by Ruth Rendell
How pretty Falcon Mews was on a sunny day. The little houses were all of different shapes and heights, their roofs of grey slate or red tile, their windows diamond-paned or plate glass in white frames, some walls covered in variegated ivy or long-leaved clematis. Flowers were everywhere, sprays and bunches of them hanging on the climbers amid festoons of dark green leaves. It was all so lovely, a beautiful place to live and be happy in. They went into the house, into the dim silence. Carl put the food and drink into the fridge, took the backpack upstairs, and dropped it on the bedroom floor.
Nicola was looking out of the kitchen window into the back garden, where she could see Dermot in one of the deck chairs reading a magazine. Sybil had acquired a pair of lawn trimmers and was cutting the edges, where the grass met the flowerbeds where the nettles used to be. She was the kind of woman, Nicola thought, who always had to be doing something: weeding, cutting, chopping, cooking, cleaning—a gift to a man. Carl was silent now, but when he saw those two, as he must sooner or later, he would start his agonised complaints again. She couldn’t leave him, nor could she put up with him much longer.
Suppose she did what Dermot hadn’t yet done and might never do? Only she and he knew the truth of what had happened on the day Carl sold the DNP to Stacey Warren. If she told the whole story to a newspaper, and if, say, the Paddington Express used it and passed it to the Evening Standard, it would be in the public domain—wasn’t that what they called it?—just as much as if Dermot had told them. Dermot wouldn’t have been responsible for its appearance, she would, but the effect would be the same. Dermot would no longer have anything to hold over Carl. His inverted blackmail would no longer work. He would therefore be obliged to pay Carl’s rent once more or leave. Also, Carl might demand rent arrears and surely get them. Once that had been done, he could evict Dermot.
And what of her? She would have to tell Carl that she had—well, betrayed him. He might never want to see her again, but as things were, she couldn’t continue with him like this. She went to the fridge and opened the still-rather-warm white wine they had bought in Church Street—well, not they; she had bought it. Carl had almost run out of money.
She poured the wine and carried in the glasses and found Carl at the back window, looking through a barrier of leaves and branches and privet bushes at Sybil chopping away at the lawn edge and Dermot apparently sleeping in his deck chair.
Carl took the glass and gulped down half of its contents, the way he always drank these days. Nicola drank more slowly, studying the man she still loved, wondering what she should do.
20
DERMOT WASN’T IN love with Sybil, but aspects of her pleased him very much. She reminded him of his mother, always busy, never sitting down for long except in church. A woman should have a faith, he thought now; women needed religion more than men. She spent a lot of time in his flat but he hardly ever saw her relax. Washing machines, microwaves, and freezers held no attraction for her. “Made for lazy people” was how she described them. When she had finished doing his washing by hand and putting up a line to peg it out on, she settled down with his mending. Even his mother no longer mended socks or sewed on buttons, though he remembered her doing his father’s darning when Dermot was a little boy. Sybil cooked his dinner on Saturdays and Sundays too, the old-fashioned food he liked: roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and shepherd’s pie. Until now he had never thought about getting married, but that might have been because he had never met a girl he could contemplate marrying.
One thing he particularly liked about Sybil was that she had never shown any sexual interest in him. He had started kissing her because that was what you did with a girl, but only on the cheek. He also held hands with her, and she seemed to like it. He didn’t know, because he had never put it to the test, how having sexual relations would be with her or anyone else. But he was convinced he would only be able to perform this duty if they were married. Then it would be all right. But it would be far from all right and would fail if he attempted it before marriage, because that would be immoral.
He was thinking along these lines and resolving to ask Sybil to marry him when Yvonne Weatherspoon walked into the pet clinic with Sophie in her cat box.
“I haven’t got an appointment, I know,” she said quickly. “There’s nothing really wrong with her, but I thought maybe Caroline would give her her injections, you know, for worms and fleas and whatever, even though it’s a few weeks early.”
“Maybe Melissa can, I’ll enquire.” Dermot did and got an exasperated agreement. Yvonne was one of their more demanding clients. She needed more attention than Sophie.
Yvonne took Sophie out of the box and held her in her arms, closely snuggled.
“Better not,” said Dermot. “We had a cat escape last week when a client opened the door—no more than an inch or two, but you know what cats are.”
Yes, she knew what cats were: highly intelligent, beautiful, and good. Reluctantly, Yvonne put Sophie back in the box. “Nasty Dermot’s a real spoilsport. We need our cuddles, don’t we?”
Dermot was still thinking about what form the question he planned to ask Sybil should take. He wouldn’t be asking her yet; it was Tuesday, and they only met at the weekends and on Friday evenings. They had discovered quite early in their relationship that they were in perfect agreement on this subject. Both worked hard, went to bed early, and got up early. Otherwise, how could they do their jobs properly? That was what weekends were for, relaxing (in his case) or catching up on all the domestic tasks that needed to be done (in hers). Yes, he thought, she would make him a good wife. A good old-fashioned wife, none of your postimpressionist feminist partners, or whatever they called them. Would he have to buy her a ring? That was something to give some thought to. They could live in the flat for the first few years, then maybe he could buy a house in Winchmore Hill or Oakwood.
NICOLA HAD FOUND a website for the Paddington Express. It had offices in Eastbourne Terrace, walking distance from Falcon Mews. With all the contact information in hand, her plan of action seemed real. She would go there and ask to see the editor (or news editor or features editor), and she or he would be interested, record what Nicola had to say, and perhaps take it down in shorthand as well. Did people still use shorthand? They would ask if they could send a photographer round. They would find out that Carl didn’t know she was telling them what he had done. It wasn’t as simple as it had seemed at first. It now appeared almost treacherous. If she did this, she would lose him. This must be the end.
Perhaps she wouldn’t have to do it herself. Or not do it in person. She could send an anonymous letter. Nicola marvelled that she, who was surely an honest, decent sort, should even contemplate such a thing. Perhaps honest, decent people imagined this kind of behaviour, but they didn’t carry it out. Of course they didn’t. When the time came, she would go herself and be straightforward and truthful. There was nothing else for it. The only question was when.
YVONNE WEATHERSPOON ARRANGED the white-chocolate-coated, circular shortbread biscuits she knew she shouldn’t eat, and therefore restricted herself to one a day, on an oval china plate. She put the plate on a tray with the coffeepot and two cups, the jug of semi-skimmed milk, and the two sachets of sugar substitute. The thin milk and thinner little packets were to make up for the biscuits.
Yvonne was setting the tray on the table by the open French windows when the landline rang. She picked it up.
A coarse voice, quite a rough male voice, said, “Mrs. Weatherspoon? Mrs. Yvonne Weatherspoon?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve got your daughter. She’s OK at present, and you can have her back”—the man paused to speak to someone—“for a lot of money.”
Yvonne laughed. “That’s very funny, as my daughter is sitting here beside me. You can speak to her if you like.”
The phone was abruptly cut off.
Yvonne and Elizabeth agreed on few things, but this was one of them. They both laughed, Elizabeth hysterically, Yvonne with more restraint
. “Do you think we should tell the police?”
“I don’t think so,” Elizabeth said. “Let sleeping cops lie.”
21
“ARE YOU GOING to set me free now?” Lizzie asked, using a phrase she had learned from a TV drama about royalty in the thirteenth century.
Scotty and Redhead looked a bit rattled, she thought, as though their plan hadn’t gone entirely as they had expected.
“Why would we do that? That wasn’t your mum, just as you must have known it wouldn’t be.” Redhead fetched her a mug of water. “We’re going to have to move you, so we’re going to give you enough pills to knock you out for twenty-four hours.” A faint smile crossed his face. “Don’t say we don’t look after you.”
“Would you put the cuffs on my hands in front?” she asked, feeling alarmed. “Please.”
But the handcuffs remained where they were, and soon the two men appeared to be ready to leave, Redhead with a suitcase and a big holdall, and Scotty with a bottle that must contain the sleeping pills. He shook not two but three of them into his hand and signed to her to put her head back and open her mouth.
What’s the maximum safe dose? Lizzie wondered, but she opened her mouth and swallowed the pills, washing them down with the rest of the water in the mug.
They walked her downstairs, both supporting her, talking as they went, grumbling about who they had thought she was, and what they were going to do with her now.
The car was in a side entrance outside a back door. Consciousness was going and Lizzie stumbled down the last few steps, wondering vaguely what time it was, early or late, as blackness and oblivion descended.
WHEN SHE CAME round, to use her father’s phrase, her hands were shackled in front and cable had been tightly tied round her feet.
While captive, she was learning things. When you feel comfortable in your body, most of the time you’re barely aware of having a body. But when part of it is tied up, hands together and feet together, you feel stiff and then you start to ache. You wonder if this is what it will be like when you’re old. Recovering consciousness, you don’t feel wide-awake quickly; for a long time you feel weak and feeble and vague and the room swims around you.
To keep her weight down, Lizzie had eaten sparingly for months, years really, so she had got used to small meals and hadn’t often felt hungry. But she had in the past eaten something every day and had never felt like this. Her hunger was a devouring presence. Although she knew it was a stupid thing to do, she couldn’t stop herself imagining her mother’s cooking, so that she actually saw before her eyes her famous lemon meringue pie, the glistening leg of lamb surrounded by potatoes roasted in goose fat, the apple tart with its latticed lid. She had never known what it meant to have your mouth water. Now she did.
It amazed her that she could do without a bath or a shower. She was still wearing the same clothes she had worn when Scotty and Redhead took her away, and inside Stacey’s black dress with the white lace panel, filthy now and torn, her body smelled like a sick dog and her hair as if it had been buried in dusty earth. But all this worried her less than she would ever have expected. If she smelt bad, so did Redhead and Scotty.
In this new place, she was left alone, drugged, given water when she woke but no food apart from a piece of white bread from a sliced loaf and a hunk of cheese in the morning and the evening. One of them took her to the bathroom when they brought the bread and slammed the door on her, waiting outside. She had to shuffle along slowly because of the rope tied around her ankles. They no longer spoke to her.
She had no idea of how much time had passed when they took her downstairs again, put her in the car, and drove her through dark, winding streets to a new prison.
THE PREVIOUS YEAR, in late July, when school was finished and the little ones were supervised by volunteer mothers, Lizzie had gone off somewhere on a holiday with a friend or friends. Or she said she had, but you never knew when she was telling the truth and when she was not.
These were Tom’s thoughts, not Dot’s. Tom no longer believed much of what Lizzie said, while Dot always had faith in her daughter. More than this, though, she trusted and believed in what her husband said. If Tom said Lizzie was somewhere on the Mediterranean, or in Cornwall, that was where she was. While it annoyed Tom that his daughter would disappear somewhere with friends and not tell him or her mother where she was, it upset Dorothy.
“She’s an adult,” he said. “She has her own life.”
“I knew you’d say that. Of course you’re right, but I think she could ring us. It’s not much to ask.”
“You’ve never asked her, though, have you? Maybe you should. I doubt it’ll make any difference, but it would set your mind at rest—in the future. To know where she was.”
“Oh, it is at rest. I’m not worried, I’m cross.”
But she was worried, and so was he. They might have confided in each other, but they never did that. Each pretended that Lizzie must be safe somewhere and fine. Unpleasant things happened to young girls every day, the newspapers said so, but they did their best to dismiss this thought. Nothing nasty could ever happen to their Lizzie.
22
IT HAD BECOME an obsession. Carl understood that his behaviour was just as much that of a fanatical lover as of a fixated hater. He followed Dermot with his eyes whenever he had the opportunity, listened for what he could hear of him, outside the door at the top of the stairs: his music, his footsteps, and his words on the phone or when he spoke to Sybil Soames. When Dermot approached the door, Carl ran down the top flight of stairs to hide in his own bedroom.
At first he did this only while Nicola was at work, but gradually he came hardly to care at all. Anyway, she knew. She had told him what he should do, but now she had stopped; telling him, she said, was useless. Probably the time was coming when she would give up on him and leave. He wouldn’t care. Sometimes he thought he wouldn’t even notice.
Once or twice he had followed Dermot to work. If Dermot had turned round and seen him, he wouldn’t have cared, but he didn’t turn round. Carl watched as Dermot went into the pet clinic by a back door. Then the clinic lights came on and Carl walked away.
He had also begun to follow Dermot to Sybil’s parents’ house when he walked her home in the evenings. Occasionally, if it was raining or chilly, Dermot called a taxi for her. He could easily afford taxis now, Carl thought bitterly. But mostly Dermot set off with Sybil at about nine thirty in the evening. They held hands. Or rather, Dermot held her hand. She wouldn’t have dared take his, Carl thought.
Their walk took about twenty minutes and they always went the same way: down Castellain Road, into Clifton Gardens and across Maida Vale into St. John’s Wood Road to Lisson Grove. They kept always to those same wide roads and never took the shortcut along the canal path. Although it was lit, it was much darker along there, a lovers’ walk under the trees. Did Dermot avoid it with Sybil for that reason? Because it was somehow intimate, sheltered, a place for kissing?
On the way back though, Dermot did go that way. After he had kissed Sybil’s cheek, watched her go into the flats, waved once, he turned round and took the little path that went over the canal bridge and led along the dark water. He walked slowly, pausing to look down on to the glassy canal.
Carl watched from the other side of Lisson Grove. When he was at university, he had belonged to the drama society, and the high spot of his second year had been their performance of Measure for Measure. A line came back to him, a phrase really, “the duke of dark corners.” Dermot looked like that, with his round shoulders and long, thin neck; almost a mediaeval figure, dressed in a dark jacket, black jeans tucked into black boots. Under the bridge at Lisson Grove and under the bridge at Aberdeen Place were dark corners, footpaths melting into blackness.
If Carl wondered about Dermot, why he always walked to Jerome Crescent the way he did and returned along the towpath, Carl also wondered at himself. What made him follow Dermot? What did he get out of it? He didn’t know. He just had a compuls
ion to do it.
Nicola had gone back to her old flat and the girls for the night, and he was sitting in his bedroom in the dark when he heard Dermot come in. These days he seldom thought about anything but Dermot, and sometimes Sybil, but pushing his backpack into a corner with his foot, he noticed that Nicola hadn’t taken the goose out to put it on the hall table.
SUNDAY, AND DERMOT had come back from church with Sybil and a crowd of other people. Carl, watching from upstairs, saw him unlock the front door and welcome them all in. It was another fine day, clouds across the blue sky but plenty of sunshine too. Two women were among them apart from Sybil, and all wore bright floral dresses. Sybil’s had a pattern on it of pink cabbage roses on a black background. The door shut with a bang.
Nicola was out, at a brunch with two of her ex-flatmates. He had forgotten to mention the goose. Never mind. It wasn’t important. Nothing was but Dermot and maybe money.
He went into his bedroom and looked out of the window, hoping that Dermot and his guests wouldn’t go into the garden. No one was out there, but as he turned away, he heard a commotion from downstairs as they all burst out among the flowers. Gusts of laughter drifted up. Sybil appeared with the trolley that had been Carl’s father’s, loaded with bottles and cans and plates of food and packets of crisps. Everyone started eating and drinking. Sybil was walking among them holding up her left hand for them to see something. Someone said, “I know you’ll be very happy.” Not I hope, but I know.
It was an engagement party. Carl felt sick. He fell back into a chair. “Don’t let him see you,” he said aloud, then whispered it. “Don’t let him see you, he’ll ask you down. He’ll tell you his news and ask you to join them.”
Quietly, as if they were all listening for him to make a move, he crept into the bathroom and drank from the cold tap above the sink.
