A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  Where had he seen it before, that wall of leaves? The picture, of course, the painting that must be a picture of this very house. Orcadia Place. He must have been very preoccupied not to have caught on before. He went closer, peering, touching the layers of leaves and the red-gold tendrils that crept across and clung to the brickwork, stroking with one finger the pale-gray door, examining the glass that was like no other glass he had ever seen, but more like solidified clear green water.

  She opened the door before he could ring the bell. Another woman who had been watching for him. What got into them? This one looked as she sounded on the phone, showy, shrill, too old to dress like that. Her eyes went all over him, like groping hands.

  “Come in, Teddy,” she said, as if she had known him for years. “It’s so hot, I expect you’d like a drink.”

  Harriet Oxenholme, she had said on the phone. The bell that should have rung, but hadn’t because of his disturbed concentration, pealed now. The red hair was the same and maybe the nose, but it couldn’t be.… He wasn’t going to stick his neck out, anyway, and look a fool when she didn’t know what he was talking about. Besides, by the time he had taken two steps into the hall he was overcome by something much more important to him, his surroundings, this house.

  It was far and away the most beautiful place he had ever seen. The proportions of this hall, this room into which she took him, the windows, the walls, the carpets, the flowers, the furniture, the paintings, all of it dazzled him. The only place he had ever been in remotely like it was the V and A where the Chances had once taken him, the only place where one could hope, he had thought, to see chairs like these and rugs like this and vases like that. He stared about him, turning this way and that, his eyes going up to the ceiling and down toward the long windows that led into the courtyard at the back.

  People lived here. This woman lived here. And was real, an ordinary middle-aged, long-nosed woman with dyed red hair. Only perfection should be here, only perfect loveliness was fit for it, to be ensconced in this matching beauty. Only Francine. In her white dress, in that creamy brocade chair, her white hand on its white-and-gold arm.

  “What will you drink?” the Harriet woman was saying. “I’ve a glorious Chardonnay on ice, deliciously cold, unless of course you’d fancy something stronger?”

  Teddy shook himself, came back to earth. Why was she offering him drink? For a moment it had gone out of his head why he was there. He felt as if he had been in a dream, the kind where you go to a place to perform some task and there are people there who treat you as if you’ve come to do something quite different. “You’d better show me where you want this cupboard,” he said.

  “Do let’s have a drink first.”

  He nodded, gave in. “Water, then.”

  Her disappointment was obvious. He couldn’t understand it. In the unlikely event of his inviting someone in for a drink he would be very pleased if they drank water and saved him expense. Money probably didn’t mean much to her, she must have lots of it. He took the glass of water absently, not looking at her, she was the least attractive thing in the place, far and away the least. She had poured herself an enormous glass of wine and was eyeing him in a peculiar way over the top of it. He said abruptly, “Could I have a look over this house? See the rest of it, I mean?”

  “You want to go over the house?” Her tone suggested that this was the most bizarre request he could have made.

  “Yes. Is that all right?”

  She nodded. “It’s a rather unexpected request.”

  Because she didn’t see him as an educated craftsman but a common working-class laborer? He turned cold eyes on her and she said hastily, “Of course I’ll take you over the house, I’ll be delighted. This is the dining room,” she said, “and that’s the alcove I want the cupboard in.”

  Teddy stared at the picture above the sideboard. It was a still life, or almost a still life, for present as well as the oranges and the piece of cheese on the dark table was a white mouse. You could see from its expression the mouse’s longing for the cheese and see, too, its fear and wariness. “Is that a Simon Alpheton?”

  He had surprised her. She had set him down as an ignorant working boy, he could tell. Like the mouse, she was confused, but perhaps also like the mouse, if it ever got beyond the confines of the painting or had existence outside it, she moved closer.

  She laid her hand on his arm, on the bit where his sleeve ended and she could touch skin. “Do you know Alpheton’s work?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Then you must have recognized me. Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place.”

  “I recognized the house,” he said. “You were that Harriet?”

  “I don’t think you know that painting as well as you say.” She withdrew her hand. “I wish you’d have that drink.”

  “I don’t drink. What’s in there?” He pointed to a door at the end of the passage beside the staircase.

  “Stairs down to the cellar. It’s never used.”

  “I want to see everything.”

  She opened the door, said impatiently, “It used to be a coal hole, they delivered coal from outside. Right? There’s nothing to see.”

  He looked down the stairs into half-dark. She didn’t switch on the light. He saw a cavern, a stone floor, a bolted door. He turned away. “I’ll measure the alcove,” he said, “and if you give me some idea of what you want I’ll do some drawings. It won’t take long, only about a week.”

  She didn’t feel capable of stopping him a second time. He measured and stood back and took another measurement, looked at the doors on the china cabinet, the paneling on the walls, nodded, put his measuring tape away.

  Her touching him he hadn’t liked. He would have liked to take hold of that brown, wrinkled, red-nailed hand and throw it back at its owner. But he wanted this job. He followed her up the stairs to the first floor, pausing on the way to look at pictures and out of a pretty bow window. Only two bedrooms and two bathrooms up here. He had expected more, but the main bedroom was very big and spread out, with a huge, glorious four-poster in it, a bed draped in creamy white silk and hung with veils of white gauze, and with a picture inside its roof of nymphs and gods, and a white bull with a wreath of flowers on its horns.

  You could sit up in that bed and look at yourself in the curved and curlicued mirror on the white dressing table. Francine could do that. Everyone else would be overcome and diminished by this house, but not Francine. For her it would be a fit setting and he imagined her naked in the bed, dressed in nothing but her own long black hair and the ring he would put on her finger. He had never seen a naked girl, but he had seen paintings. She would be better than the paintings.

  Another attempt was made to make him drink once they were downstairs again and the hand returned to his arm. He slid away from it in a serpentine movement, got up and walked purposefully out into the hall, promising the drawings within the week. The postman dropped a card through the letter-box at that moment. Teddy bent down, picked it up and handed it to her, careful to keep his fingers from touching hers as he did so.

  Once out in the street he was overcome with an unfamiliar feeling: envy. He wanted that house and the things in it. The sensations he had were shared by many of the young, poor and beautiful: how unfair it was that they should be denied benefits which the old and ugly enjoyed.

  In imagination his own home suffered by the comparison. It would look worse than ever now. On the way back he bought paint, matte and gloss, in ivory and coffee, and set about decorating the place. He couldn’t bring Francine here, not the way it was. The irony of it struck him when the phone rang and it was someone else answering his advertisement, not asking him to make fine furniture, but to do just what he was doing at home and paint her house. Paint one room, rather. He was affronted and on the point of saying no, telling her to go to hell, but then he thought of the money, he could ask good money and he had to find employment.

  All evening and all next day he worked on the walls in his ro
om and the living room, washing them down prior to starting with the paint roller. It soothed him, cleaning away dirt and stains, making a bare scrubbed surface. Francine didn’t phone. He was beginning to give up hope. That night, instead of the sideboard dream, he dreamed he was cleaning up the world, getting rid of the ugliness. He had a machine like a giant vacuum cleaner that mowed down motorbikes and chain-link fencing and plastic sheeting, and sucked them into its insides. It plowed into gas stations and the shop fronts of discount stores, breaking them up and swallowing the harsh blues and reds and yellows and chrome. He was going to try it on people, sucking in the old and the ugly and the young and ugly, the deformed mob, but just as he directed his machine on to a skinny old man getting out of a car he woke up.

  The woman who had called was a Mrs. Trent. She was not in the least like Harriet Oxenholme and her house in Brondesbury Park was very different from Orcadia Cottage. Teddy looked around her poky living room, stuffed with a fat and shiny pink brocade three-piece suite and varnished mock-walnut veneer, and gave her as estimate the first sum that came into his head. He must have set it too low, for she accepted with alacrity. When could he start? Wednesday, he said.

  He went down to the Chenil Gallery to inquire if anyone had asked about buying his mirror. No one had. He didn’t really want to sell it, but he might if someone offered the asking price of eight hundred pounds. It was quite a distance to St. John’s Wood from there, but on the other hand it was on his way, so he got out of the tube train and walked over to Orcadia Place. Just to look. That first time he hadn’t noticed the medallion of the two cherubs with folded wings or the row of blue and green tiles under the eaves and he couldn’t remember the falcon heads on the gateposts.

  No one else phoned. He looked up New Departures in the phone book and wrote down the number on the paper where he had written her home number. All that weekend, while he painted the walls and cleaned the Edsel and made his drawings, he thought about Francine. Not about what she felt or thought or was doing or might feel about him, not about her relationship with the fat, fair-haired woman who had scolded him, but solely about the way she looked and smelled and sounded. He seated her on battlements and on a white pedestal and found himself drawing, instead of designs for a cupboard, her face. He had made seven drawings before he got it right and was satisfied.

  19

  Noele talked to her like a Victorian householder whose housemaid has followers. Francine had read enough novels of the period to recognize the attitude and the tone. She listened in silence, but not meekly. A young man had come into New Departures on the previous day, the Tuesday, and asked for her, spoken in a vulgar accent and insolent tone as if he had the right to go where he pleased and do as he liked, and told Noele to give her a message. Who did he think he was? Who did she, Francine, think she was? It was out of the question for her to carry on some kind of intrigue in Noele’s establishment.

  “What was the message?” said Francine.

  Noele laughed unpleasantly. “I’ve passed it on to Julia. You can ask her.”

  Francine didn’t. She asked her father. He was in London for the whole week and when he got home that evening she asked him if he had a message for her. Julia was in the kitchen, cooking dinner.

  Richard frowned. “Do you know this boy, Francine?”

  “Of course I do.” She said it sharply for her. The abruptness was sufficiently out of character for her father to look up, concerned. “He’s a friend of Holly’s boyfriend—well, someone he knows. They were at university together. Holly’s boyfriend introduced us.”

  “Us?” said Richard. The word hung ominously in the air.

  “He introduced him to me.”

  “I must say I’m surprised. He sounds a rough customer. Julia says he is very badly spoken. Do you like him?”

  “What was the message?” Francine said again.

  “Oh, something about you phoning him.” Richard looked unhappy. “He said you have his number. Do you, Francine?”

  She didn’t answer. She might have if Julia hadn’t come in. Francine recognized the dress she was wearing, a pale-blue crêpe Jean Muir that had hung on Noele’s rack since first she went to work there. Painfully and slowly, she had sewn new buttons on it herself. Julia, in it, was a clashing of primary colors, blue, yellow, red.

  “Noele won’t let him into the shop again,” Julia said, “you can be sure of that. You have to ring the bell to get in and if she sees him she just won’t open the door. She has promised me that.”

  Two old witches was the expression which came into Francine’s mind. It was Holly’s description and it shocked her because she seldom thought in such crude terms. “I’m not enjoying working in that shop,” she said.

  Julia made no reply. “Your dinner’s on the table.”

  “Give it a little longer, Francine,” Richard said pleadingly. “Give it a chance. You’ve only been there a month.”

  “Yes, this world would soon grind to a standstill if everyone gave up a job the moment conditions weren’t quite perfect. Come and have your dinner.”

  Richard recognized the feeling he had for what it was and didn’t much like it or himself. He was jealous. Jealous of a cocky young man with a lower-class accent who had been to one of those colleges that these days were called universities. Possessiveness, it was also called, the fear of losing his precious daughter. But it made him look at Julia with new eyes. Julia was right, Julia knew and understood. She would keep his daughter safe for him, close to him, she would put on the full armor of guardianship and go forth against the enemy with banners flying.

  Once he had loved Julia and he would again. Being away from her so much refreshed him and reawakened his feeling for her. They had both recognized that whatever had gone before in Francine’s life, she had now reached that most difficult of all ages. Vigilance such as had never yet been attempted was called for. Maybe they could even think of living in Oxford now, selling the house and moving by Christmas …

  Jennifer used to have an uncanny way of reading his thoughts. He would be about to comment on something that came into his head quite unconnected with their prior conversation and before he could get the words out she had uttered the very thing he had been about to say. Julia had never done that, but now she did. Its effect was to endear her to him.

  “I was wondering, darling, if I should think of going up to Oxford and doing a bit of house hunting. Of course I’d take Francine with me. On one of her days off.”

  “I was having much the same thought myself,” said Richard, and from sitting some distance from her he moved to place himself beside her on the sofa.

  “I think it a very good idea for her to have some say in the choice of her new home. It’s all part of this gradual assumption of responsibility I’m recommending for her. After all, she will be living there just as much as we will, both during her three years at the university and afterward. And I think as near the center of the city as possible, don’t you? We won’t want to be at a distance from her and she won’t want a lot of traveling.”

  “You might go while I’m in Stockholm.”

  He took her hand and held it.

  * * *

  If Noele hadn’t made that fuss and Julia been so dictatorial and her father asked all those questions, and Holly on the phone tried to promote James’s interest while claiming to have forgotten who the mirror maker was, Francine might not have given much more thought to Teddy Brex. He might have quietly slid from her mind, perhaps to be relegated to her memory merely as the first boy who ever admired her.

  But the opposition of all these people made her think about him. Their dislike aroused her sympathy. It was outrageous to condemn someone because he didn’t speak like you did; awful to ostracize someone for walking into a shop and asking a question. She remembered the odd things he said, like how he would give the mirror to his woman to see her face in. And how he had waited in the bus shelter for her, waited for hours just to see her.

  He began to fill her thou
ghts. That mutilated little finger on his left hand, how had that happened? And how could he do such a daring thing as push up her sleeve and write on her wrist? She remembered the feel of his skin on hers and it made her shiver, but not unpleasantly. In the shop one afternoon it occurred to her out of nothing, out of the blue, that he was very good-looking. Up until that moment it had hardly struck her. She was in the workroom, ironing that most difficult of all things to iron, a white cotton shirt, when the shop bell rang. The bell was always replied to by Noele’s buzzer that operated the door, but this time there was no answering buzz. No one had been let in.

  Of course she couldn’t be sure and she wasn’t going to ask, but she thought it was Teddy who had come to the door. He had come and been sent away. It was then that she felt the first flutter of fear: that they would keep repulsing him until he got tired of trying and gave up. He would think they acted on her behalf and that she wanted to be rid of him as they did.

  Maybe he would be in the bus shelter, waiting for her, like that first time. He wasn’t and she felt a pang, as if she had lost something she valued. Holly phoned—the first time for a long while—to say she and Christopher were going clubbing and James was coming and would Francine like to join them. Her father would have let her go, provided he had known who she was going with and where, and he did know these people and approved of them, but her father had gone away that afternoon. If she made all kinds of promises to Julia permission would probably be given, but as she thought of those promises—to take taxis, to phone home, to stay with the others whatever happened, to be in by midnight, poor Cinderella that she was—she couldn’t be bothered. Besides, she didn’t really know James and wasn’t sure whether she liked him or not.