by Ruth Rendell
Teddy’s ring, which she had been wearing hung on a ribbon around her neck, she took off and slipped on to her finger. The third finger of her right hand. Perhaps one day, in the distant time to come, when all this with Julia had somehow been made to come right, when she had been to Oxford and was an independent professional woman, when Teddy was a successful artist, then and only then she might move that ring on to her left hand.
He had heard, he couldn’t remember where, of slaves sleeping across the doorway of a master’s room. And the idea tempted him, though he wasn’t a slave and those dead weren’t his masters, but to be a guardian of them, a watchdog, to protect them from whoever might come, that was strangely attractive. Until the wall was built and the cellar, to all intents and purposes, no longer there.
But no one would come and he wouldn’t do it. He bathed, went to bed in Harriet’s bed and dreamed he was dismembering furniture, the way he actually had taken apart the dining suite. But when he came to carry the pieces out, daily depositing another segment or joint into a waste bin, he looked into the bag and saw not a carved piece of stained and polished wood, but a severed hand and Harriet’s foot in its high-heeled shoe.
27
Bricking up the hole in the wall would have been a quick and simple task if there were no question of how the final result looked. If, for instance, a wall of rough, bulging, uneven masonry would serve as well as a smooth one. Teddy wanted to do a proper job. He wanted to make it look beautiful and as if no doorway and no door had ever been there. So he worked slowly and meticulously, laying his courses of bricks in perfect alignment with the existing structure. One surprising discovery he made was that his father’s trade was not the child’s play he had always believed. There was skill in it, there were techniques and methods which he had never learned. But he managed, with a good deal of trial and error, and by lunchtime when he was due to leave and meet Francine six courses of bricks were in place.
Holly de Marnay’s flat was in a street off Kilburn High Road, which the agents described as “West Hampstead borders.” It was a shabby place of late-Victorian terraced houses, streets which had been tree-lined but were now car-lined as well. Fallen leaves and plastic litter were blown about on the pavements by the wind. Teddy felt a scornful wonder that anyone who had the chance of living where Holly’s family did, in a fine big house by Ealing Common, could choose to slum it in this place.
For independence? He had had independence all his life and it was a precarious, troublesome business. What you want if you can get it, he thought, is a beautiful home with people to look after you, which she had had and rejected. The house where the flat was looked one of the worst-kept in the street, with broken steps going up to the front door and two dilapidated pillars at the foot of them, on one of which sat a headless stone lion and on the other a child’s woollen glove, no doubt picked up in the road. He rang the bell that looked as if it might be the right one.
He was expecting Holly to answer it, but it was Francine who came down. She was wearing a dress, a long black dress with a light rose-colored jacket over it and a long chain of pink beads. Her hair was plaited into a loose braid. She took his hand and led him in, put up her face for a light kiss, but her beauty was too much for him and he took her in his arms in the dark hall, kissing her deeply.
All his vague sensations of disappointment in her were gone. She was perfect. She was his beautiful treasure. Her skin was softer than velvet, smoother than wax. While he had her he could care less than nothing for whoever and whatever awaited him upstairs.
Holly came up to him in her aristocratic manner, holding out her hand and saying, “Hi, how do you do? We met at that exhibition, do you remember?”
Teddy nodded. Of course he remembered. That was where he had met Francine. The room they were in appalled him. For one thing it was filthy, a great cavernous one-time drawing room, with folding doors and a ruined hardwood floor, scuffed and stained and pitted, and a hugely high ceiling hung with a gray metal chandelier and, too, with festoons of dusty cobwebs. The smell was a mingling of aromatherapy oils and marijuana.
Christopher was there, reclining on a settee covered in a polyester tiger skin, and there were two girls of the kind Teddy actually disliked letting his eyes rest on. One was fat with curly black hair and silver rings clipped all over her ears and her left eyebrow. The other was a waif-like creature, straw-colored skin and wispy hair, wearing washed-out blue denim overalls and brown suede knee boots. He didn’t catch their names, which hardly mattered since he had no intention of using them.
“I’ll show you the rest of it if you like,” Holly said.
“Of course he’d like,” said Francine, linking her arm in his. “And I’d like. I’ve been waiting for him to come so that I can see it.”
Was she implying that he was late? He glanced suspiciously at her. He was never late. They went out into the hall and through a door into a bedroom. You could see that one big bedroom had been made into three bedrooms and another into two.
“Who put those partitions up?” said Teddy. “Bodger and Leggett?”
Appreciative laughter greeted his old joke. Perhaps Holly really hadn’t heard it before. “If Francine comes to be our fourth girl you can carry out some much-needed improvements. Be our builder.”
“You didn’t tell me,” he said.
She squeezed his arm. “Because there’s nothing to tell. I’m not coming. I can’t. They’d never let me.”
Holly laughed. “Can’t you abduct her, Teddy?”
The bedrooms were all the same, ugly cupboards, three of them with mattresses on the floor. When you had to do that it was another story, but to do it from choice …! The bathroom had a claw-footed bath, but not the latest fashion kind. This one had been put in when bathrooms were a daring innovation and since then had taken about fifteen coats of paint. Flakes of it, peeling off, disclosed a pattern of black islands in a green sea.
“Occasionally,” said Holly, “you get out of the bath a most peculiar bruise color, as if you’d been beaten up.”
She talked like an actress in one of those British films of the forties you sometimes saw on television. He had nothing to say to her or to Christopher. But while they ate their lunch in a pizza place in West End Lane he made the effort for Francine’s sake. He told them about the work he was doing, leaving out the part about painting Mrs. Trent’s house and stressing his cabinetmaking. The temptation to talk about Orcadia Cottage was very strong, he hardly knew why, perhaps because, apart from Francine, it was all he thought about at present.
“I’ve got a contract for a conversion,” he said. “It’s a house in St. John’s Wood. I’m doing it while the people are away.”
“I wish you’d do a conversion for us,” Holly said. “Would you? When you’ve got time? Our landlord’s my uncle’s friend and I’m positive he’d say yes if I ask him terribly nicely.”
“Yes, we’ve never actually known anyone who can do this sort of thing, have we, Holl?” said Christopher.
“We have no skills, poor us, and we do tremendously admire someone who has.”
He had an idea they might be sending him up, but afterward, when he asked Francine, she said no, they really meant it. He mustn’t be suspicious of people, lots of people were really nice. Not in his experience, he thought, but he didn’t say that.
Holly and Christopher drank a lot, spirits as well as wine, vodka mainly. What was there about that stuff that looked like thick water? He liked to see Francine with a glass of cold white wine in her hand, not so much drinking it as holding the chilly glass, frosted with droplets, her parted lips touched by a gleam of wine. Like a girl in a cover photograph on one of those magazines that were too expensive for him to buy. Like a girl in a foreign film, in Paris maybe or Madrid, sitting outside at a table, waiting for her lover, waiting for him.
The one they went to see wasn’t like that and there were few young people in it. Teddy couldn’t understand why anyone would want to see a film about Queen Vi
ctoria falling in love with an old servant and Francine’s enthusiasm he found incomprehensible. For most of the second half of it he kept his eyes shut, dreamed about acquiring ten thousand pounds and taking Francine shopping to expensive clothes shops in Knightsbridge, and buying her black dresses and white dresses made by top designers and floor-length velvet coats with big fur collars.
Back at Holly’s, they all wanted him to take them for a ride in the Edsel. It puzzled them that he hadn’t mentioned arriving in it. While they had been in the restaurant and the cinema someone, a child probably, had scored the words “Shit yank car” across the top of the boot with a rusty nail. Christopher was loud in his indignation. He wanted to call the police. Teddy found he cared very little about the damage to the Edsel’s bodywork, the sentiment written there was very much his own, and he knew the police would treat such a complaint with incredulity. They had other things to do, especially in this neighborhood. But he took them all around the block and up and down West End Lane, Holly waving graciously to passersby like a member of the Royal Family.
It was still only seven when he was able to take Francine away. She gave him an unpleasant surprise when she said she wouldn’t come back home with him. He found a place where he could pull in and park and he sat staring at her.
“I’m sorry, Teddy. If I do I’ll have to leave again almost immediately. There’s no point in my coming back with you if I can’t stay.”
“Then why,” he said, “did we waste the whole day with those people?”
“Is that how you saw it, as a waste? They’re my friends.”
He picked up her hands. They were exceptionally pretty hands, of a narrowness usually only seen in Asian women, long-fingered, the nails perfect ovals, and creamy white. But what he liked best about them was the pure smoothness of the skin, not a line and scarcely a crease, the veins, instead of root-like, pale-blue shadows under the milky surface. He brought them to his lips, kissing the nails, the knuckles, the delicate membrane between forefinger and thumb. “It’s my place, isn’t it? You don’t like my place. I don’t blame you, I said it was a dump.”
She was amazed and somehow disconcerted. To have her feelings so entirely misunderstood wasn’t a new experience for her, but she hadn’t expected it from Teddy.
“It’s a horrible hole,” he said, “and it’s not fit for you to be in. I know that. I never wanted to take you there, but I didn’t have a choice.”
“Teddy, it’s not that. I love your house. Haven’t I said so over and over? I love it.”
“If you really did you’d come back with me.”
“I can’t. Julia’s alone. I’m afraid of what she may do.”
“Why do you need these people?” he said. “These so-called friends? This woman? You have me. I have you and you have me. We don’t need other people.”
She said breathlessly, “Give me back my hands.”
Her face was flushed. She was excited and he had excited her. His heart began beating with steady, heavy thuds. “You don’t ever need to go back. You can stay with me day and night.”
She snatched her hands from him, turned away her face. “Take me to a tube station. Please.”
He said lifelessly, “I’ll drive you all the way home.”
He couldn’t afford it, he couldn’t really afford to drive the Edsel at all. But he turned around a roundabout as soon as he could and drove her along the North Circular Road out to Ealing and let her out under the trees where they had parted that first time. She gave him one kiss, and then she jumped out of the car and ran.
The garage was large, but not large enough to accommodate the Edsel. It was a pity as he would have preferred not to leave it out there in the mews, attracting attention as it always did wherever it might be. Not that there was anyone’s attention to attract on this evening. There seldom was. On Monday morning he would find a place where they sold spray paint in cans and see if they had a pale primrose one to cover up those incised letters on the boot top.
He entered through the back gate and closed it behind him. It occurred to him then that from the rear the house didn’t look like a house at all but like a square bush with eyes in it. They were well into October now—wasn’t it time those leaves fell off? Or were they the kind that didn’t fall? The street lamp shone in here, but he switched on his flashlight. He squatted down and examined the manhole cover. A beautiful piece of work, he noticed for the first time: Paulson and Grieve, Ironsmiths of Stoke, and a laurel wreath that someone had designed with considerable skill and taste. He wouldn’t junk it, he’d keep it, it was worth keeping.
Somewhere, among all these paving stones, front and back, hidden perhaps or half-hidden by overhanging plants, must be one of just the right size which he could prize up and fit into the gap removing the cover would leave. Fit in and cement in place. That was a task for another day, for later in the coming week. He had other things to do first.
He let himself into the house by the back door and returned to his courses of brickwork. There he worked steadily, taking it slowly, but growing accustomed to the task and also becoming more expert. To be content only with perfection was his aim. If a brick jutted even a millimeter out of truth he took it down and started again. By the time he had completed a wall to fill the space where the doorway had been it was midnight.
But they were sealed up in there, those two. It was almost as if they no longer existed, as if by creating a doorless tomb for them he had magicked them into the dust he swept up and vacuumed away. Tomorrow he would set about plastering over the brickwork. And when that was done, perhaps even before it was done, he would bring Francine here. That was the solution to all their problems. He couldn’t rent the elegant apartment he had had in mind, he didn’t have the money or the means of raising any, but he had something better and it was free and available.
No one lived here. The owner of the house was gone forever. In a way it was the Keith situation all over again. Just as he had seen to it that Keith died so that he could occupy Keith’s house, so Harriet too had died and left him in possession. Those properties weren’t his and, as far as he could see, never would be. But they were more his than they were anyone else’s, there was no one to dispute his occupancy and, provided he paid the services bills that must inevitably arrive, no one to evict him.
He would bring Francine here. Tomorrow. He could continue with the work that had to be done. Now the hole in the wall was bricked up she would never guess a door had ever been there, but simply suppose the plaster needed renewing. A plan began taking shape in his mind. He would tell her he had acquired the place in exchange for certain essential work that must be done. It would, of course, be preferable to make her believe that the house was his, but there were too many difficulties in the way of that. Harriet’s clothes in the wardrobe, for instance. All the valuable furniture and ornaments and pictures she would know he couldn’t have afforded to buy. His lack of familiarity with the workings and arrangements of the house. She must be taught to believe he had taken on some sort of lease …
She would love it. It was so exactly suited to her as if it had been designed and built and furnished for her. And once she had seen it all and lain in that gorgeous bed with him, seen herself in those mirrors, felt the soft carpets and the slippery silk hangings, she would forget about having to go home early. She would stop telling him lies about this Julia woman.
And once he had her here he would be able to make love to her. These surroundings were what he needed, he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it before. His failure wasn’t due to the presence of the Edsel, for the Edsel was clean now and empty, just an ordinary rather big and grotesque car, but to that squalid place where, although they were dead and gone, his parents and Keith remained as ugly and inhibiting presences.
Here everything would be different. He must be the kind of man, and he rather liked the idea of himself in this role, who could only perform the act of love with a beautiful woman in a beautiful environment. The former he h
ad, no one was lovelier than Francine, and now he would place her in the setting fit for her. Then and only then would he find with her complete possession.
He drove home and put the Edsel back in its place in the garden, under the carport.
28
Many times Julia wished she had made a note of Jonathan Nicholson’s address. All she knew was that he lived somewhere in Fulham, but when she looked in the telephone directory she could find no J. Nicholson in SW6. Perhaps she could find his car again and perhaps that envelope would still be on the dashboard shelf.
She could go out looking for it only while Francine herself was out, for she still adhered to her principle of never allowing the girl to be in the house alone. And the difficulty there was that when Francine was out the car would not, of course, be parked in this vicinity. Francine and Jonathan Nicholson would be out in it somewhere, would probably have gone in it to his house in Fulham. Julia believed that if only she had had a chance to hunt for the car while Francine was at home she would certainly have found it.
Her opportunity came when Richard arrived back in England and took two days off at home. Julia said she was having lunch with Jocelyn and didn’t feel it would be right to cancel the engagement. She disliked lying, but told herself that the end justified the means.
She spent two hours searching for the red sports car, walking up and down the parallel streets which radiated from this main road like ribs from a spine, and twice she thought she had found it. Perhaps she had found it, she couldn’t be sure. The disappointing thing was that in neither car was there an envelope on the dashboard shelf addressed to Mr. Jonathan Nicholson. When she got back Richard said Francine had gone out. She had an interview for a job and afterward she was seeing a friend. He hadn’t liked to ask her who the friend was and where they were going.
