The Water's Lovely

by Ruth Rendell

  Ismay looked at him in dismay. “I’ll talk to them,” she said. “I’ll—oh, I don’t know what I’ll do, Andrew, but if you’ve quarreled with him, I’ll ask Heather if she can’t go to Edmund’s place and not bring him here.”

  “He has quarreled with me,” said Andrew. “He has insulted me and drawn intolerable conclusions.”

  “What sort of conclusions?”

  “Never mind.”

  Ismay found she couldn’t do as she had promised. She couldn’t speak to Heather and perhaps she wouldn’t need to, for Edmund ceased to come to Clapham and her sister was out a great deal more than she had used to be. But her worry about Heather’s part in their stepfather’s death had receded. It is difficult to be worried about two things at once, and concern as to whether Andrew would be driven away had forced Heather’s past into the deeper recesses of her mind. She had even ceased to be troubled about the tape—perhaps the putting of her worry into a box had worked—whether it was safe where it was or should she move it somewhere more secure, even destroy it? Worry about Andrew was more important. It always was and always would be.

  After that conversation they had had when he had complained about Edmund and Heather and she had promised to try to alter the situation, she sensed that he had changed toward her. He was less—ardent. He came to the flat, spent nights with her, took her out for the occasional evening, but he often seemed absent-minded, and when he talked to her it was almost exclusively about the awkwardness of Edmund’s and Heather’s presence, even though Edmund hadn’t been there for the past week. He seemed to have become fixated on it, as if he thought of nothing else, yet Ismay felt, strangely, that his obsession wasn’t quite real, was assumed, to cover some genuine preoccupation.

  “Edmund doesn’t come here anymore,” she protested when he accused her of doing nothing to change the situation.

  “She does. I still have to put up with her silent presence and those eyes on me.”

  “But you said you were used to her.”

  “Please don’t pick me up on every little thing, Ismay.”

  The more he seemed to grow away from her the more she felt she must be placatory. She wanted to say that he must know she wasn’t willing to separate herself from Heather. Even if it was in her power to turn her out, she couldn’t do it. A rift would open between the two sisters that nothing would heal. They would be apart forever.

  “I don’t actually see why you couldn’t move her upstairs. They’ve got a spare room, haven’t they? He could be there with her if he can’t control his lusts for five minutes. And it would only have to be endured until—when did you say? May?”

  She said miserably that she would suggest it, but if she did, Pamela and perhaps even her mother would have to agree as well. She even came close to the point of asking Pamela, but thought she should mention it to Heather first. The prospect made her feel sick and she was relieved when Heather phoned to say she wouldn’t be home that night. Andrew asked her, of course, and she said she intended to speak to Heather. She was just waiting for the right time. Andrew phoned the next day as usual, but she noticed he didn’t end their short conversation with “Love you” as he invariably did. Then, instead of daily, his phone calls became more widely spaced. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday went by without the sound of his voice, without a sight of him. She was distraught. Heather was always out—at Edmund’s mother’s? In a flat borrowed from a friend? Edmund had that friend who was a doctor and Heather had Michelle at work and that Greta whose home she had intended to visit the day Guy died and whom she was still close to. Andrew says he’s not here because of Heather, but he could be here now, she thought, with me and without Heather. When she tried to phone him his mobile was switched off. On the Thursday evening he arrived without warning. As might a husband who had been married for years, it seemed to her.

  “It’s wonderful to see you,” she couldn’t stop herself saying. She got up, went to him, put her hands on his arms and looked up into his face. “Andrew? They’re not here. They haven’t been here for days.”

  “You haven’t spoken to them, have you?”

  She shook her head.

  “You haven’t asked your mother to take her in upstairs and you haven’t asked her to go upstairs?”

  “No, but she hasn’t been here. That’s the point.”

  “The point seems to be that you prefer her company to mine. Is there anything to eat? No? I suppose I’d better go out to a restaurant then. D’you want to come?”

  She thought it a strange question and wondered why he hadn’t said, “Shall we go out to eat?”

  “What’s wrong, Andrew?” She now knew what that expression meant, “her heart was in her mouth.” “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “There is something. You’ve changed.”

  “Yes, I expect I have. Haven’t you understood yet that I’m fucking fed up of having those two about the place? I thought I’d made it plain. Can’t you see it’s getting me down?”

  “But they’re not here,” she said. “Heather says Edmund won’t come back. Not after what you said to him. And she’s out every evening with him.”

  “Oh, yes, and we know what that amounts to. A week or two and they’ll both be back.” He sat down beside her, but he didn’t touch her. “I have serious doubts about this flat he’s supposed to be buying. Does it exist, one wonders?” He had been addressing the bookcase or perhaps the door to the hall, but now he turned and looked at her, stony-eyed. “You once told me I was the most important person in your life, yet you can’t do this small thing for me. You haven’t the spirit to tell your gorgon of a sister to remove herself upstairs.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “Andrew, tell me, I have to know, is it really Edmund and Heather that’s the trouble or is it something else? Because I can’t bear it, the way it is now between us.”

  “I need a drink,” he said. “I need my dinner,” and he left, slamming the door behind him and then the front door.

  Alone that night, she dreamed the dream. This time, however, Guy was alive, contemplating Andrew’s drowned body floating in a glassy lake.

  Chapter Nine

  In a hotel room in Shepherd’s Bush, a very small room containing a double bed, wall hooks for clothes, an Ikea table with a mirror hanging above it, and a chair that was part of a 1930s dining suite, Heather and Edmund sat up in the bed, drinking tea out of a thermos flask. It was eight o’clock in the morning.

  “You’ve a home in your mother’s house,” she was saying to him, “and it’s a big house. I’ll come to you there. We can do it, Edmund. It will just be hard at first. I’ll be nice to your mother, I’ll help her in the house if she’ll let me.”

  “You know I’ve found this so-called studio flat.”

  “And from what you say I’ll hate it. I’ll especially hate it because it’s three hundred pounds a week. We need every penny we’ve got for our own place when we get it.”

  “We can’t go on staying in these ghastly hotels like adulterous couples in the fifties.” He hesitated, then said grudgingly, “I suppose we could try Chudleigh Hill.”

  “I love you,” she said, “and I know we ought to be together. A lot of people would say that the worst thing we could do would be to live with your mother, that it would separate us, but I think it would keep us together. I think it would make us a united front, while spending two thirds of what I earn on that studio and the other third on Ismay’s flat would—would divide us. Don’t forget I’d have to go on paying my share of Ismay’s rent up until the end of April.”

  “I’m afraid my mother will set out to make trouble between us,” Edmund said.

  “Yes, maybe, but Andrew set out to make trouble between us and he hasn’t. Don’t you see she can’t succeed if we know it beforehand? If we’re determined? You say you’re afraid, but I’m afraid too. Not of that, never of that. I don’t think I’m superstitious, but what I’m afraid of is something I don’t understand, something out there that will—we
ll, strike us and part us forever and there’ll be no going back.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk like this before.”

  “Maybe not. But I’ve had feelings like this before. When I was—well, younger.”

  He took her in his arms and held her close to him. “I think we ought to get married,” he said. “I know we’re going to get married, but I think we should do it now, as soon as we can. It takes three weeks, doesn’t it?”

  Alone at home, Ismay waited for Andrew to phone. He had said he would phone “around six” and now it was nearly seven. She had brought work home with her, but writing her ideas for a new client presentation was beyond her. She could settle to nothing and had slipped into the fraught and impotent mind-set of those who only stand and wait. Only she wasn’t standing but trailing about from room to room, looking out of windows into the winter darkness. At the Victorian double-fronted houses opposite, the houses she had been looking at almost all her life, the shallow roofs and unused chimneys, the carved stonework around window frames, the lights between open curtains behind glass, the leafless trees with peeling trunks. Why did the bark peel off plane trees and not off other trees? Like skin off diseased people, but the trees weren’t diseased.

  Cars lined the pavement edges; wind-blown litter left behind by people who ate in the street was tossed about in the gutters. A vandal had stuck an empty Coke can on a garden wall and a graffitist had painted a swastika and a Maltese cross in red on a white gatepost. Scaffolding and builders’ materials were stacked outside at least four houses and the part of the street that was being dug up was encircled by cones, some of them on their sides. It often seemed that the whole of London was gradually being dug up or rebuilt. She turned away and went to look out of a rear window at the garden, the darkness that lightened and grew gray if she stared at it long enough, lights in windows which were just lights, but which always made wistful watchers think that inside were happy people partying and enjoying each other’s company. She carried the phone with her in case it rang and she couldn’t reach it before it went on to message, though ten rings had to sound before that happened.

  A glass of wine, which at first, at six, had seemed unwise, at seven was indispensable. She must have something to quiet her, to calm the beating of her heart, release her held breath, slacken her tense muscles, even take away that feeling that eating would never again be possible. While she was opening the bottle of wine with shaking hands, the phone rang. She picked it up, said a breathless “Hello?” only to hear her Pamela’s voice. Immediately she thought, suppose he phones now and the line’s busy? She heard herself making all sorts of promises to Pamela. Beatrix had been restless, had been wandering about, shouting the more extravagant effusions of Saint John the Divine. Pamela didn’t care to go out and leave her…. Yes, she said breathlessly, yes, she’d sit in with her mother anytime Pamela wanted, tomorrow, Thursday, whatever, making wild excuses for ending the conversation.

  When at last it was over, she poured herself a large glass of wine, drank half of it, and felt warmth flood through her. Not comforting warmth, though. She knew she would worry now half the night, perhaps all night, that he had phoned while she was talking to Pamela. Things would be marginally better if Heather were here. But that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? That Heather shouldn’t be here and Edmund shouldn’t, but together in a place of their own? Or anywhere so long as it wasn’t here. If he phoned she could tell him. She could tell him they had gone off to Edmund’s mother’s house, the very thing he wanted. It was “if” he phoned now, not “when.” She thought, he is punishing me, that’s the way he is. He will punish me for a few days and then he will phone. And I’ll tell him they’re gone. I’ve done what he wanted. Maybe I’ll tell him a lie and say I did speak to Heather and asked her to go. It will please him to know I’ve obeyed him.

  A momentary qualm visited her. Was this to be her life, abject obedience to a man in order to keep him? She would once have called herself a feminist. She was behaving like a masochist, relishing subservience. But how can I do otherwise, she asked herself, when I love him so much? When I long for him? She marveled that a week ago the thing which worried her was what Heather had done to Guy. Or might have done. Or very possibly had done twelve years ago. It wasn’t her responsibility. Who said it was someone’s job to be a guardian to her able-bodied, strong, healthy, capable sister? Now Ismay could hardly understand why her mother and she had undergone such stress, such pain and so many struggles over what Heather might have done. Stress and pain over such a thing seemed nothing compared to her present agony. Draining the glass of wine, she said aloud, “He doesn’t care about me anymore. I know he doesn’t. And I can’t live without him.”

  The worst thing was that she would have to live. Alone here, carrying on, putting a brave face on it. But wait a minute…there must have been a thousand reasons why he hadn’t phoned. Well, two or three. As she poured another glass of wine, she tried to think of reasons but couldn’t find one. He always had his mobile with him. Once, she thought, even if he was expecting a brief or a client, even if he was due in court in a minute’s time, he would have phoned her. Just to hear the sound of her voice. Those days were over. Could this be solely due to his dislike of Heather and Edmund? There was something else. She began to shiver in the warm room. Something else was always only one thing….

  Dropping in on Mr. Hussein, Marion found him entertaining a lady in a red-and-gold shalwar-kameez with glasses of mint tea and a plateful of sticky sweetmeats.

  “May I introduce Mrs. Iqbal,” said Mr. Hussein. “This is Miss Melville. She won’t be staying.”

  Had she ever heard anything so rude, Marion later said to Irene Litton. As if she were a child or a servant.

  “Well, I suppose you are a servant,” said Irene.

  “Maybe, but not his.”

  “Did he give you anything to eat?”

  “It would have choked me. That woman he had there was a great big fat thing with black hair and bright red lipstick and loaded with jewels. Goodness knows how she got those diamonds. Mind you, I can guess.”

  Irene wasn’t interested. Edmund had phoned a few minutes earlier, she now told Marion. “He’s bringing that girl back here.”

  “You don’t mean for the night.”

  “I do. Would you like a glass of Bristol Cream?”

  They were drinking sherry when Edmund and Heather arrived. Edmund came into the living room alone. He frowned when he saw Marion.

  “Well, where is she?” said Irene. “Not shy, I hope.”

  Edmund fetched Heather, who said, “Hello, Mrs. Litton. How are you?”

  “Much the same as always. I’m never very well. This is my dear friend Marion Melville. You’ve heard me mention Edmund’s friend Heather, Marion.”

  “Heather is my fiancée,” said Edmund.

  “When I was a girl,” said Irene, “I was always told that was a very vulgar word. Only common people used it. One said”—when she reflected that what one said involved such expressions as “going to marry” and “engaged to,” she cut herself short—“something more decorous.”

  “Right,” said Edmund. “Heather is my betrothed, my promised spouse, my affianced bride. We’re going to take her things upstairs and then we’ll eat.” He looked around him. “We’ll go out to eat.”

  “Yes, you’ll have to. I haven’t felt well enough to cook anything.”

  “You do look rather peaky, as white as a sheet.” Smiling Marion was in sycophantic mode. When Edmund and Heather had gone she said in a voice not much above a whisper, “I can’t say I admire his choice. You’ll have to put your foot down about her sharing his room.”

  Support from Marion was one thing, advice quite another. “I think I can manage my own son, thank you very much. And now, if you’ve finished your sherry, I’d really like to be on my own. I’ve got a splitting headache.”

  Dismissed twice in the same day, Marion went home, running through the backstreets to Lithos Road. Fowler had
been in the flat in her absence. She could smell him. He had left a glass in the sink and she saw that the gin level had gone down alarmingly. Time to get the lock changed and new keys cut…. It was coming up to eight and she was due back in Pinner by eight-thirty. The idea of the long tube journey made her yawn in anticipation. She would have preferred to trot and run and dance all the way except that it would take hours.

  The drugs Beatrix had been prescribed were highly effective, and under their influence she was docile and compliant. Silent, adhering to her radio as if it were an extra limb, she retreated into some secret space. No one knew what was in there, whether it was turbulent and demon-ridden or empty where thought was absent. But she had contrived cunning ways of not taking the drugs, hiding the capsule under her tongue or sticking it to the piece of gum she incessantly chewed. Then her wildness returned and if she could escape, she roved the streets declaiming the texts she had once mysteriously learned.

  When she could be sure her sister had taken the drugs prescribed for her, Pamela could go out without fear. In the evenings, though, she worried and never stayed out long. Mostly, when she intended to be out late, one of her nieces would “keep an eye” on their mother, sometimes sitting with her. Beatrix was never left alone overnight.

  Neither Ismay nor Heather ever referred to Pamela’s habit of dating men to whom she had introduced herself by means of a newspaper or through the Internet, unless she did so first. This was tact on their part, and it occurred to neither of them that their silence on the subject made Pamela feel awkward.

  Pamela never advertised her own attractions. An essentially modest woman, she wouldn’t have known how to describe herself. She was fifty-six and a size sixteen, and though her face wasn’t too bad, her neck was wrinkled and her hair thinning. Looking dolefully into the mirror, she saw these defects but never her advantages: her large blue eyes, clear smooth skin, and excellent teeth. One of the men she met on a date told her she had “American teeth,” which she knew was a great compliment. In spite of that, he didn’t want to see her again.