A Sight for Sore Eyes

by Ruth Rendell

  The wind had got up as he was walking back, bringing squally rain with it. As soon as it let up he lifted his mirror out of the boot of the Edsel and carried it across the yard into the house. Why not hang it where the Alpheton still life used to be? The hook was still there, a strong double-pronged hook screwed, not pinned, to the wall. He hung up the mirror, straightened it precisely—crooked mirrors and pictures were among his hates—and studied the effect. It looked good. He had feared it would be too modern for the room, too great a contrast with the rest of the furniture, but it fitted in very well. It reflected the paintings that faced it and the trailing plant in a wall vase.

  He went upstairs and into the bedroom. No wonder Francine hadn’t been able to find anything to wear in that wardrobe. What horrible clothes Harriet had had! Just the same, you could see that they had been very expensive. A bright pink and black suit carried a Lacroix label. There was a fur coat, a sort of speckled yellow thing, that felt real, and an evening gown with a top like a corset encrusted with blue and red and yellow jewels.

  It wouldn’t do for Mildred or any of the neighbors to see him coming out with an armful of Harriet’s clothes. He searched for suitcases and finally found one in a landing cupboard. If anyone saw him carrying that they would simply think he had been staying at Orcadia Cottage and was going home.

  The wind had become a gale, blowing leaves from the trees and whirling them high into the air. The rain that came with it brought a premature dusk. Other cars had their lights on so he turned on the Edsel’s. Driving southwestward, he and the Edsel entered the procession of vehicles that moved with grinding slowness through the wet gray mist of a winter’s afternoon. Leaves were blown onto the hood and a red plastic bag, bright as a tropical bird, flew down to catch itself on his windshield wipers.

  “And Teddy rescued you?” Holly said. “How awfully romantic! Don’t you think that’s romantic, Chris?”

  “I’d do the same in the unlikely circumstances of your mum locking you up.”

  “You’ll never have the chance. Teddy actually did it.”

  Francine was in Holly’s flat in Kilburn where she had arrived ten minutes before. Its chaos, its scents of joss sticks and aromatherapy oils and cigarettes, the empty but far from clean cups and plates which stood about, were all immensely comforting. She sat on the floor, on a heap of cushions and shawls and bedcovers, and thought how nice sitting on the floor was and asked herself how she had missed out on this pleasant and comfortable way of relaxing.

  As if reading her thoughts, Holly said, “You’ve missed out on a hell of a lot of things, haven’t you? I just hope you’ve put a stop to that.”

  It wasn’t so easy. Holly always made everything sound so simple. Francine hadn’t said anything about what had happened the night before and she wasn’t going to. It hadn’t, after all, been rape. It hadn’t come to that and therefore could be forgotten, put behind her. She had thought of telling Holly and Christopher and James, who had just come in with a bottle of champagne, about Orcadia Cottage and its being lent to Teddy and the work he was doing there, but she decided against it. It was probably ridiculously suspicious and middle-class of her but she felt uneasy about Orcadia Cottage. She thought they, or at any rate she, ought not to be there.

  James poured the champagne. He seemed used to opening bottles like this one because he didn’t spill a drop. “It’s to celebrate your escape,” he said.

  They all drank a toast to her and to Teddy, who Holly said ought to be dressed in armor and on a white horse. Where was he anyway? Why hadn’t he come with her? Francine said he was working.

  “It’s actually quite funny Julia hasn’t given us a bell,” said Christopher. “I mean, you’d have expected that, wouldn’t you, Holl?”

  Holly nodded. “She doesn’t know Teddy rescued you. She must think you got out on your own. Or, no, it’s most likely she thinks you phoned me and I came and you threw the key out to me. So why hasn’t she called?”

  “Because she’s afraid of admitting to anyone,” said James, “that at the end of the twentieth century she locked her stepdaughter up in a bedroom. It makes her look cruel and very very foolish.”

  “It makes her look draconian.”

  “Bloody-minded.”

  “Mad.”

  “She is a bit mad,” said Francine. “I’ve thought so for a long time. But you can’t tell a psychotherapist she’s crazy, any more than you can tell a doctor she’s got—well, chickenpox.”

  They all laughed at that. Francine felt better by the minute. She asked if she could phone her father’s office, but when she did she once more got the woman’s voice saying she was away from her desk. Holly said that now the champagne was finished why didn’t they all go down to the pub and celebrate some more and then buy some deep-pan pizzas at the Safeway. It used to be an Irish pub, but now it was full of very good-looking fierce Somalis all living on the benefit.

  “Racist,” said James.

  His brother said, “Holly thinks that if she says they’re handsome that makes it PC.”

  It was a different world. Francine thought wistfully that she liked it. The pub was smoky and noisy, and the people looked rough, but she liked that too. Holly cooked the pizzas and after lunch Christopher and James, who both had jobs, had to go off to work. Holly’s work was finished, she was off in a week’s time to join a study group conserving coral on the Banggai Islands of Sulawesi.

  “You ought to come. Well, I think it’s all booked, but I could see. Or you could get on this Earthwatch thing I’m doing in the spring.”

  “Could I?”

  “You’ve escaped—remember? It’s studying Trinidadian land crabs. Don’t laugh, it’s really worthwhile.”

  “I wasn’t going to laugh, Holly. I was thinking I’d better go home and confront Julia.” Holly’s look of horror did make her laugh. “My dad’ll be home tomorrow. I can’t just desert him. I won’t stay, don’t think that, I’ve promised Teddy I’ll be back by six.”

  Holly said very seriously, “France, don’t get into that again. Not even with Teddy. Not with anyone.”

  “Into what?”

  “Promising you’ll be home. You’ll be home at six or whatever. Don’t do it. You’ve had it all your life, you’ll never be free at this rate. Get out of it now.” Holly added as if she were middle-aged, “While you’re young.”

  “All right. I’ll try not to. I’ll try to change. But I do have to go and see Julia and—and tell her things.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No. No, thanks. I mean, I’d really like you to come, it’s a long way, it’d be nice to have you there, but I have to go alone. I have to face her on my own. It’s better that way. It’s better even without my dad there. You do see, don’t you?”

  The shop Teddy found was in Notting Hill Gate. It was called Designers Please and claimed to buy and sell only first-quality secondhand clothes. This part of London was unknown to him. He couldn’t remember ever having been there before. He drove around in the gloom, his lights on, looking for a parking space.

  Every metered space in the neighborhood seemed to be occupied. He knew it would be risky parking on a double yellow line, or even a single yellow line, at this hour, but in a side street off the back of Kensington Church Street he found areas demarcated on the roadway with white lines. All but one of these was occupied and it was just large enough to take the Edsel.

  While there, he decided he might as well make another attempt on a cash dispenser. He tried, failed once more and went back to the car. Carrying the suitcase, he made his way up Kensington Church Street. He had been obliged to park the car at such a distance that Designers Please was nearly half a mile away. A woman who wasn’t in the least like Noele, being overweight, dark and multi-chinned, was attending to a customer and it was another ten minutes before she asked how she could help him. He fidgeted and paced, and looked at his watch. He was beginning to realize that if he wanted to spend the evening with Francine he was n
ot going to make it to Liphook that day.

  The woman scarcely glanced at the clothes in the suitcase, but said she couldn’t consider anything that hadn’t been drycleaned. Swallowing his anger, Teddy asked her just to take a look and tell him if she’d be interested in the event of his having the clothes cleaned. Her contemptuous expression changed when she saw the Lacroix label and the Givenchy. It seemed as if he had some very high-quality garments there, she said, but he’d have to have everything dry-cleaned—he did understand that, didn’t he?

  There was a cleaners a few doors up the street. The unremitting wind blew him along, once stopped him in his tracks, it was so fierce. He opened the suitcase once more, piled Harriet’s suits and dresses on the counter and was told they would be ready by Thursday. While he was putting the suitcase back in the Edsel’s boot he saw a sign he hadn’t noticed before which seemed to be explaining that this was residents’ parking and available only to permit holders.

  The relief he felt was premature. He got into the driver’s seat and switched on the ignition, but the engine wouldn’t start. This had never happened before. He tried again and again, urging the engine to fire but hearing only that monotonous and maddening chug-chug-chug. Another ten minutes had passed before he noticed his lights were on and simultaneously understood that this was why the car failed to start. The battery. He had run the battery flat.

  Keith would have known what to do, Nige would know, that Christopher would know, but he didn’t. The words “jump leads” he distantly remembered Keith uttering in connection with a flat battery, but what these things were he had no idea. The only thing would be to find a garage and get the people there to restart the car.

  Although not yet four, it was dark. The wind tore the air, carrying with it spitting rain. The Edsel’s windshield was patterned with huge splashes and thin trickles. People battled through the wind, heads lowered, coats clutched about them. A woman brandished a black umbrella, blown inside out. Teddy sat in the car and counted his money, all he had in the world. Twenty-four pounds and some loose change. Suppose the garage people charged him twenty pounds for starting the car? They might. Equally they might charge him five or forty. He had no idea.

  The only thing to do was leave the Edsel, go home and think. Come back tomorrow. Meanwhile, think how to get his hands on money. Could he sell some of Harriet’s silverware or glass? Her jewelry? It wouldn’t be stolen—or not until he stole it—so the jeweler wouldn’t have it on any stolen-property list. Leave the suitcase in the boot. There was no point in being lumbered with that. He had to fight the wind in order to get out of the car, battle with it and push himself on to the pavement.

  Getting up to St. John’s Wood took a long time and then there was the walk home, struggling against the wind. The front garden of Orcadia Cottage was lost under a carpet of fallen Virginia creeper leaves, red and purple and yellow-green and gold, by now a sodden, slippery mass. He went out again and in by the back way. He had to. Francine had the front-door key.

  36

  A wise move would be to collect up the silverware and jewelry immediately, before Francine came back. She wouldn’t believe any explanation he might give her as to why he was selling Harriet’s property. The future, which he seldom thought about for long, now presented itself to him as a blank, a mystery. It had to be filled—with money, with work and above all with Francine.

  Speculating about people, their motives, their wishes, hopes and fears, came very hard to him. He had never done it before, he had never cared. He cared now. He struggled to understand her, to know what she wanted. Money, of course. A girl brought up like that, with those parents, going to that school, needed a constant supply of money. Not for a moment had he believed that stuff about not wanting him to support her. She had liked the ring and the dress and that restaurant, being taken about by car, drinking wine. If he wanted to keep her, and he desperately did, he had to have, find, make, money.

  He went upstairs and into the bedroom. Harriet’s jewelry was already familiar to him. Often enough he had draped these pearls and ropes of shining stones around Francine’s neck and put these bracelets on her arms. He put a handful into each pocket of his jacket. A small silver bowl, a silver-backed hairbrush and silver-bound comb also looked saleable. He would take a necklace to one jeweler’s and a bracelet to another, the hairbrush to a third. It would take a long time, but he might realize a thousand pounds out of it.

  Francine would want clothes and a car to go about in, more of those restaurants and maybe books. She seemed keen on books. Could he let the Neasden house? Hard to imagine anyone wanting to live in the neighborhood, pay rent for such a house, but Megsie and Nige liked it, they had bought next door. Or maybe he could even rent out this place? It was a daring thought.

  During the long slow journey by tube, Francine reflected that this was the first time in her life she was going home without, so to speak, an appointment; going to where Julia was without a pre-arrangement to be there by seven or nine or ten.

  On all those previous occasions, hundreds of them, she had been apprehensive as to how Julia would greet her. Even if she were early or on time. Tears or rage or happy smiles, reproaches or gratified approval, it was bound to have been one of these. Never had Julia simply acknowledged her arrival with a nod or a simple “hello.” She realized, looking back, how terribly it had plagued her life. How she would have loved a casual, laid-back or light-hearted companion, someone who took things easy. But it was over now, the end had come on Sunday and she was no longer in the least afraid of Julia’s reception of her.

  She emerged from the station to find the rain coming down harder than ever and the wind blowing it in horizontal sheets. It was also growing dark and she saw that she had left her departure from Holly’s till rather too late, for now it was past four. Getting back to Orcadia Place by six would be difficult, but as that thought came to her she remembered Holly’s words. “France, don’t get into that again. Not with Teddy, not with anyone.” She could phone him from home, she could tell him she’d be back late.

  All the taxis were taken. They always were when it was raining. She could walk, it would take a quarter of an hour, that was all, and if she got wet through she had plenty of clothes there to change into.

  Walking—even walking in a gale and a downpour—was a good activity for thinking and clearing the mind. She had often noticed this. Things fell into place more logically and reasonably than when one tried to concentrate before going to sleep at night. She thought about Teddy and she knew suddenly and regretfully that it wouldn’t work. He wasn’t for her and never could be. They had nothing in common and they looked at life quite differently. Probably she would never have gone out with him, never had secret meetings with him, if Julia hadn’t put the pressure on and her father been so moralistic.

  That didn’t mean she wouldn’t go back. Of course she would, and tonight as she had undertaken to do. She’d even stay a few days and she’d explain and make him listen and try to show him they weren’t suited to each other. At the time, at each time, she had felt very frustrated and somehow deprived of a right, but now she was glad they had never had sex. Well, never had real sex, proper sex. She would have felt more committed to him if they had.

  She hadn’t liked the way he wanted her to dress up and pose and be stared at. It was—she searched for and found the unfamiliar word—voyeuristic. It was like a striptease in reverse. She had felt uncomfortable all the time during those sessions and bored too. How anyone could bear to be a model she couldn’t imagine. But worse than any of that had been his behavior of the night before. She hadn’t told Holly, she couldn’t have told anyone, but she knew now, if she hadn’t then, that he had wanted to have sex with her, had almost been able to have sex, because her mother had been murdered and she had talked about murder. It had been a sort of trigger to excite him and she couldn’t bear that. That had been the end, the final thing.

  His ring slid on her finger in the wet. She brought her hand up in front o
f her face and looked at the blue stones and the diamond. He must have it back. Books had taught her that you gave a man back his ring, even if it wasn’t ever an engagement ring.

  It was a joyous reunion. They collected De Valera from the kennels on their way home from Heathrow. The Irish setter gave the same welcome, it seemed, to each of them, favoring Franklin equally with Anthea in bestowing licks and uttering whimpers of happiness.

  “With luck,” said Anthea, “they’ll put an end to this ghastly quarantine and we’ll be able to take him with us next time.”

  They had firmly become “us” and their future a joint affair. If there was a problem it was only that Franklin, being without a resident’s parking permit in the City of Westminster, had to put the BMW in an underground car park. He and Anthea ordered Thai food over the phone. They disliked the idea of going out and leaving De Valera again.

  “Are you going to phone Harriet?” Anthea said.

  “I’ve thought about that and I can’t see why I should. I never do, normally. She expects me back tomorrow and tomorrow I shall go back—for half an hour.”

  “It had better not be more than half an hour,” said Anthea, who was beginning to exhibit her old signs of possessiveness.

  Franklin rather liked it. For one thing, he hadn’t seen much of it for nearly thirty years and for another, it brought back tender memories of his youth. “I shall stay long enough to tell her what has happened and that I am leaving her. I shall pack some of my clothes into a suitcase and come away.”

  “Mind you don’t weaken.”

  “I never weaken, you know that,” said Franklin with one of his awful smiles.

  It was true. He always did exactly what he wanted, whatever the cost in money and trouble. He had wanted Harriet, so had got rid of Anthea, though it took him five years and cost, until she married again, something in the region of half a million. Now he wanted her again and was getting rid of Harriet. Probably it would take another five years and cost three or four times that. But he would do it.