The Girl Next Door: A Novel

by Ruth Rendell

  Apart from himself, Zoe was his father’s next of kin. She alone, it appeared, received news of him. From Urban Grange or from himself? Perhaps both. Michael told himself that he was uninterested in his father’s fate. He was uninterested in his father. Of all the cruelties and neglect John Winwood had inflicted on Michael the worst in his memory was not failing to call the doctor for three days after Michael broke his ankle, not taking him to and showing him over the abattoir where John had once been a slaughterman, not leaving Michael in bed without water when he had measles—but abandoning him on Victoria station without money or food. That was the worst act, and he could never forgive it. He still remembered every detail of that day, the train journey, his fear and his utter loneliness, the kindness too of the lady with the little dog, but even that had never been able to assuage the horror he felt for a father who could do that to his small son. Any love Michael had for him—not much—was extinguished that day when he met Zoe and learned what love was.

  So indifferent to his father? Was he? No, he thought as little about him as possible now because he had been shown by Vivien that hatred, which was what he really felt, corrupted the mind and spoilt the character. “Don’t hate anyone,” she had said. “It’s quite useless and harms the hater while it does nothing at all to the hated.” So his dwelling on his father’s iniquities and even some desire he had had for revenge faded away. Sometimes he even found himself humming one of the hymns his father used to sing. He tried to think of John Winwood as dead but failed in this attempt.

  “Your father,” said Zoe, “was one of those people who are always having money left them. His own parents had a lot of siblings. Only one of them married, and that was my mother. The rest died intestate—one of them never even knew your father—and their money automatically went to him. It wasn’t dribs and drabs; one legacy was ten thousand pounds and another nearly five thousand. He used some of it to buy the house called Anderby. A house on the Hill in Loughton would have cost a thousand just before the war when he bought it. He didn’t exactly fit in.”

  And my mother? Michael had thought, but didn’t say. Anita. She was a dim, vague figure from the distant past. Where John Winwood had met her, why he had married her, if she had any relatives still living—Michael had no idea of the answers to all this. All he could remember was her face. That he could still see when he closed his eyes, a face that epitomised not beauty but exquisite prettiness, the tip-tilted nose, the short upper lip, the baby-doll eyes, the round pink cheeks, and the abundance of red-gold hair. His wife Babette had a similar facial construction and the red hair; his wife Vivien, the antithesis, grave, austere, until she smiled and the sun came out.

  “He seems to have been fond of her insofar as he could be fond,” said Zoe, who had lately given up never criticising his father. Perhaps she realised Michael was no longer the child she had to protect from an ugly truth; had she known it, he knew better than she. “Anyway, he may have had a bit of a guilty conscience. Sheila probably took an overdose on purpose, whatever the inquest said. She seemed very unhappy to me.”

  “Yes, she did,” Michael said, waiting for more, but none came. What did it matter? No more revelations about this father could shock him now. Any connection with himself had come to an end on the platform at Victoria station six decades ago. He had just one question, the one he had never before asked.

  “Just how old is he?”

  “He’ll be a hundred next January.”

  AT NO TIME in his life before had Alan ever concentrated his thoughts on one person in one situation and done so for day after day. He thought of Daphne when falling asleep, and Daphne was the first to come to mind when he awoke. He set her in her house and saw her moving among the rooms—even those rooms he had never yet seen—he saw her walking up Hamilton Terrace and walking along St. John’s Wood Road, stopping sometimes to talk to some faceless neighbour. He saw her reclining on the sofa where they had lain, a book in her hand, and then she laid the book aside to think—perhaps—of him. Most of all, when dwelling on her, he was asking himself what they were going to do. Would the sort of promise she had made to him ever come true? It was so unlikely, he was too old; and this too had to be faced, she was too old. People didn’t fall in love at their age—but they do.

  He had supposed, and in a way hoped, that setting eyes on Rosemary after he returned from his visit to Hamilton Terrace would bring guilt, enormous guilt. He might, he had considered while sitting in the tube, even feel a kind of relief that Rosemary’s presence, Rosemary’s existence, would show him his and Daphne’s folly, the impossibility of what they had half planned to do and the sheer wrongness of it. But this had passed in a moment to be replaced by a thought that it would be wrong, even if possible now, to dismiss this joy he and she contemplated. It was something he would bitterly regret for the rest of what life remained to him. Telling himself that he would be a useless companion to Rosemary now, no husband, a shell, his whole mind and heart given to another woman even if he looked like the man she was married to—that was a hypocritical let-out.

  Rosemary was a good woman, he repeatedly told himself, devoted to him, a homemaker, his carer, the mother of his children. Then a small voice inside him said that of all that, only the last was true. An image of the sewing machine appeared in his mind’s eye. A song from some musical had been about the sewing machine being a girl’s best friend. How ancient that seemed, how antediluvian. Rosemary’s sewing machine had been his worst enemy. The sound it made, that buzz that was unlike any other, got increasingly on his nerves. No other woman he knew possessed a sewing machine, though many had done so when he was young. The only other one he knew of was in the dry cleaner’s they patronised in the High Road, where a woman in a sari sat in the window stitching seams. How grossly unfair he was being! He couldn’t leave Rosemary, anyway. It was unthinkable. Yet he was thinking of it as often as he thought of Daphne.

  He continued to make his excuse of a meeting with Robert Flynn, though growing aware that he would have to think of some alternative reason for going out without Rosemary. Now he needed a new pretext, this time for staying away overnight. Lying, which he had once believed he found difficult if not impossible, had become simple, largely because—and this was an additional trouble to him—his hearer was so innocent and so trusting. That made untruthfulness so much more outrageous. Yet he and Daphne couldn’t go on as they were, kisses and afternoon visits, however delightful. He knew himself and was aware that for him love-making should take place at night-time, not necessarily in the dark, but at least in artificial light. And in a bed if possible, not on a sofa. It was his age. Wasn’t it true that for this fundamental aspect of our being, for sex and love, we want the circumstances, the setting, and the very sounds and scents of our youth? That might well be why some marriages endured more or less for ever. He thought, as he often did, of Daphne’s father’s car at dusk on Baldwin’s Hill. The smell of her now was the same, the feel of her. She was the first woman he had had and would, if all could miraculously go well, be the last.

  He would be found out through Robert Flynn. That was why he must think of another excuse. He thought of all this as he told his usual lie to Rosemary and set off for Loughton station. Robert would phone or his wife would or someone else who knew them both would phone and tell Rosemary that Robert was complaining he never saw Alan these days. Coming home in late evening, he often thought of that. But he need not think of it now, not now.

  RISOTTO IS A DISH notoriously difficult to make or if not that difficult, time-consuming. Once you have started it with your rice and mushrooms, say, in the pan, stock added and more stock waiting to be added, you cannot leave it. Constant stirring is essential or disaster ensues. The chef at Lotario’s restaurant in St. John’s Wood High Street was a superb cook and his risotto was famous, thanks in part to culinary features in glossy magazines. The restaurant was always full by eight thirty, but those who booked for seven—the locals and the elder
ly mostly—found space and soft music, pink tablecloths and napkins, always the best colour, and courteous service. And of course the risotto.

  Freya and David had been visiting the flat in the block opposite Lord’s, of which they now had possession. They would move into Oak Tree Court on the following Saturday, but today they were measuring windows for blinds and calculating whether the second bedroom would take a queen-size bed. They arrived there later than they had expected and, once inside, made two discoveries: the previous occupants had removed all the light bulbs and they themselves were highly incompetent both with tape measures and rulers. Near quarrelling, they sought their usual remedy for ill temper, sat down on the newly carpeted floor, and drank a couple of glasses each of the bottle of merlot they had brought with them. This restored their equilibrium, and as it was getting on eight thirty and growing dark, they set off to find a restaurant.

  “Why not try Lotario’s?” said Freya. “He’s the man who makes the marvellous risotto.”

  “I hate risotto.”

  “Then you can have something else.”

  The place was crowded. They hadn’t booked, but one table was available to them, the sort no one wants because it is just inside the door and liable to draughts.

  “I think we should have a pink tablecloth like these, don’t you?” said Freya, who had something of her grandmother in her.

  David was not a talkative man, something which seldom bothered her. They ordered another bottle of merlot, risotto for Freya, spaghetti vongole for David. He was not a people-watcher either, in her opinion, like most men. Her eyes roved round the diners and came to rest on a couple seated at a table diagonally opposite theirs. The man was facing them and the woman had her back to them. Far from young or even in their middle years, they might have been described as in the prime of old age, straight-backed and both with good heads of hair. It seemed as if they had finished eating, but two half-full glasses of wine were still in front of them. The man, whom Freya immediately recognised, had his right hand covering the woman’s left hand across the tablecloth, and now he raised it to his lips.

  Freya said faintly, “I don’t believe it.”

  “That always means you do.”

  “You see those people—the woman in the black and white—that old man with her is my grandfather.”

  “D’you want to go over and say hello?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Their food came, the risotto and the spaghetti vongole. Freya took a larger-than-usual swig of wine. “I rather hope they don’t see us. That isn’t my grandmother, you know.”

  “Some business acquaintance, I expect.”

  “He doesn’t have a business.”

  David smiled, then laughed. “Well, good luck to him.”

  “It isn’t funny.”

  The old man was paying his bill. They finished their wine, got up, and began walking towards the door, quite a long way from Freya and David, who kept their eyes downcast. But in Freya’s case, not enough to avoid seeing their departure. “Did you see that?” she said as the door closed behind them. “He had his arm round her like they were young.”

  “Maybe they feel young.”

  “It’s upset me a lot. I feel sort of disillusioned. I mean, I never dreamt of anything like that. Not Granddad.”

  “It’s not our business, Freya.”

  “Of course it is. He’s my granddad. I really need a drink, something stronger than that red stuff. A grappa. D’you want one?”

  “I’m okay. It hasn’t upset me.”

  “NEXT TIME,” said Alan, “I’ll stay the night.”

  “Good.”

  Daphne wouldn’t want to know how he would manage to stay the night, what far greater prevarication would have to be employed, what far bigger lie be told to explain his absence for perhaps twenty-four hours. Not Robert Flynn this time, Alan was growing frightened of Robert Flynn, that this innocent and blameless man might suddenly surface like a monster from a calm sea, rear his ugly head (though Alan remembered him as rather a handsome man) and gnash his shark-like jaws, robbing his quarry of an arm or a leg. For to lose Daphne now would be like the loss of a limb. Of all that Robert Flynn might do, he must not be allowed to take Daphne from Alan; better break up his marriage. But that was already broken, wasn’t it?

  Worries, mostly related to Robert Flynn, whose function as an alibi Alan felt he had overused, beset him all the way home in the tube train. He even envisaged walking into the flat and finding not just a wakeful Rosemary sitting there but also Robert Flynn and his wife, whatever she was called, the three of them assembled to examine his lies and excuses and confront him with them. Of course there was nothing of the sort. Rosemary was in bed and presumably asleep, and the copper-coloured silk suit, finished at last, was on a hanger in the hallway.

  9

  MICHAEL CARRIED WITH him a large box of chocolates. The flowers he would buy in Lewes, if necessary getting the taxi driver to stop at a florist’s on the way to Zoe’s. A phone conversation two days before with Brenda Miller, Zoe’s carer, friend, and companion, had told him there was nothing to worry about. A woman of ninety-six was bound to grow weaker, bound to be frail, but Brenda believed that the doctor, who had called that day, was exaggerating when she said his aunt was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

  “I thought, but I didn’t actually say so, that someone of her age could hardly be in the early stages of anything.”

  “I’ll be down on Thursday and we’ll see,” said Michael. “She doesn’t want Zoe to go to a—well, a nursing home or a hospice or something, does she?”

  “That wasn’t mentioned. That would kill her, we both know that.”

  So here he was with his chocolates and his flowers, golden roses and pink and yellow lupins, kissing Zoe, who was smiling at him as she always did. Her voice was a little weaker, her movements a little slower. Instead of a stick, then two sticks to walk with, she was using a walking frame.

  “People have stopped called them Zimmer frames,” she said. “Have you noticed? I think it’s something to do with anti-German prejudice or maybe dislike of the EU.”

  That didn’t sound like early-stage Alzheimer’s.

  Brenda served lunch, and afterwards the two women ate a couple of the chocolates each. While he was visiting, Zoe omitted her afternoon nap. She would go to bed earlier, she always told him. She didn’t want to sleep while he was there. Besides, today she had something to tell him, it was important, it was private, and she had asked Brenda to leave them alone together for half an hour. Well, twenty minutes. They could ask anything of each other, she and Brenda, offence would never be taken or hard feelings.

  Michael saw how little she had eaten, not much more than a scrap of the grilled sole, a wafer-thin piece of bread, and the two chocolates. He noticed too how white she had grown, the skin of her face blanched to a pallor only seen in the very old. It was new, though, as was the loss of colour in her eyes, which were no longer blue but the grey of still water. The blue of her eyes was the first thing he had noticed about her when she’d kissed him on Lewes station.

  “Sit down, darling,” she said when they were in her little sitting room, her own private room where people had to be invited in. “My son. I have always thought of you as that. I hope you don’t mind, I won’t labour it.” He reached for her hand and held it. “At my age, Michael, one must always think of dying. One ought to, no harm in that. Every time I see you, I know I may never see you again. I don’t want to talk about your father, and I’m sure you don’t, but there is one thing about him I need to tell you. Well, two things really.

  “It was the last time I saw him. He was alone, having left Sheila at home. Poor thing. I hadn’t liked her but I pitied her as once I pitied you. But I think you were lucky, Michael.”

  “I know that. Because you found me and brought me here.” He wanted to add, And made your
self my mother, but he was afraid he would start crying if he said that.

  “I didn’t mean that. I meant because you escaped him. I will tell you quickly what he asked me. I think the word would be alibi. I know what it is but not what it means. You’re a solicitor, you’ll know.”

  “It’s Latin for ‘elsewhere.’ ”

  “Is it? That’s what he asked me when he came here alone. Would I give him an alibi.”

  Michael felt like saying he wasn’t hearing this. He didn’t, but he thought that, against nearly all evidence to the contrary, Zoe was succumbing to senility. “An alibi?”

  Her old face, already deeply lined, crunched into a mask of wrinkles as she seemed to make a concentrated effort to define what she had said. “ ‘Elsewhere,’ you said. He wanted me to say he was elsewhere. If anyone came asking, I was to say he was here with me.”

  “But when, Zoe? How?”

  “It was twenty years ago. I was to say that he was here with me, spending the day here, on a specific date in May.”

  “You must have asked why?” Michael was starting to feel sick. “You must have asked who would do the asking?”

  “I didn’t want to know. I knew it was something awful. I knew him. I just said there was no question of lying for him. He seemed surprised. He said, ‘But you’re my cousin, you’re family.’ ” She gave a deep sigh. “I’ve seen him since, occasionally. He wrote and told me about going into Urban Grange and telling the company that runs the place that he had no next of kin except me. It suited him then to say I was only a cousin.”