A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  He was listening. Almost for the first time he was listening with total concentration to something she said. His attention brought strength to her voice and her resolve.

  “Our house was a bit like this one, a sort of big cottage with that same plant climbing the wall. Coming here keeps reminding me, but that doesn’t matter. I want to tell you, I know how it is. I do know how it is to have something dreadful happen to you when you’re young, and how you don’t really get over it, how you live it every day. I lost the power of speech, I couldn’t speak a word for six months.”

  He said hoarsely, “What happened?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “What happened?”

  “I heard the shot. He shot her. More than once, I think. Twice or three times. The man was looking for drugs or money from the sale of drugs, the police thought he mistook my father’s house for a doctor’s with the same name. She must have got in his way, have tried to stop him.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?”

  “You think he would have wanted to? Perhaps. I don’t know. I hid in a cupboard in my bedroom and he came in. He went into all the bedrooms, looking for drugs, I suppose. When he’d gone I went downstairs and found my mother.”

  He said again, his voice breathless now, “What happened?”

  “There was—blood. A lot of blood. My father came home and found me sitting there covered in my mother’s blood. The man had shot her in the chest, one shot had gone into her heart. I couldn’t tell them about the man, not for months, I couldn’t speak.”

  His concentrated gaze alarmed her. She flinched a little. “Teddy?”

  “Someone murdered your mother? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I have told you. Don’t look at me like that.”

  Something dreadful then. Unbelievable. He got up and came to her, moving as if going in for the attack. His face had gone blank, an empty mask. He was pulling off his clothes as he came, undoing his flies, dropping the too-short trousers, tripping on them, no longer graceful. He made a grab for her, holding her down hard against the shiny slippery sofa. His breathing was as if he had an engine inside him, revving up, spurting. She felt an iron-hard pressure against her stomach and it was something she had never felt before, a rod between her soft flesh and his bones.

  His hands had become a workman’s tools, sharp, hard, certain. He pulled the dress over her head, but not quite over, leaving enough to wind around her face and mask it. The dress became a blinding hood. The hard rod was out now, no longer separated from her by barriers of clothes. She felt it questing her thighs, seeking entrance, as his hands pressed folds of dark-green velvet into her mouth, her eyes. She kicked him and fought him with her hands. Her shoes might have been a weapon but they flew off. She heard one of them strike against something and break it. The tinkling of china shattering was overpowered by a more brazen sound, the phone ringing.

  It was enough momentarily to stay him. Briefly she felt the loosening of his hands. She leaped and pushed him, kicked him as she went, fled across the room, stumbled and fell in the doorway. The phone stopped abruptly, halfway through a ring. She struggled to her feet, certain he would seize her now, that this would be the end for her.

  He sat on the floor, half naked, his head in his hands. She saw his shoulders shake. He was crying. For a moment she simply didn’t know what to do. The shock of what he had attempted was making her heart drum heavily. Her mouth had dried, her hands were shaking. A voice, her own voice, inside her head kept saying over and over, “How could he? How could I? Why did I? Why did I?”

  To touch him now, comfort him with her hand on his shoulder, perhaps stroke his hair, take his hand, all this was impossible. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she dragged herself out of the room and upstairs, hanging on to the banisters. There was another bedroom with another bed in it, an ordinary, rather pretty brass bedstead. A key was in the lock. She went inside and locked herself in. The irony of it struck her after a few minutes, that here was she, who had been forcibly imprisoned in a bedroom, now voluntarily locking herself in another, to protect herself from the man who had rescued her.

  In the morning she came into the big white bedroom to find her clothes. He watched her in silence. For the first time for a long while he wasn’t up at first light. He lay there in misery because he had nowhere to go and nothing to do.

  The rain had come back. It was pouring. She still had the velvet dress on. In the gray water-washed light he watched her taking jeans, a shirt, a sweater out of the suitcase she had brought with her. She wouldn’t put on her clothes in front of him. He watched her go into the bathroom, carrying her clothes, he heard her bolt the door, then the shower running.

  When she came back she was dressed the way he hated, but he scarcely noticed that now. She went to the dressing table and began braiding her hair, winding the plait on to the back of her head. On her right hand she still wore his ring.

  He said, “I thought you’d gone away.”

  It was the nearest he could get to an apology. She made no reply. She opened the wardrobe and he supposed she was looking for her coat.

  “Don’t go,” he said.

  The words were wrenched out of him. It was like the squeezing of a nearly empty tube. His voice was dry and hoarse. She turned around and came to sit on the end of the bed.

  “You’re going.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. I was frightened last night. You tried to rape me.”

  That shocked him. “Me? How could I rape you? You’re mine, we’re together.”

  “Rape,” she said, “isn’t only when the girl’s someone you give a lift to or meet in a street at night.”

  “Anyway,” he said, “I didn’t mean it. Not that.”

  “Why did you, Teddy? Why did you want to?”

  He shrugged, swung his legs over to the other side and got out of bed. “Don’t go,” he said again, biting on the words as if they hurt him.

  She was in the kitchen when he got downstairs, drinking coffee, making toast. It was raining so hard that the room was dark and the windows misted over. She shocked him by talking of something quite different, almost social small talk. Her voice was neutral, polite, distant. “I keep trying to phone Julia, but I’m not getting an answer.”

  And you won’t. But he didn’t say so.

  “I’ll get hold of my dad today. I shouldn’t be here and no one knows where I am. I’ll feel better if I can speak to my dad in Hamburg.”

  “It’s too wet to go out,” he said. “You’ll have to stay here today.”

  “Teddy,” she said, her tone very serious, “If I go out I promise I will come back. I know you’re worrying I won’t come back, but I will. I wouldn’t just leave you.”

  After that he had to pretend he didn’t care. And of course she’d come back—where else did she have to go to? He drank some coffee, went into the living room and picked up the pieces of the blue-and-white china figurine her flying shoe had broken the previous evening. On a fragment were printed a crown and the words Royal Copenhagen. It had been beautiful, that child in pastel porcelain, and he hated to see it broken by careless indifference. Could he get it mended? And how much would that cost? Wanton destruction of something so lovely made him feel sick with dislike of humanity.

  Moodily, he cleared a space in the mist on the window and looked out into the yard. Everywhere was wet, the flagstones darkened by rain and water lying in puddles. The protective plastic over his wire netting and cement structure flapped in the wind.

  So much had happened, so many disturbing things, that he had forgotten all about the manhole, that it had been open, covered only by that thin membrane, for hours. It had been raining all night and water must have got into the hole, down there, with what lay down there …

  He went outside, picked up the plastic and the stones and replaced the manhole cover. The rain was heavy enough to have soaked his hair and made sodden patches on his jeans in the few minutes he was out the
re. He shivered. The Edsel’s tank was nearly empty and he needed more money. Apart from that, he had to go home, check on his post, see if anything had come from Habgood, perhaps go and see his grandmother’s friend Gladys. The bill in the restaurant had been an almost greater shock to him than Francine’s rejection of him. He didn’t know food could cost so much. He had barely fifty pounds left and of that thirty could easily go on petrol.

  Francine had gone into the living room and was phoning someone. That Holly, it sounded like.

  “I’m going out,” he said. “I’ll have another key cut for you, shall I?”

  If she said yes, everything would be all right. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “Yes, fine. Do that. If I do go out I promise I’ll be back.”

  “You can have the front-door key and I’ll take the backdoor key.”

  A thought struck her. “Do you want to know exactly when?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I’ll be back exactly at six.”

  He wasn’t much of a student of facial expression or tones of voice, but even he could tell that she was making an effort to be kind to him. “Humoring” was what they called it, he thought. But she would come back at six. He began thinking of ways to keep her, but so that she couldn’t get away, so that there was no escape.

  * * *

  Enough petrol remained in the tank to get him to the nearest pump. When he had paid for it, he drove to his favorite cash dispenser, the one on the corner of Wellington Road. He put the card in, punched out the number, asked for two hundred pounds and waited. Even before any more digits or words had appeared on the screen he knew something was wrong. Then green letters displayed: Your order cannot be processed. Please collect your card. Puzzled, he took it. Should he try again, maybe in the Edgware Road?

  He found a dispenser at the NatWest Bank on the corner of Aberdeen Place. It was the kind that wanted to know if he required English money. He punched out “yes” to that and “no” to a receipt and, just as his hopes were rising, the refusal came again. There was a fault. His order couldn’t be carried out and he was to collect his card.

  Then he knew, or guessed. Harriet’s money had dried up. He had drawn out so much that no funds remained in her current account.

  35

  Richard read the fax from London with some bewilderment. His daughter had been trying to get in touch with him but had left no contact number. Why should she leave a number? Her number was his home phone.

  Since speaking to Julia on Sunday afternoon he had made no more calls to her. This was normal. He had never got into the habit of phoning every day. But now a phone call must be made. Francine had hardly ever tried to get in touch with him while he was away, therefore if she had tried this time there had to be something seriously wrong.

  So, at eleven at night—only ten in London—he had tried to phone. No answer and the answering machine switched off. He thought of the man who stalked her. Jonathan Nicholson. Was she trying to contact her father because of some outrage perpetrated against her by Nicholson? Had Julia unplugged the phone because of harassing calls from Nicholson? In that case, a ringing tone would still be heard by a caller. He went to bed, but slept badly.

  At nine in the morning, eight in London, he tried again. Julia might be up, Francine hardly would be. Still, he would be sure of getting one of them. He punched out the number and, when there was no reply, tried again through the hotel switchboard. Still no answer. If, as he thought, they had unplugged the phone, could they have forgotten to reconnect it?

  He could phone a neighbor. He felt the same reluctance to do this as Francine had felt about calling for help when locked in her room. Holly’s mother was the only other contact he could think of. She answered, couldn’t help, but gave him the number of Holly’s flat. Again he got through, but the answering machine replied.

  In half an hour’s time he was due to give a lecture, the last one of the conference. He had intended to stay on till the next morning, visiting the chief executive of a new company of software manufacturers, but now he decided to abandon this plan and go home on the afternoon flight.

  The silk curtains in a shade of pale autumn leaf were as beautiful as he could have wished, but now he had no use for them. He saw himself as living, if not permanently in Orcadia Cottage, then for years. Provided he paid the services bills, what or who was there to stop him? They could come and turn off the water and the power in his old home for all he cared, he was determined never to return.

  The old woman who had made the curtains was clamoring for him to paint the smelly hole at the back of her house. Agnes, who had come with him, backed her up. He could start any time, she insisted, he didn’t know what to do with his time, hadn’t got a regular job. If his source of supply hadn’t dried up he would have paid her for her work and so got out of a hated task. Now he bitterly regretted that expensive meal. It wasn’t as if there had been any pleasure involved. All that money had been wasted.

  “He’ll start tomorrow,” said Agnes, appointing herself his spokeswoman.

  “I’ll start on Friday,” Teddy said.

  Anything could happen before Friday. For all he knew, that bank account might fill up again, might automatically do so in, say, the third week of the month, and sets of two hundred pounds in series once more be available. He drove home—what else could he call it?—with Agnes in the passenger seat. She had no objection to him as driver now he had a full license.

  Suddenly she asked, “Has Keith given you this car?”

  He didn’t answer. He was listening to a new sound the engine was making, a knocking. A vague memory came to him of Keith taking it to bits and reassembling it. Should a car be regularly serviced and if so, how often? One thing was for sure, no one had looked at this engine for nine months.

  “He hasn’t given it to me,” he said slowly, and then, “He wants it back.”

  “Of course he does.” Agnes always took a triumphant pleasure in other people’s regrets and resignation. “He’ll be after you if you’ve not taken care of it properly. He’ll want compensation.”

  This was too stupid and, considering Keith’s fate, nasty, to get a reply. Teddy went into the house with the curtains. There was a letter on the doormat for him. He ripped open the envelope on which the postmark showed the evening before. The letter was from Mr. Habgood to say that his wife wasn’t happy with the designs and not at all pleased with the estimated cost, so in the circumstances they wouldn’t proceed further. A tiny thread of panic flickered in Teddy’s chest. It seemed that he had gone from riches to rags in a matter of days.

  He went into the room that he had always thought of, and still did think of, as his own and unhooked the mirror from the wall. When she came back at six she’d be glad to see it and she’d forget all the stupid accusations she’d made. He took a blanket off his bed, wrapped the mirror in it and carried it back to the car. Still in the passenger seat, Agnes was talking to Megsie through the window.

  “Hello, stranger,” said Megsie. “You ought to tell us when you’re going away, you know, on account of keeping a lookout for intruders.”

  “I’ve moved,” he said recklessly. “I’m living down in St. John’s Wood.”

  His grandmother said it was the first she had heard of it and it would be fifty pee to speak to him now.

  “We quite miss this lovely old car,” said Megsie. “It was only yesterday Nige said to me, the place isn’t the same without that lovely old Elvis.”

  “Edsel,” said Teddy, and then, because it was true, it was his intention, the decision he had suddenly come to, “I’m going to drive it down to Liphook, to Keith. Later in the week.”

  Quick as a flash Agnes said, “Not Friday you’re not. Friday you’re painting Gladys’s toilet.”

  “Won’t Keith be happy to see it,” Megsie gushed. “I bet you he’ll feel just like he’s got his beloved pet out of quarantine. And you have kept it nice, Teddy, not a speck on it.”

  He drove his grandmother home. Why late
r in the week, he thought. Why not now? He had nothing else to do. He would drive to Liphook and just abandon the Edsel, leave it in the street somewhere. They’d tow it away eventually, but if they got on to him all he had to do was say it was his uncle’s and his uncle lived down there somewhere. Anyone they spoke to would confirm that Keith lived in Liphook. And he would be rid of it and the cost and worry of it.

  After she had gone inside, he sat in the car for a while just looking at his grandmother’s house. It was her house, no doubt about it, not rented, not on a life interest, but hers to do as she liked with. Or hers to do nothing with, just to die and leave him to inherit. A house that would be his that he could sell, not one that had come vaguely into his possession for him to occupy but not own.

  He drove back to Orcadia Cottage. It was empty. Francine had gone out. He expected that, she had said she might go out and had promised to be back by six. That reminded him he had said he would get her a key. It wasn’t worth taking the Edsel, it hardly ever was worth taking it. He walked across Hamilton Terrace to Maida Vale and down the Edgware Road where there were shops where keys could be cut. She wouldn’t have let him go to the bother of having a key cut if she hadn’t meant to stay.

  They looked at the key and said they couldn’t copy it. That was the point of keys like that. You had to apply for copies to the manufacturer locksmiths. He tried two more places, but they said the same thing. He didn’t feel bad about it, it scarcely mattered, he and Francine had a key each. The main thing was that she wanted a key because she meant to come back.

  The shop next door was a place where “nearly new” clothes were sold. He remembered Noele’s and the day he had called there in search of Francine. But Noele’s place was a lot more up-market than this one. You wouldn’t expect even secondhand designer clothes on sale in the Edgware Road, but in smarter, more fashionable parts of London there must be plenty of places. And they had to buy before they could sell.