A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  No woman had ever before paid for any meal eaten by Franklin. It was a novel situation and strangely exciting. When they parted he asked if he could see her again and two months later they went on holiday together to Lugano. That had been five years before.

  Now, in a borrowed villa outside San Sebastian, or rather, at that precise moment, sitting on the terrace of a restaurant and looking at the great curved bay and the cresting waves, Franklin said not very romantically, “Shall we give it another go?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We don’t have to get married unless you’re fussy about that. Nobody cares these days. But we do rub along rather well together, don’t you think?”

  “We always did,” said Anthea, “until you took up with that red-haired cow.”

  “Calling names doesn’t help. I think she’s got a teenager in tow, very young anyway. I’ve seen all the signs.”

  “She’ll take a lot of keeping. From what you say she’s an expensive bitch. I could help with that, but I draw the line at someone else’s toy boy.” Anthea looked speculatively at him over the rim of her glass. “You’re sure it’s me you want and not De Valera?”

  Franklin smiled his death’s-head grin to take the sting out of what he had to say. “If we wait much longer the poor old boy will have gone to the Happy Hunting Ground.”

  Recalling from somewhere or other that new plaster must be left to dry, for at least a day and perhaps more, Teddy got to work next morning on the backyard. He had woken early, for a few seconds with no idea where he was. Then he remembered. He was up and dressed and outside soon after seven.

  It was still dark. The day ahead would be misty and damp. Without too much difficulty he lifted the manhole cover and laid it on the flagstones. A good many solutions to the problem of the open manhole had suggested themselves to him: a flowerbed planted in a fiberglass liner with maybe one tree in it or a rosebush, a birdbath on a plinth or a second marble urn, another paving stone set in cement like the rest of the components of the courtyard. He thought wistfully of creating something beautiful and of transforming this rather dull backyard. What he would have liked best was a statue, a figure, for instance, of Francine in bronze or marble.

  That was impracticable, he wasn’t a sculptor and the materials in any case would be too expensive. A flagstone inserted in the opening would be the best and safest idea. By the time daylight had come, a pearly cold daylight that seemed to bear no relation to a risen sun, he had found what he was looking for, not in this courtyard but on the edge of the paved area at the front of the house.

  The flagstones up against the flower borders on either side were loose and had simply been laid flat on the soil below. However, only one of them was approximately the right shape and size. Teddy realized that he would have to make a wooden frame to insert in the aperture, rest the stone on it and cement it in place. He prized up the stone and watched the woodlice he had disturbed running all directions. A couple of snails adhered to its underside. He brushed them off and when he looked back on the doorstep had the satisfaction of seeing a thrush intent on cracking the shell of one of them, beating it against the flags.

  Crumbs of soil and flakes of stone made a trail through the house as he passed. He would clear it up later, have a good clean. It was essential to maintain the house in immaculate condition, in a better state, in fact, than that in which he had found it. The frame he would make of oak, for this was a wood which was practically indestructible, everlasting and undamaged by water, drought or time.

  He took measurements, hid the flagstone under the silvery gray shrubs at the side of the courtyard and replaced the manhole cover. His next task would be the purchase of matte white vinyl paint and more ready-mixed cement. A piece of oak he had at home would do for the frame. If not, that would be something else to buy. He washed his hands thoroughly, found a dustpan and brush and the vacuum cleaner, and removed from the floors all traces of the passage of that flagstone through the house. Then he drove home, stopping for the paint and the cement on the way.

  Luckily, he had a piece of oak he thought might be big enough. There was no time to waste and he got busy with his saw. He was meeting Francine at three. While he worked he thought about Harriet Oxenholme’s bank card. Not the two credit cards, the Diners Club and the American Express, but the Visa Connect card which, from observing the behavior of other people at cash dispensers, he knew might be used for extracting money from a bank account. How did it work? What did you do?

  Half an hour was all the time he needed to complete the drawings for the built-in cupboards in the Highgate house. He put them in an envelope with his estimate, addressed the envelope to Mr. Habgood and went out to buy a stamp. The bank next to the post office had a cash dispenser beside its front entrance. Teddy eyed it speculatively. He only had to wait a few minutes.

  A woman, a young girl really, approached the dispenser and looked over her shoulder to the right and the left before taking a card out of her bag. Trying to be streetwise, Teddy thought. Well, he wasn’t going to lay a finger on her. The idea made him shudder, for although she was about the same age as Francine, she was in every way inferior, overweight, spotty and with stubby red hands.

  He watched those hands, the fingers with the bitten nails. She put the card into a slot and a lot of green letters came up on to the screen. He got as close behind her as he dared and just made out that the machine was asking for a PIN. That must be the number she punched in. She suddenly looked around sharply and he retreated to be on the safe side, started walking away. Looking back over his shoulder he saw the card reappear and, with a sudden feeling of envy, a wad of cash come out.

  So you had to have a number. Just a number the bank gave you? Or your phone number? Your date of birth, if there weren’t too many digits? Somehow, he knew Harriet wouldn’t have used her date of birth. What would she have used? If he could find that number his worries were over.

  All that morning Julia’s sufferings had been terrible. She had no belief in Francine’s story that Miranda’s father might be offering her a job and she was going to see him. Why would a man like that, a tycoon, have a job for an untrained eighteen-year-old anyone could see was emotionally disturbed? She had begun her pacing just after Francine left the house. On one of her marches to the front window she saw a young man sitting in the bus shelter. He was fair-haired and of a heavy build, but that didn’t fool Julia. Jonathan Nicholson was clever and would stop at nothing to get Francine. Disguise was an area in which he was an expert and to lighten his hair and flesh out his body was child’s play to him.

  If he was bent on defying her she was not going to rise to his bait so easily. Instead of going immediately across the road, she opened the window, leaned out and stared at him. He stared back. He had seen her, he knew she was watching him. She moved slowly, in a deceptively casual manner, no manic rushing this time, put on her coat, buttoned it, wrapped a scarf around her neck, opened the front door.

  He was still there, but standing up now. She hesitated, thought, suppose he attacks me? Suppose he strikes me, pushes me into the road? It was a risk she had to take. For Francine’s sake, to save Francine from him. Nothing he could do to her mattered when it was a question of Francine’s safety. She walked briskly across the road to the island. A stream of traffic held her there. The last vehicle in it was the bus.

  That was just her luck. To be so near to her quarry and have him get away yet again. She couldn’t cross until the bus had gone and he, of course, had gone with it. Or had he? She hadn’t seen him get on it, only its arrival, a big red screen before her eyes, and seen its departure wipe him away. He might simply have hidden himself, calculating that she would believe him gone with the bus, while in fact he was hiding behind that fence or in that garden or down that side turning.

  Julia searched for some time. She went into several gardens and even lifted the lid off someone’s wheelie-bin to see if he was lurking inside. The householder put a head out of an upstairs window and sh
outed at her. Then she went up and down the street looking for Jonathan Nicholson’s car. Of course, she failed to find it because he had been using the bus, hadn’t he? His car must be in for a service or perhaps he had sold it, got rid of it because it was such a giveaway and he knew she was on to him.

  Eventually she went back home, but an hour or so later she understood that he had been there all the time, for she saw him back in the bus shelter, his hair restored to its natural dark, his extra weight shed. This time he was accompanied by several others. Bodyguards, she thought, heavies was what they called them.

  She didn’t go back. She found Miranda’s number in Francine’s address book and called it. A girl who certainly wasn’t Miranda answered, thus confirming Julia’s worst fears. Julia asked to speak to Miranda’s father and the girl said he was at his office and then, hastily and obviously untruthfully, that she’d heard Francine was seeing him about a job. It was just the sort of lie a young girl would tell, confident that by so doing she was serving her friend.

  Because she didn’t want Jonathan Nicholson to see her go out and thus leave the field clear for him, Julia waited until he and his companions had gone once more into hiding and then she took her shopping bag and went down to the High Street. In the continental patisserie she bought olive ciabatta and date bread and chocolate croissants and several packets of white chocolate finger biscuits. Much of this she ate for her lunch, gorging until she felt sick. When Richard phoned in the late afternoon she put on a bright, sweet manner, telling him everything was fine, it was a lovely autumn day, and Francine—imagine—had gone out with Miranda.

  “I thought you were going to say, with that boy,” said Richard.

  “He’d like to. But she’s not having any, or that’s how I see it. The reality is, he’s been watching for her from that bus shelter most of the day.”

  “He’s what?”

  “I’m afraid he does a lot of that. He’s quite obsessed.”

  “He’s not stalking her, is he?”

  Julia suddenly felt very frightened. Of course Jonathan Nicholson was stalking her, but if she admitted that to Richard he would bring the police in, maybe take legal advice. She didn’t want interference with her management of Francine, she didn’t want busybodies coming in and taking away her control. Her denials poured out. “Oh, no, no, what an idea! I wouldn’t have that, I’d stop that. Let me have a look … he’s gone now, disappeared. Somehow I have a feeling, an actual gut feeling, darling, that he won’t come back.”

  “I hope you’re right. I should be home by six. Will Francine be home?”

  “Oh, yes, quite early. She promised.”

  “If you stayed here and slept here and were here all the time it would be all right.” Teddy spoke sullenly, in a grudging, accusing tone. “I could do it right if you were here with me.”

  His grim looks troubled her. He ceased to be handsome or fun or attractive when he drew his black brows together and pushed out his lower lip. Paradoxically, he then looked much younger than his real age, like an overgrown naughty child.

  “You won’t do what I want” he said. “I only want you to do what I want, it’s not much to ask, it’s simple enough.”

  “But I do do what you want, Teddy. I let you wrap me in all those silk things and draperies and whatever, and shine lights on me and put all that jewelry all over me, I do let you, but I can’t do it all the time. It makes me feel—well, awkward, I don’t know, uneasy. I can do it for a bit, but not for hours and hours.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Maybe go for a walk sometimes, have a meal somewhere, go out in the car, talk. I’d really just like to talk. We never talk.”

  They were in Harriet’s bedroom, Francine on the bed whose sheets he had changed, putting on the pillows white organza slips he had found in a cupboard. She had been naked at his request, hung only with all the many pearl necklaces he had discovered among Harriet’s jewelry, but now, disconcerted by something she didn’t know the name of, his obsessive gaze, she had wrapped herself in the white embroidered bedcover.

  “I’m sorry, Teddy, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t think it’s quite right you dressing me up, or not dressing me up really, and staring at me. It’s—” she nearly said “sick” but stopped herself“—not the way it should be.”

  Instead of answering he said, “If we’re in the complaints department I’d just like to say that I hate the way you dress. I hate your clothes, jeans and shirts and jackets a guy might wear on a building site. The first time I saw you you had a dress on.”

  “I can wear a dress if that’s what you want.”

  “Find something in the cupboard. Go on. There are plenty. She won’t want them. I’ve got a job to do—remember? I’d best get on with it.”

  Left alone, Francine put on her underclothes and opened the wardrobe door. The interior reminded her of Noele’s shop. Here hung the dresses and suits of a middle-aged woman of flashy taste, one partial to pearls, sequins and rhinestones. The colors were mostly red, black and white, but one dress of velvet was a startling emerald. Even if she had liked them she wouldn’t have wanted to put on any of these garments. They weren’t hers and she couldn’t believe their owner wouldn’t object to her wearing them.

  She expected the second wardrobe to contain a more casual line of clothes, but the things inside it were all men’s. Suits, sports jackets, trousers, a camel-hair winter coat and the sort of raincoat policemen wear in television serials. A man’s clothes, but not a young man’s. It was no business of hers, Francine decided, and remembering what Teddy had said about her jeans and her shirt, after some small hesitation she put on a black silk dressing gown.

  Whether Teddy wanted her to be with him while he worked she wasn’t sure, but there was nothing else to do in this house. She went downstairs and, guided by the strong and heady smell of plaster and paint, found him in a corner of the hall at the back near the kitchen door.

  When he saw her he jumped. “I didn’t hear you.”

  She laughed. “Julia would say you had a guilty conscience. Well, she’d more likely say you’d a guilty super-ego.”

  He didn’t smile. “Where did you find that dressing gown?”

  “It belongs to your friend—employer, client, whatever she is. Teddy, did you know that other wardrobe is full of men’s clothes? You said she lived alone.”

  He thought about what she had said. “They must be Marc Syre’s.”

  “But he died before either of us was born.”

  “I don’t know, then. Does it matter?”

  She wasn’t frightened of him, only puzzled. He followed her up the stairs, switched off the light, went into the bathroom to wash his hands.

  “What shall we do?” she said, like a child.

  “Do?”

  “I mean, you’ve finished working, so what shall we do for the rest of the day?”

  Instead of answering, he dried his hands, turned to her and snatched her into his arms. It was like that, a seizing of her, rough and sudden. He pushed the dressing gown down off her shoulders and kissed her neck and her breasts. He held her waist in his two hands as one might hold a bunch of flowers. “It’ll be all right now,” he kept whispering. “Come with me now, it’ll be fine now.”

  30

  But it was not all right.

  Just as he had felt that years-old emotion, long-forgotten, that sense of fear, so now another childhood urge returned. He wanted to cry. In the playpen he had cried, but never since, not even when he cut his finger with Mr. Chance’s chisel. He buried his face in her shoulder and heaved with dry sobs.

  She held him and told him yet again that it didn’t matter, it wasn’t important. One day it would come right, if he would stop worrying. She kissed his hands and kissed the mutilated finger, but he hated that, he hated her drawing attention to his one flaw. It would only come right, he said to her peevishly, when she was with him all the time, when she left that old woman, when she wanted him more than that o
ld woman. But he made no physical attempt to stop her going, even drove her part of the way in the Edsel.

  And when she was away from him, in a strange way things were better. He could no longer feel she was watching him and wondering, despising him, growing impatient. He could even direct his mind and his actions to the pressing things he had to do in the house. It was no bad thing that she had refused to see him for a few days, for he could spend them finishing the job.

  It was a strange feeling, contemplating that wall, on which the white paint was drying, and knowing that behind it was something that maybe no human eye would see again. That was no doubt what those makers of the pyramids thought, when the pharaoh and his attendants and his artifacts had been laid in the tomb, and they came to seal it up. Of course, they had been wrong, the pyramids had been broken into and the dead discovered, and perhaps his burial chamber would also one day be opened. But no, he thought, no, I have sealed it so that no one will believe anything was ever here.

  A little white chamber, a tiny windowless room, lying deep in the earth under London. It was the kind of idea he liked. In a curious way it even cheered him. It took away some of the pain of his inadequacy. In this area, of making death and achieving concealment, he was a king.

  No one could enter his secret chamber from the house for there was no entrance to it. From the backyard there would soon be no opening, no hole, no way in, for Paulson and Grieve, Ironsmiths of Stoke, in their laurel wreath, would be hidden in some store-place of his own and where the coal chute had been, a blossoming plant growing in a new flowerbed. Airless it would become inside there and the ill-matched couple would slowly decay, return to earth, to dust, to bones. So should all ugliness be concealed and buried …

  The phone ringing made him jump. Naturally, he wasn’t going to answer it. The answering machine cut in. He went upstairs. Francine hadn’t made the bed before she left. This omission irritated him. He didn’t expect bed-making from her because she was a woman; he would expect it from anyone. She had been on a pinnacle and now she fell a little in his estimation. His grandmother used to say that we can’t all be alike and that this was a good thing, but he wasn’t so sure. It would be a good idea if everyone were like him, tidy, clean, methodical, circumspect and punctual.