by Ruth Rendell
There wasn’t a single light showing. He remembered that they lived in the back, but they might have put a light on to greet him. But for his car headlamps, he wouldn’t have been able to see his way at all. Clutching the box of peppermint creams he had bought for Elizabeth Crouch, he splashed across the almost flooded paving, under eaves from which water poured as from a row of taps, and made for the front door, which happened to be—which would be—at the far side of the house. It was hard to tell where their garden ended and the Forest began, for no demarcation was visible. Nothing was visible but black, rain-lashed branches, faintly illuminated by a dim glow showing through the fanlight over the door.
He rang the bell hard, keeping his finger on the push, hoping the rain hadn’t got through his coat to his hundred-guinea suit. A jet of water struck the back of his neck, sending a shiver right through him, and then the door was opened.
“Duncan! You must be soaked. Have you had a dreadful journey?”
He gasped out, “Awful, awful!” and ducked into the dry sanctuary of the hall. “What a night!” He thrust the chocolates at her, gave her his hand. Then he remembered that in the old days they always used to kiss. Well, he never minded kissing a pretty woman and it hadn’t been her fault. “How are you, Elizabeth?” he said after their cheeks had touched.
“I’m fine. Let me take your coat. I’ll take it into the kitchen and dry it. Hugo’s in the sitting room. You know your way, don’t you?”
Down a long passage, he remembered, that was never properly lighted and wasn’t heated at all. The whole place cried out for central heating. He was by now extremely cold and he couldn’t help thinking of his flat, where the radiators got so hot that you had to open the windows even in February and where, had he been at home, his housekeeper would at this moment be placing before him a portion of hot paté to be followed by poulet San Josef. Elizabeth Crouch, he recalled, was rather a poor cook.
Outside the sitting-room door he paused, girding himself for the encounter. He hadn’t set eyes on Hugo Crouch since the man had marched out of the office in a huff because he, Duncan Fraser, chairman of Frasers, had tentatively suggested he might be happier in another job. Well, the sooner the first words were over the better. Very few men in his position, he thought, would let the matter weigh on their minds at all or have his sensitivity. Very few, for that matter, would have come.
He would be genial, casual, perhaps a little avuncular. Above all, he would avoid at any cost the subject of Hugo’s dismissal. They wouldn’t be able to make him talk about it if he was determined not to; ultimately, the politeness of hosts to guest would put up a barrier to stop them. He opened the door, smiling pleasantly, achieving a merry twinkle in his eye. “Well, here I am, Hugo! I’ve made it.”
Hugo wore a very sour look, the kind of look Duncan had often seen on his face when some more than usually extravagant order or request of his had been countermanded. He didn’t smile. He gave Duncan his hand gravely and asked him what he would like to drink.
Duncan looked quickly around the room, which hadn’t changed and was still furnished with rather grim Victorian pieces. There was, at any rate, a huge fire of logs burning in the grate. “Ah, yes, a drink,” he said, rubbing his hands together. He didn’t dare ask for whisky, which he would have liked best, because his doctor had forbidden it. “A little dry Vermouth?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have any Vermouth.”
This rejoinder, though spoken quite lightly, though he had even expected something of the sort, gave Duncan a slight shock. It put him on his mettle and yet it jolted him. He had known, of course, that they would start on him but he hadn’t anticipated the first move coming so promptly. All right, let the man remind him he couldn’t afford fancy drinks because he had lost his job. He, Duncan, wouldn’t be drawn. “Sherry, then,” he said. “You do have sherry?”
“Oh, yes, we have sherry. Come and sit by the fire.”
As soon as he was seated in front of those blazing logs and had begun to thaw out, he decided to pursue the conversation along the lines of the weather. It was the only subject he could think of to break the ice until Elizabeth came in, and they were doing quite well at it, moving into such sidelines as floods in East Anglia and crashes in motorway fog, when she appeared and sat next to him.
“We haven’t asked anyone else, Duncan. We wanted to have you to ourselves.”
A pointless remark, he thought, under the circumstances. Naturally, they hadn’t asked anyone else. The presence of other guests would have defeated the exercise. But perhaps it hadn’t been so pointless, after all. It could be an opening gambit.
“Delightful,” he said.
“We’ve got such a lot to talk about. I thought it would be nicer this way.”
“Much nicer.” Such a lot to talk about? There was only one thing she could mean by that. But she needn’t think—silent Hugo sitting there with his grim, moody face needn’t think—that he would help them along an inch of the way. If they were going to get on to the subject they would have to do all the spadework themselves. “We were just saying,” he said, “how tragic all these motorway crashes are. Now I feel all this could be stopped by a very simple method.”
He outlined the simple method but he could tell they weren’t really interested and he wasn’t surprised when Elizabeth said, “That’s fascinating, Duncan, but let’s talk about you. What have you been doing lately?”
Controlling the business your husband nearly ruined. “Oh, this and that,” he said. “Nothing much.”
“Did you go on a cruise this winter?”
“Er—yes, yes I did. The Caribbean, as a matter of fact.”
“That’s nice. I’m sure the change did you good.”
Implying he needed having good done to him, of course. She had only got on to cruises so that she could point out that some people couldn’t afford them. “I had a real rest,” he said heartily. “I must just tell you about a most amusing thing that happened to me on the way home.” He told them but it didn’t sound very amusing, and although Elizabeth smiled half-heartedly, Hugo didn’t. “Well, it seemed funny at the time,” he said.
“We can eat in five minutes,” said Elizabeth. “Tell me, Duncan, did you buy that villa you were so keen on in the South of France?”
“Oh, yes, I bought it.” She was looking at him very curiously, very impertinently really, waiting for him to apologise for spending his own money, he supposed. “Listen to that rain,” he said. “It hasn’t let up at all.”
They agreed that it hadn’t and silence fell. He could tell from the glance they exchanged—he was very astute in these matters—that they knew they had been baulked for the time being. And they both looked pretty fed up, he thought triumphantly. But the woman was weighing in again and a bit nearer the bone this time.
“Who do you think we ran into last week, Duncan? John Churchouse.”
The man who had done that printing for Frasers a couple of years back. He had got the order, Duncan remembered, just about the time of Hugo’s promotion. He sat tight, drank the last of his sherry.
“He told us he’d been in hospital for months and lost quite a lot of business. I felt so …”
“I wonder if I might wash my hands,” Duncan asked firmly. “If you could just tell me where the bathroom is?”
“Of course.” She looked disappointed, as well she might. “It’s the door facing you at the top of the stairs.”
Duncan made his way to the bathroom. He mustn’t think he was going to get off the hook as easily as that. They would be bound to start on him again during the meal. Very likely they thought a dinner table a good place to hold an inquest. Still, he’d be ready for them, he’d done rather well up to now.
They were both waiting for him at the foot of the stairs to lead him into the dining room and again he saw the woman give her husband one of those looks that are the equivalent of prompting nudges. Hugo was probably getting cold feet. In these cases, of course, it was always the women who were mor
e aggressive. Duncan gave a swift glance at the table and the plate of hors d’oeuvres, sardines and anchovies and artichoke hearts, most unsuitable for the time of year.
“I’m afraid you’ve been to a great deal of trouble, Elizabeth,” he said graciously.
She gave him a dazzling smile. He had forgotten that smile of hers, how it lit her whole face, her eyes as flashing blue as a kingfisher’s plumage. “‘The labour we delight in,’” she said, “‘physics pain.’”
“Ah, Macbeth.” Good, an excellent topic to get them through the first course. “Do you know, the only time we three ever went to the theatre together was to see Macbeth?”
“I remember,” she said. “Bread, Duncan?”
“Thank you. I saw a splendid performance of Macbeth by that Polish company last week. Perhaps you’ve seen it?”
“We haven’t been to the theatre at all this winter,” said Hugo.
She must have kicked him under the table to prompt that one. Duncan took no notice. He told them in detail about the Polish Macbeth, although such was his mounting tenseness that he couldn’t remember half the names of the characters or, for that matter, the names of the actors.
“I wish Keith could have seen it,” she said. “It’s his set play for his exam.”
She was going to force him to ask after her sons and be told they had had to take them away from that absurdly expensive boarding school. Well, he wouldn’t. Rude it might be, but he wouldn’t ask.
“I don’t think you ever met our children, Duncan?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“They’ll be home on half-term next week. I’m so delighted that their half-term happens to coincide with mine.”
“Yours?” he said suspiciously.
“Elizabeth has gone back to teaching.”
“Really?” said Duncan. “No, I won’t have any more, thank you. That was delicious. Let me give you a hand. If I could carry something …?”
“Please don’t trouble. I can manage.” She looked rather offended. “If you two will excuse me I’ll see to our main course.”
He was left alone with Hugo in the chilly dining room. He shifted his legs from under the cloth to bring them closer to the one-bar electric heater. Hugo began to struggle with the cork of the wine bottle. Unable to extract it, he cursed under his breath.
“Let me try.”
“I’ll be able to cope quite well, thanks, if you don’t watch me,” said Hugo sharply, and then, irrelevantly if you didn’t know nothing those two said was irrelevant, “I’m doing a course in accountancy.”
“As a wine waiter, Hugo,” said Duncan, “you make a very good accountant, ha ha!”
Hugo didn’t laugh. He got the cork out at last. “I think I’ll do all right. I was always reasonably good at figures.”
“So you were, so you were. And more than reasonably good.” That was true. It had been with personnel that the man was so abysmally bad, giving junior executives and little typists ideas above their station. “I’m sure you’ll do well.” Why didn’t the woman come back? It must have been ten minutes since she had gone off to that kitchen, down those miles of passages. His own wife, long dead, would have got that main course into serving dishes before they had sat down to the hors d’oeuvres. “Get a qualification, that’s the thing,” he said. In the distance he heard the wheels of a trolley coming. It was a more welcome sound than that of the wheels of the train one has awaited for an hour on a cold platform. He didn’t like the woman but anything was better than being alone with Hugo. Why not get it over now, he thought, before they began on the amazingly small roasted chicken which had appeared? He managed a smile. He said, “I can tell you’ve both fallen on your feet. I’m quite sure, Hugo, you’ll look back on all this when you’re a successful accountant and thank God you and Frasers parted company.”
And that ought to be that. They had put him through their inquisition and now perhaps they would let him eat this overcooked mess that passed for dinner in peace. At last they would talk of something else, not leave it to him who had been making the running all the evening.
But instead of conversation, there was a deep silence. No one seemed to have anything to say. And although Duncan, working manfully at his chicken wing, racked his brains for a topic, he could think of nothing. Their house, his flat, the workpeople at Frasers, his car, the cost of living, her job, Hugo’s course, Christmas past, summer to come, all these subjects must inevitably lead by a direct route back to Hugo’s dismissal. And Duncan saw with irritable despair that all subjects would lead to it because he was he and they were they and the dismissal lay between them like an unavoidable spectre at their dismal feast. From time to time he lifted his eyes from his plate, hoping that she would respond to that famous smile of his, that smile that was growing stiff with insincere use, but each time he looked at her he saw that she was staring fixedly at him, eating hardly anything, her expression concentrated, dispassionate, and somehow dogged. And her eyes had lost their kingfisher flash. They were dull and dead like smoky glass.
So they hadn’t had enough then, she and her subdued, morose husband? They wanted to see him abject, not merely referring with open frankness to the dismissal as he had done, but explaining it, apologising. Well, they should have his explanation. There was no escape. Carefully, he placed his knife and fork side by side on his empty plate. Precisely, but very politely, he refused his hostess’s offer of more. He took a deep breath as he often did at the beginning of a board meeting, as he had so very often done at those board meetings when Hugo Crouch pressed insistently for staff rises.
“My dear Elizabeth,” he began, “my dear Hugo, I know why you asked me here tonight and what you’ve been hinting at ever since I arrived. And because I want to enjoy your very delightful company without any more awkwardness, I’m going to do here and now what you very obviously want me to do—that is, explain just how it happened that I suggested Hugo would be happier away from Frasers.”
Elizabeth said, “Now, Duncan, listen…”
“You can say your piece in a moment, Elizabeth. Perhaps you’ll be surprised when I say I am entirely to blame for what happened. Yes, I admit it, the fault was all mine.” He lifted one hand to silence Hugo who was shaking his head vehemently. “No, Hugo, let me finish. As I said, the fault was mine. I made an error of judgment. Oh, yes, I did. I should have been a better judge of men. I should have been able to see when I promoted you that you weren’t up to the job. I blame myself for not understanding—well, your limitations.”
They were silent. They didn’t look at him or at each other.
“We men in responsible positions,” he said, “are to blame when the men we appoint can’t rise to the heights we envisage for them. We lack vision, that’s all. I take the whole burden of it on my shoulders, you see. So shall we forgive and forget?”
He had seldom seen people look so embarrassed, so shamefaced. It just went to show that they were no match for him. His statement had been the last thing they had expected and it was unanswerable. He handed her his plate with its little graveyard of chicken bones among the potato skins and as she took it he saw a look of baulked fury cross her face.
“Well, Elizabeth,” he said, unable to resist, “am I forgiven?”
“It’s too late now. It’s past,” she said in a very cold, stony voice. “It’s too late for any of this.”
“I’m sorry if I haven’t given you the explanation you wanted, my dear. I’ve simply told you the truth.”
She didn’t say any more. Hugo didn’t say anything. And suddenly Duncan felt most uncomfortable. Their condemnatory faces, the way they both seemed to shrink away from him, was almost too much for him. His heart began to pound and he had to tell himself that a racing heart meant nothing, that it was pain and not palpitations he must fear. He reached for one of his little white pills ostentatiously, hoping they would notice what they had done to him.
When still they didn’t speak, he said, “I think perhaps I should go now.”
“Just the same, it might be better…”
“Please stay and have coffee,” she said firmly, almost sternly, and then she forced a smile. “I insist.”
Back in the sitting room they offered him brandy. He refused it because he had to drive home, and the sooner he could begin that drive the happier he would be. Hugo had a large brandy, which he drank at a gulp, the way brandy should never be drunk unless one had had a shock or were steeling oneself for something. Elizabeth had picked up the evening paper and was talking in a very artificial way about a murder case which appeared on the front page.
“I really must go,” said Duncan.
“Have some more coffee? It’s not ten yet.”
Why did they want him to stay? Or, rather, why did she? Hugo was once more busy with the brandy bottle. He would have thought his company must be as tiresome to them as theirs was to him. They had got what they wanted, hadn’t they? He drank his second cup of coffee so quickly that it scalded his mouth and then he got up.
“I’ll get an umbrella. I’ll come out with you,” said Hugo.
“Thank you.” It was over. He was going to make his escape and he need never see them again. And suddenly he felt that he wouldn’t be able to get out of that house fast enough. Really, since he had made his little speech, the atmosphere had been thoroughly disagreeable. “Good night, Elizabeth,” he said. What platitudes could he think of that weren’t too ludicrous? “Thank you for the meal. Perhaps we may meet again some day.”
“I hope we shall and soon, Duncan,” she said, but she didn’t give him her cheek. Through the open door the rain was driving in against her long skirt. She stood there, watching him go out with Hugo, letting the light pour out to guide them round the corner of the house.
As soon as he was round that corner, Duncan felt an unpleasant jerk of shock. His car lights were blazing, full on.
