The Keys to the Street

by Ruth Rendell

  “Any time, Hob, you know that,” his stepfather said. “You don’t have to ask.”

  He saw that he didn’t.

  • • •

  Effie was up on the hill, drinking the nuns’ tea, and so were Dill and Teddy and the man called Nello. Last time Roman had been up there all the talk had been of Pharaoh and his terrible end, of Pharaoh and of Decker. Who would be next? Would it be one of them? No one talked of it anymore. They were as they had been before, or almost. Roman fancied they were more subdued than usual, more wary. They, who had never been afraid of what people with roofs over their heads feared, the streets, the dark, were afraid of them now.

  He had taken to leaving his barrow under the arch at the Grotto. Sooner or later it would be stolen, he knew that, but he didn’t much care. It was a relief not to have to lug it around with him. Every time he saw Nello, who had all the marks of the amiable natural, the village idiot, almost the holy fool, the man would remind him of the risks he ran.

  “They’ll nick it off you, Rome,” he said. “They’ll nick it off you. Don’t you know not to leave it about? They’d have it if you chained it up, they would. Don’t you know to keep it with you?”

  And Effie grinned and nodded and pointed to the empty space, the area four feet in front of him, where she thought the barrow should be.

  “You want to go back and fetch your barrow, Rome,” said Nello. “You’ll be lucky if it’s still there. There’s plenty as’d pay good money for that barrow.”

  Someone was killing the street people but he was to worry about the possible loss of a gimcrack box barrow. Psychologists, he thought, called that displacement. They all walked down the hill together, Effie and he, Nello and Dill and the beagle. Dill had told him that when he got a new uncle, when the old one had left and his auntie had found a replacement, the new one had turned him out of the house—well, it was a flat at Woodberry Down, but it came to the same thing. He had given him twenty-four hours to go and told him to take the dog with him. It had been his auntie’s dog but she’d seemed glad to see the back of it, so Dill and the beagle had set off together.

  “Like Dick Whittington and his cat,” Dill had said unexpectedly, crinkling up his Oriental eyes.

  But the streets hadn’t been paved with gold and the beagle didn’t even have a name. They just called it Beagle. Instead of a lead, Dill had a length of rope, but he let the dog off when they were in the park. Roman saw the fair-haired girl in the distance, walking toward the Broad Walk, and a man with her, as fair and slight as she, not the dark burly one he had sent off in the wrong direction.

  The memory made him smile. A couple of weeks ago it had been and just about this time of day. Then, too, he had been up on the hill partaking of the nuns’ tea and wondering, he remembered, if those charitable sisters were connected in any way with a church he often passed that was dedicated to the Handmaidens of the Sacred Heart. It was a name he loved and that stuck in his memory and he was thinking of it and of those nuns who were handmaidens to the poor and dispossessed, when the fair girl came running along as if pursued and called out to him a breathless hello.

  That set off another train of thought, this time Russell’s contention—or Russell quoting some other philosopher’s contention—that at certain times and in certain situations to lie is moral. If, for instance, one should see a man running as if in fear of his life, and within moments his pursuers arrive and ask which way he went, then it is permissible to lie and tell them the left-hand fork when in fact the man fled to the right. This reflection had come into his mind just as he came out at the bottom of Ormonde Terrace and the dark and burly chap appeared, running, red-faced, obviously as mad as hell.

  Roman nearly laughed aloud at the opportunity that had been sent him or he, coincidentally, had found. Would the man have asked him? Probably not.

  He pointed down the terrace toward Primrose Hill Bridge and the park. “She went that way.”

  “What?”

  “The lady you are chasing went down there into the park.”

  The man stopped and stood, indecisive. He had gone even redder. “Fuck you,” he said to Roman. “Mind your own bloody business.”

  But he turned and ran down the terrace just the same. Roman watched him, laughing. He hadn’t laughed so much for ages, not since before it happened, not since his loss. For a moment or two he had awaited further developments, the man’s reappearance perhaps, the fair girl herself to come creeping back, but nothing happened. And since that afternoon he had twice seen her with a new man, this straw-haired pale-eyed one, who looked nice enough, who held her hand and once put an arm tenderly about her shoulders.

  This relieved him of a burden, for he had thought, after amusement at the incident gave place to reflectiveness, that she was in distress, and he had come close to constituting himself her guardian or protector. He saw her so often, their paths were always crossing, that he felt he could easily keep an eye on her, see that she was safe. But safe from what? If the railings murderer, the Impaler as the papers called him, sought out young women for his victims, Roman would have made himself at once her watchdog. But she could hardly be farther from the type that had so far been his victims. She had a home, probably a nice one, and she was female. Did her femaleness exclude her? He gave Effie a glance, Effie with her bandaged legs and the men’s suit trousers she wore and her green bundles, and wondered.

  When they came to the Inner Circle he told them that this area, this ring enclosing a few acres, had once been designated by Nash, who was the prince regent’s architect, as the site for the prince’s summer palace. He meant to say no more, for he had no wish to be their didact, but Nello said to go on, to tell them, and Dill said to sit on a seat and tell them a story. Effie only stared, her eyes as empty and as desperate as they always were.

  So he told them how the prince who became George IV had laid out this park, or rather Nash had under his instructions, and how Nash and Decimus Burton had built the villas and the terraces for the prince’s courtiers. He talked about the great road that was to be built all the way from this inner circle down to Trafalgar Square, that it had been begun and Portland Place was the start of it, but the plan had to be abandoned for lack of money. They could appreciate that, they knew about governments’ thriftlessness and abandoned schemes. Dill put the beagle back on its lead, or tied the rope to its collar, and they made their way through the rose garden, which was in full bloom, at the glorious zenith of its blooming. The sun was hot and the air perfumed, Roman thought, like those famous gardens of the East, the Shalimar perhaps.

  They were a rag, tag, and bobtail crew, shuffling along these immaculate paths, and people gave them glances but no stares. The respectable were afraid of the retorts or oaths stares might evoke. Though dogs were strictly not allowed, no one said a word even when the beagle lifted its leg against a rose called Sexy Rexy. But Effie knelt down by the finest rosebed of all and buried her face in the full brilliant blossoms of Royal William, inhaling and lifting her head and burrowing once more in the rich scented petals.

  Roman couldn’t think of much more to tell them, though they asked. The summer palace had never been built—what would it have been like? The Pavilion at Brighton?—and the great road had been spoiled by intersections, Regent Street having later been quite destroyed and rebuilt. The Inner Circle had been the province for a while of the Royal Botanical Society before becoming Queen Mary’s rose garden. He left them then, Effie and Nello seated side by side on a bench near the bandstand, Dill and the beagle on their way to their pitch outside Tussaud’s. It was time to buy his supper, make his way back to the Grotto.

  The evening sun awoke in him memories of warm London nights. They were few, it nearly always grew cold, but sometimes, when they had a sitter for the children, he and Sally had gone to a restaurant in Bayswater or Notting Hill and eaten their dinner at a table outside. He was no longer able, when he envisaged these events, to see Sally’s face clearly. There were parts of it, a curve, a feature
, that whatever constructed such things in his mind failed to build accurately. It was not that she or the children receded from him but rather that a mist or veil had come down between them and him.

  A curious thing was happening: He was able to remember with less pain, with something more like a sweet nostalgia. Something he had believed would never come was coming, a kind of resignation. It was not exactly hope he had, certainly not recovery, but he could, in connection with what he had suffered, repeat to himself Winston Churchill’s dictum, that this was not the end nor the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning.

  Had he set forth on his pilgrimage then with the aim of being cured? He thought not. It had been escape, not therapy, but perhaps therapy had come just the same. His fate he had begun to see not as something to be fought against with rage and anguish—Why me? Why me?—but as marking him out simply to be a member of that rare band of people, not so rare in many places, whose whole family has been destroyed at a stroke. He could see himself calmly now as one of them, as different from the rest of mankind as a dwarf is different or an amputee, destined to live with that difference forever and to accept.

  He went into a shop in Camden High Street, bought a sandwich, an apple, and a banana, and because he had wanted it the other day when he only had milk, a bottle of wine. There was a corkscrew in his barrow if no one had come and stolen it and all it contained, as Nello had forecast.

  He stopped for his usual contemplation at Durham’s figure in bronze. She gazed toward Gloucester Terrace with his old girlfriend’s eyes, making him ask himself where she was now, what had become of her. Would he know her if they met? Did she still look like this maiden drawing water from the spring? She was not in the least like the fair girl he had fancied needed protection. He was not ambitious to become one of those men who haunt and harass women, following them, dogging their footsteps, but still he thought as he climbed down into the Grotto, that he would try to watch over her from a distance.

  For all that, he was unable to tell himself why he felt she needed a guardian angel. She had the man who looked so uncannily like her. Her brother perhaps? The burly dark one was just a fool who surely constituted no real threat. As he opened his wine, he began to make a little scenario. Her brother had come back from abroad, expected to share her home with her, but found the dark one in residence and they had fallen out … He couldn’t finish the story, couldn’t see where it might go next nor account for her being chased to the gates of Primrose Hill. But he thought he would “look out” for her, and begin in the morning, for he was sure she always entered the park just here, at the Gloucester Gate, and walked past that sculpted tower of silence.

  • • •

  There came back to Bean a conversation he had once had with Clitheroe. His employer was in bed recovering from a particularly serious beating. When he dressed it Clitheroe’s back reminded Bean of James Fox’s in the film Performance, which he had seen while working for Anthony Maddox—only Fox was an actor and the weals and cuts on his back were makeup, while Clitheroe’s were real. He had said something like that, something about Chas in the film, and Clitheroe said, talking of acting, he’s a pretty good actor, that chap.

  What did he mean, actor, Bean had asked. And Clitheroe said The Beater’s name, which Bean couldn’t remember, and then he said, he’s made himself into what he thinks I want him to be, and he’s right, I do want him to be that, I want a savage, Bean, I want someone who enjoys beating someone else more than anything in this world. Who gets all his pleasure from it, who wants it better than sex or drugs or money, because to him it is sex and drugs and money. Do you understand?

  “Sure,” said Bean, “of course I understand.” Understanding made him feel sick but he didn’t say that.

  “I love his excitement, Bean. Do you know, I think I love him, and why not? It’s just what a crazy pervert like me would do. I’d like to do something for him, set him up for life, show him after I’m gone that I had real feelings for him.”

  “Turn over,” Bean said, “and let me have a look.” He had stopped calling Clitheroe “sir” about the time The Beater first began coming. “Christ,” he said, “I just hope this lot’s not turning septic.”

  “It’d better heal up because (the name again) is dropping in for a drink and fifty lashes on Saturday.”

  “He’ll kill you,” said Bean, not knowing how near the truth he was.

  “I can see it in his eyes that he’s acting,” said Clitheroe, wriggling—with pain or pleasure, or were they the same? “There’s something dead in his eyes. And I’m glad of it, Bean, because it would be too much for me if it was real, it would be too beautiful to bear.” He shivered and goose pimples came up between the wounds. “He could act anything. I wonder why he doesn’t? Make his living at it, I mean. Maybe he’s never had the chance. Or maybe he only wants to act in life, not on the stage. He wants to be, you could say, not to act.”

  That was all too deep for Bean. He hated that kind of high-flown meaningless speculation. The Beater had dropped in for the drink and whatever and again the following Saturday and it was after he had gone that Maurice Clitheroe had had his stroke. Sometimes Bean thought himself lucky to have got the apartment under Clitheroe’s will, for he might easily have left it to The Beater.

  It was satisfying to have remembered, but not much use. Every morning, about this time, Bean still expected the police to come back for him, though it was over a week now since they had hauled him in for a second going-over. While he dressed and had his breakfast he kept running to the front to look out of the window and check.

  • • •

  “Testimonials? I’ve never heard of such a thing,” said Bean, annoyed, when Valerie Conway told him Mrs. Sellers wanted two independent references on top of Valerie’s own recommendation before she would surrender her dalmatian to his keeping.

  “Suit yourself,” said Valerie. “But don’t expect me to put myself out another time.”

  Bean said he’d ask Mrs. Goldsworthy and Miss Pring but he wasn’t promising anything. This Mrs. Sellers should realize she wasn’t doing him any favors. A reliable dog-walker was like gold dust, never mind Barker-Pryce and his school-leavers.

  “Oh, get a life!” said Valerie, slamming the area door.

  Lisl Pring was off on location somewhere, so Bean had to use his key to pick up Marietta. He asked Mrs. Goldsworthy about the reference and she said, Oh, sure, no trouble, she’d do it later and to remind her again if she forgot. Bean knew she’d never do it, she was the sort who had so much money she never bothered to do anything. He tied the dogs to the gatepost at Charlotte Cottage and pretended to ignore what Ruby was trying to do to McBride. Let them get on with it. He asked Miss Jago for a reference. Something like that would have looked better coming from Sir Stewart Blackburn-Norris but it couldn’t be helped. She said, Yes, of course, and she’d give it to him the next morning, and somehow he thought it likely she’d actually do it.

  It was a warm sultry morning, the kind of July day that threatens a storm to come. Swarms of gnats rose and fell above the surface of the lake, and from the bridge over the island the water had a fetid smell. The grass in the open areas was worn and bleached by the sun. Bean walked the dogs over the bridge and almost to the Hanover Gate. This morning the roof of the mosque was dull as an old copper pot. Watching the gambols of Boris and Marietta, he asked himself if he really wanted another big dog, a dalmatian. Big dogs were unruly and easily got out of hand. Pity they couldn’t all be like that little Gushi, who stuck close beside him and only occasionally ran off for some puppyish adventure with McBride.

  A man was walking down the Broad Walk from the zoo end. Bean was quite a long way away from him. Flowerbeds and ornamental trees and fountains and urns spilling out more flowers separated them. But he would have known The Beater anywhere, at any distance, by his slouching walk, the lift of his chin, his body movements as elegant as a black man’s, the way his arms hung loosely by his sides. Bean had all the do
gs on their leash by now and he approached nearer. He had no objection to being seen by The Beater and in the daylight and the warmth had lost the fears of the night.

  When their eyes met The Beater’s showed not a flicker of recognition. But he was an actor, wasn’t he? Bean stared at him before turning abruptly away. How old was he? That had always been a mystery, but he must be all of thirty-five now. He turned around when he was sure The Beater wasn’t looking and took in the jeans, the denim jacket, the longish hair. Was it possible …? He had seemed clean enough but some of them were clean. There were hostels now where they could get showers, wash their hair.

  So could The Beater have come so low as to be on the street?

  Bean had no real reason to think so except that they did come in here and loaf about and The Beater seemed to have been wandering aimlessly. Where, after all, could he have come from and be going to? If he really was one of them maybe the Impaler would find him and he’d end up murdered and stuck on railings somewhere. Things would have been very different for The Beater if he hadn’t beaten Clitheroe quite so hard and Clitheroe had lived a little longer and changed his will.…

  Marnock and the sergeant were waiting for him when he got back to York Terrace, sitting outside in their car on a double yellow line. They were a lot more polite than on previous occasions, which made Bean cocky and say in a testy tone, “What is it this time?”

  They wanted him to tell them all about the man who had mugged him in the Nursemaids’ Tunnel. There was no need to go down to the station if he’d be good enough to ask them in. Was he sure the mugger had been Clancy? Was there any room for doubt over the identity of his attacker?

  Bean had to rethink the whole thing. Maybe it hadn’t been Clancy. He wondered if he dare give them a description of The Beater, but he thought better of this as too dangerous and said he couldn’t remember. They stayed for nearly two hours, their politeness unflagging, and when they left they said nothing about seeing him again.