by Ruth Rendell
The orthopaedic ward was full. On one side of Pamela was a very old woman who had had a hip replacement and on the other someone nearer her own age who was the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The television was on all day.
‘I don’t want to watch it but there’s nothing else to do. Isn’t it odd the way when someone gets murdered like that girl Eva Something it’s all over the TV for days and in all the papers with a photo of the victim every day and then it suddenly stops? If they don’t find someone for it, it sort of fades away and you never hear any more. Then, one day years later, someone refers to it as an unsolved crime.’
‘I thought they’d arrested that man they call the West End Werewolf,’ said Ismay.
‘They let him go. He wasn’t the right one. I mean, he wasn’t the Werewolf and he wasn’t the killer either. Just ask me. I see every news and every police programme. This is my supper coming. No, don’t go. I shan’t eat much. It’s just as awful as they say. Have you noticed in those hospital sitcoms on telly you never actually see any of the patients eating?’
A tray was set down in front of Pamela on a folding table. On it was a small salad of bruised avocado, withered lettuce and a piece of raw carrot with a small round pie and boiled potatoes to follow. Pamela asked Ismay to pour her some water from the jug and pass the glass.
‘When Edmund came in he told me he’d been afraid the police might want to talk to Heather because apparently she knew this Eva. You know how they want to talk to the victim’s friends. Not that Heather was a friend but she did know her.’
‘Heather knew Eva Simber? I don’t believe it.’
‘That’s what he said.’ Pamela hesitated. ‘I suppose you know – I’m sorry, Issy, but I’m sure you do know – Eva was seeing Andrew? I didn’t know but he was on telly.’
‘Andrew was on television?’ Saying the name brought the blood to her face.
‘Only for a minute or two. He was with her parents, appealing for the person who killed her to come forward.’
‘I didn’t know.’ All Ismay could think of was, if she were murdered would he have gone on the television to appeal to her killer?
‘Edmund didn’t say it had anything to do with that but I’m sure it must have,’ Pamela said. ‘I mean, Andrew having been your boyfriend. I wondered if she’d – well, told Eva about you and how Andrew had treated you. It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’
Ismay sat very still. She had been looking at Pamela but now she turned her eyes away and down into her lap. ‘What, asked her to give him up, d’you mean?’
‘I don’t know, Issy. It did cross my mind. It would sort of be like Heather.’
Ismay had been going to resume her urging of Pamela to go to the police and tell them what Ivan had done but now she had lost heart. She kissed Pamela and told her she would come again in a day or two.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,’ Pamela said. ‘I could be wrong, anyway. I do wonder sometimes if you know how much Heather cares for you.’
It hadn’t escaped Marion’s notice that whereas, once upon a time, fifty or so years ago, tradition had it that if you slept with a man he wouldn’t want to marry you, the reverse was now true. He wouldn’t marry you unless you’d slept with him. Barry Fenix, however, was getting on a bit. Marion didn’t know how much he was getting on. In telling Fowler he was sixty-two she had merely uttered the first likely number that came into her head. He might be older, though hardly younger.
Did that mean he clung to the prejudice and bigotry of half a century ago or had he moved with the times? She would have to find out first. Perhaps she could steer the conversation round to modern morals. The trouble with that was that there never was much conversation, only Barry talking about India and she saying how wonderful he was and what a lot he knew.
Marion’s sexual experience was very limited. Over the decades there had been two affairs, entered into more for status and kudos than love, and neither had lasted more than a few months. The lovers said she was frigid and though she hotly denied the charge, attributing the coldness of her response to their clumsiness and lack of attraction, privately she told herself it was true and she was glad of it. A lot of trouble was saved. It was a dirty untidy business at best. As far as she was concerned, sex was to be used for manipulation and possibly blackmail, though it would hardly come to that with Barry. If she did sleep with him, would he know she wasn’t a virgin? Would he expect her to be? Would he care? Again, that depended on what he thought of contemporary morals.
She was going out with him again that evening. She kept a tally and this was the seventh time, which possibly meant something. First to call in at Avice’s and explain why she had scarcely been near Pinner for the past week. Sitting in the tube train, she thought about the ultimate reason she must give for failing to turn up six days ago. Her poor old father had passed on. But this was so rash and final. If she told Avice that she would have nothing left to supply her with an excuse for future absences. Surely she must save up dad’s death for when Barry’s engagement ring was on her finger or even when her wedding had been fixed.
She found Avice, with Figaro at her feet, sitting in front of the coffee table on which lay a fresh batch of paperback novels. She looked cross. Marion reminded herself that Avice was a frequent will changer and the arrangement she had come to with Mr Karkashvili might be altered at any time. Also, she needed the miserable wage Avice paid her.
‘I’m so sorry, Avice,’ she said. ‘My poor dad’s gone into a coma. I’ve been sitting at his bedside hoping against hope he’d come to and recognise me. I’ve been holding his hand. It’s seventy-two hours since I’ve had my clothes off.’
‘Well, of course I’m sorry about your father,’ Avice said, stroking Figaro’s head, ‘but there is such a thing as a telephone.’
‘They don’t allow mobiles in the ward where he is. Now I’m here let me see what I can do. If you’ll just jot down a few things I’ll run up to the shops, shall I?’
In the pet shop in Pinner Village she bought a packet of rabbit treat. Gifts for her pets were a surer way to Avice’s heart than giving her chocolates. She changed the peat which covered the concrete flooring in the hutch bedding and made Avice’s lunch. She would return tomorrow, she said, but now she must go back to her comatose father.
On superficial examination, Fowler appeared not to have been back to Lithos Road, though as far as Marion knew he still had a key to the flat. She had been too preoccupied to ask him. Besides, he would have denied having it or else asked her in that lugubrious way of his if she’d prefer him to break in. She couldn’t afford getting someone in to mend more broken windows. But the big dread of her life remained: suppose she brought Barry back here and they found Fowler in the flat. However besotted with her Barry might be, she was sure he’d retreat at the sight and smell of her brother.
He liked to watch for her from his window and see her hopping and skipping (his words) down Chudleigh Hill. Marion always did it as fast as she could and popped in through Barry’s side gate in the hopes Irene wouldn’t see her. Of course, once she had Barry’s ring on her finger, Irene could see her all the time, the oftener the better, but spotting her now might lead to attempts to put a spoke in her wheel.
Barry was cooking for her at home that evening. She sat on the sofa beside him, her shoes off, her feet tucked under her and her head on his shoulder while he played strange music he told her was made by sitars, tablas and tambouras.
‘It’s what they play in India, little one,’ he whispered into her crimson hair. ‘Didn’t know that, did you?’
‘I’m very ignorant, Barry,’ she said humbly, ‘but I’m learning. You’re such a good teacher.’
The curry was particularly spicy and Marion made the mistake of helping herself to lime pickle. Even a tiny spot of that on her tongue burnt like fire. It was the hottest thing she had ever tasted. She choked and cursed under her breath and had to be plied with iced water, tears streaming down her face. But she hardly need have w
orried. Barry loved ministering to her, dried her tears, said she was a poor little kitten and gave her a kiss on her forehead.
After dinner there was more tabla music and cuddles on the sofa. Barry told her how he had seen the Indian rope trick done by a man in Brick Lane while he was pursuing his enquiries there (whatever that meant) and Marion told him about her friend Mr Hussein who came from Ladakh and his son Zafar who had, she said, been madly in love with her.
‘And did you reciprocate?’ Barry asked this in quite a different tone from his usual facetious banter.
‘Pardon?’ said Marion.
‘Did you respond to his – er, ardour?’
‘Oh, no, Barry. Of course not! What an idea! I’ve never been like that, never.’
‘Not that sort of girl, eh? That’s what I like to hear.’
The altar before bed then, thought Marion, relieved. As she had half believed, he was living in the middle of the previous century. Perhaps even before Indian independence came about, some time, she vaguely believed, in the nineteen forties. She must remember to ask him for the precise date. He’d like that.
He drove her home, attempting quite a passionate kiss before she got out of the car. But Marion, remembering her icy chastity, pushed him gently away and flitted up the path to her front door, waving as she went.
Ismay came away from the hospital angry with Heather, determined to go straight to Victoria and have it out with her but Pamela’s final words came back to her. ‘I do wonder sometimes if you know how much Heather cares for you.’ Of course she knew. Hadn’t Heather killed Guy to save her? Heather would do anything for her. The question seemed to come out of the air and present itself to her: is it possible she has done something else for you, something enormous and terrible? Is it possible she has killed Eva?
Ismay was on a bus going to Victoria. She was upstairs in the front seat. The question was such a shock that although the bus was coming up to where she wanted to get off, she sat quite still without moving and let it rumble past the stop. Could this be what she had feared for twelve years? That Heather who had done it once would do it again? The situation wasn’t quite a parallel with the drowning of Guy but close enough. Eva hadn’t set out to injure her but without Eva Andrew wouldn’t have left her. Removing Eva wasn’t a guarantee that Andrew would return to her but it was the only step anyone could take to make it a possibility.
I can’t have it out with her now, thought Ismay as she got off the bus. I can’t mention it to her. Is it possible she could have done it? Would she have known Eva went running in Kensington Gardens? Come to that, how well had she known Eva? So much of this was new that Ismay felt her head reeling. That girl with her skimpy transparent clothes, her socialite’s lifestyle, her county family – much of this had appeared in the newspapers – and her lack of a job or an aim in life, was so nearly the antithesis of Heather that it was hard to believe they could even have spoken to each other. Ismay no longer felt the resentment she had in the hospital over what had seemed like interference on Heather’s part. It no longer angered her to think of Heather asking this girl to send Andrew back to her. It hadn’t worked anyway, had it?
But she wouldn’t go to Heather and Edmund. She needed time alone to review what she had discovered. If she had discovered anything. Sleep was very slow in coming that night. She lay in the dark and, because that was hopeless, put the light on again. Her grief over the loss of Andrew – like a bereavement it had been and still was – had almost emptied her mind of all other concerns. Her long-held worry over Heather and what Heather had done (or possibly not done) had been pushed out of the way. If her mind was a cupboard, Heather and Guy had gone to the back of the top shelf, hidden and almost out of reach. Now the things Pamela had said had brought it to the front, into the light of day, and with the sight of it came a cold sick feeling of dread. It was terrible enough knowing that Heather, as a child, had killed a man. Ismay understood now that there had been some element of fantasy in her fears that she might kill again. It had been a possibility but a remote one. There was nothing remote about Pamela’s reasoning and what she had inferred from it.
I will listen to the tape again, she thought. I will listen carefully to what I said to Edmund but which I never gave him. Could I give it to Heather now? Could I do what I should have done years ago? Could I sit down with her and be gentle with her and ask her? Did you drown Guy for me and did you kill Eva Simber to send Andrew back to me?
She got up and began to look for the tape. At one point she had put it in a plant pot but she remembered taking it out again. Where had she put it? She looked in all the obvious places – what were the obvious places? Were there any? – and ended by ransacking the flat, turning out cupboards and emptying drawers, all of it in vain.
Just before morning, when the dawn was coming and grey light filled the room, she dreamed of climbing the stairs, a much steeper and longer staircase than in reality, up and up to where Heather in her wet dress, stood at the top. But the further she climbed the more the stairs lengthened ahead of her, and though she stretched out her arms, Heather turned away and retreated, disappeared, leaving pools and trails of water behind her.
CHAPTER 21
A little early in getting to Chudleigh Hill – she had been rabbit-minding while Avice went to a matinée of The Woman in Black with Joyce and Duncan – Marion was about to slip into Barry’s house by way of the side gate when Irene came out of her front door with a pair of secateurs in her hand. ‘You must be getting absent-minded, my dear,’ she said in rather a cheerful tone for her. ‘This is where I live.’
‘Goodness, I’ll forget my own name next,’ said Marion with great presence of mind. She didn’t like secateurs. Fowler had nearly chopped off one of her fingers with a pair just like Irene’s when she was ten. She still had the scar. Fowler had intended no harm. She wasn’t so sure about Irene. ‘I can’t stop long, I’ll just pop in and out.’
Bristol cream sherry was produced, the secateurs laid down on the table and Irene was off on a long diatribe about her next-door neighbour. He was sulking, she said. Just because she had made it plain she wasn’t interested in ‘anything like that’. It was very silly of him to hide himself away just because romance was out of the question. Why couldn’t men realise they weren’t all God’s gift to women? Even worse was Edmund’s behaviour. To be fair, it wasn’t his fault but that wife of his who had undue influence over him.
‘They’ve given up their flat and moved in with her mother in Clapham. She’s mad, you know. The mother, I mean. Mrs Rolland, she’s called. I suppose Edmund’s wife thought she’d get free attention from him, though what he can do I don’t know. It’s not as if he was a doctor or even a psychiatrist.’
‘Mad?’ said Marion. ‘My goodness.’
‘There’s a sister living upstairs. Esme or something. Her boyfriend walked out on her and she’s having a nervous breakdown. That means nothing these days. She’s probably mad too. These things are hereditary, you know.’
Marion made her escape after about ten minutes. Irene came out with her, remembered after they had said goodbye that she needed to dead-head the dahlias and had left the secateurs inside. While she was gone Marion rushed into Barry’s garden and had just got inside the side gate when she heard Irene returning and the snip-snip of her decapitations.
‘How’s my kitten?’ asked Barry above the soft keening of a raga. Marion thought he looked very strange in an embroidered silk coat over his flannels, a kind of turban on his head with a feather and a jewel on it. She lifted up her face for a dutiful kiss. ‘I’m in my best bib and tucker for your birthday, my dear.’ He was the only one who had remembered it. ‘I hope you don’t think it too much like fancy dress.’
‘Not on you, Barry. You look gorgeous.’
‘The old lady caught you, I see.’
Marion had heard or read somewhere that men like women who are kind and generous towards other women. ‘Poor thing. She’s so lonely. I had to go in for five minutes.’
‘Ten,’ said possessive Barry. ‘I was counting. Would you like your birthday present now or in the restaurant? I’ve fixed it up that they’re bringing your cake after the main course and one of the waiter-wallahs is going to sing “Happy Birthday to You”. So shall we save the present till then?’
‘Anything you say,’ said Marion, hooking her little hand over his arm and pretending to be enraptured by the music. It was always an oriental restaurant but she was getting used to it.
‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell old Barry which birthday it is?’
‘Oh, just somewhere between thirty and death,’ said Marion with a giggle.
Pamela was sitting in a wheelchair and she wasn’t alone. A man was with her, someone Ismay thought she vaguely recognised, associating him with Guy, though she couldn’t place him. Pamela held out her hand and Ismay bent down and kissed her.
‘Do you remember Michael, Issy?’
Then she did, of course. This was the man who had been engaged to Pamela at the time Beatrix married Guy. This was the man who had left her a week before they were due to be married. ‘How are you?’ she said.
‘You were a little girl when I last saw you.’
‘I was fifteen.’
He was looking at Pamela as if he had fallen in love with her all over again. He took her hand, kissed her in a tender way and left, promising to come back next day. Ismay said goodbye and looked enquiringly at Pamela.
‘I know what you’re thinking. He apologised for all that.’
‘Bit late in the day, wasn’t it?’
Pamela went on as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘He said it was partly due to Guy’s dying like that. He said he felt he couldn’t be connected to our family when he’d actually hoped something like that would happen.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘He said that when Guy had that virus and just seemed to get worse and worse he hoped he – well, he wouldn’t get better.’