by Ruth Rendell
“I want to hear what Leonora has to say, not you. Let her speak for herself. She’s quite capable of that, I assure you. Now you tell me, Leonora—you weren’t going to leave me, were you? You weren’t seriously contemplating going to Manchester?”
“What do you mean, ‘leave me’?” said Newton, very cold now. “You can’t leave someone you’re not with. Leonora left you seven years ago.”
“It’s a lie!” Guy shouted. “She loves me, she’s told me so a hundred times. She isn’t going to marry you. What makes you think she is? Her family found you for her and pushed her onto you, but they can’t control her mind, they can’t touch her heart. She’s mine and she always will be . . .”
“Guy …” Leonora came round the table to him. Newton still sat there staring, calm, as cold as ice. “Guy,” Leonora said, “you must stop this, you must.”
“Get him to stop lying to me and then I’ll stop all right.”
“He isn’t lying. I’m going to marry him and I’m going to Manchester with him.”
“I don’t believe it. I won’t believe it. I’ll see you dead before I let you go away with him.”
“Do you wonder I didn’t tell you about it when you go on like this? The reason I didn’t tell you was to avoid you going on like this.”
Guy looked at her, feeling a tide of misery gathering and mounting inside him. He had never felt more like weeping in her arms. He wanted to take her in his arms and beg her not to go. “You won’t go, will you, Leo?”
She made no answer but her face was twisted as if she was in pain.
“That’s why you’re selling your flat,” he said. “That’s why he’s selling his.”
“Please don’t, Guy, don’t go on. Please stop shouting.”
It was slowly becoming clear to him. “That’s why he’s getting rid of ”—he flung out an arm—“all this shit. All this rubbish,” he said, “… these swords. He said he wanted to sell his swords.”
Guy was trembling. He took two steps to the fireplace and pulled down the swords from the wall. Newton sat there, looking incredulous. Guy threw the naked sword down on the table and tugged the other from its scabbard. Leonora seized his arm. He flung off her hand and leaped back, brandishing the shining sabre.
“I’ll fight you for her! We’ll fight a duel.” He was trembling no longer. Adrenaline poured through him, quenching misery. “I’ll fight you to the death!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
William Newton picked up the sabre from the table and stood looking at it as if it were some strange implement he had heard of but never seen before. He laid it down again, said to Guy, “Why don’t you put that down and go home.”
“He’s afraid to fight me, Leonora,” Guy said.
“It might be unwise.” A little smile, probably nervous, had appeared on Newton’s horsy face. “They’re old fighting sabres, they’re not ornamental.”
“You coward,” said Guy. “Where’s your honour? Admit it, you’re chicken. This is the man your parents chose to be your husband, Leonora. Pathetic, isn’t he?” He raised the sabre. It was years since Guy had taken his fencing lessons, but he was strong and fit. He held the sword at an angle, the point level with Newton’s eyes.
Leonora said in a breathless voice, “I’m going to phone the police.”
“Why?” said Guy. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“I’m going to phone them unless you put that sword down now.”
“No, you’re not, my dear.”
The phone on a small side table had a long trailing lead. It wasn’t the kind you can plug in. Guy brought the sabre down with a long slicing movement across the lead six inches from where it emerged from the wall. The phone bounced off the table but the lead remained intact. Guy made a grab at it, pulled the lead and wrenched it out of the wall socket.
“For God’s sake. Are you mad?”
“Don’t say that to me, Leo. You shouldn’t have talked about phoning the police. Stand back, please. Go in the other room, if you want.” He added contemptuously, “If there is another room.” He turned back to Newton, who had said nothing, who had responded to none of Guy’s insults, but merely stood there, the smile still twitching his lips. “Ginger dwarf, miserable runt. Fucking prig.”
Casually, Newton picked up the sword. Its blade was dull but it looked sharp. For all their shabby appearance on the wall, the swords had been kept in good condition. The two men faced each other, each holding his weapon, but not crossing them, not performing any preliminary ritual. They looked at each other and Leonora watched them, one hand up to her open mouth.
Guy was the first to make a move. He swung his sword in two sideways sweeps, to the left and to the right, then made a swift fierce stab at Newton, but the other man skipped quickly round the table, avoiding the lunge. Guy stabbed again, over the table-top, knocking over the wine bottle. Newton ducked, then sprang up at the end of the table where he had been sitting. His sword and Guy’s clashed with a high-ringing sound. Guy thrust again and the swords crossed and recrossed. Playing for a moment or two, like a tennis player in a knock-up before a match, Newton suddenly made a sweeping movement that turned Guy’s weapon aside.
“Pimp,” shouted Guy, “ginger dwarf, yes-man, wimp, egghead.”
Newton started laughing. “I have to tell you,” he said, “that I’ve done quite a bit of this, so if you want to stop now, that’ll be okay.”
“He’s trying to say he’s good,” Leonora shouted. “He fenced for his university.”
“So did I,” said Guy, “the university of life! Now wipe that grin off your face,” he yelled at Newton and lunged at him.
Leonora put her head in her hands. The swords were simply clashing now, Guy smashing his this way and that, in wild movements without any finesse or control. He sprang back and drove his weapon at Newton in a scooping movement like an underarm serve. Newton didn’t skip aside this time but deflected the blade with a single sweep. Guy could feel Leonora behind him. One of her hands clutched at his shoulder. He shook it off. He backed, defending himself. She cried out, “Please, Guy, please stop. I’ll get the neighbours, I swear I will. I’ll go down to the street and phone the police. You must stop.”
“For Christ’s sake, keep out of this!” He had never spoken to her like that before. She gave a sob. “I love you,” he shouted. “I’ll always love you. I’ll win you!”
Newton stood there, legs apart. He wasn’t smiling any more. He threw back his ginger hair. For a moment they faced each other, perfectly still. Guy had the feeling Newton would like to stop, would welcome a truce. That made him spring forward and whirl his sword in a movement that, if successful and the blade sharp, would have severed Newton’s head. Leonora screamed. But the stroke wasn’t successful. Newton parried it. He did so easily, and in a way that maddened Guy, it was so smoothly done and with a grace that made the ringing clang of the blades the more shocking.
Newton made a quick riposte, a feint really. He was teasing Guy. He danced with his sabre, making swift covering moves as Guy’s sword lunged wildly. Leonora was struggling to raise one of the window sashes. Guy forgot everything he had learned about fencing. He was just a man with a stabbing, cutting weapon. He was doing what an unskilled man with a sword will do, pushing it back and forth to the right and left, and yelling curses with each attack. He could hear himself roaring.
She couldn’t shift the window but collapsed against it for a moment, her head on her hands. Guy beat at the air, at Newton’s blade when his came into contact with it, once striking the shade of the central light and setting it swinging wildly. Leonora’s coming away from the window, standing there and watching them as if hypnotized, gave him a fresh impetus. But the silent Newton was no longer menaced by anything Guy did. He was in absolute control of the bout. Sometimes his weapon grazed Guy’s, sometimes beat lightly on it. Guy’s rage, at boiling point, rose another inch and spilled over. He leaped outside the range of Newton’s sabre and made a wild attempt to run him th
rough from the side.
The blade missed Newton, not because he parried it with his own but because he contracted his muscles in the nick of time. The sabre point went through his sweater at the waist and ripped the wool from hem to neckline.
Newton growled like a bear. His sweater flapped open like an unfastened strait-jacket. He pulled his arms out, stood there in a grubby white T-shirt, his breath rasping angrily. Guy was laughing in triumph. He pulled off his own jumper and threw it across the room. From his success he had gained skill, or at least energy. He began to mix slashes and stabbing, crowing and making Wild West yells. Leonora was watching wide-eyed, like a first-time spectator at a bullfight, horrified, yet compelled.
Guy began directing his blade in a low line, pointing at Newton’s genitals. He twirled the point. He laughed. Shouting insults, he danced up and down, the sword jumping and bobbing in a half-circle at thigh level. It was designed to lull Leonora’s lover into a state of unpreparedness, and if the surprise thrust he now made had hit its target, Newton would have got to his feet a eunuch. But this was the last blow Guy was to attempt. It was all over with a frightening suddenness.
Newton parried the lunge with a neat turn of his wrist in a lateral defensive movement, riposted at once and caught Guy on the left arm. The point of the sabre cut him in a straight line from wrist to elbow.
Guy’s sword fell from his hand. With blood fountaining from his wound he toppled over, seizing what first came to hand to break his fall. It was the edge of the table-cloth and with it came plates and glasses, wine bottle, knives and forks. He collapsed onto the floor covered in a litter of sticky china and glass. He could hear Leonora screaming, a manic animal sound. She dropped the window sash and ran to him. Guy shut his eyes, opened them and sat up. His arm was streaming with blood.
“Oh God,” Leonora sobbed. “Oh God, oh God.”
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’ll be all right.” He held the wound but his hand wasn’t large enough to cover it. Leonora started ripping up the tablecloth, tearing it into strips. The first bandage she put on was immediately soaked in blood. She was sobbing and gasping.
“Don’t worry, darling,” Guy said, “it’s only a flesh wound.”
This, for some reason, evoked a crow of laughter from Newton, who with ridiculous coolness was wiping the sabre blade and replacing it, unwashed, in its scabbard. He hung both swords back on the wall. “Still want to buy them?” he said. “Oh, William, don’t. Haven’t you done enough?”
“I’m sorry,” Newton said. “I shouldn’t have fought him.”
“No, you shouldn’t. It was awful. Look what you’ve done. Phone for an ambulance, now, please.”
“I can’t phone for anything, can I? Not now he’s buggered up the phone.”
Leonora unwrapped the table-cloth bandage and started applying a fresh one. Guy was still sitting on the floor. He got to his feet. His left arm felt rather numb, without pain. There had been no pain, only the initial sting, like an insect biting, when Newton’s sword point ripped the skin. Newton sighed and said, “I’ll drive you to hospital. I’m sorry about this, Guy. It’s a mess. All we can do now is go and find some casualty department.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather die than have you drive me anywhere.”
“Okay, be like that, but you’ll have to have something done about your arm.”
“I’ll drive him,” said Leonora. “I’ll drive you, Guy.”
Everything that had happened was worth it to hear her say that. She had another go with a fresh strip of table-cloth, binding it more tightly this time. One of her scarves made a sling for his arm. “Put your sweater round you.” She picked it up off the floor. “Do you want a coat? I expect I could find you a jacket.”
“Not one of his,” said Guy.
Newton grinned. “He’d rather die of cold.”
That made Guy start for him, fists up, in spite of his bleeding arm. Leonora grabbed him, pulled him round, and then the wound did start to hurt, a deep throb beginning. Guy groaned. Leonora’s face was wet with tears. She wiped it on another bit of table-cloth. Newton touched her arm and she looked at him, but Guy couldn’t read that look. He would have liked to hold on to her going down the stairs but pride forbade it.
At the bottom a front door opened and a man, a sleek yuppie with a small moustache, put his head out.
“Everything all right?”
“Only a duel,” said Leonora, with an hysterical edge to her voice.
The man didn’t seem to take this in. “I thought I heard something. My wife said it was builders.”
They found a casualty department open in a big hospital half-way up a hill. Guy didn’t know the name of it. He didn’t really know North London. It seemed to him he must have lost pints of blood. His shirt was soaked with blood. It had cost him nearly two hundred pounds, a deceptively simple and casual garment. The blood would never come out. Some of it had got onto Leonora’s track-suit top and there were smears on her white trousers. The pair of them looked as if they had come off a battlefield.
He was happy. Of course he realized that it was awful, what he had done. He would be scarred for life. But she loved him. He had won her. Hadn’t she reproached the wretched Newton? Hadn’t she rushed to him and sacrificed a perfectly good table-cloth to bind up his wound?
“I’ll pay for the phone to be re-connected,” he whispered.
She started laughing. It was humourless hysteria. Sobs punctuated it.
“Come on,” he said. “Everything’ll be okay. You’ll see. I’ll buy him a new sweater.”
After that his name was called. A weary doctor cleaned the wound and of course wanted to know what had caused it. An accident with a carving knife, Guy said, an explanation that wasn’t believed, but the doctor said no more for the time being. He gave Guy an anti-tetanus injection, put half a dozen stitches in the wound. It was no more really than a deep scratch.
“Do you know what that looks like to me? Just as a matter of interest? As if someone quite skilled with the sabres wanted to, if you’ll forgive the pun, make his point. Show he meant business but that was enough for now, right?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Guy.
“I do a bit with the sabres myself, or I used to, in the days when life was normal and I had, you know, what’s it called, leisure. Run along now. You can come back next Wednesday and have the stitches out.”
In the car Guy said, “Are you angry with me?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m just tired, fed up, sick of the whole thing.”
“My darling, I understand. I know how you feel.”
“No, you don’t, Guy. That’s the trouble. You don’t know how I feel, you never have and you never will. Now I’m going to drive you home. Will you be all right on your own?”
“I hoped you’d stay with me.”
“I can’t do that. What good would that do? Shall I phone Celeste?”
He shook his head. They were waiting at a traffic light and he reached out to take her hand. “Stay with me.”
“Guy, I’ll come in with you and see that you’re okay and make you a hot drink. I’ll phone you in the morning.”
He understood she couldn’t leave Newton just like that. Newton, who was a madman, a psychopath, was capable of coming round to look for her, armed probably. Besides, she probably wanted to be alone with Newton and tell him in no uncertain terms what she thought of his violent behavior.
He said it again and this time she didn’t argue. “Have lunch with me on Saturday.”
“I always have lunch with you on Saturdays.”
That she came in with him as she had promised nevertheless surprised him. “Your lovely house,” she said. “It’s the nicest house I know.”
“Is it? It’ll be yours one day.”
He waited for the denial but it didn’t come. “I can’t remember where the kitchen is.”
“You don’t need the kitchen. I don’t want a drink, not that sort anyway. You shall
sit down, my darling, and I’ll make you a drink. Something strong, you need it after all that hassle.”
“I’m driving,” she said. “Remember?”
“Oh, come on. No one’s going to breathalyse you.”
She took the glass from him, poured soda water into it. He was impeded by his disabled left arm. Something from the evening past came back to him. Perhaps it was the sight of the television set in the corner that he hardly ever switched on. He poured his brandy, a generous measure.
“Haven’t you got an uncle in television? Something with the BBC? Haven’t I met him?”
She nodded. “My father’s brother, my Uncle Michael. He’s the chairman of TVEA. Why?”
“I suppose it was through him Newton got this job?”
“Of course it wasn’t, Guy. It had nothing to do with it. William’s going to work for BBC North-West. He told you.”
“It all comes to the same thing, though, doesn’t it? Back-scratching. What’s the word? Begins with an N.”
“Nepotism. Only it isn’t. Guy, are you all right to be left? I ought to go.”
“Where shall we have lunch on Saturday?”
“Anywhere you like.”
“D’you know, I thought for a while in the car that you might say you wouldn’t have lunch with me, you might be too cross.”
She smiled, got up. “Well, now you know. I’m not. Too cross, I mean.”
“Clarke’s again?” he said.
“Could it be—well, more central? Didn’t we once go to a nice fish place in the Haymarket?”
“The Café Fish in Panton Street.”
“That’s right. One o’clock? Guy … ?” She took his hand. They walked out into the hall together. He stood inside the front door looking at her, his left arm still supported in her red-and-black silk scarf. “Guy—I don’t know how to say this.” She was trembling. The light in the hall was dim but he could see she had gone pale. Her eyes glittered. “I want to—could we spend the day together on Saturday? I mean, could we have lunch and be together for the rest of the day? Maybe go to the theatre or the cinema, have dinner—oh, I don’t know. I’d just like to—but your poor arm! Perhaps you won’t feel like …”
