by Ruth Rendell
She was getting tired of going to a rendezvous with a man who had described himself, for instance, as tall, dark, sexy, and young-looking, and meeting a sexagenarian of five feet six with gray hair and appearing every year of his age. She was tired of men looking her up and down as if she were a cow in a cattle market. So tonight she was set for an adventure in speed dating. Not that Pamela approached the Kensington hotel where the function was held in an adventurous spirit. She was more nervous even than she had been the first time she met an unknown man. Getting off the bus, she told herself as she had often done before, that she only did this because without it her existence would be a pathetic apology for a life. Without it, tasteless as it often was, she would spend her days sorting out other people’s money and as companion to a woman who was only bearable when stunned with drugs.
The speed-dating session was held in a rather cavernous place called the “small ballroom.” It made Pamela wonder what the large ballroom was like.
She had paid quite a lot for her ticket so was glad to see a number of tables laden with canapés and, even better, bottles of wine. Before she arrived, she had imagined the setup might be like a dance hall of her youth, the girls all giggling at one end and the young men eyeing them at the other before one dared make a move and ask a girl to dance.
Here the room was more luxurious than any provincial dance hall, the floor being carpeted and the windows festooned. There were numerous gilt tables and chairs as well. As for the hopefuls who stood about, the men were on the whole congregated at the end where a dais stood, and the women were grouped nearest the food and drink. No one was young and, as far as Pamela could see, no one was beautiful. Music was soft and sweet, the numbers one heard in every hotel lounge the world over: “Never on Sunday,” “Un Homme et une Femme,” “La Vie en Rose.” The idea was to approach someone of the opposite sex and enter into a conversation. Five minutes was allowed and then you had to move on. Pamela spotted a man in a dinner jacket who appeared to be some sort of master of ceremonies. She was so afraid that this person, who looked to her like a Latin star of thirties movies, might come up to her, take her by the hand, and lead her to the man of his choice, that she took the plunge herself.
The old formula that he couldn’t kill her came to her aid and she boldly marched up to a man of about fifty who looked quiet and shy. In spite of his downcast eyes, she said, “Hello. I’m Pam.” She had never called herself that before, though others did, and she cringed a little as she said it. “This is my first time here. What’s your name?”
When the entry phone bell rang, of course she thought it was Andrew forgetting or losing his key. No, she didn’t really think it was. She hoped, that was all. Breathless, she opened the door. Heather and Edmund stood there.
“Now I’m not living here I didn’t like to use my key. We’ve come for more of my clothes. You look awful. What’s wrong?”
“You must both come in,” Ismay said. “I was supposed to be mother-sitting for Pamela but Mum’s taken her tablet so she’s okay. I couldn’t face it.” She hesitated. “Andrew won’t be here. I haven’t seen or heard from him for ten days.”
“Where is he? What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened to him, if that’s what you mean. It’s not something that’s happened to him that’s stopping him. I’ve phoned his chambers. Lots of times. I was desperate. They just say he’s in a meeting. That’s what they always say.”
“Oh, Issy. Oh, darling.” Heather put her arms around Ismay and held her close. “I’m so sorry. What can we do? We’ll do anything.”
“Of course we will,” Edmund said.
“There isn’t anything.” She had been dry-eyed, but now she sobbed and the tears poured down her face. “I love him so much. I’ve never been in love with anyone before.”
“D’you want me to stay here with you? We could both stay here with you.”
Edmund read it all in Ismay’s anguished face. It was the two of them, in her estimation, or more likely him, who had driven Andrew away. Suppose he reappeared tonight and they were back again?
“Or just me,” said Heather, intuiting the same thing.
“Better not.” Ismay scrubbed at her eyes with tissues. “I’m better alone. I’ll have to get used to being alone, won’t I?”
“I’ll phone you tomorrow.”
“I suppose he’s with his new woman now.”
“You don’t know that, Issy.”
“It’s either that or that he’s dumped me because he didn’t like having you two around. Is that likely? Would he do that if he loved me?”
Carrying the two suitcases into which Heather had packed her clothes, Edmund and she walked back toward the tube station.
“We don’t seem to be anyone’s favorite people,” Edmund said. “Your sister doesn’t want us and my mother doesn’t. We are like orphans of the storm or babes in the wood.”
“We want each other,” said Heather, “and that’s what matters.”
“Do you know, I used to see couples kissing in the street and I thought, how wonderful to do that, how I’d like to do that, and now I can.” He suited the action to the word. She clung to him, kissing him with passion. “In two weeks we’ll be married. Tomorrow we’ll go and buy a wedding ring.”
She stepped away from him and smiled. “I shall like that. I like the things they say when they know we’re soon to be married, the jokes and all that. I want to hear them call me Mrs. Litton.”
He laughed. “You’re an old-fashioned girl.”
“D’you think it’s true Andrew’s found another woman?”
That was when he made up his mind to tell her. “I know he has.”
The house in Chudleigh Hill was in deep darkness, though it was only just after nine. It had been that way every evening since Heather had come to stay there with Edmund. Irene had taken to going to bed very early and when she went to bed she turned off all the lights. Edmund asked her why and she said she couldn’t bear to see him go up to his room “with that girl.” And he should remember she’d be an invalid by now if she hadn’t struggled against it. After that, Heather stayed upstairs almost all the time she was there. If they went out—and they mostly did—they went straight upstairs when they returned.
Because he had always done this and long before he met Heather, Edmund put on the hall light, which he turned off from the top of the stairs. His mother was never asleep and always called out, “Is that you, Edmund?” as if a burglar would let himself in with a key, put a light on, and walk upstairs talking in whispers to his female companion. Edmund invariably called out, “Good night, Mother,” as he switched off the light. Irene never called out, “Is that you, Heather?” So far she had never called Heather by her Christian name or spoken a word to her on the rare occasions she and Edmund were downstairs together.
They went into Edmund’s room, which by now was taking on the look of a bedsitter. It was large and comfortable, with a big bed and built-in cupboards and its own bathroom. Edmund had added two armchairs and a table and a desk, a bookcase, and a standard lamp. Neat, methodical Heather would normally have emptied her suitcases and put the contents away. Instead she sat down in one of the armchairs and said, “But you don’t actually know Andrew’s seeing this girl?”
“Do you think anyone could see us together and not know we’re lovers? It’s in the look. He was looking at her like that.”
“Maybe she was a one-night stand.”
“Then why hasn’t he come back to Ismay, all contrite and telling her of his undying love?”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Heather said. “I just don’t want you to be. When I shared the flat with Issy I used to see them together and think they were the perfect lovers, the way a couple ought to be, the way I thought I’d love to be—and never would.”
“Why not?” Edmund sat on the arm of her chair and put his arm around her. “Why on earth not?”
“I don’t know. Well, I do. I just thought a happy life with someone I love
d wouldn’t ever be possible for me. It sounds silly, I know. But never mind me. What can we do for Issy, Ed?”
“Nothing. No one can do anything. Two hundred years ago I could have called him out and had a duel with him on Primrose Hill, and a hundred years ago I could have horsewhipped him. If I did something like that now I’d spend five years in jail.”
“Yes,” said Heather thoughtfully. “Yes, you would.” She smiled up at him. “We’re the perfect lovers now, aren’t we? The way a couple ought to be. Let’s go to bed.”
“Yes, please,” said Edmund.
Chapter Ten
There was a place in the Strand he regularly went to for his lunch. Not always but at least twice a week. If I go there every day at lunchtime, Ismay thought, he’ll come in one day. With a friend perhaps or with several people. It will be humiliating and horrible, embarrassing for him and worse for me, but he will have to speak to me, he will have to tell me. Terrible though it will be, can anything be worse than now? Won’t anything be better than what I suffer now? And is there any other way I can find him?
She had phoned him at work until it was pointless to try anymore. Seb Miller, the man he shared a flat with, had told her at first, repeatedly, that Andrew wasn’t there; then, when she persevered, that he “seemed to have moved out.” Seb was kind and reassuring but she hadn’t believed him. He had moved out only in the way a man sometimes does; because he is spending nights elsewhere and with a new woman. His flat was in Fulham, the area estate agents call “Chelsea borders,” picturesque but unsafe after dark, the lawless precinct of muggers and car thieves and hunters whose prey was mobile phones. It was a long way from Clapham and her job in Regent Street. She had been there only two or three times and always with Andrew. She went there, searching for him, before she tried Brief Lives.
It hadn’t occurred to her that she would be so frightened. She had thought her longing for him, her anguish at his absence, would overcome all other emotion, just as it had overcome her dilemma over Heather, Guy, and the tape. It was early evening when she got there, nearly six, the time he would reach home if he were coming home. She waited, walking up and down because keeping still adds to the stress of someone in her situation. The street was shabby, shaded by the same peeling planes, the trees of London, terraces of Victorian houses of grayish stucco with turnings off which looked much the same, the lights dim, without shops or bus stops or people at this hour. No stranger to London would have believed how high the rents were. She walked up and down, around the block or half around it so that by looking over her shoulder she could keep the house in view. No one was about except the occasional resident who came out and got quickly into a car. A solitary man on foot spoke to her.
“What are you playing at? I’ve been watching you. Can’t keep still, can you?” She didn’t answer but began to walk back the way she had come. “I’m talking to you,” he said.
Then she was frightened. The only sanctuary was a phone box. She went inside it. The door wouldn’t close. The phone itself was unusable, the broken receiver hanging by a shredded cable. She stayed there, breathing in short gasps, until she saw the man pass the box and head for the Fulham Road, talking to himself and laughing. After that she resumed her pacing. At nine, when Andrew hadn’t come, she went up to the front door and rang his bell. It took immense nerve to do this. As soon as she had done it she was praying no one would answer. A sort of hiss came out of the entry phone and Seb Miller’s voice said, “Yes?”
“It’s Ismay.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh, yes.” There was a pause. “He’s not here, Ismay.”
She felt like a creature people trod underfoot. Something whose natural habitation is subterranean. “Yes,” she said. “I see.”
“Are you all right?”
“No,” she said and walked away to get a bus home.
A point must be reached, she thought, when I shan’t care about humiliation anymore. I shall be so low I can get no lower. That’s when I’ll wait here all night. Men will come and rob me of my bag and beat me and probably rape me. I’ll think I deserve it because I’m so low. He’s with that girl now and if I think about that I’ll scream out loud.
Next day she tried Brief Lives.
The way to do it was just to go there. Turn up in the clothes she normally wore for work, a plain black or navy suit, her long black coat over it. She couldn’t do it. He had once said he liked a clinging blue knitted dress she had, he liked her best in that. She wore it to go to this grimmest of rendezvous, over it a blond fauxfur jacket. Her haggard face, overly made up, contrasted badly with the soft pale colors.
Breaking her rule of not drinking at lunchtime, she asked for a glass of the house wine. She had eaten so little in the past days that it went to her head, increasing the beating of her heart. But still she had another. One o’clock went by, half past, ten to two. He wouldn’t come now and she had to go back to work. Dressed the same, she returned to Brief Lives next day. And the next. He never came.
She thought, Seb has warned him. Whether he still shared the flat with him or really had moved out, Seb would have alerted him. And he would have deliberately avoided old haunts, especially those to which in the past he had taken her. If she went to Fulham, he would get Seb to watch for her, phone him when he spotted her outside, warn him off. How did he get people to lie for him? Charm, she supposed, the barrister’s persuasive tongue. That heart-stopping smile, that authoritative voice. She wasn’t the only one tied to him by invisible, unbreakable cords.
Avice Conroy had gone to a Scarlatti recital with Joyce Crosbie, leaving Marion to guard the rabbits. Guard them from what, Marion asked herself. Figaro and Susanna, brother and sister, were large but lean, Abyssinian cat colors, one of them chocolate, the other pale blond, their coats like thick soft plush. Avice got angry when people called them bunnies. Both had mild brown eyes and little in the way of personality. They hopped about, sometimes leaving currant-like droppings in spite of what their owner said, and sometimes lolloping through the rabbit flap into a large hutch with a window and an exit door, which like a conservatory extended six feet or so into the garden.
Apart from sucking up the currants with a hand-held dustette, Marion had absolutely nothing to do and this suited her fine. Money for old chicken feed, it was, or rabbit food. In case Avice got wise to the fact that no rabbit-sitter was really needed, she thought she should perhaps invent some hazard or alarming incident she could say had occurred during the rabbits’ owner’s absence. A firework going off nearby would do—such explosions were no longer confined to Guy Fawkes Day—or even a German shepherd barking next door. Meanwhile she explored the house.
Marion brought all the enthusiasm and precision of a scholarly researcher to investigating other people’s desks, drawers, and other private places of concealment, leaving no scrap of paper or even used envelope unturned. Looking for Avice’s will, she finally found a copy in, of all unexpected places, a drawer in one of the kitchen cabinets where she kept the brochures of instructions for using the oven, fridge, microwave, hair dryer, and alarm clock radio. The large brown envelope contained not one will but four, each invalidating its predecessor. There were approximately two years between them and the most recent had been made some twenty months earlier. Of course Marion’s name appeared in none of them. She would have been astonished if it had, considering the shortness of their acquaintance. But it was apparently time, or soon would be, for Avice to make a new one.
The contents of a will shed a good deal of light on the testatrix’s circumstances. Who, for instance, would have supposed Avice to own not only this place but a terrace of houses in Manchester? Or so many Tesco shares? No wonder she could afford to part with twenty pounds for the unnecessary services of a rabbit-minder. The beneficiaries were the Small Mammals’ Protection League—Marion, a realist, knew she couldn’t shake that—a nephew with an address in Berwickshire and a woman, not apparently a relative, in the Isle of Man. Avice, who was given to making her testamentary
dispositions in elaborate language, had left the Isle of Man woman fifty thousand pounds “in fond memory of our happy schooldays when we first learned of friendship’s joys and consolations.”
If she’d been at school with Avice, thought Marion, she was no chicken. Might drop off her perch at any minute. All this required a good deal of careful consideration. She put the will back exactly where she had found it and when Avice came back half an hour later told her she had caught—and killed—a flea which she had found on Figaro’s back.
“Oh, dear, how dreadful,” said Avice. “I’ll have to take him and his sister to the vet. I didn’t actually know rabbits had fleas. But it’s half a mile away and taxi drivers won’t take them, you know. Afraid they’ll spend a penny, which they very seldom do.”
“I could take them. Well, separately of course. If you’d like to make the appointments. I wouldn’t at all mind carrying one of them in a basket half a mile. They’re so sweet, it would be a pleasure.”
“Would it?” Avice beamed. “I really do need more help with them than I have. Well, I don’t have any. And they deserve the best attention, don’t you think?”
“I absolutely do. And by the way, a fox came into the garden and came quite close up to the windows. I don’t think Figaro or Susanna saw it but I couldn’t help thinking what might have happened if one of them had been outside. If I was here on a more or less regular basis I could see to things like that.”
“Dogs and cats have owners, Marion,” said Avice with a friendly laugh, “but rabbits need staff.”
Arrangements were made to their mutual satisfaction. Marion was to have a regular job with Avice as rabbit manager but to include a little shopping, limited cooking, and occasionally staying overnight. Giving up her job at the South End Green estate agents came as a relief. Of course the sum Avice had named was pitifully small, well below the minimum wage, but no worse than what Mrs. Pringle had provided and look what the result of that had been. Marion was never worried by illegality and had reasoned that the perks would almost make up the shortfall. For instance, she would be doing the household shopping and could manage to make Avice’s weekly budget include all her own eatables. There were, too, a great many nice things lying about the house, silver ornaments, porcelain and glass, not to mention jewelry. Avice, whose sight was fast deteriorating, would hardly miss them. In a burst of confidence she had told Marion she had diamond rings, which had been her mother’s, she could no longer squeeze over her arthritic knuckles. A plan of gradual abstraction must be made.
