by Ruth Rendell
We were bedding out plants one afternoon – yes, I said ‘plants’, there’s no need to be coarse – when Lindsay started discussing divorce.
‘You’d divide your property, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘I mean, split it down the middle. Or, if you didn’t think that quite fair on her, she could keep this place and that sweet cottage in wherever it is, and we could have the Kensington house.’
‘Fair on her?’ I said. ‘My dear girl, I adore you, but you don’t know you’re born, do you? All these hereditaments or messuages or whatever the lawyers call them are hers. Hers, lovey, in her name.’
‘Oh, I know that, darling,’ she said. (By the way, she really has the most gorgeous speaking voice. I can’t wait for you to meet her.) ‘I know that. But when you read about divorce cases in the papers, the parties always have to divide the property. The judge makes a – a whatsit.’
‘An order,’ I said. ‘But in those cases the money was earned by the husband. Haven’t you ever heard of the Married Women’s Property Act?’
‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ I said. ‘It means that what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is her own. Or, to enlarge, if she fails to pay her Income Tax I’m liable, but if I fail to pay mine nobody can get a bean out of her. And don’t make me laugh, sweetheart,’ I said, warming to my theme, ‘but any idea you may have about division of property – well, that’s a farce. There’s nothing in English law to make her maintain me. If we got divorced I’d be left with the clothes I stand up in and the pittance I get from Lady of Leisure.’
‘Then what are we going to do about it?’ she said.
What a question! But, to do her justice, she didn’t make any silly suggestions as to our living together in a furnished room. And she was even sweeter to me than before.
Of course, she loves me so she doesn’t feel it a hardship to run around laying out my clean clothes and emptying my ashtrays and fetching the car round to the front door for me when it’s raining. But I know she thought I’d have a go at Hedda, ask her to let me go and make a settlement on me. I could picture Hedda’s face! Having a deeply rooted idea that she’s the most dynamic and sexy thing since Helen of Troy, my wife has never suspected any of my philanderings and she hasn’t an inkling of what’s in the wind with Lindsay. The funny thing is, I had an idea that if I did tell her she’d just roar with laughter and then say something cutting about church mice and beggars who can’t be choosers. Hedda’s got a very nasty tongue. It’s been sharpened up by writing all that snappy dialogue, I suppose.
Anyway when she got back she wasn’t interested in me or Lindsay or all those petunias and antirrhinums we’d planted. The first thing she wanted to know was why I hadn’t filled in the well.
‘All in good time,’ I said. ‘It’s a matter of priorities. The well can get filled in any time, but the only month to plant annuals is May.’
‘I want the well filled in now,’ said my wife. ‘I’m sick of that bloody great heap of hardcore out there. If I wanted to look at rocks I’d have bought a house in the Alps.’
What I’d said about priorities wasn’t strictly true. (Thanks, I will have that topped up, if you don’t mind.) I didn’t want to fill the well in because I’d already started wondering if there was any possible way I could push Hedda down it. It had become a murder weapon, and to fill it up with hardcore now would be like dropping one’s only gun into the Thames off Westminster Bridge. Hedda hadn’t made a will, but so what? As her widower, I’d get the lot. All through those hot weeks of summer while I stalled about the well, I kept thinking of Lindsay in a bikini on Hedda’s private beach in Minorca – only it’d be my private beach – Lindsay entertaining guests in the drawing room in Kensington, Lindsay looking sweet among the herbaceous borders at the farm, my farm. And never a harsh word from her or a snide crack. I’d never again be made to feel that somehow I’d got an invisible apron on. Or be expected to – well, accede to distasteful demands when I’d got a headache or was feeling tired.
But how do you push an able-bodied woman of thirty-eight, five feet ten, 152 pounds, down a well? Hedda’s an inch taller than I am and very powerful. Bound to be, I suppose, the T-bone steaks she eats. Besides, she never goes into the garden except to walk across it from the garage to the back kitchen door when she’s put her Lincoln Continental away. I thought vaguely of getting her drunk and walking her out there in the dark. But Hedda doesn’t drink much and she can hold her liquor like a man.
So the upshot of all this thinking was – nothing. And at the beginning of this month Lindsay went off for her three weeks’ holiday to her sister in Brighton. I’d no hope to give her. Not that she’d a suspicion of what was going on in my mind. I wouldn’t have involved a sweet little innocent like her in what was, frankly, a sordid business. As we kissed goodbye, she said:
‘Now, remember, darling, you’re to be extra specially loving to Hedda and get her to settle a lump sum on you. Then afterwards, when it’s all signed, sealed and settled, you can ask for a divorce.’
I couldn’t help smiling, though I felt nearer to tears. When you come across ingenuousness like that, it revives your faith in human nature. And when you come to think of it, old man, what an angel! There she was, prepared to endure agonies of jealousy thinking of me making love to Hedda, and all for my sake. I felt pretty low after she’d gone, stuck at the farm with Hedda moaning about not knowing how to get through all her work without a secretary.
However, a couple of days bashing away at the typewriter with two fingers decided her. She couldn’t get a temp typist down in Sussex, so she’d go back to Kensington and get a girl at vast expense from the nearest agency. I wasn’t allowed to go with her.
She stuck her head out of the Lincoln’s window as she was going off up the drive and pointed to the heap of hardcore.
‘Faith doesn’t move mountains,’ she bawled. ‘The age of miracles is past. So let’s see some God-damned action!’
Charming. I went into the house and got myself a stiff drink. (Thanks, I don’t mind if I do.) It was fair enough being alone at the farm, though painful in a way after having been alone there with Lindsay. A couple of postcards came from her – addressed to us both, for safety’s sake – and then, by a bit of luck, she phoned. Of course, I was able to tell her I was going to be alone for the next three weeks, and after that she phoned every night.
Remember how marvellous the weather was last week and the week before? Not too hot, but ideal for a spot of heavy engineering in the open air. I was just resigning myself to the fact that I couldn’t put off filling in the well a day longer when I got this brilliant idea.
Oddly enough, it was television that inspired me. Hedda doesn’t care for watching television, though we’ve got two big colour sets which she says, if you please, that she bought for my benefit. I hardly think it becomes her to turn up her nose at the medium considering what a packet she’s made out of getting serials on it. Be that as it may, I don’t much enjoy watching it with her supercilious eye on me, but I’m not averse to a little discriminating viewing while she’s away. It must have been the Friday night I saw this old Hollywood film about some sort of romantic goings-on in the jungle. Dorothy Lamour and Johnny Weissmuller, it was that old. But the point was, there was a bit of wild animal trapping in it, and the way the intrepid hunter caught this puma thing was by digging a trough right on the path the hapless beast frequented and covering it up rather cunningly with branches and leaves.
It struck me all of a heap, I don’t mind telling you. The occasion called for opening a bottle of Hedda’s Southern Comfort. In the morning, a wee bit the worse for wear, I spied out the land. First of all I needed a good big sheet of horticultural polythene, but we’d already got plenty of that for the cloches in which I was going to have a stab at growing melons. Next the turves. I drove over to Kingsmarkham and ordered turves and the best quality gravel. The lot was delivered on Monday.
By that time
I’d got all the surrounding ground levelled and raked over, smooth as a beach after the tide’s gone out. The worst part was getting rid of the hardcore. Hedda was damned right about faith not moving mountains. It took me days. I had to pick up every chunk by hand, load it on to my wheelbarrow and cart it about a hundred yards to the only place where it could be reasonably well concealed, in a sort of ditch between the greenhouse and the boundary wall. Must have been Thursday afternoon before I got it done to my satisfaction. I remember reading somewhere that the human hand is a precision instrument that some people use as a bludgeon. I wish I could use mine as bludgeons. By the time I was done, they looked like they’d been through a mincing machine.
I waited till nightfall – not that it mattered, as there wasn’t an observer for miles apart from a few owls and so on – and then I spread the polythene over the mouth of the well, weighting it down not too firmly at the edges with battens. The lot was then covered with a thin layer of earth so that all you could see was smoothly raked soil, bounded by the house terrace, the really lovely borders of annuals Lindsay and I had made, and the garage at the far end.
I was pretty thankful I’d got those turves and that gravel well in advance, I can tell you, because the next day when I went to start my new car, I couldn’t get a squeak out of it. Moxon’s, who service it for me, had to come over from Kingsmarkham and collect it. Some vital part had packed up, I don’t know what, I leave all that mechanical stuff to Hedda. But the thing was, I was stranded without a vehicle which rather interfered with my little plan to surprise Lindsay by popping down to Brighton for her last week. She, of course, was dreadfully disappointed that she wasn’t going to get her surprise. ‘Why don’t I come back and join you, darling?’ she said when she phoned that Saturday night.
And get wind of what was going on down the garden path?
‘I’d much rather be with you by the sea,’ I said. ‘No, I’ll give Moxon’s a ring Monday morning. If the car’s ready I’ll just have to stagger in to Kingsmarkham on the 11:15 bus and collect it. It’s only an hour’s run to Brighton. I could be with you by lunchtime.’
‘Heaven,’ said Lindsay, and so it would have been if Hedda hadn’t sprung a little surprise of her own on me. Luckily – with my heavenly week ahead in view – I’d laid all those turves and made a neat gravel path from the garage to the back kitchen door when, on Sunday night, Hedda phoned. She’d got all her work done, thanks to the efficiency of the temp girl, and she was coming down in the morning for a well-earned rest. By twelve noon she’d be with me.
But I didn’t feel dispirited and there didn’t seem any point in phoning Lindsay. After all, we were soon going to be together for ever and ever. Before I went to bed I made a final survey of the garden. The path looked perfect. No one would have dreamt it hid a forty-foot death trap going down into the bowels of the earth.
That was last Sunday night, the night the weather broke, if you remember. It was pelting down with rain in the morning, but I had to go out to establish my alibi. I caught the 10:15 bus into Kingsmarkham to be on the safe side. When Hedda says twelve noon, she means twelve noon and not a quarter past. But, by God, I was nervous, old man. I was shaking and my heart was drumming away. As soon as the Olive and Dove opened I went in and had a couple of what the doctor would have ordered if he’d been around to do an electrocardiogram. And I chatted up the barmaid to make sure she’d know me again.
At twelve sharp I beetled down to Moxon’s. Couldn’t have given a damn whether the car was ready or not, but if Moxon’s people were talking to me face to face at noon, the police would know I couldn’t have been at the farm pushing my wife down a well, wouldn’t they? The funny thing was this mechanic chappie said my vehicle had been taken back to the farm already. The boss had driven it over himself, he thought, though he couldn’t be sure, having only just got in. Well, that gave me a bit of a turn and I had a very nasty vision of poor old Moxon walking up to the house to find me and … However, I needn’t have worried. I was just getting on the bus that took me back when I saw Moxon himself zoom by in the Land Rover with the tow rope.
It was still pouring down when I reached home. I nipped craftily round the back way and in via the garage. Hedda’s Lincoln and my little Daf were there all right, the two of them snuggled up for all the world like a couple of cuddly creatures in the mating season.
Out of the garage I went on to my super new path. And it was as I had planned, a big sagging hole edged with sopping wet turf where the well mouth was. I crept up to it as if something or someone might pop out and bite me. But nothing and no one did, and when I looked down I couldn’t see a thing but a bottomless pit, old boy. Never mind the rain, I thought. I’ll get into my working togs, clear the well mouth of polythene and other detritus, and call the police. Here is my wife’s car, officer, but where is my wife? I suspect a tragic accident. Ah, yes, I have been out all the morning in Kingsmarkham as I can prove to you without the slightest difficulty.
I was fantasizing away like this, with the rain trickling down between my raincoat collar and my sweater, when there came – my God, I’ll never forget it – the most ear-splitting bellow from the house. In point of fact, from the kitchen window.
‘Where the flaming hell have you been?’ Only she didn’t say ‘flaming’, you know. ‘Are you out of your God-damned mind? I come here to find the place covered with your filthy fag-ends and not a duster over it for a fortnight. Where have you been?’
Hedda.
I nearly had a coronary. No, I’m not kidding. I had the first symptoms. Dizziness and pain up my left side and in my arm. I thought I’d had it. I suppose the fact is Hedda and I do have a perfect diet, the very best of protein and vitamins, and that stood me in good stead when it came to the nitty-gritty. Well, I sort of staggered up the path and into the kitchen. There she was, hands on hips, looking like one of those whatsits – Furies or Valkyries or something. (Sorry, I’ve had a drop too much of your excellent Scotch.)
I could have done with a short snort at that moment. I didn’t even get a cup of coffee.
‘One hell of a landscape gardener you are,’ Hedda yelled at me. ‘A couple of drops of rain and your famous path caved in. Lucky for you it happened before I got here. I might have broken my leg.’
Her leg, ha ha! Of course I saw what had happened.
The water had collected in a pool till the polythene sagged and the battens finally gave way. I would have to run into a wet spell, wouldn’t I, after the heatwave we’d been having?
‘You didn’t put enough of that hardcore down,’ said my wife in her psychopathic-bird-of-prey voice. ‘Christ, you live in the lap of luxury, never do a hand’s turn but for that piddling around the peonies column of yours, and you can’t even fill in a God-damned well. You can get right out there this minute and start on it.’
So that’s what I did, old man. All that hardcore had to be humped back by the barrow-load and tipped down the well. I worked on it all afternoon in the rain and all yesterday, and this morning I re-made the path. It’s messed up my back properly, I can tell you. I felt the disc pop out while I was dropping the last hundredweight in. Still, Hedda had bought me that German hi-fi equipment I’ve been dreaming of for years, so I mustn’t grumble. She’s not a bad sort really, and I can’t complain my every wish isn’t catered for, provided I toe the line. (No, I’d better not have any more. I’m beginning to get double vision, thanks all the same.)
Lindsay? I expect her back on Monday and I suppose we’ll just have to go on as before. The funny thing is, she hasn’t phoned since last Saturday, though she doesn’t know Hedda’s back. I called her sister’s place this morning and the sister went into a long involved story about Lindsay going off on Monday morning, full of something about a surprise for someone – but then Hedda came in and I had to ring off.
I can use your phone, old man? That’s most awfully nice of you. I don’t want the poor little sweet thinking I’ve dropped her out of my life for ever …
The Thief
1
The first time she stole something Polly was eight years old. She and her mother had gone in the car to have tea with her aunt, so that she could play with her cousins, James and Lizzie. It was a fine sunny day in the middle of summer. Chairs and tables were out in the garden under a big sunshade. There was a blow-up pool and the hose was on. James and Lizzie were in swimsuits and Polly put hers on. They splashed about in the water. Polly got very excited, splashed water over her mother and Auntie Pauline and took hold of Lizzie, holding her head under the water. Her mother told her to stop and then, when Polly didn’t stop, she told her again.
‘Stop that at once, Polly. You’re spoiling the game for the others!’
Polly had stopped for a while, then begun again, splashing with both hands. Her aunt got up, said to her, ‘Come into the house. I’ve got something I want to show you.’
So Polly got out of the water, dried herself on a towel and followed Auntie Pauline into the house. She thought she was going to get a present. Auntie Pauline had said that once before and had given her the thing she had shown her. Not this time. As soon as they were inside and the door was shut her aunt put her over her knee and smacked her hard, ten sharp blows across her bottom. Then Auntie Pauline went back into the garden.
When her aunt had gone and left her crying, Polly had hated her. She would have liked to kill her. Rubbing her eyes, she had walked slowly through the rooms. In one of them was a desk and on the desk, lying face-down, the book Auntie Pauline was reading. Polly took it. She put it in the big bag her mother had left in the hallway. It wasn’t her aunt’s book but one from the Public Library. If it was missing Auntie Pauline would have to pay for it …
