One Across, Two Down

by Ruth Rendell

  The rest of the time, God knew, he had trouble enough. He saw very clearly that matters had come to a head, to a straight battle between Maud and himself. On his side he had youth, comparative youth, at any rate, but he couldn’t see that he had much else. The dice were heavily loaded in Maud’s favour. She wanted to get Vera away from him and it was hard to see how, in time, she could fail. Stanley couldn’t understand how she hadn’t already succeeded. If he had been in Vera’s place, if his mother had come to him with bribes and offers of money and ease, he would have been off like a shot. Stanley felt quite sick when he thought of his fate if Maud were allowed to win. Why, the chances were that pair of bitches wouldn’t even let him keep this house.

  And now Maud had an ally rushing to her support. If that letter he had read was a typical example of the sort of effusions Maud sent weekly to Ethel Carpenter, her friend would arrive armed against him. He shuddered when he thought of Ethel taking Vera aside, whispering to her in corners, putting Maud’s case far more forcefully than Maud could herself, because Ethel would appear as a detached observer, an impartial outsider, seeing the pros and cons without emotional involvement. There was nothing he could do about it. Ethel would come, put in three days’ forceful persuasion, and if that wasn’t enough to do the trick, would be just around the corner, dropping in two or three times a week, ready with arguments, wearing away Vera’s opposition until, at last, beaten down by the pair of them, she would give in.

  There was nothing he could do about it—except get rid of Maud first.

  But the failure of the Shu-go-Sub had shaken Stanley badly. He read and re-read all his medical books and when he had digested every word reached the conclusion that there are basically no rules as to the incidence of stroke. Maud had had one: she might have another tomorrow; she might never have another. Worry could induce one, but on the other hand, it might not. And what worries did Maud have? Anti-coagulants might prevent one. Ease and quiet might prevent one. No one could say for sure that the absence of anti-coagulants and a life of anxiety would cause one. Stanley reflected disgustedly that what doctors didn’t know about cerebral thromboses would fill more volumes than their knowledge. They couldn’t even tell you when one was going to occur.

  Then there was the question of the will. Stanley was almost certain that Maud couldn’t have got any solicitor to agree to that condition. Why, she might quite accidentally fall under a bus. In that case was Vera not to inherit? No, it was an impossible, lunatic condition, but how was he to find out for sure whether or not it had been made? Of course, there was nothing to stop him walking into any solicitor’s office and asking straight out. And then, if Maud died, accidentally or by his hand, you could be damn sure the first thing to happen would be that solicitor shooting his mouth off to the police. Clever Maud, Maud with the balance swinging down and throbbing heavily in her favour.

  If only he could think of something. It was April now and in a week’s time Ethel Carpenter would be here. Once let her arrive and he could say good-bye to everything he had ever hoped for, and look forward to a miserable poverty-stricken old age.

  Meanwhile, Stanley continued to substitute Shu-go-Sub for Mollanoid, destroying the anti-coagulants as Vera fetched them on prescription from the chemist and dropping the saccharine into the labelled bottle while Maud was asleep. But it was a forlorn hope. Without his crossword puzzles, he sometimes thought he would go utterly to pieces.

  “We can’t let your auntie Ethel sleep in that room as it is,” Maud said. “We’ll have to get a new bedspread for one thing, and some sheets and towels.”

  “Well, don’t look at me, Mother,” said Vera. “I’ve just had the phone bill to pay.”

  “I wasn’t intending you to pay for them, dear,” Maud said hastily. “You get them and I’ll give you a cheque.” She smiled ingratiatingly at her daughter and stirred herself to help clear the table. The last thing she wanted at the moment was to antagonise Vera. Suppose she had really meant what she said and would be wicked enough to run away and leave her with Stanley? She would have to cook Stanley’s meals and wait on him. “We’d better both have new dresses, too. When you have your afternoon off we’ll go down to Lucette’s and choose something really smart.”

  “Anyone would think it was the Queen coming,” said Stanley.

  Maud ignored him. “I’m getting quite excited. I think I’ll have that girl in to give me a home perm and you must have your hair set in your lunch hour. And we’ll need some flowers for Auntie’s room. Auntie Ethel loves flowers.”

  She settled down contentedly with her knitting, repeating silently the words she had written to Ethel Carpenter that morning. “… You mustn’t be too upset by the state of this house, dear. It’s a poor old place and a crying shame that Vee should have had to live in it so long but we shall soon see some changes. When I see you I’ll show you some of the details of new houses estate agents have sent me. The one I have my eye on has a fully fitted Wrighton kitchen and luxury sunken bath. Quite a change from the old days!! And I’ve been wondering if you would like to move in here. Of course, I would have it painted throughout for you and a sink unit put in. We can talk about it when you come. I know I can rely on you to help me in bringing Vee round to my point of view….” Maud smiled and saw that Stanley had caught her smile. He frowned blackly. If only he knew!

  “Time for ‘Augusta Alley,’” she said confidently.

  Stanley didn’t say a word. He threw down his completed puzzle, flung open the french windows and went out into the darkening garden.

  “We’ve got some old tab coming here,” said Stanley to Mr. Blackmore. “Pal of my ma-in-law’s. They couldn’t make more fuss if it was royalty.”

  “I daresay Mrs. Kinaway doesn’t see all that many people.” Blackmore stuck his ladder against the house wall and mounted it, carrying with him brush and paint pot.

  “Excitement’s no good to her.” Stanley stuck his fork in the soil. “Going on the way she is she’ll have another one of those strokes.”

  “I sincerely hope not.”

  “Hmm,” said Stanley and he turned away to concentrate on his trench. He had ordered a fresh bale of peat and it ought to arrive in a day or two. The next thing was to wheedle the money for some of that new variety of majenta heather out of Vera. If she had any. God knew how much she and the old girl together had blued on entertaining Ethel Carpenter.

  For once, however, she’d done some of the work herself. Light work, of course, the kind of thing the ladies who had employed her wouldn’t have been above undertaking. Stanley drew in his breath in an angry hiss when he looked at his ruined display of daffodils, every other one snapped off, not even cut, to make a fancy flower arrangement in Ethel Carpenter’s bedroom.

  The room itself had been transformed. Anxious about the sudden dissipation of his inheritance, Stanley had looked on gloomily while Maud wrote out cheques, one for Lucette’s where her dress and Vera’s had come from, one for all the special food they had to get in and another for the draper’s who had sent up a pair of lemon nylon sheets, two matching frilled pillowcases and a pair of black and lemon towels. But it was Vera, of course, who had washed all the paintwork and turned the mattress and starched the little lace mats Maud wanted to see on Ethel’s dressing table.

  The depredations of his daffodil bed so depressed Stanley that he gave up gardening at eleven and trailed despondently into the house. He didn’t go into the dining room. Maud was in there, having her hair penned by the dispirited young housewife who went out hairdressing to help make ends meet. The door was shut but didn’t prevent a nasty smell of ammonia and rotten eggs from seeping into the rest of the house.

  The second post had come, the one that brought local or near-local letters. A fortnight before Stanley had written to the editor of a national newspaper offering his services as a crossword puzzle setter, a job which he felt would really suit him and give outlet to his creative talents. But the editor hadn’t replied and Stanley had almost given up hope. H
e picked up the letters from the mat and contemplated them gloomily. Nothing for him as usual. Just the gas bill and a long envelope addressed to Maud.

  It wasn’t stuck down. Stanley took it into the kitchen and wondered who could be writing to Maud and typing the address. Possibly her solicitor.

  From the other side of the thin dividing wall he heard Maud say, “If that’s the last curler in, dear, why don’t you pop into the kitchen and make us a nice cup of coffee?” He grabbed the letter and took it upstairs.

  In the privacy of his bedroom, his crossword annuals around him, he slid the single folded sheet out of the envelope. It wasn’t from a solicitor. It wasn’t a letter as such at all. Growing suddenly cold, Stanley read:

  64, Rosebank Close, Chigwell, Essex.

  This desirable bungalow property, freehold and overlooking the Green Belt, is moderately priced at £7,600, and comprises a magnificent through lounge with York stone fireplace, two double bedrooms, luxurious air conditioned kitchen with waste disposal unit, spacious bathroom and separate W.C. Details are as follows: …

  Stanley didn’t read the details. He had seen enough. Maud must be very confident if she had reached the stage of actually approaching estate agents. Like the commander of an army, she had decided on her strategy and was marching ahead, overthrowing everything that obstructed her path. While he … He and his poor forces were falling back on every hand, their weapons impotent, their pathetic outflanking movement ineffective. Soon he would be driven into what sanctuary he could find for himself. And it wasn’t going to be any St. Helena but a furnished room or even—horror of horrors!—a working man’s hostel.

  Here, at least, was one desirable property she would never get her hands on. Stanley put a match to the paper and burnt it in the grate. But destroying it afforded him small pleasure. It was about as satisfying as burning the dispatch that tells the defeated general the battle is over, his forces scattered and capitulation inevitable. As in such a case, another dispatch will come. The destruction of the news does nothing to impair the fact of defeat.

  He went downstairs and indulged himself in the only comfort left to him. But the crossword puzzle was completed in fifteen minutes and Stanley found that these days he was no longer able to derive his old pleasure from digesting and appreciating the clues after they were solved, from chuckling silently over such witty efforts as: “Nutcracker Suite”—Tchaikovsky’s interpretation of shelling, or “Wisdom Tooth”—Root cause of biting wit? Nevertheless he repeated them slowly to himself and the very repetition of the words soothed him. He rested his elbows on the kitchen table and whispered over and over again: “Underwear for barristers”—briefs. “Does this book tell of a terrible Tsar at Plymouth?”—Ivanhoe. A pity they didn’t put two in every day instead of only one, he thought with a sigh. Maybe he’d write to them and suggest it. But what would be the use? They wouldn’t answer. Nothing went his way these days.

  The hairdresser girl was off now. He heard the front door close. Maud came out into the kitchen, her iron-grey hair in large fat curls all over her head. The curls reminded Stanley of those cushion-shaped pot scourers one buys in packets. They had the same hard, metallic and durable look. But he said nothing, only gave her a dismal stare.

  Since Vera’s threatening outburst they had been wary of each other in the evenings, distant rather than polite, scarcely ever provocative. But during the day war had been maintained with as much vitriol as ever and Stanley expected her to pull the paper away from him with some such accompanying insult as: “Why don’t you take your lazy self out somewhere?” But Maud merely said, “She’s made a nice job of my hair, hasn’t she? I wouldn’t want Ethel to think I’d let myself go.”

  Half a dozen apt and rude retorts came to Stanley’s lips. He was deciding which one of them would have the most stinging effect, bring the blood rushing to Maud’s face and spark off a bitter interchange, when, staring sourly at her, he saw it would be of no use. Maud hadn’t made that innocent remark about her hair because she was weakening or softening with age or because it was a nice sunny day. She wasn’t trying to establish a truce. She had spoken as she had because warfare was no longer necessary. Why bother to swat a fly when you have only to open a window and drive it outside? She had won and she knew it.

  Speechless, Stanley watched her open the larder door and view with a blank, perhaps very faintly amused expression, the cold pie Vera had left for their lunch.

  6

  When Stanley was out of work, it was unusual for either him or Maud to appear downstairs before nine-thirty in the morning. Indeed, Maud often remained in her room until eleven, manicuring her nails, tidying her dressing table and her shelf of medicaments, writing another instalment of her weekly letter to Ethel Carpenter. But on Friday, April the tenth, the morning of Ethel’s arrival—E-Day, as Stanley called it bitterly—both astonished Vera by appearing at the breakfast table.

  Each had awakened early, Stanley because the gloom and actual dread occasioned by the imminence of Ethel’s coming had made dozing in bed impossible, and Maud because she was too excited to sleep.

  Taking her place at the table and filling her plate liberally with cornflakes, Maud thought how wonderfully and suddenly those two had begun to dance to her piping. It was a good fortnight since Stanley had spoken an insolent word to her. Defeat was implicit in every line of his body, hunched up as it was, elbows on the table, dull eyes staring disconsolately out into the garden. And as for Vera … Maud had hardly been able to stop herself from shouting with triumph at Vera’s face when she had seen all those new towels and sheets arrive at the house, her wistful wonder at the blue and white spotted dress, a model, Maud had made her buy. One word from Auntie Ethel and she would yield utterly. Of course she would; it wasn’t human nature to do otherwise.

  “One egg or two, Mother?” Vera-called from the kitchen.

  Maud sighed with satisfaction. Her quick ears noted that Vera’s voice had lost that querulous, martyred tone which used to annoy her so much. It was now reserved for Stanley.

  “Two, please, dear.” Maud swallowed her two tablets, washing them down with a big gulp of tea. Really strong and sweet it was, the way she liked it. Sugar was what she needed to keep her strength up for the long day ahead, sugar and plenty of protein.

  Vera bustled in with the plate of eggs and bacon, stopping to saw off a thick slice of bread for Maud. Stanley sipped his tea slowly like an invalid.

  “Try and get home early, won’t you, Vee?”

  “I’ll see if I can make it by five. You said Auntie Ethel wouldn’t be here till five, didn’t you?”

  Maud nodded complacently.

  She went to work with a will as soon as Vera had gone, scouring the thin carpets with Vera’s old vacuum cleaner, waxing the hall floor and lastly preparing the feast which was to gladden Ethel’s heart. It was years since she had done a stroke of housework and in former days she would rather have seen the place turn into a slum about her than let Stanley Manning see her lift a duster. But now it no longer mattered. Stanley wandered about from room to room, watching her and saying nothing. Maud didn’t care. She hummed her favourite old hymn tunes under her breath as she worked (“Lead Us, Heavenly Father, Lead Us” and “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling”), just as she used to do all those years ago in the big house before the master and mistress were up.

  They had lunch at twelve.

  “I’ll clear away and do the dishes,” she said when they had finished their cold rice pudding. “It wouldn’t do to have Ethel come and find the place in a mess.”

  “I don’t know why you and Vee can’t act more nautral.”

  “Cleanliness,” said Maud, taking advantage of Vera’s absence to have a prohibited dig at him, “is natural to some people.” She rushed around, wiping surfaces, her limp hardly noticeable. “I shall put on my new dress and get myself all ready and then I’ll have a lay-down on my bed.”

  “What’s wrong with the couch in there?” Stanley cocked a thumb toward
s the dining room.

  “That room is all tidied up ready for tea, and I can’t go in the lounge on account of that’s where we’re going to receive Ethel.”

  “My God,” said Stanley.

  “Please don’t blaspheme.” She waited for the spirited rejoinder and when it didn’t come, said sharply, “And you needn’t go messing the place up. We don’t want them crossword puzzles of yours laying about.”

  Stanley rose to that one but only with a shadow of his former verve. “You needn’t worry about me. I’m going to take my lazy no-good self out. Maybe you’d like me to stay away the whole weekend.” Maud sniffed. She rinsed her hands, dried them and moved majestically towards the door. Stanley tried a feeble parting shot. “Mind you don’t oversleep. God knows what would happen if Miss Carpenter had to hang about waiting on the step.”

  “I’m a very light sleeper,” Maud said gaily. “The least little thing wakes me.”

  Life wasn’t going to be worth living for the next few days. Those women would be screaming at him morning, noon and night to wipe his feet and wash his hands and run around after Ethel Carpenter till he couldn’t call his soul his own. She would go, of course, on Sunday or Monday, but only round the corner to Green Lanes, and how many times a week would he find her back here again, her feet under his table?

  That in itself was a sufficiently gloomy prospect, Stanley thought, leaning forward on the table, his head in his hands. He could at a pinch put up with that, but one day he’d walk in from the pictures or from work—he’d have to get a job if only to get out of this house—to find the lot of them gone and a note on the table with a Chigwell phone number on it and a short sharp request for him to find other accommodation.