by Ruth Rendell
She was already learning that crossing him led to an outburst of bad temper. To her surprise he peeled and cut up the potatoes himself. She fried his share of the salmon, and they finally sat down, not at the table, which looked as if it was never used, but side by side on the sofa in front of the television. There was no wine. Pamela didn’t mind too much because she had secretly brought a flask of vodka with her, from which she had taken surreptitious sips while cooking.
It wouldn’t do, she kept telling herself. There was no point in going on with it. Well, there was a point, just one, but she shied away from facing it. In spite of those preliminary words of his last time, that it was sex they had really come there for, “that side of things,” as her mother used to put it, had been surprisingly good. Or was it just that so much time had passed since the last time? Years, she thought, three or four years. Ivan, who seemed to her grossly insensitive in some areas, stingy and mean-spirited, was tender and gentle and controlled in his lovemaking. She had half expected him to boast about it afterward, that seemed in character, but he hadn’t. Nor had he said, “Was that all right for you?” He knew it had been.
What did it matter if he didn’t take her out for meals, if he wanted to eat chips, if he moaned a bit about taxes being spent on the unemployed? He looked so good. It was nice to lie in his arms and know he really desired her. After all, she wasn’t going to marry him. She wasn’t even going to be his partner, for that surely meant living under the same roof.
They went to bed. And it was just as good as the first time. It was better. He remembered that she had said she should be home soon after eleven and at ten he said he would order a cab for her. They could go to the pub at the end of his street and ask the cab to call for her there. Pamela didn’t much want a drink as she had almost emptied her flask, but she agreed so as not to antagonize him. Did that mean she was afraid of Ivan? Women are afraid of men, she said to herself. Men are afraid of women’s minds and tongues, and women are afraid of men’s violence. It seemed to her that she had hit on a great if unhelpful truth.
They walked down the street, Ivan with his arm around her. He asked if he could see her the next day, and Pamela had to say she couldn’t, not the next day. She had to stay with her sister. She couldn’t ask one of her nieces again so soon.
“Why not? She’s their mother, isn’t she?”
“They both go out to work, Ivan. And Heather’s married. They do their bit, more than their bit actually, but they can’t be there every evening.”
“I’d have thought you could have left your sister on her own. She’s not violent, is she? She won’t break the place up?”
“I do leave her alone sometimes. When I can be sure she’s taken her tranquilizer. But I can’t always be sure.”
Out there in the street, outside the pub, he flew into a rage, shouted at her, “You put your crazy sister before your partner? Is that it? You put your selfish nieces before your partner. Can’t you understand how I feel about you? Does your sister feel about you like I do? Do those selfish girls?”
He took hold of her by the shoulders but not to hurt her. He held her like that for a moment or two while she trembled. Then he said in a quite different tone, a weary tone, “Oh, what’s the use? I need a drink.”
She refused a glass of wine, but he became angry again, so she agreed. It made her head swim. It made her afraid to talk in case her speech came out slurred. After about ten minutes, in which Ivan talked about teenage mothers living on benefit, the taxi came. It wasn’t a black cab but a minicab. Pamela wasn’t happy about it as she had heard too many stories about minicab drivers stealing from their fares or even raping them. Out on the pavement Ivan kissed her passionately in front of the driver and a group of young black men, who cheered and clapped their hands. She had taken it for granted that the cab would have been paid for, but it hadn’t, and when they got to Clapham the driver demanded fourteen pounds.
The first ten minutes of the BBC’s early evening news was all about the United Kingdom’s bid to get the Olympic Games in London in 2012. Avice was indifferent to the outcome and Marion was bored. She was disappointed but not really surprised that Avice had woken up fit and well after the tartufo dessert. After all, she had eaten a very small amount of it. Tonight was to be the night, the pear and almond tart being the poison vehicle. Not that Marion referred to it like that even to herself. The word “painkiller” appealed to her far more, though Avice hadn’t had a recurrence of that ache in her chest and left arm.
A horrible story came next about a lot of dogs and horses left to starve to death in a stable. Avice was upset and wanted to turn it off—thank God no rabbits were involved, Marion thought—but it was quickly over and the following bit wasn’t nearly as disquieting. Avice was one of those people who prefer animals to human beings, so the news that the man a newspaper had called the West End Werewolf had attacked another girl disturbed her less.
“I don’t know why they make such a fuss,” she said. “What do they mean, ‘attacked’? He only puts his hands around their necks and gives them a bit of a push. Turn it off, Marion, will you? I shan’t sleep tonight when I think of those poor creatures.”
Oh, yes, you will, thought Marion, imagining with a shudder the feel of strange hands touching her neck. She skipped out into the kitchen. Lately she’d been remembering the ballet lessons she’d had when she was a child and Fowler not much more than a baby, and she executed a couple of pas de deux and an entrechat on her way to picking the morphine bottle out of her bag. Two slices were cut from the pie and Marion poured morphine liberally over the plate on the left (M comes after A in the alphabet). For the first course she had grilled a piece of fillet steak for Avice and a piece for herself with new potatoes and peas. It was to be a particularly nice meal. After all, it was the last Avice would ever have.
Fifty thousand pounds was a serious sum of money. It should be spent wisely. With the knowledge she had gained from her employment as an estate agent’s receptionist, Marion calculated that she would get two hundred and fifty thousand for her flat or maybe even three hundred. Add another fifty thousand to that and she could buy something quite charming. Not in a basement, for instance. She pirouetted about, humming a Coldplay song, and then she carried the tray into the living room where Avice waited.
It was rather unfortunate, she thought, that the principal story line in Avice’s favorite hospital sitcom happened to deal with the subject of poisoning. And, to be precise, poisoning in a cake for the sake of monetary gain on the part of a nurse. It didn’t, however, put Avice off starting on her slice of pear and almond tart. Starting but not continuing.
She brought a forkful to her mouth and it seemed to Marion that her hand hovered there for far longer than usual, trembled an inch or two from her lips while she made some comment on the homicidal nurse’s appearance. Marion muttered something in reply. Sighing a little, Avice opened her mouth, received the forkful of tart—and if she didn’t quite spit it out, she contorted her face into an expression of nausea, pushed the plate toward Marion, and said, “Taste that!”
“Mine is all right,” Marion murmured.
“I can’t help that. Taste mine.”
One forkful wouldn’t kill her, Marion thought. A crumb or two wouldn’t kill her. Cautiously, gingerly, she tasted a small fragment from Avice’s plate.
“It tastes as if it has been soaked in cough mixture,” said Avice.
It had. Marion went out into the kitchen, poured the dregs from the bottle into a teaspoon, and drank it. Cough linctus, no doubt about it. Someone had emptied out the morphine and substituted Benylin.
Fowler, she thought, always Fowler.
Chapter Seventeen
It was so green. Like the country but not quite like. Eva had never been in Kensington Gardens before, or if she had it was because Daddy had brought her when she was little. They had lived quite near. She tried to remember where but even the name of the street eluded her. She didn’t really know London, only lived in it. You had to. I
t was either London or a big house in Gloucestershire. Anywhere else was unthinkable.
She had driven up to Notting Hill and left the car that had been Daddy’s birthday present on a meter in somewhere called Linden Gardens. It was funny a park being called Gardens and a street too. You didn’t have to put money in the meter until eight-thirty, which was just as well as she’d brought none with her. This morning she was wearing one of her white T-shirts, the one with lace around the neckline, and mid-calf-length pink pants, and she kept stealing glances at her reflection in the windows of parked cars.
The unfamiliar green space was full of trees she didn’t know the names of. Mummy said she didn’t know the names of anything. It was a disgrace, seeing what her schooling had cost. Some of the trees looked like Christmas trees and some had their branches sweeping the ground but their leaves were too big to be weeping willows. Eva ran along an avenue of trees, passing other joggers and race walkers, and meeting men running in pairs. These gave her admiring glances. But most people she saw were walking dogs. Eva liked dogs. She especially liked True, a Labrador named after one of John Peel’s hounds, and would have had him with her but Mummy said keeping a dog in London was cruel.
It was a fine sunny day, early enough for the trees to cast elongated shadows across the sleek turf. Eva turned right and took a ride that cut through these shadows, heading for a tall tower block on the edge of the park. She passed a statue of a man on a horse and a fountain, a little house with its own garden and a fence around it, and more trees and tall bushes with flowers on them. All the other runners were left behind. At one point she had seen a great glassy lake to her left, but that was far behind her now. Almost her last words to herself before she got lost were, “I mustn’t get lost.” Then she was.
Eva had no idea about noting landmarks when you were out in a strange place. A strange-shaped tree, for instance, an unusual building, a glimpse of something known through the branches. If there had been such signs to look out for on her return she hadn’t noticed them. She could still see the tower block, which didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the scenery, and directly ahead of her a peculiar tall kind of spire, a bit like a church but huge, with steps around it and gold all over it and statues clustered on it. She seemed to remember seeing it once before when she’d been to visit her friend in Queen’s Gate years ago while they were both still at school, but she didn’t know what it was and something about it, its size, its strange colors, the gilding on it, unnerved her.
Veering sharply away from it, she crossed the turf between the tallest trees she had yet encountered and at a place where four paths met at a kind of crossroads, came upon a signpost with four arms. The trouble was that she didn’t know where any of the places were that the arms pointed to. Kensington Palace, for instance, the Royal Albert Hall, Exhibition Road. Knightsbridge was familiar because of Harrods and Harvey Nicks but she didn’t want to go there now.
The path she took led her past a big shallow pond that looked as if it ought to have boats on it and children playing but didn’t. The early sun had gone in and a wind sprung up. Now to the left of her was something that looked like a formal garden, the kind of thing friends of Daddy’s had where they lived near Cheltenham. The Campbell-Sedges, of course. It was at their place that she’d met Andrew last year. Apparently, they had known each other since they were kids, but she could never remember things like that. Maybe she’d marry Andrew if he asked her. She liked the idea of a baby. Everyone knew a baby was the best accessory you could have. Look at Britney and Kate Moss. If she had a baby, newspapers might treat her more seriously. Of course she’d have a cesarean so there wouldn’t be any pain.
Beyond the garden and the big house she could see a towering church spire and what might be the back of a street. She had no idea where she was or where she was heading for. For some reason she had left her bottle of water in the car and she was growing thirsty. That reminded her of where she had parked the car and when. She never wore a watch when she was running. What time had it been when she started? Hours and hours ago—well, an hour. Traffic wardens wouldn’t be about yet, not before nine surely.
The path led her through trees that formed another avenue. Ahead of her a spaniel was running, just one solitary dog in the whole park, its owner, a young black man in vest and jeans, strolling behind it. Eva could hear footsteps but they weren’t his. They were behind her.
It wasn’t really like being in the country anymore, for the path was neat and weed-free, and the trees more like Kew Gardens than the Cotswolds. A person could go around and around this place and never find a way out or never find the way she came in. If she didn’t find the way she came in how would she ever find her car? She had forgotten the name of the street where she put it, remembered only that it was somewhere in W11.
The man and the spaniel had disappeared, though she hadn’t seen them go. They must have turned off at this little path on the right. The footsteps behind her were still pattering steadily along and somehow, without looking back, she knew that whoever it was had no dog with him. Or her. Dogs made you feel safe. If she had had True with her she wouldn’t be in a state now, wondering if she’d ever get out, find the car, find her car key, which she’d meant to tie to her shoelace but hadn’t.
The only way the man and the spaniel could have gone was to take this little path which turned off to the right. There seemed to be no other turning. Eva didn’t ask herself why she felt unsafe or why an unknown man and his dog made her feel safer, but it was so, and she had begun to dislike those footsteps behind. At the entrance to the path, where a tall bush with dark leathery leaves stood on either side like guardians of the place, she stopped and looked back. There was no one. The path she had followed, wide, sandy, straight, stretched behind her between a wall of trees.
At this point or after this time, in St. James’s Park, she would have drunk half the contents of her water bottle, but she had left it in the car. Her mouth was very dry and she was aware that it was dry because of anxiety as much as thirst. Fear dried your mouth, Daddy had once told her, though she couldn’t remember why. She took the path the man and the dog had taken, that they must have taken, unless the earth had swallowed them up. Above her, between leafy branches, ran another narrow path, a lane of sky, gray, cloudy, but lit by a pale sun.
Stopping at that junction of ride with path had put an end to her running. She would walk the rest of it, walk now until she came to a street, a pavement, gates perhaps, until she saw a bus, heard a fire engine, a car horn. All she could hear now was those footsteps. Patter-patter. Then they stopped. Whoever it was must have left the path and taken to the turf, the grass that was always out there, beyond shrubs and trees and hedges.
The path was petering out and becoming the brown dusty floor of something like a wood, a thin sparse wood, and beyond it she saw what she’d almost lost hope of seeing. Between the trunks of trees, a long way behind them, a red double-decker bus passed. There must be a road. It could even be the Bayswater Road. She remembered the name now and would have run toward it, but she could see that ahead of her was no way out of the park. She would have to return to that hated path and walk on to where she thought the gate must be. Still keeping her eyes on the spot where the bus had been, she took a step backward, then another. A second bus passed, going the other way. As she peered, trying to locate the gate, she heard the faintest sound, a whisper or rustle behind her, and slowly turning her head, felt a cold finger touch her neck.
Eva screamed. She felt her legs buckle and sink as the finger became a hand, became two hard strong hands, and closed together, digit tips meeting.
A traffic warden found her car at eight forty-one. Spotting it, doing the paperwork, and summoning the clampers would add another one to his tally and enable him to reach his target. As he filled in the forms and began attaching them to windscreen and driver’s door, he felt, as well as satisfaction, relief that the driver hadn’t come back to abuse him, assault him, or spit in his face.
> Chapter Eighteen
“That poor girl,” said Edmund, handing Heather the Evening Standard.
“I’ve seen it,” Heather said. “I wonder if Ismay knows. She never reads a paper these days. Eva really was lovely, but not like a woman. Like a child of twelve.”
“Andrew Campbell-Sedge fancies twelve-year-olds. Haven’t you noticed?”
She could live for ten years, thought Marion. At least ten. There had been a man of a 109 having a birthday party on breakfast television that morning. Was she going to stay with Avice in spite of this setback? Perhaps for a while. She remembered the will. That still stood and would endure. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be a slave, tied to the place. It was time for her poor old father to have a serious illness which required her frequent presence. She was thinking along these lines, wondering whether to give him cancer or coronary heart disease, when her mobile rang. The sound it made was the first few bars of “The Entry of the Queen of Sheba,” and Avice asked her rather crossly if she’d left the wireless on.
Her caller was Barry Fenix. “Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do, Barry. Once seen, never forgotten is what I always say. How are you?”
“Fighting fit as ever. I was just wondering if you’d pop over and have a look at the old lady. I saw her in the garden this morning and I thought she was looking a bit frail.”
“I could do,” said Marion. “Just let me consult the diary.” “The” diary sounded so much more official and important than “my.” She did a little dance on the spot, the cough linctus temporarily forgotten, before picking up the phone again. “Say five o’clock this afternoon?”
“You couldn’t manage anything before that?”
Not if she was wise. Not if she gave an hour to Irene, then went in next door at drinks time. If she hung about a bit, dinner was likely to be suggested…. “Five it must be, I’m afraid, Barry. I’ve a very full day.”
