Dark Corners

by Ruth Rendell

  Lizzie had come with her mother to see him in hospital and had told her parents in great detail about what she called her new job, looking after her friend Stacey’s state-of-the-art apartment in Primrose Hill. Tom again thought about his daughter’s flat in Kilburn. But his thoughts were mostly on his recent ordeal. The breezy attitude he adopted as he recounted his encounter with the two young men, and that he continued with the police officer who called to ask him what had happened, was a show of bravado and not what he really felt.

  Some would say it was his own fault, provoking that girl by shopping her to the driver. But wasn’t that the duty of a good citizen? I wouldn’t do it again, though, he thought. I’d lie low. But even making this resolve failed to give him confidence. He postponed the idea of getting on the number 82 bus, which had been his next project. Instead, now that his bruises were getting better, his headache from hitting his head when they kicked him over gone, he planned to take himself up to Edgware or Harrow at the end of the week.

  But when Thursday came—Friday was the day planned for this excursion—he went to bed dreading the next morning and found it impossible to sleep. He lay awake tossing and turning and only fell asleep at 5:00 a.m., to be jerked awake by a dream, not about an assault in Haverstock Hill but a car crash in Willesden Lane.

  At breakfast, he told Dorothy he wouldn’t be taking a bus ride that day.

  “Very wise,” she said. “You can come with me to have a look at Lizzie’s lovely apartment.”

  14

  ELIZABETH HOLBROOK HAD divorced her husband after fifteen months of marriage and was now living in her mother’s house.

  “I suppose you’ll revert to your maiden name,” said Yvonne Weatherspoon.

  “How ridiculous is that? Maiden name indeed. Anyway, I won’t. I always hated being called Weatherspoon. I more or less got married to get Leo’s name.”

  “It’s nice to have you back,” said her mother insincerely. “You’re not thinking of moving into a place of your own?”

  “If that was what you wanted, you might have given Stacey’s flat to me instead of Gervaise.”

  In fact, Elizabeth had no real quarrel with the way things had turned out. Her mother had five bedrooms, a self-contained flat in the basement, a cleaner every morning, and two cars. The only drawback to the house in Swiss Cottage was that cat. Elizabeth had attempted in the past to show Sophie who was boss, but never stood a chance. Their first—and almost their last—encounter had been when Elizabeth had roughly removed her from the seat of an armchair, and Sophie had turned on her, teeth bared, claws out, and inflicted some nasty wounds before returning to her favourite spot. These days they gave each other a wide berth.

  DAYS PASSED AND no rent had appeared. Carl hadn’t expected it, but he was still angry and miserable. He also knew that Dermot was playing some sort of complicated game, for after a week or two, the noise had stopped. Even the front door was closed silently. It was so quiet that there might have been no tenant on the top floor if Carl had not occasionally seen Dermot walking down Falcon Mews, on his way to or from work or leaving for church. Then, in the middle of the next week, something made of metal—a watering can, perhaps—was dropped and crashed resoundingly, bouncing across the floor above. Because he was no longer used to it and had believed the noise had come to an end, Carl shivered and actually cried out.

  There was no more noise that day, but it left him trembling. Nicola was due home at six thirty, but he couldn’t bear to wait that long, not so much because he wanted her company as out of terror that the dropping of things was due to start again.

  When he phoned her, she said she had the afternoon off and would come home in an hour’s time. Having her here would be wonderful, were it not for the fact that she would constantly urge him to stand up to Dermot and demand the rent. But Carl had to have her here for this coming weekend. He couldn’t live without her. He had done no work for weeks now. The book was a dead loss, not a book at all, for he had destroyed all of it, even the plan and the notes he had made before he started. He had never wanted a real job, but now he wished he had one. It would get him out of the house. He read in the paper and saw on the television that jobs were hard to get. It was hopeless for him even to look for employment.

  On Friday afternoon, on his way back to work, Dermot knocked on Carl’s living-room door.

  Carl was asleep. He got off the sofa and opened the door. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Just to ask you if it’d be all right to use the garden sometimes, sit out there, I mean. I’ve got a couple of deck chairs.”

  “That would mean coming through my kitchen.”

  “That’s right. OK with you?” Implicit in the enquiry was it had better be. “ ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot.’ ”

  Carl shrugged, nodded, shut the door. He wondered why he ever spoke politely to Dermot. Why even answer him? Silence would be best, but he knew he wouldn’t keep silent. Was it because he clung to some hopeless hope that Dermot would relent, that he would say he hadn’t meant it, it was a try-on, and now, soon, he would pay the rent as he had always known he must?

  When Nicola came in from work, Carl was waiting for her, sitting on the front step, maybe just to escape from breathing the same air as Dermot. Money was short. The lack of it was beginning to make itself felt in a serious way, and Carl couldn’t admit this to Nicola. Even though he had grown up in a world where women were becoming increasingly equal to men, where equality was the subject of almost daily TV programmes and constant newspaper features, he had still absorbed enough of a male-supremacy culture to believe that, if he were to mention his financial crisis, Nicola would think he was asking her for a loan or even a gift. And she would press him again to confront his tenant.

  ON SUNDAY, THEY watched from a window as Dermot went to church. Like churchgoers in times gone by, he carried a prayer book. They had talked about Dermot for half the night, what he would do if crossed, and what the consequences would be. They did make love, at just before three, and afterwards fell into a heavy sleep until nearly ten. Saturday’s rain had stopped during the night. The sun was out, the wind had dropped, and Mr. Kaleejah was taking his dog for its morning walk. It always walked along in a docile way, pausing sometimes to look up at Mr. Kaleejah and wag its tail. Carl had never heard it bark.

  “He’ll bring his deck chairs through the kitchen to the back door,” said Carl. “Why deck chairs? One for him, and who’s the other for? Perhaps he’s got friends, but I’ve never seen them. The next thing will be he’ll want to take over one of my rooms. He’s got a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom. Maybe he wants another bedroom? He could take over my second bedroom. Why not? I can’t stop him.”

  “Yes, you can, Carl. He can tell his story to anyone he likes. How do you know they’ll even care? They’ll probably say, so what? If they’re even interested, they’ll google it and see that what you did wasn’t against the law. Tell him you want the rent and if he says no, you’ll evict him. That’s what anyone else would do.”

  She made it sound so simple, Carl thought. He watched Dermot turn the corner into Castellain Road and disappear. Carl put his head in his hands, a frequent gesture with him these days.

  The day continued fine, becoming sunnier and warmer. “Let’s go out for lunch,” said Nicola cheerfully, though she felt anything but cheerful.

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Well, I can. You’ll have to face up to that, Carl. When you do what I suggest, you’ll have some money and you’ll feel much better because things won’t be as bad as you think. Probably they won’t be bad at all. Come on, we’ll go out, and we won’t be here to see Dermot come back.”

  So they went round to the Café Rouge, ate fish cakes and chips and lemon tart and drank a lot of red wine. “You’ll think I’m crazy,” said Carl, “but I don’t want to go back there. I can’t bear to be under the same roof as him.”

  “I live there too, you know. When you tell him to do his worst
, I’ll be with you. We’ll confront him together.”

  The sun was hot and the house warm and stuffy when they got home. Nicola went upstairs and looked out the bedroom window. She called Carl. “You’re not going to like this, but you’d better see it.”

  No one had attended to the garden since Carl’s father had died; in fact, since long before that. Where the lawn had been, the grass had grown tall and turned to hay, and the flowerbeds were dense with stinging nettles three feet tall. Two deck chairs covered in red-and-blue-striped canvas had been put up among the hay, and in them sat Dermot and a rather large young woman with shaggy, dark hair wearing a dirndl skirt and peasant blouse.

  Carl made a sound like a howl of agony. “Who’s that woman?”

  “His girlfriend, I should think.”

  “He hasn’t got a girlfriend.”

  “Well, he has now.”

  A VISIT FROM her parents was not to be welcomed by Lizzie. Usually, that was. Now, however, in possession of Stacey’s beautiful flat, she felt very different. Not just on account of the decor and furnishings, but because quite a lot of exotic drink still remained from Stacey’s store, as well as tins of the sort of biscuits and snacks that went well with drink.

  Tom and Dot had been in the flat no more than ten minutes, had examined the large refrigerator, the freezer, and the washing machine and dryer, as well as the living-room and bedroom furnishings and the two flatscreen televisions, when they were plied with dry oloroso and tequila sunrises. Conversation concentrated on Tom’s recovery from his assault on Haverstock Hill. Lizzie, who didn’t take admonition well herself, told him how careful he must be in future, and to be sure to take his mobile with him and phone her or her mother at the least sign of danger. Dot agreed, but added that it was useless to say anything as Tom never did what he was told.

  Advice, in any case, was unnecessary. Dot and Lizzie both thought privately that Tom had given up his exploration of London on buses. It had, in their opinion, been ridiculous and had, fortunately, and without too much harm being done, been ended by the Haverstock Hill attack. Both Dot and Lizzie were now putting their minds to some alternative hobby for him and already had ideas: golf, for instance, though Willesden was a long way from a golf course; the Willesden cycling club, though Tom didn’t possess a bicycle, and anyway, look how many cyclists got knocked down by lorries; dog walking, which, considering they had no dog, was never taken seriously. None of these options was mentioned to Tom.

  UP TO NOW, Tom Milsom had led a calm, steady, peaceable life. His job had been largely trouble-free. His wife loved and respected him, or seemed to. His daughter—well, she took his money, he thought bitterly, and for a flat she no longer even lived in. What did they think of him, the pair of them, for giving up an interest he had plainly enjoyed because two boys had hit him? Part of him never wanted to get on a bus again, even though it was not the buses’ fault. In fact, he had not even been on a bus when the boys had attacked him. This line of reasoning sent him out of the house—though perhaps it was more the result of Dorothy plying the vacuum cleaner round the armchair he was sitting in.

  He walked about a mile, thinking it was good for him, then got on the number 139 bus. Only then did it occur to him that he should have looked at London Bus Routes online. Perhaps when he got to Baker Street he could find a number 1. Something about a bus numbered 1 was fascinating, intriguing. It ought to be the best of all London buses. He asked the driver, who told him to stay on till Waterloo and pick up the number 1 there, which would take him to Bermondsey and Canada Water. Relaxing in the back of the 139 once more—several seats were empty—Tom felt enormously better. He had always wondered what Canada Water was like, what Canada Water was, and now he would find out.

  The sun was shining; it would be light for hours. Nothing was going to happen today or on the days to come. The trouble with those two boys had been no more than a nasty incident. Luckily he hadn’t been much hurt and all was going to be well.

  15

  NICOLA WANTED TO protect Carl from Dermot, but she didn’t tell Carl this. No matter how far emancipation had progressed towards equality, a woman might tell a man she wanted to care for him but she could not admit to him that she wanted to defend him from another man. Anyway, she seldom saw Dermot. If she heard him on the stairs, she kept inside the living room until the front door closed. They had met only once recently, in the hallway, she going out and he coming in, he from the pet clinic and carrying shopping, she on her way to buy something for an evening meal.

  “You’re living here full-time again now, are you?” he had asked. That enquiry could be put several ways, and Dermot’s phrasing was rather accusatory, the implication being that she shouldn’t have been.

  She would have liked to ask him if he had any objection, but Carl’s fear of Dermot was beginning to affect her too. “I am, yes.”

  He shook his head, the kind of gesture that implied wonder more than disapproval. “As I always say, it takes all sorts to make a world.”

  She said nothing about it to Carl. When she got back with the two ready meals and a bottle of rosé, her anger, which had been considerable, had died down. Dermot was upstairs but silent apart from a burst of “Amazing Grace” when he briefly opened his front door.

  Next day was Saturday, the weather improved, and he was out in the garden with the two deck chairs, though only one was occupied. He must have sneaked—as Carl put it—through the kitchen with them while Carl and Nicola were out.

  “You’ll have to tell him you don’t want him in the garden,” said Nicola. They were in the bedroom, looking down on the top of Dermot’s head.

  Carl didn’t say anything.

  “You’ll have to, Carl. This is only the thin end of the wedge.”

  “I’ve already told him he can use the garden.”

  “Don’t you think that if he was going to tell anyone—I mean about selling that stuff to Stacey—”

  “I know what you mean. I think about it every day. It haunts me. I know what you were going to say. That if he was going to tell the newspapers or her aunt or her cousins or anyone, he’d have done it by now. But why would he? He has the perfect arrangement. He could tell them tomorrow or next week. It’s not something that gets easier for me, is it? The newspapers will send someone around here to interview me. He’s biding his time, as he might say. He’s waiting for someone or something to trigger it, and me telling him he can’t sit out in my garden might be just the trigger he needs.”

  The weather went on being nice, and Dermot sat out in the garden again the next day. Carl and Nicola knew he would because he left the deck chairs out overnight. This, Carl said, was the thickening end of the wedge, or was it the further thinning? Dermot had gone to church, carrying his Alternative Service Book. Carl, like many atheists, disapproved of that work, preferring the Book of Common Prayer, and would have liked to say so scathingly to Dermot but was afraid. His tenant—could you describe someone as a tenant when he paid no rent?—returned at eleven thirty with the fat, dark girl. They sat in the garden for an hour, then the deck chairs were vacated and soon a strong smell of curry permeated the house.

  Carl and Nicola went out. They had a drink in the Prince Alfred around the corner. It was a fine old pub, much loved by Nicola and once loved by Carl. He loved it no longer; he loved nothing.

  “Except you,” he said. “I love you a lot. I really love you, but how can I marry you?” He had never before mentioned marriage. “This torment will go on for ever, for the rest of my life. I know it sounds mad, but it’s true. I shall live in this house or another house and he will be there with me, wherever it is. He will never go and I can’t get rid of him. Sometimes I think I’ll kill myself.”

  WEEKS HAD PASSED since Yvonne Weatherspoon had been to the pet clinic. Sophie was well and no injections were due, but a new event had taken place in the Weatherspoon household. Elizabeth had occasionally opened the French windows for the cat to go out in the evenings, and Sophie had stayed out until
dawn, squealing under Yvonne’s bedroom window to be let in. This truancy had badly frightened Yvonne, and she was even more distressed when she saw that Sophie had a wound on her neck and a triangle of furry skin nipped from one of her ears. She had plainly been fighting with the Bengal next door.

  “This is what happens when you have your children home to live,” Yvonne told Dermot the next morning, referring of course to Elizabeth, not Sophie.

  “You wouldn’t be without her,” said Dermot in a sentimental tone.

  “There’s no question of that. Will Caroline be able to see me? Well, see her, poor darling.”

  “I expect we can fit you in. Sophie will have to have intravenous antibiotics.” Dermot liked to display medical knowledge picked up from Caroline, Darren, and Melissa without actually knowing anything about it.

  “I should have phoned first. I know that.” Yvonne brought her face close to his across the desktop. “But you see, if I did that, I thought you’d say no, maybe say there was no room for us.”

  “Not this time.” Dermot smiled his toothy, yellow smile. “Now here’s Melissa come for you. I’m afraid Caroline’s out on a call.”

  Left alone, and with no other pet owners due until the afternoon, he let his mind wander to Stacey Warren and the pills that Carl had given—no, sold—her. He mustn’t tell, he knew that beyond a doubt. It would be different if Carl had demanded the rent and threatened eviction, but it was unlikely that he would do that as he was too frightened.

  No one had ever been afraid of Dermot before, or not to this degree, and it gratified him to have caused someone this amount of fear without violence or even the threat of it. A shame really that he couldn’t have it both ways: not tell Stacey’s aunt or cousins, say not a word to the Ham and High, but drop a hint just the same to Carl as to how near to danger he had come and would come again. Of course the game would have to end at some point. He had no intention of being evicted. He would have to quietly resume paying rent. But not now. Not for a long time. For now he would keep the money, keep the fear up, and keep Carl exactly where he wanted him.