The Copper Peacock

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Don’t look at it, dear,’ said the double-glazing girl, making a screen out of her leaflets between Nell and the body which lay half outside and half under the car. ‘Let’s get you indoors.’

  Nell gave another wail when she saw the Little Pet roses all lying there waiting to be planted. The woman next door went into Charlotte’s kitchen to make a cup of tea and her husband came in carrying Daniel who, when he saw Nell, spoke another sentence of sorts.

  ‘Daniel hungry.’

  ‘I’ll see to him, I’ll find something for him,’ said the woman next door, dispensing tea. ‘Bring him out here, poor little mite. He’s not to blame, the little innocent, how was he to know?’

  ‘You see,’ said Ivan when they were alone.

  ‘You can’t mean to tell people Daniel did it. You can’t, Ivan.’

  ‘I can’t, agreed, but you can. I wasn’t there. I was up in my study.’

  ‘Ivan, the police will come and ask me.’

  ‘That’s right and there’ll be an inquest, certain to be. The coroner will ask you and police will probably ask you again and maybe solicitors will ask you, I don’t know, a lot of different people, but they’ll be kind to you, they’ll be understanding.’

  ‘I can’t tell lies to people like that, Ivan.’

  ‘Yes, you can, you’re a very good liar. Remember all those lies you told to Charlotte. She believed you. Remember that boyfriend you invented and all the times you said you’d been to the cinema with him when you’d been with me? Besides, you don’t have to lie. You only have to tell them what happened last time, only this time poor old Charlotte got in the way.’

  Nell burst into sobs. ‘Oh, I can’t stop crying, I can’t. What shall I do?’

  ‘You don’t have to stop crying. It’s probably a very good thing for you to cry quite a lot. Now don’t stop crying but listen to me if you can. Daniel can’t tell them because Daniel can’t speak so’s you’d notice. And it doesn’t matter anyway because no one’s going to blame him. You heard what Mrs Whatever-her-name-is said about no one blaming him, the little innocent, how was he to know? Children aren’t supposed to know what they’re doing before they’re seven, before the age of reason. Everyone is well aware of what Daniel gets up to in cars, everyone knows he did it before.’

  ‘But he didn’t do it this time.’

  ‘Never say that again. Don’t even think it. Everyone will assume it was Daniel and you will only have to confirm it.’

  ‘I don’t think I can, Ivan. I don’t think I can face it.’

  ‘You know what will happen to me if you can’t face it, don’t you?’

  The police came before Nell had time to answer.

  It was something of a dilemma for them because Daniel was so young, but he helped them by coming into the room where they were interviewing his father and confirming, so to speak, what Ivan had told them.

  ‘Daniel drive.’

  They exchanged glances with Ivan and Nell and one of them wrote Daniel’s words down. It was as if, Nell thought, they were taking down what he said to use it in evidence at his trial, only Daniel, naturally, wouldn’t have a trial. He sat on her lap, holding one of his cars in his hand, but in silence. Nell said afterwards to Ivan that from that day forwards he never said ‘Brrm, brrm’ again but neither of them could be sure of this. When it was time for the police to go they took Nell with them to the hospital where at last she had her hand cleaned and the wound stitched. The sister in the Outpatients, who didn’t know the circumstances, said it was a pity she hadn’t come as soon as it had happened, for now she would probably be scarred for life.

  ‘I expect I shall,’ said Nell.

  ‘There’s always plastic surgery,’ the sister said in a cheerful way.

  By the time the inquest took place, the car had been fitted with a new windscreen and was scheduled for a re-spray, the garage had been measured for a new door and Daniel had learnt to utter several more sentences. But those who had power in these matters, a doctor or two and the coroner and the coroner’s officer, all agreed that it would be unwise from a psychological point of view to mention again in his hearing the events of that Saturday morning. Not, at least, until he was quite a lot older. It would be better not to attempt any questioning of him and admonition at this stage seemed useless. The wisest course, the coroner said when the inquest was almost over, was for his father to ensure that Daniel never again sat in the back of a car on his own unless he were strapped in or closely supervised.

  Nell gave her evidence in a low subdued voice. Several times she had to be asked to speak more loudly. She described how she had sat in the car, feeling faint, her eyes closed. There was no one in the driver’s seat, Charlotte had gone to close the garage door, when suddenly Daniel, shouting ‘Brrm, brrm,’ had precipitated himself forwards and seizing the controls, switched on the lights, flashed up the full beam, pushed the transmission into ‘drive’, set the water jets spraying across the windscreen, taken off the handbrake. No, it wasn’t the first time he had done it, he had done it once before, only that time his mother wasn’t in the path of the car, bending down to close the garage door.

  The coroner asked if she had attempted to stop the child but Nell burst into tears at this and, in a gesture that seemed dramatic but was in fact involuntary, held out, palm-upwards, her wounded hand, at that time still thickly bandaged. She often found herself staring at that hand in the weeks, the months, the years to come, at the white scar which bisected it from the first joint of the forefinger to the fleshy pad which cushioned out at the point where hand met wrist. She looked at it when she held her third finger up for Ivan to put the wedding ring on.

  ‘Death by misadventure’ the verdict had been, ‘misadventure’, Ivan said, meaning ‘accident’. She had cut her finger by misadventure and she sometimes wondered if any of this would have happened if she hadn’t cut it. If, in point of fact, Daniel hadn’t run up behind her and thrown his arms round her legs. So perhaps, in a curious way, it really was his fault after all. She said something of this to Ivan who agreed but he never mentioned anything about any of it again. Nell never mentioned it either. The event, which he had certainly witnessed, had no apparent ill effects on Daniel. He was four when they got married and talking like any other normal four-year-old. He didn’t appear to miss his mother, but then, as Ivan said, he had always preferred Nell.

  When Nell’s daughter was born after they had been married five years and she was giving up hope of ever having a child, Daniel, eyeing the baby Emma, surprised her by asking about his mother. He asked her how Charlotte had died. In a car crash, Nell said, which was the answer she and Ivan had agreed on.

  ‘One day you’re going to have to tell him more,’ said Nell. ‘What are you going to tell him?’

  4

  Ivan didn’t say anything. His expression was guarded yet calculating. As he got older the ruthlessness which had helped to give him his dashing piratical appearance now made him look wolfish. Nell repeated her question.

  ‘What are you going to tell Daniel when he asks you how Charlotte died?’

  ‘I shall say in a car crash.’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to be satisfied with that, is he? He’ll want to know details. He’ll want to know who was driving and was anyone else involved and all that.’

  ‘I shall tell him the truth,’ said Ivan.

  ‘You can’t tell him the truth! How can you possibly? What’s he going to think of you if you tell him that? He’ll hate your guts. I mean, he may even go and tell people that his father – well, you know. I can’t, frankly, bring myself to put it into words.’

  ‘I am delighted to hear there is something you can’t bring yourself to put into words. It makes a pleasant change.’ When something riled him Ivan had got into the habit of curling back his upper lip to expose his teeth and his red gums.

  ‘What precisely do you intend to tell Daniel, Ivan?’

  ‘When the occasion arises, I shall tell him the truth about Charlotte’s d
eath. I shall tell him that though he was technically responsible for it, he couldn’t at his age be blamed. I shall tell him as honestly as I can that he got hold of the controls of the car and drove it into Charlotte.’

  ‘And that’s the truth?’

  ‘You should know,’ said Ivan, wolf-faced, his upper lip curling. ‘That’s what you told the inquest.’

  Daniel had only asked about his mother, Nell thought, because he was jealous. He was jealous of Emma. Until then he had had all Nell’s attention, or all the attention she could spare from Ivan. Seeing Nell with this newcomer, understanding perhaps that she would no longer be exclusively his, recalled to him that he had once had a real mother of his own.

  There were many things to recall her to Nell. Each time – which was every day – she saw those Little Pet roses she thought of Charlotte. Ivan had planted them himself, the day after Charlotte’s funeral. They never used the car again, that went in part-exchange for a new one. When Emma was a year old they moved out of the house and into a larger, older one. Nell was happy to be rid of those roses but she couldn’t get rid of her own hand with the white scar across it that followed in that sinister way the path of the life line. And she couldn’t avoid occasionally seeing a map of Scotland.

  At the new house they lost their baby-sitter. The woman next door had sat for them but wasn’t prepared to travel ten miles. Ivan had several times suggested they engage a mother’s help but Nell was against this. She remembered the way Daniel had always seemed to prefer her to his own mother. Besides, since they married she had never been in what Ivan called gainful employment. She had worked, of course, but this had been at the tiring and time-consuming task of looking after Daniel and then Emma too. And she had kept the house very clean and beautiful, and learned to drive.

  A girl who was employed by Ivan at the gallery lived no more than a couple of streets away. She said she loved children and offered to baby-sit for them once a week. Ivan told Nell she was called Denise and was twenty-three but nothing else, and it came as something of a shock to discover that she was also very pretty and with long wavy chestnut hair. In fact, they needed her less frequently than once a week, for Ivan so often worked late that on the evenings he did come home in time for dinner he didn’t feel like going out again.

  ‘Emma will grow up hardly knowing her father,’ said Nell.

  ‘Go and be a mother’s help then,’ said Ivan. ‘If you can earn what I do I’ll be happy to retire and look after the kids.’

  Denise sat for them on the evening of their sixth wedding anniversary and on Nell’s birthday. Emma, whom Nell suspected of being hyperactive, stayed awake most of the time Denise was there, sitting on Denise’s lap, playing with the contents of Denise’s handbag and screaming when attempts were made to put her back to bed. Denise said she didn’t mind, she loved children. Emma clung to her and hit out at Nell with her fists when Nell tried to take her out of the girl’s arms.

  ‘I’ll drive you home,’ said Nell.

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ said Ivan. ‘I’ll do that. You stay here with Emma.’

  Denise had a boyfriend she was always talking about. When she couldn’t baby-sit it was because she was going out somewhere with her boyfriend. Ivan said he had seen him come for Denise at the gallery but when Nell asked what he was like the best Ivan could do in the way of a description was to say he was just ordinary and nothing in particular. Nell didn’t know where they would find another baby-sitter but sometimes she hoped Denise was serious about her boyfriend because if this were so she might get married and move away.

  It was preposterous of Ivan to suggest, even in a satirical way, that she might get a job herself. She had her hands full with Emma who had an abnormal amount of energy for a child of eighteen months. Emma had walked when she was ten months old and never slept for more than six hours a night, though sometimes during the day she would collapse and fall asleep through sheer exhaustion. It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t yet uttered a word, she was younger than all that activity made her seem, and as Nell remarked to Daniel, she hadn’t got time to talk.

  ‘You didn’t talk till you were nearly three,’ said Nell, and mistakenly as she quickly realised, ‘There must be something about your father’s children . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Daniel, ‘there must be. It can’t be you or my mother. I’d like to know what happened to my mother.’

  ‘It was a car crash.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I mean I’d like to know details, I’d like to know exactly what happened.’

  ‘Your father will tell you when you’re older.’

  Nell had made a mystery of it and this she knew was an error. She intended to warn Ivan but for days on end she hardly saw him. They had made an arrangement to go out on Friday evening but Ivan phoned to say he was working late and that he would get in touch with Denise and put her off. He got home at midnight and nearly as late on Saturday. Daniel managed to catch him on Sunday morning.

  ‘In some ways the sooner Daniel goes away to school the better,’ Ivan said to Nell.

  ‘That won’t be for a year.’

  ‘It might be a good idea for him to go as a boarder somewhere for that year.’

  ‘I don’t want him to go away, I want him to stay here. And it’s no good you saying he’s not my child, it’s nothing to do with me, because he’s more mine than yours. You’ve never liked him.’

  Ivan’s hair, once the black of a raven’s wing, had begun to go grey early. It was the colour of a wolf’s pelt now and the moustache he had grown was iron grey. Perhaps it was the contrast this provided which made the inside of his mouth look so red and his teeth so white when he indulged in that ugly mannerism of curling back his upper lip. If he were an animal, Nell’s mother said, you would call it a snarl, but men don’t snarl.

  ‘Are you saying I don’t like my own child?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I am saying that. We don’t like the people we’ve injured, it’s a well-known fact.’

  ‘What utter nonsense. How am I supposed to have injured Daniel?’

  Nell looked down at her left hand. This had become an almost involuntary gesture with her, like a tic. She turned it palm-downwards and put her thumb across the base of her forefinger to hide the scar.

  ‘I suppose he asked you about Charlotte?’ she said.

  ‘I told him you were the only person who could tell him. You were there and I wasn’t. Of course, if you weren’t prepared to tell him, I said, that was your decision. I wish you’d have something done about your hand. It doesn’t get less unsightly as you get older. They can do marvels with scars these days and it isn’t as if I’d grudge the expense.’

  It was six months since Denise had baby-sat for them. They didn’t need her because they never went out. Or they never went out together. Ivan always went out. Nell stayed at home and looked after Daniel and Emma and kept the house very clean. She had become obsessive about it, her mother said, it wasn’t healthy.

  One afternoon she was putting the vacuum cleaner away when Emma who had been running in and out, shut her in the broom cupboard. The cupboard door, which was heavy and solid in that old house, had a handle on the outside but not the inside. Nell, determined not to panic, began cajoling Emma to open the door and release her, please Emma, there’s a good girl, open the door Emma, let Mummy out . . .

  5

  For a little while Emma stood outside the door. Nell could hear her giggling.

  ‘Let Mummy out, Emma. Emma’s such a clever girl she can open the door but Mummy can’t. Mummy’s not clever enough to open the door.’

  Nell thought this flattery and self-abasement might have some effect on Emma. The giggling stopped. Nell waited in the dark. It was pitch dark in the cupboard and there wasn’t even a line of light round the edge of the door. It fitted into its frame too well for that. The cupboard was in the middle of the house, between an interior wall and the solid brick of the chimney bay. The air there was thick and black and it smelt of dust and soot. E
mma gave another very light soft giggle. Nell knew why it sounded so soft. Emma was moving away from the door.

  ‘Emma, come back. Come back and let Mummy out. Just turn the handle and the door will open and Mummy can get out.’

  The little footsteps sounded very light as they retreated. They sounded too as if the feet that made them moved not with their customary swiftness but sluggishly. With a sinking of the heart, Nell realised what had happened. This was what often happened to Emma after a long frenzied spell of hyperactivity. She had tired herself out. Seizing her opportunity, Nell would lay Emma down in her cot and cover her up, but what would Emma do in Nell’s absence?

  Injure herself? Go outside and shut herself out? This was an additional worry. Nell began to hammer on the door with her fists. She began to kick at the door. Not only was she shut up in this cupboard but her child, her less than two-year-old baby, was wandering alone about this big old house of many steps and corners and traps for little children. Emma was tired, Emma was exhausted. Suppose she got the cellar door open and fell down the cellar steps? Suppose she put her fingers into the electricity sockets? Or found matches or knives? Nell couldn’t see her hand in the dark but she could feel with the fingers of her other hand the ridge of scar tissue that scored her palm. She hammered on the door and shouted, ‘Emma, Emma, come back and let Mummy out!’

  As well as being black-dark in the cupboard, it was airless. Or Nell imagined it would soon be airless. No air could get in and once she had used up what oxygen there was – she would die, wouldn’t she? She would suffocate. Daniel wouldn’t be home for hours, Ivan, to judge by his recent performance, not before midnight. The more she shouted, the more energy she used in beating at the door, the more oxygen her lungs needed.