The Lake of Darkness

by Ruth Rendell

  “How much is it, Martin?”

  “Forty-two thousand pounds.”

  Francesca was silenced. She felt quite weak and swimmy in the head at the thought of so much money. Martin said it would be a good investment, house property was the best investment these days, and before they got married he would sell both flats and buy a house. The property market, he had been told, was due for another steep rise in the spring. With luck he ought to make a big profit on both flats.

  They went back to Cromwell Court where Martin had got chocolate eclairs and a Battenburg cake in for tea. Francesca partook heartily of both. It was the most miserable shame she didn’t find Martin in the least attractive. If only she fancied him she could have put up with the yawning dullness and the accountant’s talk and the pomposity for the sake of that lovely flat. But she didn’t fancy him, not a scrap, which was odd really because, like Tim, he was tall and dark and though not so good looking, he was younger and cleaner and he didn’t permanently stink of Gauloises. Francesca pondered rather regretfully on the anomalies of sexual attraction while Martin lectured her gently on house property and the registration of land and stamp duty and the making of searches and the mysteries of conveyancing.

  Francesca ate another chocolate eclair. Martin wasn’t the sort of person who would even consider going to bed in the afternoon, he would think it perverse. She let him hold her hand across the spread of sofa cushions.

  “I suppose it’ll be months and months before you actually own it?” she said.

  “Oh, no. I’m paying cash, you see. My friend, Norman Tremlett-you met him here-he’ll do a survey for me on Monday. I’ve already talked to my solicitor-he’s another friend, we were all at school together-and he says, provided the survey’s favourable there’s no reason why the contract shouldn’t be ready for my signature by February the twelfth, that’s Monday week. Then I’d, get completion as soon as possible, maybe three weeks, and you could move in.”

  Francesca thought how when she and Russell had tried to buy a house, what difficulties and obstacles there had been! The first two they fixed on had been sold over their heads while the building society hesitated over giving Russell a mortgage. Securing the one they had finally lived in took months and months, nearly a year of their hopes being raised and dashed. But they, of course, had had no money and no old-boy network. It no longer mattered, it was history, ten years gone, swept away by oceans of water under the bridge. She smiled at Martin.

  “What about furniture, darling?”

  “I thought of making a separate deal with the owner for the carpets and curtains and the bedroom furniture and the fridge and cooker. He wants to sell. Of course, if there was anything special you wanted, we could go shopping together next Saturday.”

  Was there any point now in waiting till February 12? None except that she had given Tim an undertaking. Martin seemed to take it for granted that she would now be spending every evening with him. Francesca pointed out that while she was still with Russell she couldn’t go out every night and leave him to look after Lindsay. Perhaps she might manage another day in the week as well as Monday …

  “I want my parents to meet you,” said Martin.

  She insisted on going home at six o’clock and he insisted on driving her. This time he didn’t drop her a hundred yards away but set her down outside number 54 and there he waited to see her into the house. Francesca stood outside the white iron gate, waving impatiently at him, while he sat in the car, refusing to go till she did. After a few seconds she saw it was useless. She must either make it look as if she were going into that house or else give up the game.

  There was a light on in the hall but nowhere else. She unlatched the white gate and walked quickly to the side entrance which was a wooden door set into a six-foot-high fence. It was rather more than dusk and not quite dark. Francesca boldly tried the handle on the wooden door, and when it worked pushed the door open and found herself on a concrete strip of back yard. It would be rather awful, she thought, but rather funny too if someone saw her lurking there and called the police. After a little while she heard Martin’s car go, so she opened the wooden door again and got out as fast as she could, running away down the side street on to which the garden of 54 abutted.

  It wasn’t until her next meeting with him that she learned how Martin had come back to “see if she was all right.” How, from a car in the street, he could have known whether she was or wasn’t he didn’t say. But while there, he said, he had seen Russell Brown come out of the house and walk away towards Coldfall Wood.

  First of all he told her that he had felt so happy about the new flat and their future that on Sunday he had decided to rush in (as he put it) where angels fear to tread and had actually called on Miss Watson. There in her employer’s house in Hurst Avenue he had explained what his letters perhaps hadn’t explained and had convinced her of his good intentions. She had agreed, in tears and some bewilderment, to accept ten thousand pounds with which to buy a small terraced house in the Lincolnshire town where her married sister lived.

  “So that’s twenty-five thousand disposed of. Do you think it would be wrong of me if I only gave away another twenty? You see, I’m going to have rather more expense than I thought with your flat.”

  Francesca said with perfect sincerity that she didn’t think it would be wrong at all. Every time he talked of giving money away to these people she didn’t know and didn’t want to know, she had to turn her face away so that he couldn’t see her expression of disgust and dismay. She turned her back on him, picking red tulips and blue irises ouf of the jars on the floor to make a bouquet for his mother.

  “And I’ve got something else to tell you. I’ve seen Russell.”

  She turned round slowly, holding the flowers. He smiled, looking triumphant.

  “He only waited for you to come in to go out himself, didn’t he? I must say, it gave me a strange feeling to see him. He looks older than he is, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know, Martin.”

  “More than thirty-five, I thought. D’you like those coneyskin coats on men? They’re very ‘in’ this year. I could get one.”

  “Was Russell wearing his coneyskin then?” said Francesca with care.

  “When I saw him I remembered what he’d, done to you and I longed to get out of the car and hit him. But, of course, I didn’t. I thought of how upset you’d, be. He went off up towards the wood or the North Circular or somewhere.”

  “He’s got friends in Coppetts Lane,” said Francesca.

  They went out to the car with the flowers.

  “I’ve told my parents a bit about you. I’m afraid I’ve had to stretch the truth a bit. It seemed politic.”

  The truth had been stretched so far by now, thought Francesca, it seemed unlikely to snap tonight.

  “I’ve given them to understand you’re already living apart from your husband,” said Martin. “I refer to you as my fiancee.”

  “Then I ought to have a ring,” said Francesca.

  “I’m afraid you wouldn’t wear it any more than you wear Russell’s wedding ring. But shall I get you one for when your divorce comes through, so you can wear it to the registrar’s office?”

  The Urbans were very much what Francesca had expected, except that Walter Urban was younger and better looking. She found him rather attractive and speculated as to what it would be like to go to bed with a man twice one’s age. Margaret Urban sat making patchwork of the same sort as that with which the cushions were covered. It looked a tedious and intricate task, putting all those hexagons together evenly. Francesca wondered why she did it, for they seemed to have heaps of money, but she would have liked a skirt for herself made in that sort of patchwork. It was a shame really that she wasn’t, whatever the Urbans might think, in the running to get one.

  They were like the Three Bears, she thought. She had gone to sit down on the right-hand side of the log fire and been told sotto voce by Martin that that was his mother’s chair. They drank sher
ry, oloroso for Mrs. Urban, amon-tillado for Walter, and Tio Pepe for Martin. She felt that, like Goldilocks, she should have tried a little bit of each but settled instead for the Tio Pepe too.

  Inwardly, she was amused. How dismayed the two senior Urbans must be at the thought of their only son (a boy brought up with the utmost care) marrying a divorced woman with a child. She tried to read some hint of it in their faces and in Mrs. Urban’s tone when she looked up from her sewing to ask questions about Lindsay. But there was nothing. They were playing safe, humouring Martin, in the hope, no doubt, that if they didn’t oppose him he might get over her before any irreversible step was taken. It was just the way she envisaged behaving herself if anything so awful was to happen as Lindsay bringing home an accountant or a solicitor and saying she wanted to marry him.

  When they were on their second glasses of sherry Martin told them about buying the fiat in Swan Place.

  “For Francesca and Lindsay,” he said.

  Where did they suppose she was living now? Francesca wondered. She expected Martin’s announcement to be greeted with grave disapproval. In her experience, parents never like you spending money, even your own, but she had reckoned without the passion for wise investment which throbs in the heart of every good accountant. Francesca noticed too that Martin’s mother took it very coolly. She had a sensitive awareness of women’s reactions, and she understood that Margaret Urban, mother of an only son, would now be able to convince herself that if her son and his fiancee lived under separate roofs before marriage, they wouldn’t sleep together before marriage either.

  “A very sound idea,” said Walter, “buying the place before prices go up again. Of course you’ll elect to describe it as your principal residence?”

  “It won’t be his residence at all, Walter,” said Mrs. Urban.

  Her husband took no notice of this interruption which had made Francesca discreetly smile. “Because if Swan Place is your secondary residence you won’t forget, will you, that you’ll be liable for Capital Gains Tax when you sell it.”

  “Do you know,” said Martin, “I had forgotten. The tax payable would be a third of my profit, wouldn’t it?”

  “Thirty per cent,” said Walter.

  They talked about tax and tax avoidance all through dinner. Mrs. Urban watched them placidly from under her slate-blue fringe, but Francesca was so bored she couldn’t control her yawns.

  On Saturday afternoon they paid another visit to Swan Place and saw the owner, a Mr. Butler, and he and Martin went through what Martin called “negotiating a price” for the carpets and curtains and bits of kitchen equipment and bedroom furniture. Afterwards he took Francesca out to tea at Louis’ in Hampstead. He said that they would go and buy any other furniture she might want next week-end, and when she said she could do that on her own, he said he thought he would like to be there too. After all, it would one day be his furniture as well as hers. Francesca didn’t much care, she had given up, the long drag was nearly over. She would see him on Monday and say she couldn’t leave Russell or contrive to have a tremendous quarrel with him, and that would be that.

  When Francesca had eaten as many cream slices and rum babas as she could manage-it was too late in the day to worry about sticking to a Victorian lady’s appetite-Martin suggested they go across the road and see the Bunuel film at the Everyman. But Francesca wasn’t having that. If Goldie upstairs would keep an ear open for Lindsay she wanted to go round the pub with Tim. So she said she had to get back to Lindsay because Russell was having dinner with his publisher and someone who might be interested in doing The Iron Cocoon for television. This was an excuse in which Tim had rehearsed her and she was glad to have an opportunity of using it. Martin, of course, drove her up to Fortis Green Lane. Once more she had to hide in the side entrance. After Monday, she thought, she would never set foot in Finchley again.

  February 10, February 11 … It would soon be all over. Francesca tried to think of ways of breaking off with Martin that were not too brutal. It was no good discussing this with Tim who would have advised the bald truth, presented as savagely as possible.

  Martin walked into the shop at a quarter to six on Monday, February 12. Last time, thought Francesca, last time. She gave him a vague kiss. She hadn’t bothered with pink panne velvet or burgundy crepe but was wearing her favourite collection of garments, a patchwork skirt, a Hungarian peasant top with a long cardigan over it, and her Olaf’s Daughters boots, which were heaven to wear in the shop whatever Martin might think of them.

  “I’m awfully sorry, darling, but before we have dinner I’ve got to go round to my solicitor’s and see about this contract. You won’t mind, will you?”

  Francesca didn’t particularly mind. She wouldn’t have minded if they had spent the entire evening at his solicitor’.s All that interested her was how to pave the way for disappearing permanently from Martin’s life. Perhaps it would be best to stage a quarrel over dinner or make use of an idea which had come to her earlier in the day. This was to say that she was pregnant and that it was Russell’s child, so she would have to stay with him, wouldn’t she? Francesca thought she could really enter into the spirit of this. And it had the great merit of not humiliating or even much disillusioning Martin. Francesca was amoral and greedy but she wasn’t entirely heartless. Martin sometimes reminded her of a big kind dog, a Newfoundland perhaps, that one might have to abandon at the Battersea Dogs’ Home but which one wouldn’t kick in the face. She would try to let him down as lightly as possible, for her sake, she admitted, as well as his. She hated scenes, recriminations, fuss.

  Martin introduced her to Adrian Vowchurch as his fiancee. There was a Mrs. Vowchurch somewhere, clattering about in the kitchen regions. Francesca sized Adrian up. She didn’t like little hatchet-faced men with supercilious eyes and the sort of public school accent so affected as to be a joke. He shook hands with her and said insincerely, she thought, that it gave him really tremendous pleasure to meet her at last. While he and Martin talked more or less incomprehensibly, it was borne in on Francesca that they were there for the express purpose of signing the contract for the purchase of the Swan Place flat. She could see it, or what was probably it, lying on a blotter on a mahogany desk. Adrian saw her looking and said they hoped for completion within a couple of weeks, allowing for searches (whatever that might mean) and would Mrs. Brown like to have a look at the contract? Francesca hesitated. It seemed too unkind to let Martin buy the flat when she hadn’t the slightest intention of ever living in it. Somehow the purchase of the flat hadn’t seemed real until she saw what, in black and white, it involved.

  This agreement is made the Twelfth Day of February, Nineteen Hundred and Eighty, between John Alexander Butler, of Flat 10, Swan Place, Stanhope Avenue, High-gate, in the County of London {Hereinafter called “the Vendor”), and Mrs. Francesca Brown. … Martin had given him her address as 12, Cromwell Court. It was absurd on the strength of that one week-end, but it was rather touching. She read the rest of the first page. She’d, thought that he brought her here just to witness his signature. And once this contract was exchanged with Butler’s, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for him to get out of buying the flat. Even she knew that. What she ought to do was ask him to postpone signing it, and when they were alone tell him the truth.

  She found she lacked the courage to do that. She looked up and met the cold, suspicious eyes of Adrian Vowchurch. He didn’t like her. It was far more than that. He distrusted her and resented her presence. He gave an infinitesimal shrug and passed a fountain pen to her.

  “Can we have your signature then, Mrs. Brown-er, Francesca?”

  She took the pen.

  “Not there,” he said. “Up here.”

  Martin gave a soft indulgent laugh. She didn’t quite understand, but she signed where Adrian told her to, and then Julie Vowchurch, who had come in and given her a tight smile signed as witness. Francesca felt excited and puzzled and rather frightened. Martin refused the Vowchurches’ offer of drinks
and they drove up to Hampstead and had dinner at the Cellier du Midi.

  “You don’t know how relieved I am,” said Martin, “that I told you about winning that money. We’ll never have secrets from each other, shall we?”

  “No,” said Francesca, trying furiously to think. She couldn’t wait to be home with Tim.

  “Now we’ve got your flat fixed up and the future settled, I want to get the other thing settled too. I mean the philanthropy part or charity or whatever you like to call it. So I’m going to have another go at Mrs. Cochrane, and I really think the last ten thousand had better go to Mrs. Finn. Have I told you about her? She used to be our cleaner and she’s a bit crazy, poor old creature, and I’ll have to reach her through her son. But I’m sure she’s a deserving cause … Are you all right, darling? You look as if you’re off somewhere in a dream.”

  “I’m awfully tired. I won’t come back with you, if you don’t mind. I’ll just get a taxi in Heath Street.” His face fell. “But I could see you tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Darling,” he said, “if that’s a promise I shan’t mind letting you go.”

  Tim was sitting at the kitchen table doing his reporter’s expenses, the greatest work of fiction, he sometimes said, since War and Peace. He was smoking what smelt like his hundredth Gauloise of the day and drinking retsina out of a bottle. The oven was on and the wall heater and as usual the condensation was running down the walls.

  “Oh, Tim,” said Francesca, “I feel very peculiar. Wait till I tell you. Can I have some wine, please, and a cigarette?”

  “Have you had a heart-rending renunciation scene?”

  “No, listen, Tim, we went to his solicitor and he had this contract thing for buying the flat and I read it and it said something about being between John Alexander Butler and Francesca Brown. And I nearly didn’t sign it because it seemed a bit mean and rotten making him pay for something I wasn’t going to live in, but you needn’t look like that, I did sign it, and …”

  “Thank Christ,” said Tim, and his sallow face had become even paler, the red mouth and the black brows standing out like paint. “Think-you’re sure it was made just between this Butler guy and you?” She nodded with eagerness. “And you signed it on your own? Livingstone didn’t sign it?”