by Ruth Rendell
He was only twenty-five but even he could remember a time when black people, however accepted, were never considered good-looking in the eyes of whites. Then came the years when black men and women were attractive enough when they had Caucasian features. That was gone now and West Africans of pure lineage found favour in whites’ eyes — unless the white was a member of the BNP or extremely right-wing. Damon thought about this as he hung about Glebe Alley and thought too that Kingsmarkham wasn’t too bad a place to be in, especially when he remembered what it had been like being a child in Deptford.
All the time he kept his eyes on those zigzag white-painted steps on the rear of the black-painted building in Glebe Road. When he closed his eyes he saw them as black on white. He saw them in dreams at night, black on white or white on black. It seemed like a symbol or an omen but he couldn’t for the life of him think what it could mean. Nothing, probably. That made him laugh to himself as he walked down to Glebe Lane and back again. He knew the water would come through the soles of his shoes and it had. Between his toes he could feel it squelch. He had taken off his right shoe and was pouring the water out of it when two figures appeared on the zigzag steps. The sight of Colin Fry’s girlfriend made him laugh afresh. She wore a glossy white mac, tightly belted and reaching only to about eight inches above her knees. Those saggy boots all the girls were wearing would have been more suitable this evening but Emma was in peep-toe sandals with four-inch heels. From where he stood, a good fifty yards from the fire escape, Damon could hear her squeals of protest at the weather as she descended the steps, clinging on to Colin’s anorak.
He was rather sorry he couldn’t linger but they mustn’t see him. He splashed down the alley, filling his shoes with water once more, reached his car and hurled himself inside. It might have been wiser to strip off his mac first for now the car seemed full of water, soaking the carpet, making the seat slippery and dripping from the steering wheel. There was nothing to be done except take off his sodden shoes and socks, and regret not bringing a towel with him.
For safety’s sake he had parked Bal’s car almost at the end of Glebe Road, out of sight of Colin Fry windows. That meant he could barely see the red-painted front door. He started the car and moved it until he was nearly opposite the dry-cleaners. There was no one about. Usually clogged with nose-to-tail parking, Glebe Road was half empty of cars. Damon had begun to shiver. They must go out sometimes, he thought, and no one come to use the flat. Suppose this is one of those evenings. He’d give it an hour - no, maybe an hour and a half. Awful to contemplate but it had to be. Just as he was asking himself if it would be too wasteful and environmentally unfriendly to run the engine in order to have the heater on, a car drew up and parked in the space next to his. A man and a woman got out. Only their slim figures and the speed of their movements told him they were young, for the woman pulled the hood of her padded coat up over her head before she got out of the car and the man, his raincoat covering him from his head to his ankles, put up a big black umbrella the moment his feet were on the pavement. But it was the red door beside the dry-cleaners’ window they were making for. Damon saw the man fumble under his raincoat, bring out a key and insert it in the lock. Both of them were quickly inside and the door shut behind them.
This was the second visitor to Colin Fry’s flat he had seen let himself in with a key. Wasn’t it a bit careless of Colin to give a key to his home to all and sundry? But then perhaps it wasn’t all and sundry; Damon thought as he drove home to a hot bath and a chicken tikka masala takeaway. If not his friends, perhaps all the people who used the flat were well-known to him, people he trusted or people recommended by those he trusted. He’d put that in his report and he’d come back on the following night. Now he’d got somewhere it was starting to be quite exciting.
‘They’re a perfectly legitimate organisation,’ Mary began, ‘or they used to be. Still are, for all I know. There’s a social worker who works for Kingsmarkham Social Services runs it and me and a couple of trained counsellors. We all do the job for free. Our members really organise themselves. ‘What we do is advise. We’re an advisory service.’
Sylvia came in with wine on a tray and cashew nuts and crisps bowls. Wexford extended his right hand to the nuts, withdrew it sharply as if it were surrounded by an invisible electrified fence. ‘What sort of advice?’
‘Well, darling, people are told what their options are. That means how to go about IVF treatment - oh, and one of the counsellors is a herbalist and advises what to take to promote fertility.’ She made a face. ‘Then there’ the metamorphic technique which is based on “cell memory”. According to its practitioners, our cells carry past traumas around with them. Imagine a woman who desperately wants to conceive but has already had a difficult birth. She carries the memory of that birth with her and the fear of repeating it may prevent her falling pregnant. Daft, really, darling. There are people who offer lymphatic drainage and hypnotherapy visualisation,’ said Mary ‘Some put a fertility crystal under their pillows.’
Wexford’s eyebrows went up.
‘Yes, I know. I was never keen on that. Then if that fails or it’s impossible there’s surrogacy which can be like what Sylvia’s doing, helping a friend, or we direct them to an agency such as Babies for All. Adoption, of course, and fostering. We advise, tell them who to go to and how, that sort of thing. Oh, and we hold group therapy sessions. That’s really couples or single would-be parents sitting around in a circle talking over their particular problem and saying how they feel about it. That can be very sad, you know, darling.’
‘Do women come to you offering their services as surrogates?’
‘Yes, often,’ Mary said. ‘We send them on to the agencies. Babies for All or Intended Parents. I think that girl who was murdered came.’
‘You mean Megan Bartlow?’
‘No, the other one, the good-looking one. When I saw her picture on the TV I thought, I wonder if that’s the girl who came in here. I couldn’t swear to it but I was pretty sure.’
‘You sent her to an agency?’
Mary sighed. ‘First of all she said she was an intended parent but when she got in there - the session hadn’t started - she announced she wanted to be a surrogate and she was chatting away before anyone could stop her. She’d been talking to a few people before I realised and threw her out.’
One of those people, Wexford thought, or more probably a couple, found her privately, made an arrangement with her and on the evening of August the tenth she went to their home or met the man in an hotel and took a sperm sample from him. He also gave her a thousand pounds which, free and easy girl as she had been, she put into her pocket and went off to the Bling-Bling Club. Intending to give their cut to Ross or Rick Samphire?
He asked Mary.
‘I’ve never heard of them, darling. I’m sure they don’t have any connection with SOCC.’
‘Why did you say SOCC used to be legitimate?’
‘I said they still are, for all I know.’
‘But what did you mean by “used to be”?’
Mary swallowed her wine as if she needed it. ‘I’ve resigned if you must know.'
‘I think I must know, Mary.’
‘Well, there’s something going on I don’t like.’
‘I’ve had a look at their website.’ Just saying those words, in casual fashion as if he looked at websites every hour, brought Wexford a pride he knew was ridiculous. ‘What are “absolutely new systems of acquiring the child of your dreams”? Some method of reproduction I’ve missed out on?’
‘I don’t know but that’s why I’m resigning. All I know is that one of our counsellors, a man called Quickwood, is sending women would-be parents to a travel agent in London. It may only be an introduction to cross-cultural adoption, it may be no more than that but somehow I don’t think it is and that’s why I don’t want any more to do with SOCC.’
‘I don’t think I understand.’
‘I don’t understand myself,’ Mary said. ‘A
ll I know is that at a group question-and-answer session last week one of our members said she was going out to Africa on what she called a “birth package”. Nairobi, I think she said. She would be bringing back a baby with her. Afterwards our social worker asked her if Kingsmarkham Social Services had made an assessment - that is, what they call a home study, see if the would-be adoptive parents’ home and circumstances are suitable for a child. It’s even more, well, rigorous when it’s cross-culture adoption and it’s always quite a long process. Anyway, this woman said that wasn’t necessary because this would be her own child. She would give birth herself in Africa. I had a good look at her then and she obviously wasn’t pregnant, yet she’d said she was going to Africa in two weeks’ time.'
‘Well, Quickwood, who’s a social worker, said the woman was obviously very disturbed. Her husband had left her and she was in a bad mental state. It was nothing for us to worry about because she wouldn’t be allowed to take the baby out of Africa, still less bring it here. Probably it was all in her head, he said. But I don’t know, Reg, I didn’t like it. I made a point of talking to her again and she told me she knew it was all right and above board because a woman she knew in Myringham had gone on a “birth package” and come back with a baby which she’d given birth to a week after she arrived in Nairobi. I asked her a question then. I asked her if her friend was white and she said yes, she was, and then I asked if the baby was black and she said yes, of course. Babies born in Africa were black. And then she said she thought I was being racist.'
‘I told Ken Quickwood. He said it was nothing to do with us, but the woman was one of our members and she was telling everyone about this. That’s why I resigned.’
‘Is this confidential,’ Wexford asked, ‘or are you going to tell me this woman’s name?’
‘I’ll have to, won’t I, Reg? There’s no point in telling you all this if I don’t. She a Mrs Gwenda Brooks and she lives at two Jewel Terrace, Brimhurst.’
For a moment he didn’t know who this was. Then he remembered his and Burden’s encounter with John Brooks and his young lover in the restaurant. This was his wife, his childless neglected wife.
‘Who was the woman she knew in Myringham?’
‘I don’t know, Reg. I’ve told you all I know.’
It was like going away on a honeymoon. Not as it might be now, a pair of newly married lovers who had been together, perhaps living together, for months, but as it once was, in the old days, when a shy but proud husband was going away for the first time with his virgin bride. Ahead of them a wedding night, a real wedding night, on which sex would be taking place between them for the first time.
So it was for her and Bal. They sat silent beside each other in Damon Coleman’s car, just as that bride and bridegroom must have felt, but worse than that because society and its requirements had changed. She found herself resenting Bal for it. This was all of his making. What had given him the idea of going away for the weekend in order to make love to her? He was creating an artificial situation, almost a ritual, serious and momentous, out of something which should have been the natural effect of a cause. How much happier would she and he both have felt if they had gone to bed together (a euphemism she usually scorned) two months ago and been going to bed together ever since. For she was sure, from his long silences and apparent abandonment of anything like conversation, that he was as nervous as she. They could be talking now and laughing, reminiscing about the recent past and just a little too excited for comfort at the prospect of checking into the Maid’s Head and finding themselves alone in their room.
Instead of this sort of thing - ‘How far are we from Taunton now, d’you think?’
Hannah was navigating. ‘Maybe fifteen miles.’
‘We should be there in plenty of time for dinner.’
Dinner! ‘Yes,’ she said.
He pulled into a service station for petrol. The afternoon had grown gradually greyer and darker and now, the clocks put back an hour the weekend before, night had come. At only six thirty, night had come. Not a romantic kind of evening, with a moon and stars covering a clear sky, but a thick grey darkness where mist was beginning to obscure the road ahead and a damp heaviness in the air. Bal was silent as he drove away. A few more minutes of it and even he - she put it to herself like that, ‘even he’, as if he had become obtuse, all his sensitivity departed - seemed to notice the awkwardness.
‘Is something wrong, Hannah?’
She didn’t answer and he repeated the question.
‘Intuitive of you to notice,’ she said.
A man all over, as her mother might have put it, ‘What have I done now?’ he said.
She came to a decision. If she did nothing, if she left it and let the evening take its course, she knew it would be far worse. One or both of them would be deeply humiliated and they lacked love for each other to make it right. But as she briefly looked back over their relationship, she couldn’t see how she could have acted differently. What move could she have made or step taken which would have brought them to this point, just outside Taunton, in a different frame of mind? There was nothing. Much as she disliked think ing it, the blame was his. He had tried to live according to an outdated morality in an age that neither wanted nor understood it.
‘It’s no good, Bal,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s my fault’ - she knew it wasn’t - ‘but this isn’t going to work. I’m sorry'
‘What are you talking about, Hannah?’
‘We’ve left it too long. Don’t you feel that? Don’t you see? This sort of thing should be natural and spontaneous. I did tell you only you wouldn’t listen. It all had to be serious and getting to know each other and . . . and whatever. And now it’s too late.’
He pulled the car into a lay-by. ‘What do you want to do? Stay there in separate rooms? We can do that. I’ve always said delay is the wisest way.’
‘Yes, and look where it’s got us. You go on. Drop me in Taunton and I’ll go back on the train. Taunton’s on the main line, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said and his face was as dark as the sky outside. ‘Of course I’ll drive us back.’
And he did. Speechless, controlled, but sometimes making a noiseless sound like a suppressed growl.
‘I need to go to the loo,’ she said, somewhere in West Sussex. They had a cup of coffee, remembered they had had no dinner and each tried to eat a pork pie and a tomato.
‘I think you have lost your mind,’ said Bal.
She shrugged.
‘This seems to be the end, don’t you think?’
‘There was never much beginning,’ she said.
He was so beautiful to look at, even when he was tired and cross. What a waste. And she did like him, she’d miss him, only the trouble was she wouldn’t because he’d always be there. Maybe she should apply for a transfer — but why should she? She wasn’t the one in the wrong. He drove on in renewed silence.
The traffic had thinned out, especially in this easterly direction. As always, drivers were tempted to go over the speed limit, past eighty and into the nineties. Bal, of course, kept to an obedient seventy, unworried when the speed camera flashed, aimed at the eighty-seven miler in the fast lane.
They didn’t speak again until they had passed the sign which said ‘Welcome to Kingsmarkham, An Historic Town’. Bal went on round the roundabout instead of turning left and Hannah said, ‘You’ve gone the wrong way.’
He gave a humourless scathing laugh. ‘One of us has, that’s for sure.’
Never again would he say ‘us’ in quite that way, she thought. He turned the car round, took Orchard Road and stopped rather too sharply outside her block. She turned to look at him but he didn’t look at her. His hands were still on the wheel, clenched tightly.
As she left the car she said again, ‘I’m sorry.’
Damon could never understand what the radio and TV weather forecasters meant when they said that the rain would move away northwards (or southwards or east wards) to be succeeded by su
nshine and showers. Showers were rain, weren’t they? When he was a child one of his parents’ white neighbours used to shout after him to go back to where he belonged. As he had been born in London he had no idea of where this might be and one day he turned and asked the woman. He asked her very politely.
‘A hot place,’ she said. ‘Hot enough to burn you up, cheeky monkey.’
But she never shouted after him again. Damon thought it would never rain in the hot place and he rather liked the idea of going there. He remembered this when he was back again in Glebe Alley, watching the zigzag fire escape and wondering if one of those showers was due. It was a moonless, starless night. The sky might be clear or covered in cloud, you couldn’t tell. He had put on his thick mac again just in case and it felt hot inside it. Hot enough to burn you up, cheeky monkey Damon smiled to himself. That poor old woman everyone in the neighbourhood knew was half- crazed could have been up in court these days for saying what she had said to him. It was a funny world.
Because he was using Bal’s car and, anyway, parking it more or less out of sight, Colin Fry and Emma might have decided to go back to using their front entrance. There was nothing he could do about that. He couldn’t be in two places at once. A drop of rain fell on his nose and as he put up his hand to wipe it away they emerged from the door at the top of the fire escape. He didn’t wait but ran down the alley, into Glebe Lane and his car. The good clean he had given its inside first thing this morning had smartened it up but it still felt damp. He moved it a dozen yards along Glebe Road and into the one remaining vacant space.
If a visitor to the flat arrived now, where would he put his car?
