by Ruth Rendell
The modicum of respect with which the Scurlocks favoured the residents of the four blocks wasn’t extended to those they deemed unworthy. These included a couple in Hereford who lay in bed each day till noon, a man in Ludlow they suspected of being a transvestite and, of course, Olwen.
‘Yes, what is it?’ Wally came wearily up the stairs.
‘Will you go down to Mr Ali’s and get me a bottle of vodka? Or gin would do.’ Olwen realised some politeness was required. ‘Please?’
‘It’ll cost you.’
For a moment she thought he was referring to the price of the vodka but it soon dawned on her that he meant his fee. She always carried a lot of money on her which she withdrew, two hundred at a time, from the cash machine outside the post office in Kenilworth Parade. ‘Five pounds?’
‘Ten,’ said Wally. ‘I want it in advance.’
He wasn’t long about it and within a quarter of an hour the treasured bottle was standing on the draining board in her kitchen. Until that moment Olwen hadn’t been certain that Mr Ali sold spirits, but this was confirmation. Still, for the first time since she had moved into Lichfield House she was coming to understand that she would have to cut down. She must make this bottle last her until Monday by which time the ice might have gone. The first glorious glassful poured, she sat down on the sofa and decided she would go to Stuart’s party. At first she hadn’t even considered going but, when she came to think of it, drink would be there, possibly only wine, but four or five glasses of it would eke out the vodka …
Stuart had asked the neighbours opposite, putting notes through the doors of three houses. This was not because he wanted Duncan Yeardon, the Pembers or Ms Jones and Mr Lee at his party but because this way it was possible that he might find out from one of them where the beautiful girl lived. He had had a reply only from Duncan but perhaps it wasn’t done round here to write acceptances to a drinks party invitation.
The three girls were in two minds whether to go to the party but the bitter cold was getting them down. Whether to go and thus miss meeting friends (who probably wouldn’t turn up) at a wine bar in the Haymarket was discussed by Molly and Sophie throughout the day. Noor, of course, could come and go as she pleased. The prince would pick her up in his white Lexus.
‘Stuart’s very attractive, isn’t he?’ said Molly.
Sophie lifted her shoulders. ‘Yeah, but I think he’s gay.’
‘Is he?’
‘Every time you see him in the lobby he’s looking at himself in that mirror. Should we take a bottle?’
‘If you want. Mr Ali’s got Moldovan Chardonnay at three ninety-nine.’
The Constantines were going. They had said they would and not to turn up when they had said they would was against their principles. The party was due to begin at seven thirty and Rose Preston-Jones had invited Marius Potter down for an early supper. Sorrel soup began the meal, the main course was a walnut pilaf with sprouts and chestnuts and the pudding grapefruit yogurt. McPhee climbed onto Marius’s lap and licked his left hand.
Rose had asked for a reading of the sortes before they went across to the party and Marius had brought Paradise Lost down with him. His eyes on Rose, thinking how very much prettier she looked than those who plastered their faces with make-up, he opened the book at random. The sentence he read slightly embarrassed him but it made his heart beat faster too, and there was no escape from reading it aloud.
‘ “Henceforth an individual solace dear: / Part of my soul I seek thee, and thee claim / My other half.” ’
It was foolish to feel awkward of course. Rose had blushed becomingly to match her name. His own embarrassment would have been less but for those Hackney memories. When the colour came into her cheeks she looked more like that girl of long ago so that he could hardly understand how he hadn’t been able to place her when first he moved in.
‘Let’s go across to Stuart’s, shall we?’
Claudia was the first to arrive. Must have been the only time in her life she’d actually been early for anything, Stuart thought. She congratulated him on the window-box refrigerator, opened a bottle of champagne and helped herself. She of course had brought nothing. He would have been amazed if she had. Marius and Rose came next, then Mr Lee and Ms Jones who were called Ken and Moira, complaining about the cold. The sister of one of them had skidded on the ice in her new BMW that morning, the car was a write-off and if she hadn’t been wearing her seat belt … Duncan Yeardon arrived as Moira was describing the accident and contributed experiences of his own when he worked for the AA or the RAC or something like that back in the dark ages. Stuart started worrying when they all rejected wine in favour of sparkling water in case he hadn’t got enough.
‘They’ll just have to have tap,’ said Claudia, who had taken over the running of the party as if she were his wife.
No fear of this in Olwen’s case. She homed in at once on to the Sauvignon, pouring herself a tumblerful. Eyebrows were raised at the sight of her, for she was wearing a dress. Memories of the few parties she had attended, mostly the office kind, had come back to her a couple of hours earlier as she reached about halfway down the vodka bottle. She had worn a dress to those parties, she still had that dress. It was in a cupboard somewhere. The flats in Lichfield House were well appointed with cupboards and she opened hers one after another. Rubbish fell out, old newspapers, unwashed clothes, dozens if not hundreds of empty bottles, green, brown, clear glass, a single blue one that must, once, have contained Bombay Sapphire gin. They rolled across the floor.
The last cupboard held clothes, the ones she had worn before her tracksuit days. At first she couldn’t see the dress and, fumbling along the shelf at the top in case she had rolled it up and stuffed it there, her hand came in contact with a bottle. A full bottle of Absolut vodka. Tears of joy came into her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
She remembered then. She had hidden it there in case of just such an emergency as had come about in these past freezing days – hidden it and forgotten it. For a moment the tears were also for her anguish when she had been utterly deprived and no one had helped her, but finding the dress, black, ancient, in desperate need of dry-cleaning, its hem coming down at the back, put an end to crying. A long swig of vodka once the dress was over her head, and she was off down in the lift to celebrate her find at Stuart’s party.
The tumbler of wine in her hand didn’t stop her helping herself to champagne when Claudia came round with the tray and they all toasted Stuart’s ‘happy house’. By that time Jock and Kathy Pember had come. Molly and Sophie with Molly’s boyfriend arrived late but this, as Sophie’s father used to say, was ‘par for the course’. A good deal of the champagne had gone before they got there but their Moldovan Chardonnay was received gratefully by Stuart who kissed all three of them, thus convincing Molly that he wasn’t gay, after all. Further confirmation, to her dismay, was provided by Claudia who clung closely to him, kissing his neck.
The Constantines drank white wine, liberally diluted with water from the kitchen tap. They talked to each other and occasionally to Marius Potter and Rose Preston-Jones. Rose said she wanted to ask Michael something. Michael groaned inwardly as people were always asking him something, usually what they were to do about their weight or their headaches or their sinuses. Rose, though, had a question which had nothing to do with ill health. Due no doubt to a diet of Paradise Lost, she wanted to know if it was true what someone had told her, that men had fewer ribs than women on account of Eve being made from the one taken out of Adam’s side.
Suppressing an urge to scream and stamp, Michael said gravely that it wasn’t true. Men and women had the same number of ribs. He was watching Olwen with concern and already longed to act like a conscientious barman and say, ‘I think you’ve had enough.’
Until now he hadn’t quite realised how deep into alcoholism she was. He had seen the bottles she carried in but had no way of knowing how long they lasted or how many people had shared them with her. She hadn’t been drunk when she
arrived, but then she was probably never drunk in the usual sense of the word. You might equally say that she was always drunk. He had been near enough to her to detect that she smelt – no, stank – of gin. He had read somewhere that in the past women like her used camphor to mask the smell. She smelt of mothballs, the camphor was on her clothes, but not enough to cover the heady odour of spirits. In the past half-hour she had refilled her tumbler of wine three times. His thought that she had had enough was an understatement. But, anyway, you can’t go up to a fellow guest at a party and say that. He fixed her with a disapproving eye but, as he had feared, she took no notice and poured another glass of wine.
Among the latecomers were Jack with his girlfriend and Martin. Stuart had never met Hilary before. As much a connoisseur of women’s looks as he was an admirer of his own, he was very disappointed in her appearance. No makeup, hair in need of a wash and figure in need of a diet. He was surprised at Jack, but perhaps someone who looked like him couldn’t be very choosy. They had brought lager, he and Martin, which Stuart thought, but didn’t say, would very likely never be drunk.
‘Is that stain blood?’ were almost the first words Jack said.
Hilary gave a little scream.
‘Of course not,’ said Stuart shortly.
It was just after nine. Noor arrived at five past with the prince who was wearing a white silk turban with a feather stuck on it with a jewelled pin. They each brought a bottle of very good claret. The party, Claudia whispered to Stuart, linking her arm in his, was going well. People were enjoying themselves. The Constantines and Duncan Yeardon had also brought bottles of wine and there was no shortage of drink. Everyone – or those who thought about them at all – had given up on the Scurlocks. This brought a certain amount of relief as no one knew how to address them, still less what to talk to them about. Just as Stuart was deciding that they had changed their minds, they arrived, Richenda in a minidress and knee-high boots, Wally greeting everyone with these words: ‘Now I know I’m only the caretaker and I hope I show a proper respect to one and all but when we meet on a social occasion like this one to which Mr Font has been good enough to invite us, I suppose no one will object if we use Christian names. No one object? Right. Thanks very much, Stuart, for asking us.’ And he set down another bottle of Mr Ali’s Moldavan Chardonnay on the table.
‘Come into the bedroom,’ Claudia said rather haughtily to Stuart as if she intended to discuss with him in private the manners of his latest guests.
Lamblike, Stuart went. Almost before the door was closed she had seized him in her arms and clamped her mouth on his. Resistance was impossible – and ridiculous. But he had no intention of letting her get him into bed. Not with all those people a mere matter of feet away.
‘Later,’ he was saying, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, when he heard a door slam in the street. This was followed by footsteps pounding up the path. Claudia moved a little away from him. He stood very still. The footsteps made an unnaturally loud noise as if the man who was crashing across the floor of the lobby intended a disturbance. Stuart’s front door received a kick, then it burst open, smashing against the wall and causing one of the women to scream.
The unmistakable voice of Freddy Livorno, deep, strong and very loud, said, ‘Where is he? Where is my wife’s lover?’
‘Oh God,’ Claudia whimpered. ‘Oh God, I don’t believe it.’
‘I do.’ Stuart wanted to get under the bed and hide. But it was no good, he had to go out there.
Freddy was standing just inside the front door which had closed behind him, brandishing a cudgel thick as a tree branch. He stood like some hero of ancient days, Belisarius perhaps or Joshua, a huge man grasping a lethal weapon. The party guests stared. Olwen took a more than usually huge swig of her drink. When he saw Stuart, Freddy advanced a little, taking perhaps two strides forward. He had left a couple of square yards of empty space between himself and the door into the hallway and Moira and Ken took advantage of this by slipping out of the flat in silence. Molly and Sophie were far too fascinated, not to say hoping for better things to come, to move from their corner where they had been gossiping with Marius and Rose. The expression on Wally’s face, compounded of fear and fascination, was that of a man who has come for a normal sort of booze-up and found himself precipitated into a Roman orgy.
Perhaps because he had an audience, and he always enjoyed being looked at, Stuart approached a little nearer to Freddy and said, ‘How dare you burst your way in here – you’re trespassing.’
‘I’ll trespass a bloody sight more. Where’s my wife?’
‘In the bedroom.’
‘In the bedroom? You dare say that to me?!’ Also perhaps enjoying being the cynosure of all eyes, Freddy addressed the company. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ The words were absurd but no one laughed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but this man, your host, this miscreant and villain, is an adulterer who has been shagging my wife.’ This raised gasps from Kathy Pember and Duncan. ‘I could have used a stronger word but out of respect for your feelings I abstained. You will want to know what I intend to do. I will tell you. I intend to kill this man.’
Without a word, Marius Potter slipped away, unnoticed by Freddy, keeping to the rear of the spectators until he was out of the front door. Alone in the lobby he did something which, in his hippie days when he despised the ‘filth’, the ‘fuzz’, he would have scorned even to consider. He was old now and things had changed. He dialled 999 and asked for the police. Now he had done his duty, should he go back upstairs to his flat? No, because it would be most unchivalrous to leave Rose there, possibly in danger. While he was thinking about it, Duncan Yeardon came out of Flat 1 and with an embarrassed smile at Marius slipped out of the automatic doors into the night, followed by the Pembers. He had left Stuart’s front door ajar. A loud scream from inside fetched Marius through it.
In his absence various things had happened. The girls from Flat 5 and Olwen had shut themselves in the kitchen. Claudia was nowhere to be seen but was probably still in the bedroom. It was Richenda who had screamed when her husband, attempting to intervene between Freddy and Stuart, had been pushed to the ground by a great shove from Freddy. Stuart stepped over him, said to Claudia’s husband, ‘Now, listen, we can talk about this. Look what happened last time. We both got hurt.’
‘You alone will be hurt this time.’ Freddy picked up the heavy glass celery jar which Stuart had transferred to the mantelpiece. He thrust it into Richenda’s arms with a ‘Here, take that. Put it somewhere. If you don’t want to witness a murder.’ To the rest of the company who remained he said, ‘You had better leave now.’ He stepped aside to let them pass and when Wally, limping, had moved off into the lobby, turned swiftly, raised his stick and brought it down with vicious strength on Stuart’s head. Or tried to. It struck his upper arm instead with a dreadful sickening sound of breaking bone. Stuart screamed, ‘Not my face, not my face!’
Claudia came out of the bedroom, running to him.
‘Get out of the way,’ Freddy yelled and struck Stuart again, hitting the back of his neck this time and felling him. He dropped the stick and rubbed his hands together as at a job satisfactorily done.
Stuart sat up, Claudia kneeling beside him. ‘He’s broken my spine,’ he shouted. ‘I’ll never walk again.’ With that, he struggled to get to his feet and stood there, swaying, holding on to the furniture. ‘My arm’s broken.’
‘Yes, but not much else is, more’s the pity.’ Freddy picked up his stick and surveyed the room. Everyone but Stuart and Claudia had gone. ‘However, that will do for now. Next time, if there is a next time, I shall kill him.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Come along,’ he said. ‘Home, you.’
She obeyed him. As they were getting into his car, parked in Kenilworth Parade, a screaming of sirens and flickering of blue lights announced the arrival of the police. ‘Let’s get outta here,’ said Freddy, smiling.
CHAPTER NINE
‘What’s that stain?’ the younger of the two policemen asked.
‘It’s not blood,’ said Stuart.
The policeman didn’t say he would be the best judge of that but he looked it. They had been told something in the nature of an affray was going on in this flat but there was no one here except the owner, though plenty of evidence in a full ashtray, empty and half-empty glasses, mangled cheeses and biscuit crumbs that visitors had been here. Stuart had told them he didn’t want to press charges.
‘Sure of that?’
He hadn’t been at all sure but he had thought about it while they went over the flat. If he pressed charges any possible witnesses had disappeared. Claudia had gone off with Freddy without even asking how he felt or saying goodbye. He, Stuart, would look foolish if this got into the papers as it would. It would be a different matter if Freddy were to be sent to prison for ten years, say. The most likely outcome would be that Freddy got a suspended sentence or even a couple of weeks’ community service. Seeing that he was a solicitor, that would probably mean spending a similar time working for Citizens’ Advice for free.
‘I’m sure of that,’ he said.
‘That arm needs seeing to,’ said the younger one, passing him the phone so that he could call an ambulance.
In his day, Duncan thought, it would have been called ‘conduct likely to lead to a breach of the peace’, but what it was now he had no idea. He was very glad he had escaped when he had. Among other causes for relief was the warmth inside his own house. Stuart’s flat wasn’t exactly cold but you could call it cool, the temperature probably no more than, say, sixty-eight. Duncan had never managed to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius (or centigrade as they used to call it when he was young) without doing a complicated sum that involved multiplying something by something and taking away 32. He didn’t know what the temperature was in here, he had no thermometer, but he guessed at least eighty. And that was fine, that was what you wanted when it was minus five outside.