The Crocodile Bird

by Ruth Rendell

  She was powerless. It hurt, as it had never hurt even the first time. When it was over and he was whispering to her that he knew she had really enjoyed it, he could always tell if a girl liked it, she thought of Eve and Trevor Hughes. Eve had had a pair of dogs to call, but she had nothing.

  He fell asleep immediately. She cried in silence. It was weak and foolish, she was a baby to do it, but she couldn’t stop.

  Eve would never have tolerated such treatment. Eve never permitted persecution. Not since what had happened on the way back from the airport. Her own suffering was nothing like as terrible, but bad enough, a foretaste of a possible future. Eve had revenged herself on three men for what three men had done to her. That was why she had done those things, for vengeance more than for fear or safety or gain. More for vengeance than for Shrove.

  Was this then what her own life would be? Making love when she wanted to and also making love when she didn’t want to. Or doing that when she didn’t want to. After what had happened, she thought she would never want to again. She remembered the day of Jonathan Tobias’s wedding and how Eve had used the occasion as an opportunity for a lesson, as she so often did. She had taught Liza about marriage and marriage customs but had said nothing of having to do what a man wanted when you didn’t want to, of men getting their way because they were stronger, of working for them and waiting on them and submitting to their right to tell you what to do.

  Perhaps she hadn’t because Liza had been only a child then. It was a lifetime ago and she was a child no longer. But once more she was in a position where she couldn’t run away. And it was worse than last time when all she needed was courage. Now she had nowhere to run to.

  One other thing Eve had done for her, though, apart from teaching her so many of the things Sean said were useless, and that was to teach her to rough it. Life had never been soft. They made their own pleasures with the minimum of aid, without toys, television, videos, CD players, external amusements. Eventually, after years, they had got their bathroom. The gatehouse had an old fridge and an even older oven, but there was no heating upstairs, no down quilts or electric blankets of the kind she’d seen at Spurdells’, no new clothes—those jeans and the padded coat were the only things she possessed not made by Eve or from the Oxfam shop—they’d had none of that takeaway or processed food she’d got used to with Sean but never really trusted. They’d made their own bread at the gatehouse, grown their own vegetables, made their own jam and even cream cheese. Everywhere they went they’d had to walk once Bruno was gone.

  Her mother had given her a kind of endurance, a sort of toughness, but what use was that in the world of Spurdells and Superway? You didn’t need to be tough, you needed certificates and diplomas, families and relations, a roof over your head and means of transport, you needed skills and money. Well, she had a thousand pounds.

  She could see the money belt on the table where he had thrown it when he stripped her. If he knew about the money, he would want it. Once he wanted it, he would take it. He would say that what was hers was theirs and therefore his. She got up, washed all traces of him off her body, pulled on leggings and the blue-and-red sweater for warmth, and curling the money belt up as tightly as she could, thrust it inside one of her boots.

  Keeping as far from him as she could, on the far edge of the bed, she went to sleep.

  TWENTY-TWO

  PROUDLY showing Liza her box of decorations that had all come from Harrods, Mrs. Spurdell said it was too early to dress the tree yet. But there was no point in deferring the purchase of it until later when the best would be gone. Philippa and her children were coming for Christmas. Jane was coming. Having once told Liza Philippa’s Christian name, Mrs. Spurdell had since then always referred to her as Mrs. Page while Jane was “my younger daughter.”

  It was the first Christmas tree Liza had ever seen. Indeed, it was the first she had ever heard of and the rationale for uprooting a fir tree, winding tinsel strings around it, and hanging glass balls on the branches was beyond her understanding. As for Christian customs, Eve had taught her no more about Christianity than she had about Buddhism, Judaism, and Islam.

  She could hear Mr. Spurdell moving about in his study upstairs. His school had broken up for Christmas. With the two of them in the house she had no chance of a bath. She scrubbed out the tub and put caustic down the lavatory pan. While she was cleaning the basin it occurred to her to look in the medicine cabinet. There, among the denture-cleaning tablets, the vapor rub, and the corn solvent, she found a cylindrical container labeled: MRS. M. SPURDELL, SODIUM AMYTAL, ONE TO BE TAKEN AT NIGHT. Of its properties she knew nothing except that it evidently made you sleep. She put the container in her pocket.

  If she didn’t have her money in her hand before she gave notice, she thought it quite likely Mrs. Spurdell would refuse to pay her. While she pushed the vacuum cleaner up and down the passage, she worked out various strategies. Determined to be honest and not to prevaricate, she knocked on the study door.

  “Do you want to come in here, Liza?” Mr. Spurdell put his head out. “I won’t be a minute.”

  “I’ll do the study last if you like,” she said. “I’ve brought all your books back.”

  “That’s a good girl. You’re welcome to more. I’ve no objection to lending my dear old friends to a sensible person who knows how to take care of them. A good book, you know, Liza, ‘is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit.’”

  “Yes,” said Liza, “but I don’t want to borrow anymore. Can I ask you something?”

  No doubt, he expected her to ask who said that about a good book but she already knew it was Milton and knew too, which was very likely more than he did, that it came from Areopagitica. He was all smiling invitation to having his brains picked.

  “How can you find out where someone’s in prison?”

  “I beg your pardon?” The smile was swiftly gone.

  Now for the honesty. “My mother has gone to prison and I want to know where she is.”

  “Your mother? Good heavens. This isn’t a game, is it, Liza? You’re being serious?”

  She was weary with him. “I only want to know who to write to or who to phone and find out where they’ve put her. I want to write to her, I want to go and see her.”

  “Good heavens. You’ve really given me quite a shock.” He took a step forward, glanced over the banisters, and spoke in a lowered voice, “Don’t give Mrs. Spurdell a hint of this.”

  “Why would I tell her?” Liza made an impatient gesture with her hands. “Is there a place I could phone? An office, I mean, a police headquarters of some kind?” She was vaguely remembering American police serials.

  “Oh, dear, I suppose it would be the Home Office.”

  “What’s the Home Office?”

  Questions that were requests for information always pleased him. Prefacing his explanation with a “You don’t know what the Home Office is?” he proceeded to a little lecture on the police, prisons, immigration, and ministries of the interior. Liza took in what she needed.

  She drew breath and braced herself. Sean’s words came back to her, about being more like six than sixteen, about being helpless. “Please, may I use your phone? And may I look in the phone directory first?”

  He was no longer the benevolent pedagogue, twinkling as he imparted knowledge. A frown appeared and a petulant tightening of the mouth. “No, I’m afraid you couldn’t. No to both. I can’t have that sort of thing going on here. Besides, this is the most expensive time. Have you any idea what it would cost to phone to London at eleven o’clock in the morning?”

  “I’ll pay.”

  “No, I’m sorry. It’s not only the money. This isn’t the kind of thing Mrs. Spurdell and I should wish to be involved in. I’m sorry but no, certainly not.”

  She gave a little bob of the head and immediately switched on the vacuum cleaner once more. When the bedrooms were done, she came back to the study and found him gone. Quickly she looked for Home Office in the phone book. Several numb
ers were listed. She wrote down three of them, knowing she didn’t want Immigration or Nationality or Telecommunications.

  The house was clean and tidy, her time up. It seemed harder than it had ever been to extract twelve pounds from Mrs. Spurdell, the last pound coming in the shape of fifteen separate coins. Liza thanked her and said she was leaving, she wouldn’t be coming anymore. Mrs. Spurdell affected not to believe her ears. When she was convinced, she asked rhetorically how she was supposed to manage over Christmas. Liza said nothing but pocketed the money and put on her coat.

  “I think you’re very ungrateful,” said Mrs. Spurdell, “and very foolish, considering how hard jobs are to come by.”

  She began shouting for her husband, presumably to come and stop Liza from leaving. Liza walked out of the front door and shut it behind her. All the way down Aspen Close she expected to have to run because one of them was pursuing her but nothing like that happened. If the manager who admired her had been on duty in the Duke’s Head she would have asked him if she might use his phone, but there was a woman in reception. While she was occupied at the computer, Liza walked upstairs and had a bath.

  Not waiting for Sean but going home on the bus, it occurred to her as she climbed to the front seat on the top, that for a six-year-old—like the milkman with a child’s mental age?—she hadn’t done badly. Surely she had been resourceful? She had acquired a soporific drug, discovered how to find her mother, had even found the phone number, had given in her notice, had a bath, and lacking a towel, dried herself on the hotel bathroom curtains.

  Would she have done better if she’d grown up in a London street and been to boarding school?

  Sean had finished at Superway. He had unpacked his last carton of cornflakes and last can of tomatoes. A little wary of her still but no longer sullen, he described how the manager had shaken hands with him and wished him well.

  “Does anyone know about me?” Liza asked him. “I mean, the people at your work? Do they know you’ve got a girlfriend who lives with you and who I am and all that?”

  “No, they don’t. I keep my private affairs to myself. So far as they know, I’m all on my own.”

  “Will you drive to Scotland?”

  “’Course I’ll drive. What you got in mind? First-class train tickets and a stopover in a luxury hotel? You’ve got a lot to learn about money, love.”

  He began fretting about a new law that had come in, excluding caravans from all land except where the owner’s express permission was given. The sooner they were gone the better. Would the law in Scotland be different? He’d heard it sometimes was. Liza knew more about it than he did, she had read it up in Mr. Spurdell’s newspaper. For instance, she knew that if your caravan was turned off a piece of land and you weren’t allowed to park it anywhere else, the local authority was bound to house you. It might not be a real house or a flat, it might be only a room, even a hotel room, but it would be somewhere. She wasn’t going to say any of this to Sean and risk a sneer about her cleverness and her aspirations.

  All the time they had been there she had kept the caravan very clean. Cleanliness was ingrained in her, Eve had seen to that, and she could no more have left her home dirty than she could have failed to wash herself. For all that, it was a poor place, everything about it shabby, worn, scraped, scuffed, chipped, broken, cracked, and makeshift-mended. But the gatehouse had been shabby too. Would she want anything like the “monstrosity” Bruno had picked or the Spurdells’ house, she who had been spoiled for choice by Shrove?

  The caravan and the car, a home and a means of transport. With those, life would be possible, some kind of future would be possible. She watched Sean speculatively. Spartan living wasn’t all that Eve had taught her.

  No one had known where Bruno was and no one had cared except an easily fobbed-off estate agent. Trevor Hughes had had an estranged wife, glad to see the back of him. No one knew Sean wasn’t alone. Her existence, her presence in his life, all this he had kept secret. He had left Superway and at this branch they would think no more about him, no doubt he was already forgotten.

  At the Glasgow end they would expect him to turn up for the course on Monday. If he didn’t come they wouldn’t set in motion a police alert but conclude that he had changed his mind. She knew little about life, but the experiences she had had were of a peculiar nature. Few could look back on a similar history. She knew from experience, from the disappearance of Trevor Hughes and Bruno Drummond, that the police do little about searching for missing men in their particular circumstances. In this case it was unlikely an absent man would even be reported missing.

  Sean’s mother had long since lost interest in him. His brothers and sisters were scattered in distant places, long out of touch. The chain-smoking grandfather was too ancient to bother. The people he called his friends were pub acquaintances and caravansite neighbors like Kevin.

  While Sean watched television, she looked at herself long in the glass, the cracked piece of mirror ten inches by six that was all she and Sean had to see their faces in. It had seemed to her that Eve had never changed. The woman she had run away from a hundred days and nights ago was in her eyes the same woman, looking just the same, as the mother who had brought her to Shrove when she was three, not older or heavier or less fresh. Yet now as she looked at her own face it was a youthful Eve that she saw, different from the Eve of the present, an Eve she had forgotten but who came back to her as herself. As Jonathan had once said, as Bruno had said, she was a clone of that Eve, fatherless, her mother’s double, her mother all over again.

  With her mother’s methods, with her mother’s instincts. What would Eve have done? Not put up with it. Never yielded. Eve would have argued, remonstrated, reasoned—as she had—and when all that was to no avail, when they wouldn’t agree or see her point of view, appeared to give in and conciliate them.

  Retreating to the kitchen where he couldn’t see her, she reread the instructions on the label of the sodium amytal carton. One would evidently send him to sleep. Two, surely, would put him into a deep sleep. And while he slept? He had often reproached her for not being squeamish enough, for an ability to confront violence and blood and death.

  She had never been taught a horror of these things. If she was horrified by any of violent death’s aspects it was at her own weakness in vomiting when she found Bruno’s body. Eve had taught her to be a perfectionist, to be good at everything she did. She would do this well, cleanly, efficiently, and without remorse.

  “What time do we start in the morning?” she asked him.

  “First thing. Hopefully we can be on our way by eight.”

  “At least it’s stopped raining.”

  “The weather forecast says an area of high pressure’s coming. It’s going to get cold, cold and bright.”

  “Shouldn’t you put the towing bar on tonight?”

  “Christ,” he said. “I forgot.”

  She doubted if she could do it herself. In the past, when he had done it, she hadn’t bothered to watch him. This evening, of course, she watched him all the time, studying what he did, assessing him in every possible situation, as she had done in those early days when she was in love with him.

  Perhaps, at sixteen, you were never in love with the same person for long. It was violent, it was intense, but of short duration. Did teachers like Mr. Spurdell, or people like Eve, ever ask if Juliet would have gone on being in love with Romeo?

  Sean worked by the light of a Tilley lamp and a rechargeable battery torch. Wrapped in the thick padded coat, she sat on the caravan steps in the quiet and the darkness, appreciating for the first time how silent it was here and how remote. Like Shrove. This place had the advantages of Shrove. Not a single light was visible, not an isolated pinpoint in any direction across the miles of hills and meadowland. The black land rolled away to meet the nearly black sky. If she strained her ears the gentle chatter of the stream was just audible.

  Above her now the stars were coming out, Charles’s Wain pale and spread out and
Orion bright and strong. The white planet, still and clear, was Venus. The air had that glittery feel to it, as of unseen frost in the atmosphere. Metal clinking against metal occasionally broke the silence as Sean worked, that and the soft ghostly cries of owls in the invisible trees.

  She hooked her thumbs inside the money belt, feeling its thickness. How was it she knew that if she let Sean live and went up north with him he would sooner or later find out about that money and demand it himself? She did know. She could even create the scene in her mind with her telling him it was hers, hers by right of her mother, and Sean saying she wasn’t fit to have charge of money, he’d look after it and put it toward the home they’d buy.

  He finished coupling the car to the caravan. They went back inside and he washed his hands. It was late, past eleven, and as he kept saying, they had to get up early.

  “Don’t you worry, I’ll wake you,” he said. “You know what you are, sleep like the dead. I don’t reckon you’d ever wake up without me to give you a shake.”

  She didn’t argue. Her dissenting role was past and now she was all acquiescence. Eve had given in to Bruno over the house and to Jonathan over the sale of Shrove. Perhaps she had murmured, “Yes, all right,” to Trevor Hughes before she bit his hand. You gave in, you smiled and said a sweet, “You win.” You lulled them into believing theirs was the victory.

  “Wake me up at seven and I’ll make you tea.”

  It wasn’t unusual for her to say that, she often said and did it. He never had a hot drink at night, always had one in the morning. She put the pill container behind the sugar basin, opened the drawer where they kept cutlery, their blunt knives and forks with bent tines, and checked that the one sharp knife was there, the carver. It was good to be the kind of person who didn’t flinch from weapons or the consequences of using them.

  He was already in bed. Her throat felt dry and her stomach muscles tightened as they had on the previous night and the night before. On neither of those nights had he touched her. Last evening he hadn’t even kissed her. But she was afraid just the same, of his strength and her own weakness, knowing now something she’d never realized and would once have refused to believe: that a woman, however young and vigorous, is powerless against a determined man.