by Ruth Rendell
“When we’re married I’ll buy you a mink. It’ll be my wedding present to you.”
He drove up North Hill and into Finchley High Road. Fortis Green Lane ran up out of Fortis Green Road towards Colney Hatch Lane. Francesca didn’t issue directions, she wasn’t that sort of woman. He got the impression, when she was with him, that she was content to let him organise things and steer her life his way. She wasn’t so much passive as gracefully yielding. He took a left turn out of Fortis Green Road and they were in the street where she lived.
By now it was growing towards dusk and what daylight remained was clear and blue. Mustard yellow lamps, true opposite in the spectrum to that blue, were coming on in Fortis Green Lane. It was a long wide winding road, disproportionately wide for the small squat houses which lined it. Here and there was a short Victorian terrace, red brick and three storeys high, but the small low houses predominated and eventually took over altogether. They stood in blocks of four, some of brown stucco, some of very pale anaemic-looking brick, with small metal-framed windows and shallow pantiled roofs. In their front gardens snow lay on the grass. They weren’t bad houses, they weren’t slums, but Martin thought he would go to almost any lengths to avoid living in such a place. He had always, in his heart, despised people who did. Couldn’t Russell Brown, who was thirty-five years old and no slouch apparently, a teacher and a writer, have done better for his wife than this? Poor Francesca …
Number 54 was the end house of a block which meant it had a side entrance. It stood on the corner of a side road depressingly called Hill Avenue in which were similar houses stretching away to be lost in the twilight. Their roofs were so low that over the tops of them you could see the branches of trees which Martin guessed must be in Coldfall Wood. He got out of the car and helped Francesca out. There were no lights on in her house. Her husband and child hadn’t yet returned. Carrying her suitcase, Martin began to unlatch the small white wrought iron gate.
“You mustn’t come in, darling.” She had taken his arm and was looking nervously up into his face.
“Would it matter so much if Russell and I were to meet? We’re sure to some day. I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything to me.”
“No, but he might do something to me later.”
The truth of this was evident. He had seen the bruises. It wasn’t much of a disappointment not seeing the inside of her house. Compared with what he felt about parting from her, not to see her again for perhaps a whole week, it was nothing. He didn’t think she would kiss him good-bye with the chance of some neighbour seeing, but she did. Out there in the street she put her arms round his neck and kissed him on the mouth, clinging to him for a moment. But Francesca was like that, too innocent to be aware of the cruelty and malice in other people’s hearts.
He got back into the car. She stood there, waving to him, her small bright face made pale by the lamplight, her beautiful hair tucked inside her hood. He turned the car to go back the way he had come and when he looked round again she was gone.
XI
Although Martin had confided to Francesca most of what had happened to him in the past, his present circumstances, and his hopes for the future, he hadn’t said anything about the pools win. He didn’t quite know why he hadn’t. Perhaps it was because she was still living with her husband. He had a vague half-formed idea of Russell Brown as a thoroughgoing villain, in spite of his education and his talents. Suppose Francesca told Russell that the man she was in love with had won a hundred thousand pounds on a football pool? If he knew that, Russell might try to extort money from him. Martin thought he would only tell Francesca after she had left Russell and was living here with him in Cromwell Court.
After that week-end he didn’t see her again, as he had feared, until the following Monday. On the afternoon of that day Dr. Ghopal phoned to say that the operation on Suma Bhavnani had taken place on January 5 and been a complete success. This news had a tonic effect on Martin. Playing God was possible, after all. At lunchtime he had had a sandwich in the Victoria Stakes with Caroline and she had regaled him with a long sad tale about a young couple who were friends of hers and who were paying 60 per cent of their joint wages for the rent of a furnished flat. They had no children and the girl couldn’t have children, so they wouldn’t get a council place, said Caroline, for five years, if then. The furnished flat was four draughty rooms in Friern Barnet. By telling a few white lies about knowing someone who knew someone who might possibly have an unfurnished flat to let in April, Martin managed to get these people’s name and address out of Caroline. That night, after he had taken Francesca to dine at the Cellier du Midi and sent her home to Russell in a taxi, he added this new name to his list. It now read: Miss Watson, Mr. Deepdene, Mrs. Cochrane, Mrs. Finn? Richard and Sarah Gibson. He crossed off Mr. Deepdene’s name, put a question mark after Mrs. Cochrane’s. Then he composed a letter to the Gibsons, beginning by mentioning the connection through Caroline Arnold and going on to ask if they would care to meet him one evening in the coming week to discuss accommodation he might be able to offer them. It obviously wasn’t a good idea baldly to state in the preliminary letter that he was dispensing money in large quantities. Look what an effect that had had on Miss Watson and Mr. Deepdene. Better meet and talk about it face to face, which was perhaps what he ought to have done and could still do with Miss Watson.
He hadn’t said any more to Francesca about leaving Russell. He had hoped she would say something. Perhaps she hadn’t liked to, she was such a self-effacing girl. Next time he saw her he would insist on their making definite plans. He went about the flat, thinking what it would be like when she was there all the time. He would buy a three-piece suite, of course, and put that cane stuff in the bedroom. Or they could go out on the balcony; they would be an improvement on his two shabby deck chairs. The bathroom ought to be recarpeted, Francesca would like that, a white carpet with a long pile. And maybe he should buy a wardrobe-the cupboard was full of his own clothes-and a dressing table.
Mr. Cochrane would probably make a terrific fuss once he found out Martin was living with a woman. Martin could just imagine his face and his comments. They could always pretend to be married or, come to that, Mr. Cochrane could be told to go and Francesca do the house-work. Martin didn’t want her to work in that flower shop or anywhere else once she had left Russell.
It could only have been a couple of hours after he got Martin’s letter that Richard Gibson phoned. He was forthright and he sounded suspicious.
“Look, Mr. Urban, Sarah and I have been badly let down about this sort of thing before. If you’re really making us a firm offer, that’s fine and I’m grateful, but if it’s just a possibility or someone else is likely to step in and get the place over our heads-well, we’d, rather not know. And I’d, better tell you here and now, we can’t pay key money or a premium or anything. We haven’t got it.”
Martin said the offer was firm and there was no question of key money, but he’d, rather talk about it when they met. Richard Gibson said any evening in the following week would suit him and the sooner the better, so Martin agreed to go up to Friern Barnet on Monday.
He got back early from the Flask on Saturday because Francesca was coming at two. She got there at five past, wearing the jumper he had bought her and smelling of Ma Griffe. He began at once to tell her of his plans for the flat when she came to live with him. When was she going to tell Russell? When would she leave? He supposed that she would want to bring a lot of her other possessions as well as clothes and they would have to …
“I can’t come and live here, Martin.”
She spoke in a small nervous voice and she had begun to twist her hands together in her lap. He stared at her.
“What do you mean, Francesca?”
“I’ve thought about it a lot. I feel awful about it. But it’s not possible. How could we live here? It wouldn’t be big enough.”
“Not big enough?” He felt stunned. He repeated her words stupidly. “What do you mean, not big enough? Nearly
all the people in the other flats here are married couples. There’s this huge room and a bedroom and a big kitchen and a bathroom. What more do you want?”
“It’s not what I want, Martin, you know that. It’s Lindsay. Where would we put Lindsay?”
He must have been a fool or totally obtuse, he thought, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she would be bringing the child with her. To him Lindsay was a part of Russell, or rather, she and Russell were part of the life lived in Fortis Green Lane. In leaving it behind, Francesca would be leaving behind all that belonged to it, walls, furniture, husband, child. But of course it couldn’t be like that. He ought to have known. He ought to have known vicariously if not from experience that a mother doesn’t desert her two-year-old child. Lindsay would become his child now. The idea was very disturbing. He lifted his eyes to meet Francesca’s mournful eyes.
She would never know what an effort it cost him to say what he did. “She can sleep in here or have a bed in our room.”
“Oh, dear, you do make it hard for me. Darling Martin, don’t you see it wouldn’t be right for the three of us to be living all crowded together like that?” It was hard to tell when Francesca was blushing, her cheeks were always so pink. “She’d-she’d, see us in bed together.”
“She sees you and Russell in bed together now.”
“He’s her father. I can’t take my little daughter away from her father and her home and her own room and bring her here where she’ll have to sleep in a living room or on a couch or something.” Her lips trembled. When he put out his arms to her she laid her head against his shoulder and held on to him hard. “Oh, Martin, you do understand?”
“I’ll try to, darling. But what alternative do we have? There isn’t anywhere else.”
His pride was bruised by her rejection of his home and he thought of the little box she lived in. After she had gone he began to feel angry with her. Did she expect him to leave the flat he was fond of and buy a house or something just to accommodate the child she had had by another man? This thought was immediately succeeded by another, that it was his Francesca, his love, that he was using those harsh words about. They would find a way, of course they would. Once Francesca had told Russell she wanted a divorce it might be that he would leave. Surely that was what husbands usually did? Martin wondered if he could possibly bring himself, say for a couple of days each week, to live in the house in Fortis Green Lane.
He got to Friern Barnet at the appointed time of eight on Monday evening. The flat was as nasty as Caroline had led him to believe, with bare stained floorboards, the walls marked all over where other people’s posters and pictures had hung. It was furnished partly with Woolworth chipboard and plastic and partly with pre-World War I pitch pine. The Gibsons gave him Nescafe and kept saying how surprised they were that he was young. Sarah Gibson was pale and rather big and dark-haired with a face like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and her husband was fair and upright and looked like a guards officer, though, in fact, he turned out to be a hospital porter on thirty-seven pounds a week.
When Martin told them-he found it very difficult to do this, he even began to stammer-that his intention was to give them money to buy a flat, they refused to believe him.
“But why?” Sarah Gibson kept saying. “You don’t know us. Why should you want to give us money?”
Martin said that he had “come into” a fortune, which was strictly true. He explained his motives. He even described his experiences with Miss Watson and Mr. Deepdene. He had wanted to find a young couple, he said.
“Okay, that’s fine for you, but what about us? We’d, be under an obligation to you all our lives. We’d, be sort of tied to you. Anyway, you must want something out of it.”
Martin felt helpless. He couldn’t think of any more to say and he wished he hadn’t come. Then Richard Gibson said,
“If you’re really serious, we’d, borrow it from you. I mean, we’re both teachers only we can’t get jobs. We’d, borrow it from you, and when we get proper jobs we’d, start paying it back like a mortgage.”
That wasn’t what Martin had wanted but it was the only arrangement the Gibsons would agree to. He said he would have to do it through a friend of his who was a solicitor. His friend, Adrian Vowchurch, would draw up an agreement for an interest-free loan, and he would be in touch with Richard Gibson in a day or two. Sarah Gibson sat staring at him, bewildered and frowning.
Her husband, seeing Martin out, said, “I honestly don’t expect ever to see you or hear from you again. You see, I don’t believe you. I can’t.”
“Time will show,” said Martin.
He felt angry. Not so much with the Gibsons as with the world, society, civilisation, so-called, which must be in a pretty terrible state if you couldn’t perform an act of altruism without people thinking you were mad. Sarah Gibson had thought he was schizophrenic, he had seen it in her eyes. He drove down across the North Circular Road and into Colney Hatch Lane, passing very near to Francesca’s home. But Francesca wouldn’t be there now, it was Monday and she had gone to Annabel’s, she had told him so on Saturday.
How much he would love to see her now! Maybe the time had come for him to tell her about the money and how he had come by it, or if not that, it would simply be lovely to be with her and talk to her. He was aware of something he never remembered knowing before he had met her-loneliness. It was nearly nine o’clock. Why shouldn’t he go to Annabel’s place in Frognal and pick her up and drive her home? He didn’t know Annabel’s surname but he knew the house she lived in. He had parked outside its gate after their second meeting to say good-bye to Francesca. Would she mind his calling for her? He didn’t think so. She had met Norman Tremlett at his flat, now it was time for him to begin meeting her friends.
For all his convincing arguments, he felt apprehensive as he drove across Hampstead Lane. Annabel knew of his existence, he told himself, even Russell knew of it. He wasn’t doing anything clandestine or dishonourable. He was simply calling at a friend’s house for the woman who was going to be his wife. Young men all over London were doing the same. He drove down past the Whitestone Pond into Branch Hill. A little snow still lay in patches on the brown turf of Judge’s Walk. There was mist in the air, a damp icy breath. He drew the car into the kerb at the top of Frognal and crossed the road. As soon as he was alone with Francesca he would tell her he intended to put the flat on the market and buy a house for the three of them. Would she consent to live in Cromwell Court with him just until he could do that?
The house outside which he had parked that night in November was large, almost a mansion, with a front garden full of leafless shrubs and small grey alpine plants dripping over steps and the rims of urns. It appeared to be divided into three flats and Martin was rather taken aback to find that there were no names but only numbers to the bells. He had taken very little notice of the house on that previous occasion, but now looking up at its brown bricks and half-timbering, red shingles, and red tiles, seemingly numberless windows of both plain and stained glass, he wondered how any young girl on her own, a friend and contemporary of Francesca’s, could afford to live in a place like this. Then, because the top storey seemed the smallest and the least grand, he rang the top bell.
After about a minute a woman opened the door. She was probably forty, a good-looking blonde, very well-dressed but for her footwear which was a fluffy pair of bedroom slippers. Martin apologised for disturbing her. Could she tell him in which of the flats someone with the christian name of Annabel lived? He was calling for his fiancee who was a friend of hers. Martin balked a little at calling someone else’s wife his fiancee, yet it had the required respectable ring to it.
“Annabel?” said the woman. “There isn’t anyone called that here.”
“There must be. A young girl living on her own.”
“There’s myself and my two sons, we have the top floor. Mr. and Mrs. Cameron have the middle flat. They’re elderly and they haven’t any children. The ground floor’s occupied by Sir John a
nd Lady Bidmead-the painter, you’ve probably heard of him-and it’s them the house belongs to. They own it. I’ve known them for twenty years and they certainly don’t have a daughter.”
It had occurred to Martin while she was speaking that Francesca hadn’t actually pointed to this house and said Annabel lived there. It was possible she had meant the house next door. He went next door, a slightly smaller place, semi-detached. An elderly man answered his ring. The owner of the house was a Mrs. Frere who occupied the whole of it and whom he referred to as the employer of himself and his wife. Martin called at two more houses but at neither had Annabel been heard of.
The astonishment he felt softened the edge of his disappointment at not seeing Francesca. He tried to remember what had happened on the evening of November 27. She had got out of the car, turned back to say to him, “Call for me at the shop,” and then disappeared in the heavy rain. It had been pouring with rain and he hadn’t been able to see much, but he knew she had asked him to park here, had said that Annabel lived just here.
Was Annabel an invention then? Had Francesca made her up? There came into his mind the confusion over where Russell’s parents lived. She had said Oxford that first time, he knew she had. He went up into the flat and without putting a lamp on, sat at the window, looking down over London. He saw spangled towers drowning in mist, he saw them, yet he saw nothing. He closed his eyes. Annabel as a creation to be presented to Russell for an alibi was feasible -but to him? What motive could she possibly have had? Perhaps she lived a fantasy life in a fantasy world; he had heard of people like that. Perhaps none of the people she had told him about existed-but that wasn’t true, of course they did. Russell got his name in the papers and there was no doubting the fact of Lindsay. He put the lights on and drew the curtains and poured himself a whisky. What was the matter with him that he doubted her like this and questioned the very foundations of her being? She had small fantasies, that was all. She slightly distorted the truth as some people did to make themselves appear more interesting. That night in November she had told him she had a friend living in an exclusive part of Hampstead to impress him, and later she couldn’t go back on what she had said. Russell’s parents very likely lived in Reading or Newmarket, but the two great universities had come into her head as more glamorous and intriguing.
