Tigerlily's Orchids

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘I just popped out for a breather,’ Duncan said. ‘Do you fancy a cuppa?’

  ‘I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘You can have coffee if you don’t mind instant.’

  Stuart made no reply but went inside. He didn’t remark on the heat. Dust sheets and pieces of newspaper covered the hall floor and half the staircase. Duncan brought him a mug of thin coffee in which curds floated.

  ‘Do you know the people next door?’

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ said Duncan. ‘They keep themselves to themselves. There’s that bloke you were talking to and two girls and a young chap. Well, I suppose that girl lives there too. I’ve never seen her before. I call the other girl Tigerlily.’

  ‘The beautiful one?’

  ‘Well, she’s pretty. I wouldn’t call her beautiful myself but there’s no accounting for tastes.’

  ‘Tigerlily,’ said Stuart in a dreamy tone.

  ‘That’s not her real name, mind. I made that up or got it out of a book or something. I call her Tigerlily and the boy Oberon. Mr Wu, as I call him, is her husband.’

  Stuart was appalled. ‘Are you sure?’

  Remembering that this was a relationship he had himself invented, Duncan said no, he wasn’t. ‘I mean, he’s not her husband. He’s not called Mr Wu either. That’s just my fun.’

  Stuart put his half-empty mug on the floor because there was nowhere else and said he must be off. ‘I need to rest because of my arm.’ Duncan hadn’t asked him about it, an omission he resented. Outside the Lichfield House gate he met Wally Scurlock, carrying a bottle of gin and a bottle of vodka.

  ‘Not for my consumption, sir,’ said Wally, ‘so you needn’t look like that.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking like anything. They’re for Olwen, are they?’

  ‘I perform this little errand for her, yes. You wouldn’t care to take it on, I suppose?’ Wally had been on the point of saying that Stuart had plenty of time because he ‘did fuck all’ but decided it would be going a bit far. ‘She’ll pay,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve got a bad arm,’ said Stuart. ‘I’m convalescing.’

  His encounter with Rose (or Rosie as he then knew her) came back to Marius with almost total recall once he had found the right place for her in his memory. He had just finished his degree, it was in classics and he had got a first. And in those days, as he told himself, a first was a first. Six months off and then a year at teacher training college. The six months he spent at the Hackney squat as part of a commune with people called Storm, Anther and Zither (not their real names), Simon Alpheton the painter, who wasn’t famous then, and a woman named Harriet something. Rosie had arrived one morning, brought there by Storm whose girlfriend was her friend. Well, it was more like the middle of the afternoon as no one ever got up before late lunchtime. She was rather shy and quiet and looked a lot younger than her real age. He remembered her extreme slenderness and her long pale hair.

  No one in the commune ever did anything. They sat around on the floor in the evenings and sometimes long into the night, smoking pot, passing damp brown joints round the circle, picking things up – a green glass ball, an ostrich egg, a string of beads – and stroking them, cooing over them and making sounds of wonder as if they were priceless objects. Why did they? He couldn’t remember, and now he felt ashamed of wasting his time. But he had done it with the rest of them and so had Rosie who sat next to him.

  She had been allotted a mattress in Harriet’s room. No one had a bed. It was summer and hot. In some of the rooms the windows had been boarded up because the glass was broken but not in his. It was quite airy in his room and quite clean. He had always kept his living places clean, much to the derision of the others. That night no one wanted to go to bed because of the heat – except Rosie, who got up rather unsteadily and asked where she was to sleep. He said he would take her to Harriet’s room, but when they were out in the passage – that house was a maze of passages – she looked trustingly at him and said she didn’t want to be alone. He was used to the place but he could see that to a newcomer it could be more than intimidating. It could be frightening. Darkness prevailed. Cobwebs hung everywhere, grey veils swaying in the draughts from the broken windows. Bulbs were in only a few of the light sockets, burnt-out candles stood about in cracked saucers, old Indian bedspreads were draped over some of the mattresses and pinned up at some of the broken windows. He put his arms round her. She was trembling but warm and soft.

  ‘Let’s go into my room,’ he said. ‘It’s better there. It’s nice there. And there aren’t any spiders.’

  ‘I don’t mind spiders,’ she said.

  After all these years he remembered that. He had meant to lie down beside her and not touch her again, but he couldn’t keep to this resolve, partly because she so evidently didn’t want him to. The lovemaking was lovely, he remembered, protracted and repeated, and they fell asleep in each other’s arms, something he had read about happening to couples as quite a normal common thing, but it had never happened to him before. They moved away from each other later, surely another normal thing. But in the morning – the afternoon, really, when he woke up – she was gone.

  Storm had brought her so it was to him he had gone. Who was she? Where was she? But Storm was too far gone on an acid trip, out of his head on the stuff, even to know whom he meant. And Storm’s girlfriend had broken up with him and disappeared so she was no help. Marius had asked the other people in the commune but no one knew Rosie’s other name. She was just Rosie and they talked of ships passing in the night. Why had she come in the first place? No one knew. That wasn’t the kind of thing they enquired about. They were there to escape from questions of that kind – what are you doing? Why are you here? What time is it? When are you going to get a job? Who’s that girl?

  Within weeks he went off to his teacher training and he forgot her. Or thought he had. There had been other girlfriends, even a fiancée. He had never married but he wasn’t enough of a sentimentalist to attribute his singleness to his night with Rosie. But now that total recall had come to him he stayed away from her. Being in her company embarrassed him.

  When Claudia arrived at Lichfield House it happened that several of the residents were either on their way out or reaching home. This was because the time she had chosen was five thirty in the afternoon. Stuart himself was returning from his tanning session at Embrown and Michael Constantine from a meeting with the features editor of his newspaper. The Scurlocks, together for once, were on their way to visit Richenda’s mother in the Royal Free Hospital, and Marius Potter was off to a house in Mill Hill where on Tuesday evenings he tutored a seventeen-year-old for her Latin A level. Duncan Yeardon wasn’t there but, having finished his decorating for the day, was whiling away the time until his dinner by watching Lichfield House.

  He saw the arrival of the tall blonde woman whose husband had broken up Stuart Font’s party and Stuart Font’s arm. She got out of a taxi, had an argument with the driver and flounced off up the path. The door opened to receive her as it had opened for that medical chap two minutes before. Stuart appeared next, looking as if he had been on a long holiday in the Caribbean, but stopped outside the Bel Esprit Centre to stare at Tigerlily and Mr Wu who had just got out of their car. Stuart waved and called out hi and wasn’t it a lovely evening but Mr Wu hustled Tigerlily into the house and quickly closed the front door. Duncan was beginning to enjoy himself.

  The man who looked like an old hippie – Duncan called him Ringo – came out, then went back as if he’d forgotten something. Stuart trailed slowly up the path, obviously fed up about Tigerlily not talking to him. What was going on there? Before he could provide an answer, the wife of the madman who had injured Stuart appeared, the glass doors opening for her and almost precipitating her into Stuart’s arms. The word Stuart used was uttered so loudly that Duncan heard it clearly from his open window – and deplored it as unnecessary and a sign of the times. The doors stood open, kept in that state by the press of people all standing on the thresh
old. That caretaker chap and his wife pushed their way through, the caretaker or porter or whatever he was shouting that they’d break the door mechanism if they went on like that.

  Inside the lobby of Lichfield House Claudia was hanging on to Stuart, holding his arm and clutching his other shoulder. She had lost all control and begun shouting at him that he needn’t think he could treat her like that, never answering her calls, ignoring her after all they’d been to each other. Duncan could no longer hear her and barely see anything now the doors had closed. Regretfully, he turned away to think about cooking something for his supper.

  *

  Stuart unlocked his door and pushed Claudia inside. He didn’t want her there but it was a preferable alternative to the scene she was making in front of Marius Potter and Michael Constantine.

  Once inside, Claudia demanded drink. She needed it. Surely he had a bottle of wine in his fridge? He told her she would have to drink it warm, and while she was taking a long swig, he resolved to be strong and decisive. A break must be made. She set down her glass, said, ‘You’ve been away. You’d never get a tan like that in this country.’

  ‘In Barbados,’ he lied. ‘And I’m going back there.’ He began fabricating. ‘Tomorrow. I’ll be away a long time.’

  ‘Oh, darling, is that why you didn’t answer my calls?’

  He weakened. Instead of telling her all was over and they were never to see each other again, as he had resolved to do, he agreed with her. That was why. ‘Where does Freddy think you are?’

  ‘Oh, God knows. Who cares? Let me come to Barbados with you. That’ll be the start of leaving Freddy. You don’t know how I long to see the back of him.’

  This was worse than he had ever dreamt of. ‘Listen, Claudia, you tell Freddy I’m in the Caribbean. Or tell him I’ve moved – anything. Don’t you realise he more or less threatened to kill me?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s all talk, darling. Oh, darling, let’s go to bed.’

  Claudia admired his beautiful tan, something which once would have gratified him, but he didn’t much enjoy himself. It was the last time, though, he made up his mind as she was dressing that it absolutely must be the last time. When he was going about with Tigerlily – something he must make happen – Claudia would get the message, she would give up, she would have to.

  By now it was dark, the street lights coming on. He saw Claudia out, found a taxi waiting hopefully in the parade and put her into it. On his way back he saw the black car, its headlights on, pulling away from outside Springmead with Tigerlily’s father at the wheel. He was so excited he could almost feel the adrenalin surge and he ran up the steps and rang the bell. The place was brightly lit behind its slatted blinds. He heard the chimes the bell made, pressed it again, it chimed again, and the door was opened.

  Tigerlily stood there, beautiful in her white dress, her hair in two thick black plaits. Even Stuart, not known for his sensitivity to other people’s feelings, saw her look of horror. She put one slender hand up to cover her mouth. Behind her, instead of some sort of hallway or room, was another door which she must have closed behind her. It was made of thickly chased glass, apparently coloured green, unless there was a green curtain behind it.

  ‘I came to ask you over for a drink,’ he said, adding when the look remained unchanged. ‘You and your father and your sister, of course. Any time you like. I’m always there.’

  She began shaking her head. She took her hand away from her mouth, said, ‘No, no, no …’ Then, taking a step forward, she laid one hand on his arm, looked up the street to the right and the left. ‘Are you good man?’

  No one had ever asked him that before. He nodded. ‘Yeah – well, I hope so.’

  It was what she wanted. ‘I come,’ she said. ‘Please. Tomorrow.’

  The door was shut. Amazed at his success, quite dizzy with it, he walked down the path to the gate as Tigerlily’s father’s car appeared from the corner of Kenilworth Parade. The man had seen him and pulled in to the kerb. Stuart also ran, across the road, causing a van driver to brake and curse, plunged into Lichfield House and the sanctuary of his flat.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The impossibility of living isolated in this world when you have an addiction and when you have cut yourself off from almost all means of communication, was now borne in upon Olwen. It was something she had not allowed for. When adopting this new ideal life for herself, she had supposed she would always be able to go out to buy her own drink, that wine shops would always be in easy reach and in that failing to pay her phone bill she had nevertheless thought she would be able to use someone else’s landline or mobile to ask British Telecommunications for reconnection. Now she realised that everyone in Lichfield House was avoiding her, except Wally Scurlock and he kept in touch only because she paid him.

  Even if she had been able to get on the phone again she had insufficient money to pay some wine shop in Edgware or Hendon to deliver to her. As it was, she had been forced into the near-intolerable position of being unable to call on Scurlock for fresh supplies. With the aid of her stick in one hand and clinging on to fences with the other, she had managed the walk – the struggling, dragging, crawling – to the cash machine in the Kenilworth Parade post office. There she found she had thirty-four pounds and some odd bits left in her account. The pensions wouldn’t come in until the 24th, which was the middle of next week. She staggered back home, wondering if an appeal to Scurlock would be any use. Unlikely. Last time she had tried it he had refused point-blank. She could empty her account and offer him twenty pounds to fetch her a bottle of gin but he was bound to say no. It wasn’t worth making the journey for only one bottle, he would say.

  She had perhaps three inches of vodka left in the bottle and half a bottle of gin. Cutting down, making it last, were alien concepts to Olwen. Of course, she had done that in the past – her whole life had been arranged around having a drink, putting off a second drink, waiting an hour, having a drink and another one, exerting all her will to have no more till next day. But the very point of coming here, of cutting off all ties, of putting the past behind her, had been to drink all she wanted, every drop she wanted, until she died. And she had been happy doing that, she thought as she contemplated the two bottles, really happy for the first time in her life, whatever the abstemious might say.

  The terrible nightmare of tomorrow loomed in front of her. As a dry desert it appeared, a brown sunless plain where nothing grew and nothing moved. She poured herself two inches of gin, murmuring, make it last, make it last.

  Turning off his central heating, Duncan opened all the windows in the house. Appreciate the weather, he told himself, don’t moan about it. The cloudless sky and the hot sunshine were surely more suited to July than April, and then he remembered how, two years before, April had been just like this, April had been the summer, and afterwards it was cold and wet until September. His painting finished, he set up his garden furniture, a white-painted metal table and four chairs, one of them a cushioned recliner.

  From time to time he heard the twittering voices of Tigerlily and the girl he called ‘the other one’ and occasionally the high-pitched gutturals of Oberon and Mr Wu. Those three chairs looked very empty and he considered putting his head over the fence and inviting whoever might be out there to join him for a cup of tea or a glass of wine, but then he thought better of it. Instead he asked the Pembers from number 1. They knew all about Tigerlily, Mr Wu, Oberon and the other one, only she wasn’t Tigerlily’s sister but her stepmother. Or so they said. The family came from Hong Kong and ran a family mail-order business from Springmead: garden plants, seedlings, seeds, annuals and perennials as well as vegetables, very much in demand in these hard times. Moira Jones that Duncan called Esmeralda and Ken Lee at number 7 had told them all about it. Ken had a Chinese mother himself. Hadn’t Duncan noticed?

  Rose’s three clients of the morning had gone and the fourth and last one was late. Sitting in one of the two small rooms of the Holistic Forum, she felt the onset of depr
ession, once familiar to her, but rare since coming to live at Lichfield House. McPhee would have comforted her, his pretty fluffy face, his muscular furry body in her arms, but obviously a dog had no place here in this temple of hygiene, all white-and-peach tiles, peach carpet, opalescent washbasin and crystal flagons of what Marius – very kindly and sincerely – called ‘magic potions’. The health and safety people wouldn’t allow a dog in.

  Of course really she knew the cause of her depression – the lack for the past fortnight of Marius in her life. Not McPhee who would be waiting for her when she went home in an hour’s time, not on account of the credit crunch keeping a lot of clients away. No, it was because Marius no longer rang her doorbell, no longer phoned, no longer invited her. She had been a fool to bank so much on it, to read more into his visits than was actually there. He was very clever, highly educated, a mine of history and classical lore, he knew about everything, while she was very ignorant about all but alternative medicine. He had seemed interested in that too but no doubt he had got bored with it – and her. She felt too low, and the lowness was increasing, to take steps herself. Suppose he snubbed her? Suppose she went up in the lift and knocked at his door and asked for a sortes reading and he said he was too busy?

  The client came. She was a large woman wearing tight white trousers and tight green T-shirt. Rose thought she had seldom seen such an expression of misery on anyone’s face.

  ‘Shall I work out your BMI, Mrs Hayley?’

  The client asked what a BMI was and when Rose said it meant body mass index a dark red blush spread over Mrs Hayley’s sad face. ‘If you must.’

  Rose got her on to the scales, calculated her height and fed the information into her computer.

  ‘Well, what is it then?’

  ‘Thirty-two,’ said Rose. Two tears welled in Mrs Hayley’s eyes and trickled down her cheeks. ‘Please don’t be upset. We can deal with this, you know. I’m going to let you have some of my herbal tincture to take three times a day. I want you to drink plenty of water before meals and I shall give you a diet sheet.’