The Crocodile Bird

by Ruth Rendell

  When she came to bed and switched off the light she fancied she could feel his eyes on her in the darkness. Gradually, as always happened, she became accustomed to the absence of light, and the darkness ceased to be absolute, became gray rather than black. The moon had risen out there, or half a moon to give so pale a light. It trickled thinly around the window blinds.

  His eyes were on her and his lips tentatively touched her cheek. He must have felt her immediate tension for he sighed softly. An enormous relief relaxed her body as he rolled over on his side away from her. She withdrew to the side of the bed, to put as many inches as she could between herself and him.

  She would sleep now and in the morning she would kill him.

  TWENTY-THREE

  DREAMING, she was herself and not herself. She was Eve, too. She looked down at her hands and they were Eve’s hands, smaller than hers, the nails longer. A shrinking had reduced her to Eve’s height.

  Yet she was in the caravan where Eve had never been. She knew she was dreaming and that somehow, by taking thought, by a process of concentration, she could be herself again. It was dark. She could just make out the shape of Sean lying in bed and a hump in the bedclothes beside him as if another body lay there, her body. She had come out of her body the way the ancient Egyptians believed the Ka did. But it felt solid, her hand tingled when she drew a nail across the palm. It was no longer Eve, for Eve had come in and was standing at the foot of the bed.

  They looked at each other in silence. Eve’s hands were chained, she had come out of prison, and Liza knew—though not how she knew—that she must go back there. In spite of the chains, painfully, with a great effort, Eve reached up and took the gun down from the caravan wall. There was no gun there but she reached up and took it down. A little moonlight gleamed on the metal. Long ago, years and years ago, Liza had known that her mother took the gun down from the wall but she had never seen her do it.

  Eve came up to her, holding the gun in her manacled hands. She did not speak, yet her message communicated itself to Liza. It would be easy. Only the first time was hard. Sleep would still be possible and peace of mind and contentment. Long days of forgetfulness would pass. Eve smiled. She began to whisper confidingly how she had wrapped herself in a sheet, taken a kitchen knife, and crept upstairs to the sleeping Bruno.

  Liza cried out then. She reached for Sean, for the bed, for the body of herself and entered it again, her body growing around her, waking as she woke. And then she was up, huddled and crouching in a far corner. The moon still shone and its greenish light still infiltrated the caravan, seeping between window frames and blinds. It was icy cold.

  Gradually full wakefulness returned. The cold brought it back. Strangely, the dream had been quite warm. She fumbled around in the half dark, first for Mrs. Spurdell’s pill container, then for the sweater Eve had knitted. As she pulled it over her head, the dreadful feeling came to her that once her eyes were uncovered again she would see Eve standing there, chained, smiling, advising.

  She opened her eyes. They were alone, she and Sean. It struck her as very strange, almost unbelievable, that she had meant to kill him.

  More cold would come in but still she opened the caravan door. The steps glittered with frost. She prized the top off the pill carton and threw the pills into the long wet grass in the ditch. The frost burned her bare feet and when she was back inside again sharp pains shot through them.

  Despair seemed to have been waiting for her in the caravan. It was there in the cold darkness and the smell of bodies and stale food. The world hadn’t fallen apart when Eve told her to go. It was falling apart now, one staunch rock after another tumbling and landsliding, Eve, Sean, herself. Soon the ground beneath her feet would founder and split and swallow her up. She gave a little cry and in an agony of grief and loneliness, flung herself face-downward on the bed, breaking into sobs.

  Sean woke up and put the light on. He didn’t ask what was the matter but lifted her up in his arms, held his arms tightly around her, and pulled her close to him, burrowing them both under the covers. Murmuring that her hands were frozen, he squeezed them between their bodies, against his warm body.

  “Don’t cry, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t help it, I can’t stop.”

  “Yes, you can. You will in a minute. I know why you’re crying.”

  “You don’t, you can’t.” Because I can’t kill you, because I’ll never kill anyone, because I’m not Eve.

  “I do know, Liza. It’s because of what I done the other night, isn’t it? It seemed funny at the time, like a joke, and then I got to remembering what you’d said to me when we first done it, back in the summer, like I’d never make you if you didn’t want to, and I’d said I never would. I’ve been ashamed of myself. I’ve hated myself.”

  “Have you?” she whispered. “Have you really?”

  “I didn’t know how to say it. I was like embarrassed. In the light, in the daytime, I don’t know, I couldn’t say it. I’m not like you, I can’t express myself like you. I’ve felt that too, maybe you never knew it but I have, you being like superior to me in everything.”

  “I’m not, I’m really not.”

  “It’s so bloody cold in here I’m going to light the gas. I don’t reckon we’ll sleep no more. It’s nearly six.”

  Wiping her wet face on the sheet, she watched him get up, wrap himself in the clothes that lay about, and then put a match to the open oven. Her eyes hurt with crying and she felt a little sick.

  What he said next surprised her so much she sat bolt upright in bed.

  “You don’t want to come with me, do you?”

  “What?”

  He got back into bed and pulled her down under the bedclothes. He hugged her and held her head in the hollow of his shoulder. His hands were always warm. That hadn’t really registered with her before, or she had taken it for granted. She remembered the sunny summer days and how she had watched him, that first time, from among the trees at Shrove and his puzzled look as he stared unseeing at her, aware as people mysteriously are of being observed.

  He said it again, “You don’t want to come with me,” but not this time in the form of a question.

  Shaking her head under the bedclothes, she realized that the movement indicated nothing to him and she whispered a small, “No.”

  “Is it because I—I forced myself on you?”

  “No.”

  “I’d never do it again. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “It’s not because of that.”

  “No, I know.” He sighed. She felt his chest move with the sigh and was aware of his heart beating under her cheek. “It’s because we’re not like the same kind of people,” he said. “I’m an ordinary—well, I’m working class and you’re—you may have been brought up in that cracked way but you’re—you’re light-years above me.”

  “No, no, Sean. No.”

  “You only got to listen to the way we talk. I know I get words wrong and I get grammar wrong. Hopefully that’ll change when I get into management. I might say you could teach me, but that wouldn’t work. In a funny sort of way, I knew it wouldn’t work when it first started last summer, only I wouldn’t admit it even to myself. I suppose I was in love—well, I know I was. I’d never been in love before.”

  “Nor I.”

  “No, I reckon you never had the chance. I had but I never was. Not till you. Only, love, how’ll you make out on your own?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “I do love you, Liza. It wasn’t just for sex. I loved you from the first moment I saw you.”

  She put up her face to him and felt for his mouth with her mouth. The touch of his lips and the feel of his tongue on hers quickened her thawing body. She felt the quick familiar ripple of desire. He sighed with pleasure and relief. They made love half-clothed, buried under the piled covers, his hands warm and hers still icy, while the blue gas flared and the water from condensation flowed down the windows.

  It was eight when they woke up, muc
h later than he had intended. She was making tea, wearing her padded coat, when he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll leave you the van.”

  She turned around. “The caravan?”

  He thought she was correcting him again. “Okay, teacher, the caravan. Always got to be right, haven’t you? Always know best. That’s what you’d better be, not a doctor or a lawyer, but a teacher.”

  “Did you really mean you’d leave me the caravan?”

  “Sure I did. Look at it this way, I was going to take the van on account of you, but if you’re not coming it’d be better for me to share with those guys, it’d be easier.”

  “You could sell it.”

  “What, this old wreck? Who’d buy it?”

  Her hesitation lasted only a moment. “I’ve got some money,” she said. “I found it when I went to Shrove. It was Eve’s but she’d have wanted me to have it.”

  “You never said. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I’m horrible—or I thought you were. Don’t be cross now. It’s a lot, it’s more than a thousand pounds.”

  She was ashamed because she’d thought he’d grab the money as soon as he got the chance and here he was shaking his head. “I always said I’d not live off my girlfriend and I won’t. Even”—he smiled a bit ruefully—“if you’re not my girlfriend no more. You’ll need it, love, whatever you do. I’d get in touch with that Heather if I was you. Hopefully, she’s been wondering what you’ve been up to. It’ll be a relief to her. And then maybe you and her can go together to see your mum.”

  Liza gave him his tea. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Sean. I’m going to cook us a big breakfast of eggs and bacon and fried potatoes and fried bread and if it stinks out the caravan, who cares?”

  “We’ll meet again one day, won’t we?” he said as he started on his first egg. “You never know, we might both be different.”

  “Of course we’ll meet again.”

  She knew they never would. Whatever became of him, she would be different beyond recognition.

  “You’ll need someone to look after you.” He fretted a bit as he packed his bags. They were Superway plastic carriers, the only luggage he had. Guilt over her made him fret. “You’ll get hold of Heather, won’t you? That money you’ve got, it’s not all that much. I’ll tell you what, I’ll drive you into town, it’s on my way. You can phone her from there.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll feel easier, love.”

  Instead of hating the new situation, he was relieved. Just a bit. She could tell that, she could see it in his eyes. Tomorrow it would be more than a bit, it would be overwhelming. He wouldn’t be able to believe his luck. As it was, now, he was forcing himself to put up a big pretense of being sad.

  “I’ll worry about you.”

  “Write down where you’ll be,” she said, “and I’ll write to you and tell you what’s happened to me. I promise.”

  He gave her a sidelong look. “Don’t put in too many long words.”

  The two phone boxes in the marketplace were both empty. Sean parked in front of them. He felt in his jacket pocket and gave her all the change he had: coins to phone Heather and coins to phone the Home Office. There were enough of them to last even if people at the other end kept her waiting while they went off to find someone. First, he said, she must get on to directory enquiries for Heather’s number. She’d got the address still, hadn’t she?

  “But maybe you’d better come with me, after all, love. Just for a week or two, until we’ve found someplace for you to go, until you’re sure of this Heather.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve left the van behind, remember? You’ve left me the van.”

  That he was grateful for her use of his term she could see in his eyes. They seemed full of love, as they had been in those early days, at apple-picking time, in the warm sunny fields. She put up her face and kissed him, a long soft passionless kiss. It troubled her, and always would, that she had thought of killing him. Even if she hadn’t really been serious, even if it was a fantasy created out of stress and memory, it would always be there. More than anything else, it would be responsible for making any further love or companionship or even contiguity between them impossible.

  “Drive off,” she said. “Don’t wave. I’ll be okay. Good luck.”

  But she watched the car go, she couldn’t help herself. And he did wave. He did a funny thing, he blew her a kiss. She was left in the cold marketplace, on the pavement, with shoppers all around her.

  The phone boxes weren’t empty anymore. A woman had gone into one of them and a boy into the other. She sat down on the low brick wall built around a flower bed, an empty flower bed, the earth thinly sprinkled with frost. It didn’t matter to her how many people went into those phone boxes, if a queue of fifty formed, if someone went in and vandalized them like they’d done to the one outside Superway, pulled the phones off the wall, it wouldn’t matter to her because she didn’t mean to phone anyone. What she had to do now was think of how to find out where a certain street was.

  She thought about it. If she didn’t fix her mind on something practical it would fill up with fear, with the realization of her utter aloneness. Sooner or later she was going to have to confront that, but not now. A picture of herself as a silly little ignorant girl sitting on a brick wall weeping rose before her eyes and she resolved not to let it become real. She would go into a shop and ask.

  They didn’t know. The shop was full of small objects Liza thought were called souvenirs, brooches and key rings and little boxes, fluffy animals and plastic dolls and china mugs, that she couldn’t believe anyone would want to possess. The people who worked there all came from outside the town. You could get a street plan, one of them said. How do I, she asked, and if they looked at her strangely, they nevertheless said, a paper shop, yes, that’s the best place, there’s one three doors along.

  And there was. And they had a street plan. They didn’t seem to think it was a funny thing to ask for. It was a long way away, her destination, two miles she calculated from the rough scale.

  On the way she passed street people who had been out all night on the pavement or in doorways if they were lucky. It brought back to her what Sean had said about “poor buggers sleeping rough.” Would she be one of them? It was a possibility. A thousand pounds wasn’t the fortune she had thought it when she first took the iron box. It didn’t seem much when you could pay a twentieth part of it for that pair of shoes she saw in a shop window she passed.

  The shops stopped soon after that and there came a place with a red fire engine half out of its door. Seeing one like it on television made identification possible. Next door was a big imposing building with a blue lamp over the door and a notice board on either side of the entrance. The blue lamp, like the one on the car, told her what it was before she read the County Police sign.

  She stopped and stared at the poster on the notice board. The strange thing was that she recognized the painting in it as Bruno’s before she knew it for her own portrait. The big features, the strong colors that had never been her features and colors. No one passing would know it for her. If anyone came by they would never connect the brown-and-yellow daub on the poster with the girl who stood looking at it.

  No doubt, it was the best the police could do. It was all they had. Probably they had never before come upon a missing person who had never had her photograph taken. The poster said: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? It said she was missing, gave her name and age, her height and weight and the color of her hair, that anyone knowing her whereabouts should be in touch with them.

  Liza turned away. She felt enormously more cheerful, she felt full of hope. Eve hadn’t forgotten her, Eve did need her. If no one had found her it was because the only likeness of her that existed was Bruno’s strange daub. She began to walk fast along this street of small red houses, all linked together in a long row of roofs and chimneys and tiny gardens, each with its car at the pavement. Warmth began to spread throug
h her and she felt the blood come into her cheeks.

  The house she was going to wouldn’t look like these, she had decided, but either like Mr. and Mrs. Spurdell’s or else like the one Bruno had nearly bought, or a mixture of the two. That sort was beginning to appear now, prim, neat houses each hugging to itself its small, walled piece of land.

  The name of the place where she had grown up and the year of her own birth. Shrove Road was on the edge of the town where the country started. Number 76 wasn’t at all what she had expected but a house that looked as if left over from some distant past time when there were no other buildings but the church and the manor and the farms. This one had been a small farmhouse, she thought, which even now stood in a big piece of land with trees on it.

  She was suddenly afraid. Of no one being at home, of her assumptions and assessments being all wrong, of walking back again to the bus stop past the street people. The bell by the front door didn’t chime like the one in Aspen Close or toll like the bell on the door at Shrove. It buzzed. She took her finger away as if the insect that made the buzzing had stung it, then, more confidently, pressed again.

  Jane Spurdell didn’t recognize her. Liza could tell that and, inspired, she grasped a handful of her hair and pulled it to the back of her head.

  “I know. It’s Liza. Wait a minute, Liza Holford.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in. You must be cold.” A glance outside had told her Liza had come on foot. From where? “I’m miles from anywhere.”

  “I’m used to being miles from anywhere,” Liza said, and that was the start of telling her. Not all, not a hundred nights of life story, just the essentials and an outline of her present state.