The Beloveds

by Maureen Lindley

  Lovers pass by with their arms around each other. I saw a man hitting a woman once; the slap I could tell was so big and hard that she staggered before he pushed her ahead of him. He looked back and caught sight of me, put up one finger in that vulgar way, and gave the woman another shove as though to say to hell with being seen by me. She was his burden; he would do as he liked.

  Drunks weave their way along the streets, tripping over curbs, managing somehow to stay upright. I sometimes wish that I could get as intoxicated as them, be out of my head for a while. But no matter how much I drink, my mind is always perfectly clear.

  I find it strange that I am not noticed more often. Perhaps people don’t care to look into the shadows. I duck down when the odd car comes by, occasionally a police car, although it annoys me that I have to take such a necessary precaution. I hardly think that being in one’s own car is a crime, whatever time of day. I don’t wish to be questioned, though.

  Over the months I have learned the best roads to park on, the quiet end of Bassett, with its huge trees shading the pavement, and the poshed-up St. Helens Gardens, where I squeeze in between the Porsches and Range Rovers. Occasionally I have seen a handover, drugs, most likely, and once a woman hanging around the corner of Lancaster Road, wearing white high heels and a short skirt, was picked up at two in the morning by a man on a Harley-Davidson. West ten, where the wealthy live alongside their more straitened neighbors, is both trendy and edgy.

  When the weather is bad, or my mood so gloomy that my thoughts bring me down and sap my energy, I cannot be bothered to go far. On those nights I sit in my car in the apartment’s private parking area, where I can keep in sight Wifey and Hubby’s windows. The flickering light from their television goes off around eleven fifteen, followed by the light going on in their bathroom. They spend longer in there than it generally takes for two people to wash their faces and brush their teeth, two heads silhouetted behind the white blind as they move about. If I had to guess, I would say they shower together. Then to the bedroom, where a soft light illuminates their striped curtains for a moment before it’s switched off. When they are at home in the evening, they are rarely up past midnight. And their sleep? Untroubled, I imagine.

  To lessen the chance of being seen, I have smashed the four yellow bulbs set behind metal grills in the wall facing the parking lot. It will be a while before they are fixed.

  My own sleep is more a series of naps than a proper uninterrupted night’s rest. The dreams that come now are worse than the white empty ones of the past. I suffer visions of Pipits. Sometimes I am walking its halls even as it burns; in others, it appears as it used to be, its soft rose brick lit by evening sunlight, the leaves of the copper beech restored to their former beauty, winking in the breeze. To wake and know that it is lost is heartbreaking.

  What will satisfy me now? Only owning the Stash land and ridding myself of Henry. In my head I picture achieving those two things. I imagine walking Pipits’ meadows in sunlight, seeing the mound of earth under the trees in the shade of the woods, where Henry will lay, finally broken. I picture Gloria in widow’s weeds, the color drained from her face, hugging Noah to her, her luck changed forever. Nothing will truly comfort me until that vision becomes reality.

  I wonder how long I can keep up this unsettled London life. I cannot claim anywhere as home anymore. Gloria has robbed me of that luxury. For now, though, I must finish the job of dispensing with my irksome neighbors. Tick them off my list of things to be dealt with.

  The thrill went out of my special shopping trips even before I finally stopped them. It wasn’t as though I was pitting myself against equals; the game had become too easily won to sustain the excitement. Anyway, most of my bounty has gone to the charity shop that deals with the aged. Best to get rid of the evidence, I think.

  Dressed as Mayfair Lady, I take bags of my shoplifting spoils to donate and am made to feel like some kindly upper-class woman doing her best to help out.

  “Downsizing,” I explain. “One cannot keep everything.”

  I have even been asked if I would consider donating some time to work in the shop. A couple of hours a week would help, they say. It is easy to tell that they find me charming, a cut above their usual customers.

  I guess it is the sort of thing a lonely Mayfair Lady might do, so I’m thinking about it, although I am not sure if I could bear the fusty smell of the place.

  24

  GLORIA IS DELIGHTED THAT I am coming to visit.

  “Hard to believe,” she says, “that it’s more than two years since you were last here. It’s been difficult for you, I know; so many reminders. And now having to cope with this terrible news about your neighbors.”

  “Yes, just dreadful,” I say. I infuse my voice with the sympathy she expects.

  I guess apart from this latest drama, she believes that I am finally healed from the shock of the fire that almost killed me. That I am ready at last to come and admire all that she and Henry have achieved while I have been away.

  I’m feeling the tiniest bit jumpy about what happened in the apartment’s parking area around two in the morning a little over a week ago. The incident solved overnight the problem of my difficult neighbors, but because it wasn’t planned, it’s all a bit of a hodgepodge, and I have to be careful not to say anything that might connect me to the event. Usually I work better when I have a strategy, but hey-ho, I cannot help feeling pleased with myself for my quick thinking without one. Straight off the cuff, as they say.

  I’m confident the police don’t suspect that I had anything to do with it. I cannot be sure, though, that I was not seen by some worthy citizen spying from his window. I was in my darkened car, I had my hood up, and there was nothing of my daytime disguise to identify me, but there are people in the area who have seen both personas, so I can’t be certain that I wasn’t recognized. I confess that it is a niggle, a small concern; although, surely if there had been witnesses, they would have turned up before now? Another week or so, and if no one comes forward, I can relax.

  It was a bonus that there was no lighting to illuminate the area. Not that I had planned the occurrence, when I broke the bulbs. I am entirely innocent of premeditation.

  I’m not on the run, but I do feel the need to get out of London for a bit. I could do with a break from the questions the police keep coming up with. They have gone over my statement with me three times now. Do they know something and hope to catch me out? They have my car still, will have it for some time, they say. It only took a few hours to find it, and apparently it was not where I had dumped it.

  “So upsetting for you,” the young policewoman said. “Your car was definitely the one.”

  I think I managed the appropriate look of quiet horror when she told me that.

  “Are you absolutely sure?” I gasped, with feeling.

  “Yes, absolutely. There was a positive blood match, and flakes of paint that match the trash bin were found on the back fender.”

  “Oh, how horrible.”

  I was surprised they had spotted the car so far from where I had left it.

  “A council estate in Islington,” she said. “A bad area for petty crime.”

  It couldn’t have been better; a stranger’s fingerprints on the wheel, those of some small-time yob no doubt, his DNA all over the interior.

  The fingerprints they can’t account for are not, they are surprised to discover, on police records. The car is being stripped down to its bones, every little crevice searched for evidence.

  My mind is working overtime, a worm of caution wriggling in me, keeping me alert. It’s a good thing; it would be all too easy to slip up and subtly change my alibi the more I am asked to repeat it. Since the incident, I have thought of several little details that I could have added to give my story the ring of truth. What I was listening to on the radio, for instance; how, when making a late cup of tea, I heard a car accelerating, that sort of thing. Now that those ideas are in my head it would be easy to forget that they were not i
n my original statement. And revealing them might bring doubt on myself, when really my report of being at home alone, being asleep, hearing nothing, is simple and quite good enough. I’ve never been the type to arouse suspicion.

  I have wiped clean the keys I had to the downstairs apartment and dropped them in the Thames. The water gulped them down in an instant. Gone for good, like so many other secrets held in its chilly depths.

  So I have finally accepted Gloria’s invitation to spend the weekend with her and Henry at Alice’s house. My property, of course, so I hardly need an invitation, but I will never think of that limited place as anything other than Alice’s house.

  The rental car smells of new leather and an ersatz sort of floral polish. I threw out the cardboard deodorizer in the shape of a miniature Christmas tree that hung from the interior mirror. Its bobbing about annoyed me. Such useless things.

  I thank heaven the points have been removed from my driver’s license. The police cannot get me on that, at least. They asked about them, though, so they must have looked me up.

  “A difficult time,” I said. “I don’t usually drink, but my husband had just left me for another woman. It is no excuse, I know, and I bitterly regret it.”

  I left a long pause, swallowed hard, then said in a shaky voice, as though attempting to recover myself, “It cost me a fortune in taxis at the time. My husband would have been ashamed of me.” I let my voice hesitate a little over “my husband,” and gave them a weak smile.

  They echoed my smile with pitying ones of their own. I could see what they were thinking; they had that concerned look in their eyes. Where would a woman like me find another man to take the errant husband’s place? The female officer even gave my shoulder an encouraging pat as I saw them out.

  They have been dusting the couple’s flat for fingerprints and will find mine there, I suppose. Well, that’s not so odd after all, neighbors visiting each other. I will tell them I was a frequent visitor, invited for drinks, and dinners, for coffee with Wifey. Who is there to deny it now?

  * * *

  I CAN STILL HARDLY believe what happened that night. Under different circumstances, I would take some of the responsibility for it, but really I was pushed to the brink by them. I cannot be blamed for hitting back.

  Everything that took place in the lead-up to it came about after my month of lying low. I had been watching them, of course, had even passed them in the street once or twice and given them a chastened nod of my head in greeting. I felt sure they were taken in by my new quiet demeanor.

  It occurred to me they might connect the absence of mishaps in their apartment with my having been seen off. Not much I could do about that. But they couldn’t know for sure, and little mishaps happen to us all every day, don’t they?

  I had yet to set the details of my final plan. Minor accidents hadn’t worked. I strained to think of what would. I wanted them gone. So, I had to do something that would make them leave, and leave quickly. I thought of gas leaks, booby-trapping the electricity, but I couldn’t be sure that those kinds of faults wouldn’t start a fire that might put my own flat at risk. I have had enough of fires; they are unreliable.

  It occurred to me that I might fill their bath, let it overflow, flood their apartment and the one below it. They might have to move out while the place dried out, and they would have to pay for the damage, but it would hardly see them off for good. Experience has taught me that half-hearted strategies rarely get the job done. Perhaps a visit to their apartment would stimulate some ideas.

  That morning when I entered their hall I was in good spirits. I wanted to try on Wifey’s new coat, which I had seen her wear on the previous weekend. I fancied that it would suit me better than her. My visit, though, was to be mostly a reconnaissance, a catch-up to reassure myself that nothing much had changed. I would read their email, get up to speed on their lives. I was looking forward to making myself a coffee, reacquainting myself with the place.

  Two steps in and the noise came, unbelievably loud, a piercing squeal that deafened me and set my heart racing. I froze, unable to move for a second or two until I realized what the squealing was. They had installed an alarm.

  I stumbled out of their apartment, leaving their door open, and took the stairs to mine in such a panic that I tripped and banged my knee hard on the sharp edge of the top step. I felt sick with the pain of it, but I didn’t slow down, not for a second.

  Later I would be disgusted with myself for losing it, for fleeing as though I were already being pursued. It was weak of me. I should have been better prepared. But I hadn’t seen anyone install the alarm, hadn’t heard any test runs.

  Safely back in my own flat with my door double locked, I took a few deep breaths and began to gather myself. The alarm was still rattling on, the hateful sound muffled now by my distance from it. It was not as distressing as it had been, but I wanted it to stop. I needed a bit of silence to think.

  A bruise was already blooming on my knee, and there was blood, globules of it on the surface of a big nasty-looking graze. I felt humiliated. I had allowed them to make a fool of me.

  By the time I had changed into a pair of Mayfair Lady slacks to cover the bandage on my knee, and reasoned myself back to near calm, I saw a police car pull up outside, and on its tail, Hubby, in his flashy four-by-four.

  Shortly after that, the alarm abruptly stopped. I heard nothing for the next half hour or so, and then my doorbell rang.

  “Yes, of course I heard the alarm,” I told the police officers. “No, I didn’t see anything. Alarms are always going off in this neighborhood. You get into the habit of ignoring them.”

  “The door was open,” one of the policemen said. “But no sign of damage to it or the lock.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, “how worrying.”

  I wondered, as I answered the police’s questions, whether Hubby had said bad things about me. That didn’t seem to be the case, though. My questioners were charming, kind even. They advised me to be careful, to keep an eye out for anything suspicious, suggested I get an alarm installed myself. I told them that I would.

  It occurred to me that I should have closed Short and Tall’s door as I fled, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. With the door shut, it could simply have been taken for a faulty alarm, as I had told the police, a common enough occurrence around here. But the open door, with no signs of a forced entry, posed a question. It was a bit of a worry to me, although the police said with nothing stolen, it wasn’t a high-priority crime. Hubby had told them he was sure he had pulled the door shut when leaving that morning, but he couldn’t swear to it. So it would go on record as an attempted breaking and entering. They asked me to be alert, and to keep my eyes open for any strangers lurking about.

  “I will, of course,” I said. “We must all play our part in upholding the law.”

  I was still too shaken to go far on the nights following the alarm fiasco. I sat in my car in its private space, sipping my gin and going over in my head just how sneaky they had been, and how they must be so pleased with themselves for outwitting their intruder, laughing about how they had most probably scared the life out of him, out of them, out of me. I believed they would have me in the picture as a possibility at the very least.

  I confess to hating them. I have never liked their type, cocky and full of ego. But I am angry with myself for letting their alarm fill my head with fright. It’s an embarrassment to me that I ran away without thinking to close their door.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A HALO around a soapy moon on the night of the incident, and the shadows were thick, the air humid. As I settled myself in my car, I knew that there would be rain later. The sky is hard to read in the city, too much sodium light messing things up, but country girls know about halos; we know what it foretells when the stars are misty, and what it means when there are hundreds of them, or none at all, in the sky.

  The lights were out in their apartment, and their car was gone, so I knew that they were off somewhere. With
friends, most likely, or dining in one of the upscale restaurants they were always recommending on their Facebook pages.

  I was maddened that my actions appeared not to have had an effect on them. They were getting on with their lives as though I didn’t exist. My knee, bruised black and swollen from the fall on the stairs, was hot to my touch and throbbing a little. A cold anger sat in me like a lump of ice.

  I heard the growl of their car’s engine before I saw it, before its lights slid along the parking lot wall, and it rolled into their space two over from mine. Ducking my body down, I made myself small, so as not to be seen.

  Hubby made a big deal of getting out of the car, tumbling unsteadily from the passenger seat as Wifey killed the lights. Couldn’t hold his drink, I suppose. There was giggling, and I raised my head a little and saw him push her against the car and kiss her, a long, swaying, drunken sort of kiss. Then he opened the trunk, and she took out a couple of plastic bags and handed one to him. I heard the clink of bottles, the rustle of what sounded like potato chip packets. They had probably had a picnic somewhere along the line, although I’d seen him eating in the car before. The cause of his tubbiness, I expect.

  With their free arms around each other, they walked unsteadily toward the trash bins, which were directly behind my car. As they lifted the heavy metal flap of the middle bin, I heard them laughing, and my anger, under control mere moments before, turned to rage. They were laughing at me, confirming to each other how insignificant I was, how easily they had seen me off. Other Beloveds, untouchable Beloveds, standing there in my space. The lucky bastards, laughing their winners’ laugh.

  It was obvious what I had to do. I don’t remember even thinking about it. I was driven by blind instinct. When I saw in my rearview mirror that they had their backs to me, my hand reached out and released the hand brake. Then I took hold of the steering wheel and pointed the vehicle in a straight line toward them.