A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  “I want to see you in it,” he said stonily.

  “I’ll put it on tomorrow, Teddy. I’m tired now. What I’d really like is to go to bed. I want to go to bed in a place where I’m free and no one’s locked me in and just sleep and sleep and sleep.”

  It was not the way he had envisaged it. All the way here in the car the idea had been growing in his mind with increasing excitement that things would be all right now. He had won, he had succeeded. He had rescued her, done murder for her, and gained possession of her. By these actions, whatever it was that inhibited him and dulled his flesh would be banished. His troubles were over and would never return.

  But instead of coming to him, a passive and silent beauty, obedient to his command that she wear his dress, she had talked and talked until he was sick of the sound of “Julia” and “Dad” and how awful it had been. A vague, irritable depression settled over him and when he went up to the bedroom he found her, to his disgust, lying in Harriet’s bed in a white cotton nightshirt and already asleep.

  He lay down beside her, listening to the rain that spattered in the wind against the glass. Desire seemed to come back, a flicker of it, and he put his hands on her, lifted that horrible white cotton garment and felt her warm, sleek flesh. She neither turned toward him nor shuddered away, she was still and heavily asleep, but he was powerless just the same, as dead as a block of wood.

  There must be ways. He lay awake thinking of them, of how it might be different if he could silence her, close her eyes, dress her in the dark-green velvet, take that white nightshirt thing away and burn it, or put it out with the rubbish. Hang jewels on her, buy flowers for her and fill her arms with lilies. Now he had money he could do that. Tomorrow he would buy lilies, and maybe peacock’s feathers and a length of heavy white silk. He would lay her on the floor on the silk, gathering it up a little, ruffling it, and he would spread out her hair and weave gold chains into it. Paint her eyelids peacock-green and gold, and close them over her eyes like the domed covers of jewel boxes and place a lily in one of her hands and a green plume in the other.

  She slept beside him, breathing steadily, and after a while he slept too.

  It was eleven before she woke up and then it was the phone ringing that woke her. She picked up the receiver and said hello and a man’s voice asked to speak to Franklin Merton. Francine said she thought he had the wrong number.

  Teddy had been up for hours. He took the Edsel up to Cricklewood, filled the tank and used Harriet’s Connect card to collect another two hundred pounds. Back at Orcadia Cottage, he carefully rested the flagstone in its wire netting cradle. A lot of space remained around it. He really ought to break the stone into two pieces or find another smaller piece of stone to slip in beside it. The important thing was to avoid an odd appearance, something that would attract attention.

  He dabbed cement on to the pins that held the wire in place, then spread on a smooth layer. The rain had held off long enough for him to do the job, but now it began to fall again, a fine but insistent drizzle. He covered up his work with a square of plastic, weighting down the four corners with pebbles. After that he went back into the house and found Francine in front of his new wall where the Alpheton still life now hung.

  She had dressed herself in the hideous uniform of jeans and boots and sweater. The effect on him was to make him speak roughly, though the words would please her. “I’ll take you out tonight,” he said. “We’ll go wherever you want. I’ve got plenty of money.”

  “Have you got work, Teddy?”

  “As much as I can handle. More. We can go anywhere you like. You can get dressed up and put on her jewelry, anything you want.”

  “I must phone my friends,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “Phone them and tell where I am.”

  They went into the kitchen. She ground coffee, put a filter paper into the coffee machine and poured the coffee in.

  “Why must you?” he said. “Why do you want to do that?”

  She didn’t answer. “And phone Julia, too. I can’t just vanish into thin air. She’ll be frantic with worry about me. When she woke up—just think of how she must have been when she found me gone. She’s probably got on to Dad in Germany and been ringing round my friends.”

  He stared at her with a kind of despair. What was she talking about? He had got her out of there and she was his now, bound to him, here with him. Then anger drove out his dismay. He took her by the shoulders, gripping the thin flesh, the fine bone, digging in hard fingers. “You’re not making any phone calls, right? Have you got that? You can’t just use her phone to call your friends. There’s no need for it, d’you understand?”

  “Teddy, you’re hurting me! Why are you doing that?”

  She shrank away from him, but he held on. He moved her backward and forward, it was almost but not quite a shaking. “While you’re with me you do as I say, right? No phone calls, no getting on to Julia. We may as well get things straight now. I don’t want you knowing people, you don’t need friends, you’ve got me. You’re living here with me now and that’s how it’s going to be, you and me on our own.”

  “Please let me go.” She spoke with such calm dignity that it had its effect on him. As his fingers loosened she took his hands and removed them from her shoulders. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “It’s plain enough. I gave you my ring, didn’t I? And I saved you. You don’t have to see any of them again, not your father or your friends or anyone. You belong to me.”

  She was seldom silent and when she was he knew no way of managing her. Impotence extended from his body to his mind and he was filled with a bitter, ragged frustration. She made the coffee, poured a cup for him and pushed it across the table. Her face was stony, beautiful in cold disdain, like a marble statue in a gallery. He wanted to lay down the law—it was his grandmother’s phrase, recalled from childhood—tell her he made the rules and what they were, that he was the boss and she must obey. She was to understand the truth of it, that he had made this place possible, had arranged everything, he had the money and the power, she had no right to dispute anything. But the look on her face stopped him. He poured the coffee she had given him down the sink and banged out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.

  The phone rang and because he evidently wasn’t going to answer it, she did. A woman this time, again asking for Franklin Merton, and again she said it was a wrong number, though she was beginning to have her doubts. She dialed Holly’s number, then Miranda’s, got answering machines both times. Talking to Julia she had postponed, but the time had come to do it. Holly and Miranda being out hadn’t really surprised her, but Julia’s failure to answer did. Sitting at the table, sipping her coffee, she began to feel rather miserable. She wanted her father, but she didn’t know the name of the hotel where he was staying.

  The next time the phone rang she didn’t answer it. There seemed no point. After six rings it stopped and the machine took over. Presently she went into the living room where there were a few books in a glass-fronted bookcase. They weren’t her sort of books, but she preferred reading anything to nothing. Teddy came in after half an hour and found her curled up in an armchair with a paperback. He said he was going to work, he was doing a job for a man in Highgate and he’d be back by five.

  When he had gone she laid down her book and thought about things. Holly must be out somewhere with Christopher and somehow she knew that it wasn’t like this for them. He wasn’t a man who thought about nothing but sex and what Holly looked like, he liked talking to her and hearing her talk, and they could laugh and have fun and share things. But I can’t go back, she thought, can I? I can’t go back to mad Julia and be locked in my bedroom and turned into a sort of Cinderella. What am I going to do?

  It was usual for Franklin to phone Harriet a couple of days before he was due home. If she wasn’t there he never left a message. After all, he had nothing to say to her except to make sure she’d arranged to have the boiler serviced and had the water meter check
ed. It struck him as he put down the phone that it mattered very little whether these things were done or not, mattered to him, that is, since he never intended living in Orcadia Cottage again.

  “I suppose she’ll keep it, will she?” said Anthea.

  “Some arrangement will have to be come to.”

  “Not the same sort of arrangement as was come to with me, I hope for your sake. I took you to the cleaners, didn’t I?”

  “What you might call the complete valet service with reproofing,” said Franklin with his skull’s smile. “In the present case all I really want is the furniture. Not that I shall tell her that. That is between you and me.”

  Anthea smiled. “I suppose you’ll come back to Half Moon Street with me on Wednesday?”

  “We’ll pick up De Valera from the kennels on our way.”

  Mr. Habgood had a wife. Teddy hadn’t expected that, for she had never been mentioned. But there she was, a fussy woman, who seemed to think it strange that he had called at the house to find if they were accepting his estimate. Why hadn’t he phoned if he was so anxious? No, she couldn’t let him in, not if he had no identification. She seemed to expect him to carry a photograph of himself on a chain around his neck.

  Keeping him on the doorstep, she relented enough to discuss the cupboard designs with him. She disliked paneled doors and wanted brass fittings. Her husband wouldn’t dream of giving him a deposit of fifty percent, that was out of the question. Ten was more likely. If he would like to phone that evening her husband would be in after seven. But before nine-thirty, please, as they weren’t nightbirds.

  Teddy couldn’t phone that evening. He was taking Francine out. It seemed a more formidable task than making a whole suite of furniture would be. First, he wouldn’t be able to wear his usual sort of clothes, jeans and sweatshirt and zipper jacket. He ought to buy something, but he didn’t know where or how. Women’s clothes were easier. He had had no difficulty over Francine’s dress. She might know how to go about it, but he wasn’t going to lower himself to ask her, she had humiliated him enough already. Then there was the question of where to go. He had never in his life been to that sort of restaurant, let alone taken anyone there, taken a girl there.

  He wasn’t in the habit of asking advice, but he wished he knew someone to ask. Nige? Christopher? Both were impossible. Driving the Edsel home, he remembered Harriet’s address book, the real restaurants and the pretend restaurant. He could phone one of those. Or he could get her to phone, she would know what to say.

  “Who’s Franklin Merton?” she said when he came in and found her reading in the living room.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “People have been phoning for him.”

  “Don’t answer the phone,” he said. “I told you. I said not to answer it. The machine will answer it.”

  He had written down the names of the restaurants and their phone numbers on a sheet of drawing paper. She said she’d call them if that was what he wanted, of course she would, but he didn’t like the look she gave him, as if she were sorry for him or understood him. That wasn’t possible, but even if it were, he didn’t want to be understood.

  34

  He went upstairs and opened the door to the wardrobe she said was full of men’s clothes. By the look of them it was an old man. Only old men wore tweed suits and check jackets and a thing he thought might be called a tuxedo. Until now he’d only seen them on television. This old man evidently wasn’t fat, that at least was something. But could he bring himself to wear someone else’s clothes? He shuddered at the thought. Oxfam was one thing, but everything from there could be washed.

  One suit only was a possibility. It was sheathed in a clear plastic cover. He took it out on its hanger, slipped off the cover and saw the dry-cleaner’s label still attached to neck and waistband with small gold safety pins. No one had worn it since it was cleaned, a plain dark cloth suit that might fit him. He went into the bathroom and ran a bath, putting in bath essence and aromatherapy oil. Washing himself and washing his hair, he felt he was scrubbing and swilling away all the accumulated dirt of his day, the words of that rude woman in Highgate, Francine’s disobedience and contempt, his fear of the new world he was discovering. The towel he used to dry himself had been used before. There was a faint streak of something blue—bath oil, makeup?—on its hem. Tomorrow they must have a big wash …

  A clean white shirt. He found one in a drawer. It had been beautifully washed and ironed, he couldn’t have done better himself. But still he shrank away a little from its touch as he put it on and pulled on the trousers—they were an inch too short—and slipped his arms into the jacket sleeves. It might have been dry-cleaned but that wasn’t like washing, not a total immersion, not a complete purification. He found himself cringing inside his borrowed clothes just as a man with a sensitive skin shivers at the touch of wool.

  Several times during the course of the afternoon Francine had tried to phone Julia. Then, when it was almost too late and everyone would be on the point of going home, she phoned her father’s London office. They would know the name of the hotel where he was staying in Hamburg. But all she got was a voice saying its owner was away from her desk at present and offering all sorts of numbers, mobiles and faxes and an E-mail address. Francine left a message that she wanted the number of her father’s hotel and would call again in the morning.

  A gale was blowing and it was raining hard. She would have liked to go out, if only for a walk around a district she barely knew, but outdoors looked uninviting. When she thought staff would be there, she booked a table in a restaurant in Primrose Hill. This was something she had never done before, but she had heard Julia do it and the woman she spoke to seemed to understand and made no difficulties.

  The man she met on the stairs as she was going up to change she barely recognized. Teddy looked handsome, suave, strange, a different person. He looked older too and, although she didn’t admit this to herself until she was dressing, somehow rather frightening. Formal clothes brought out in him a cold austerity of expression she had never observed while he wore his jacket and jeans. His mouth seemed tighter, his eyes more hooded. He walked down the stairs in a feline way. He had always seemed graceful, but now there was something more studied and smooth, almost serpentine, in his movements.

  She would have liked to say something about the length of his borrowed trousers, not exactly laugh at him but perhaps make the comment that he would have to undo the waistband and slide them a little way down his hips. Something in his face, its awful cold gravity, told her to avoid this.

  But when he turned to look at her, to take in her appearance in the dress he had bought her, there was a lightening and a kind of relief in his expression. “Beautiful,” he said. “You are so beautiful.”

  “It fits. You were clever.”

  “Only because you’re a perfect size eight.”

  She started telling him about Noele and her clients and how angry Noele had been. It seemed funny now, but it had been most unpleasant at the time. Noele had accused her of setting herself up as better-looking than the customers, which she hadn’t meant to do and hadn’t believed anyway.

  He wasn’t listening. “It’s time we went,” he said.

  The restaurant wasn’t the kind she had often been in, but sometimes she had been in places rather like it for lunch with Julia. Teddy was so plainly ill at ease that she took over most of the ordering and asking for things. He wouldn’t drink—well, he couldn’t really, not with having to drive the Edsel. She felt she drank rather too much, perhaps more than she ever had in her life before. She had to because, otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to get through the evening. It was painful, ugly, a lesson she understood, and understood uncomfortably, that she was learning too early in her life.

  He barely spoke. She talked to him about everything she knew, school, her father’s marrying Julia, the house she had once lived in that was similar to Orcadia Cottage, the house she lived in now, or had done until the previous d
ay, her friends, the job with Miranda’s father that might have been. There was only one thing she didn’t talk about.

  He reacted to the prospect of a job. She wouldn’t need a job. He would keep her, he had money and would soon have more.

  “I can’t live off you, Teddy.”

  “Why not? You lived off your dad.”

  “That was different,” she said. “That’s always different. A child is kept by its parents until it earns for itself. Well, her-self. I ought to keep myself until I go up to Oxford.”

  He fell into a mutinous silence. Their bill came. He didn’t know what to do with it, made furious impotent faces at her across the table, finally passed notes to her under the cloth. She had to tell him it wasn’t enough. It pained and embarrassed her, he looked so aghast, so distressed. She had never seen anyone so engulfed with shame. More notes were passed until she could pay the bill and manage an inadequate tip.

  They left without speaking to the waiter or each other, without saying good-bye or thank you. She had forgotten all her exasperation with him, all her dismay at his failure to listen to what she said, all his demands that she should obey him. Everything was swallowed up in a huge pity. It seemed to her that whatever had been done to him in his childhood and youth, what cruelties and deprivations, they had damaged him fearfully, perhaps irrecoverably. She wanted to show him that she too had lost a mother in a dreadful way, that she shared his traumas and his injuries.

  The silence was maintained all the way back. She went alone into Orcadia Cottage while he parked the car in the mews. When he came in she was sitting on the ivory satin sofa in her dark-green velvet, her hair loose about her shoulders, clasping her hands, loosening them and laying them in her lap. “I want to tell you something.”

  He nodded. He sat in an armchair, staring at her.

  “When I was seven a man came into our house and murdered my mother. I was upstairs, I’d been sent to my room, I’d been naughty, and I heard the doorbell ring and looked out and all I could see was his shoes and the top of his head. My mother came to the door and let him in.”