by Ruth Rendell
Innocent eyes, an uncomprehending gentle gaze. “Nothing. I don’t know. What is it, Guy?”
“A man who took LSD and died of bee-stings.”
“Ah.” He saw light dawn and his heart dipped. “Yes, I heard about that. A long time ago. I never knew if it was true.”
“It was true.”
“What am I supposed to say? Do you want to tell me about it?”
“He begged me for the stuff. I didn’t want to give it to him. But I was devastated afterwards. Leo darling, I was so ashamed. And I didn’t want you ever to know, I knew what it would do to you. To you and me. How you’d feel about me.”
“I knew there must be a reason why you did it,” she said. “It didn’t make any difference.”
“It didn’t make any difference?”
“To the way I felt about you,” she said.
He took her in his arms. She was leaning against a round smooth stone pillar and he put his arms round her and kissed her. There had been no kisses of that kind between them for years, five years, six. It was a long and sweet, open-lipped kiss with tongues meeting, of the kind that precedes love-making, not a kiss for a river-breezy corner with people passing and a ship on the water sounding a long blast on its siren.
“I love you, Leonora,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. I shall love you till I die. Come back to me. I know you’ll come back to me one day. Come back to me now.”
She said with infinite sadness, “It’s too late, Guy.”
“Why is it too late? It’s never too late. I love you and you love me, and you know you’ll never go through with that crazy marriage, that ridiculous marriage. Don’t you see it would be a crime against you and me to marry that man? I know you won’t, though. I know you love me. You’ve shown me. I know you love me now.”
“Let’s walk, Guy,” she said.
They walked along the path in the Victoria Embankment Gardens. It was cool and windy and there were little grey waves on the river.
“Promise me,” she said, “not to press me about this. It’s hard enough for me without that. Things are hard enough.”
“My darling, I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do. I’ll do anything you ask. You’ve made me so happy.”
“You do nag rather, you know, Guy. You do go on and on. But you won’t any more, will you? You won’t pin me down?”
“Now I know you love me, I’m so happy I won’t say another word.”
“Come and have supper with us on Wednesday,” she said. “Would you do that? Phone me tomorrow and Monday and Tuesday and come and have supper with us on Wednesday at about seven-thirty,”
What’s supper? he might have said if it had been anyone else. Dinner is what you eat in the evening. Tea, of course, was what he had eaten in the old days with his mother, if there had been anything to eat. “Who’s ‘us’?” he said.
“William will be there, of course. Guy, it’s William’s flat. Be reasonable. Be nice.”
“I’ll be nice. I’ll come. I’ll get to see you twice in one week. Where shall we have lunch next Saturday?”
She laughed. “We can talk about that on Wednesday.”
After she had parted from him he didn’t take a taxi. He walked. She had kissed him again when they said goodbye, a warm, sweet, loving kiss. And now he was alone again. She had told him she loved him, that nothing made any difference to that, she had renewed her love for him. Of course she had also said it was too late to come back to him, but she didn’t mean that. Probably she thought he wouldn’t really want her after her inconstancy, but she was wrong there, she was quite wrong.
It occurred to him as he walked along the Embankment that when people in their circumstances come together again after a split, when they start again, it would be usual for them to go home together. The natural thing would have been for Leonora to go home with him now. But he understood why she couldn’t do that. Hadn’t she said things were hard for her? “Things are hard enough without that,” she had said. Nothing could have declared more plainly the pressure she was under from her family to stay with William Newton. They had found him for her. brought them together, and now they were all united in binding her to him.
All they wanted, and this was very clear, was to get September 16 over and that wedding with it. They were like some royal family in history or a fairy story who locked the princess up in a tower until she consented to marry the—ginger dwarf. He smiled to himself when he thought of it like that. But he was soon angry again, angry for her, whom they had made unhappy, his sweet and beautiful love who found “things hard enough” because she was being forced into marriage with a man she didn’t love.
It began to rain and he hailed a taxi. Once back in Scarsdale Mews he thought he would check up at once in his engagement book to see what he was doing on Wednesday that he would have to cancel. Nothing—on Wednesday. For a moment he could hardly believe what he read, then believed it only too well. He remembered it.
On Monday, her birthday, he was supposed to be driving Celeste to Stratford-on-Avon, taking her to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and afterwards staying the night at the Lygon Arms in Broadway. Supposed to be? He had the tickets, had made the booking. She had taken his letting her down last Friday very well. He couldn’t do that to her again. As he reassessed the next few days he started planning his phone calls to Leonora. On Monday he ought to be able to reach Leonora before he left, and on Tuesday he could phone her from the hotel …
Celeste spent Sunday night with him. She arrived in the late afternoon just as he rang off from talking to Leonora. It was necessarily a bland and on the whole meaningless telephone conversation they had, due to Tessa and Magnus being there. Leonora was back in Portland Road for the day, packing up some of her personal possessions, she said, for her mother and stepfather to take home with them in their car and store in their garage. This made Guy reflect to his satisfaction that if she really intended marrying Newton, she would have her things taken round to his flat.
“Darling,” he said, “I would have brought it all here. Why didn’t you ask me?”
He understood she had to speak in a very neutral way, make small talk really, with Tessa there. With Tessa, doubtless, breathing down her neck, noting every word to rebuke her with it later. He could see Tessa, that stick-insect woman darting about the flat, picking up this and that, choosing to take things off a shelf just behind Leonora while she was on the phone. He could see her stringy brown hands, a skeleton’s bone hands with a bit of dried leather covering them and the nails painted like silver knife blades, her small head with the dark hair scraped back on a neck like a tortoise’s questing out of its shell.
“I have to go away on business, Leo,” he said. “Just tomorrow and Tuesday.” It was untrue, but now was no time for admitting he was taking another woman away for the night. Telling a lie about it would only be bad, Guy thought obscurely, if he had wanted to go off with Celeste. “But I’ll still phone you; I’ll make sure I get to a phone.”
It wasn’t until very early next morning that, waking up in the Chinese bed beside Celeste, he began to recall what Leonora had said to him about Con Mulvanney. Her kiss, her declaration of her continuing love for him, her disclosures, so revealing, about the pressures she was under—all this had driven those simple remarks of hers from his mind. He hadn’t even remembered them when he talked to her on the phone yesterday afternoon. But they were back with him now, in the dark mad small hours. He could see the luminous hands of his small carriage clock showing four-thirty.
“I heard about that,” she had said. “A long time ago. I never knew if it was true.”
She had heard about that. He had never really doubted, he had never needed proof, but now his belief had been confirmed. Why hadn’t he asked her who told her? Because he was so overwhelmed with joy by what she said next that none of it made any difference. Anyway, he knew. Rachel had told her, Rachel who had gone away on holiday to Spain with a man called Dominic. And what a difference that had made
! Rachel was scarcely removed from the sphere of influence she had set up, for Leonora to be back in his arms.
He was painfully aware just the same of her not being in his arms at that moment. Only a fool wouldn’t have asked why she couldn’t just walk out on Newton, get in a taxi and come here to him. But he knew why she wouldn’t. Her family’s pressures and threats were still too much for her, she had to be liberated from that and liberated by him. If there was any possibility of her arrival, Celeste wouldn’t be here now, her sable dark hair spread over the pillow, her brown shoulders emerging from the white ruffled tulle of her nightgown. There had been no occasion for the removal of that pretty garment last night or on any night for a while now. The odd thought came to him that she would never take it off for him again.
When he thought sleep gone until the next night, in some Cotswold bed, sleep came to him and held him until past eight. Celeste was up before him, making the phoning of Leonora difficult in theory, impossible in practice. They were away by ten. At the place where they had lunch he couldn’t tell Celeste he had to make a phone call on business. She knew too much, she wouldn’t believe him. It was her birthday, she was enjoying herself. He had just bought her a magnificent lunch, promised her a present, anything she wanted from the nicest dress shop in Stratford. She looked wonderful with her beautiful hair plaited and coiled on top of her head, in a cream silk trouser suit and caramel shirt. Men turned their heads, looked at her, then at him. He couldn’t go and make a phone call to Leonora now and tell Celeste a lie about it—still less, tell her the truth about it.
It was Romeo and Juliet they saw. Guy had seldom, if ever before, seen a Shakespeare play on the stage. Maybe on the TV by accident, but not on the real stage.
“You thought it would be boring, didn’t you?” said Celeste as they got into the Jaguar. “But I could see you loved it. You’re like a kid that’s only done Shakespeare at school and can’t believe it’s the same thing when he sees it done for real.”
“I don’t remember Shakespeare at school,” said Guy.
“Sweet Guy, they did it on the days you were shuckin’ ’n’ jivin’ round Notting Dale.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Do you know what that play reminded me of?”
She didn’t answer. He could feel her silence, warm and distressed. Then she said, “Yes,” with great finality.
It was their own story, his and Leonora’s, the star-crossed lovers, the repressive autocratic family. He hadn’t killed anyone, of course, but in their eyes he had: Con Mulvanney. Con Mulvanney was his—what was he called?—Tybalt. The play stayed with him as he drove south, reproducing glowing pictures in his mind. That bit in the orchard and on the balcony, he could so easily replace in it Romeo with himself and Juliet with Leonora. He wished he could remember some of the lines, he wished he could talk about it with Celeste. Something about the way she was sitting, her shoulders stiff, her profile bronze-hard and staring ahead of her in the dark, told him he couldn’t.
By the time they were in their hotel bedroom it was midnight. The day had gone by and he hadn’t phoned Leonora. He had longed and longed to phone, even during the intervals of the play he had thought about phoning her, about escaping from Celeste and finding a phone, but it had been impossible. It wasn’t the first time a day had passed without their speaking on the phone. Far from it. In the previous week, though he had seen her at Susannah’s, he had spoken to her only once. But it was the first time they hadn’t spoken because he had failed to call.
Celeste didn’t maintain her silence. She was speaking again, talking about the room, the view they would have in the morning. But the confidence that had existed between them, the wonderful way that, though he didn’t love her, he had been able to say anything and everything to her, they had been able to share each other’s minds, that had gone.
It was lost, he had killed it, it would never come again. What did it matter? He thought, as he lay in the twin bed a yard away from Celeste’s, that he would be bound anyway to lose her once he and Leonora were together again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
You didn’t phone me yesterday.”
“Darling, I’m so sorry. Were you worried? I haven’t upset you, have I?” Guy was so happy that she minded his not phoning her that he couldn’t keep the note of excited joy out of his voice. “I couldn’t get to a phone. It just wasn’t possible. Will you forgive me?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, it’s not that. I only meant it was odd. It was so unlike you.”
She must have waited in for his call. His heart sang. His head felt tumultuous, as if someone inside it were doing an energetic dance. “You stayed in, waiting for the phone to ring? Oh, Leo.”
“I happened to stay in. I’d nothing to go out for.”
Ah, yes. A likely story. He almost laughed aloud. “Leo, will you tell me something? It’s about what we talked about on Saturday. I don’t know why I didn’t ask you then. You said you knew all about—well, Con Mulvanney. Do you remember?”
“Who?”
“The man who died of bee-stings. You said you knew all about him, you’d heard about that and it was a long time ago. It was exactly four years ago, as a matter of fact.”
“Yes,” she said, “it would be about that. I was still living with Daddy and Susannah. It was before I moved into that room in Fulham with Rachel.”
“Leo, who told you about it? It was Rachel told you, wasn’t it?”
“Rachel?”
It was so clear in his mind, he began to tell her the story as he understood it. “Con Mulvanney lived in South London, in Balham, and so did this woman who was with him when he died. She was some sort of social worker and Rachel’s a social worker in South London, so you can see how she came to tell her. She said she’d tell everyone …”
“Guy,” she interrupted him, “what are you talking about? Do you know what you’re talking about? Because I don’t. It was Susannah who told me, Susannah.”
The name exploded in his ears. Susannah, whom he had thought of as his friend, the woman who, of all Leonora’s family and friends, had been kindest to him—it was she who had betrayed him and alienated his love. He should have thought of it before. Why had he been such a fool?
“Of course.” He heard himself stammering. “Susannah’s mother lived in Earlsfield, which is east Wandsworth, which is next to Balham, she was in hospital there.”
“Guy, I honestly don’t know what you mean. It wasn’t like that, Susannah’s mother never came into it. I suppose I’d better tell you, though I promised myself I never would.”
“Tell me what?” He touched the wooden frame of the French windows and held on.
“A woman wrote to Susannah—well, she wrote to Susannah and my father, I mean to Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Chisholm. I was there when the letter came. I suppose she thought they were my parents, I mean that Susannah was my mother. She wrote warning them off you, for my sake, I mean. Look,
Guy, what is this? What does it matter? I’ve told you it didn’t make any difference. I have to go, we’ve been talking for half an hour.”
“Please don’t go, Leo, please don’t ring off. This is terribly important to me, I have to know. Who wrote to your parents?”
“To Daddy and Susannah,” she said. He could hear a growing impatience in her voice. “Well, I’ll tell you quickly and then I must go. I’ve told you it made no difference to the way I felt about you and you must believe that. This woman’s name was Vasari, I’ve always remembered because it’s the same as the man who wrote about the lives of the artists.” He didn’t know what she meant, he was lost. “Vasari,” she said, “Polly or something. She wrote to them to tell them they shouldn’t let me marry you. My God, I was twenty-two years old. They were to stop me marrying you because you were a social menace and you’d given drugs to her boy-friend. It was something like that. Susannah opened the letter because it was addressed to both of them and Daddy had gone to work.”
“And she told you just like that?”
“I was there when she opened the letter. Of course she showed it to me. Look, phone me later if you want to, but I do have to go now, this minute.”
He said he would phone her at seven. She said goodbye quickly and put the phone down. He sighed. Clarifying the mysteries of the past and the present only led to further complications. Of course it was easy to see how Poppy Vasari had found out about his association with Leonora and found out, too, who Leonora was. In those days they were often together, he was always calling at Lamb’s Conduit Street. She would have followed him, read the name by the bell-push on the door. How that vindictive woman must have enjoyed writing the letter that would ruin his life!
And Susannah, that treacherous woman, that snake in the grass … Surely a nice person with any idea of loyalty would have thrown that letter away in disgust after reading the first line. The sort of woman he had thought Susannah was wouldn’t have believed a word of it. the last thing she would have done was show it, and show it immediately, to the girl it was intended to caution. The hypocrisy of it made him indignant. It wouldn’t have been so bad coming from Tessa, who had never pretended to like him, who had never concealed her hatred. He remembered Susannah’s kindly proffered advice, her Judas kisses.
He phoned Leonora again at seven. It was Newton he expected to hear and he braced himself for the man’s exasperated, superior-sounding voice—after all, he was going to have to spend tomorrow evening with him—but Leonora answered the phone.
“Can he hear what you’re saying?” he asked her.