The Lake of Darkness

by Ruth Rendell

  Martin hadn’t expected an account at all. It was true that Adrian had charged him for the conveyance of his own flat, but since then he, Martin, had put in a whole lot of hours sorting out some family trust muddle for Julie and he wouldn’t have dreamt of expecting payment for that. He said shortly,

  “To me, of course. Who else?”

  “My dear old chap, I only asked. Ladies get very uptight these days if their equality isn’t respected. Francesca is a property owner now and a ratepayer. It can go to their heads, you know, and you do rather …”

  “Adrian …” he interrupted but he couldn’t finish.

  “What? I was merely going to say-if merely is the word -that you do rather talk as if her flat was sort of yours. You can’t have it both ways, avoid your tax and keep a foot in the door.”

  The flat was hers. Did she know that? He had never exactly explained this to her but she must know it, she was no fool. If she knew it was hers, surely she would come to it. He put his head round his father’s door to say he was going out for an hour. Walter Urban was preoccupied with a client’s letter. He looked up, irritability making him more than usually dog-faced.

  “Extraordinary chap,” he said, tapping the letter. “Calls himself the chairman of a financial PR company and he doesn’t know the first thing about finance. Here he is telling me he’s given away-given, if you please-ten thousand pounds to his sister to start some sort of business and can he get tax relief on it? He won’t find the government giving anything to him, he’ll be giving it to them. Hasn’t he ever heard of CTT?”

  “CTT?” repeated Martin, although he knew perfectly well what those initials stood for.

  “Capital Transfer Tax. Wake up, Martin. His sister’s not a charity. Why didn’t he consult me before he started throwing his money about?”

  Martin asked himself why he too hadn’t consulted Walter or even consulted his own knowledge. Was it because he hadn’t wanted to know and have his noble-hearted schemes spoiled? Just as he hadn’t wanted to know of the true relations between Francesca and her husband? Now, in both cases, he was going to have to pay for wilfully shutting his eyes. Almost all his money was gone and he was presumably going to have to pay tax at least on what he had given Miss Watson and Mrs. Cochrane, though perhaps not Mrs. Finn since that was cash … Was he planning on being dishonest about it as well? He pushed all thought of money out of his mind-did he really care about it at this juncture? -and drove to Swan Place. The flat was just as it had been on Wednesday, empty, waiting, the fridge door open, the carpet marked with circular depressions where furniture legs had stood.

  He had wanted to tell Adrian about it but he hadn’t been able to. Adrian’s voice had been too cool, too mocking and urbane. He thought of those friends of his whose advice he could ask-Norman, the Tythertons. They couldn’t help him any more than he could help himself, and behind his back, because they were deeply conservative and unshakeably conventional, they would laugh nervously.

  Back in the office, he reverted to that paragraph in the Post. He could remember perfectly what it had said. Russell Brown was thirty-five, was a teacher in a technical college who had written a book about the fourteenth century and the Black Death, wife, Francesca, daughter, Lindsay. Martin sighed and dialled the Ilford number Mr. Blanch had given him. There was no answer.

  Could the Post have got it wrong? Could it have been Fortis Green Road or Fortis Green Avenue instead? That wouldn’t explain how Francesca had seemed to live, had repeatedly said she lived, in Fortis Green Lane. The Post must have some sort of clue to all this and he knew someone who worked on the Post. …

  Tim Sage.

  Tim might not know the answer, but Tim would be able to help him. Journalists always knew how to go about finding elusive addresses and phone numbers, and elusive people, come to that. And it was foolish to think of himself and Tim as enemies. Why did he do that? There had been no quarrel except in his own mind and in his dreams.

  He dialled the Post’s head office in Wood Green. No, Mr. Sage wasn’t there but he could try their Child’s Hill office. Martin tried Child’s Hill and was told Mr. Sage hadn’t been in all day. It was always hard to get hold of Tim. In the old days-he thought of pre-November as the old days-it was nearly always Tim who had phoned him. A feeling of desolation crept over him. He sat at his desk, unable to work for the first time in as long as he could remember.

  It was about an hour later that Caroline came in to say that an Indian family had arrived and were asking for Mr. Urban.

  “A man and a woman and a little boy and an old man and an old woman who looks just like Mrs. Gandhi.”

  He stared at her.

  “What do they want?”

  “You,” said Caroline. “They’ve just got back from India today, or some of them have, and they’ve been in Australia first and they want to see you and thank you for something. That’s what they said.”

  The Bhavnanis.

  For months he had hoped to see them, had longed, though never quite admitting it to himself, for some crumb of gratitude from someone. And now they had come he knew he couldn’t face them.

  “Take them in to my father,” he said. “He’s called Mr. Urban too.” Although it was only four he walked out of the office and drove back to Swan Place where he sat by the window, waiting for Francesca to come, although he knew she wouldn’t come.

  Samphire Road. Martin found it in the London Atlas he kept in the glove compartment of his car. It was Finsbury Park really, North Four. He didn’t think he had ever been there or known anyone else who lived there.

  If Tim was out he would sit in the car and wait for him. He would wait till midnight if necessary, he had nothing else to do. But he probably wouldn’t have to wait like that because the man Tim lived with would be there. Why had he ever worried about having to meet this man, about seeing him and Tim together? He couldn’t have cared less now.

  It was getting on for six when Martin left Swan Place. If Tim had had an afternoon job he would be home by now, and if he had an evening job it was unlikely he would go out before seven. He and his friend might be eating their evening meal. Martin recalled the big red sofa he had dreamed about, red velvet, sponge-like yet dusty. It embarrassed him even to think of it.

  He drove up Crouch End Hill and down Hornsey Rise. The sky was like a thick grey veil which the sunset had torn open to show through the rents radiant flesh colours. He would tell Tim everything, he thought, and the prospect of being able to be open and candid with Tim at last filled him with a joy so intense that his hands actually trembled on the wheel. For a moment he forgot the loss of Francesca and the bitter, growing disillusionment. The secret he had kept from Tim for three months had weighed upon him-how heavily he was only now realising-and at last, within a few minutes perhaps, he was about to unburden himself. That his purpose in coming here was to question Tim about the paragraph in the Post had receded and dimmed in the fierce light of the confession, the money and its source, Francesca, his long silence and coldness, he was going to make. He longed for it as the devout sinner longs for the confessional and the exhausted tormented prisoner for a chance to admit his guilt.

  He had entered a desolate wilderness where streets, walled in wooden barricades, traversed a grassless, treeless, and almost building-less waste. A few new houses, in strange colours of brick, lemon, pasty white, charcoal, rose here and there in straggling lines. The old streets of old brown houses clung to the perimeter like low cliffs surrounding a crater in a desert. Martin found Samphire Road quite easily, even though his map no longer gave a very clear idea of the lay-out. It was a gorge in the brown cliff with shabby houses which made Martin think of the living quarters in some aged and perhaps abandoned garrison. Compared to it, Fortis Green Lane was paradise.

  He walked up broken concrete steps to the liver-coloured front door and pressed the bell marked Sage. Nothing happened for a moment and then a light came on behind the green-and-yellow glass transom over the door. He was aware now that he c
ould smell Gauloise smoke, as if Tim hadn’t long come in.

  The door opened and Tim stood there. He wore jeans and an old grey, heavy, stringy sweater that made him look thinner than ever, gaunt almost. His face was very pale, his mouth as red as fresh blood. Had he always been so pale? He took the cigarette out of his mouth and said,

  “I thought you’d, turn up. It was only a matter of time before you cottoned on.”

  Martin stared at him. He didn’t know what he meant. Then something so strange happened, so amazing really, that temporarily he forgot all about Tim. The door at the end of the passage opened and a child came running out and towards them. The child was, must be, but couldn’t be, Lindsay.

  She came to an abrupt halt and looked at Martin. Her look was full of anger and dislike. She threw herself against Tim’s legs, holding up her arms. Tim lifted her up and held her against his shoulder, black hair against black hair, sallow velvet skin touching sallow waxen skin. Four blue eyes looked at Martin. He felt the earth move under his feet, the walls tilt, the dark, frowsy, uncarpeted passage rock back and forth and steady itself.

  “You’d better come in,” said Tim.

  Martin came in and felt the door closed behind him. He was unable to speak. He took a few steps down the passage, then turned, shaking, to contemplate again Lindsay and her undoubted father. But Francesca was her undoubted mother …

  “I don’t understand,” he began. “You and Francesca … Where’s Francesca?”

  Tim put the child down. He leant against the door, his arms folded. “She’s dead. You didn’t know? No, I reckon-well, how could you? She was killed last Saturday night, run over, the car didn’t stop.”

  Lindsay, clinging to his legs, began suddenly to cry.

  XXI

  Lindsay’s screams seemed to express the grief of both men; Tim’s sorrow, Martin’s stunned, incredulous dismay. They were both silent, oblivious of the sobs and howls, the stamping feet, the fists beating at Tim’s legs. They stared at each other, but Martin was the first to let his gaze drop and to turn away. Slowly Tim reached down and picked Lindsay up. She stopped screaming but continued to sob, her arms and legs clamped against him like a starfish.

  A door opened upstairs and a woman’s voice called,

  “Everything okay, Tim? God, she was making a racket.”

  Tim went to the foot of the stairs with Lindsay in his arms. “Could you have her for half an hour, Goldie?”

  “Sure, if you want. She’ll have to watch telly, though, it’s my serial on.”

  “Lindsay wants Goldie!” The child scrambled down her father’s body and up the stairs on all fours.

  “You’d, better come in here and have a drink,” said Tim. “We could both use a drink.”

  He led Martin down the passage into the room from which Lindsay had emerged. It was a kitchen, modernised in skimpy patches round the sink area and unit of cupboards, but otherwise dismally old-fashioned with a defunct boiler in one corner and, in the wall facing them, a fireplace whose flue was blocked up with red crepe paper. The oven was on and so was a wall heater. On the table, which was littered with newspapers and Gauloise packets, were the remains of a meal and a half-empty bottle of Dominic’s Military gin.

  Martin moved as if in a daze. Tim motioned him to one of the small shabby fireside chairs that flanked the wall heater, but Martin sat, or sank, into a bentwood chair at the table and put his head in his hands.

  “D’you want it neat or with water?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Martin had never before drunk gin without tonic or martini or some other fancy mixer. He had never drunk it warm which this was. It tasted so disgusting that he gave a strong shudder, but the fiery stuff bolstered him. He turned to look at Tim with haggard eyes. Tim was watching him with something that might have been despair or just indifference. When he spoke it was in a cool detached voice, such as a sociologist might use, reporting on failure, misery, defeat.

  “I’ll tell you what the police told me and fill in the gaps from my own knowledge. After you’d, dropped her at that place in Finchley she went to look for a taxi to take her home. It wasn’t the first time. It’s not easy to find taxis up there. She walked a long way, nearly up to the North Circular.” Tim paused, resuming in the same flat voice. “You can’t see how anyone could have failed to see her crossing the road, it’s so brightly lit. Maybe the guy was drunk or just not looking. Another motorist found her ten minutes afterwards-or that’s what they think. She wasn’t dead. She died in hospital on Sunday evening.”

  Martin said softly, “She lived all that time …?”

  “She wasn’t conscious. Have some more gin?”

  Tim refilled their glasses. He lit another cigarette. The only sign of emotion he gave was the way he drew on that cigarette, with nervous, greedy gasps.

  “Right,” he said. “Question time.”

  The gin was making Martin hot and dizzy and brave. “Were you married to Francesca?”

  Tim laughed, a sound that had nothing to do with amusement. “You know better than that. You’re my accountant. Wouldn’t I have had to tell you if I’d, been married? Francesca was still married to a guy in Ilford. He’s called Russell Brown, he really is.”

  “But that piece in your paper …”

  “Pieces in the paper are of human origin. They’re not messages from some infallible source of truth.” Tim shrugged. “I made it up, bar the names. You found the house yourself. I didn’t tell you she lived at 54 Fortis Green Lane and, incidentally, neither did she. You fabricated it. You made conjecture into truth just as you did when you saw those bruises on Francesca and thought Russell had put them there. In fact, she’d, fallen over on the ice like several thousand other people did that day.”

  Martin was silent. Then he said slowly, “Do you mean that it was all a conspiracy between you and Francesca? All of it?” The enormity of what had been done to him was now breaking over Martin in waves. He could feel a pulse drumming in his head. “You both of you set out to con me, to get”-he understood now-“a flat out of me? You were two-criminals who did that?”

  “At the beginning,” said Tim, “Francesca set out only to get money or a piece of jewellery. I knew about your pools win, of course. I’ve known from the first. You must have forgotten that though I’m not much of a success at things I’ve got a spectacularly good memory.” He took a gulp of gin and it made him shudder. “You aren’t the soul of generosity, are you? I got nothing and she got nothing until you hit on your bright idea of a tax dodge. By that time, as you accountants might say, she was in for a penny, in for a pound.”

  Martin had got to his feet. He swayed and steadied himself. There was one thing still, one last thing. If she had been unfaithful to Russell Brown with Tim, she had been unfaithful to Tim with him. He looked into Tim’s eyes and the voice which he meant to be defiant, spitting revelations, came out falteringly.

  “She slept with me! Did she ever tell you that?”

  Tim had half-risen, his mouth smiling, his eyes dead. He shrugged. “So? It was hard work. There was no question of mixing pleasure with business.”

  Without thought or preparation, Martin hit him. He doubled his fist and swung and struck Tim on the jaw. Tim let out a grunt and fell back into the chair, but he was up again straightaway, leaping on Martin with both hands raised. Martin ducked and struck out again and fell across the table, knocking over the lamp which rolled on to the floor and went out.

  The room was dark but for the fierce red glow from the wall heater, so that redness lay on the air and on the furniture and on Tim, backed against the door, a demon, a fallen angel, painted with red light. He came at Martin again, punching to his face, but this time Martin seized him by the shoulders, by his thin hard rib cage. For a moment they remained upright, locked together, struggling, then they tumbled to the floor and rolled, clutching each other, into the deep dark shadows of the floor and across the thick, old, rumpled rug.

  Tim was trying to grab his sho
ulders so as to beat his head against the ground. Martin was stronger. He was bigger and heavier than Tim, and more powerful. He got hold of Tim’s wrists and held them behind his back, wrapping him in his arms.

  With this success, this subduing of Tim, a tremendous excitement seized him. He was wrestling with Tim, he was doing what he had longed to do in those dreams. And in the pressure of Tim’s hard flesh, the friction of his body writhing and turning so that they rolled this way and that, embraced so tightly that each body seemed to penetrate the other and fuse with it, he felt himself charged and stiff with desire. He felt a passion which made his relations with Francesca seem thin and cold.

  Whether Tim realised or not he didn’t care. He was lost to all caution and all inhibiting restraint. He spoke Tim’s name in a hoarse whisper and the struggling slackened. There was a moment in which Martin hardly seemed to breathe and then, because he couldn’t help himself, he put his mouth over Tim’s and gave him a long, enduring kiss. The release that came with that kiss seemed to take with it the repressive burdens of a lifetime. He rolled away from Tim and lay on his face.

  Tim got up first. He did what he would do on the gallows or at an H-bomb early warning. He lit a Gauloise. His mouth quirked up on one side at Martin and he gave a sort of half-wink. Martin was flooded with shame, the burdens of a lifetime were still there. He got to his feet and sat, hunched, in one of the fireside chairs.

  “Don’t put the light on.”

  “Okay, not if you don’t want.”

  “I’m sorry about that. Just now, I mean.” Martin tried not to mumble. He tried to look at Tim through the red gloom, to meet his eyes and speak lucidly. It was nearly impossible. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  “It was the military gin. The fact is, it’s meant for guardsmen and you know what guardsmen are.”