldn’t face the idea of seeing a dead body, particularly a body in the state Rachel’s would be in. So in despair she’d turn to the one she could depend on, her own true love, and together they’d go to Brixton. He’d drive her in the Jaguar. Once there, he’d take matters into his own hands. “I know the deceased quite as well as my fiancée does, Sergeant. Leave this matter of identification to me.” She’d cling to him afterwards in the car. “It was always you really, Guy. I must have been mad …”

  After two more stiff vodkas he was perfectly sober but his speech was a bit slurred. He practiced talking to himself in the mirror and confessed honestly that he didn’t really want Leonora to hear him speak like that. When he got back from the restaurant would do for a last try.

  He walked. He needed the air. It was very unusual for him to eat alone or in a place where he hadn’t previously booked a table. A little way along the Old Brompton Road was an Italian restaurant where he had once had a good pasta with Celeste’s predecessor, a half-Chinese girl who was a stewardess on a Boeing 747. Four days since he had spoken to Leonora … It was better, safer, to concentrate on Rachel, who might so easily be lying dead somewhere by now, almost certainly was. It was nearly eight o’clock, more than forty-eight hours since he’d tipped the wink to Danilo.

  The restaurant was somewhere in this row of shops. A man, a beggar, down and out, whatever you liked to call it, was lying full-length along one of the doorsteps, the threshold of a health-food store, long closed. He was black, a youngish man, tall apparently and thin to the point of emaciation, dressed in blackish rags. A cap lay on the pavement beside him and the single five-pee piece in it was the only indication that this was not simply headgear cast temporarily to the ground.

  He lay on his back with his hands folded behind his head, staring upwards. His lips were parted, the teeth very white with a gleam of gold among them. He didn’t look at Guy and Guy gave him only a rapid glance but he was sure it was Linus. A Linus terribly changed, brought low, with a growth of beard on his once-glowing cheeks and an ugly jagged scar across his once shapely cheekbone, but the same man. Guy walked on, quite sober now but trembling. His hands shook, he felt as if his legs could scarcely carry him, but for all that he kept walking. He forgot about finding the Italian restaurant and walked unsteadily down the Boltons, along the Fulham Road. All that mattered was to put as great a distance as possible between him and the poor derelict on that doorstep who might have been, who was, Linus.

  Yet once he was in the restaurant he found in Cale Street, had gone to the bar and ordered a large vodka martini before asking for a table, he wondered almost with a groan why he had run away. Why hadn’t he stopped and asked how he could help his friend? That, of course, was to simplify things. But he might have made a start by asking the man if he really was Linus. The precise identity of a black person is no more readily discernible to a white man than a white is to a black. There will not be that instant indisputable recognition. In Guy’s mind a slight doubt lingered. When he last saw Linus he was a lithe, fit, beautiful, prosperous, young gangster. He was always well and gaudily dressed. He had a gold tooth, Guy remembered, rather unusual in the young but not so unusual in someone of Caribbean origin.

  Guy sat down at his table, ordered some sort of chicken dish and another vodka martini while he waited for the food. The beggar on the step had a gold tooth. Going back in his mind to half an hour before, he saw again the parted lips, full and gleaming, with a bluish tinge, and among the white molars a glint of gold. It was Linus. What had happened to him that he had come to this?

  Fifteen years ago … The teenage street gangs knew nothing of racism. It was something to be proud of now, something to be pleased about, but in those days none of them thought about it from that aspect, only marvelled when the police and social workers talked about race troubles among the young in Notting Hill. Guy could almost have said—almost but not quite, if he was honest—that he didn’t notice another person’s colour. He was aware that in some people’s eyes to be Irish, as he was, was a liability. Linus had been a young devil. Once, in the Central Line tube between getting in at Notting Hill and getting out at Queensway, he had taken five hundred pounds off three American tourists without their knowing a thing about it.

  The food came but he could only pick at it. He drank a carafe of the house wine. Why had he stayed to eat anything? He should have returned immediately to the place in the Old Brompton Road where he had seen Linus lying. He had run away. Getting up now, paying the bill, he told himself he must go back. He must go back and find the young black man on the step and confirm that he was Linus.

  He walked down the street looking for a taxi, looking for that glowing golden cube moving towards one that is the most welcome of all street lights. Approaching him along the King’s Road, arm-in-arm like an old married couple, were Robin Chisholm and Maeve Kirkland.

  Of course it was less surprising that they should be here than that he was. They lived only a street away. The King’s Road was their High Street. Guy expected them either to pretend not to see him as on that day in the park or to start a row in the street. He braced himself and stared as they approached. They were going in for that twin-dressing again, perhaps it was a feature of their relationship. Identical pink shirts this time. It was the jeans that differed, hers the brushed sooty kind, his stone-washed blue denim. Robin showed no signs of having narrowly escaped a serious accident, and his eye was no longer discoloured. Guy had to stop himself from putting his hand up to his cheek, where the faint mark of a fingernail still was.

  They were both grinning widely. “Bygones be bygones, old man?” said Rob
in.

  Guy had never heard anyone under sixty call another “old man” before. “How are you?” he said, and then, for politeness, “Good to see you up and about again.”

  “Oh, I’m fighting fit.” It seemed an unfortunate choice of words. Knowing Robin, Guy had no doubt it was a matter of choice. “What brings you,” said Robin in his fruity tones, “to this neck of the woods?” Without waiting for an answer, he asked Guy round to St. Leonard’s Terrace for a drink.

  All this warmth staggered Guy. What was Robin up to? “Sorry, I’d like to, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  “You haven’t asked where Leonora is,” Maeve said rather spitefully.

  It was true. He realized he hadn’t thought of Leonora for the past hour. It must be a record. “No,” he said. “No. She’s at

  Portland Road, I suppose. I’m having lunch with her tomorrow.”

  “She’s moved out to William’s on account of Rachel not being there. There’s no point in her staying in the flat alone.”

  He felt a thrill of excitement. “What do you mean, Rachel not being there?”

  “She’s gone away on holiday, hasn’t she?”

  “On holiday?” he said.

  “This morning. She went to Spain with Dominic. Why are you looking like that, Guy? It’s Rachel I’m talking about, not Leonora.”

  A taxi came. He hailed it, told the driver to drop him in Bolton Gardens, said goodbye to them and got in. As it drove off he could see Maeve’s face through the rear window, her mouth a little open, her head shaking. So Rachel had escaped him, or rather, had escaped Chuck. Rachel had gone off on holiday with one of those egghead men of hers. The important thing, of course, was not that she should be dead but that she shouldn’t be there. Well, she wouldn’t be there.

  The evening had grown windy and no longer warm. Autumn was coming. The concrete of a doorstep was cold and hard, piercing through thin soot-coloured clothes like pain. He got out of the taxi in Bolton Gardens and walked the few yards back into the Old Brompton Road.

  There was no one in the doorway. Linus, if it was Linus, had gone. The only evidence of his past occupancy was a cigarette end, a tiny stub, much smaller than that left behind by most tobacco smokers. Guy picked it up and smelt the slightly dizzying scent of marijuana.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  She was late. He sat at their large round corner table in the gracious room, determined not to look at his watch again. His drink had been ordered and he resolved not to look at his watch until it came. The cigarette he had not been able to resist lighting was attracting censorious glances from a woman in a pink hat. Guy forced himself to look out of the window.

  The brandy he had ordered arrived. It was the strongest thing he could think of, short of something totally way-out like absinth or Zubrówka. Even the Savoy probably didn’t have those. He looked at his watch. It was twelve minutes past one. He hadn’t spoken to her on the phone for days. This date at the Savoy had never been confirmed. He thought, she’s not coming. They’ve beaten me, they’ve moved her away to Newton’s place, they’re never going to let her speak to me again. I’ll wait till twenty past. If she hasn’t come by twenty past—what will I do then? What shall I do?

  Go to Georgiana Street, he thought. Find her. He hadn’t spoken to her since he saw her in Lamb’s Conduit Street on Tuesday. It was four days. He ought to have persisted, he ought to have found her before this. She might be anywhere, she might have gone with Rachel to Spain. He caught the waiter’s eye and asked for another brandy. Of course she wasn’t coming, he knew she wouldn’t come now. He looked at his watch. It was twenty-two minutes past.

  The second brandy was nearly gone by the time the waiter showed her to the table. Guy jumped up. He forgot the agonies of his long wait. She looked beautiful. For him and for this special place she had for once dressed up.

  But perhaps not for once. Perhaps forever. It was part of the changing process, the change back to him. He forgot the unanswered phone, the silent days. She wore a linen suit. The short skirt was of a rich dark but not navy blue, the long, high-buttoned, tight-waisted flared jacket was dark blue and dark pink in wide vertical stripes. The sleeves were turned back to show the pink-and-blue-spotted lining. She had mauvish stockings and blue suede shoes and her earrings were dark red glass roses.

  Her hair shone. It looked as if it had just been cut, and well-cut for a change. There was a glow on her face so that for a moment he thought she was made-up. She kissed him, one cheek, then the other, nothing unusual in that.

  “I’m sorry I’m so late, Guy. There was trouble on the tube.”

  Who cared about the tube? Her eccentric modes of travel made him laugh. “Darling Leonora,” he said, “you look so beautiful. I want you to look like that always.”

  “It was my mother. She said, ‘You can’t go to the Savoy in jeans.’ I’d just bought this suit, so I thought, well, why not?”

  “Your mother wanted you to dress up for lunch with me?”

  She smiled, the tight smile with the corners of her mouth restrained. “My mother would want me to dress up for lunch with anyone.”

  That was best ignored. “Have something nice to drink for a change,” he said. “Don’t spoil things with orange juice.”

  “All right. I’ll have a sherry. No, not a dry one, a lovely dark brown, sticky Bristol Cream.”

  “So you’ve moved into Georgiana Street,” he said.

  She began explaining why. He told her about meeting Maeve and Robin. The apparent truce or detente between him and Robin seemed to bring her great pleasure. She reached across and squeezed Guy’s hand. No, she wouldn’t eat meat even to please him, she said. She’d have fish. Lobster? Guy suggested. That made her shudder but she would have sole. Creole prawns first and then sole and fried potatoes—why not?—and vegetables instead of a salad. A proper meal, Guy said, he was delighted.

  Although he had never contemplated doing so, he told her about Linus. She did remember Linus?

  “Of course I do. He didn’t like me. I’ll never forget it, the first time we met, it was out in the street, Talbot Road or somewhere, and you were nice to me, you passed me a joint—though, God knows, Guy, you shouldn’t have—and Linus, he spat into the drain.”

  She remembered all that. She remembered how he had been that first time. His heart was full. “There was the end of a joint left behind on the step,” he said.

  “He never liked me,” she said again. “There was no reason. He was just one of those gay men who don’t like women.”

  “Linus wasn’t gay.” He was astounded sometimes by the things she thought of, the layers of her, the things that went on in her pretty head. “What makes you say that? He had that girl-friend, Sophette, she was old enough to be his mother, but she was his girl-friend.”

  “Exactly,” said Leonora with a little laugh. “Are you sure it was him on the doorstep?”

  “Almost positive.”

  “You’d better be entirely positive before you start doing something.”

  She ate her prawns with gusto, she ate all her fish and most of the potatoes. She wouldn’t have a second sherry but she shared the Frascati with him. He had to order a second bottle.

  “Guy,” she said, very serious, “it’s very good of you, very kind, to want to help Linus if that’s really him and he’s down and out, but I think you’ve got to remember something. Linus was a pusher, he was a dealer in dangerous drugs. That’s how he made his living. He’s probably come to this state through his own addiction. Had you thought of that?”

  He had to stop himself from gaping at her. Didn’t she know? Didn’t she know that what went for Linus also went for him?

  “It would be a bit strong,” she said, “to say he only got what he deserved, but you could say he brought it on himself.”

  “So he’s to be left in the gutter? Who gives you these ideas? Newton?”

  “You’re identifying yourself with Linus, that’s why you feel so deeply about him. You see yourself in hi
m, brought low by some means or other. Oh, not poverty or crime now, I don’t mean that, but something else. You were in the same line of life, you see, you’re the same age with much the same background, the same way of making a living once.”

  “You’ve caught that way of talking from Rachel.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What do you know of my way of making a living, Leonora?” he said heavily.

  She said innocently, “You sold marijuana, didn’t you? I always knew that.”

  The moment passed, the terror. She drank a second glass of wine, would have no more, but was excitedly prepared to have a wonderful sweet, a kind of sculpture in chocolate with leaf-thin whorls and petals, white, milk, and dark. The decision about the sweet, its arrival shifted them from the subject. He began to think about the two weeks ahead, the wedding that everyone said would take place on September 16, a fortnight from today. Of course it wouldn’t but …

  “I couldn’t get you on the phone at all last week,” he said.

  “No, I know. I am sorry, Guy. But I’ll be in Georgiana Street all the time now.” She smiled at him, her head a little on one side. “I do have to go out sometimes, you know.”

  “You’ve left the flat in Portland Road for good?”

  “It looks like it. With Maeve gone and Rachel away, there didn’t seem much point in going back there. As a matter of fact, we’re lending it to Janice and Gerry while they’re in this country. It’s nicer for them to have a place of their own than stay with Daddy and Susannah. Then, when Rachel comes back, we’ll exchange contracts and it’ll be all hers.”

  When they had finished they walked down onto the Embankment. He took her hand and she let him hold it. The words were in his bead and he wanted to bring them out but he was afraid. They were there, in his mourn now, waiting to be uttered. She talked about the river, the craft on it. There had been an accident to a pleasure boat the week before, the worst river disaster for more than a hundred years, fifty people drowned. She was talking about what it would be like, trapped below deck, shuddering. He said because he had to, because the words crowded into his mouth were choking him, they exploded from him, “Con Mulvanney—the name—what does it mean to you?”