by Ruth Rendell
The tobacconist’s had been given up and Maud had retired to luxury in a small but sumptuous detached house at Eltham. Stanley never went there—he wasn’t invited—and he showed small sympathy when Vera, lunched and cosseted by her mother, returned home from a day at Eltham full of anecdotes about Maud’s high blood pressure. Through the years this was Stanley’s only consolation and, being a man of more than average intelligence who could have excelled at any of several well-paid careers if he had only put his mind to it (if he had had a chance, was the way he put it), he set out to study the whole subject of blood pressure and hardening of the arteries. At that time he was working as a factory night watchman. No one ever tried to break into the factory which was on its last legs and contained nothing worth stealing, so Stanley whiled away the long hours very pleasantly in reading medical books he got out of the public library.
It was therefore no surprise to him when he arrived home one morning to be greeted by Vera with the news that her mother had had a cerebral thrombosis.
While pulling long faces and being unusually kind to his wife, Stanley began calculating his inheritance. There ought to be at least eight thousand from the sale of Maud’s house as well as a tidy sum in the bank. The first thing he’d buy would be a large car just to put the neighbours’ noses out of joint.
Then Maud got better.
Stanley, hope springing eternal, agreed that she should come and live with them in Lanchester Road. The extra work, after all, would fall on Vera and if the eight thousand didn’t immediately fall into his lap, there was bound to be a share-out. No one, in Stanley’s view, parked themselves on a relative without paying their way, and if Maud was sticky, he would drop her a gentle but unmistakable hint.
Two days after she arrived, Maud explained her intentions. With the exception of ten shillings a week, her whole pension would be handed over to Vera but her capital remained where it was, comfortably invested.
“I never heard such a diabolical bloody liberty,” said Stanley.
“Her pension pays for her food, Stan.”
“And what about her lodgings? What about the work she makes?”
“She’s my mother,” said Vera.
The time had come to put that phrase into the past tense. Not murder, of course, not actual murder. Since he had knocked that old woman on the head and taken her handbag when he was eighteen, Stanley had never laid violent hands on anyone and when he read of murder in the newspapers he was as shocked as Vera and as vociferous as Maud in demanding the return of the death penalty. As in the case of that shot police constable, for instance, P. C. Chappell, who had died trying to stop thugs breaking into Croughton Post Office last month. No, murder was something he wouldn’t even consider. An accident was what he had in mind. Some short of carelessness with the gas or a mix-up over all those pills and tablets Maud took.
A scheme for gassing Maud taking shape in his mind, Stanley walked into the house whistling cheerfully. He didn’t kiss Vera but he said hallo to her and patted her shoulder as he went to switch on television.
Thinking now of her days as numbered, Stanley had been prepared to unbend a little with Maud. But as soon as he saw her, sitting up straight at the table and already on her second helping of eggs and chips, her face red with determination and ill temper, he girded himself for battle.
“Had a busy day, Ma?”
“Busier than yours, I daresay,” said Maud. “I had a chat over the fence with Mrs. Blackmore this afternoon and she said her husband went to get his petrol at your garage but he couldn’t get no service. He could see you, though, and he reckoned you were asleep.”
Stanley glared at her. “I don’t want you gossiping over the fence any more, is that clear? Walking all over my garden and trampling down the plants.”
“It’s not your garden, it’s Vera’s.”
She could scarcely have said anything more irritating to Stanley. Brought up in the country, on the borders of Essex and Suffolk where his father had a small holding, he had loved gardening all his life and he called it his only relaxation, forgetting for the time his crosswords and his medical books. But this passion of his was out of character—gardening is generally associated with the mild, the civilised and the law-abiding—and Maud refused to take it seriously. She liked to think of Stanley as among the outcast, the utterly lost, while gardening was one of the pastimes she had respected all her life. So she would watch him tending his heather garden or watering his gladioli and then, when he came in to wash his hands, tell him not to forget that the garden, along with the rest of the property, was Vera’s and Vera could sell it over his head whenever the fancy took her.
Now, pleased that her retort had needled Stanley, she turned to Vera and asked if she had remembered to get her skein of wool.
“It went right out of my head, Mother. I am sorry.”
“That puts paid to my knitting for tonight then,” said Maud sourly. “If I’d known I’d have got it myself when I was in town.”
“What were you doing in town?”
“I went,” said Maud, shouting above the television, “to see my solicitor.”
“Since when have you had a solicitor?” said Stanley.
“Since this morning, Mr. Clever. A poor old widow in my position needs a solicitor to protect her. He was very nice to me, I can tell you, a real gentleman. Great comfort he gave me. I told him, I’ll be able to sleep in my bed now.”
“I don’t know what you’re on about,” said Stanley uneasily and he added, “for God’s sake someone turn that T.V. down,” as if Vera or her mother and not he had switched it on. “That’s better. Now we can hear ourselves speak. Right, what’s all this about?”
“My will. I made my will this morning and I got the solicitor to put it the way I want it. If Vera and me were living alone it’d be a different thing. All I’ve got is coming to her, I don’t know how many times I’ve told you. But you listen, this is what I’ve done. If I die of a stroke you get the lot but if I die of anything else it all goes to Ethel Carpenter. And now you know.”
Vera dropped her fork. “I don’t know at all, Mother. I don’t know what any of that’s supposed to mean.”
“It’s clear enough,” said Maud. “So just you think about it.”
She gave them a grim smile, and hobbling rapidly to the television, turned up the volume.
“That,” said Stanley in bed that night, “is the biggest bloody insult I’ve ever had said to me. Insinuating I’d put her out of the way! I reckon she’s going cracked.”
“If it’s true,” said Vera.
“It doesn’t matter a damn whether it’s true. Maybe she went and maybe she didn’t, and maybe the solicitor put that in and maybe he never did. Whichever way you like to look at it, she’s got us by the short hairs.”
“No, she hasn’t, love. It’s not as if we’d have dreamt of harming her. Of course she’ll die of a stroke. What hurts is that Mother should even think of such a thing.”
“And if she doesn’t die of a stroke, what then?”
“I don’t believe any solicitor’d put that in a will.” Vera sighed heavily and turned over. “I must go to sleep now. I’m dead tired.”
On the whole, Stanley thought Vera was right and no solicitor would have agreed to Maud’s condition. It probably wasn’t legal. But if Maud said it was and there was no one with the knowledge to argue….
Vera worked all day Saturdays and Stanley and Maud were left alone together. On fine Saturdays Stanley spent hours in the garden and when it rained he went to the pictures.
March had been mild and the almond tree was already in flower. Daffodils were in bud but the ericas in his heather garden were just past their prime. It was time to nourish them with a bale of peat, for the soil of Croughton was London clay. Stanley fetched a new sackful from the shed, scattered peat around the established plants and dug a trench. This would be filled with peat for the new plants he had ordered.
Although he objected to Maud’s gossiping over the
fence with Mrs. Blackmore at number 59 or Mrs. Macdonald at number 63, Stanley wasn’t averse to breaking off from his digging for an occasional chat. Today, when Mrs. Blackmore came out to peg a couple of shirts on her line, he would have liked nothing better than to have catalogued, as was his usual habit, Maud’s latest solecisms and insults, but this would no longer do. He must establish himself in his neighbour’s estimation as a tolerant and even affectionate son-in-law.
“She’s all right,” he said in answer to Mrs. Blackmore’s enquiry. “As well as can be expected.”
“I always say to John, Mrs. Kinaway’s wonderful really when you think what she’s been through.”
Mrs. Blackmore was a tiny birdlike woman who always wore her dyed blonde hair tied up in two bunches like a little girl, although in other respects she seemed resigned to middle age. Her eyes were sharp and bright and she had the disconcerting habit of staring hard into the eyes of anyone with whom she happened to be talking. Stanley met those eyes boldly now, doing his best not to blink.
“You can’t help admiring her,” he said with a little smiling shake of his head.
“I know you really feel that.” Mrs. Blackmore was somewhat taken aback and temporarily her eyes wavered. “Has she seen the doctor lately?”
“Old Dr. Blake retired and she won’t have anything to do with the new one. She says he’s too young.”
“Dr. Moxley? He’s thirty-five if he’s a day. Still, I daresay that seems young to her.”
“You have to respect their funny ways, the old folks,” said Stanley piously. Their eyes engaged in a hard tug-of-war which Stanley won. Mrs. Blackmore dropped her gaze and, muttering something about getting the lunch, went into her house.
Stanley’s own meal was of necessity a cold one. He and Maud ate it in silence and afterwards, while Stanley sat down with the Daily Telegraph crossword, his mother-in-law prepared to have her rest.
When she was alone she simply sat in an armchair and dozed with her head against one of the wings, but on Saturdays with Stanley in the room, she made a considerable fuss. First she gathered up every available cushion, making a point of pulling out of one behind Stanley’s head, and arranged them very slowly all over the head and foot of the sofa. Then she made her way upstairs, tapping her stick and humming, to return with an armful of blankets. The weight of the blankets made her breath laboured and she gave vent to groans. At last, having taken off her glasses and her shoes, she heaved herself up on to the sofa, pulled the blankets over her and lay gasping.
Her son-in-law took absolutely no notice of any of this. He filled in his crossword, smiling sometimes at the ingenuity of the man who had set it, and occasionally mouthing the words of a clue. When Maud could stand his indifference no longer, she said acidly: “In my young days a gentleman took pride in helping an old lady.”
“I’m no gentleman,” said Stanley. “You have to have money to be a gentleman.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Gentlemen are born, let me tell you. You’d be uncouth no matter what money you’d got.”
“You could do with being a bit more couth yourself,” said Stanley, and having triumphantly silenced his mother-in-law, he filled in 28 across which completed his puzzle.
Maud closed her eyes and set her mouth in a grim line. Doodling on the edge of his paper, Stanley watched her speculatively until those crinkled compressed lips relaxed, the hand which gripped the blanket went limp, and he knew she was asleep. Then, folding his paper, he tiptoed out of the room and made his way to Maud’s bedroom.
She had evidently spent the greater part of the morning writing to Ethel Carpenter, for the finished letter lay exposed on her bedside table. Stanley sat down on the edge of the bed to read it.
He had always suspected that he and his doings formed one of the favourite topics of the old women’s discussions, but he had never supposed that Maud would devote three and a half sides of paper to nothing but a denigration of his character. He was outraged and he was also bitterly hurt. It was a favour he was doing Maud, after all, letting her live in his house, and the ingratitude implicit in this letter made his blood boil.
Frowning angrily, he read through what Maud had to say about his laziness and his ill manners. She had even had the effrontery to tell Ethel that he had borrowed a fiver from Vera the day before which, Maud declared, he intended to put on a horse for the National. This had been Stanley’s purpose but now he told himself he had wanted it to buy more peat and young heather plants. The old bitch! The evil-tongued old bitch! What was this next bit?
“Of course poor Vee will never see her money again,” Maud had written. “He will see to that. She works like a slave but she wouldn’t have a rag for her back, bar what I give her. Still, it is only a matter of time now before I shall get her away from him. She is too loyal to say yes mother I’ll come, knowing no doubt what a scene he would make and perhaps even strike her. I wouldn’t put anything past him, my dear. The other day I told her I would buy her whatever she liked to name on condition she would leave him and the tears came into her poor eyes. It went to my heart, I can tell you, seeing my only child in distress. But I tell myself I am being cruel only to be kind and she will thank me on her bended knees when she is rid of him at last and living with me in the lovely house I mean to buy her. I have got my eye on one I saw in an advertisement in the Sunday paper, a lovely place just built in Chigwell, and when Vee has her afternoon off I am thinking of hiring a car to take us both out to look at it. Without him of course….”
Stanley nearly tore the letter up, he was so angry. Until then he had had no idea of Maud’s plans, for Vera had been afraid to tell him about them, although he had guessed there was something afoot. If I’d only got money, he raged, I’d sue the old bitch for what-d’you-call-it?—enticement. That’s what I’d do, have her up in court for trying to take a man’s lawful wife away from him.
He sat staring moodily at the letter, suddenly aware of the great danger he was in. Without Vera, he had no hope of ever getting his hands on that twenty thousand. It would be the breadline for him all the rest of his life while Vera lived in luxury. My God, he thought, even the house, the very roof over his head, belonged to her. And what a beanfeast those two would have, hired cars, perhaps even a car of their own, a modern house in snooty Chigwell, clothes, holidays, every convenience. The whole idea was unbearable to contemplate and suddenly he was seized with the urgency of what he must do and reminded too of his original purpose in coming up to Maud’s room.
Leaving the letter as he had found it, he turned his attention to the three containers of pills which stood under the bedlamp. Those pale blue capsules were sleep-inducing; they didn’t interest him. Next came the yellow vitamin things which, Stanley was sure, were responsible for Maud’s abundant vitality and kept her tongue in sprightly working order. Nevertheless, he wouldn’t mess about with them. These were the ones he wanted, the tiny anti-coagulant tablets called Mollanoid of which Maud took six a day and which, Stanley supposed, kept her blood from clotting as it coursed through those brittle arteries. He took one from the carton and folded it inside his handkerchief.
She was still asleep when he came downstairs and, generously, he would have let her have her rest without interruption on any other Saturday. But now, with the memory of the libellous letter uppermost in his mind, he switched on the television for “Sports Round-Up” and took a bitter pleasure in seeing her jerk awake.
Stanley wasn’t allowed to leave his glass booth between nine and five, although he often did so and for this truancy had several times been threatened with the sack. But the chemist on the other side of the street would be closed when he knocked off and he couldn’t afford to wait until the following Saturday before buying the substitute tablets he required.
He waited until one o’clock, the slackest time of the day, and then he sneaked across the road. But instead of one of the girls being behind the counter, the pharmacist himself was on duty and showed such an interest in all this fumbling among the
bottles and boxes that Stanley thought it wiser to try Boot’s, although it was a quarter of a mile away.
There he found all the goods on display on self-service stands and he was able to study a variety of white pills without being observed. All the aspirin and codeine and phenacetin tablets were too big and the only thing he could find approximating in size to Maud’s anti-coagulants were a saccharine compound for the use of slimmers.
These he thought would do. The tablets looked exactly like the one he had appropriated. He tried a single tablet on his tongue and it was very sweet, but Maud always swallowed her tablets down quickly in a sweet drink and very likely the taste would be disguised.
“D’you mind not eating the goods before you’ve paid for them?” said a girl assistant pertly.
“If you’re accusing me of stealing I want to see the manager.”
“All right, all right. There’s no need to shout. That’ll be five and six, please.”
“And bloody daylight robbery,” said Stanley. But he bought the phial of Shu-go-Sub and ran all the way back to the garage.
Three cars were drawn up by the pumps and Stanley’s boss, holding the petrol nozzle delicately and furiously as far as possible from the lapels of his immaculate suit, was doing his best to serve the first customer. Stanley went into his booth and watched him through the glass. Presently, when the cars had gone, his boss marched into the booth, rubbing his oily hands.
“I’ve had about as much of this as I can stand, Manning,” he said. “God knows how much custom we’d have lost if some enterprising motorist hadn’t phoned me to ask what the hell was going on. I said I wouldn’t tell you again and I won’t. You can have your cards and get out on Friday.”
“It’ll be a pleasure,” said Stanley. “I was going, anyway, before this dump goes bust.”
The loss of his job didn’t particularly dismay him. He was used to losing jobs and he enjoyed the freedom of several weeks out of work, during which he would draw ample untaxed unemployment benefit. Telling Vera, though, was something he didn’t much look forward to and he was determined to prevent Maud finding out. That would be nice, something to cheer a man up, having his misfortunes shouted over the garden fences and sent winging in choice virulent phrases down over the river to Ethel Carpenter in Brixton.