by Ruth Rendell
‘Do you think I could?’ Tom had asked.
‘Have you got a computer or a tablet or whatever?’
‘Of course I have. Shall I give it a go?
‘You do that,’ said Trevor Vincent, moving off to find his wife and go home.
Tom thought very little more about the suggestion that evening, but next day the conversation came back to him. Well, why not? Describing today’s adventure might provide the opening of such a book, the incident in Harlesden High Street, for instance, when those Chinese people had refused to get off the bus when told to do so because they had no passes but only offered cash. The driver had tried to turn them off but they had sat in the vacant seats playing some strange musical instruments Tom had never seen before. A huge burly man (not Chinese) had joined them and also refused to get off the bus when the police came and told them to. Tom had had to get off himself then, sad not to see the outcome. That could all go in his book. He might start it tomorrow.
The Basenji man, whose name was Adam Yates, took Lizzie to something more like a wine bar than a pub. He seemed quite overcome by Stacey’s beautiful cream-coloured dress and jacket, though Lizzie herself thought it was a bit over the top for the Unicorn Lounge. She was very hungry, so Adam’s suggestion that they have dinner in the Unicorn’s rather beautiful dining area met with an enthusiastic response. Lizzie had a principle that if a restaurant, no matter how grand and expensive, had an illustrated menu – coloured photos of chicken tikka and fish pie – she would refuse to eat there. There was nothing of that sort here. The food was civilised and delicious, quite unlike that dreadful evening with the awful Swithin Campbell and his boring talk, Adam made no suggestion of coming in when he took her home, but kissed her lightly on the cheek and went to catch the 82 bus.
Next morning he phoned. He had tickets for a concert. A famous orchestra from Hungary was playing Mozart and Respighi and would she come with him on Friday? Of course she accepted, already planning to wear the green suit with the pearls. Lizzie had never heard of Respighi, but what was Google for but to help out in situations like this?
Lizzie was the kind of person for whom designated future tasks loomed large. There was little pleasure to be anticipated in completing the task Caroline had set for her: to carry all the items that had once belonged to Dermot to Carl Martin’s house in Falcon Mews. Unless, of course, Carl might invite her in. She was curious to see what his place looked like. He probably wouldn’t even recognise her, it had been so long since they had seen each other in their school days. They both had been close to Stacey, of course. It wasn’t very far to the mews that linked Sutherland Avenue to Castellain Road. Dermot was said to have walked it, there and back, every day, but Lizzie didn’t fancy the walk at all.
While Caroline was busy removing a nail from a cocker spaniel’s pad, Darren was out on a call and Melissa carrying out a routine examination of Spots the Dalmatian, Lizzie had a look inside the storage cupboard, largely to assess the weight of the late Dermot’s property. A pair of sheepskin gloves, a framed photograph of a dark girl with a fat face and heavy shoulders, two broken mobile phones, an ancient bible, three box files, a hardcover London atlas, two notebooks and a box of paper fasteners all added up to considerable weight. She decided that she’d postpone the task till the following week.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SYBIL’S PARENTS PAID her a visit at the flat in Falcon Mews on a dreary Sunday. It was late morning, and the streets were deserted; those few people who were out carried umbrellas. It was pouring with rain, torrential rain that had begun at nine and looked as though it would continue. A worse day for rain couldn’t have been thought of, for it was the second and most important day of the local carnival, and the sound of it, though a little subdued, could be heard from Falcon Mews, a throb, a beat, muffled cries and shouts and music.
Carl saw Mr and Mrs Soames arrive. He guessed who they were, for who else could they be? Mrs Soames looked very much like her daughter, or her daughter looked very much like her. They came along the mews under a single large black umbrella, which they only folded up when Sybil answered the door.
‘She’ll want me to meet them,’ Carl said to Nicola. ‘You’ll see. Maybe they’ll have tea first and then she’ll bring them down here and present them to me.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Well, insofar as nothing matters any more, no, it doesn’t.’
‘Carl, what’s wrong? Why does nothing matter? If you don’t want Sybil living here, why did you say she could?’
‘I can’t answer that, Nic. I will never be able to answer that. I would if I could, but you have to take it from me that it’s impossible. She’s here for ever or until she chooses to go.’
Nicola turned away and looked out of the window at the ceaseless rain, at Mr Kaleejah, at his dog trotting along, ignoring the water underfoot and the water descending from the low grey clouds. ‘What’s that dog called? Do you know?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t give a shit.’
Nicola walked out of the room without a word.
For a while Carl had convinced himself that what he had done was not important. But gradually guilt and shame had arrived, as well as not so much a fear of discovery as a fear of some kind of retribution for his wickedness. He knew now that his action, irrespective of Dermot’s own wrongdoing, would always be with him, day after day, year after year. In the unlikely, indeed impossible, event of his confessing his crime, asking for forgiveness, walking into the police station and telling whoever was there that he had killed a man, would his fear go away? When his guilt was known, when everyone knew, perhaps he would no longer be haunted by it. But it was with him now and inhabited his body like his heart did. It slept with him and woke with him, it lived with him like an organ. It would never leave.
He tried to deflect himself from this wretched reverie by thinking of practical things; for instance, getting some sort of job. He should never have set forth in life thinking he could live on his writing. He’d relied on renting out his property for his livelihood, and this was no longer possible. A tenant, and now that tenant’s ghastly successor, had found a way to deprive him of his rent while enjoying all the benefits of a home in one of the best parts of London.
If Dermot knew from beyond the grave what Sybil was doing, would he be proud of her? And what could Carl do now? A philosophy degree was training for nothing. But that was the qualification he had; it must be a start. He could perhaps take a teacher training course, teach English.
Footsteps sounded heavily on the stairs and Sybil called out, ‘Hi there, Carl.’ She had recently stopped calling him Mr Martin. Perhaps she thought her new status as a permanent householder made her his equal. ‘Can I bring my mum and dad in to make your acquaintance?’
He would have liked to tell her to go to hell, never to speak to him again, but he got up and opened the door. One thing particularly struck him about the couple at the foot of the stairs. They were nervous. Of him, or of Sybil?
‘These are my mum and dad,’ said Sybil. ‘They’re called Cliff and Carol. This is Mr Martin.’
Carol Soames said she was pleased to meet him. Cliff Soames said nothing for a moment but looked around the room apparently without approval.
‘You own this place, do you?’ he said, fixing Carl with a stare.
‘I told you he did, Dad.’
‘Let’s hear what he has to say for himself. Belongs to you, does it? A young man like you?’
‘Yes,’ Carl said.
‘Sybil says your dad left it to you. A whole house to do as you like with. That true?’
Carl hated this man’s attitude. Whatever hold Sybil had over him, he wasn’t obliged to take this. ‘Yes, I can do with it as I like, and one of the things I’m going to do is turn you out of it. Now. Get out and take your fat wife with you.’
Immediately he said it he regretted that ‘fat’. ‘Go on, leave,’ he continued, not touching Cliff but pushing Carol out of the room. ‘Get out now. I ne
ver want to see you here again.’
They hurried out quickly, clearly in shock at Carl’s anger. Sybil stared at him. ‘Don’t think that bothered me. I don’t care if I never see them again.’ She lumbered up the stairs without another word.
Nicola had heard it all, coming silently from the kitchen and standing in the doorway. ‘You were very rude,’ she said, ‘but you managed to stop the lecture he was going to give you on capitalism versus anarchy.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Shall we go out, do something? It’s brightening up. At any rate, the rain’s stopped.’
‘All right,’ Carl said, still in the same gloomy, downcast tone. ‘I’ve got no money. Where can you go and what can you do without money?’
‘In a week’s time you’ll get the rent,’ she said.
As they walked along the mews, Carl began to consider, not for the first time, what he could or should tell Nicola. But as before, there was no answer that was both a reason for no money coming in, such as Sybil’s being unable to afford the rent, and, far more difficult to explain, for his tolerating this void like some sort of rich philanthropist. No one would believe such a tale, and certainly not Nicola, who knew him so well, who knew he disliked Sybil, who knew how totally strapped for cash he was.
He said to her suddenly, ‘Is there anything I can do to make money quickly? I mean, get a job tomorrow or very soon that would bring me in, say, a hundred and fifty pounds a week?’
‘Oh, Carl, you don’t know much about wages, do you? How could you? But you don’t have to. You’ll get twelve hundred pounds next week.’
He would have to tell her the truth. But the truth was so terrible that he would lose her. If she wouldn’t tolerate his selling a drug to Stacey, how could he expect her to accept that he had killed a man? And what would she do about it? Force him to go to the police? But would it take much forcing?
‘Where are we going?’ he asked now.
‘Where would you like to go?’
‘A pub,’ he said. ‘To have a drink, something strong. I need it.’
They went to the Carpenters’ Arms in Lauderdale Road, where they met the local bookshop owner, Will Finsford, and his girlfriend Corinne. The girls kissed, delighted to see each other. It was still only midday, but Will plied them with wine that Nicola firmly and effectively, and Carl feebly and in vain, refused.
It had been several months since they had seen each other. Corinne and Will sympathised with Carl over Dermot’s death as if his tenant had been a friend, and wanted to know if they had found someone new to occupy the top floor. Carl, his head feeling muzzy with alcohol already, was looking at Nicola as she spoke. There was nothing to compare to beauty like hers: those soft but classical features, those dazzling eyes, and the blondeness of her – the pale glossy hair and the slightly darker, more golden eyebrows. And more than her physical beauty, there was her essential goodness. It would all be taken from him when he told her what he had done. As he must, as he had to, in the next few days. She had left him before. Of course she had come back. But she wouldn’t come back this time.
Nicola was telling the others about Sybil Soames taking over the tenancy, but she said nothing about Carl’s reaction to Sybil’s appearance and manner. So lovely herself, she spoke of other women as if they were equally beautiful and gentle.
When Carl’s glass was empty, she took one of his hands and whispered to him that it was time to go. She had already got a promise from Corinne that she would phone to accept one of the dates Nicola had given them to come over. Outside the rain had cleared, and the sky was a cloudless blue. Carl had scarcely said a word for the past hour, but now he began on his current favourite subject, his inability to pay for anything and the shame this brought him. The shops of Sutherland Avenue and Clifton Road often had notices in their windows offering work for supermarket staff or restaurant waiters. He would have to apply for such a job. Maybe tomorrow.
They had reached the Rembrandt Gardens, overhung by broad-leaved trees. Nicola sat down on a wooden seat and motioned to him to sit beside her. The seat overlooked a part of the canal where it widened into a lake with an island in its centre clustered over by water birds. Nicola knew that Carl wouldn’t take kindly to her telling him he had neither the experience nor the patience for manual work; instead, intent on cheering him up, she reminded him that next week he would have an envelope with twelve hundred pounds from Sybil.
He turned his eyes from the island and the birds and looked at her. ‘I won’t get it,’ he said. ‘It won’t come. Let’s go home.’
Nicola felt very near to tears. Whatever was the matter with Carl now? What did he mean about the rent not coming in? Surely Sybil would pay. Was it the book he was unable to get on with? Was it simply the presence of Sybil in his house?
It wasn’t far to Falcon Mews. When they entered the house, there was no sign of Sybil and no sound from upstairs.
‘Shall we have a cup of tea? I’ve got some of those nice biscuits you like, the round white chocolate ones.’
She made the tea, set out the white biscuits. They sat down on Dad’s sofa. On the walk back, Carl had come to a decision: he would tell her that he’d killed Dermot. But sitting beside her now, looking at her, so beautiful and loving, he knew it was impossible. He couldn’t even pretend it had happened by accident. There was nothing he could invent to account for lifting up that bag with its green pottery contents and bringing it down on Dermot’s head.
‘You were going to tell me why you fear Sybil won’t pay the rent next week. You were, weren’t you?’ Nicola said.
‘She thinks I killed Dermot and she says she’ll tell the police she saw me do it if I make her pay. That’s what it amounts to,’ Carl said in a single breath.
Nicola looked shocked. ‘She can’t. She’s out of her mind. She can’t think that way. Where does she get such an idea? To suspect you of all people, a gentle person like you, of doing such a thing.’
He said nothing for a moment. He was wondering what she would say if he told her the truth.
‘Of course the poor woman’s mentally ill,’ Nicola went on. ‘But to accuse you with her insane belief? Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I don’t know. But now you can see why I can’t risk her going to the police with this story.’
‘But it isn’t true, Carl. They wouldn’t believe her. You’d tell them the truth and then ask her to get out of this house. You would find someone else for the flat.’
‘Nic, my sweetheart, I can’t do that. Leave it now. You know what the situation is. Wait till tomorrow or Wednesday, say, and if the rent comes we’ll know she’s thought better of her accusation and all is well.’
But all would not be well. He knew that. Strangely, for he had always believed that telling a lie, and as monstrous a lie as this one, could never make you feel better, this one did.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ON MONDAY – A dry day apart from the inevitable occasional showers – Tom set off on a trip to Leyton Green on the number 55. He picked it up at Oxford Circus, having got there on his favourite number 6 from Willesden. The number 55 proceeded through Holborn and Clerkenwell to Shoreditch. Tom hardly knew these places and found them shabbier than he expected, with the exception of Shoreditch, which had been much smartened up and seemingly filled with trendy shops and restaurants.
The bus might be full of schoolchildren in an hour’s time, but now it was half empty. From the laughter and shouting, there appeared to be a lot of young people upstairs, but Tom never now went to the upper deck; he preferred to be downstairs at the front on the right, where his fellow travellers were mostly women and a few girls.
One young man did get on, though, as the bus moved into Hackney; or Tom thought it must be Hackney. To find his bearings when in an unfamiliar district, he usually looked at the newsagents’ shopfronts or a post office or police station where lettering over the front entrances told the observer that this was Clapton News or Islington Central Post Office. But he saw n
o clues of that sort as the bus proceeded along wide streets and shabby narrow ones, heading for where he had no idea.
The young man who had got on at the possible beginnings of Hackney stayed downstairs and settled himself on the left-hand side in a seat next to the window. Tom had expected him to go to the upper deck, but he hadn’t. He was a black-haired man, beardless and with very white skin, carrying on his back what Tom would have called a satchel. He kept it on his back as the bus went on into what a post office sign told Tom was Clapton.
At the next stop, a crowd of women and children got on and the young man got off. Most of the mothers and children went upstairs, and those who remained went to the back of the bus, where you could sit facing each other. It was then that Tom saw that the young man had left his bag behind, on the floor, pushed into the corner. It no longer looked like a simple satchel but rather more threatening – a container for something dangerous. It would be hard to say what suggested this; it might only have been that its shape gave the impression of having something heavy and metallic inside. It had a heavy metal zip that went all the way round it. Tom didn’t like the look of it at all.
He went up to the driver and told him about the bag. Then he told him about the young man who had got off, leaving it behind.
‘It’ll go to the lost property department,’ said the driver.
‘Yes, but that won’t be for several hours. It ought to be dealt with now.’
‘I tell you what, I’ll have it taken off and left in the garage when we get to Leyton Green.’
With that Tom was expected to be satisfied. But he wasn’t. He admitted afterwards that he had been thinking of his own skin just as much as the children eating ice-cream cornets in the back seats of the bus, and the noisy young people upstairs. He didn’t select the place where he got off with the bag; it just happened to be beside a patch of open space, where people were strolling about under the trees and someone was picking chrysanthemums. Tom had once told a woman to leave the flowers alone and got a mouthful of abuse.
