by Ruth Rendell
To distract his mind, or to attempt to, from the afternoon ahead, he got out his code notebook and studied it. Already, because he knew the first word must be ‘Leviathan’ and the third ‘Dragon’, he had made a little headway. Then he had got stuck. But now, immediately, as if his subconscious had silently, during the night, been working on the problem, he saw what ‘Tosos’ meant. ‘Ignore all Tosos commands’ was now clear. It meant to disregard any messages that might be received in the The Other Side of Silence code. But did the bit that preceded it therefore mean that now April was here, a new month, the Bruce-Partington code must be adopted? Who, anyway, was Bruce-Partington?
Not some participant in this mini-Mafia, John thought. They all had those fabulous beast aliases. Bruce-Partington might well be an author of espionage fiction. John had never heard of him but this didn’t mean he didn’t exist. He wasn’t very well up in the writers of this genre, knowing only the great ones really, Le Carré, Deighton, Yugall, and now Albeury and one or two others. He had hours and hours before the appointed time of his meeting with Jennifer. Why not go down to the library in Lucerne Road now and ask if they had any novels by Bruce-Partington? With luck the man might have written no more than half a dozen, in which case, provided the library had them in, it would be a simple task to check their opening lines for the April code.
First, though, he tidied up a bit. He cleaned the sink and wiped down the surfaces. It was pointless to think of cleaning the whole house at this stage, and hadn’t she told him often she wasn’t houseproud, that she was indifferent to these things? The sunshine showed up cobwebs, fingermarks on woodwork, curtains that needed cleaning. It would be nice to throw the lot away and buy new. And why not, for her, if she wanted it? She may be changed, he thought. If Peter Moran was about to desert her again, if she had suffered a double disillusionment, would she be bitter and despairing?
For the first time John confronted the possibility that she was only returning to him because Peter Moran was leaving her once more, that in other words, it was a matter of any port in a storm. He found he didn’t much care. At any rate, this time, she would be cured of Moran, that would be the end of it. John recalled the feeling he had had about Peter Moran, the rather creepy intuition that Moran might have nasty sexual proclivities. Such as what, though? John didn’t know much about this kind of thing. He couldn’t be someone who preferred men. Perhaps he liked being beaten or even – John shrank at the thought – doing the beating himself. He had been very quick and glib with his reference to Sacher-Masoch. Could it be this which was driving her away? As for him, she had loved him once and would again. Self-confidence came to him with the sunshine and he found that he was whistling as he pottered about the kitchen.
The librarian at the Lucerne Road branch was sure they had no books by Bruce-Partington. She looked through the author files they kept on a computer and showed John that there was no writer on record between Robert B. Parker and Harry Patterson.
‘The name does ring a bell, though.’
‘You mean,’ John said hopefully, ‘there may be such a writer but you don’t have his books?’
‘I don’t think it’s actually a writer. More a name of something. Like a firm or a make of something.’
It didn’t much matter. Next week, anyway, he might not have the time or inclination for breaking codes.
It was twenty-five past two when John walked through the main gates into Hartlands Gardens. He had had lunch, a very sparse lunch, and bathed and put clean clothes on, washed the dishes, dried them, put everything away and it was still only one-thirty. And then it was simply that he couldn’t stay in the house any longer. He had to be out in the air and walking about.
The bus had come at once and for some reason there was very little traffic to hold it up. A summer’s day it had become, a freak hot day, the leafless trees having a strange look against that blue unclouded sky. The broad central walk which led from the gates up to the Douglas mansion were bordered with masses of golden-eyed white narcissi, thousands upon thousands of flowers, and their rich heady scent had been brought out by the heat. John left the main path and took a right-hand turning, heading for that part of the grounds that was always known as Lady Arabella’s Garden.
Lady Arabella had been the wife of Lysander Douglas, a society hostess and a great gardener. John’s mother, as a child, could remember seeing her being driven about the city in a big Lagonda car. John and Cherry had often come here with their mother and naturally had preferred the play area with the swings and slide. At that time the park hadn’t long been made over to the city, the result of death duties which had nearly impoverished the Douglases. John’s mother’s favourite place was this garden which he was now making for and which had been designed by Lady Arabella herself. As he approached it, John wished he had thought of suggesting to Jennifer that they meet there instead of at the tea place. He and she had been there and sat and walked on several occasions.
It was a white garden that somehow managed to have flowers blooming in it at three seasons of the year. Yew hedges enclosed it and it was not until you had walked down one of the passages between them and under an arch that you could see the flowers at all. John was astonished to see so much in bloom, such a variety of narcissi, white tulips coming into flower, snowy arabis, ivory crocus just touched with mauve, honesty and some type of early iris he didn’t know the name of. The branches of a cherry tree were clustered with fat buds, not yet open, but a clematis that overhung the wall of the small pavilion was covered with star-shaped delicate papery blossoms.
He found himself quite alone in the garden. The beauty of it, with the scents and the warm sun, affected him strangely so that he felt tremulous and weak. He could have gasped aloud. He sat down on one of the stone seats and thought, suppose she were to come in here now, come in from the other end behind the pavilion, and walk up to me? It was possible, it was even likely, for she couldn’t be far away. He looked at his watch. Two forty-five. Perhaps he would bring her back here after they had had tea. There were white violas growing everywhere between the stones, on the edges of the symmetrical flowerbeds, among the other flowers, as if the gardener had opened and scattered packet after packet of seeds. John thought, I shall will her to come in here now, and he closed his eyes, concentrating, praying really. But when he opened them he was still alone. Only a butterfly had arrived, a winter survivor, fluttering above the arabis and as appropriately white as its petals.
He left the garden and walked back towards the house along one of the high terraces. From these it was possible to look down on to the circular stone-paved courtyard where in summertime tables and chairs were set out and the doors to the restaurant thrown open. Normally, at this time of the year, it would have been too cold for this but as John came along the narrow path and leaned over the railing, he saw that the tables were out and even one or two sunshades up. At a table in the full sun, sitting upright in her chair and apparently reading a newspaper or magazine spread out in front of her, was Jennifer.
She was early. And she looked as if she had already been there for some minutes. John, after his heart had lurched and his throat dried, enjoyed the considerable pleasure of watching the beloved person without being oneself observed. She was dressed as he best liked to see her, simply enough in skirt, shirt and pullover, but the skirt must have been a very long very full one, for it spread out in thick folds nearly to the ground, showing only her fine slender ankles, her feet in pointed flat pumps. The sun shining on her hair had turned it to the tawny gold Rembrandt used for Juno’s crown, John thought, admiring her, wondering if he could bear the pleasure that would come to him if she turned and saw him and waved, or if it would be too much for him, for his heart, and he would die of it.
His heart wasn’t put to the test. She continued to read. She turned a page. He walked to the next set of steps, experiencing now that sensation we have when tremendous anticipation is over, when the end is achieved and the consummation come – an absence of thought
and blankness of mind. Like an automaton he approached her table and she, hearing his footfalls, turned and got up, standing there and gradually managing to smile.
He understood very quickly that of course he couldn’t kiss her or shake hands with her or even touch her hand.
She said, ‘Hallo.’
He said, ‘Hallo, Jennifer.’
The long tweed skirt hung like a bell. She held her hands clasped up against her chest. Her fingers were bare, the wedding ring gone.
‘It’s good to see you.’
She nodded. It might mean anything.
‘Would you like a cup of tea? Shall we have tea and cakes?’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she said. ‘You have cakes if you like. You’ve lost a lot of weight, haven’t you?’
‘I expect it’s better for me.’ He watched her pick up her magazine, fold it, start to put it into the big carrier of woven straw she had with her. ‘If we’re not going to eat,’ he said, ‘we could go for a walk. We could walk to the white garden. I’ve just come from there, it’s beautiful, you’d like it.’
‘I’d rather sit here. We may as well stay here.’
He knew then. He knew from her tone and the look on her face, a bored, rather miserable expression, anticipating an unpleasant task ahead, that she wouldn’t be coming back with him. She sat down and he sat opposite her. The sun hadn’t gone in but he had a feeling that it had. She put her left hand on the table and made nervous finger movements like someone testing the tone of a piano. And suddenly it seemed to him that sheepishness, passivity, would no longer do. What had he to lose from speaking? What to gain from this devoted humble patience? He had already lost everything.
‘Why did you ask me to come here, Jennifer?’ He surprised himself with the sharpness of his voice. ‘What is it you want?’
‘A divorce,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘I want a divorce.’
The clean sheets on the bed, he thought. He had made a fool of himself, if only to himself.
‘Are you going to marry him?’
She nodded.
‘And what guarantee will you have this time that he won’t turn tail and leave you two days before the wedding?’
‘That’s my problem,’ she said. The blood came up into her face and he exulted because he could still upset her. ‘He won’t though. It’s different this time.’ She said quickly, in a rush, ‘I don’t want to wait two years. I want you to divorce me for adultery with Peter.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because I ask you, John.’ He winced at her use of his name. ‘It was a mistake our marrying in the first place. We made a mistake.’
‘I didn’t make a mistake.’ He found out of his misery a wonderful articulateness. He was able to express himself as he never had before, with perfect heartfelt lucidity. ‘I fell in love and I married the woman I loved and as far as I was concerned I hoped and meant to stay married until I died or she did. I’m still in love and I still want that.’
‘It’s impossible!’
‘You’re my wife. Doesn’t that mean anything? You said you were sorry you said that about not having to make vows or promises.’ He lost the thread of what he had been about to say. Cold realization seemed to cut him to the bone. He would go home alone. He would always be alone. And she would go back to Peter Moran, relieved no doubt, glad to have got it over, this necessary interview, would throw herself into Peter Moran’s arms and kiss him, sob her disappointment – and be comforted. ‘What is there about him? He’s not good-looking or good company as far as I can see.’
‘He’s clever and he’s cool, he’s an intellectual. He’s funny. He makes me laugh. We speak the same language.’
That was bitter to hear. ‘He hasn’t a job, he can’t even provide for you properly.’
‘You don’t love people because they’re good breadwinners.’
‘He deserted you once, he left you more or less at the altar. Did you ever find out why?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. Her face looked as soft and vulnerable as one of those paper-petalled flowers that bloom for a day, that bruise at a touch.
‘I’ll never divorce you,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to wait five years. But he’ll have left you by then.’
He jumped up and walked rapidly away. He was determined not to look back and he didn’t, keeping his eyes fixed on the green lawns ahead, the blue sky, the white shimmering mass of narcissi. Very nearly colliding with a woman walking towards him, he was surprised that there were other people in the world. He looked about him, saw children, a man with a dog on a lead, and felt dazed, stunned. For half an hour he and she had been the only man and woman on earth – and now there was only himself.
Two days afterwards there was a piece on the local television news about Lady Arabella’s Garden. Even the white butterfly – perhaps the same white butterfly – appeared in the film, fluttering about. But the main item was concerned with the missing schoolboy. A boy of twelve, a pupil at Hintall’s the prep school, had disappeared on Saturday afternoon while out on a supervised nature walk. The last anyone had seen of him was by the river on the other side of Nunhouse where a group of boys, keeping very quiet and still, had been observing the behaviour of herons. During this silence and stillness James Harvill had vanished.
Any mention of Nunhouse caught John’s attention. But it was to be quite a long time before he connected the disappearance of the boy with something in Jennifer’s letter.
PART TWO
1
HE WAS ONE of those small neat people, the kind that never look ungainly or, come to that, anything but spruce and spotless. Beside Mungo he seemed very small indeed. He had elfin ears, the tops of them not pointed but not rounded either, ever so slightly peaked. His pale hair was always newly-washed and well cut. The squeaky voice that, nearly a year before, had told Mungo on the phone that its owner wanted to defect, was still unbroken. Trimly dressed in the clothes ordained for Rossingham casual wear, grey flannel trousers, dark green pullover, without a tie because it was after six, he accepted Mungo’s offer and sat down at the study counter in the chair that was normally used by Graham O’Neill. There he cast the eye of one who is insatiably inquisitive over the books Mungo had been using for his French prep.
Mungo reached across and slid his attempt at a translation out of that eye’s range and as he did so an arm came out and produced first an egg from his pullover sleeve and then a couple of dozen yards of paper streamers from his trouser pocket.
‘Don’t do that,’ said Mungo. ‘You make me nervous.’
Charles Mabledene smiled with his lips closed. That was a habit with the Moscow Centre lot, they picked it up from Guy Parker, and it served to remind Mungo of Dragon’s antecedents, as if he could ever forget them. His trousers fitted him snugly and his pullover was even rather small on him, far too tight to conceal an egg and all those streamers, yet egg and paper had unaccountably appeared and as unaccountably vanished.
‘Why are you called Mungo?’
‘After Mungo Park, the explorer. He was Scottish too and a doctor and we’re all doctors in our family.’
‘I’ve heard your brother call you Bean. Is that because of mung beans?’
Mungo felt irritated. ‘I think so. I’ve forgotten.’ He added, ‘No one but my brothers call me Bean, absolutely no one.’
The smile reappeared.
‘I got you down here to ask you how you got that piece of information out of Mr Blake.’
‘My mother asked him.’
‘Your mother? All right, go on.’
‘My mother wants to open a new salon . . .’
‘A what?’
‘A salon. A hairdresser’s. I got her to ask the Blakes to dinner. She didn’t know them but she does Mrs Blake’s hair or one of her stylists does. And Mrs Blake kept on saying she wanted to see my mother’s sauna. I’d told my mother I’d heard the doctors’ place was coming up for sale, that a friend of mine had told me and that was all I ne
eded to say. Mr and Mrs Blake came to dinner and I knew she’d tell them, I knew that was why she’d invited them. Blake said he was surprised to hear that as he understood the doctors would be extending their premises.’
Simple. Mungo looked at diminutive Charles Mabledene, a child in looks if not in mind and guile. Still, no doubt he was reckoned sufficiently adult to be present at his parents’ dinner parties . . .
‘I wasn’t there,’ Dragon said. ‘I taped it.’
‘You what?’
The door opened and Graham came in, wearing tennis whites and carrying his racquet. Charles Mabledene got up courteously to give up his chair but Graham waved him away.
‘It’s OK. I’m going to have a shower.’
Coming out of the adjoining room where their two bunks were he slung the towel he had gone to fetch over his shoulder and six tennis balls all dyed different colours bounced out of it. Charles Mabledene’s eyebrows went up and he smiled, without modesty.
‘I was just saying,’ he said, ‘that I taped the conversation. Of course it’s a bit muzzy and parts of it you can’t hear at all on account of my having to conceal the recording device behind some dead grass. I mean, my mother goes in for these dried-flower arrangements and I stuck it behind that.’
‘Do you often do that?’ asked Graham.
‘If I think something useful might be said, yes.’
‘Useful?’
‘Something I could put to use,’ said Charles Mabledene, and he began juggling with his coloured tennis balls.
After he had gone Mungo pondered for a while before returning to the passage from de Maupassant he was rendering into English. His father had believed in the letter and acted accordingly, or rather, not acted. By now, presumably, it being the last week of April, he would have had a real letter about the decision of a real meeting but Mungo wasn’t going to worry about that. Fergus might find it odd but everyone was always saying how unaccountable councils and bodies like that were in their behaviour, apparently you came to expect anomalies. Dragon had done very well. Mungo asked himself why he found his methods distasteful. Or was it Dragon himself he found – well, not so much distasteful as somehow cold and repellent? After all, there wasn’t anything strictly wrong about recording a conversation when the end you were going to use it for was good, was there? Mungo thought he had heard some saying or principle or whatever about the means being justified by the end or was it the end by the means? He would have to find out.
