The Girl Next Door

by Rendell, Ruth

  What Michael had said seemed to have affected Alan heavily. Or something else had. Instead of pale, he had gone red, a flush colouring his face. Momentarily, he closed his eyes. ‘Tell me something,’ he said, leaning forward. ‘What did you think when I went off with Daphne?’

  The question surprised Michael. Why should the man care? ‘I’d rather not say.’

  His preference was ignored. ‘Did you think I was crazy, or she was? Were you – well, astounded?’

  ‘I don’t know. I expect you’d be offended or hurt or something if I said I didn’t think much about it.’

  The old Alan would have laughed. The new one said, ‘Think about it now.’

  ‘All right. I’ll tell you. I hadn’t seen Rosemary since she was – what was she, ten, eleven? When I saw her at George’s, she reminded me of my wife. Vivien has been dead for years but she reminded me of her.’

  ‘I’ve nothing more to say,’ said Alan. ‘That’s it. Thanks for coming here.’

  They both got up. Neither had any idea of shaking hands. Michael went off across Belsize Park Avenue to Swiss Cottage and Alan to Carlton Hill. They might have walked part of the way together but they chose to go separately. It wasn’t often that Michael felt happy to be in his own home, but he did that evening, or almost happy. It occurred to him that apart from a couple of comments, Alan had talked mainly about Daphne. He went upstairs, lay on his solitary but comfortable bed and told Vivien about his evening. He told her how Rosemary had reminded him of her but not all that much, how it was really just one nice, pleasant woman bringing to mind another. Not that he needed anything to bring Vivien to mind. It seemed to him that when he’d said that about Rosemary, Alan had winced, but maybe he’d imagined it.

  Alan walked down Greville Road to Hamilton Terrace and took the road where Daphne lived very slowly, delaying his arrival at her house.

  If she had been asked, Rosemary wouldn’t have admitted to being happy. How can you be happy when your husband has left you for another woman? When he has left you without a cause, when everything between you had been as it always was, pleasant, loving, a peaceful, quiet relationship. Or had it been? She asked herself that quite often and finally came to the conclusion that it hadn’t. Alan had spoken to her only to ask for something or to tell her it was time for their walk, had kissed her when he did so but on the cheek, had eaten his meals behind a newspaper. It would have been behind a book except that she protested against that, a ban he seemed disproportionately to resent. Hours passed when he said nothing, but once when she told him she disliked being totally ignored, he said simply that at their age there was nothing left to say. As for sex, or making love as she called it, that had stopped years before. He had sex with Daphne, didn’t he?

  ‘He’ll come back,’ Judith said on one of her teatime visits.

  Neutrally, her mother said, ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he will.’

  The woman upstairs who had the cat said, ‘One of these days he’ll come back.’

  Freya, appearing one afternoon with her baby, quoted her own mother without knowing she did so. ‘He’ll come back, Gran.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘They always do.’

  Did she think her grandmother would start crying? Would say no, he never will, and keep on crying? ‘What about all those divorces? Those husbands didn’t come back.’

  Freya had nothing to say. She talked about the baby instead.

  Rosemary had never lived alone before. At first it had been with her parents, then with Alan. If her home had been a detached house, as it had once been, she might have been uneasy, even frightened, especially at night, but aware here of living in a flat with others above, below and on either side of her, she wasn’t even apprehensive.

  She had started going to bed later. Since Alan had said that about their lives having been dull, she often told herself that he was right, but it was a painful thing to admit. This was her whole life gone by. She thought how the friends she had, the people she knew, that she invited to Traps Hill and to whose houses she went, were Alan’s, from the golf or tennis club; one or two had been at school with Alan. Where were those who had been at school with her? Today was Friday and she was going to the theatre, going alone. She didn’t have to go. She could tear the ticket up and stay at home. Her inner voice told her that if she did that, she would never go to the theatre again, never to the cinema. She phoned Fenella and asked her whether, if she bought a computer, she would teach her how to use it. Fenella asked her if she could type at all.

  ‘I’m a good typist,’ said Rosemary, and added, ‘Very good.’

  Her granddaughter was surprised. As she put the phone down, Rosemary thought how none of the family had ever heard of her prowess, or if any of them had been told, they hadn’t listened. She walked to the shops, bought some food for lunch, put a new coat on over her dress and set off for London. She was very early and had nothing to do and nowhere to go for several hours. She could call on Freya or Judith. Sitting down on a seat in the park – which park? Hyde, Regent’s, St James’s? – she leafed through her little address book and found a phone number that once had an exchange called Ambassador. It belonged or had belonged to an old school friend called Emma. Rosemary went into a call box and got a sharp buzzing tone. Probably all the numbers she had were like that. She found two others, one exchange called Primrose, the other Acorn; the numbers were of corporations or firms.

  It was growing cold. She would buy a mobile phone tomorrow and teach herself to use it. She was sure she would never hear from Fenella on the subject again. Now what? She walked into a cinema, where the woman behind a window sold her – without even asking – a senior person’s ticket. It was a Japanese film, and when Rosemary saw what it was she very nearly walked out. But it was rather good, it was very good. She started to sit it out, then enjoyed it. Maybe she would try another one of these. To her surprise, she saw it was six thirty.

  A leisurely walk to the theatre seemed a good idea. She had nearly reached Shaftesbury Avenue when she realised she hadn’t eaten since her early lunch. Too late now. She would eat when she got home. Not everything could be achieved the first time of trying. The theatre was full, but there was her empty, inviting, well-organised seat. Halfway through the play she fell asleep and woke up only when the curtain was coming down for the last time.

  Caroline Inshaw asked Michael if they could meet, at his home or in her London office. It must be somewhere private, a venue where they were not open to interruption, as this was ‘a matter of the utmost seriousness’. She had read the papers he had sent her, by now she knew all the facts and could gradually see her way to confronting Mr John Winwood. In her words, this needed ‘an in-depth discussion’ between them on the subject. Would he have an objection to this?

  They agreed on the phone to meet at his home. DI Inshaw was to come at six. Michael had never undertaken anything in his whole life that brought him such dread, such stress and such shrinking pain. The night before she was due to come, he slept not at all. It was all he could do to stop himself pacing the rooms, then up the stairs and down again, until at last he lay in the dark seeing lights flashing and hearing a slow, dull movement like a train passing through the world’s longest tunnel. When morning came – late as it must in December – he sank into a sleep that was all dreams, and finally getting up, swore like poor Clarence that he would never pass another such a night, ‘though ’twere to buy a world of happy days, so full of dismal terror was the time’.

  Arriving two minutes early, Caroline Inshaw told him he didn’t look well. ‘It’s nothing,’ Michael said. ‘A virus maybe. Isn’t that what everyone says?’

  He was going to make her tea but she said no, she’d like a drink and maybe he should have one too. It would do him good. He thought how pretty she looked with her long black hair, her jeans and her white wool jacket over a blue sweater. When he was young, police officers never dressed like this as far as he could remember, but then hardly any of them were wom
en. She took off her jacket and he felt pleased that the place was warm and comfortable for her.

  She drank some of her wine, began talking about the hands in the box, said she supposed he knew the woman’s hand was his mother’s, immediately asking him if this brought him pain. He said yes but he was used to it by now. She had spoken to someone who had suggested that the other hand might have been that of a man called Johnson.

  ‘I knew a Johnson,’ Michael said. ‘Slightly. When we were children. He was one of the boys who was in the tunnels with us. But it’s a common name. He was William Johnson, called Bill.’

  ‘This one was Clifford. An army captain, a relation of the Johnsons who lived on The Hill, William’s uncle. He was killed in the war, in the Western Desert. Your William is a diplomat now, an ambassador.’

  Michael digested this. He remembered Clara telling him about a Clifford Johnson, that he’d been an admirer of his mother. ‘One of the hands is his?’

  ‘It looks like it. We have a DNA match.’

  ‘A wonderful substance is DNA – is it a substance? – it’s like magic. A hundred years ago – well, less than a hundred – people would have seen it like that. Witchcraft.’

  She wasn’t interested in any of that. Her eyes glazed over as people’s eyes did when growing bored. ‘Now I need to see your father. In a care home, is he?’ Michael nodded. It was simpler, easier, not to go into details.‘I need to put a great many questions to him. Will he talk to me?’

  ‘I think he may.’

  She took another sip of her wine. ‘He should have someone with him, not just me,’ she said.

  ‘I will come,’ he said, feeling that sad and heavy sinking of the heart. ‘When do you want to go?’

  ‘How about Wednesday?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PERHAPS OTHER PEOPLE behaved like this. He didn’t know. This was what he did: he walked round the rooms and thought, when he saw the bookcase where Michael had stood reading the titles of the books, that’s where Michael was when we were so happy. Over there was where Rosemary threw that wine glass and we watched, loving each other. Out in the garden, standing side by side, holding hands, we watched the big dog fox come through the fence. Outside the front door I went to pick up the parcel the postman shouldn’t have left there but did, and when I went back into the hall Daphne came to me and put her arms round me.

  Now I can’t go on. At first I thought it was the shock affecting me. What she told me passed through my mind and passed again and again. I told myself to think of something else, expel it, find a book to read, something compelling, interesting. Daphne’s house is full of books, but I couldn’t read. Not any more. I saw the young girl in love with a man three or four times her age. She was a child. Depraved, surely? Absolutely corrupt. She kept on asking me what was wrong. What had she done? I couldn’t tell her. I kept on saying to myself that this would pass away, I loved Daphne. All our lives we had been made for each other, destined one day to be together. A voice in my mind said, you fool. You wanted some excitement, you wanted the thrill of Daphne’s glamour. You’re old but so is she, a rich old woman, and now you’ve found out that her life has just been a saga of corruption. All those marriages, for instance, and how many lovers were there? You were too innocent and ignorant for her. She thought you would listen to her and smile, laugh; maybe she would tell you that you were the one of all of them that she truly loved.

  The mistake was yours. You should have gone away from George’s house and left that card of hers lying on the floor.

  They hadn’t all the time in the world. If Lewis had been twenty years younger and Melissa, say, ten years younger – not that he wanted her younger, she was perfect as she was – they could have let everything go slowly. She had been a widow only a matter of months. If he let the weeks pass, waited a fortnight and then phoned her, someone else might have snapped her up. She had been so kind to him, so helpful: ask her to come earlier, you’d like to meet her, wouldn’t you, and surely you want to talk to her about your uncle. So Lewis had phoned Noreen and been gratified to find himself speaking to a warm, expansive woman. She couldn’t come earlier, her flight had been booked, and no, it wouldn’t do to come straight to him, but she would phone him as soon as she was in England. Of course he had thanked Melissa for her help, they had gone out again and now they were going out on Thursday.

  But the next step? What would that be? He thought, we forget these things. We’re in a restaurant and I say something about how wonderful it’s been to have met her and she says how lucky she is to have met me, or something like that. We go home in a taxi and I go into her house and after we’ve had a drink or something I give her a kiss on the cheek and say I’ll call her tomorrow and then I leave. But I haven’t all the time in the world.

  He didn’t know how to behave, he didn’t know what to do. He had been married for years and years, decade upon decade, and if he ever knew he had now forgotten. He didn’t know the words to use. He didn’t know how to tell her how much he liked her, and more than that, how he missed her. How could he tell her how it hurt him when she went into her house and closed the front door behind her? When he was young he used to read a lot. He always had a book, a novel, and it was full of love and pain and words, words, words. Where were those books now? Lost, parted with, disposed of to second-hand bookshops – all except The Count of Monte Cristo, and he’d read that too often. Except for that, he hadn’t read anything except the evening paper and the Spectator and the Sunday Times for years. He thought he would never learn how to ask her. And what would he ask her? Would he ever recognise the opportunity when it came? Might it be better for him not to phone her again, just to keep away from the phone, not to answer it if it rang? He would only do something that made him feel a fool.

  He tried keeping away from the phone and he could do that when it was a matter of phoning her. It was less easy when it rang and, when he didn’t answer, rang again. Of course it was Melissa. She said, ‘Please come round. I feel I’ve done something to hurt you or offend you. Please come round and tell me what it was.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything,’ he said, and he went round. She let him in, and when she had closed the door, she put her arms round him and held him in a close hug.

  Alan had discovered something about himself. Lovemaking was only possible for him if he loved the woman he was with. That wasn’t quite correct. Admired might be a better word. If he admired her, honoured her, respected her. He had had those feelings for Daphne, and now as he looked back over the years, he saw that whenever he thought of her, which he did quite often, it was with consistent admiration, thinking how beautiful she was, how clever and how accomplished, a strange word but somehow true. All that was gone. He could even ask himself now after so many years what a young girl of nineteen or so was doing having sex with a young man in the back of a car in Epping Forest. How could she? Perhaps the answer was that she had had that experience seven years before and it had coloured her whole life. Now he felt he couldn’t touch her again and when they were in bed and she moved close to him, he shrank away. All the time he thought that maybe his old feeling would come back but it didn’t. Rather, he grew more revolted until he knew he would have to leave. He even thought of leaving in the night. Going to bed with her, waiting for her to fall asleep, then getting up and picking up the case he had packed and sneaking out of the front door. He couldn’t do it. He knew she would soon say something and she did.

  ‘What is happening to us, Alan?’

  Even then the temptation to deny it, to say he wasn’t well, he was ‘under the weather’, was very great. ‘It isn’t working,’ he said. ‘I suppose we know each other better. Maybe we should have waited before living together.’

  ‘It’s what I told you about me and John Winwood, isn’t it?’

  There was something about her that compelled him to be truthful. He couldn’t look into her eyes and deny that everything that was going to split them up had come about because she, a child, had
encouraged a man of forty and more to make love to her, had enjoyed it. ‘It is,’ he said. ‘I can’t help it, Daphne. I can’t do anything to change it. I have tried. You don’t know how often I have tried to get it it out of my mind, but I can’t.’

  ‘I would go back and undo it if I could,’ she said. ‘When I’d finished telling you – no, before I’d finished – I realised how I’d shocked you. I’d horrified you. I knew it was too late. I thought, maybe it’ll be all right, he will sleep on it, he’ll forget. But you didn’t, did you?’

  He didn’t answer directly. ‘We’re completely different, you and I. I was brought up by quiet, conservative people who wanted everything to stay the same. You were ahead of your time. I don’t know why. I thought it was wonderful when we made love in your dad’s car. Every time it was a marvellous thrill. Would it have lasted?’

  ‘For a little while,’ she said.

  He packed a suitcase. He had bought clothes since he came to live with her and one bag wasn’t enough. Daphne said she would send the rest on. ‘You’ll be home for Christmas. That will be nice, with the family.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  The new suitcase felt very heavy. It felt much heavier than the case he had arrived with in the summer. It must be his age. Not months but years had been added on over the past two or three weeks. He seldom looked at himself in the mirror, but now he did and saw a very old man, a man who looked too old to look after himself.

  He wondered how he should say goodbye to Daphne. A kiss on the cheek seemed an insult, so he did nothing. He stood there and said, ‘Goodbye, Daphne.’

  She nodded, said, ‘Goodbye.’

  Her farewell had a more permanent ring than if she had used his name. She stood in the doorway while he went down the steps, walked to the gate and turned round to face her. He thought he had never seen so sad a face but he said nothing, only raised his left hand and walked on, through the gate and down the street. Giving up the struggle, he hailed the first taxi that came and asked the driver to take him to Marble Arch and the Central Line.