A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  Noele looked her up and down rather grimly when she arrived for work in jeans and an endangered-species T-shirt with leopards on it, and suggested she change into “something from the Moschino rack.” Willing to compromise a little, Francine looked for plain black trousers, but nothing she found fitted. “I’m afraid they’re miles too big, Noele.”

  The proprietor of New Departures was herself a scrawny, taut-bodied woman, a hook-nosed white-blonde, brimming with nervous energy. She said rather unpleasantly, “I hope you’re not going to take an insensitive attitude toward our clients.” Noele had clients, not customers. “Normal-sized women don’t feel very happy having adolescents flaunt their size-six bums at them, you know.”

  As it happened, Francine had little opportunity to flaunt anything, for most visitors to the shop were received and fêted by Noele, who did all the showing and persuading herself. Francine spent most of her time in the workroom. There she received garments brought to be sold and her function was to examine them for flaws and wear. The slightest blemish disqualified a dress or suit for New Departures. If anything seemed perfect to Francine, Noele had to be summoned to fix the price. Even though the garment had to have been dry-cleaned and still in its plastic bag, this was always very low, allowing Noele to make an enormous profit of something like two hundred percent.

  Occasionally, if the hem of a dress or skirt was coming down it would have to be repaired. Noele was appalled when Francine said she couldn’t sew. “What on earth did they teach you at that expensive school of yours?”

  “Maths and French and English literature and history,” said Francine. She said it politely, though her patience was tried, and she smiled.

  “There is no need to be sarcastic,” said Noele.

  When she arrived at the shop in the mornings she looked back at the window from which Julia watched her. Julia’s face she couldn’t see, it was too far away, only the movement of the curtain. And when she left Noele’s at five she saw the curtain move again. Julia was on the watch for her and would be waiting.

  Julia asked Francine how she had got on at work in much the same way as a mother questions a child newly started at primary school. Francine must be tired, on her feet all day, she would want an early night. It would be unwise to go out in the evenings during the week and, in fact, said Julia with a certain triumph, none of Francine’s so-called friends had phoned to make arrangements to meet her. “I am afraid you must be prepared for some of those people to drop you now you’ve left school and aren’t seeing them on a daily basis. It’s the way of the world, Francine.”

  “It’s down to me to phone them just as much as it is for them to phone me.”

  Julia’s smile was sympathetic, a little rueful. “I wonder if they think themselves a cut above you socially? I wouldn’t be surprised. School is a great leveler and when it’s past …”

  Outwardly, Julia seemed serene. She showed nothing of her inner anxiety. If Richard were at home she would have told him everything, but Richard was in Brussels till the weekend. It had begun with the phone call. A voice, a young man’s, with an accent Julia dubbed Brent Cross, had asked to speak to Francine. With no preliminaries, no pretense at courtesy, more abrupt than one could imagine. “I want to talk to Francine.”

  “Who is that?” Julia said in her icicle tone, long drawn-out and cold.

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “My stepdaughter is not available,” said Julia and put down the phone.

  Probably there was no connection between that call and the car. Their street, of course, was always full of cars, parked cars and passing cars—what street is not? But this was a bright-scarlet sports car with no top, or with a soft top that folded down, a two-seater and very speedy. It sped along the street with its radio blaring. Down the street it cruised at ten in the morning and up again at eleven. Back it came at four in the afternoon, rock music throbbing from its open windows and roof, but it had disappeared by the time Francine returned home.

  The phone call wasn’t repeated and the car didn’t come back. Julia might have thought no more of it, but for the appearance of the man. Again, she had no reason to connect him with the phone call. He might have been the driver of the red car, for that driver too had been young and dark, but of that she couldn’t be sure. She first saw him on the opposite side of the road at about midday.

  Almost directly opposite the house was a bus-stop with a shelter. He was sitting in the shelter, reading a book. Or pretending to read a book. Julia happened to be looking out of the window when he arrived and sat down in the middle of the seat.

  It had occurred to her, ten minutes before, that she had no idea what Francine did about lunch on these working days. She could ask her, or Noele, but it might be just as satisfactory to observe the shop door from her window. It was possible Francine went out alone and ate in some café. Anything could happen to her, she might meet anyone.

  She didn’t see Francine, but she saw the young man. And in that sight Julia’s world turned over. In the past she had thought of men in connection with Francine, but only the man and other vaguely conceived psychopaths who might want to harm her physically. Now a terrible thing occurred to her, that Francine sooner or later might attract a man and be attracted by him.

  In her eyes Francine wasn’t attractive. She was too thin and too dark, too unlike Julia’s own ideal of beauty. And she was too young—or so Julia had thought. Now she realized that Francine was by no means too young, she was eighteen, an age which many people would call too old to have a first boyfriend.

  Hot tides of pain and panic surged through Julia. She broke out into a sweat. Francine as a young woman with a lover was a prospect she knew she couldn’t face. Even contemplating it made her feel sick. And the horrible thing was that Francine was probably highly sexed. Damaged or disturbed people often were. “It will destroy her,” said Julia aloud into the empty room.

  “I will lose her,” she whispered to herself.

  The young man on the seat looked dangerous. He was too handsome and too casual. As if he cared about nothing except getting what he wanted. Julia stared at him, willing him to go away, to prove her wrong.

  Two more people came to the bus-stop. One of them sat down and a third looked as if she would like to, but the man wasn’t going to shift along, not he. He sprawled over half the seat with his right leg crossed over his left above the knee. Julia thought of going over there and speaking to him. She would go up to him and tell him off, ask him why he hadn’t the courtesy to let an old lady sit down. She was considering doing this when the bus came. The other three people got on it, but he didn’t. He remained where he was.

  Julia hated that. It frightened her. But what could she do? He had a perfect right to sit there if he wished and as long as he wished. She kept returning to the window throughout the day, but by four he was gone. There was no reason to suppose a link between the phone call, the red sports car and the young man in the shelter, but she did suppose one. She supposed, too, a link with Francine and longed for Friday when Richard would come home.

  On the following afternoon he was back. Julia felt sick with apprehension. He was sitting there reading, occasionally glancing at the house. At last, half an hour before Francine was due to leave New Departures, she went across the road and accosted him. He looked up and fixed on her dark, cold, expressionless eyes.

  “What exactly do you think you’re doing here?”

  “Sitting,” he said. “Reading.”

  “I can see you’re sitting and reading, I’m not blind. Why are you doing it here? You’re not waiting for a bus, I’ve watched you. Haven’t you got a home to go to?”

  The stare he fixed on her was unnerving. She had the strange incongruous impression that he was an actor and one who has mastered the art of timing. He was not afraid to be silent, to create a long enduring pause. At last he said, “Go away.”

  Julia couldn’t handle it. She said, with bluster, “If you’re still here in half an hour I’m calling the
police.”

  Walking home, Francine saw no one, heard nothing. She was deep in thought. If she stuck Noele’s for another month that was about all she was going to manage. Yet she had to stick it, for if she told her father how much she hated New Departures and how bored she was, Julia would say that went to prove what she always said, that Francine wasn’t fit to be in the outside world and couldn’t cope with even a little part-time job.

  Now she wished she hadn’t acquiesced in that gap-year plan. It was really only because Holly was taking a year out, she had somehow thought she would be with Holly and they would do things together and enjoy themselves, while in fact Holly was so busy working for her MP and going about with Christopher that they hardly spoke and seldom saw each other. Thanks to her own weakness and impulsiveness she had fallen into Julia’s trap and was due to pass another year of her life in tedium and near-imprisonment.

  She refused to look up in the direction of that window, from which Julia would certainly be gazing, smiling and probably waving, and even stayed on the other side of the wide street. She didn’t want to tease Julia, she had never done that, though she had been tempted, but she wasn’t above walking along behind the row of parked vans and delivery trucks that would conceal her from Julia’s view. Eventually, of course, she must cross the street and she decided to do so on the pedestrian crossing, a few yards along from the bus-stop.

  There was someone waiting for a bus. She wasn’t sure afterward if she recognized him first or he her. Perhaps recognition was simultaneous.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Oh, hi, hello.”

  “Do you …” he tried, and then he tried again, “do you remember me?”

  “You’re the mirror maker.”

  “Yes.”

  He stood looking at her.

  She couldn’t recall anyone looking at her so intensely before. It was as if he were studying her, learning her, to store up for future use. “Do you,” she said tentatively, “live around here?”

  He shook his head. “I came to see you. I’ve seen where you work and I’ve been waiting here to see you.”

  “Have you?” She felt the blood come up into her face. The heat of it embarrassed her.

  “That woman in your house is staring at us out of the window,” he said. “She came out and asked me why I was here.”

  “Why are you?”

  “I told her to go away. Can I come in with you for a bit?”

  Her horror must have shown. He stared intensely at her, not smiling, his face hard with concentration. Then, in that moment, the bus came. If he realized she didn’t know, but she knew at once that the bus would cut them off from Julia’s view. A man got off it, then an old woman, taking her time.

  “If I write down my number,” he said, “will you give me a phone?”

  Before she knew what he was doing he had taken her left hand in his and turned back the sleeve of her cardigan. It was then that she noticed the mutilation of his little finger, how it had been cut off at the first joint. He began to write in ballpoint on her wrist. She held her hand stiffly for him, extending the fingers. It was a phone number he wrote.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I really can’t.”

  “Please. I want you to.”

  The bus started. She ran across the road behind it, avoiding a swerving bicycle. He might still be there, but she refused to look back. She pulled her cardigan sleeve right down over the ballpoint writing and halfway across her hand. Julia opened the front door just before she got there, a favorite trick of hers.

  For a moment Francine thought Julia was going to seize her by the arm and pull her into the house. It was just the impression she got from her stepmother’s stance and extended hand. But Julia restrained herself, stepping back and quickly pushing the door shut behind Francine. “Who were you talking to?”

  It would be easy to lie and say it was a stranger who had asked her the time or which bus went to Chiswick. “Someone I met at that Private View I went to.”

  “Do you mean he picked you up, Francine? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, Julia, I’m not saying that. I was introduced to him.”

  “Do you know he has twice been hanging about out there, spying on this house? He came driving down here in a red sports car. I went over to speak to him and he was extremely rude. Your father will be horrified.”

  Francine went upstairs to her room. She looked out of the window at the bus shelter but of course he was long gone. Almost any one of her friends would know what to do in this situation, but she didn’t. And although she was sure they would be very free with advice she didn’t want to ask them. She must ask herself. Did she like him? Did she want to know him better? He was young and good-looking, and she thought he was clever and she liked the way he talked.

  She shut her eyes and put her head in her hands and thought that if he touched her, put his arm around her, held her hand, put his mouth on her mouth, she wouldn’t hate it. When he took hold of her hand to write on her wrist she hadn’t minded. She had even felt a kind of strange little thrill as his skin touched hers. But phone him? Use that number and phone him? She turned back her sleeve and contemplated the number. Wash it off, forget it. She was saying this to herself when Julia’s voice came up the stairs.

  “Francine?”

  This always happened when Julia had been harsh or dictatorial. She would hector, then ten minutes later cajole.

  “Francine?”

  “What is it?” Francine opened her door, put her head over the banisters.

  “I’ve made tea, dear. I thought we might have an early meal and go to the cinema. Would you like that?”

  Francine used the phrase she never used to anyone else and which she disliked, but which best expressed her feelings. “I don’t mind.”

  She went into the bathroom and washed her hands and wrists, but first she wrote down the phone number. She wrote it in three separate places to be on the safe side.

  18

  Teddy’s ability to concentrate, usually so good, had been badly shaken this past week. The sight of the girl Francine at close quarters was responsible for that. He had never before felt like this. Why couldn’t he get her out of his head? Why did he see her face when he shut his eyes and look for her in every young dark-haired girl he passed? He didn’t even know what he wanted from her except to have her with him and look at her all the time. Every time the phone rang he jumped and something knocked at his chest wall.

  He had got into the habit of snatching up the receiver and speaking into it breathlessly. That was what he had done when the woman phoned. His disappointment was correspondingly stunning, like a heavy blow to the back of his knees. He sat down. The voice was shrill and ringing with an upper-class accent. She said she had read his advertisement and wanted some joinery done. A cupboard and shelves to be built into an alcove. Would he come and see her? She was Harriet Oxenholme and she lived at 7a Orcadia Place, NW8.

  He ought to have been delighted, but all he felt was, maybe he’d get some money out of it. The name ought to have rung bells, but the only name that meant anything or affected him at all was Francine Hill’s. He shut his eyes and pictured himself as he had been, holding her white hand in his, writing his phone number on her white wrist. Her hand had been soft and warm and dry. The skin felt like silk. Why hadn’t she phoned him?

  He remembered how he had half forgotten her number. It hadn’t been written down and he had had to hold it in his head. But he had looked up her father in the phone book and found the number. Perhaps she had washed his number off her wrist or that woman who had come and questioned him had taken hold of her by force and washed it off. He never found it hard to imagine violence.

  Go back to that bus shelter and try again? The idea was humiliating, he wouldn’t do that, he would never show himself to that woman again. He could go to that shop she worked at and ask her to go out with him. How did you ask? Just said, will you come out for a drink, presumably, or, we could go for a walk. She
might say no.

  And should he take the Edsel? Should he go down to St. John’s Wood in the Edsel? Maybe not. It was a reckless act, however you looked at it, taking the Edsel anywhere. All that was needed to put an end to everything was a minor accident, even a flat tire. Better I get the tube, go down on the Jubilee Line.

  The phone rang as he was leaving. His heart jumped. It was just after one. Somehow he thought that if she phoned it would be from that shop and at her lunchtime. But it wasn’t her, it was a woman with water coming through her kitchen ceiling who had been given Keith’s number.

  “He’s retired and gone to live in Liphook,” said Teddy.

  A girl got into the tube train who looked a lot like Francine, but a cheap, shabby version of her. Like a poor reproduction of a great painting, Teddy thought, or chipboard with a veneer made to resemble oak. This girl had bitten nails and a spot in the middle of her right cheek and bony knees. Really, it was only her hair that was like Francine’s and her dark eyes. Francine was perfect. You could take Francine’s clothes off and train a powerful arc lamp on her and search her all over and find no flaw, no mark. One day he would do that.

  He got out at St. John’s Wood, walked down Grove End Road and across Alma Gardens. Orcadia Place was hidden away where you would least expect a street of houses to be, off the end of Melina Place. He stood still for a moment, for he hadn’t known such places as this existed in London. It was like somewhere in the country, a corner of a country town, or a picture in a book of photographs of a country town. And it was quite quiet. Traffic could be heard only distantly and like the humming of bees. Orcadia Cottage was an invisible house, nothing of it to be seen behind the tall barrier of many varieties of leaves, feathery and pointed, shiny dark-green and tender pale-green, bronzed gold and pastel-yellow. He opened the iron gate and went in.

  Flowers everywhere, he didn’t know the names. He only knew roses and of those there were plenty, pink and red and white, heavily scented. Window boxes and baskets spilled out pink and purple trumpet flowers and blue daisies and long sprays of silver leaves. They blossomed against a backcloth, a rippling layered canopy, of glossy leaves, green but touched with bronze. Most of the front of the house was covered by this foliage, like a drapery or a dense but faintly trembling screen.