by Ruth Rendell
Lord Studley was dead, his son had inherited the title and was one of the small number of hereditary peers who still had seats in the House of Lords. He and his wife Oceane enthusiastically maintained the tradition of the candles. The only households which did not, June had observed, were the Stills at number 7 and the Asian couple in the lower half of number 4, a surprise really as June would have expected Hindus, which she supposed they were, to go in for lights in a big way. Last year Lord Studley had written severe letters to number 4 and number 7, admonishing them for not keeping up with the tradition and urging them to remember their candles this time. Now, as everyone in Hexam Place knew, Preston Still had moved out, a divorce was impending and it seemed that the family was held together by Rabia, the nanny. It was she who, having got indifferent permission from Lucy (‘Oh, do as you like, I don’t care’), took Thomas buying candles and candleholders and brought number 7 into line with the other houses in the street. The Asian couple took no notice of Lord Studley’s letter and struck a note of defiance by filling their drawing-room windowsill with seven pots of red and white poinsettias from the Belgrave Nursery.
Because Simon Jefferson took no interest in candles or even Christmas itself but went away to stay with his sister in Andorra, number 3 was left in the safe keeping of Jimmy. With his usual generosity, Dr Jefferson told his driver to enjoy himself, have friends in, have a party. Jimmy put more candles in the drawing-room window than anyone else in the street and would have set the curtains on fire if Thea hadn’t snatched the offending candleholder away in the nick of time. She had expected Jimmy to find fault with her new hair colour but it seemed that he loved everything about her even if the admired feature underwent a dramatic change.
‘It’s like you were born with it that shade,’ he said. ‘It looks more natural than the red did.’
‘My mother says I hadn’t any hair when I was born.’
Thea was already regretting changing the colour. Montserrat had given her a big hat from Accessorize for an early Christmas present. Under its brim there would have been no ginger showing to provoke unruly teenagers.
‘What do you think of the twenty-seventh of January for our wedding date?’
‘Oh, Jimmy, I can’t. That’s the day of Damian and Roland’s civil partnership and I’m doing the food.’
No harsh words had as yet passed between them. Jimmy had been unfailingly amenable and loving and easy-going. Now he exploded. ‘I don’t believe it! I’m not hearing this! We can’t get married because you’ve got to make sandwiches for a couple of shirtlifters’ thrash – a mockery of marriage if you ask me.’
‘I don’t ask you. Never never use expressions like that again. It’s disgusting, I didn’t know you were a rank homophobe, I can’t believe it.’
The traditional way for lovers to mend their quarrels is to settle them by making love. Jimmy instigated the lovemaking by carrying Thea upstairs to Dr Jefferson’s four-poster, somewhat against her will. She protested but weakly and soon gave in. Nothing more was said about a wedding on 27 January. Given the scarf, an early Christmas present, Jimmy reacted as if he had been presented with a treasure he had longed for all his life. Thea was genuinely pleased with his offering of a black faux-fur jacket, very like Montserrat’s which she had always admired.
Downstairs on the drawing-room windowsill the flames burned steadily as they did, more extravagantly than elsewhere, at Lord Studley’s. The Kleins had gone to New York for Christmas so there were no candles in the house on the corner. Thea herself had bought, installed and lit six pink ones at number 6 because June’s bad arm made any such activity on her part impossible. Living on an upper storey herself and without a ground-floor window, Thea had also set up candles in Damian and Roland’s window and got a good deal of criticism for their colour and shape but no thanks. At number 4 Arsad Sohrab and Bibi Lambda had for the first time just about given way to Lord Studley’s bullying, removed the poinsettias and placed two meagre candles on saucers at the back of the blinds, behind which they glimmered faintly.
Jimmy, in the kitchen at number 3, was planning the Christmas dinner he intended to cook for himself and Thea. A duck had been ordered from the butcher on the Pimlico Road. He would collect it on Christmas Eve. The green peas came frozen while the Maris Piper potatoes sat in a bowl, waiting to be peeled and dropped into cold water. He was grating orange peel for the sauce when the doorbell rang. It was Dex, come for the bag of tools he said he had left behind the last time he had been here. The evening before there had been a phone call from Mrs Neville-Smith, snowbound in Wales, asking Dex to scrape off what ice and snow remained on the steps of number 5 as well as the front garden and path, ready for their return. She would pay him the day after. Another call came almost immediately after. It was Peach, the beautiful voice severe now, cross and purposeful. ‘Remember you have to destroy the evil spirit. The psychopomp. You have to do it soon. Now, as soon as you can.’
Jimmy was a stranger to him, his face a featureless mask as nearly everyone’s was, his voice harsh and unrecognisable. ‘I could do the front here too,’ Dex said, ‘once I’ve got my tools.’
‘I don’t know. Dr Jefferson’s away. I can’t speak for him.’
The mask grew darker and uglier. ‘OK. Maybe you can phone him.’ Dex had infinite faith in mobile phones. His was the home of his god and so might other people’s be. ‘Like before the snow goes,’ he said.
There were no sheds in the gardens of Hexam Place, only a cupboard in the area. Jimmy sent Dex down the area steps to the basement door, went down there himself from the inside and found the tool bag inside the cupboard. Dex checked that everything was there, nodding at each object he pulled out, secateurs, shears, a long trowel with a pointed tip like a dagger, a small fork, a pruning knife and a variety of other implements. The spade he used when he tended Dr Jefferson’s garden he left behind in the cupboard along with a broom, a rake and a hoe, the fork and the shears, ready for future use here and perhaps for other gardens in Hexam Place. The tool bag was now much lighter.
‘I don’t know if I can let you leave that stuff here,’ said Jimmy. ‘You shouldn’t have left it in the first place.’
‘Dr Jefferson won’t mind.’
‘We’ll see about that. If he says take it away, I’ll be on the blower and you’ll have to come back and fetch the lot, Christmas or no Christmas.’
Dex set off up the street, the little lights twinkling on either side of him, white candles and red candles and in one window a dog sitting next to some pink candles. He didn’t like dogs but he liked the lights. He walked all the way back and down again.
Preston Still had been to see his son and his daughters. Not to give them their Christmas presents, children must have their presents on Christmas Day itself, that’s the rule, but to hand them into the safe keeping of Rabia. The gifts themselves were shop-wrapped. Rabia could see that, for she rightly guessed that Preston was incapable of making a parcel with festive paper and tying it up with glittery string. His awkwardness in the matter of the bonfire would never be forgotten. She put the presents on the top shelf of the cupboard in her own bedroom, out of the children’s reach, beside the three stockings she had prepared. This was something she had never done before for any children but she read in a magazine how to do it, the kinds of small toys and sweets you put inside, and found it simple enough. She was particularly looking forward to seeing Thomas’s face when he woke up on Christmas morning and found this sparkling cornucopia of little gifts at the end of his bed.
Lucy had taken the girls ice-skating. Thomas was having a nap. Rabia eyed Preston keenly as he stood over the boy, watching his sleeping child. His face didn’t change. She often looked for signs of tenderness and love in the expressions of these parents but seldom saw even a hint of what she hoped for.
‘I’ll be back to fetch them on Christmas Day,’ he said. ‘I’m taking them to my sister’s in Chelsea. Lucy too maybe but who knows?’
Rabia came out with him and
over the gallery watched him go down one flight of stairs and then another, half expecting him to head for the basement and Montserrat. But he marched without a backward glance towards the front door and slammed it after him, as had become his habit these past weeks.
The previous Christmas Day Thea had spent with Miss Grieves. As was the case with most of her good deeds, she hadn’t wanted to do this but had succumbed to what she thought of as her duty. That was before the advent of Jimmy. When she told him she intended to cook dinner for Miss Grieves and herself and eat it with her, he had been nearly as angry as over the wedding date debacle.
‘I can’t just abandon her.’
‘Get someone else to do it. You’ll be wanting to take her on our honeymoon next.’
The only possible person was Montserrat. On 23 December, the busiest shopping day of the year, at ten in the morning she went down the basement steps at number 7 and rang Montserrat’s bell. There was no reply but because a faint light was showing in the window, Thea tapped on the glass and called softly, ‘It’s me.’
A groan was the answer. ‘What is it?’
‘Please let me in. I want to ask you something.’
After another groan, quite a long time after, the door was opened. Montserrat was in tracksuit pants and a sweatshirt that belonged to Ciaran. ‘You’d better come in but I’ve got the mother of all hangovers.’
‘Damian says that it’s only since all these Asians came to live here that we’ve started talking about the mother of things. Because they do. We used to talk about the father. And that’s quite funny because they’re supposed to be misogynists.’
Sitting down on Montserrat’s tousled bed, Thea thought how much she would like it if Jimmy said things like that. If he observed people and their speech and habits and made perceptive comments. But he didn’t and never would. Montserrat had sunk down in a heap on the far end of the bed.
‘Shall I make us some coffee?’
‘If you want it. I don’t.’
Thea told her about Miss Grieves and the Christmas dinner. She would supply the ingredients and a Christmas pudding and mince pies already made.
‘Sorry but that’s out. I expect I’ll be spending it with Preston. He’s taking his kids to his sister’s and then he’ll be taking me to the Wellesley for lunch.’
Thea didn’t believe her but she could hardly say so. For one thing she doubted if that exclusive and fashionable restaurant would be open on Christmas Day. ‘I’ll have to try and find someone else.’
‘Leave her to her own devices, why don’t you? It’s not as if she’s disabled. I see her chasing the fox up those stairs most days. It’ll have to stop anyway when you’re married.’
Thea had also been going to ask Montserrat if she would come last-minute shopping with her to Oxford Street but now she changed her mind. The resentment she felt wouldn’t make for pleasant companionship. Montserrat too preferred to be alone until she met Ciaran to go clubbing that evening. The lie she had told about dinner with Preston troubled her, not because it was a lie but because it might all too easily be found out. As for shopping, she might venture into the chaos and melee of Oxford Street later in the day.
‘In case I don’t feel up to it, would you go into HMV and get me a DVD for Rabia? I’ll have to give her something. D’you think she’d like Doctor Zhivago?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Thea, ‘but I’ll get it.’
Walking down Hexam Place for the third time that day, drinking in his fill of the lights, Dex saw the evil spirit come up the area steps at number 7. He hung about, letting her get well ahead of him, and then he began to follow her. Past the flickering lights in number 9, past the bold and blazing lights of number 11 and on towards Sloane Square.
He wanted to steer clear of that Underground. But if she got into a train he would follow her, not do as he had done last time when he had failed. She avoided the station. She was going to get on a bus. Dex left her to seek a little warmth under the bus shelter while he stood outside. He did as he sometimes did when he wanted guidance, touched a series of numbers on his phone, eight digits starting with a seven, in the hope of hearing his god’s voice, but there was nothing, only words from a woman telling him the number had not been recognised. It might be the evil spirit speaking but he wasn’t sure of that.
The bus came and he got on. The evil spirit went upstairs while he went for the seats at the very back. From there he would have a good view. The psychopomp, Peach had called it, the guide who led evil spirits to hell.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When there is a popular sale on in Oxford Street or a new much-hyped store is opening or 23 December comes round, the crowds are not like the crowds in other cities. They are nearer the huge gatherings of people assembled for some religious ceremony or political upheaval. The difference is that they are mostly but not exclusively women and they are constantly on the move. The movement is slow and sporadic, broken by hesitations outside shop windows or pauses at traffic lights, where impatience to get across is intense and risks are taken with life and limb. Regularly, people fall as they try to cross on a green light and are injured, occasionally one will be killed, collapsing under a bus, but mostly the crowd moves on, a sluggish river of women and the rare man, come to help carry the bags. It is never possible to strike out a plan for oneself or take one’s time or even change one’s mind as to direction of route or selection of store. It is wiser to stay away. One joins in where one can, moving along at a pace set hours before, following those ahead and being followed by those behind.
It was so for Dex who managed to come up very close behind the dense mass of black hair and the black coat as the evil spirit left the bus and to follow her as she slipped into the train of shoppers, heading up towards the Circus. She didn’t look round, no one did, you looked ahead, ever onward, hoping for a gap in which to spot a certain doorway you could plunge for, elbowing and thrusting, scarcely breathing. The evil spirit seemed to have no particular shop in mind, no recognisable door to make for. He fingered the trowel in his pocket, the long trowel with the pointed head, and the sharp pruning knife. Which to choose? Which to use? Perhaps the trowel was not sharp enough while the knife was sharp enough for anything.
Somewhere ahead, maybe in the Circus itself, a band was playing, someone was singing, all of them surrounded by red and yellow streamers and great green and white banners under the silver Christmas lights. Of the people around him and ahead of him, many were on their mobiles, talking and listening, laughing, enjoying themselves. Dex tapped a number into his and this time it rang. The voice that answered was a man’s, a soft voice, not his god’s but like it. It was unusual for this to happen but wonderful when it did. The voice that wasn’t quite Peach said, ‘It’s a wrong number but Merry Christmas just the same.’
Dex said, ‘Thank you. Merry Christmas,’ and as he did so, realising that he had never uttered those two words before to anyone or had them uttered to him.
The music was very loud now, the voice shouting and sobbing. Dex could see only the backs of heads, mainly the black curly head in front of him. He pulled the tool bag up so that he was holding it right up in front of his chest. It kept him from being too close to the evil spirit, from touching it. In his other hand he clutched the knife. No one was looking at him, everyone could only look ahead, shuffling along, moving to the rhythm of the crowd’s footfalls. Dex lifted the knife in his fist and thrust it hard through the black coat, through and through and through. The sound the evil spirit made was drowned by the drums and the saxophone and a CD all playing at the same time. Dex stood still, let the crowd move past him, clustering now around the falling girl. There was very little blood to be seen, the furry coat must have sucked it up. The evil spirit was now a heap of black fur lying on the ground like a dead bear. Now there began a constant choking screaming from the crowd and a sudden stop to the music. The singing stopped and the band on the dais fell silent. The sound was replaced by everyone talking, shouting, repeating over and
over, ‘What’s happened? What’s going on? What is it?’ and then a man’s voice like a bell tolling, ‘Someone’s been killed.’
Closing Oxford Street on notoriously the busiest shopping day of the year was at first unbelievable to retailers and public. This was their day of days, their last-minute day. But they had no choice. Entrances to the stores were closed and though rowdier women from the crowd banged on the doors demanding to be let in, most fell in with the police demands to proceed into side streets, to Tube stations and to bus stops on diversionary routes. The clearing of the shopping centre took a long time.
It was impossible for the police to establish who had been moving along in the vicinity of the dead woman when the stabbing took place. Dex felt the trowel in his pocket, glad he hadn’t used it. He liked his little trowel and had never seen another quite like it. To have used it to destroy an evil spirit might have spoiled it for him, making him not to want to weed and plant with it again. The knife he had wiped on the raincoat of a man he was thrust against in the exodus and then he had slipped it into an open handbag. Whose handbag he didn’t know, just a big red bag belonging to a woman who had left it wide open as she struggled along. A wrong way to behave, Dex thought, because it encouraged crime, put temptation in the way of bad people who wanted to get money they hadn’t earned.
His success pleased him. The world had been cleaned of another evil creature and he would be rewarded for it. The backstreets of Mayfair were strangely silent and empty. Dex didn’t think why this might be. He heard police-car sirens and the deeper howl of ambulances and supposed there must somewhere have been a serious accident. In Park Lane he got on to a crowded bus and it carried him away towards Victoria.