The Copper Peacock

by Ruth Rendell

  She went downstairs and found the telephone directory for the area and looked up Yackle. It wasn’t there. She sat down and worked her way through all the ‘Y’s. There were not many pages of ‘Y’s, apart from Youngs, but there was no one with a name beginning with Y at that address on the rustic road among the cottages.

  She could not get to sleep. She expected the phone to ring again, Maria Yackle to ring back. After a while she put the bedlamp on and lay there in the light. It must have been three, and still she had not slept, when Griselda came in, got on the bed and stretched her length along Anna’s legs. She put out the light, deciding not to answer the phone if it did ring, to relax, forget the run-over cat, concentrate on nice things. As she turned face-downwards and stretched her body straight, she felt Griselda’s claws prickle her calves. As she shrank away from contact, curled up her legs and left Griselda a good half of the bed, a thick rough purring began.

  The first thing she thought of when she woke up was how upset that poor cat woman had been. She expected her to phone back at breakfast time but nothing happened. Anna fed Griselda, left her to her house, her cat flap, her garden and wider territory, and drove to work. Richard phoned as soon as she got in. Could they meet the following evening? She agreed, obscurely wishing he had said that night, suggesting that evening herself only to be told he had to work late, had a dinner with a client.

  She had been home for ten minutes when a car drew up outside. It was an old car, at least ten years old, and not only dented and scratched but with some of the worst scars painted or sprayed over in a different shade of red. Anna, who saw it arrive from a front window, watched the woman get out of it and approach the house. She was old or at least elderly – is elderly older than old or old older than elderly? – but dressed like a teenager. Anna got a closer look at her clothes, her hair, and her face when she opened the front door.

  It was a wrinkled face, the colour and texture of a chicken’s wattles. Small blue eyes were buried somewhere in the strawberry redness. The bright white hair next to it was as much of a contrast as snow against scarlet cloth. She wore tight jeans with socks pulled over the bottoms of them, dirty white trainers, and a big loose sweatshirt with a cat’s face on it, a painted smiling bewhiskered mask, orange and white and green-eyed.

  Anna had read somewhere the comment made by a young girl on an older woman’s boast that she could wear a miniskirt because she had good legs: It’s not your legs, it’s your face. She thought of this as she looked at Maria Yackle but that was the last time for a long while she thought of anything like that.

  ‘I’ve come early because we shall have a lot to talk about,’ Maria Yackle said and walked in. She did this in such a way as to compel Anna to open the door further and stand aside. ‘This is your house?’

  She might have meant because Anna was so young or perhaps there was some more offensive reason for asking.

  ‘My parents. I’m just staying here.’

  ‘Is it this room?’ She was already on the threshold of Anna’s mother’s living room.

  Anna nodded. She had been taken aback but only for a moment. It was best to get this over. But she did not care to be dictated to.

  ‘You could have let me know. I might not have been here.’

  There was no reply because Maria Yackle had seen Griselda. The cat had been sitting on the back of a wing chair between the wings, an apparently uncomfortable place though a favourite, but at sight of the newcomer had stretched, got down and was walking towards her. Maria Yackle put out her hand. It was a horrible hand, large and red with rope-like blue veins standing out above the bones, the palm calloused, the nails black and broken and the sides of the forefingers and thumbs ingrained with brownish dirt. Griselda approached and put her smoky whitish muzzle and pink nose into this hand.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ Anna said rather sharply, for Maria Yackle was bending over to pick the cat up. ‘She isn’t very nice. She doesn’t like people.’

  ‘She’ll like me.’

  And the amazing thing was that Griselda did. Maria Yackle sat down and Griselda sat on her lap. Griselda the unfriendly, the cold-hearted, the cat who purred when alone and who ceased to purr when touched, the ice-eyed, the standoffish walker-by-herself, settled down on this unknown untried lap, having first climbed up Maria Yackle’s chest and on to her shoulders and rubbed her ears and plump furry cheeks against the sweatshirt with the painted cat face.

  ‘You seem surprised.’

  Anna said, ‘You could say that.’

  ‘There’s no mystery. The explanation’s simple.’ It was a shrill harsh voice, cracked by the onset of old age, articulate, the usage grammatical, but the accent raw cockney. ‘You and your mum and dad too, no doubt, you all think you smell very nice and pretty. You have your bath every morning with bath essence and scented soap. You put talcum powder on and spray stuff in your armpits, you rub cream on your bodies and squirt on perfume. Maybe you’ve washed your hair too with shampoo and conditioner and what-do-they-call-it? – mousse. You clean your teeth and wash your mouth, put a drop more perfume behind your ears, paint your faces – well, I daresay your dad doesn’t paint his face, but he shaves, doesn’t he? More mousse and then after-shave.

  ‘You put on your clothes. All of them clean, spotless. They’ve either just come back from the dry-cleaners or else out of the washing machine with biological soap and spring-fresh fabric softener. Oh, I know, I may not do it myself but I see it on the TV.

  ‘It all smells very fine to you but it doesn’t to her. Oh, no. To her it’s just chemicals, like gas might be to you or paraffin. A nasty strong chemical smell that puts her right off and makes her shrink up in her furry skin. What’s her name?’

  This question was uttered on a sharp bark. ‘Griselda,’ said Anna, and, ‘How did you know it’s a she?’

  ‘Face, look,’ said Maria Yackle. ‘See her little nose. See her smily mouth and her little nose and her fat cheeks? Tom cat’s got a big nose, got a long muzzle. Never mind if he’s been neutered, still got a big nose.’

  ‘What did you come here to say to me?’ said Anna.

  Griselda had curled up on the cat woman’s lap, burying her head, slightly upward turned, in the crease between stomach and thigh. ‘I don’t go in for all that stuff, you see.’ The big red hand stroked Griselda’s head, the stripy bit between her ears. ‘Cat likes the smell of me because I haven’t got my clothes in soapy water every day, I have a bath once a week, always have and always shall, and I don’t waste my money on odorisers and deodorisers. I wash my hands when I get up in the morning and that’s enough for me.’

  At the mention of the weekly bath, Anna had reacted instinctively and edged her chair a little further away. Maria Yackle saw, Anna was sure she saw, but her response to this recoil was to begin on what she had in fact come about: her compensation.

  ‘The cat you killed, she was five years old and the queen of the cats, her name was Melusina. I always have a queen. The one before was Juliana and she lived to be twelve. I wept, I mourned her, but life has to go on. The queen is dead, I said, long live the queen! I never promote one, I always get a new kitten. Some cats are queens, you see, and some are not. Melusina was eight weeks old when I got her from the Animal Rescue people, and I gave them a donation of twenty pounds. The vet charged me twenty-seven pounds fifty for her injections, all my cats are immunised against feline enteritis and leptospirosis, so that makes forty-seven pounds fifty. And she had her booster at age two which was another twenty-seven fifty, I can show you the receipted bills, I always keep everything, and that makes seventy-four pounds. Then there was my petrol getting her to the vet, we’ll say a straight five pounds though it was more, and then we come to the crunch, her food. She was a good little trencher-woman.’

  Anna would have been inclined to laugh at this ridiculous word but she saw to her horror that the tears were running down Maria Yackle’s cheeks. They were running unchecked out of her eyes, over the rough red wrinkled skin, and one dripped unh
eeded on to Griselda’s silvery fur.

  ‘Take no notice. I do cry whenever I have to talk about her. I loved that cat. She was the queen of the cats. She had her own place, her throne, she used to sit in the middle of the mantelpiece with her two china ladies-in-waiting on each side of her. You’ll see one day, when you come to my house.

  ‘But we were talking about her food. She ate a large can a day, it was too much, more than she should have had, but she loved her food, she was a good little eater. Well, cat food’s gone up over the years of course, what hasn’t, and I’m paying fifty pee a can now, but I reckon it’d be fair to average it out at forty pee. She was eight weeks old when I got her, so we can’t say five times three hundred and sixty-five. We’ll say five times three fifty-five and that’s doing you a favour. I’ve already worked it out at home, I’m not that much of a wizard at mental arithmetic. Five three hundred and fifty-fives are one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five, which multiplied by forty makes fifty-three thousand pee or five hundred and thirty pounds. Add to that the seventy-four plus the vet’s bill of fourteen pounds when she had a tapeworm and we get a final figure of six hundred and eighteen pounds.’

  Anna stared at her. ‘You’re asking me to give you six hundred and eighteen pounds.’

  ‘That’s right. Of course we’ll write it down and do it properly.’

  ‘Because your cat ran under the wheels of my car?’

  ‘You murdered her,’ said Maria Yackle.

  ‘That’s absurd. Of course I didn’t murder her.’ On shaky ground, she said, ‘You can’t murder an animal.’

  ‘You did. You said you were going too fast.’

  Had she? She had been but had she said so?

  Maria Yackle got up, still holding Griselda, cuddling Griselda, who nestled purring in her arms. Anna watched with distaste. You thought of cats as fastidious creatures but they were not. Only something insensitive and undiscerning would put its face against that face, nuzzle those rough grimy hands. The black fingernails brought to mind a phrase, now unpleasantly appropriate, that her grandmother had used to children with dirty hands: in mourning for the cat.

  ‘I don’t expect you to give me a cheque now. Is that what you thought I meant? I don’t suppose you have that amount in your current account. I’ll come back tomorrow or the next day.’

  ‘I am not going to give you six hundred pounds,’ said Anna.

  She might as well not have spoken.

  ‘I won’t come back tomorrow, I’ll come back on Wednesday.’ Griselda was tenderly placed on the seat of an armchair. The tears had dried on Maria Yackle’s face, leaving salt trails. She took herself out into the hall and to the front door. ‘You’ll have thought about it by then. Anyway, I hope you’ll come to the funeral. I hope there won’t be any hard feelings.’

  That was when Anna decided Maria Yackle was mad. In one way this was disquieting, in another a comfort. It meant she was not serious about the compensation, the six hundred and eighteen pounds. Sane people do not invite you to their cat’s funeral. Mad people do not sue you for compensation.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think she’d do that,’ said Richard when they were having dinner together. He was not a lawyer but had studied law. ‘You didn’t admit you were exceeding the speed limit, did you?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘At any rate you didn’t admit it in front of witnesses. You say she didn’t threaten you?’

  ‘Oh, no. She wasn’t unpleasant. She cried, poor thing.’

  ‘Well, let’s forget her, shall we, and have a nice time?’

  Although no note awaited her on the doorstep, no letter came and there were no phone calls, Anna knew the cat woman would come back on the following evening. Richard had advised her to go to the police if any threats were made. There would be no need to tell them she had been driving very fast. Anna thought the whole idea of going to the police bizarre. She rang up her friend Kate and told her all about it and Kate agreed that telling the police would be going too far.

  The battered red car arrived at seven. Maria Yackle was dressed as she had been for her previous visit but because it was rather cold, wore a jacket made of synthetic fur as well. From its harsh too-shiny texture there was no doubt it was synthetic but from a distance it looked like a black cat’s pelt.

  She had brought an album of photographs of her cats for Anna to see. Anna looked through it – what else could she do?

  Some were recognisably of those she had seen through the windows. Those that were not she supposed might be of animals now at rest under the wooden crosses in Maria Yackle’s back garden. While she was looking at the pictures, Griselda came in and jumped on to the cat woman’s lap.

  ‘They’re very nice, very interesting,’ Anna said. ‘I can see you’re devoted to your cats.’

  ‘They’re my life.’

  A little humouring might be in order. ‘When is the funeral to be?’

  ‘I thought on Friday. Two o’clock on Friday. My sister will be there with her two. Cats don’t usually take to car travel, that’s why I don’t often take any of mine with me, and shutting them up in cages goes against the grain, but my sister’s two Burmese love the car, they’ll go and sit in the car when it’s parked. My friend from the Animal Rescue will come if she can get away and I’ve asked our vet but I don’t hold out much hope there. He has his goat clinic on Fridays. I hope you’ll come along.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll be at work.’

  ‘It’s no flowers by request. Donations to the Cats’ Protection League instead. Any sum, no matter how small, gratefully received. Which brings me to money. You’ve got a cheque for me.’

  ‘No, I haven’t, Mrs Yackle.’

  ‘Miss. And it’s Yakop. J,A,K,O,B. You’ve got a cheque for me for six hundred and eighteen pounds.’

  ‘I am not giving you any money, Miss Jakob. I’m very very sorry about your cat, about Melusina, I know how fond you were of her. but giving you compensation is out of the question. I’m sorry.’

  The tears had come once more into Maria Jakob’s eyes, had spilled over. Her face contorted with misery. It was the mention of the wretched thing’s name, Anna thought. That was the trigger that started the weeping. A tear splashed on to one of the coarse red hands. Griselda opened her eyes and licked up the tear.

  Maria Jakob pushed her other hand across her eyes. She blinked. ‘We’ll have to think of something else then,’ she said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Anna wondered if she had really heard. Things couldn’t be solved so simply.

  ‘We shall have to think of something else. A way for you to make up to me for murder.’

  ‘Look, I will give a donation to the Cats’ Protection League. I’m quite prepared to give them – say, twenty pounds.’ Richard would be furious but perhaps she would not tell Richard. ‘I’ll give it to you, shall I, and then you can pass it on to them?’

  ‘I certainly hope you will. Especially if you can’t come to the funeral.’

  That was the end of it then. Anna felt a great sense of relief. It was only now that it was over that she realised quite how it had got to her. It had actually kept her from sleeping properly. She phoned Kate and told her about the funeral and the goat clinic and Kate laughed and said, poor old thing. Anna slept so well that night that she did not notice the arrival of Griselda who, when she woke, was asleep on the pillow next to her face but out of touching distance.

  Richard phoned and she told him about it, omitting the part about her offer of a donation. He told her that being firm, sticking to one’s guns in situations of this kind, always paid off. In the evening she wrote a cheque for twenty pounds but instead of the Cats’ Protection League, made it out to Maria Jakob. If the cat woman quietly held on to it, no harm would be done. Anna went down the road to post her letter, for she had written a letter to accompany the cheque, in which she reiterated her sorrow about the death of the cat and added that if there was anything she could do, Miss Jakob had only to let her know. Richard w
ould have been furious.

  Unlike the Jakob cats, Griselda spent a good deal of time out of doors. She was often out all evening and did not reappear until the small hours, so that it was not until the next day, not until the next evening, that Anna began to be alarmed at her absence. As far as she knew, Griselda had never been away so long before. For herself she was unconcerned, she had never liked the cat, did not particularly like any cats, and found this one obnoxiously self-centred and cold. It was for her mother, who unaccountably loved the creature, that she was worried. She walked up and down the street, calling Griselda, though the cat had never been known to come when it was called.

  It did not come now. Anna walked up and down the next street, calling, and around the block and further afield. She half-expected to find Griselda’s body, guessing that it might have met the same fate as Melusina. Hadn’t she read somewhere that nearly forty thousand cats are killed on British roads annually? On Saturday morning she wrote one of those melancholy lost cat notices and attached it to a lamp standard, wishing she had a photograph. But her mother had taken no photographs of Griselda.

  Richard took her to a friend’s party and afterwards, when they were driving home, he said, ‘You know what’s happened, don’t you? It’s been killed by that old mad woman. An eye for an eye, a cat for a cat.’

  ‘Oh, no, she wouldn’t do that. She loves cats.’

  ‘Murderers love people. They just don’t love the people they murder.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ said Anna, but she remembered how Maria Jakob had said that if the money was not forthcoming she must think of something else, a way to make up to her for Melusina’s death, and she had not meant a donation to the Cats’ Protection League.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘I don’t see that you can do anything. It’s most unlikely you could prove it, she’ll have seen to that. You can look at it this way, she’s had her pound of flesh . . .’