Tree of Hands

by Ruth Rendell

  It wasn’t until an hour or two afterwards that Benet understood he had meant James.

  She needed someone to confide in. Curiously enough, in an unsatisfactory and inadequate sort of way, Mopsa had filled that role. In the middle of this populous place, Benet was aware of her isolation, a solitude she had created for herself and must maintain until Jason was gone. Since Antonia’s, there had been only one phone call and that had been from Ian Raeburn. He asked her to come out for a meal with him.

  Benet longed to go. Her abruptness to him, her coldness, when she met him in the street with Jason and the rocking horse had troubled and nagged at her ever since. Without Jason, in some restaurant and later on their own, she could get to know him better. It surprised her how very much she wanted to do this. But Jason couldn’t be left and there was no one she could ask to sit with him. All the people she could think of as possibilities had, in the past, sat for her with James. This was an excuse she couldn’t make to Ian. She had to tell him she was busy every evening.

  ‘Some other time?’ he said. ‘How about next week?’

  She found herself saying, ‘Yes, please,’ like a child promised a treat, a way she had never before spoken to a man.

  Now next week had come and she was waiting for him to phone. If he would phone, that would make her do something about Jason. Lying in bed thinking like that at three in the morning seemed perfectly rational, to arrange to have dinner with Ian on, say, Thursday night and therefore be impelled to get rid of Jason by Wednesday. Dressing Jason next morning, giving him his breakfast, talking to him about the day ahead, she felt quite different. Her sense of responsibility returned, her care for Jason’s welfare and for his status as a human being worthy of respect. But she waited for Ian’s phone call like a teenager with a first boyfriend. She kept on thinking she heard the phone when it hadn’t rung. And when one day she found the receiver had been off for hours because Jason had been playing with it, she had to make an effort not to show her anger.

  It was that afternoon when, to divert him from the phone, she broke down another barrier and unlocked James’s toy cupboard.

  He fetched the toys out in a methodical adult manner, examining each one. A paintbox James had never used, had been far too young to use, interested him deeply. He couldn’t possibly have known what the paints in their small square troughs were or what they were for. Perhaps he simply liked the colours. It brought Benet enormous entertainment to observe how manually dextrous he was. He hardly ever dropped anything. He was a clean and tidy eater. Now he took out a paintbrush and tested the soft camel hair on the pad of his left forefinger. The feel of it made him look up at her and give her one of his broad, radiant smiles. After a while he found the xylophone with its rainbow octave. It was the colours, the spectrum and the gold, that held his attention. James, she remembered with a catch of pain, had wanted the notes of the scale, that was what had pleased him. But Jason, after a time, did pick up the wooden mallet and slowly and speculatively produce a do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do . . .

  Up above them the front doorbell rang. She heard the gate close, footsteps on the short paved path, then the bell. She jumped up and went to the window. No one ever came to the door, no one ever had. The police would come, she thought, and her mouth went dry.

  At six o’clock it was dark, the Vale of Peace lamplit in its cosy, antique Hampstead sort of way. She looked out through the slats of the blind. No police car, no stranger’s car at all. What cars there were were her own and those of her neighbours habitually parked in this corner of the Vale of Peace. The thought came then that her caller might be Ian. Perhaps he didn’t live far away. That the Vale was not exactly on the way to anything except the dark uninhabited Heath itself did occur to her. And wouldn’t he have phoned first? Well, Jason had had the phone off the hook for hours.

  The bell rang again, a long insistent peal this time. She ran upstairs. All the time she was thinking, let it be him, let it. To sit and talk to him over a cup of tea down here in the warm basement with Jason was the nicest thing she could think of doing. Yes, please let it be him . . .

  She put on the hall light and opened the front door. It wasn’t the police and it wasn’t Ian.

  It was Edward.

  The firm of solicitors Terence found to act for him was in Cricklewood. He saw the name in gilt letters on a row of windows over the premises of a building society. Cricklewood was safer than Hampstead. He took the deeds with him. By now he was getting used to being addressed as Mr Phipps and he felt fairly confident about signing as Phipps, having practised John Howard’s signature every day.

  Terence expected a lot of questions but the solicitor wanted nothing more than the name of the estate agents. He seemed surprised to be offered the deeds of the house.

  ‘We’ll press for an early exchange of contracts and ten per cent of the purchase price on that date,’ he said.

  Going down the stairs, Terence worked that one out. Thirteen thousand, two hundred and ninety-five pounds. If he lost his nerve, if the strain of it all got too much for him, he could pull out once he got that money. He could simply walk out and go. The thought comforted him and his churning stomach quietened. When he got home he found a letter waiting for him on the mat. It was one of the few letters he had ever received while living in Spring Close, the first since Freda went away.

  He recognized Freda’s writing on the envelope.

  ‘Dear Terry’ – he would have expected ‘Dearest lambkins’, though he had never had a letter from her before. The opening seemed ominous. He read quickly, fearful she might be coming back. There was no risk of that though. Not much was said about what she was doing, yet somehow the two sheets reeked of happiness, and all through them were references to someone called Anthony. A brief explanation of who Anthony was – ‘an old friend I knew before I was married, we lost touch over the years. He has a house here . . .’ – came near the end. Terence saw it all. That was why she had gone: she had had a letter from, perhaps even been invited by, this Anthony. Some old rich man. Money calls to money, he thought. Very likely she would marry Anthony.

  The letter annoyed him. She was obviously indifferent to his welfare. The tone was rather as if she were writing to a caretaker. ‘The heating system should be overhauled before Christmas. Would you like to ring them and arrange a date? It is on contract so there is no need for you to worry about payment . . .’ It also pleased him. She wasn’t coming back, she wouldn’t poke her nose in where she wasn’t wanted. If he could only hold on to his nerve, keep cool, why do a moonlight flit with thirteen thousand when he had only to wait in perfect safety for ten times that?

  He phoned Steiner & Wildwood to give Sawyer the name of his solicitor. In the course of conversation it came out that they would be taking three per cent commission. Terence had been told this when he first put the house in their hands but it was irritating to be reminded of it. A pleasanter piece of news was that Mr and Mrs Goldschmidt were not dependent on the sale of their own house to buy 5 Spring Close.

  ‘There won’t be any question of a chain,’ said Sawyer.

  ‘A chain?’

  ‘I mean there won’t be any question of Mr and Mrs Goldschmidt waiting to sell their property to a purchaser who is waiting for someone to buy his property. And so on.’

  ‘I see. Great. That’s fine.’

  There seemed cause for celebration. Terence seriously contemplated selling those National Savings certificates of John Howard’s. He was confident of his ability to forge the signature perfectly. And he would only have to forge the signature on a withdrawal form. He had found out there would be no need to present himself for scrutiny at a post office. But was it worth even that small risk for £1400? How would he feel forever afterwards if he threw up his chances of £130,000 for not much more than a hundredth of that?

  For the time being, he had to be content with the benefit he got from the DHSS. He phoned Teresa and took her to the cinema. They went to the Screen on the Hill so they were back at Spring
Close soon after ten. For the first time Terence had used Freda’s car, noting it was high time it had some exercise. The battery needed a good deal of stirring into life. Because he put the car away in the garage again, they entered the house by the back way.

  Teresa said could she have a bath? Freda’s en suite bathroom reminded her of a photograph of one she had seen in Homes and Gardens while waiting to have her teeth scaled. Terence went to the bedroom window to pull down the blind which was made of black silk with a Chinese painting on it. It was not modesty or prudishness that stopped him putting the light on before doing this but rather an unwillingness to draw any sort of attention to himself on the part of the neighbours. Seeing a naked man and a girl in Freda’s bedroom wouldn’t, of course, have the effect of making a neighbour ring up Steiner & Wildwood and spill the beans, but it would make him conspicuous and even talked about in a way he felt – at this moment in time, to quote Sawyer – undesirable.

  A man was standing under the archway that was the entrance to Spring Close. Terence could see him quite clearly in the light from the fancy carriage lamps that were secured on each side to the uprights of the arch. He was a young man, very young, perhaps no more than what newspapers and television called a youth. The lamplight showed Terence that he was dark, handsome in an Irish sort of way, very lanky and narrow-hipped. He had jeans on and a leather jacket, a sweater with a high polo neck. Exactly the way a young detective constable would dress getting himself up to be taken for a yobbo.

  Terence’s heart thudded as if it were kicking him. There was no doubt the man was watching this house. A non-confronter and one who could readily convince himself black was white and things almost anything but what they seemed, Terence nevertheless couldn’t be persuaded that the man under the arch was interested in any other house or was there for any other purpose but to keep his eye on 5 Spring Close. Their eyes met, only Terence knew the man couldn’t actually see him, having sometimes himself looked back at this window from the arch after dark.

  What was he doing there? Had the police somehow got wise to what he was doing? That solicitor, he thought, and he broke out into a sweat. Probably the solicitor had been a personal friend of John Phipps. Terence padded over to the bedside table and swallowed two Valium. He could hear Teresa splashing about in the bath. Why would the police watch the house? Why wouldn’t they just come and arrest him?

  It occurred to him that the man might be waiting to do just that, only he thought he was still out. He’d soon know, he had to know. What had he done, anyway? Nothing. He had signed nothing. He would say that he was Freda’s cousin and that she’d asked him to sell her house for her in her absence. And if they asked her at this stage, she wouldn’t betray him. She might hate him, never speak to him again, but she wouldn’t betray him to the police. He took a deep breath, snapped on the overhead light and immediately pulled down the blind.

  Teresa came dancing out of the bathroom in wafts of Freda’s Opium bath essence. Her scented nakedness had not the slightest effect on Terence who hoped to God things would improve later. It was his turn for the bathroom. He cleaned his teeth. Then he stood on the rim of Freda’s bidet and looked out of the window.

  The close was empty but for a white cat sitting under the catalpa tree. The man had gone.

  In the light of her porch he looked pale and rather thinner than three years before. He walked in without a word as if he were expected. And suddenly, as he was unwinding his long scarf and hanging up his jacket, she understood that he was expected. At least as far as he knew. He had been among those anonymous phone callers, one of the many Mopsa alone had spoken to and given God knows what replies. Of course Mopsa had invited him. It would be one of Mopsa’s dearest wishes to see her and Edward married, irrespective of their feelings for each other, for the sake of a weird, specious propriety, for the sake of James who was dead.

  ‘I suppose my mother asked you?’

  ‘Your mother said you asked me.’

  ‘Edward, what on earth do you mean?’

  ‘You were ill in bed when I phoned. She said she knew you’d like to see me, you were always saying so, but to leave it a week or two till you were better. She said you’d call me back if Wednesday turned out not to be convenient.’

  Had his tone always been so sulky? It was a voice, she thought; full of paranoia.

  ‘I didn’t invite you. It’s the first I’ve heard of any of this.’

  ‘I had an extraordinary feeling as I was coming along this dank enclave,’ said Edward, ‘that when I got here I wouldn’t be greeted with open arms.’

  He hadn’t changed in his ways or his appearance. He was dressed as he always had been, with all the eccentricity of an athletic teenager: jeans, open-necked thin white shirt, leather jacket and striped scarf that hung to his knees. The boyish look was still there, the lock of yellow hair dipping over the forehead, the chiselled mouth with its tilted corners, but it was growing strained, the process of desiccation was beginning. Edward’s nose looked sharper and more aquiline. The wonderful blue of his eyes was as intense as ever.

  ‘Come and have a drink,’ she said.

  She had been going to take him into the living room where the drinks were but she remembered Jason. Jason was down in the basement on his own and the kitchen was full of dangerous gadgets, the electric kettle, the gas taps, knives. She went towards the basement stairs, Edward following. He always walked softly and springily, in a catlike way, as if on his toes. He is like a cat, she thought. We always think, when we make that comparison, of dark people, dark-haired people, and Edward is fair. Yet he is like a cat, a long, lean ginger tomcat . . .

  The same explanation of Jason’s presence must be given to him as had been given to Ian Raeburn. Why not? He wouldn’t be interested anyway. In the past he had often said he disliked children.

  ‘I read your book,’ he said. ‘I liked it. It’s a great book, it deserved to win that prize.’

  She was astonished and touched. She turned her head to him. ‘Why, Edward, how very nice of you!’

  ‘One of the things that gratified me was how much of it you owed to me.’

  There was nothing to say. He had taken her breath away.

  ‘The fact that you went to India at all, for one thing. That you had the entry to places you’d never have set foot in but for me. Not to mention what you learned about writing from me. You might have given me a credit, a single line of acknowledgement would have been less ungracious – “For Edward Greenwood without whose help et cetera”.’

  ‘The gratification you felt wasn’t an adequate recompense then? You’d have liked a fee?’

  She ran down the last half dozen stairs, her heart pounding with anger. Jason, who had abandoned the xylophone for the time being and was filling James’s wheelbarrow with James’s bricks, looked up and smiled when he saw her. His pleasure at her return lit up his whole face. He had waited, he hadn’t cried, but he was relieved to the point of delight that she had come back. He came to her and put up his arms. She picked him up, calmed by him, her anger cooling.

  Edward was looking at them both. A flush had come up into his face. He said in his sullen way, ‘So that’s my son?’

  She hadn’t expected that. Bringing Edward down here she hadn’t foreseen it, though obviously she should have. It would be easy to say yes, the easiest way out. After all she would seldom see Edward again, she was going to make sure of that. In no possible way were they going to become ‘friends’. If James had lived, if this were James he was looking at in Benet’s arms, that would still be true. There was nothing to make a link between them now that James was dead.

  She had only to nod. A shrug, simple silence, would do it. To put an end to questions, inquiries, suspicions, she had only to nod her head, take a step forward and present this handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed child to this handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed man. She couldn’t. It seemed an outrage. So Edward did mean something to her still? Or what there had been between herself and Edward meant som
ething? Enough anyway to make it impossible for her to look him in the face and tell him this was his child.

  ‘No. He’s a friend’s child I’m looking after.’

  He didn’t believe her. ‘Don’t give me that, Benet. You’ve kept yourself from me and your book and your success, you must be the meanest-spirited woman living. And now you’d even deny me the identity of my son.’

  ‘I’m not denying anything, Edward. This isn’t James.’

  She set Jason on the rocking horse and set it swinging. But Jason had had enough of rocking horses and xylophones and wheelbarrows. He rubbed his fists into his eyes.

  ‘Jay wants juice.’

  It was what he always said when he was tired. She carried him with her to the fridge, took out the feeding bottle of apple juice, held it under the hot tap to take the chill off, Jason seated on her hip. Edward followed her. He was standing very close to them.

  ‘If it’s not James, where is James?’

  To gain courage, to have the strength to say the words, she found herself doing a curious thing. She tightened her grasp on Jason and held him close to her, feeling his warmth.

  ‘James is dead, Edward.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I did say that. You did hear me. James is dead. He died in hospital about six weeks ago.’

  ‘Children don’t die these days,’ he said. ‘Children don’t die.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. I was wrong. They do.’

  Jason liked best to feed himself with the juice. She sat him in the big Windsor chair, propped with cushions. Edward was staring at him.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Benet. It would be typical of you to invent some stratagem to keep me totally from my son. I’ve no legal claim anyway but the fact that he’s my son and you know it and I know it would be enough to bother you. You’d even cut that.’

  She lifted her shoulders. She said stonily, ‘I’ll show you the death certificate.’