Tree of Hands

by Ruth Rendell

  Barry didn’t nod at him or acknowledge the wave. It didn’t occur to him to be grateful to Dennis Gordon for deigning to notice him. The Rolls moved off quietly, with smooth elegance, like a lovely ship leaving a port that is necessarily squalid with docks and wharfs. Barry thought what a lot of people there were about who had money: Ken, Mrs Fylemon, Kostas, Terence Wand, Dennis Gordon. Sometimes his longing for money or for the opportunity to make it was as great as his longing for Carol. He sensed somehow that if he had it he could keep her for ever.

  The wine bar was full of trailing plants, pictures of the sea, posters of ruined temples, very Greek. Alkmini, round, dark, heavy-browed, dressed in unrelieved black, was serving behind the bar on her own. Barry was glad afterwards – insofar as he was glad of anything – that he hadn’t betrayed himself by asking for Carol. He hadn’t got as far as speaking a word. At the sight of him, Kostas, unsmiling, lifted a brown hand an inch or two off his knee. It was Alkmini who told him.

  ‘You forget it’s Wednesday, Barry?’

  He said nothing for a moment. He felt something move involuntarily inside his chest. His face grew hot. He knew at once with the intuitiveness of the lover what Alkmini was implying. Carol still worked at the wine bar, had even taken on Saturdays, but she had given up Wednesday evenings. She had given up working Wednesday evenings and she hadn’t told him.

  ‘It went right out of my head,’ he said.

  He hardly cared whether they guessed or not. Or even, when he looked back over his shoulder and saw Alkmini whispering to a customer, whether it was him she was whispering about – ‘That’s Carol Stratford’s boyfriend, that’s the one.’

  If Carol hadn’t told him, it was because she must be going somewhere on Wednesday evenings she didn’t want him to know about. Of course he could guess where that was. He got on a bus, the first that came along, hardly knowing where it was going, anywhere to put distance between himself and Winterside Down. A curious idea came to him – but one he quickly pushed away – that she must love him, she must care for what he thought and felt, if she bothered to deceive him. She must still care about hurting him.

  He tried to remember what she had worn that day. Even if he could have remembered, it would mean nothing. For going out with Terence Wand, she would have come home and changed after being at Mrs Fylemon’s. The Zandra Rhodes dress perhaps or the black and white zig-zag with the fake fur over it, it was cold enough for that tonight. He got off the bus in Camden Town and went into the tube station. At Hampstead, when he came out into Heath Street, it was snowing a little, the odd occasional flake of snow falling out of the black smoky sky.

  Hampstead was like a museum full of old things, beautiful, preserved, unreal. The richness of it, even on this mid-winter night, the money-breathing walls, depressed him. He made his way through winding lanes and little alleys to the walls that enclosed Spring Close as if it were a castle. Which, of course, it was, a rich man’s castle guarded from the rough world. Barry stood under the arch. The lamplight in there was of quite a different kind from that which glared upon and bleached Winterside Down. It seemed to stroke the brownish-red bricks, the pale smooth stonework, the dark shiny wood, the glass. There was enough of it to throw a shadow of the tree on to the paving stones, a shadow like a piece of branched coral. The snow had stopped.

  Terence Wand’s house was in total darkness. They were out somewhere together, of course they were, though they might intend to come back here later. What could he have done anyway if they had been there? He couldn’t march in, fight the man, seize Carol. He wasn’t her husband. She hadn’t even promised he might be her husband one day.

  He walked round the perimeter of Spring Walk. Number five’s garage was empty, the door standing open. They had gome out in the car. He went back into Hampstead, into Heath Street, down to the High Street for a drink in the King of Bohemia. It was warm in there and crowded. Carol would have to be home by eleven-thirty, he thought, if she wanted him to go on thinking she had been at the wine bar. It was getting on for ten now. The cold hit him, coming out of that warm bar. It was stupid going back to Spring Close but he went back.

  The arrival of a police car put an end to his vigil. It slid in under the arch, a little sleek blue and white car with the orange-coloured illuminated sign on its roof. Barry was caught in its headlights like a wild animal on a country road. His first thought was that they wanted him again for another half-dozen hours of questioning, that they had followed him here observing all his movements, the transport he had used, and now were going to carry him off to the fresh humiliation of some interview room.

  But the young uniformed officer who got out and came up to him only asked him quietly and politely what he was doing there. Barry didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was doing there himself.

  ‘I was just looking,’ he said and he heard a stammer in his voice. ‘I didn’t know there were any modern houses down here so I came in to get a closer look.’

  ‘You’re taking your time about it.’

  One of the neighbours had been on to them, Barry guessed. Somebody in one of the lighted houses must have phoned them to report a loiterer.

  ‘I should get off home if I were you,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s getting a bit late to be hanging about looking at other people’s houses. Let’s see you on your way. Know where the station is, do you?’

  No question of their mistaking him for a Hampsteadite! They made sure he went to the station. They watched him from the car, and when he was at the top of Christchurch Hill, he heard the car crawl up behind him, felt her lights flood his back. The time was after eleven-thirty. If he didn’t make haste he could miss the last Piccadilly Line train out of King’s Cross. He’d be late anyway. For once Carol would wonder where he was. The police car followed him down Heath Street and, when he had been seen to go into the tube station, went off down Fitzjohn’s Avenue.

  It was possibly the last train he got and it brought him to Turnpike Lane at nearly half-past midnight. He had a long walk from there. The only people about were young men of his own sort of age, walking alone like he was, or in groups. There wasn’t a woman to be seen. The traffic was light. It had snowed a lot while he was in the train and the snow had melted into puddles. A young black man passed him, carrying a transistor playing very loud rock.

  Barry turned into Winterside Road and went down the path to the Chinese bridge. He counted the houses from the corner, but with no joy in his heart this time. Her lights would draw him to her but not happily, not at a run.

  They were on, upstairs and down. He began to think what he would say to her. He couldn’t just let it go. The green lawns were khaki-brown in the sodium lamplight and the sky held its reddish London sheen, but the lights at each end of the footpath ahead were timed to go out at midnight. The passage itself was dark though light at the end, as the mouth of a cave is when looked at from the inside. Barry thought suddenly, suppose he’d been wrong all the time, suppose she’d given up Wednesday evenings only this week and she’d forgotten to tell him? Alkmini hadn’t said anything that didn’t fit in with that. And then after leaving Mrs Fylemon she’d gone shopping somewhere, to one of the centres that stayed open till eight. It was something she often did. He had gone out himself at seven. She was in now. She might have been home waiting for him for hours, he thought.

  Barry very much wanted to believe this. He thought that, if Carol told him the story he had just told himself, he would believe her, he would be happy. He entered the passage between the high fences and as he did so two men came in at the other end. Their bodies blocked out the light and he could see the shape of them only, not their faces. For a moment he thought nothing of it. Two men had come into the passage and were walking towards him, that was all.

  He went on walking, slowing down when he realized there was something odd. The odd thing was that they were still walking abreast. One hadn’t stepped behind the other to let him pass. They still walked side by side, the pair of them coming
towards him as if they hadn’t seen him – no, not that, as if they meant to come smack into him.

  Barry was aware of a danger that raised prickles on the back of his neck. He turned round. Another man, thin, lanky, his black clothes glistening in the little light that showed in the mouth of the passage, had come from the path across the grass and entered the footpath on purposefully silent feet. He stood there, waiting, his arms folded.

  Not men, of course. Boys. He recognized the one with folded arms, he could see him. It was Blue Hair. They had been watching for him, they must have been. Waiting for him to be out late on his own. He turned again in the way a cornered animal does and his face met Hoopoe’s hot breath, kebab-stinking. Black Beauty with him had pockmarks under his cheekbones as if his face had once been peppered with shot.

  ‘Let me pass,’ said Barry.

  ‘Fucking baby killer.’

  Barry knew he was for it. It wouldn’t make any difference what he did, cringe, plead or what, so he wouldn’t cringe. He wouldn’t argue. That this lot should set themselves up as keepers of a social conscience was a bitter irony. He lifted his right arm and elbowed Hoopoe out of the way. He used both his arms, elbowing. He did it so fast that it nearly worked with Hoopoe. Not with the black boy. The black boy grabbed his shoulder and wheeled him round and struck him in the face with the flat of his hand. Barry punched back. He punched hard at Black Beauty and kicked out at Hoopoe and the adrenalin streamed into his blood and, for a moment, a split second, it was good, he was kicking and lashing out and winning. But only for a moment.

  Blue Hair, who had been waiting, took a leap down the passage like someone doing the long jump and then he ran and landed on Barry with both arms flailing down hard. He had leather gauntlets studded with shallow metal spikes. Black Beauty, who Barry had kneed in the groin, grabbed his arms and pinned them behind him while Blue Hair punched hard, mostly at his head and face.

  Black Beauty held him long after he would have fallen. He held him for Hoopoe and Blue Hair to use as a punching bag. Darkness came down in a sagging curtain and Barry felt his mouth fill with blood as a tooth went. Black Beauty dropped him, perhaps to keep himself clean of the blood which was spilling down Barry’s chin. Barry fell, hitting the fence, making the fence shake and vibrate. Hoopoe’s pointed boot went hard into his side. But this was his right foot and Hoopoe was left-footed. He drew back his left foot and kicked Barry’s ribs as hard as he could.

  The last thing Barry knew was a window opening upstairs in the house behind the fence and a voice calling something he never heard.

  Book Three

  18

  This agreement is made the ____ day of ____ nineteen eighty ____ between John Howard Phipps of 5 Spring Close, Hampstead, London NW 3 (hereinafter called ‘The Vendor’) of the one part and Morris Goldschmidt and Rosemary Catalina Goldschmidt his wife, both of 102 The Dale, Cricklewood, London NW2 (hereinafter called ‘The Purchaser’) of the other part.

  TERENCE’S EYES WANDERED down past the first two clauses to the vital point three:

  The price shall be £132,950 and the Purchaser shall on the signing hereof pay a Deposit of £13,295 to Lewis & Plummer, Solicitors for the Vendor, by Solicitors’ Client Account Cheque, Building Society Cheque or Banker’s Draft.

  Did that perhaps mean that this solicitor would hang on to Goldschmidt’s cheque, investing it perhaps, until the whole transaction was complete? Terence wouldn’t have been at all surprised, it was typical of people like that, sharks and money grubbers. In any case it would make a difference of no more than a month or so. If he didn’t manage to get himself a bank account by the end of the month, he must by completion date.

  No date had been entered. But the solicitor’s covering letter which had arrived with the contract suggested 15 February and would Mr Phipps indicate in his reply if this suited him? Terence phoned. The man himself wasn’t there but he spoke to a secretary.

  ‘It would be usual practice for such a deposit to be held by the vendor’s solicitors until completion date, Mr Phipps.’

  Terence didn’t want to arouse any suspicions by hinting he was in need of funds, though he was. He rang off. It had occurred to him that it would be wise to buy a plane ticket a week or so before completion to be used on completion day. What sort of a day was 15 February? Hanging up behind the kitchen door was a calendar for this year but nowhere in the house was there one for next year. He had to work it out on his fingers. February 15, thank God, was a Tuesday. Imagine if it had been a Friday with Goldschmidt paying the money in in the afternoon and him not being able to get at it till the Monday.

  Would he dare wait to buy a ticket for a flight to, say, South America until that Tuesday? It was cutting it fine. Terence, whose anxiety neurosis derived rather from the anticipation of frightful fear than from fear itself, could picture the jelly-like tongue-tied abjectness of his condition as, with a suitcase full of cash, he went from airline to airline attempting to buy a ticket. His tremulous glance would hardly dare to take in anything but that which lay straight ahead, for fear of the encroaching law. His throat would be too dry to speak, his hands shaking as he fumbled with the catches on the case. No, he must secure his seat in advance. His self-knowledge told him he would sail more or less serenely through such a purchase because at that point he would scarcely have done anything illegal. At any rate he wouldn’t have laid hands on a penny of Goldschmidt’s money.

  But without Goldschmidt’s money, how was he even going to buy a plane ticket? A one-way ticket to anywhere as distant as he intended to go to would hardly be less than £500. He wasn’t going to mess about with charter flights you had to pick up in Amsterdam. The sum of £500, which he had randomly seized on as likely, suggested to him the credit limit allowed him on his Barclaycard. He hadn’t used the card since moving out of Jessica’s house. Barclaycard didn’t know of his change of address and the card would no longer be valid anyway.

  Or was there a chance it was? Terence hadn’t the faintest idea where the card might be except that he was sure he wouldn’t have thrown away anything that might, however remotely, be a source of money. He went upstairs and hunted about. In the cupboard of the room where the futon was he had hung most of the clothes he brought with him after flitting from Jessica’s. He went through all his pockets. Nothing but a few valueless copper coins, a dirty tissue and a piece of chewing gum. Books had never been much in his line and he possessed none. What had become of the suitcase he had ‘borrowed’ from Jessica to bring his things in?

  No doubt it was with the rest of the luggage in the big store cupboard next to the guest bathroom. He looked in there and found it, a brown Revelation suitcase with a zip-up compartment inside the lining of the lid which he could feel was full of papers . . . He undid the zip and took out a copy of Knave magazine, a letter from Freda, indiscreetly sent to him at Jessica’s, a bill from Brian of Brook Street for two shirts, a bank statement – and the Barclaycard. The expiry date was February of next year. He remembered now. Jessica had got him the card in the early spring nearly two years ago and three or four months later he had left her. He could hardly believe his luck. What he must do was write at once to Barclaycard and inform them of his change of address so that they could send him a new card in time for the expiry date of this one.

  Once he had the new card things would be easy. The fact that his credit limit was only £550 mattered not at all. He could buy a one-way ticket through a travel agent, paying the deposit on the ticket out of one month’s credit and the balance out of the next month’s – Barclaycard’s accounting always taking place, he remembered, round about the twentieth of the month. And this way he wouldn’t even have to make the requisite percentage repayment of ten or twelve pounds, for this percentage instalment would not be demanded before the eighteenth of the month following the first credit and on the fifteenth he would be away.

  Terence went back to the writing desk and wrote to Barclaycard, giving his change of address and requesting a new card. Only ju
st in time he stopped himself signing the letter John Howard Phipps. He wrote to his solicitor, confirming 15 February as completion date, and then he braced himself for the signing of the contract. Thank God a witness wasn’t needed.

  A drink would be a good idea. Just one though. One to steady his hand and calm the ravening anxiety that gripped him whenever he contemplated taking this step which would commit him to selling Freda’s house. One and a half inches of whisky and the same of water. The Valium he had taken after lunch had more or less worn off by now. He sometimes thought he had taken so much of it that it didn’t really work well any longer. It was starting to get dark, though still afternoon. He put on some of the lamps with black shades and some with white shades and paced up and down on the black spaniel carpet, drinking his drink.

  Outside in the courtyard the fairy lights someone had put in the catalpa tree winked and sparkled. First of all the green and yellow lights came on, then the blue and red, then the white, then the lot together. Terence walked purposefully to the desk, sat down and signed the contract. He took two or three deep breaths, grasped the pen firmly and signed the document with the signature of John Howard Phipps. It was the best signature he had ever done, almost better than the genuine article if that were possible.

  The post wouldn’t go out till morning now but he might as well take his letters to the box and have a drink in the White Bear on the way back. He had a couple of quid left. It was while he was in the pub, minding his own business in a corner over a half of Foster’s lager, that he remembered the bank statement he had found in the zip-up compartment of Jessica’s suitcase. So excited had he been over the discovery of the credit card and finding it still valid that he hadn’t even bothered to look at that statement. Suppose there was some money still in the account? Suppose there was as much as twenty pounds? There might be. He had never drawn anything out after leaving Jessica. Some kind of wariness had stopped him. At any rate he must check up on it. The last thing he wanted was to leave the country, having made the Anglian-Victoria bank in Golders Green a substantial money present.