by Ruth Rendell
“And how long is that going to be? In my experience it’s only when people pay for property with ready cash that these deals get done fast. Someone I know in chambers waited a year from signing a contract on a house until completion.” He turned around and put out his arms, holding her naked body against him. “I love you. I love holding you like this whenever I want. I want to be alone with you and I don’t want to wait a year.”
“Of course it won’t be a year, darling.” Ismay took her dressing gown off the bed and wrapped it around her. “April is what Edmund’s solicitor says.”
“Look at you. You have to cover yourself up to go to the bathroom. In case your sister’s boyfriend sees you. And in half an hour we’re all supposed to sit around the kitchen table having breakfast together like two married couples sharing a gîte in the Dordogne. Oh, please. But I’m not doing that. Not this time. I’m going to leave now and call into Starbucks on my way.”
But they were engaged, Edmund and Heather, she thought when he had gone. They would marry as soon as they had somewhere to live. Heather would go and Andrew could move in. It wouldn’t be long, a few months at most. This will all work out, she told herself. It will come right. And as she made her way to the bathroom and passed Heather’s door, which was a little ajar, she caught a glimpse of Edmund and Heather standing as she and Andrew had stood a few moments earlier. Quickly she looked away, but not before she had seen that Heather was naked, Edmund’s arms enclosing her. The difference was that they were kissing.
Looking back, Ismay supposed she had been in love with Guy. He was her type, the prototype of her type really, the first one of a few that ended in Andrew: thin, tall, dark men with fine-drawn features and beautiful hands. When her mother first brought Guy Rolland home, she and Heather had been antagonistic, loyal to their father’s memory, absolutely unable to understand that Beatrix, at not quite thirty-nine, might not yet be past the age for love. And that attitude had continued as far as Heather was concerned. She liked Guy as little as she was to like Andrew. In fact, when Ismay thought about it, she saw that her sister reacted to both men in the same way, had been similarly hostile—though rather less so—to those boyfriends who had come in between. Was it that they all looked a bit like Guy?
The first evening that Guy came into the house with Beatrix they had been to the theater and Guy brought her home. It was only their second date, the first being the dinner with Pamela and Michael. Guy was the marketing manager in the firm Pamela worked for at that time. There had been no matchmaking intended, she said afterward, and it was hard to see how she could have seen Guy as a suitable husband for her sister. For one thing, he was five years her junior and, since her husband’s death, Beatrix had looked older than her age. Perhaps Pamela, only just over thirty at the time, had had her eye on him herself, Ismay had wondered, and considered he would be safe with Beatrix.
If that were so she couldn’t have been more wrong. That first date led to another and another, and very soon Guy and Beatrix were a couple, an item. And Ismay developed a “crush” on him. She kept it dark; she was ashamed of it. He was her mother’s, and Ismay, young as she was, understood that her mother needed Guy, even deserved Guy, after the years of nursing their father and her long-drawn-out suffering after his death. Besides, she was only thirteen, a child in appearance. That was how Guy must see her, as a child. Heather, on the other hand, eleven years old, was already beginning to look like a woman. But she was childlike, innocent, even naïve, Ismay thought. At school Heather worked hard. She worked earnestly, her eyes too close to the book she was reading, her handwriting slow, deliberate, and round. Far more than she and her mother did, Heather talked about their dead father. “Daddy” might not be still alive, but he was present with Heather, a rock to lean on, male perfection and the role model she would look for in the men in her own life.
“Why did Daddy have to die?” was a question she still occasionally asked. She didn’t expect an answer. She knew there wasn’t one.
For weeks she wouldn’t speak to Guy. To do him justice—and Ismay was very willing to do him justice—he tried doing what he called “drawing her out.” He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t bring her presents or call her darling, as he soon did call Beatrix and Ismay, he didn’t ask her how she was getting on at school or ask her anything except her opinion, come to that. She was almost twelve but he talked to her as if she were ten years older, making it his business to find out what things she liked doing at school and after school, and trying to discuss these subjects with her. “Trying” was the word, Ismay thought. He never succeeded. Heather was learning Spanish and Ismay remembered—with pain now and a kind of fear—how Guy had talked to Heather about Spain and its history and language and the perils of the Spanish subjunctive, about tennis and Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras, and about cooking, which she was already good at. Heather didn’t ignore him. She answered with a “yes” or a “no” or an “I don’t know.”
Ismay remembered the first time he had kissed her. He and her mother were engaged by then and due to be married a month later. When they got engaged Ismay expected Guy to move in. Every couple she knew or came across who were engaged, lived together. But Guy went on going out with Beatrix and bringing her home, and half an hour later kissing her good night. One evening he kissed Ismay too. She knew very well from films and television how men kissed women they were in love with and Guy’s kiss wasn’t like that. The way he kissed her mother wasn’t like that either.
Ismay asked Heather why she thought he wanted to marry Beatrix. He didn’t act as if he wanted to marry her. He just said he did and went along with all the arrangements.
“I expect he wants a house to live in,” said twelve-year-old Heather.
“Oh, grow up,” said Ismay. “You are such a baby. Men don’t marry women for a house to live in. He’s got a flat. Pam said he earns good money. I heard her say that to Mum when he first came here.”
“Our house is nice and big. It’s worth a lot. His flat is quite small with just one bedroom. I heard him say so. I expect he’s got a big mortgage. You don’t even know what a mortgage is, do you?”
“Of course I do.” Ismay was bored by the kind of practical things that interested Heather. “I do know,” she said, though she didn’t really. “If he likes this house so much why doesn’t he come and live here? They’re engaged. It’s normal to live together when you’re engaged.”
Their grandmother was alive then. “Gran says he respects Mum too much for that.” Heather laughed. “I should think that if you respected someone you’d want to live with them. Won’t he respect her after they’re married?”
“He doesn’t love her,” Ismay said. She had never put that into words before. Now she did she knew it was true.
“Perhaps he won’t marry her then. I hope he won’t. We were better without him, just you and me and Mum.”
Ismay and Heather went to the wedding, but they weren’t bridesmaids. Beatrix liked the idea but Heather refused even to think of it. She hated dressing up. Once Guy was in the house, living there as much as they did, Heather changed. As she entered her teens she became the archetypical teenager, moody, intractable, and isolated. She wanted no one’s company but Ismay’s and she clung to Ismay, associating herself with her in every possible area of life. “I” almost disappeared from her vocabulary as “we” took over. It was “we don’t want any breakfast” and “we didn’t sleep well last night” and sometimes even “we’ve got a cold.” One day, when Guy was talking to Ismay about what sort of job she thought she would have when her education was finished and where she would like to live, Heather said, “We shall live together. We always will.”
The first time Ismay sat on Guy’s knee was when he offered to help her with her homework. It was chemistry and she had to learn some of the periodic table. Guy, who had done chemistry to A level, called her over for them to study the book together. “Come here,” he said. “Sit on my knee.”
Beatrix was there and so was Heather, a l
ook of horror distorting her face. Ismay sat on Guy’s knee and immediately remembered that she had never sat on her father’s. Close beside him, yes, his arm around her, in bed with him and her mother when she was little, on the arm of his chair, leaning against him, but never on his knee. If she had, would she have felt like she did sitting on Guy’s? She thought not, she recoiled from the idea, because, with Guy’s arm around her, his lean thighs under her slender delicate thighs, she felt—not something new, not quite that, but a sensation she had once or twice had when watching on television the kind of film put on after the nine o’clock watershed.
If she had told Heather about that feeling, about her sensation of some indefinable excitement, would Guy be alive today? It didn’t bear thinking of. She had never told Heather and certainly never said a word to her mother. As far as Heather knew, she disliked Guy’s putting his arm around her, kissing her, calling her his sweetheart and his angel. She didn’t dislike it. Because she was so young, necessarily without experience, she thought she must be in love with Guy and only knew she hadn’t been once he was dead. He attracted her and she desired him, that was all.
It was interesting, she often thought later, how everyone had a type who they were drawn to above all others. She had guessed the type that attracted Heather would be a man who resembled their father or at least had his qualities. That was why, when she first met Edmund, she almost committed the awful solecism of bursting out laughing with delight. He was the same height and build as Bill Sealand and, though with quite different features and hair color, had the same sort of voice and manner. Because of all that, she knew he would be right for Heather, just as she knew Andrew was right for her.
From the first, she pitied Beatrix. Poor old thing, but she hasn’t a hope. Now she knew this was a typical adolescent girl’s reaction to a mother’s lover. What does he see in her? He can’t be in love with her. She’s old, she’s a mess, she’s let herself go. What wasn’t typical, perhaps, was her thinking he must prefer me. Guy began kissing her when he left in the morning and when he came back in the evening. Just a kiss on the cheek or on both cheeks. But subtly she felt the kisses change. If her mother was there the kiss would be like the one he gave Pam or her mother’s friend next door, an air kiss really, which barely brushed the skin. But when he and she were alone his lips stayed for a few seconds and moved closer to her mouth. He always got home at about six and she began making a point of happening to be out in the hall around that time. She had tennis lessons on Thursday evenings and more and more she began missing them so as to be in the hall when Guy came home.
If her mother came out just as Guy’s key turned in the lock, Ismay would feel a sharp, almost panicky disappointment, and resentment, too. Heather was often there, but Guy took no notice of her. That is, he would say, “Hi, Heather,” and smile at her, but he wouldn’t let it stop him giving Ismay those kisses that had moved to her mouth by then. Heather was too young to bother about, Ismay knew he thought. Heather couldn’t understand. She sometimes wondered when it was too late, why Heather hadn’t said something to her, something on the lines of, “You shouldn’t let Guy kiss you that way.” At the time she had felt the way Guy felt: it doesn’t matter about Heather being there, Heather doesn’t count.
She never thought about what it would lead to, what might happen, though she began to imagine a step farther on, a mile farther on. Guy might come to her bedroom one night. If only Beatrix would go away somewhere, go away on holiday, for instance, on her own with Pam. Or with Jill and Dennis, the people next door. A scenario developed in which Beatrix and Guy were planning a holiday, and she and Heather were to stay with Pamela. At the last minute Guy couldn’t go. He was too busy at work. But Beatrix could still go and she went alone or maybe she took Heather with her and her old school friend Rosemary. Guy would be working all day but he’d come home in the evening and she’d be there and that first night Guy would….
That was a fantasy and didn’t happen. But when they were alone (except sometimes with Heather) Guy’s kisses became real like in the kind of films she and Heather were still too young to see unaccompanied. His tongue exploring her mouth and his hands on her breasts. The first time that happened Heather saw. She stood in a corner of the hall where the phone was on a table as if she meant to make a call. Ismay seemed to remember her starting to dial just after Guy had said “hi” to her, starting to dial and then putting the phone down quietly when Guy took Ismay in his arms. Staring and noting what happened, no doubt, only Ismay was too rapt and excited to see.
It happened that way three times, with Heather there the first and second times but not the third. By then she was showing him she liked what he did, she responded to him, returning his kisses. After that Guy must have been busy at work because he started getting home later. Weeks went by without those kisses. And then he got the flu. Beatrix called it flu, though actually it was a virus, the kind that brings a high temperature, a headache, a sore throat, and congestion of the lungs. It was high summer, the time when no one is supposed to be ill. The first day Guy went to work but had to be brought home in a taxi. He almost collapsed in the hall. Ismay and Beatrix had to walk him upstairs between them, supporting him until they could get him onto the bed. Beatrix thought the doctor wouldn’t come. It might be July, but the virus was raging and half the patients in the practice had it. The doctor would tell him to take acetaminophen or aspirins, drink plenty, and keep warm. This last wasn’t difficult because a heat wave had begun and the temperature outside was approaching Guy’s. But the doctor did come and said she would come again. Guy might have to go to hospital if he didn’t improve.
Ismay helped Beatrix nurse him. Heather wouldn’t. Ismay carried upstairs jugs of fresh water and glasses of orange juice. Because he soaked the sheets with sweat, Beatrix changed them every day while he sat shivering in a chair, wrapped in blankets. Ismay had another fantasy, that as he got better and his health and strength returned he would hold out his arms to her and as she sank into them, pull her into bed beside him. Her mother, of course, would be out shopping at the time.
Reflecting on this years later, she thought how little she must really have loved him, for she never worried about him. His illness lasted for a month and in all that time she slept as well as ever, she never thought about him except how he might make love to her. Thinking like that was when she realized she’d never had a real conversation with Guy. They never talked. Apart from Spain and Spanish, marketing (whatever that was), and watching sports on television, she had no idea what his tastes were. She never saw him read a book or listen to music. He had a degree in business studies, so he must know about them, but she didn’t know what they were either. Something about keeping accounts, she supposed, or filing things. Making love with him was all she thought about, and even then she didn’t know what lovemaking was like or, come to that—though the basic facts had been known to her since she was five—how you went about it. If she had loved him, wouldn’t the possibility have occurred to her that he might die? Wouldn’t she have been so anxious that she couldn’t eat or sleep or do any of the normal things she did?
He did die, of course. Bathwater, not the virus, killed him. He drowned, his handsome face bleached by long immersion, his dark hair streaming and his long white hands floating just below the surface of the cooling water.
Chapter Six
Seeing Heather and Edmund’s happiness, she wondered how she could ever have considered telling him. There was something else as well: how she could never be absolutely irrefutably cast-iron sure Heather was guilty of Guy’s death. No one could be positive Heather had killed Guy. She couldn’t and her mother couldn’t. They had the evidence, of course. Heather coming downstairs with that look on her face and her dress and skirt all wet down the front, Heather never actually denying it, Heather falling in with their plans to say she hadn’t been in the house but out with them. In court, if it had ever come to it, a clever lawyer could have demolished all that.
But if Heather
hadn’t done it, who had? Beatrix had put forward the theory of the mysterious intruder, in spite of the front door being locked and the back door locked and no sign of any break-in. The door to the balcony was open, Beatrix had said. Or she had said it until Ismay pointed out that in order to come into the bathroom through that door, the mysterious intruder would have had to break down the locked side gate into the garden or traverse neighboring gardens and climb over a six-foot-high wall. Then somehow climb up the sheer back of the house where there were no drainpipes or creeper vines and haul himself onto the balcony. All this with no one seeing him? On a fine summer’s day when people were in their gardens?
But that was Beatrix’s theory because she so much wanted it to be true. Besides, who but Heather would kill Guy and for what? Nothing had been stolen from the house. Nothing had been disturbed. Perhaps Guy had drowned himself. It is extremely difficult, Ismay had found out, to drown oneself in the bath, or anywhere else, come to that. Then her mother had said Heather wouldn’t have had the physical strength to do it. She was not yet fourteen. But Heather was as tall and strong as a grown woman. Momentarily closing her eyes, Ismay saw her sister coming down the stairs once more, her eyes staring and her pink dress wet, drops of water on her shoes.
Weak as he was from his illness, he had struggled. He must have thrashed about in the water, for the bathroom was wet. Not wet as if water had come through the ceiling or a flood had come up through the floor, but wet enough. Heather’s dress was wet down the front and the skirt was wet. She wasn’t soaked. Could she have been in that bathroom and drowned a struggling man without getting soaked? If only she could remember twelve years later just how wet Heather’s dress had been, how wet her shoes. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t remember if Heather had seemed frightened or shocked, but she retained an impression of Heather’s calmness and of her steady voice.
