by Ruth Rendell
This conversation was on the subject of a television programme to take place on the following night, a film of a Glyndebourne production of Don Giovanni, due to last from seven until after ten.
“Do you have to get back tomorrow night, Melinda?” asked George. “It seems a pity for you to miss this, it’s supposed to be the television event of the year. I could drive you to Stantwich first thing on Monday.”
“I haven’t got a lecture on Monday. Nothing till a tutorial at two.”
“What he really means, Melinda,” said her stepmother, laughing, “is that he wants some moral support in the car when he drives the Parchman to the station.”
“Not at all. I shall have Giles.”
Jacqueline and Melinda laughed. Giles looked up seriously from his duck and green peas. Something moved him. His conversion? The fact that it was George’s birthday? Whatever it was, he was inspired for once to say the perfect thing.
“I will never desert Mr. Micawber.”
“Thank you, Giles,” said George quietly. There was an odd little silence in which, without speaking or glancing at each other, Giles and his stepfather approached a closeness never before attained. Given time, they might have become friends. No time was to be given them. George cleared his throat and said, “Seriously, Melinda, why not stay for the film?”
It wasn’t the prospect of missing work which made Melinda hesitate, but of missing Jonathan. They had been together every day and almost every night for weeks now. She would miss him painfully tonight. Must she now contemplate another night without him? It seemed selfish to refuse. She loved her father. How wonderful he and Jacqueline had been last week over that hateful business, how loyal and unwavering! And not a word of reproach for her, not even a warning to be careful. But Jonathan …
She had come to a parting of the ways. Ahead of her the road forked. One path led to life and happiness, marriage, children, the other was a dead end, a cul-de-sac. No Through Road. She hesitated. She chose.
“I’ll stay,” she said.
From the village store Joan Smith watched the Mercedes pass through the village. Five minutes later she was at the Hall, inside the Hall, for she had skipped in her new, thoroughly insane way through the gun room to surprise Eunice as she sat devouring egg and chips and lemon cheesecake at the kitchen table.
“Oh, Eun, you must be broken-hearted. The base ingratitude after what you’ve done for them. And for a little thing like that!”
Eunice was not pleased to see her. The “little thing” must surely be her inability to read. Her appetite gone, she glowered and waited for the worst. Eventually it was not the worst but the best that came, but she had to wait for that.
“All packed, are you, dear? No doubt you’ve got plans of your own. Anyone with your skills won’t have far to look for a brilliant situation, but I want you to know you’re welcome to make your home with us. While Joanie has a spare bed and a roof over her head, you’re welcome. Though the Lord only knows how long it’ll be spared to use while the wicked man rageth.” Joan panted from her efforts, said breathlessly yet coyly, “Did you get anything by the post today?”
Hard colour came into Eunice’s cheeks. “Why?”
“Oh, she’s blushing! Did you think you’d got an admirer in the village, Eun? Well, you have, dear. Me. Why ever didn’t you read my message on the back? I knew they’d be out, I said I’d pop up.”
Eunice had supposed Melinda had sent the mocking Valentine. But this wasn’t the source of her overwhelming tremendous relief. Joan didn’t know, it hadn’t reached Joan. Relief threw her back, quite wan and weak, in her chair. She approached love for Joan in that moment, and she couldn’t have done enough for her. Recovered and almost ebullient, she made tea, cudgelled her poor imagination to invent details of her dismissal to satisfy Joan, denounced the Coverdales with bitterness, promised Joan her attendance on the following night, her last night, at the temple in Colchester.
“Our last time together, Eun. And I was counting on your company when Elder Barnstaple and Mrs. come to us for supper on Wednesday. But God isn’t mocked, dear. You’ll rise again in all your glory when he’s in the pit, when they’re reaping the punishment of their iniquity. Oh yes, when they’re heaped with retribution.”
Taking very little notice of all this, of Joan’s ravings and prancings, Eunice nevertheless ministered to her like the Martha she was, pouring tea and slicing cheesecake and promising no end of things, like coming back to see Joan at her first opportunity, and writing to her (of all things!) and swearing, in very un-Eunice-like fashion, undying friendship.
Joan seemed to have an instinct about when it was safe to remain and when to go, but this time, so vehement were they and with so much to talk about, that the van had only just turned out of the drive when the Mercedes came up it. Eunice tramped off to bed.
“Back to the grind on Monday,” said Jacqueline, leaving a satiny stripe in the dust where she had run her finger across the surface of her dressing table. “I feel as if I’ve had nine months’ holiday. Ah, well, all good things come to an end.”
“And all bad ones,” said George.
“Don’t worry. I’m just as glad as you to see the back of her. Had a nice day, darling?”
“I have had a lovely day. But all my days are lovely with you.”
She got up, smiling at him, and he took her in his arms.
19
In church on Sunday morning, their last morning, the Coverdales murmured that they had done those things which they ought not to have done and left undone those things which they ought to have done. They uttered this in a reverent and quite sincere way, but they did not really think about what they were saying. Mr. Archer preached a sermon about how one ought to be kind to old people, to one’s elderly relatives, which had no bearing on anything in the Coverdales’ lives, though plenty on the lives of Eunice Parchman and Joan Smith. After church they had sherry at the Jameson-Kerrs’, and lunch was late, not on the table till three.
The weather was non-weather, windless, damp, the sky overcast, but already the first signs of spring had appeared. Early spring is not green but red, as each twig in the hedges takes on a crimson sheen from the rising vitalising sap. In the garden of Lowfield Hall the snowdrops were coming out, first flowers of spring, last flowers the Coverdales would ever see.
Melinda had phoned Jonathan before she went to church, speaking to him for the last time. For the last time Giles saw the Elevation of the Mass. Although he was not yet received into the Church, kind Father Madigan had heard his confession and shriven him, and Giles was perhaps in a state of grace. For the last time George and Jacqueline had a Sunday afternoon doze in the morning room, and at five George moved the television set into the morning room, plugging in the aerial to the socket between the front windows.
When she woke up Jacqueline read the article on Don Giovanni in the Radio Times, and then she went into the kitchen to make tea. Eunice passed through the kitchen at twenty-five past five in her dark red coat and woolly hat and scarf. The two women pretended not to have seen each other, and Eunice left the house by way of the gun room, closing the door quietly behind her. Melinda fetched her tape recorder and, putting her head round the door of Giles’s sanctum, told him she meant to record the opera.
“I suppose you won’t even come down for it,” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“I wish you would. I’d like you to.”
“All right,” said Giles.
The dark winter’s day had slipped, without any apparent sunset, into dark winter’s night. There was no wind, no rain, no stars. It was as if the moon had died, for it had not been seen for many nights. All around isolated Lowfield Hall the undulating fields, the deserted threading lanes, and the small crowding woods were enclosed by impenetrable blackness. Not quite impenetrable, for, from the Stantwich road, the traveller would be able to make out the Hall as a brilliant spot of light. How far this little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in
a naughty world.
Joan and Eunice reached the Epiphany Temple at five to six, and Joan behaved peaceably, perhaps with an ominous quietness, during the hymn singing and the confessing. Afterwards, while they were eating seed cake and Joan was recounting details of her sinful past to a new member, Mrs. Barnstaple came up to her and said rather stiffly that she and the Elder would be unable to visit the Smiths on Wednesday evening. Now the Barnstaples lived in Nunchester, and efficient as the grapevine was, it didn’t extend to Nunchester. Mrs. Barnstaple had taken her decision because, although she knew Joan was a good Epiphany Person whom the Lord had pardoned, she couldn’t (as she told her husband) stomach listening to any more of that stuff about goings-on in Shepherds Bush while she was eating. But Joan took her refusal as reaction to the news of the enquiry set in train by George Coverdale, and she jumped up, giving a loud scream.
“Woe to the wicked man who spreadeth slanders in the ears of the innocent!” Joan didn’t necessarily quote from the Bible. Just as often she ranted in biblical language what she thought ought to have been in the Bible. “The Lord shall smite him in his loins and in his hip and his thigh. Praised be the Lord who chooseth His handmaid to be His weapon and His right hand!”
Her body was charged with a frenetic energy. She screeched, and spittle sprayed from her mouth. For a few seconds the brethren enjoyed it, but they were not mad, only misguided fanatics, and when Joan’s eyes rolled and she began tugging at her hair, actually pulling some of it out, Mrs. Barnstaple tried to get hold of her. Joan gave her a great push, and that lady fell backwards into the arms of her husband. Eunice was appealed to, but Eunice didn’t want to do anything to antagonise Joan, who was now in control of the whole assembly, raving incomprehensible words and throwing herself backwards and forwards in a frenzy.
Then, as suddenly as she had begun, she stopped. It was mediumistic, the change that came over her. At one moment she seemed possessed by an enraged spirit, the next she had fallen spent and silent into a chair. In a small voice she said to Eunice, “We’ll be on our way when you’re ready, Eun.”
They left the temple at twenty past seven, Joan driving like a cautious learner.
Grouped a suitable twenty feet away from the television set, George and Jacqueline sat together on the sofa, Melinda on the floor at her father’s feet, Giles hunched in an armchair. The tape recorder was on. Having fidgeted with it during the overture, moving it about and watching it anxiously, Melinda grew less and less aware of its presence as the opera proceeded. She was all set to identify with every female character. She was Ana, she would be Elvira and, when the time came, Zerlina too. She leaned her head against George’s arm of the sofa, for George, in her eyes, had become the Commendatore, fighting a duel and getting himself killed for his daughter’s honour, though she didn’t quite see her Jonathan as the Don.
Elegant Jacqueline, in green velvet trousers and gold silk shirt, pencilled a critical note or two on the margin of the Radio Times. Under her breath she whispered, following Ottavio, “Find husband and father in me!” and she darted a soft look at George. But George, being a man, a handsome and sexually successful man, couldn’t help identifying with the Don. He didn’t want a catalogue of women, he only wanted his Jacqueline, and yet …
“I will cut out his heart!” sang Elvira, and they laughed appreciatively, all but Giles. He was only there for Melinda’s sake, and the age of reason and manners had never held much appeal for him. He alone heard a footstep on the gravel of the drive at twenty to eight while Scene Two and the Catalogue Song were ending, for he alone was not concentrating on the music. But of course he did nothing about it. That wasn’t his way.
Looking indignant, Jacqueline added a line to her notes as Scene Three opened. The time approached five minutes to eight. As Giovanni sang, “O, guarda, guarda [Look, look]!” the Smiths’ van entered the drive of Lowfield Hall and crept, with only side lights on, almost to the front door. But the Coverdales did not look or hear any extraneous sound. Even Giles heard nothing this time.
Joan’s driving had become erratic, and her jerky zigzagging from slow lane to fast was a frightening experience even for phlegmatic Eunice.
“You’d better calm down if you don’t want us both killed.”
The admonitions of those who seldom remonstrate are more effective than the commands of naggers. But Joan was in no state to adopt the happy mean. It was neck or nothing for her, and she crawled along the lane to Greeving.
“Come in for a bit,” said Eunice.
“That’d be Daniel into the lion’s den,” said Joan with a shriek of laughter.
“You come in. Why shouldn’t you? A cup of tea’d calm you down.”
“I like your spirit, Eun. Why shouldn’t I? They can’t kill me, can they?”
Joan kangaroo-hopped the van in too high a gear up the drive. It was Eunice, the non-driver, who grabbed the gear lever and stamped on the clutch so that they could approach more quietly. The van was left standing on the broad gravel space, a little way from the streak of light that fell from between the drawing-room curtains.
“They’re looking at the T.V.,” said Eunice.
She put the kettle on while Joan lingered in the gun room.
“Poor little birds,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right. What have they done to him?”
“What have I done?” said Eunice.
“Too right.” Joan took one of the guns down and levelled it playfully at Eunice. “Bang, bang, you’re dead! Did you ever play cowboys when you were a kid, Eun?”
“I don’t know. Come on, tea’s ready.” In spite of her defiant words, she was nervous that Joan’s hysterical voice would penetrate to the drawing room and be heard above the music. They mounted the first flight of stairs, Eunice carrying the tray, but they never reached the attic floor. Never again was Joan Smith to enter Eunice’s domain, and no final farewell was ever to be spoken between them. Jacqueline’s bedroom door stood open. Joan went in and put the light on.
Eunice noticed that there was a patina of bedroom dust, composed of talcum and fluff, on the polished surfaces, and that the bed was less evenly made than when she had made it. She set the tray down on one of the bedside tables and gave the quilt a twitch. Joan tiptoed round the room, lifting her high heels an inch above the carpet and giggling soundlessly on a series of small exhalations like a person imitating a steam engine. When she reached Jacqueline’s side of the bed she picked up the photograph of George and laid it face downwards.
“She’ll know who did that,” said Eunice.
“Doesn’t matter. You said they can’t do any more to you.”
“No.” After a small hesitation, Eunice laid the picture of Jacqueline face downwards also. “Come on, we’d better have that tea.”
Joan said, “I’ll pour.” She lifted the teapot and poured a steady stream into the centre of the counterpane. Eunice retreated, one hand up to her mouth. The liquid lay in a lake, and then it began to seep through the covers.
“You’ve done it now,” said Eunice.
Joan went out onto the landing and listened. She came back. She picked up a box of talcum, took off the lid, and hurled the box onto the bed. White clouds of powder rose, making Eunice cough. And now Joan had opened the wardrobe.
“What are you going to do?” Eunice whispered.
No answer from Joan. She was holding the red silk evening gown on its hanger. She set her fingers in the circle of the neckline and ripped the dress downwards, so that she was holding the front in one hand and the back in the other. Eunice was frightened, she was appalled, but she was also excited. Joan’s mounting frenzy had excited her. She too plunged her hands inside the wardrobe where she found the green pleated dress she had so often ironed, and she ran into its bodice the points of Jacqueline’s nail scissors. The scissors were snatched from her by Joan, who began indiscriminately slashing clothes, gasping with pleasure. Eunice trod heavily on the pile of torn cloth, she ground her heel into the glass of those framed photograph
s, she pulled out drawers, scattering jewellery and cosmetics and the letters which fluttered from their ribbon binding. It made her laugh throatily while Joan laughed maniacally, and they were both confident that the music from below was loud enough to drown any noise.
It was, for the time being. While Eunice and Joan were making mayhem above their heads, the Coverdales were listening to one of the loudest solos in the whole opera, the Champagne Aria. Jacqueline heard it out, and then she left the drawing room to make coffee, choosing this opportunity because she disliked the Zerlina and feared she would make a hash of Batti, batti. In the kitchen she noticed that the kettle was still warm, so Eunice must have come back, and noticed too the shotgun on the table. But she supposed George had put it there for some purpose of his own before they had begun to watch television.
The sound of the drawing-room door opening, and footfalls across the hall floor, sobered Joan and Eunice. They sat down on the bed, looking at each other in a mock-rueful way, eyebrows up, lips caught under upper teeth. Joan switched off the light, and they sat in darkness until they heard Jacqueline cross the hall and re-enter the drawing room.
Eunice kicked at a heap of mingled broken glass and nylon. She said, “That’s torn it,” quite seriously, not joining in Joan’s laughter. “Maybe he’ll get the police on us.”
“He doesn’t know we’re here.” Joan’s eyes gleamed. “Got any wire cutters in the house, Eun?”
“I don’t know. Could be in the gun room. What d’you want wire cutters for?”
“You’ll see. I’m glad we did it, Eun. O, we have smitten him in his high places, in the bed of his lechery we have afflicted him. I am the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance! I am the sword in His hand and the spear in His right hand!”