by Ruth Rendell
On the arm of a chair in the front room she found a fine black hair, a good eighteen inches long. For someone in her eighties she had miraculous eyesight. “Who’s been here, then?”
“My girlfriend,” said Teddy and, liking the sound of it, said it again. “My girlfriend.”
For some reason that struck Agnes as uproarious and she started laughing. “You take her about in that car, do you?” she said.
“I’m driving it down to Keith in Liphook tomorrow,” said Teddy coldly.
“Right,” said Agnes. “I thought something must account for you cleaning it. You’re not famous for doing things for other people unless there’s anything in it for you. He paying you, is he?”
Teddy got rid of her as soon as he could and returned to polishing the Edsel. At lunchtime Megsie came home, bringing four other yuppies with her, and they all stood about in the garden drinking Buck’s Fizzes and calling over the fence every five minutes for him to join them. (“Leave that old Edwin, why don’t you?” as Megsie put it.) Cleaning the car thoroughly took Teddy all of three hours and he still, naturally, had done nothing about the interior of the boot.
In the afternoon Francine phoned him on her mobile. They had made no arrangement to see each other that day, but they would meet again on Friday. He hadn’t much to say to her, the things his head was full of were not for her to hear and the things she had to tell him, about her stepmother and some job her stepmother didn’t want her to take, didn’t interest him. But he loved the sound of her voice. He could have listened to it all day even if it had been speaking a foreign language.
If he got a sizeable sum for the Edsel maybe he could find a place for them with the money. Rent a flat in some nice place, a flat with gorgeous rooms in it like the ones in Orcadia Place. He imagined a drawing room with glass doors giving on to an Italian garden, surrounded by evergreen trees with dark-green pointed leaves, tubs on the paving stones full of lilies and cypresses. A stone seat, a round pond with goldfish, bronze dolphins whose spouting mouths made a fountain. Francine would sit on the seat in her white Fortuny dress, trailing one hand in the clear water …
At seven in the evening he phoned Harriet Oxenholme. The answering machine replied, Harriet’s voice uttering a bare sentence, none of your detailed or facetious stuff, but simply repeating the number and saying, “Would you like to leave a message?”
He would not. He was satisfied that she had gone away. It was necessary to wait till it was dark, but not till the midnight hours. One terrible difficulty remained and one uncertainty. Should he open that boot and look inside before he left? Or wait until he was up in the mews behind Orcadia Place? He understood now that in some half-unconscious part of his mind, some subliminal region, he had been asking himself that question all day. Under the fantasies of Francine and the Italian garden, under the plans for selling the Edsel and finding a place for him and her to live, had lain that question.
If he opened the boot lid here, there was always the possibility of Nige and Megsie looking out of an upstairs window and seeing the contents. Perhaps, of course, seeing no more than the plastic bag, a gray shiny thing tied up with masking tape. But would a smell be released? That was what he had to think of, the chance of a smell. If Nige and Megsie would only go out, he would be safe to do it, but he knew they weren’t going out. Throughout the course of the afternoon, the Buck’s Fizz drinking, the comments on the Indian summer and eventually the alfresco eating of deep-pan pizzas, he had several times heard them say they intended to put their feet up and watch their Trainspotting video. He dared not open that boot with them only yards away.
But to go to Orcadia Place without knowing what he would find when he eventually opened it? His imagination, always powerful, pictured for him a sodden mass, something like the contents of a drain he had once seen when walking past roadworks, gray, wet, like mud yet full of sticks and stones. There might be powerful acids in a body that could eat through plastic. It was about nine months now since Keith had died.
In the end he made a decision and at ten, when their lights showed him that Nige and Megsie were in their front room, watching their video, he got into the driver’s seat of the Edsel and turned on the ignition. He had to make several attempts before the engine would fire and he realized that cars had batteries and batteries could go flat. Still, it was all right. He reversed out of the carport, turned and emerged through the double gates into the street.
A nasty moment was when the curtains parted in the front-room window next door and Megsie waved to him. He waved back, making a sort of salute. Not for the first time he wondered what it was those two wanted of him, why did they seem to like him when he had repulsed every overture they made?
The night was dark and moonless, but bright up here with white and yellow chemical light. He drove down one of the roads that border Gladstone Park and there, with open space and shady trees on one side and houses fairly distant on the other, he parked and got out of the car. No one was about. Most of the houses were well lit but some only had lights on in upstairs rooms. He walked to the back of the car and stood looking at the boot lid.
In those moments he was there he asked himself if even now it might be possible just to ditch the Edsel, drive it somewhere out in the country and dump it in a wood or on the edge of a field. Who would know whose car it was or whose body it was in its boot? But it wasn’t as easy as that. Megsie and Nige would know. His grandmother would. Miracle Motors would. The police would inquire of the car dealers, of all London dealers in that kind of car, if not of the others. And, anyway, if he dumped the car he wouldn’t be able to sell it and get his five, or maybe ten, thousand pounds.
He put the key into the boot lock and turned it. His hand rested for a little while on the chrome clasp of the boot lid just above the number plate. Then he opened it quickly. He shut his eyes, lifted the lid and opened his eyes.
Nothing was changed.
Inside the boot it looked exactly the same as it had when he closed the lid nine months before. As far as he could tell in the not very strong light. He had been consciously not breathing in, or, rather, breathing only through his mouth. Now he drew the air in through his nostrils. There was no smell, nothing. He began to feel sick, nauseous, even though there was no smell. He bent over a little, approached nearer, and then there came to him, as if from a far-distant charnel house, borne on a gust of wind, a faint dreadful breath.
Quickly he closed the lid. He locked it. He got back into the car and drove off toward the Edgware Road. The Edsel attracted a lot of curious or admiring glances while he was stopped at lights. Someone crossing the road behind him, weaving his way through the cars, slapped the boot lid with the flat of his hand. A shudder ran through Teddy.
From Hall Road he turned into the mews. Here the street lamps were the old-fashioned kind, upended lanterns on black-painted iron posts, and there were only two of them. As far as he could tell, all the garage doors were shut and all the gates. Two cars only were parked.
He parked the Edsel with its rear end up against the double doors of the Orcadia Cottage garage. Climbing over the gate or the wall to unbolt the gate would be easy, but he dared not take the risk. It was one thing to be seen pulling a bag of something out of a car boot and moving it in through an open gateway, quite another to be caught in the burglar act of climbing a wall. Still, the unlikelihood of his being seen at all gave him confidence. No windows overlooked this part of the mews, the flats were over garages a good fifty yards away. The only people likely to see anything would be drivers of cars coming home or the drivers of these two parked cars, come to fetch them.
Carrying Keith’s toolbag, a flashlight and a walking stick that had been his grandfather’s, he walked around to the front of the house and let himself into the front garden by the wrought-iron gate in the wall. Once inside, he or anything he did couldn’t be seen from the street. Unfortunately, it was impossible to get from this front garden into the backyard without passing through the house. He had been a
lmost sure of this last time he was there and now it was confirmed.
Inside the enclosed garden it was quite dark. No lights were on in the house. The myriad leaves that covered it hung still and dark, but each, it seemed, with a tiny surface gleam. He looked up to see if any windows were open on the upper floor, when a light coming on in the porch over his head gave him a fright. All the leaves suddenly became acid-green. He waited for the sound of running feet, the door to be thrown open, but there was nothing. Then he understood that the light had been on a timer. Another had come on inside one of the downstairs front rooms.
Did she have an alarm system? He thought he remembered a key-pad on the hall wall. She was scatty enough to have one and not use it. She was feather-brained enough not to have turned the key in the higher of the two locks on the door. The light was a help to him. It would ensure he made very little noise. He closed his eyes, remembering the layout of the door on the hall side, the shape of the square-headed knob whereby the door was opened, the position of the letterbox and, above all, that there was no second interior box covering its opening on the inside.
Slowly and very carefully, he inserted the walking stick, hook end first, through the letter-box. When it and his forearm were fully pushed through, he bent his arm around and felt with the hook for the knob. The hook tapped against the woodwork, then caught on the knob. He pulled the walking stick toward him, the lock clicked and the door came open. Dropping the stick on the floor inside, he picked up the tool-bag and went in.
As he had thought, the suitcases were gone. She was gone. The place was very silent and quite warm. She was the kind of person rich enough to leave the central heating on while she was away. Now what to do first? Unbolt that gate or explore the cellar?
Well-off as he must be, Simon Alpheton didn’t throw his money about when it came to choosing a restaurant. He never had, Harriet remembered. Still, she had supposed that the acquisition of wealth would have changed his habits. La Ruchetta sounded all right, though she had never heard of it before, and the Old Brompton Road was all right, so long as the place you were going to was at the eastern end of it. The farther her taxi took her westward the more Harriet’s misgivings increased. The driver set her down in Earl’s Court outside a poky Italian restaurant between a betting shop and a tapas bar, its window full of fishing nets and packets of dried pasta.
Simon, who was already there, said it was his favorite place. In the days when he was poor he had lived just around the corner. Harriet thought he looked awful, his hair quite white and down on his shoulders, his belly spreading expansively above the top of his jeans. Jeans! She was wearing a black and white striped silk dress and jacket, the skirt of the dress four inches above her knees and the jacket lapels very wide and thickly encrusted with red and black bead embroidery.
But she could see they thought a lot of him at La Ruchetta. The proprietor came up to their table and made him a sort of bow and called him “Maestro.” People at the other tables nudged each other and stared. Simon’s picture had been in the paper the previous week. He had done a big interview for the Times on the occasion of his new exhibition.
“Must be ten years,” he said to Harriet, without telling her she hadn’t changed or looked younger than ever, or anything like that. “How’s Franklin?”
“Gone to San Sebastian on his hols,” said Harriet.
Whatever might have been the rejoinder to that was lost when a gushing woman holding an album came up to Simon and asked if she could have his autograph for her daughter who was at the Chelsea College of Art. Simon signed and smiled at her and was very gracious. They both ordered the risotto and then the veal, and Harriet had to admit it was very good. The Frascati was very good and so was the Chianti. She was beginning to wonder what would have happened if she’d rung Simon in those distant days after Marc and before Otto and if she’d married him instead of Franklin, when Simon suddenly remarked that he had something to tell her. That was why he had responded to her phone call by asking her here. He wanted to try something out on her.
Before he could say whatever it was there came into the restaurant and approached their table the most beautiful young man Harriet had seen for years. He was tall and slender and dark, with the features of Michelangelo’s David and the smile of Tom Cruise, and he put Otto, Zak and Dilip, not to mention Teddy Brex, in the shade. A wild idea rushed into Harriet’s head that Simon was doing her some kind of long-deferred favor, was for some reason of gratitude or simple generosity producing this boy for her. Disillusionment replaced it. Simon put out his hand and the way he squeezed the other’s hand and looked into his dark eyes left no room for doubt.
“I am going to out myself, Harriet. This coming week. I’m actually holding a press conference—can you believe it? I really want to know what you think, about the wisdom of that, I mean. Not the wisdom of our relationship, I’m not in any doubt about that. Oh, by the way, this is Nathan.”
“But you’re not gay!” said Harriet.
“Well, no, I wasn’t. Or I thought I wasn’t People change with time.” He looked at Nathan again and said fondly, “Look at him, he’s enough to turn Casanova gay!”
They had some champagne. Harriet felt chagrined, though she hardly knew why, for she didn’t want Simon herself and she knew from experience the hopelessness of making overtures to such as Nathan.
“So am I making a wise move?” Simon asked her.
She wanted to say that she didn’t know and she didn’t care. Instead that strange mantra or text she had first come across nearly thirty years before rose to her lips and she uttered it aloud. “Fourteen Manvantaras and one Krita make one Kalpa.”
“Does that mean yes or no?” Simon asked.
“It means do as you like,” she said.
He could tell he had upset her, but without knowing how could only say that he would stick to his decision. Harriet said rather spitefully that at least it would be something to read about in the papers and she looked forward to seeing what the gossip columnists made of it. A deep loneliness engulfed her, a sense of being left out of everything, and the prospect of the solitary homeward journey, the solitary homecoming, filled her with dread.
She realized that she had anticipated something very different for the evening and when she was in the taxi that Simon had had the restaurant call for her she understood, in a rare moment of insight, that she had been looking for a friendship. Perhaps, more accurately, for the renewal of friendship, for someone to like and who would like her, as against someone to lust after.
In the dim back seat of the cab she confronted her future and knew that the encounters with the Zaks and the Dilips must in the nature of things soon end. This year or next year and probably—she clenched her hands—with some instance of gross humiliation. That was when friends would be needed, but she had no friends beyond those social acquaintances of Franklin’s, beyond the always unavailable Anthers and Zithers of this world. An abyss seemed to open before her, the vacant hollow of the years ahead.
In this mood of despair she let herself into Orcadia Cottage and went straight upstairs. A frightening feeling was replacing her loneliness, a sensation that she had no idea of what to do, no notion of how to pass the time, the night, there was absolutely nothing she wanted to do. Not eat, drink, watch television, read, listen to her phone messages, if any, not even go out again—where could she go? Not go to bed, not sleep, not even induce sleep with a sleeping pill.
But she walked into her bedroom, took off her coat and threw it on the bed. Close up against the mirror she looked into her own face before turning sharply away. Far from weakening her, despair made her feel full of a wretched energy so that now she longed to do something active, even violent, attack a punchbag, kick at something soft and yielding. Or break the mirror and see her face and her body and the whole room crack and shiver and collapse.
If she had been inclined to such things she would have gone running. Run around the block, stopped somewhere and worked out the way she had once
seen a man exercise in Regent’s Park, doing step aerobics up and down one of the seats. But she wasn’t and she couldn’t. She stretched out her arms, raised them above her head, thought of screaming.
Then she heard it. The door that opened on to the top of the cellar stairs. Someone had come into the house by that door and closed it behind him, very nearly slammed it.
It must be Franklin. Only Franklin had a key. For some reason he had come back. His woman had failed to be there to meet him. No one else, no intruder, would move with such confidence, make so much noise. Yet he never went near the cellar or the cellar stairs. She might almost have said he didn’t know the cellar was there.
An undefined anger filled her, rushing through her veins, heating her face. What was he doing? Why was he here? Knowing her to be out, guessing she would go out the moment he was gone, he was putting into action some plan that involved the cellar, that involved deceiving her. He must be hiding something there, and hiding it from her. Or even setting some sort of trap for her. That would be like him, she thought, envisaging his rictus grin and hearing his teasing voice.
She looked for the pole with the hook that opened the fan-light and found it in the landing cupboard. It amused her to think of hitting him with it, striking him, perhaps mortally, and explaining afterward that she thought he was a burglar, had been frightened out of her wits. She started down the stairs.
The time-switch had caused the porch light to come on and should have done the same by the light in the dining room. Inexplicably, it hadn’t. But the light at the head of the cellar stairs had come on through human agency. The door at the head of the cellar stairs, which was never opened, which hadn’t been touched for years, was open now. She forgot her anger in her desire to frighten him, simply to give him a shock. She wouldn’t hit him—well, that depended on what he was doing.