Kissing the Gunner's Daughter

by Ruth Rendell

  It was a thatched house, as its name indicated, something of a rarity in the neighbourhood. A kind of self-deprecatory snobbery might cause its owners to call it a cottage but in fact it was a sizeable house, of picturesquely uneven construction and pargeted patterns on the walls. The windows were large or medium-sized or very small, and several peeped out under eyelid gables close up to the roof. The roof was a formidable reed construction, ornately done and with a woven design round where the ribbed and pargeted chimney pots protruded. A garage, of the kind estate agents call ‘integral’, was also roofed by this dense layer of thatch.

  Their popularity on calendars had made thatched houses faintly absurd, the butt of a certain kind of wit. But if you cleared your mind of chocolate-box images, this house could be made to appear what it was, a beautiful English antiquity, its garden pretty with wind-blown spring flowers, its lawns the brilliant green result of a damp climate.

  Inside, a certain shabbiness, an air of make-do-and-mend, made him doubt his own original assessment of Nicholas Virson’s city successes. The little den where Daisy hung slumped over the table had a worn carpet and stretch-nylon covers on the chairs. A weary houseplant on the window sill had artificial flowers stuck into the soil around it to perk it up.

  She made a little sound, a whimper, an acknowledgement perhaps of his presence.

  ‘Daisy,’ he said.

  The shoulder that was not bandaged moved a little. Otherwise she gave no sign of having heard him.

  ‘Daisy, please stop crying.’

  She lifted her head slowly. This time there was no apology, no explanation. Her face was like a child’s, puffy with tears. He sat down in the chair opposite her. It was a small table between them, such as might be used in a room of this kind for writing, for playing cards, for a supper for two. She looked at him in despair.

  ‘Would you like me to come back tomorrow? I have to talk to you but it need not be now.’

  Crying had made her hoarse. In a voice he hardly recognised she said, ‘It may as well be now as any other time.’

  ‘How is your shoulder?’

  ‘Oh, all right. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just sore.’ She said something then which, if it had come from someone older or someone else, he would have found ridiculous. ‘The pain is in my heart.’

  It was as if she heard her own words, digested them and understood how they sounded, for she burst into a peal of unnatural laughter. ‘How stupid I sound! But it’s true – why does saying what’s true sound false?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said gently, ‘because it isn’t quite real. You’ve read it somewhere. People don’t really have pains in their hearts unless they’re having a heart attack and then I believe it’s usually in the arm.’

  ‘I wish I was old. I wish I was as old as you and wise.’

  This couldn’t be treated seriously. ‘Will you be staying here for a while, Daisy?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m here now, it’s as good a place as any. I made them let me out of the hospital. Oh, it was bad in there. It was bad being alone and worse being with strangers.’ She shrugged. ‘The Virsons are very kind. I’d like to be alone but I’m afraid of being alone too – do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so. It’s best for you to be with your friends, with people who’ll leave you alone when you want to be on your own.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you feel like answering some questions about Mrs Garland?’

  ‘Joanne?’

  This, at any rate, was not what she had expected. She wiped her eyes with her fingers, blinked at him.

  He had made up his mind not to tell her of their fears. She could know that Joanne Garland had gone away to some unknown destination but not that she was a ‘missing person’, not that they were already assuming her dead. Censoring what he said, he explained how she couldn’t be found.

  ‘I don’t know her very well,’ Daisy said. ‘Davina didn’t like her much. She didn’t think she was good enough for us.’

  Recalling some of what Brenda Harrison had said, Wexford was surprised and his astonishment must have shown on his face, for Daisy said, ‘Oh, I don’t mean in a snobby way. It was nothing to do with class with Davina. I mean –’ she lowered her voice ‘– she didn’t much care for –’ she cocked her thumb towards the door ‘– them either. She hadn’t any time for people she said were dull or ordinary. People had to have character, vitality, something individual. You see, she didn’t know any ordinary people – well, except the people who worked for her – and she didn’t want me to either. She used to say she wanted me to be surrounded by the best. She’d given up on Mum, but she didn’t like Joanne just the same, she’d never liked her. I remember one phrase she used, she said Joanne dragged Mum down into a “quagmire of the commonplace”.’

  ‘But your mother took no notice?’ Wexford had observed that Daisy could now talk of her mother and grandmother without a break in her voice, without a lapse into despair. Her grief was stemmed while she talked of the past. ‘She didn’t care?’

  ‘You have to understand that poor Mum was really one of those ordinary people Davina didn’t like. I don’t know why she was, something to do with genes I suspect.’ Daisy’s voice was strengthening as she talked, the hoarseness conquered by the interest she could still take in this subject. She could be distracted from her sorrow for these people by talking of them. ‘She was just as if she was the daughter of ordinary people, not someone like Davina. But the strange thing was that Harvey was a bit like that too. Davina used to talk a lot about her other husbands, number one and number two, saying how amusing and interesting they were, but I did wonder. Harvey never had much to say, he was a very quiet man. No, not so much quiet as passive. Easy-going, he called it. He did what Davina told him.’ Wexford thought he saw a spark burn in her eyes. ‘Or he tried to. He was dull, I think I’ve always known that.’

  ‘Your mother went on being friends with Joanne Garland in spite of your grandmother’s disapproval?’

  ‘Oh, Mum had had Davina disapproving of her and sort of laughing at her all her life. She knew there was nothing she could do that would be right, so she’d got to do what she liked. She’d even stopped rising when Davina poked fun at her. Working in that shop suited her. You probably don’t know this – why should you? – but Mum tried to be a painter for years and years. When I was little I can remember her painting and Davina coming into this studio they’d made for her and – well, criticising. I remember one thing she said, I didn’t know what it meant at the time. She said, “Well, Naomi, I don’t know what school you belong to but I think we could call you a Pre-Raphaelite Cubist.’

  ‘Davina wanted me to be all the things Mum wasn’t. Maybe she wanted me to be all the things she that. wasn’t too. But you don’t want to hear about that. Mum loved that gallery and earning her own money and being – well, what she called “my own woman’.’

  For the time being Daisy’s tears were in abeyance. Talking did her good. He doubted whether she was right when she said the best thing for her was to be alone. ‘How long had they worked together?’

  ‘Mum and Joanne? About four years. But they’d been friends for ever, since before I was born. Joanne had a shop in Queen Street, and that was where Mum first started with her, then she got that place for the gallery when the Centre was built. Did you say she’d gone away? She didn’t mean to go away. I remember Mum saying – well, on the day, that’s how I think of it, as the day – Mum said she’d wanted to take Friday off for something but Joanne wouldn’t let her because they’d got the VAT inspector coming in and she’d have to go through the books with him, I mean Joanne would. It took hours and hours and Mum would have to see to clients – they didn’t call them customers.’

  ‘Your mother phoned her and left a message on her answering machine not to come before eight thirty.’

  Daisy said indifferently, ‘I expect she did. She often did but it never seemed to make much differenc.’


  ‘Joanne didn’t phone during the evening?’

  ‘No one phoned. Joanne wouldn’t phone to say she’d come later. I don’t think she could have come later even if she’d tried. Those extra-punctual people can’t, they can’t help themselves.’

  He watched her. A little colour had come into her face. She was perspicacious, she was interested in people, their compulsions, how they behaved. He wondered what they talked about, she and these Virsons, when they were alone together, at meals, in the evening. What had she in common with them? As if she read his mind, she said, ‘Joyce – Mrs Virson – is arranging about the funeral. Some undertakers came today. She’ll speak to you, I expect. I mean, we can have a funeral, can we?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Of course.’

  ‘I didn’t know. I thought it might be different for murdered people. I hadn’t thought anything about it till Joyce said. It gave us something to talk about. It’s not easy talking when there’s only one thing in your life to talk about and that’s the one you have to avoid.’

  ‘It’s fortunate you can talk about it with me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She tried to smile. ‘You see, there aren’t any family left. Harvey hadn’t any relations, except a brother who died four years ago. Davina was “the youngest wren of nine” and nearly all the rest are dead. Someone has to organise things and I wouldn’t know how on my own. But I’ll say what I want the service to be and I’ll go to the funeral, I will do that.’

  ‘No one would expect you to.’

  ‘I think you may be wrong there,’ she said thoughtfully, and then, ‘Have you found anyone yet? I mean, have you got any clues to who it was that – did it?’

  ‘I want to ask you if you are quite sure of the description you gave me of the man you saw.’

  Indignation made her frown, her dark eyebrows push together. ‘What makes you ask? Of course I’m sure. I’ll tell you it again, if you like.’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary, Daisy. I’m going to leave you now but I’m afraid this isn’t likely to be the last time I’ll want to talk to you.’

  She turned away from him, twisting her body like a child turning its back out of shyness. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘I wish there was someone, just one person, I could pour out my heart to. I’m so alone. Oh, if I could only open my heart to someone . . .’

  The temptation to say, ‘Open it to me’ was resisted. He knew better than that. She had called him old and implied he was wise. He said, perhaps too lightly, ‘You’re talking of hearts a lot today, Daisy.’

  ‘Because,’ she faced him, ‘he tried to kill me in my heart. He aimed at my heart, didn’t he?’

  ‘You mustn’t think of that. You need someone to help you not to,’ he said. ‘It’s not for me to advise you, I’m not competent to do that, but do you think you need some counselling? Would you consider it?’

  ‘I don’t need that!’ She uttered it scornfully, an adamant denial. He was reminded of a psychotherapist he had once met in the course of an enquiry who had told him that saying you don’t need counselling is one sure way of estimating that you do. ‘I need someone to – to love me, and there’s no one.’

  ‘Goodbye.’ He held out his hand to her. There was Virson to love her. Wexford was sure he did and would. The idea was rather dispiriting. She took his hand and her grip was strong, like a powerful man’s. He felt in it the strength of her need, her cry for help. ‘Goodbye for the time being.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be such a bore,’ she said quietly.

  Joyce Virson was not exactly hovering in the passage, though he guessed she had been. She emerged from what was probably a drawing room, into which he wasn’t invited. She was a big tall woman, perhaps sixty or rather less. The remarkable thing about her was that she seemed altogether on a larger scale than most women, taller, wider, with a bigger face, bigger nose and mouth, a mass of thick curly grey hair, man’s hands, surely size nine feet. A shrill, affected upper-class voice went with all this.

  ‘I simply wanted to ask you, I’m sorry but rather a delicate question – may we go ahead with the – well, the funeral?’

  ‘Certainly. There’s no difficulty about that.’

  ‘Oh, good. These things must be, mustn’t they? In the midst of life we are in death. Poor little Daisy has some wild ideas but she can’t do anything, of course, and one wouldn’t expect it. I have actually been in touch with Mrs Harrison, that housekeeper person at Tancred House, on this very subject. It seemed tactful to include her in, don’t you think? I thought of next Wednesday or Thursday.’

  Wexford said that seemed a sensible course to take. He wondered what Daisy’s position would be. Would she need a guardian until she was eighteen? When would she be eighteen? Mrs Virson shut the front door rather sharply on him, as befitted one who in her estimation would once, in better days, have been expected to come and go by a tradesman’s entrance. As he walked to his car, an MG, old but stylish, swept in through the open gateway and Nicholas Virson got out of it.

  He said, ‘Good evening,’ which made Wexford look at his watch in alarm, but it was only twenty to six. Nicholas let himself into the house without a backward glance.

  * * * *

  Augustine Casey came downstairs in a dinner jacket.

  If he had had any fears about the way Sheila’s friend might dress himself for dinner at the Cheriton Forest, Wexford would have guessed at jeans and a sweatshirt. Not that he would much have minded. That would have been Casey’s business, to have put on the proffered tie the hotel produced or to have refused and the lot of them gone home. Wexford wouldn’t have cared either way. But the dinner jacket seemed to invite comment, if only for a comparison with his own not very smart grey suit. He could think of nothing to say beyond offering Casey a drink.

  Sheila appeared in a peacock-blue miniskirt and peacock-blue and emerald sequinned top. Wexford didn’t much like the way Casey eyed her up and down while she told him how marvellous he looked.

  The disquieting thing was that everything went very well for half the evening – the first half. Casey talked. Wexford was learning that things usually went well while Casey talked, while, that is, he talked about a subject chosen by himself, pausing to allow intelligent and appropriate questions from his audience. Sheila, Wexford noticed, was an adept at these questions, seeming to know the precise points at which to interject them. She had tried to tell them about a new part that had been offered her, a wonderful opportunity for her, the name part in Strindberg’s Miss Julie, but Casey had little patience with that.

  In the lounge, he talked about post-modernism. Sheila said, humbly resigned to no more interest being taken in her career, ‘Could you give us some examples, please, Gus,’ and Casey gave a large number of examples. They went into one of the several dining rooms the hotel now boasted. It was full and not one of the men sitting at tables was in a dinner jacket. Casey, who had already drunk two large brandies, ordered another and immediately went to the men’s room.

  Sheila had always appeared to her father as an intelligent young woman. He hated having to revise this opinion but what else could he do when she said things like this?

  ‘Gus is so brilliant, it makes me wonder what on earth he sees in someone like me. I feel really inferior while I’m with him.’

  ‘What a bloody awful basis for a relationship,’ he said, at which Dora kicked him under the cloth and Sheila looked hurt.

  Casey came back laughing, something Wexford hadn’t seen him often doing. A guest had taken him for a waiter, had asked for two dry martinis, and Casey had said in an Italian accent that they were coming up, sir. This made Sheila laugh inordinately. Casey drank his brandy, made a big show of ordering some special wine. He was extremely jovial and began to talk of Davina Flory.

  All talk of ‘keeping mum’ and ‘funny little cops’ was apparently forgotten. Casey had met Davina on several occasions, the first time at a launch party for someone else’s book, then when she came into his publisher’s offices and they encountered ea
ch other in the ‘atrium’, a word for ‘hall’ which occasioned a disquisition on Casey’s part on fashionable words and otiose importations from dead languages. Wexford’s interruption was received as well-timed.

  ‘You didn’t know I was published by the St Giles Press? I’m not, you’re perfectly right. But we’re all under the same umbrella now – or sunshade might be the more appropriate word. Carlyon, St Giles Press, Sheridan and Quick, we’re all Carlyon Quick now.’

  Wexford thought of his friend and Burden’s brother-in-law, Amyas Ireland, an editor at Carlyon-Brent. He was still there, as far as he knew. The takeover hadn’t squeezed him out. Would there be any point in phoning Amyas for information on Davina Flory?

  For Casey’s own reminiscences seemed not to amount to much. His third meeting with Davina had been at a party given by Carlyon Quick at their new premises in Battersea – or the ‘boondocks’, as Casey called it. Her husband had been with her, a rather too sweet and gracious old ‘honey’ who had once been the Member for a constituency in which Casey’s parents lived. A friend of Casey’s had been taught by him some fifteen years before at the LSE. Casey called him a ‘cardboard charmer’. Some of this charm had been exercised on the hordes of publicity girls and secretaries who were always at such parties, while poor Davina had to talk to boring editors-in-chief and marketing directors. Not that she had taken any sort of back seat, but had thrown her opinions about in her nineteen-twenties Oxford voice, boring everyone with east European politics and details of some trip she and one of her husbands had made to Mecca in the fifties. Wexford smiled inwardly at this example of projection.

  He, Casey, had personally liked none of her books, with the possible exception of The Hosts of Midian (this novel Win Carver had described as the least successful or well-received by the critics) and his own definition of her was as the undiscerning reader’s Rebecca West. What on earth made her think she could write novels? She was too bossy and didactic. She had no imagination. He was pretty sure she was the only person at that party who hadn’t read his own Booker short-listed novel, or at any rate couldn’t be bothered to pretend to have done so.