Going Wrong

by Ruth Rendell

  “Where’s Leonora?”

  “I don’t know. I was told to say if you rang that Robin is better and coming out today.”

  “Well, fuck him. When you were ‘told’ that, where were you ‘told’ she’d be?”

  “Please don’t take that hectoring tone with me. And you can leave out the ‘fuck,’ it’s offensive. I get quite enough of that from the low-life I encounter at work. Perhaps you’d like to get this clear: I don’t know where Leonora is because, knowing you’d ask, I was careful not to ask her. I’m not lying to you, I don’t tell lies. Do I make myself plain?”

  “You don’t need to, my love,” said Guy, knowing he would regret it. “Nature did that for you.” He slammed down the phone.

  He dialled William Newton’s number. The line was engaged. That would be Rachel ringing Leonora to repeat to her what he had said. Anger began to rise inside him in that uncontrollable way it had. It was happening all the time these days. It would start in the way nausea started, a stifling feeling that worked its way up to his throat where it settled and needed not to be vomited but screamed out. Only he had never yet screamed it out. He walked across the room to the open double doors. It was sunny again, it was like being in Spain or Italy. The flowers on the water-lilies in the pool were all open to the sun. He turned back, picked up the Chinese vase that stood on the red lacquer cabinet just inside the doors, and smashed it down onto the stone flags.

  The shattering of the vase had an effect on him, if not quite the one he had aimed at. Certainly his anger was temporarily appeased, it had done that. It awed him, too, and brought him a kind of fear of himself. Why had he done it and without thought? He had simply done it, on an impulse.

  It was August Bank Holiday Monday, so not one of Fatima’s days. He kicked the fragments, pushing them into a heap with his toe. The vase was famille noire, cherry blossom and linnets on a black glaze, worth about fifteen hundred pounds. Thinking of that made him shudder. He lifted the phone, dialed William Newton’s number and got no reply. If he stayed there any longer he might break the place up, that was the way he felt, so he took a taxi to the rifle club and practised target shooting. Gladiators after that, the weights and some acrobatics on the parallel bars. He weighed himself and found he had lost those two pounds plus three more. In the steam room a gay Norwegian eyed him lustfully. What wouldn’t he give for Leonora to look at him like that?

  He tried her again in the afternoon. There was still no answer. Suppose he couldn’t get through to her all the week? They hadn’t yet named a restaurant for their Saturday lunch date. Suppose he couldn’t get in touch with her, what would happen to their Saturday lunch? Most likely she had gone to Robin’s. She and Maeve would have gone to Robin’s to be there when he came back from the hospital. Guy started looking up Robin’s number in the phone book.

  It wasn’t there. No Robin Chisholm was listed anywhere in Battersea. Then he realized that of course Robin didn’t live in Battersea any more, he lived in Chelsea. He realized a few more things with startling suddenness. Why was he so confused these days? Why had he been telling himself for days now that Poppy Vasari had lived in the same block of flats as Robin when it was not she but Danilo’s sister-in-law who had lived there? And wasn’t there something else he hadn’t thought of which was now staring him in the face?

  Robin couldn’t have been told about Con Mulvanney by Poppy or anyone else in August four years ago because he was in hospital undergoing those brain tests. He couldn’t have been told, and he couldn’t have passed that information on to Leonora. He wasn’t there. Leonora must have known about Con Mulvanney two weeks before they were due to go to Samos because that was when she had changed towards him, but it wasn’t Robin who had told her. Robin was shut up in Baits or St. Thomas’s or somewhere, interested no doubt in nothing but the fate of his own head.

  Guy had a quick image of a white-coated surgeon bending over Robin’s bed and applying a scalpel to his throat instead of a stethoscope, or of an armoured truck ramming the taxi that was taking him home to Chelsea, of two hooded men with sub-machine-guns jumping out of the back of it. He reminded himself he wasn’t living in a TV thriller and went back to the phone book. Chelsea. There it was: St. Leonard’s Terrace, a very nice address. He must be doing well. Guy dialled the number. He wouldn’t have been surprised not to get a reply, but Maeve answered.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  What a way to answer the phone! For the first time he noticed her rather “common” voice, more akin to his own than to Robin’s patrician accent.

  “It’s Guy, Maeve. I just wanted to ask how Robin is.”

  She was stunned into silence, as well she might be. Then she said in a tone in which suspicion seemed to war with a willingness to live and let live, “He’s really quite okay.” Evidently thinking furiously, she paused. “Thanks, Guy. I mean, well, thanks.”

  “I’m glad to hear he’s doing all right.”

  For a moment he thought she was going to ask if he was kidding. She didn’t. “They’re very pleased with him. There won’t be any, you know, ill effects or whatever from the concussion.”

  “You tell him to take care.”

  This was the true purpose of his call. “I shouldn’t let him go out again today. Keep him quiet.” He nearly said, Don’t answer the door. She would think him crazy. “Say hello to him for me, will you?”

  “Sure, I will, yes, Guy, thanks.”

  He hesitated. “Is Leonora there?”

  “No, she’s not.” The former tone, surprised, gratified, touched, had changed to Maeve’s aggressive voice. “Why ever would she be? Of course she’s not. Is that the real reason you rang?”

  He said goodbye. He tried to phone Danilo. This was never easy, as it was always possible for Danilo to be in any of about ten different places—clubs, two Soho offices, his old dad’s place, one of the establishments of his brother the turf accountant, or at a race meeting. Five attempts having failed, he got Tanya at her Richmond boutique. Danilo was in Brussels, she didn’t say why; he would be back tomorrow very late in the evening.

  Guy was by now almost certain it was Rachel Lingard and not Robin who had told Leonora about Con Mulvanney. That is, he was certain it wasn’t Robin and not quite sure about Rachel—nearly sure but not absolutely. Removing Rachel from Leonora’s immediate circle would in any case be a good thing. He wished he could, with a word or by the pressure of a switch, divert Danilo’s hit squad from Robin to Rachel. He really didn’t wish for Robin’s death any longer, it would be inconvenient, it would be unnecessary.

  He poured himself a drink, the first of the day, a very strong Campari orange, three quarters Campari and about a spoonful of orange juice. As he was dialling Newton’s number the doorbell rang.

  Guy’s doorbell hardly ever rang unless someone was expected. Celeste had a modelling job out at Totteridge, it couldn’t be her. Anyway, she had a key. Listening to the phone ringing on and on, in an empty place unanswered, he thought: it’s Leonora. He put the phone down. Of course it was Leonora—what could be more likely? On the phone the day before he had felt her changing, returning to him, her better instincts taking over, all that perverse stubbornness of the past years faded, gone.

  “Oh, Guy, how I wish …” she had said. Wished what? That she could bring herself to swallow her pride, of course, to come back to him and be as they once were.

  The bell rang again. He set his drink down. A second thought made him thrust it behind a vase. He must not die of happiness when she came into his arms … It was all he could do not to run to the door. He strode there, threw it open, already smiling a delighted welcome.

  On the doorstep stood Tessa Mandeville.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Can I come in?” His disappointment was so terrible—worse, he thought, than on that day four years before when Leonora had said she wasn’t coming to Samos with him—that he couldn’t have spoken to her. He was quite dumb, staring like a fool, yet seeing her only through a haze. Unable eve
n to answer her, he stood there while she pushed past him into the hall.

  At any other time, he would have been gleefully proud of showing off his house to one of the members of Leonora’s family. None of them had ever been there. Well aware of the suburban Victoriana in which Tessa herself lived, he would have taken great pleasure in watching her note the evidences of his wealth—the carpets, the antiques, the Kandinski. She, of all people, would very likely know it was a Kandinski. But as it was, he cared not at all. He followed her silently into the drawing-room.

  She was dressed, as usual, very smartly. She had on a tobacco-brown linen dress which, though waistless and quite straight, could only have been worn by a very thin woman. To the hot weather she made few concessions, wore shoes the colour of polished acorns and stockings patterned with sprays of leaves. More lines had appeared on her face since last he saw her. She had a young woman’s shape and legs and hair and a wizened face with lines as deep as scars. Her fingernails were painted the colour of a copper kettle in an antique shop.

  “It’s quite brave of me to come here alone, isn’t it?” she said.

  He found his voice. It came out like a sigh. “Brave?”

  “Though I’m warning you, at least half a dozen people know where I am. In case you want to try anything, you won’t get away with it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said.

  “You persecute my daughter, you beat up my son, you attempt to run my son over in a car …”

  He was indignant at the unfairness of that. “I was having lunch with Leonora when that accident happened, I was in her flat.” Then he realized there was in fact nothing unjust in her accusation. “Tessa, I went to Leonora’s in a taxi. Anyway, I wasn’t anywhere near Lancaster Gate. You can’t believe I’d …”

  “Can’t I? It’s funny you knew all about it. Maeve said you corrected her, you told her exactly where it had happened. You kept on saying things like ‘Brook Street’ and ‘Victoria Gate’ as if you’d been there. I think you’re mad. All you want is to wipe out the people who’re close to my daughter, kill them or disable them. I should never have let her have anything to do with you, I blame myself for that. I should have put my foot down all those years ago. You’ll do some harm to William next. I know what you’re up to, I know everything. I saw you parked outside my house that time in that flashy car of yours.”

  There was an uncanny accuracy in what she said. She was quite close to the truth. He moved away from her, opened the French windows. He no more fancied being closeted in here with her than she did with him. The heat came in, the scent of his climbing rose. He saw the pile of broken china still on the paving stones and she saw it too.

  “Been smashing the place up, have you?”

  “What did you come here for, Tessa?”

  He hadn’t asked her to sit down but she did. Probably his calmness, his air of indifference, had reassured her he meant to do her no harm. She stared at him without speaking. He picked up his drink and, aware of the absurdity of it, asked her if she would like one.

  “Of course I don’t want a drink!” She almost spat the words.

  “What do you want then?”

  “To tell you this. First of all, my husband will get a court order to stop you molesting Leonora if you don’t leave her alone from this moment. Is that clear? Secondly, Leonora is getting married on September the sixteenth. At twelve noon at Kensington Register Office. I’m here to give you a very serious warning, very serious indeed, not to start anything on that occasion. Right?”

  “What would I start?” he said, very nearly amused by her. She was a figure of fun, glaring at him like that, long bony fingers with those copper-kettle nails clasping exposed polished knees. The intensity of her frown contorted her face grotesquely.

  “Anything, I don’t know, a—a ruckus! You’re quite capable of turning up there and shouting things—well, forbidding the banns or something.”

  “They don’t have banns,” he said, though uncertain what banns were.

  “You’re capable of attacking William, grabbing my daughter—oh, anything! Shouting that you’ve got some insane prior claim on her.”

  “So I have.”

  “So you have not, Guy Curran! How dare you speak like that! She loves William and he loves her and they’re going to be tremendously happy. I will not have a clod like you, a common piece of rubbish from a council house, from the worst part of London, interfering with my daughter!”

  Anger began to well up inside him. Her snobbery had cut into him where her threats never could. He would have liked to tell her this was his house and to get out of it, not to speak like that to him in his house, but he thought of Leonora, of all this getting back to Leonora. It was bad enough, the way he had insulted Rachel, or she would think so. He must stay calm. With extreme controlled calmness he said, “She isn’t going to marry him. She’ll never marry him.”

  Tessa Mandeville went quite white. “You filthy drug-trafficker,” she said. “Oh, yes, you can look like that. I tell you, I know everything about you. A very good friend of Leonora’s told me all about your drug peddling, ruining young people’s lives, giving their parents a hell on earth.”

  “What friend?” he said.

  “Oh, yes, I’m likely to tell you, aren’t I? So that you can go and beat them up, I suppose. A good friend, that’s all I’m saying. Someone who’s been a better friend to Leonora than you ever could be.”

  He said, “I don’t want to put you out of here, Tessa. You’re Leonora’s mother and I can’t forget that. I’m going upstairs and while I’m away perhaps you’ll go.”

  It was to be alone really, not just to get away from her. So he had been right about Rachel. It was Rachel who had done and who was doing all the damage, Rachel who was probably with Leonora even at this moment, feeding her poison. Leonora had been more gentle with him, more loving, that day than at any time he could remember since she moved into the flat. True, it had been on the phone. But Saturday it hadn’t been on the phone. “Oh, Guy, how I wish …” What had she been going to say? How I wish we could be as we once were? How I wish I’d never met William?

  Now, though, she would be back home with Rachel, sick, bed-bound Rachel. He could imagine her sitting on the side of Rachel’s bed and Rachel repeating what he had said to her, adding, “What can you expect from low-life like that?”

  Downstairs he heard Tessa’s footsteps. They stopped. She had paused. Of course. She had stopped in front of the Kandinski, was taking it in, valuing it. The footsteps started again, the front door closed hard if not quite with a bang. He went into his bedroom and watched her from the window. She was going in the Marloes Road direction, looking for a taxi. He hoped she wouldn’t get one, she probably wouldn’t, not at this hour.

  So it was Rachel. The connection must have been the one he first thought of, through the social work she and Poppy Vasari had in common. He went downstairs and was starting to dial one of the numbers he had for Danilo when he remembered what Tanya had told him, that Danilo was in Brussels. It slightly troubled him that he was as yet unable to call off the dogs that menaced Robin Chisholm, but there seemed nothing to be done about this.

  Something was puzzling him and continued to do so on and off throughout the night. Dining with Celeste at the Pomme d’Amour, meeting Bob Joseph afterwards for a drink at the club in Noel Street, his mind kept reverting to Tessa Mandeville and the things she had said. What had she really come for?

  That was all rubbish about getting a court order preventing him from “molesting” Leonora. How could you molest someone when she wanted your company? It was Leonora herself who, three and a half years before, had made that arrangement to lunch with him on Saturdays. When Rachel and the rest of them no doubt had persuaded her to stop going out with him in any real sense, to stop being his girl-friend, she had proposed the regular Saturday meetings. Leonora wanted those lunch dates as much as he did, that was certain. She wanted him to phone her. Hadn’t she said when he left her on Saturd
ay, “Phone me tomorrow”?

  So Tessa hadn’t really meant that at all. That was just a cover for something else. What she had come for was ostensibly to stop him from making some sort of scene at Leonora’s wedding but really to tell him where Leonora’s wedding would be, a venue he knew quite well already. He was suspicious of them all and now he was even more suspicious of Tessa. What was she up to? Why come all that way, visit him at home as she had never done before, just to tell him that?

  Then he understood. He nearly laughed out loud, there in front of Celeste. The woman had told him Kensington Register Office because it wasn’t going to be there at all. It was going to be at the Camden Register Office, which was at King’s Cross, and in Newton’s borough. You could get married in your own borough or that of the person you were marrying, it was matter of choice. She had told him Kensington in case he decided to go along. The woman was so transparent it was really quite funny.

  Not that it mattered. Leonora wouldn’t get married. She wouldn’t want to get married. He heard her voice again and the tone seemed infinitely soft and yearning as she expressed her wish for what might have been. “Guy, dear,” she had called him when she had explained she couldn’t dine with him. They probably threatened her with all kinds of things when she told them she was thinking of going back to him. Rachel, for instance, who was buying Leonora’s share of the flat from her—Rachel had very likely told her the deal would be off if she persisted in having any further to do with him. Anthony Chisholm was capable of cutting her out of his will or at least of stopping any money he might be making over to her.

  “Guy, sweet,” said Celeste, “a penny for your thoughts.”

  He told her about Tessa’s visit. Her face clouded over. She said nothing. “I’ve got a headache,” he said. “I usually have these days. D’you think it’s being angry most of the time?”