by Ruth Rendell
‘Am I what?’
‘I can’t do this on the phone,’ said Heather Litton. ‘Could we meet? I’d really like to talk to you.’
‘Talk about what? I don’t know you. I don’t know what you want.’
‘I want you to give him up.’
‘You’re mad,’ said Eva. ‘I’m going to put the phone down. Goodbye.’
Not as sophisticated and detached as she liked people to think, Eva felt rather shaken. When Andrew phoned should she tell him? Should she even break her rule and phone him? Pinning her newly crinkled hair on top of her head, she stepped into the shower. She had long ago mastered the art of so twisting and contorting her body as to stand under the very hot cascade without wetting her head. You looked so ghastly in a shower cap even when there was no one to see you.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to phone Andrew and tell him or perhaps it would be better not to. Or should she tell Daddy? Daddy would tell her simply to forget it. He would treat this development the way he treated all her concerns and those of her mother and her sister. ‘Women’s nonsense,’ he called them. Or ‘a storm in a vodka breezer’, which he thought very funny. He wanted her to marry Andrew. It would be what he, in his incredibly outdated way, would call a ‘good match’. Money should ally itself with money, in his view, and Andrew was the sort of person who would one day be on the Queen’s Bench. Some other fine day, because he was made of the right material, he might become Lord Chancellor or, if this office no longer existed, Attorney-General. Eva didn’t care. She didn’t want to marry anyone but just have a good time with a lot of men and get her picture in the papers.
She dialled one-four-seven-one, proud of herself for remembering it, and was told that she had been called at nine thirty-one that morning and given the caller’s number. She wrote it down, more to convince herself that she really was grown-up and efficient than for any use it would be. The last person she wanted to speak to was that woman.
Arranging their portable possessions in the two rooms over the shop in Rochester Row, Heather and Edmund had it all done by eight. They sat down side by side with mugs of tea on the table in front of them and Heather told him about the phone call she had made. ‘I’m determined to get to speak to her, Ed. I thought I could do some running myself. We really ought to take some exercise, you know, you and I. We don’t have any. I thought I could run round St James’s Park. She’d just come in from her run when I phoned so I think she goes out at seven thirty and where she lives it’s bound to be St James’s Park.’
‘What are you going to say to her?’
‘Don’t look like that. I’m going to be nice. I thought I could find out how serious she is about Andrew and if she’s not, if it’s just a bit of fun, I’m going to get her to give him up.’
‘Why should she?’
‘I don’t know why, Ed, but I think I would if someone asked me the way I asked her and if I didn’t love the man. Nothing would have made me give you up. Anyway, no one asked me. I wouldn’t have if they had. But that’s because I love you.’
After Edmund had finished kissing her and whispering that they ought to go to bed now, she said, ‘I’m going to appeal to her better nature. I’m going to tell her she’s very beautiful – her picture’s in the Evening Standard and she is – I’m going to say, you could have anyone, so please give him up for my sister’s sake.’
‘You’ve no guarantee he’d go back to Ismay or she’d take him back.’
‘She would,’ said Heather.
‘I’m doing my run,’ Eva said in the indignant tone someone might use to say she had an appointment with the Queen. ‘I can’t just stop in the middle.’
‘Five minutes,’ the woman said. ‘We could sit on this seat for five minutes.’
‘You’re the one who called me!’
‘That’s right. You wouldn’t talk on the phone so I came to find you here. Please sit down for a minute.’
Eva, who was dressed in a pink satin jumpsuit this morning, sat down reluctantly, first brushing fastidiously at the seat. This interruption of her morning workout she considered a great nuisance. The woman beside her belonged in a category she deeply disapproved of. It puzzled her that any girl in her twenties could set foot outdoors without eye make-up. And to have short fingernails that had never had the attention of a manicurist! She noticed the wedding ring on the left hand. Someone must have married her but surely no one Eva would have looked at twice. Only the very uncharitable would have called her overweight but she’d never get into a size ten again, if she ever had. Nice hair or it would be if she had it properly cut. Having summed up Heather Litton, Eva let her eyes come to rest on the woman’s knees in what were probably Gap jeans and said, ‘Well? What is it?’
Instead of an answer she got a question. ‘Did you tell Andrew about my phone call?’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘I’d just like to know if you told him.’
Eva shrugged. ‘No. No, I didn’t. I thought it was all too stupid. I mean, asking me to give up my boyfriend just because of someone else he’s got tired of. Why tell him?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Do you love him?’
‘That’s not your business.’
‘OK, it’s not. None of it’s exactly my business. It’s yours and my sister’s and Andrew’s. I’m interfering, I know, but I think I’ve got good reason.’ Heather was looking at her with deep earnestness and Eva recognised sincerity in her blue eyes. ‘But if you love him,’ she went on, ‘if you mean to stay with him and maybe marry him – well, I’d understand. I love my husband and no one could make me give him up. He’s the great love of my life. But if it’s just a fun thing, if you fancy him and it’s sex and whatever and nothing more, couldn’t you give him up and find someone else?’
‘Quite a speech,’ said Eva.
Heather went on as if Eva hadn’t spoken. ‘He was with my sister for two years and I think they’d have stayed together, maybe for always, if you hadn’t come along. You met him at that Christmas party at his parents’, didn’t you?’
‘What if I did?’
‘I know you did. That’s when he started – leaving Ismay. That was the beginning of it. It’s not a very long time. You could give him up now and it wouldn’t be much of a split. You’ve known him less than six months.’ Heather looked into her face and Eva was very conscious of her superiority in looks over the other woman. ‘I’m pleading with you, Eva. He doesn’t mean all that to you, does he? He means the world to my sister. She’s breaking her heart. When he went he took away everything that made life worth living for her. He’d go back to her if you weren’t there.’
Eva got to her feet, shaking her head vigorously. ‘I won’t give him up. I don’t want to.’ She was aware she sounded like a petulant child but she didn’t care. ‘If he knew he’d think I was mad. No one does that sort of thing. No one gives up a man because someone she doesn’t know asks her to. It’s crazy.’
‘You could be the first.’
Eva began to run. She called back over her shoulder, ‘Don’t follow me. I don’t want to see you again.’ Inspired to utter the worst insult she could think of, she added, ‘You’re such a bore.’
If Ismay could have heard Heather’s words she would have agreed with them entirely. Of course she would take Andrew back. She loved him. Nothing could change that. Eva Simber couldn’t love him, not yet. She had only known him six months, if that. Ismay forgot that she had fallen in love with Andrew at first sight, the first moment she saw him across that crowded room – like in the song. As Heather had done, she found Eva’s address in the phone book and looked up Sark Street, SW1 in her London atlas. Unlike Heather, she had no clear idea of what she would say to Eva Simber or even if she would go so far as to speak to her at all. Perhaps she would simply note where she lived, walk about a bit to catch a glimpse of her if she came home or went out. It was also possible, she thought miserably, that she might see Andrew. That would be terrible but it would be glorious as well.
Once her idea had taken shape she was unable to rest until she had put it into practice.
Now her ally, Pamela was the only person she discussed this with and she advised her strongly against it. ‘What good will it do? You’ll only make yourself more unhappy.’
‘I couldn’t be more unhappy.’
‘Then better stay the way you are. If she sees you she’ll despise you and if he does he’ll just be exasperated. People don’t like being chased. It doesn’t take much for them to call it harassment.’
‘You know something, Pam? I don’t care. I just don’t care.’
The next evening she had a reception she was organising for a client. It was in Westminster and it ended at eight thirty. The night was fine, still light at nine, and she decided to walk, to take the Horseferry Road and cross Vincent Square. The place was quiet and there was little traffic, Maunsel Street a garden of spring flowers and the grass in the square as green as a parakeet. Tears gathered behind her eyes and flowed silently down her cheeks. She had nothing to wipe them away with but the backs of her hands. I shall be ‘all tears’, she thought, I shall turn to stone like that woman whose children all died. The woman was in classical mythology but she couldn’t remember her name or what had happened to her.
Emerging into the Vauxhall Bridge Road, tales of the West End Werewolf came into her mind. The girl he had tried to strangle had described him, young, not very tall, brown hair, clean-shaven. Thousands of men fitted that description. Anyway, he attacked at night and though after nine, it was still light. The only people about were a couple of middle-aged Asian men, a young girl on her own walking fast and a woman with a child in a buggy. She crossed the road and found Sark Street round the back of Pimlico tube station.
Eva’s flat was the top of a narrow white-brick terraced house with steps and pillars. Lights were on in every window upstairs. Ismay marched daringly up the steps to the two bells and read Eva’s name. She thought, I could ring the bell and fetch her down and talk to her. I could show her my tears. She held her forefinger, quivering with fear, an inch from the bell and then she lost her nerve and retreated down the steps. Eva wouldn’t be at home, anyway. Girls like Eva never were at home in the evenings, seldom before three in the morning. The lights meant nothing.
Ismay went back to the Vauxhall Bridge Road, found a small humble café, occupied by two couples, two men and a solitary girl like herself, and bought herself a filter coffee. She sat over her coffee for a long time while it grew dark outside. Brightly lit red double-deckers went past. A fire engine roared and howled on its way to the Embankment. She had had nothing to eat at the reception and quite a lot to drink. She bought herself a stale Danish pastry and a chocolate bar. Then she walked back to Sark Street where not a soul was about and Eva’s lights were still on, unchanged from when she last saw them.
There was no point in staying. There had never been any point in coming. Torturing herself, she imagined Andrew dancing with Eva in some dimly lit place where the music was soft. Andrew was a good dancer, especially at the tango. She walked back to Pimlico station and got into a tube to Brixton.
It was far more crowded than she had expected and she had no hope of a seat. She got out at Stockwell and found the Northern Line platform densely packed. It was a crush to get on to it at all. That always meant only one thing: that no Northern Line train had stopped here for maybe twenty minutes and meanwhile passengers had poured on to the platform from the street and, like her, from the Victoria Line. The public address system emitted its usual incomprehensible announcements, the accent Chinese, the interference with transmission an ear-splitting crackle. Whatever the voice had been saying, a train appeared, clearing perhaps a third of the people who waited. Within a minute or two a mob surged through the entrance, most of them young men, drunk and noisy. Another train came and this time she got on. She was carried on, pushed from behind and jostled on either side, shoved and pulled, buffeted to stand up against the opposite doors, clinging for dear life on to one of the uprights.
The train started with a lurch. She reached for her handbag to adjust the strap on to her shoulder. It was gone.
CHAPTER 14
Edmund heard Heather put the receiver down. He was in the living room of their flat, hanging the few paintings he had brought from Chudleigh Hill, polishing the glass and renewing the picture cords, and Heather was in the tiny hallway.
‘I could hear you,’ he said when she came in. ‘You sounded quite friendly.’
‘If we are, isn’t it better that way?’
He turned round and looked at her. A deep flush coloured her forehead and cheeks. He had never seen her look like this before and he realised he was witnessing some powerful emotion which somehow changed her face but he was unable to say what that emotion might be. Fear? Shame? Pity? No, anger.
‘What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ she said and her voice was low-pitched and slow. ‘Nothing really.’
‘She won’t give him up? No, of course not. Did you ever seriously think she would?’
‘I hoped.’ Heather gave a cry of rage, of fury, and clenched her hands. He had never seen her lose control before and he stared. ‘I hoped she’d do a – well, a good action. She’s not in love with him. She’s more or less said.’ She grew calmer and took a deep breath. ‘You said we sounded friendly. She talks to me now like I was a friend of hers. She calls me by my name. But she won’t budge. She wants to keep hold of him.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
She turned on him and he expected something he had never had from her, shouting, reproach, anger, perhaps insults. But she put her parted lips together, touched her hot cheeks with her fingertips and came up to him to kiss him.
‘I shall try again, Ed. I can’t give up.’
‘I can see that.’
‘I forgot to tell you. Issy’s had her handbag stolen, her Marc Jacobs bag.’
‘Who’s Marc Jacobs?’
‘You sound like some old judge. They never know who anyone is. He’s a designer. Luckily, she always carries her keys separately but the thief took everything else, her wallet with quite a lot of money in it and three credit cards, her mobile, her diary. It happened when she was getting into the tube.’
‘Coping with all that may at least take her mind off Andrew.’
‘It won’t,’ said Heather, thinking, though fondly, that that was just like a man, a man’s judgement.
Eva hadn’t told Andrew and she hadn’t told Daddy. When Andrew came round to take her out to dinner she had asked him if a socialite was the same thing as being in the Labour Government and he had laughed so much that his face had turned unbecomingly red. She had shouted at him not to be so mean and beastly and his laughing some more had put an end to her speaking to him at all for the next hour. As for Daddy, he’d probably advise her to tell the police. Daddy loved the police almost as much as he loved the army and was thrilled to see so many of them carrying guns these days.
Besides, telling Andrew would require bringing her own feelings about him out into the open. Young as she was, Eva was the kind of girl who believes it is best never to show a man how you feel about him and lethal to let him believe you will hang on to him at all costs. And anyway, she wouldn’t and she didn’t really know how she felt about him. The truth was that if this Heather persisted she probably would give him up, simply to avoid trouble. If she persisted and it had begun to look as if she would.
She had phoned again two days after their meeting. It was early in the morning and Eva was still in bed, it being Thursday, her day for going to the swimming pool and her yoga lesson. She said her name and asked if Eva had thought any more about what she had said in the park.
‘No, I haven’t. I told you. It’s not your business. Anyway, he wouldn’t go back to your sister.’
‘Is he there now?’
‘He’s just gone.’ It wasn’t true. Eva knew it was weakness on her part to answer Heather Litton’s questions but Eva didn’t want th
e woman thinking theirs wasn’t a full sexual relationship. ‘D’you know what he told me?’ She was driven to be spiteful. ‘He told me he doesn’t know now how he let himself be seen about with your sister for so long.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Heather said.
‘Believe what you like. It’s true.’ Eva sat up in bed, wishing there were someone to bring her coffee and orange juice and half a piece of crispbread as there was at home with Mummy and Daddy. ‘Look, what’s in this for you, for God’s sake? Andrew wasn’t your boyfriend.’
‘My sister means a lot to me. I don’t like seeing her suffer.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if she’s suffering. I didn’t mean to cause her pain. I couldn’t help Andrew falling in love with me.’
Eva was dimly aware that she was starting to be – well – almost on good terms with Heather. She couldn’t help it. Though not much older than she, Heather had a motherly manner, a way of talking reasonably and patiently that Eva wasn’t used to in her contemporaries, still less her own mother. ‘She’ll get over it, Heather,’ she said rather desperately. Using that Christian name made it worse. ‘People always do. She’ll meet someone else.’
‘I used to think that but now I don’t know. I don’t think so.’
‘People always do,’ Eva said again. ‘I’ll have to go.’
‘St James’s Park again?’
‘No, it’s not. And I don’t want you following me anywhere. Is that clear, Heather? I don’t want it. It’s harassment.’
‘OK, I’ll phone you tomorrow.’
Eva didn’t answer that. She said goodbye and put the phone down.
Avice lifted her eyes from the paperback she was reading and told Marion Mr Karkashvili would be coming to lunch on Thursday.
‘That’s an interesting name,’ said Marion as if she had never come across it before.
‘Yes, it’s Georgian, dear.’ Avice explained rather condescendingly that she referred to Georgia in Asia and not Georgia in the United States. ‘His grandfather came here from Tiflis or whatever they call it these days.’