by Ruth Rendell
It was a long time since she had thought about Guy’s death. Her loss of Andrew had driven most of that away. It had returned to her mind because today was the anniversary. Thirteen years ago to the day it had happened and always on the day the memories were stronger. If she didn’t dream about it she had a waking dream in which once again she saw Heather on the stairs in her wet dress and heard her say, “You’d better come.”
Did her thinking of it now mean she was beginning to get over Andrew? Hardly, for with that thought and its many possible repercussions, he came back into her consciousness so that she was asking herself, what does it matter now? What can it matter after so long who killed Guy, if anyone did? All I want is Andrew. I don’t want answers. I want him. I can wait. If someone said to me that he would come back in five years, in ten, I would be happy. I would wait, I would be patient. I shall never get over him. But if I knew that one day I would see him again, he would love me again, I would be dizzy with happiness. Sometimes I feel I would die of it.
For all that, when she was back in the flat, had put her head around their door and said hello to Edmund and Heather, she began once more hunting for the tape. She looked in all the places she had looked in before, and then it occurred to her it might be in her clothes cupboard, in the pocket of a coat or jacket. It wasn’t. She never carried anything in her pockets but in her handbag.
Pethaps that was where it was, in one of her handbags. Ismay had a lot. She took them out of the cupboard and laid them on the bed, opening each one and removing the contents. This yielded a lot of receipts and credit card chits from various shops, which she prudently tore into pieces; several dozen tissues; and a miscellaneous assortment of paper clips, coins of tiny denominations, ballpoint pens, a floppy disc, and a notepad; but no tape. Of course not—she remembered now. The tape had been in the bag that was stolen.
She felt a little mild relief. It wasn’t falling into the hands of anyone she knew. Any thief finding it would have thrown it away as he had thrown away all the other things in the bag except the money, no doubt, and the credit cards.
Her mind returned to Andrew. She sat down and closed her eyes. I didn’t like him smoking, she thought. I had asked him to give it up. Oh, God, now I’d let him smoke all day and all night if he’d come back to me. I love my sister, but I’d turn my back on her for him. I’d never see Heather and Edmund again if it would mean having Andrew back. I’d give everything to have him back….
Barry had a great many tapes of this Indian music of his and not many CDs. Must be his age, thought Marion, pretending to scrutinize his music library after they had come back from the Maharanee. It was a wonder really he hadn’t got it all on LPs, he was so old-fashioned. Her present from Barry she had been given in the restaurant. Not a sari, which she had feared, but a beautiful Indian dress, apricot-colored, embroidered with crystals and sequins. “I want to see you in it,” he said.
She gave a little girlish shriek but ran away into his bedroom, rather regretting she couldn’t give him his reward now. But it wouldn’t do. It would put the kibosh (a favorite Barry word) on all her well-laid plans. The dress was very small but not too small for her. Thank God she was wearing her beige patent shoes with the heels like needles.
He actually gasped when she appeared. “Well, you are a beauty,” he said. “That must be saved for a very special occasion and I think I know what that occasion will be.”
So did Marion and she went home feeling more elated than she had for a long time. Before driving off, Barry took advantage of his position as dispenser of largesse and organizer of birthday parties by kissing her more ardently that usual, his tongue lightly brushing her teeth. She’d give him something next time and make him some halva. Or wasn’t that Indian?
Barry wasn’t the only one who had remembered her birthday after all. Fowler had been back again and left her a present. She unwrapped it. Quite a nice handbag, surely not one of his bin finds. Marion examined it carefully. Of course it wasn’t new, that was too much to expect. There was a scratch on one side near the bottom and the strap was a bit scuffed. But still it was good leather and a lovely color. She opened it and saw the Marc Jacobs label inside. Although the bag remained unchanged, in her eyes it was immediately enhanced and increased in value by this label. Nothing inside it, or was there? She rummaged around and brought out a tape.
Rainy Season Ragas. Just the thing to take over to Barry when she’d made the halva.
Chapter Twenty-two
The West End Werewolf had been arrested. There was no murder charge, but as is the way in these cases, everyone knew because the newspapers knew that as soon as enough evidence had been amassed, he would be charged with causing Eva Simber’s death as well as numerous assaults on young women in the western suburbs. His name was Kevin Dominic Preston from Hounslow. He was twenty-one, an unemployed painter and decorator.
Watching television, Ismay saw him brought to court in a police van, mobbed and threatened as he was hustled into the building with a coat over his head. A woman in the crowd threw something in his direction and a policeman caught her by the arms. Ismay turned it off. She wondered if Andrew had watched it. If he had loved Eva he would have wanted her killer caught. Perhaps he was very unhappy. She understood something. You want your lover to be unhappy if he is unhappy over you, not over someone else. The death of your rival should cause him to rejoice, not grieve, even though this makes him into a monster.
The first time Irene saw her sneak through the side entrance into Barry’s back garden she thought Marion had gone to the wrong house. The second time she saw her, on this occasion going boldly up to his front door and calling something through the letter box, she had a panic attack. Her heart raced, she moaned and choked, laughed and then wept.
She phoned Edmund, but by the time he arrived it was over and she was lying prostrate, unable to speak above a whisper.
“Has something happened, Mother? Have you had a shock?”
She wasn’t going to tell him. “I’m subject to panic attacks. You ought to know that after all this time.”
“Can I make you a hot drink? Get you something to eat?”
“If that’s the best you can offer. I realize it’s not as if you were a doctor.”
Edmund went back to Clapham and Beatrix but to Heather as well and she made everything all right. “Sometimes I think if we could choose our mothers I’d rather have yours than mine.”
Heather laughed. “Mine’s never been so calm and—well, happy, since you’ve been looking after her. And she never sticks her pill on her chewing gum anymore.”
“She never gets the chance,” said Edmund.
In Chudleigh Hill Irene made her weekly evening call to her sister. “Do you happen to know if Marion Melville still looks after those animals for Avice?”
“Oh, my dear, she works for her. She gets a wage.”
“Works?” Irene was in her Lady Bracknell role increasingly these days. “In what capacity?”
“I don’t know. Cleans out the rabbits. Does a bit of shopping. Makes her appointments for her, such as they are. She sleeps there. Or she does sometimes. Not so much since her father’s been so ill.”
“Could you let me have Avice’s phone number? I used to have it, but it seems to have been mislaid.” She spoke in a slightly menacing tone as if the mislaying had been done by some servant and retribution would quickly follow. “I’ve got a pencil. I’ll hold on.”
As she usually did these days while on the phone, Irene positioned herself in the drawing-room bay window, the better to see comings and goings next door.
Joyce came back with the number. “Here it is. Now, how are you? I’m told that the proper answer to that these days is ‘good.’ All the young say it.”
“I’m not at all good, Joyce. I’ve just had a panic attack and I’ve a severe pain in my chest. I think it may be pericarditis.”
“Oh, dear. If you’re meaning to phone Avice now, the chances are Marion will answer.”
&
nbsp; “No, she won’t,” said Irene. “I’ve just seen her going into next door.”
Marion was on her way to see Barry but hadn’t brought the tape or the halva. She had assembled the ingredients for the halva—honey, sesame seeds, nuts and saffron—and then discovered from a footnote in the cookery book that it was a Turkish sweetmeat. As for the tape, she thought she ought to have a look at it before giving it to Barry. She had taken it out of its Perspex case and examined it. Wasn’t it rather peculiar to have a plain black tape cassette in a case with a picture of a man in a turban sailing on a blue lake? Maybe it wasn’t Rainy Season Ragas after all. Typical of Fowler! She had no time to test it now, what with all this running between Pinner and West Hampstead.
No time either to plan surreptitious ways of getting into Barry’s house. She would have to trust to luck, and luck was against her. Irene was stationed in her bay window, talking on the phone. When she saw Marion she waved and smiled. It was the kind of smile you gave, Marion thought, when you wanted to reassure people but actually intended betrayal. Perhaps Irene had been bad-mouthing her to Barry.
If she had, there was no sign of it in his behavior. She was in his arms almost before he had closed the front door and, nestling close to him, she murmured to herself, “Ask me then. Go on. Ask me. Propose.”
Avice was sitting on a footstool, grooming Figaro with a comb and a rubber brush with spikes on its back that looked a bit like a sea urchin. The rabbit sat completely still, showing neither pleasure nor distaste, and reacted not at all when Avice had to get up to answer the phone.
“You are a stranger,” she said.
“Is Marion Melville there, Avice?” Irene knew very well she wasn’t.
“She’s a friend of yours, of course. I’d forgotten. Would you like me to give you her mobile phone number? These things are a mystery to me, but I understand with one of them you can run someone to earth anywhere.”
Inspired, Irene said, “Where does she say she is, Avice?”
“That’s a strange tone to use. As a matter of fact, she’s visiting her father. He’s ill in hospital.”
“He’s dead,” said Irene.
“That must have been very sudden.”
“He’s been dead for twenty years.”
“I see.” Avice said an abrupt good-bye and absent-mindedly returned to her grooming. It was Susanna’s turn. Unable to concentrate, she pulled out a tuft of fur on the teeth of the comb and Susanna fled through the rabbit flap. After she had apologized profusely to the absent animal, Avice found a pencil and wrote on the phone pad: Speak to Mr. Karkashvili tomorrow.
Pamela was going into rehab, where she would have daily physiotherapy. After a fortnight, if she improved the way they expected, she could come home. The rehab center was in Berkshire and it was proposed that Pamela should be taken there in an ambulance, but Michael Fenster insisted on driving her.
“We can stay on for another couple of weeks,” Edmund said.
“But you’ve got possession of your flat.” Ismay tried to keep dismay out of her tone.
“Not till next Monday,” said Heather. “We can move all our stuff in. We can still be here and be with Mum.”
Ismay argued. “But I can easily manage. Now Ed’s got Mum taking her pills regularly she’ll be in the habit of it. She’ll be fine. I can come home at lunchtime. It’ll only be for a short time.”
“Issy, we’ll stay. We’ll stay as long as it takes. Now tell all about Michael. Has he come back to her? Will he move in here with her? He used to be quite fond of Mum—only she was different then.”
Ismay thought of how different she was and of what had made her change. If Edmund left them alone, could she ask Heather now? Take her chance and say to Heather, “You were alone here that afternoon, you were in your bedroom, that room that’s Pamela’s now. Did anyone come into the house? Did Michael come? Or was no one here but you all the time?” Edmund wouldn’t go. He and Heather were about to sit down and eat their supper. She could say to Heather, “Come downstairs later, will you? There’s something I want to ask you.” Edmund would come too. It was impossible.
It’s always been impossible, she thought. I’ve had twelve years to do it in, thirteen years now, and I haven’t done it. I’m never going to know because the fact is I haven’t the nerve to ask her. I never have had. I never shall have.
“I’d better go if I want to see Pam before eight.”
“Tell her Ed and I will be in to see her tomorrow,” said Heather.
She poured herself a glass of wine and started the tape. Whatever she had expected, it wasn’t a human female voice. The woman’s first words meant nothing to her. “My stepfather was called Guy Rolland. He was thirty-three when he married my mother and she was thirty-eight.” Marion stopped the tape. This wasn’t what Barry had told her was a traditional Hindu musical form. She felt a sharp pang of disappointment. Romantic Indian songs were just what she needed to bring Barry to the point.
Afterward she didn’t know why she hadn’t abandoned it. Barry was coming to dinner (“To see my kitten’s little nest”), but there were still two hours to go before his arrival, time to get back into her tracksuit and run down to HMV and pick up a CD. They were bound to have Indian music and she could buy it on her Visa card. It was the idea of getting out of that dress and back into it later that stopped her. Full of anti-Fowler rage, she pressed the “tape on” button. The voice said, “My father and Heather’s had been dead for three years.” Heather. Marion’s attention was caught by the name. She stopped the tape and rewound it. She knew a Heather. Just one woman called that and she was sure she’d never met another.
She played the tape again, heard “Heather,” was given no clue as to the identity of the speaker; but then came a name that was very familiar to her. “Edmund, I have to tell you this, and this seemed to me the best way to do it.” Marion felt a dizzying adrenaline rush. She took a mouthful of her Sauvignon and listened to the rest of it.
Barry arrived a little early, admired her in the dress, and gave her one of his sloppy kisses. Marion thought he seemed taken aback by the modesty of the flat, but perhaps that was all to the good. He would be even more keen to rescue her from it. She had turned down her bed in an inviting way and sprayed the covers and curtains with room fragrance, but it wasn’t exactly an invitation. She knew by this time it was marriage or nothing.
The lamb vindaloo was a great success and Barry seemed to believe that the chutney was her own make and not Waitrose’s. But Marion couldn’t concentrate the way she usually did when she was with Barry. The tape got in the way. Phrases and expressions she had heard kept repeating themselves. This Guy character dying in the bath, Heather in a wet dress, water splashes on her shoes, the woman called Beatrix—their mother?—going off her rocker, the other girl, the sister, not wanting to leave Heather alone in case she did it again. But who was the sister? Marion thought she’d listen to the tape again after Barry had gone and see if there was any clue on it as to where this sister lived and what her name was. Maybe it was enough just to find out if Heather had a sister. But, yes, of course she did. Marion remembered now. It was all coming back to her. Heather had mentioned a sister. Irene had mentioned her at that dinner when Heather had had to ask for a glass of wine and again when she had said the sister was having a nervous breakdown.
“What’s wrong, kitten?” said Barry. “You’re very quiet. Come and give old Barry a cuddle.”
So Marion sat on the sofa beside him, put her head on his shoulder, and curled up her legs so that he could rest a hand on her thigh. She had tried to lay her head in his lap but he reacted uneasily and she shifted to a more decorous position. After he had said he loved her and had never known anyone like her, she began to be confident that the proposal was imminent, but nothing came and at eleven, rather the worse for drink, he used her phone to order a taxi to take him home.
“I may be retired,” he said obscurely, “but still it wouldn’t do for someone like me to be over the limit.”
Marion managed quite a passionate good-night kiss and waved as the taxi moved off. At least Fowler hadn’t turned up. She began to wash the dishes. Marion would no more have gone to bed leaving dirty crockery and cutlery about than she would have let Barry know details of Fowler’s lifestyle. Washing up wasn’t a particularly onerous task. It allowed her to dance about, picking up plates, balancing glasses and stacking cups and, later, stretching upward to put things on high shelves. The by-now cold remains of the curry she put away into the fridge and saved the cold rice too. It would be tomorrow’s dinner. Now Avice had given her the push and taken her out of her will, Marion was starting to feel the pinch. Another couple of weeks and she’d have to become a “job seeker,” living on whatever the Department of Work and Pensions would allot her.
I wonder if I could sell the dress, she thought. She played the tape once more before going to bed.
Ismay got out of the tube at Clapham South and began the walk home. She thought about the women of her own age who lived in Hammersmith and Acton and Shepherd’s Bush and who, since Preston’s arrest, had felt safer now he was locked up. Even here was west enough to be risky. While he was free she had been conscious all the time of the need to be streetwise, to keep to well-lighted places, preferably frequented places, never to take short cuts along alleys or narrow dark lanes.
Their street was never thronged with people, only packed with cars, cars lining pavement edges on both sides. Someone (a man) had once told Ismay that if what he called “one of those lowlifes” approached her she should jump on the hood of a car and scream. She didn’t think she could jump onto a car, and even if she tried such a safety measure she was sure her pursuer would be better at making the leap. But things really were safer now that Preston was under lock and key. She came to the house with the pineapples on the gateposts and climbed the steps under the glass canopy to the front door.