by Ruth Rendell
He had found them in a bin outside the Dorchester, rainbow-coloured ones, apparently unused.
‘They’re no use to me,’ Marion said. ‘I haven’t got a computer.’
‘If I can find one I’ll give it to you for a wedding present.’
‘No one throws away computers in waste bins. And, no, I don’t want him to meet you. I may be engaged but that’s not marriage, is it? Engagements can be broken and you’re enough to put any man off.’
Fowler helped himself to the last of the gin from Marion’s fridge and the last inch of tonic in the bottle. ‘Have you told him about me? Does he even know I exist?’
‘If you must know, I’ve told him you’re a recluse.’
‘Chance’d be a fine thing,’ said Fowler, lighting a cigarette. ‘Do you know what a remittance man is?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘It’s someone like me. A wastrel, a ne’er-do-well, a loafer, a layabout, a freeloader, a black sheep, a sluggard, a hobo, a bum, a tramp, a …’
‘Oh, give over, do.’
‘In a minute. A remittance man is all those. His relatives pay him to stay away. Right?’
‘If you reckon on me paying you to stay away from Barry you’ve got another thing coming.’
‘I’m not asking for money,’ said Fowler. ‘Well, I am but no more than usual.’ Dirty, unkempt and unshaven as he was, he looked at her with the limpid eyes of innocence. So had he eyed her when he was six years old and in pursuit of a tranche of her pocket money. ‘What I want is this flat.’
Andrew had hired a car and they were going away to a country house hotel for the weekend. From the brochure it looked a glamorous place, a converted stately home, once a refuge for Charles I, later its owner host to George III. It was surrounded by twenty acres of parkland, it had a spa, a gym and a pool. Before they could leave, Ismay had to pay her weekly hush money to Marion Melville. Two hundred pounds was almost all she had left in her account until her salary was paid into it in a week’s time. Leaving Andrew in bed, she walked down to the cash dispenser, feeling that this was the last week of her life. Marion would ask for more next time and she couldn’t pay it. Andrew would receive the tape in the post or, more likely, taking no risks, Marion would deliver it to him herself by hand. Ismay imagined the consequences. First of all there would be the kind of inquest he was so good at, the demoralising kind he had instituted over her concealment of Edmund’s and Heather’s presence in the house, but far far worse. She knew him so well. She envisaged his astonishment, half feigned, his lawyer-like interrogation of her, his threat that of course she understood he couldn’t ‘just let this go’, then his slow considered decision to go to the police and finally his farewell. Goodbye, this was the end, it couldn’t be helped, but she must understand that in the circumstances, in his position, he could hardly be associated with someone whose sister …
She had arranged with Marion for the meeting to take place earlier than usual. And at Clapham Common tube station, not Hungerford Bridge. She couldn’t be away too long. Andrew would be suspicious as it was, wanting to know where she had been and what she had been doing. If she had been shopping, what on earth had she bought, knowing they’d be away for the weekend?
She withdrew the money. That made six hundred pounds this woman had extracted from her. It was rare for her to go to Clapham Common station, Clapham South being much nearer her own home but she had lived here all her life, there was nothing to surprise her. Only perhaps something which had temporarily slipped from her memory. Phoenix Road. She passed the end of it and the pub on the corner called the Phoenix, noted the name and wondered why it suddenly seemed to her so important, so relevant to her life as it now was, so vital. Something in the picture on the pub sign? She didn’t think so. It was just a bird looking rather like a pheasant rising out of a fire with red and yellow flames. Nothing there …
Of course. It came to her suddenly. Phoenix was the name of the detective inspector who had come to the house just once to talk to her and her mother and Heather. Not Parrot or Swift or Swan but Phoenix, the bird that is reborn from the flames that have incinerated it. Hope sprang, like the fiery bird, and made her breathless as if she had run instead of walked the distance.
Marion was there before her, in ra-ra skirt, tight jumper and kitten heels. She looked pleased with herself.
‘How’s Barry?’ Ismay said.
‘Goodness, what a memory you’ve got! He’s fine, thanks.’
‘Here’s the money.’ Ismay passed her the envelope. ‘So you’ll be living next door to my sister’s mother-in-law.’
‘It looks like it. I’ll phone you about next week’s instalment.’
Marion went to get a train home. Watching her pass through the barrier, Ismay marvelled at herself. All this was very unlike her. This was the kind of thing people like Marion did, not people like her, but if she didn’t go ahead with it she wouldn’t enjoy her weekend. Even being alone with Andrew in that lovely place would mean nothing if this wasn’t resolved, or set up to be resolved. She took her mobile out of her bag and asked Directory Enquiries for the number of Phoenix, initial B, at 56 Chudleigh Hill, West Hampstead, NW6.
‘How do you spell that?’
‘P,H,O,E,N,I,X.’
‘There’s no one of that name.’
She had never seen it written down. Perhaps there were other ways of spelling it. Try beginning with an F. ‘F, double E, N,I,X or maybe F,E,N,I,X.’
One of those must have been right. The recorded voice came on. ‘The number requested is …’ and four digits followed the 7624 area code. Ismay dialled it.
A rather deep voice said, ‘Hello?’
‘Is that Detective Inspector Barry Fenix?’
‘Ex-Detective Inspector now, my dear. What can I do for you?’
She cut the connection.
CHAPTER 27
The remittance man was sitting on her doorstep when Marion reached home. She had never changed the locks, so there was no reason for him to be there except, as she put it to herself, out of malice. If he did it often enough the time would come when she had Barry with her. Beautifully dressed Barry in his immaculate car, helping her out, escorting her to her door, to find this piece of human refuse littering the step. And Fowler was looking particularly awful, his face and hands black with dirt. It was months since his hair had been cut and it hung in straggly rats’ tails to his shoulders. Now the weather was growing cold, he had resurrected the red wool scarf and wound it round his neck over the collar of a thickly grunge-encrusted black plastic jacket with a broken zip. He had surrounded his seat on the step with a detritus of food packaging, a plastic sandwich case, an empty quarter bottle of gin, several apple cores and the remains of a meat pie on a polystyrene plate.
‘I was just saying to myself,’ he said, ‘Fowler, I was saying, what’s she up to, out all this time? Been to see lover-boy?’
‘No, I haven’t, and it’s no business of yours.’
‘I’ve always understood that one’s family was one’s business, even in these degenerative days. If I clear up this mess, will you cut my hair?’
She was looking for ways to get out of the trap he was setting for her. If she were to clean him up and somehow keep him clean, maybe pay him a little, would he withdraw his threat? Once she was married to Barry it wouldn’t much matter what Fowler did. Of course, marriage wasn’t what it had been in their parents’ day, the permanency, the tie that binds, but it still carried a fair amount of security … She sent Fowler off to shower and wash his hair. A man wouldn’t leave his wife because she turned out to have a brother who was a dosser but a fiancé might leave his fiancée. Fowler really wasn’t bad-looking when he was cleaned up. If his hair was no longer golden and curly it was quite a pleasant straw colour. She sat him down in a chair, spread towels on the floor and began cutting.
‘Are you going out with him this evening?’
‘What’s that to you?’
‘You know what, Marion. I won’t be h
ere, anyway. I’ve got an engagement with a skip in Highbury but I could come back on, say, Wednesday.’
Filthy again by then, she thought. ‘I could give you a bit,’ she said. ‘I mean, say, twenty pounds a week.’
‘I remember’, said Fowler, reminiscing, ‘our dad telling me that when he was young twenty quid a week was a fortune. The height of a girl’s ambition was a handsome husband and a thousand a year. Can’t imagine, can you? It’s nothing now, couple of drinks and a packet of fags.’
‘I’d throw in a new pair of jeans and one of those army greatcoats.’
‘I don’t want a greatcoat,’ said Fowler. ‘I want this flat.’
‘I expect you’d like a big white wedding,’ said Barry. ‘No reason why not. I can afford it.’
‘No, darling, I don’t think so. It’d take so long to organise. Actually, I just want to be your wife as soon as possible.’
‘Do you, kitten? Camden Register Office, then, and we’ll be off to India. How about three weeks’ time? I reckon it has to be three weeks.’
He returned to his perusal of The World Scanner’s Guide to the Asian Subcontinent.
‘Will you fix up the wedding, then?’
‘Of course I will, kitten. I’ll pop over there this afternoon.’
‘And it’ll be just us?’
‘We’ll have to have witnesses. How about that brother of yours? And maybe an old colleague of mine.’
‘From the Civil Service?’
‘That’s right,’ said Barry, his mouth twitching rather in the manner of Mr Hussein and his sons. What was so funny about the things she said she couldn’t imagine.
Mr Hussein came to the engagement party and brought one of his sons with him, Khwaja, the tallest and best-looking one, accompanied by a glamorous wife in gold lamé shalwar-kameez. Marion, in her Indian gown, felt quite equal to her. She had hoped for the chance to crow over Irene Litton but Irene stayed away, though Edmund and Heather were there. Barry appeared to have no relatives or none whom he wanted to invite but by far the majority of guests were former colleagues of his in the Civil Service, all now retired. Marion thought them the dullest bunch of men she had ever come across. She smiled and simpered when Barry introduced her as his ‘lovely bride-to-be’ but soon skipped away with the excuse that she had to ‘see to the refreshments’.
These were in the hands of caterers, all Pakistanis, and the food was splendid Mogul delicacies, Barry’s favourite, covering two long buffet tables. She picked up a plate of samosas and handed them to Heather and Edmund.
‘When’s the wedding, Marion?’ said Edmund.
‘In two weeks’ time. We’re going to India on our honeymoon next day. That’s the best part of a wedding, don’t you think? You didn’t have a honeymoon, did you?’
‘We’re starting ours a month after you,’ said Heather.
‘Are you going abroad?’
‘I don’t know. Ed is planning a secret destination.’
Marion smiled tightly. If everyone was going to look at her like that, with suppressed amusement, she’d be seriously angry. And this woman had no business to look at anyone like anything, not after what she’d done. Drowned someone! Well, Edmund would know, the whole world would know, once that sister-in-law of his had run out of cash. Marion trotted off to greet Joyce and Duncan Crosbie. Every time the doorbell rang she feared it might be Fowler. She hadn’t invited him, of course she hadn’t, but somehow he had found out about the party and though he said he had a date with a couple of men he called job seekers in a pub in Harlesden, she couldn’t rely on his not turning up here. Maybe she’d take some of this food home for him. There was so much of it, leftovers were bound to be abundant. A bottle of wine too wouldn’t be missed. She realised, uneasily, what lengths she was going to to keep him sweet.
Another glance in Heather Litton’s direction reminded her of the tape. Since she began her extortionate demands she had carried it with her everywhere she went. It wasn’t safe to leave it in the flat with Fowler about. It was in the pretty little jewelled handbag which was yet another gift of Barry’s and she had left it lying on a chair, on an arm of which one of the dull colleagues was sitting. With a sweet smile, Marion retrieved the bag, and imagining her feelings if someone had robbed her of the tape, quickly checked. No one had. She hooked the bag strap over her shoulder to be on the safe side and advanced in a hostessy way on Edmund and Heather once more. They were talking to Joyce and Duncan Crosbie. Marion took Edmund’s arm and smiled up into his face.
‘You and I were very close once, weren’t we, Edmund? You used to walk me home from your mother’s. She – and not only she – had high hopes we might have a future together. But it was not to be and here we are with completely different people. No doubt it’s all for the best.’
Joyce flicked her eyes up and down Marion’s Indian dress. ‘How’s your father these days, Marion?’
Marion made her escape with the excuse that guests’ glasses needed refilling.
Heather and Edmund left the party early to call next door on his mother. Irene was entirely dressed in black, hung with handmade strings of jet and onyx.
‘The noise from next door has been fearful. I had always supposed that if one’s house was detached, one could hear nothing from the next house, but I find I was mistaken. Surely it isn’t necessary to have the windows open at the end of October. Was she there?’
‘If you mean Marion, Mother, since it was her engagement party, inevitably she was.’
‘You know, I consider your going to it, not to mention my own sister and her husband, a betrayal of me personally.’
‘That’s a pity,’ said Edmund, ‘but nothing can be done about it now.’
Heather had said nothing, believing that any comments on the party and the party guests would be unwelcome. At last she asked Irene how she was and felt the choice of enquiry had been tactful as her mother-in-law launched into a litany of ailments: backache, exhaustion, pins and needles in the legs, numbness on waking (if indeed she had slept), persistent cough and general malaise.
‘I find it much easier to be tough with her now.’ Edmund put his arm round Heather as they walked down the street. ‘And the result is I feel guilty. I’m so sorry for her but I daren’t show it. She spends hours at that window, watching the comings and goings next door and fermenting hatreds. If Barry Fenix had to get married, why couldn’t he marry her instead of Marion? They’re both obnoxious but my ma is marginally less awful.’
‘I don’t understand why anyone marries anyone except you,’ said Heather. ‘You weren’t really close to her, were you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Ed, what are we going to do about Issy? She’s never been over to see us in our flat. We haven’t been asked to Clapham. I’ve phoned her but she’s only once phoned me and that was from work.’
‘Andrew,’ said Edmund as they went into the station at Finchley Road and Frognal.
‘Yes, of course Andrew. She doesn’t say but I know that’s why. He’ll divide me from her. That’s what he wants.’
‘Is it making you unhappy?’
‘Well, put it like this. You make me so happy, much happier than I’ve ever been in all my life. So that’s all right. This thing with Issy, that’s a kind of secondary unhappiness. It’s always there and I’d like it to stop but I reason that although she’s crazy about him now, she’ll have to get over it. He can’t last. He’s so awful and she’s bound to see that sooner or later. One day she’ll sort of – I don’t know …’
‘The scales will fall from her eyes, as your mum might say.’
‘That’s right. And she’ll give him the boot and we’ll be like we were before.’
‘Darling, I hope I’m not unreasonable but I can’t say I find your aunt’s boyfriend entirely congenial. At least he’s not living upstairs, though I suppose that will be the next step.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Ismay wanted to sound warm and accommodating but she found it impossible. Her voice
was low and despondent. ‘Pamela lives with my mother and she doesn’t like the idea of anyone else being there.’ She made a renewed effort to be strong. ‘You haven’t met my mother yet.’
‘No, I haven’t, have I?’ Andrew lit a cigarette. The smoke caught at Ismay’s throat but she knew that if she allowed herself to cough he would accuse her of putting it on. ‘Do I have to?’ He said it in the tone of a man willing to do anything to please but she knew what the result would be if she said, ‘Yes, you do.’ Things would be said that were so hurtful that she couldn’t contemplate them at this stage of her life, this crux.
Marion Melville had phoned ten minutes before he came in and asked for four hundred pounds. ‘Only two more weeks,’ she had said brightly, ‘and then you can have a break. I’ll be away on my honeymoon. Clapham Common station on Saturday morning?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Ismay said. ‘I’ll come up to you this time. There’s a café in West End Lane called Ayesha’s. Do you know it?’
‘It’s at the bottom of Barry’s street,’ said Marion.
‘Possibly. I’ll see you there at eleven.’
How it could it be, she thought as she put the phone down, that she could be so positive, so strong and in control, with other people, yet so feeble with Andrew. She was like two different people, two souls in one body. He would take her away from Pamela now as he had separated her from Heather. The time would come, and it wasn’t far off, when he would ask her not to go upstairs and see her mother. And she would comply. Because she couldn’t lose him.
The four hundred pounds would be for Marion’s wedding dress. Barry had offered to pay but her pride wouldn’t allow that. He’d be paying for everything after they were married, she told him. Something dignified, she had in mind, but suited to her type. Not white but possibly pale pink, one of those ankle-length skirts that were all over frills and lace and bows. When Barry drove her home after the party Fowler was nowhere to be seen but on the kitchen counter she found a note with ‘I want the flat’ on it in large print. She tore it up and went to bed.