by Ruth Rendell
He acknowledged Ella with a small dip of his head. The woman waved one hand at a chair and she sat down. For about a minute Joel's father, for this was surely who it was, continued to talk on the phone. Then he said a rapid, 'All right, that's enough. I get the picture,' and put the receiver into a rest. He came over to Ella with hand outstretched, said, 'Morris Stemmer. I believe you were my son's medical attendant?'
Ella had never before been called a medical attendant and she wondered why he had used the past tense but she shook the hand that was offered and asked if she could see Joel.
He smiled slightly, a smile that turned his fat cheeks into bulging cushions. 'You may see Mithras if you like.'
'I don't understand.'
'This whole business is hard to understand, Dr Cotswold. Perhaps it is best to accept that Joel has become a different person and one who may be easier for the rest of us to live with.'
She could think of nothing to say.
'If there are any fees owing to you perhaps you will send me an invoice and I will, of course, gladly reimburse you.'
'You owe me nothing,' Ella said, 'but I would very much like to see Joel. Even if he is ill. Especially if he is ill.'
'Mithras,' he said. 'He only answers to that name. It's best to remember that.'
Now he was on his feet she could see how extremely fat Morris Stemmer was. That overused word 'obese' might have been coined for him. His girth had reached the stage where an apron of fat hung down against the taut cloth covering his swollen thighs. His breathing was laboured and he sighed when he sat down. Ella wondered how a man whose much-loved little daughter had drowned could bear to have that picture of the desperate mermaid in his house.
A bell was pressed and the woman reappeared. She stood in front of Ella, waiting for her to rise to her feet. Ella followed her. The woman opened the only interior door in this central hall of the house. This room was the antithesis of the flat in Ludlow Mansions with its velvet curtains and drawn blinds, and if not as light as the rest of the house, more than dimly lit. It was furnished pleasantly in soft colours, a deep pile carpet covering the floor, a trough of house plants under the thinly curtained window.
The man who sat on a green velvet chair against leafy wallpaper was Joel, yet was not. His dark hair was a bright blond and wavy, his normally doleful face wearing a slight smile. For surely the first time since she had met him he was without sunglasses. The smile widened when he saw who had come in, yet she had the impression he didn't recognise her. He would have smiled like that at any newcomer.
'Hello,' he said in a tone unlike his usual Joel voice. 'I'm Mithras.'
'Ella,' she said, her voice shaking. 'I'm Ella.'
The voice was higher-pitched, the vowels flatter and he had a slight lisp. 'I think we've met before. In another life maybe.When I had a heart. Before they took it out. You can't be a human being without a heart, you see. You're a spirit or a god.'
A movement behind her made Ella turn round. Wendy Stemmer had come into the room. She made a little low sound, a soft whimper, and, walking over to stand beside her son, began stroking his newly blond head as one might stroke a cat or dog. But she looked sad, more real than Ella had ever seen her, all the meretriciousness, the desperate girlishness gone.
Joel suffered the stroking, yet he managed to behave as if no one was there. He picked up a book and began to read it. His mother withdrew her hand.
'There is no point in staying here,' she said. 'He'll read that book for hours. It's always the same book, he reads it over and over.'
Ella saw that the title was that of a currently popular work on schizophrenia, the picture on its cover a brain pierced by a lightning flash. This was the book that had been beside him along with the vodka and the pills when he tried to revisit 'death's door'. She turned, gave him a last look. They left the room and Ella found herself once more facing, across gleaming emptiness, the struggling mermaid in the bowl of water.
Wendy Stemmer closed the door behind her. 'I'll come out to your car with you,' she said.
For the first time since Ella had met her she was wearing a skirt that covered her knees. She pulled it down when she was in the passenger seat.
'He bleached his hair himself. He must have used kitchen bleach because he never went to the shops. The carer said he didn't go out at all. I don't know why he did it.'
I do, Ella thought. Mithras had fair hair and he wanted to become like Mithras, to become Mithras.
'I found him like that, the way he is now, talking nonsense, saying he had come back with Joel – he talked about Joel as if he were someone else. He said Joel had fetched him from a city made of cloud but when he tried to take him back again he couldn't. Joel stayed there and he – this Mithras – had to stay here.'
'But your husband,' Ella said, 'what happened to change his attitude to Joel?'
'I don't really understand.' To her surprise Wendy Stemmer clutched at her hand and held it. 'It frightens me. It makes me feel I've two mad people to deal with, not one.'
'But what happened?'
'I'd tried to tell him Joel was having this – this delusion. That he was someone else, I mean. That he was this Mithras and that he'd dyed his hair and talked in a different voice and all of it. Morris listened – he doesn't usually listen to me – and he said quite suddenly, "I'll come with you." I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
'I thought nothing would change my husband's mind, but hearing the state Joel was in did change him. He came with me to Joel's flat and – well, I don't know.' She looked at Ella and looked away. Her voice was so low Ella could hardly hear her. 'He said – my husband, I mean – he said, this isn't my son, this is someone else. We'll take him home with us. It was as if he could never have forgiven Joel but this man, this Mithras, he could accept him. He has accepted him. He came here with us quite willingly.'
Ella said stiffly, 'Has Joel -' she couldn't call him Mithras '- has he seen anyone? A doctor, I mean?'
'The psychiatrist, Miss Crane. She came here.'
'So someone's looking after him?'
'Oh, yes. He's in her care. She's prescribing his drugs and she says he can stay here. There's no need for him to – well, go away if you see what I mean. He has two psychiatric nurses, one for day and one for night. My husband says to spare no expense. Money is no object. You know how Joel wanted to be in the dark all the time? Well, this Mithras – I call him what he calls himself – he prefers twilight. Dusk, he calls it. He says it's always light, day and night, where he comes from but he doesn't want that yet. He's not my son any more, doctor.' Tears came into her eyes and she caught her breath in a sob. 'It's like we've got a spirit or an angel living with us. I must go in now. But that's what my husband wants, not Joel but a different person.'
She got out of the car and Ella watched her go. She was sure, without knowing how she knew, that she would never see any of them again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The door to the balcony was open and two chairs set out to catch what remained of the evening sun. Gemma's washing was dry. She had long ago taken it in, and by now it had all been ironed and put away. Though it wasn't yet seven Abelard was bathed and ready for bed, sitting on Fize's lap being read to. Any observer would have called it a cosy domestic scene.
'You got anyone coming round while I'm out?' Gemma asked. She was going to her mum's for a meal and her dad had also been invited, a rare event but one she looked forward to. He was a jovial guy, her dad, and when she saw him he usually gave her a handsome money present for Abelard. 'Who's that, then?'
'A friend,' said Fize.
'Oh, really? It wouldn't be an enemy now, would it?'
'It's Ian.'
Gemma always looked particularly beautiful when she was angry, her pretty face flushed and her large blue eyes sparkling. She flicked back her hair. 'I thought I'd said I don't want that shit in my flat.'
'Don't be like that, Gemma. He's OK. He'll only be here an hour. We can have a drink, that's all.'
'If he's coming here, Feisal Smith, I'm taking Abelard to my mum's with me. I don't want him round my son.'
Fize objected but it was really argument for argument's sake. Left with him, Abelard would expect the TV to be on, another story to be read, chocolate milk and a banana. He would demand to stay up till his mum came back. Fize wanted to be alone with Ian, so he gave in as ungraciously as he could manage while quite happy with the new arrangement. For most of the day he had been rehearsing in his mind what he would say to his friend and, for most of the day, it had seemed quite easy as well as right. Now things looked different. Ian would undoubtedly refuse and then what was he to do? Was there perhaps some other way of getting over this difficulty? Go it alone? He grew cold all over at the thought. Fize needed a drink. He hated feeling this way because it wasn't many years since he had given up the abstemiousness he was brought up to and taken to alcohol. Drinking still made him feel guilty. Favourite expressions on the lips of his mother and his maternal grandfather were 'morally wrong' and 'against Islam'. Sometimes it seemed to him that these days these words applied to him most of the time. He broke one of their favourite commandments and, going out to the kitchen to fetch himself a beer, sat down with it to wait for Ian.
For most of Eugene's day he had been feeling what Dorinda called 'under the weather', a foolish expression, he thought, because the day had been what it often was in the middle of October, brilliantly sunny and clear-skied. Eugene knew that the only connection his malaise had with any sort of weather was that he was in a deep depression. He was enslaved to a stupid habit and he had lost the woman he loved. No wonder he felt weak and shivery. Probably he had a raised temperature, only he was too despondent to take it.
But by the evening, his appetite gone, disinclined even to pour himself a glass of wine, he knew this was more than being depressed. He must be physically ill. If Ella were with him she would know what was wrong. He searched the house in vain for a thermometer. If there had ever been such a thing in one of the bathrooms, Ella had no doubt taken it with her. Walking, even just standing up, he found himself swaying and dizzy. The only way to go upstairs was on his hands and knees and they ached, as did most of the bones in his body.
He couldn't even find any Chocorange or Oranchoco, although he was sure he had left behind at least twenty packets when he moved out. Perhaps they were there and visible, though invisible to him because he was delirious. Sweat had begun to pour off him, he could feel it breaking through the pores of his skin. It trickled coldly down his spine. No longer hot, he wrapped himself in a blanket, then a duvet, and phoned Dr Irving. As a private patient, he had the doctor's mobile number and he caught him at a dinner party.
'Sounds like a virus.' They never said 'flu' any more unless it was preceded by 'avian'. 'There's a lot of it about.' They always said that. 'Go to bed, keep warm and drink plenty.' Dr Irving added as an afterthought, 'I mean dihydrogen monoxide. Water to you, haha.' It was a favourite joke, often repeated.
Ella had believed it was impossible for anything to shock her. She had seen too much, witnessed too many sad or wretched situations, heard too many tales of pain and suffering and cruelty. But Joel Roseman's condition had shocked her. She had gone to that bungaloid mansion in Hampstead Garden Suburb, certain she would find her patient kept under duress, perhaps even physically a prisoner, possibly maltreated, and she had been prepared to call the police and tell them here was someone detained against his will. But she had seen nothing of that, only a man who in any other period of history would have been described as mad, as stark raving mad, tended by his mother, the father with whom he was reconciled, and in the care of one of the most reputable psychiatrists in the country. She was shocked because she had been so wrong and because of Joel's pitiable state.
And their encounter had left her feeling nervous and vulnerable. Alone in the half-furnished flat from which all the books were gone and most of the ornaments, she longed for Eugene. Now that Joel was no longer her patient she could have talked to Eugene about him, described the horror she had felt when this poor man with his dyed yellow hair talked of himself as an angel or a god, and described too the pathetic mother, pared down now to a raw skinless creature who had grown, in so short a time, from absurd girlishness into her true age. And the grotesque father whose own daughter had drowned yet who kept a picture of a drowning woman in his home. Eugene would have listened and comforted and suggested kind remedies, brought her drinks and kissed her and taken her out to somewhere lovely. None of which would have helped Joel but would have helped her.
She thought of those early evening times in his study when, over a glass of wine, they had talked about the day that had just passed. She thought of his cooking for her with greater skill than she possessed, of their quiet sitting side by side, each reading in companionable tranquil silence, of their nights and his ardent lovemaking. It was gone and there was no one. Joel might be mad in the recognised sense of that term but Eugene's was also a kind of madness, inexplicable, absurd, utterly destructive.
Ella buried her face in the only two cushions remaining in her living room and began to cry.
They hadn't named any specific time for Ian to come. They never made arrangements of that sort. But when it got to nine and he still hadn't arrived Fize began to get worried that he wouldn't come at all and at the same time he was relieved. He wanted to put off what he had to say, yet he knew he would have no peace of mind until he had said it. But most people are like that. They prefer the doubt to the fact. Fize knew he was weak while wishing he were brave and strong, he knew that women liked him because he was good-looking and nice and perhaps because they could kick him around. Sometimes he thought that the only bold and daring thing he had ever done in all his life was set fire to Gilbert Gibson's house, and while he was pondering along these lines the doorbell rang.
Ian hadn't brought anything to drink. This was no surprise to Fize who would have been amazed if he had. Because he was unemployed and living on the benefit, Ian thought people in work ought to pay for everything he consumed, drink, curry, fish and chips. The first thing he said was, 'You got anything to eat in this place?'
Gemma subsisted on a healthy diet. 'There's bread. There's cheese and sardines and apples and stuff.' Fize remembered another foodstuff. 'Oh, and there's muesli.'
'Christ.'
'You can have a beer.'
When Fize came back Ian was sitting on the edge of Gemma's cream-coloured sofa as if it were made of thin ice. He had never been there before and was no doubt feeling the way Fize had when he first met Gemma and was invited back, that he had come into the showroom of a furniture shop. Everything was clean and brushed or polished, there were flowers in a vase and magazines placed in a perfect stack on the coffee table. He had got used to it but it was going to take Ian a while.
Ian took the can from him reluctantly. 'Haven't you got nothing stronger?'
'No.' Fize was beginning to feel so tense he could hardly breathe. Every muscle in his body was taut. 'Listen to me, mate.' He took a deep breath. 'Listen to me. It's about Lance.'
Ian took a bigger swig of lager than Fize would have thought possible. 'What about him?'
'He's in jail.' Fize hesitated.
'Surprise, surprise. I know that. So what's new?'
'Look, mate, will you just listen to me? He never done that. I mean burning down old Gibson's house. Burning that Romanian guy. He never done it. He wasn't there. You know that and I know it. They could put him inside – I mean, keep him inside – for like fifteen years, maybe more if he don't admit to doing it. And he can't admit it on account of he never done it.' Unaccustomed articulate speech was taking its toll on Fize, exhausting him. 'We done it, me and you. We got to go to the filth and tell them, mate. We got to.'
Ian stared. 'You're barking.'
'How're we gonna feel when he's sent down for maybe years and years and we're whatever -' Fize searched for words '- free, we're free?'
'Me, I'm going to feel great.'
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'I'm not. If we don't tell them now we'd have to then. We can't let the poor sod go down when he never done it. It's out of order.' 'Is there any more of this gnat's piss?'
Fize fetched it, flipped the lid off the can. Beer foamed over Ian's jeans.
'Fuck you!' Ian shouted, jumping to his feet.
'It's only beer, for God's sake.' Fize was getting angry now. 'It'll dry. Listen, we gotta go to them and tell them. Like first thing tomorrow. Like tonight, if you want.'
'If I want? Now you can do the listening.' Ian approached him threateningly, the can in his hand held like a weapon. 'You forget all that. Leave it out. It's bollocks, all of it. You better if you want to keep on the right side of me.'
Courage came to Fize from somewhere. That which he had dreaded no longer seemed so undoable. 'If we tell them it'll be good for us. They'll do what they call take it into account. We did do it, mate, we did set the place on fire.' He was aware that Ian had set down his beer can and was standing with his hands closed into fists. 'If you won't,' he said, 'I will. I'll go it alone.'
'You what?'
Ian's voice was quieter and more menacing than Fize had ever heard it. For some reason he thought back to the evening he had braved Lance and Uncle Gib together, asking for the money for Gemma's tooth. He had had courage then and it had worked. But of course Ian had been with him then, not against him…
'I'll go it alone. I gotta, mate. I gotta live with myself.'
'Then I'll have to stop you, won't I?'
Fize saw the knife pulled out of Ian's jeans, the gleam of its blade, which he had thought might be a gun. It was just as lethal a weapon, a small knife with a long thin blade. The blade glittered in the light from Gemma's table lamp. Fize backed away. They stood confronting each other, the way male animals do, quivering before one of them makes a move. Ian made the knife in his hand shift a little, a teasing movement, pointing at Fize, then letting it droop. He crouched slightly as if getting ready to spring. Fize made a gasping sound in the back of his throat. He snatched up Ian's beer can and flung the contents in his face.