by Ruth Rendell
The pavements between here and Victoria Station had been gritted. The snow falling onto them turned into a kind of reddish soup. Her shoes squelched in the gritty liquid and she regretted the boots. There were very few people about, so it was odd that for the second time that day she saw Dex. She had turned round before crossing the road to check there was nothing coming and there he was, apparently following the same route that she had followed. He lived round here somewhere, didn’t he? He too must be getting the Tube one stop.
Inside the station she stopped and phoned Preston on his landline. It had to be his landline because she didn’t know his mobile number. Of course he didn’t answer but that meant nothing. He was bound to be at home by now. She went down the escalator and halfway down heard the public address system telling her there were delays on the Circle Line. Nothing, though, about trains not running. The platform was crowded, densely packed with people. Montserrat knew it was wise to stand at the extreme left-hand end or the extreme right-hand end because seats were usually available in the first and last carriages.
She struggled along, forcing her way through towards the left-hand end. The sign told her a train was due in one minute. That this part of the platform, like the end of the train, would be less crowded, wasn’t true this evening. Someone at the platform edge turned round and said to her, ‘Don’t push,’ and she said, ‘Sorry,’ but went on pushing and got to the edge herself, calculating exactly where the double doors in the last carriage would open. The train could be heard quite a long way off, a kind of roaring rattle on the rails just before the gleam of its lights. Something pressed against her back, a light touch, then a heavier pressure. She cried out, stumbled over the edge but grabbed hold of the man beside her and the woman on the other side, clutching at them and letting out a loud scream. She would have toppled over but for the two of them pulling her, swinging her back.
The train came in, filling in the lethal space where death by electrocution waited. Most people got on to the train but not the two who had held her back. They supported her to one of the seats, the last one on the platform, and she half sat, half lay there, making little whimpering sounds. The man asked her what had happened.
‘I don’t know. Someone pushed me.’
‘Did you see who it was?’
‘I didn’t look.’ Montserrat turned from one to another. ‘Thank you. I nearly fell. I would have but for you.’
The woman helped her back up the escalator and put her into a cab. Montserrat had told him Hexam Place but once the car was moving said to go to Medway Manor Court instead. She badly needed someone to care, to hold her, to sympathise. Really what she needed was someone to love her, though she doubted if Preston would do that.
‘You imagined it,’ he said when he had let her into the flat. ‘You must have. These things don’t happen.’
‘This one did.’
He didn’t hold her or show any sympathy but he did give her brandy which was a kind of caring.
‘Please, Preston, can I stay here? I’ll be all right in the morning. It’s just that I’m afraid to go out there tonight.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk to me as if I were a monster. “Please, Preston, can I stay here?” Of course you can stay here.’
She said, ‘Thank you,’ in a humble way, then, ‘What does the Q in your name stand for?’
‘You don’t want to know.’ But he was smiling.
‘I do. I really do.’ She’d be able to say it when they got married.
‘Quintilian,’ he said.
The snow fell to a depth of about five centimetres. ‘You mean two inches,’ said June.
The oldest servant in Hexam Place, she was the only one to sweep the pavement outside the house they occupied or worked in. Zinnia refused to sweep outside anywhere at all, saying to anyone who cared to listen that it wasn’t her job. At number 11 Richard and Sondra agreed not to mention the subject unless asked by one or other of their employers. Simon Jefferson told Jimmy he wouldn’t dream of expecting him to perform such a chore and swept his bit of pavement himself. Elsewhere the snow lay untouched, was ground down by those pedestrians who ventured outdoors, thawed out one milder day and frozen again overnight, creating sheets of ice.
It was on a day of renewed cold that June slipped when she was pushing the Princess in her new wheelchair. June fell, the wheelchair overturned and the Princess toppled out. This mishap was witnessed by Lucy, alighting from a taxi, Roland mounting the steps to number 8 and Thea looking out of her front window. She too saw Lucy and Roland ‘passing by on the other side’, as she phrased it to herself. The Good Samaritan parable was then enacted as she ran downstairs, clutching and talking into her mobile, and doing her best to set both old women on their feet.
The Princess was shouting that she had broken her hip, without much foundation for this claim. June really had broken her wrist, putting her right arm out in a vain effort to break her fall. An ambulance came and took them both away. Thea was asked by a paramedic, under the mistaken impression that she was the Princess’s daughter or June’s, if she would like to come with them, and though she didn’t want to, said yes, of course.
Life came to something of a standstill. The only work Dex now had was his three hours a week for Dr Jefferson. Everyone knew that he had it only because of the kindness of Dr Jefferson’s heart. Dex had considered going from door to door, offering to clear snow, for more had fallen at the weekend. But it was only a thin covering that thawed on the mild Saturday afternoon. Beacon had told him that because he had money from the government called something he couldn’t pronounce, he shouldn’t earn other money by working. But Dr Jefferson gave him the money and so it must be right. Dex was more troubled because he had failed Peach and he wondered if he should make a second attempt.
The Princess’s yogurt phase had lasted longer than usual but had faded just at the point when disturbances in the dietary arrangements at number 6 were least needed. She never wanted another mouthful of yogurt as long as she lived, she said. It was muesli she fancied, having tasted it while at the hotel in Florence and re-tasted in one of those dreams with which she regaled June when her breakfast was brought up. In the dream her husband Luciano had been poisoned by a pot of yogurt by a chambermaid who was under the impression she was giving him a love potion.
No longer able to carry a tray, June transported the coffee pot, the toast, butter and honey and the no longer desirable yogurt in a shopping trolley that had to be humped from stair to stair. The plaster on her right arm extended from her knuckles all the way up to her elbow, so there were many tasks she had had to give up. She couldn’t push the wheelchair or walk Gussie. The Princess had to stay at home, nursing her bruises and Gussie paced the house, whimpering. If only Rad were still alive June would have got him to sign her plaster but Rocksana Castelli was willing to do it and to bring round to number 6 several more B-class celebrities she had met during her association with June’s great-nephew. June’s idea was to get enough famous names to turn the plaster into a valuable item, then auction it in the Dugong. Ted Goldsworth, the licensee, ran a charity to raise money for Moldovan orphans and June realised that if she wanted to receive the approbation of Hexam Place she would have to give the proceeds to it, though she would much rather have kept them for herself. The doctor who had put the plaster on had promised to cut it off with the greatest care when the time came so as not to damage the autographs.
Beacon was surprised and a little disturbed by Mr Still’s request (command) to him to leave the Audi with him overnight. The bus went from door to door, so it wouldn’t hurt him to take that home in the evening and come back on it in the morning. What, after all, was the point, said Mr Still, of paying the enormous cost of a resident’s parking place if it was never used? Like most drivers employed by rich men, Beacon had come to regard the Audi, if not quite as his own, as a vehicle in which he had more than a half-share. But when it came to giving him orders Mr Still had the right and of course Beacon was obedient.
Mr Still had been going home rather earlier than in former days. Generally disapproving of almost everything done by his employer, his employer’s wife and to some extent his employer’s children and their lifestyle, Beacon supposed that getting home to Medway Manor Court was pleasanter than getting home to Hexam Place because Mrs Still was present in the latter but not in the former. This evening, however, it was to Hexam Place he was going at seven and the car was to be parked in melting snow ruts behind a very old VW Golf, the property of Montserrat, the au pair. She was there, pouring warm water out of a milk jug on to the door handles.
If they had gone into the house together, Beacon told himself he would have handed Mr Still his notice next day. To countenance such immorality was more than he could stomach, let alone contaminate Dorothee and Solomon and William by association. But he was spared the necessity of giving up his job in these hard times, for while Montserrat went down the stairs to the area, Mr Still mounted the steps to the front door. Beacon went off to catch the bus home.
Montserrat poured two glasses of wine, sat down to wait for Preston and contemplated her reflection in the mirror. It was an image to be admired, the low-cut dark red maxi-dress – bought with the five twenty-pound notes he had unexpectedly pressed into her hand – her hair done by Thea’s sister and the dark red lipstick that matched the dress. The money, she supposed, was a reward for not telling the police or anyone else about his ‘accident’. Why should she tell them? There was nothing in it for her.
He walked in five minutes later. She no longer minded his failing to knock. They had reached too intimate a stage in their relationship for her to care about things like that. He kissed her, said, ‘No more taxis tonight. I can drive us.’
She liked that ‘us’ but the idea of driving to some distant restaurant was less acceptable. ‘There’s going to be freezing fog, darling.’ He no longer protested when she called him that. ‘We could buy our dinner and take it back to your place or here.’
‘I hate takeaway,’ he said with a reversion to his old manner.
‘OK, if you’re sure. I’ll just put my car away.’
He got up. ‘Let me do that for you.’
Such offers, any offers, were new. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She handed him the car key.
‘Perhaps you’ll open the garage door.’
She went out by way of the basement door after she had seen him go back up to the ground floor and the front door. The fog was starting, white and very cold, hanging in the windless air. No one was about but Thea, going into number 6 to attend to June and the Princess. Montserrat waved to her, slipped and nearly fell over on a sheet of melting ice that covered half the pavement. Preston was already sitting in her car, the engine running and the lights on. He took no notice of her, though he must have seen her. He was a strange man, cold and hard, like the weather. But she would marry him. Earlier, on the phone, he had talked about his coming divorce, the sale of this house and what he called ‘a division of the spoils’. She would marry him and have some of those spoils as compensation for what living with him would be like.
She unlocked the door and opened it. The light switch was inside on the left but when she pressed it the light failed to come on. The lights on the car would be adequate. She went to stand at the back of the garage and began to beckon him in. It was a standard-size garage but made narrower by stuff stacked along the walls on either side, a folding bed she was storing for a friend of her father’s, four suitcases of various sizes, plastic sacks containing bedding.
She didn’t expect him to turn the lights up to full beam as he drove towards her. Beckoning with both hands, she flinched and retreated a step or two, blinded by those lights, the dazzle forcing her to close her eyes. She tried to make a patting-down movement with both hands but cried out when instead of braking he accelerated. She threw herself spreadeagled across the bonnet of the car, clutching at the windscreen wipers.
There was no longer any need to scream. She was alive. But she went on screaming for the relief of it, letting out the aftermath of terror in short sharp cries and whimpers.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The first thing he did was put her in the wrong.
‘You’ve only yourself to blame. What possessed you to stand there gesticulating at me? Do you think I don’t know how to drive a car into a garage?’
If she tried to speak she would start crying. She slid as best she could off the bonnet of the car, slipping down over the grid and those blazing lights and tearing her dress. He went on haranguing her.
‘I’ve always made it a principle not to have anything to do with women who assert themselves too much. And when I go against it this is what happens. I told you I’d put the car away for you and instead of letting me get on with this perfectly simple and straightforward task, you interfere and half kill yourself.’
Rubbing her arms and thighs, twisting her neck this way and that, Montserrat came to stand so close in front of him that her forehead almost touched his chin. She tilted her head up, said, ‘You almost killed me, is what you mean.’
He shouted at her then. ‘Don’t be a fool!’
‘Is that what you meant to do?’
They were standing between the end of the folding bed and a plastic sack of blankets and sheets. He took hold of her by the shoulders and began to shake her. Montserrat struggled, shouting and yelling into his face, and in that moment a man walked in through the open garage door, squeezing along between the car and the suitcases. It was Ciaran.
‘What’s going on here?’
‘Mind your own business,’ said Preston.
‘If you’re assaulting a woman it’s anyone’s business. Primarily it’s the business of the police. Now take your hands off her.’
To Montserrat’s surprise, Preston did. ‘All right, Montsy. Let’s go.’
‘She’s not going anywhere with you,’ Ciaran said.
‘Who is this person, Montsy?’
Preston had called her by that diminutive twice in succession. Maybe what had happened in the garage had been her fault, after all. ‘A friend of mine,’ she said.
‘I’m her boyfriend.’
‘Is that true?’
‘What if it is? It’s nothing to you.’
‘You know where I am if you need me,’ Ciaran said to Montserrat. ‘Just call me and I’ll come. Any time. Happy to be of help.’
He walked off down the mews. Montserrat followed him for a few yards, then stopped while Preston shut the garage door. He tried to take her arm.
‘You’re not actually seeing that fellow, are you?’
‘I used to be. I could be again. I’m going home now and maybe I’ll give him a call. I need someone to protect me from people like you.’
‘Now, Montsy, what have I done? If you’d had a light that worked in that garage I wouldn’t have had to have the beam on. I’d have been able to see you, not been blinded by the glare. It was an accident, you know that.’
‘Accident is what you always say. I know you tried to hurt me. You did, Preston. I’m not saying tried to kill me but hurt me so’s I know who’s the master, not assert myself. You said that yourself, it must be what you mean.’
He took her arm, not gently but in a hard grip. ‘Come along, we’ll get into my car and I’ll take you back to Medway Manor Court. There’s a nice little Italian place round the corner, we’ll go there.’
‘No, we won’t.’ She shook him off. ‘I’m going to be covered in bruises. I know your nice little Italian places. I’m going home.’
Shut up together all day, the Princess and June bickered incessantly. Gussie had no walks until Rocksana appeared with chocolates and flowers and offered to take him out. She had turned out to be a kind girl, after all. She signed June’s cast in green ink and next day brought with her a pop singer whose name and photograph had lately been in all the papers and magazines. Rocksana told June that if she got online the first image she would see was this singer plugging her new autobiography and giving adv
ice on losing weight without pain. The singer also signed the cast and promised that her new husband, a famous TV presenter, would come next day and autograph it in purple ink. This was everything June most desired but it went against the grain with the Princess who complained that all these visitors were hoovering up her gin.
While they were quarrelling Thea arrived with Chinese takeaway, Dr Karg’s crispbread and a piece of Shropshire Blue. She admired the signatures, was sufficiently overawed by some of the particularly celebrated names and made a request.
‘Can I sign it?’
This was what June had feared. ‘I’m afraid not. You see, it’s only for celebrities, TV personalities and people like that. Yes, I know the Princess has signed it but she is a princess.’ The two of them had settled their differences and for the time being appeared the best of friends. ‘I think that makes her an exception, don’t you?’
Thea didn’t. She was very hurt, far more hurt than she would have expected to be if she could have imagined this situation. But she said nothing, simply standing there watching the Princess peering into the various little plastic pots of rice, pork, chicken and vegetables.
‘Actually, I don’t care for Chinese food.’
‘Oh, I thought you did.’
‘We can eat the biscuits and cheese,’ said June. ‘Would you mind taking Gussie round the block?’
Thea didn’t see how she could say no. She seldom did. They would be asking her to push the Princess’s wheelchair next. Gussie had to have his coat put on, an exercise which often resulted in his dresser being bitten. Carrying the takeaway in the knowledge that she would have to eat it herself – Damian and Roland certainly would not – she took the little dog up to Ebury Bridge Road and back again, noticing the single thing to be pleased about: it was a lot less cold than it had been.
