by Ruth Rendell
Bruising him wasn’t much use. The knife she had used had been too small as well as too blunt. She needed one of Auntie’s long carving knives. As a police sergeant, Lafcadio Wilson had had to be an observant man and when he came into Immacue to reason with Minty he’d noticed something like a bar or wooden baton lying horizontally across her waist. But it was mostly concealed by the loose garment she wore, and it was only when she was backing away from him and turning her body round to face the other way that he saw the end of it push out the hem of her sweatshirt. He thought no more about it. Minty was eccentric, everyone knew that. He never suspected the truth, that what he detected was a fourteen-inch-long butcher’s knife with a sharp point and a bone handle.
Minty had sharpened it on Auntie’s old-fashioned oilstone and she was surprised at the edge she’d achieved. She laid it against the skin on her forearm. One touch and the blood leapt from her arm in a string of beads. She wrapped the knife in one of Auntie’s linen table napkins, securing it in place with elastic bands, then with more bands attached it to the bum bag. Provided she wore really loose tops, it wouldn’t show.
Often now she heard his voice, but it never said more than “Polo, Polo.” Not so Auntie’s, which had joined his. All the time she’d been praying to Auntie at the grave she never got an answer and she didn’t now. It seemed to her that Auntie spoke when days elapsed since she’d been to the cemetery, as if she protested at neglect. The first time she heard the voice she was frightened, it was so clear, so plainly Auntie’s. But in life she’d never been afraid of her and gradually she became used to this new invisible visitor from beyond the grave; she’d even have liked to see her, as she saw Jock. Auntie never appeared. She only talked. The way she had when she was alive, about her sisters, Edna and Kathleen, about her friend Agnes who’d brought the baby Minty to be looked after for an hour and had never come back, about the puréed prunes and the duke of Windsor and about Sonovia not being the only person on earth with a son a doctor and a daughter a lawyer.
Then, one day, while Minty was having a bath and washing her hair, Auntie’s voice came very clearly and said something new. “That Jock’s evil, Minty love, he’s really evil. He’s dead but he can’t ever come where I am because he’s an imp of Satan. If I was back on earth, I’d destroy him, but I can’t touch him from this holy place. I’m telling you it’s your mission to destroy him. You’ve been called to destroy him, and then he can go back to hell where he belongs.”
Minty never answered Auntie because somehow she knew that though she could speak, she couldn’t hear. She’d been deaf for a couple of years before she died. The voice persisted for most of the evening. From her front room Minty watched Sonovia and Laf go off to the cinema. The evenings were light now, the sun still shining. But it had always been rather dark inside this house, perhaps because Auntie and now Minty only drew the curtains back halfway across the windows. For inner London and in parts a rough area, it was also very quiet. Mr. Kroot on one side lived in dim silence, while the Wilsons weren’t keen on television or loud laughter. Into the absence of any sound Auntie’s voice came back, telling her to destroy Jock and rid the world of his evil spirit.
Next day the top she put on was tighter and shorter, and the knife showed through, sticking out like some sort of frame. She tried other ways of carrying it and finally found that wearing it under her trousers against her right thigh, strapped in place by a belt, answered best.
A lecture awaited Zillah in the morning. Jims was dressed as she hadn’t seen him for the past ten days. Perhaps she’d never seen him so svelte and elegant. He wore a charcoal suit, impeccably cut, for which he’d paid £2,000 in Savile Row, a frostily white shirt, and a slate-colored silk tie with a vertical saffron stripe. Zillah belonged to that school of taste that holds that a man is never so attractive as when dressed in a dark formal suit, and gloom descended on her. She hadn’t slept well and her hair needed washing.
“I’ve something to say to you. Sit down and listen, please. Recriminations are quite useless, I realize that. What’s done is done. It’s the future I’m concerned about.” All of Eton and Balliol were in his tone. “I don’t wish you to speak to any journalists at all, Zillah. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not any at all. There must be no exceptions. Frankly, I had no idea when you began on your press campaign that you would be as rash and uncontrolled as you have been. I expected a modicum of discretion, but I’ve said there are to be no recriminations, so let that be an end to them. The key phrase for you to remember is, no contact with the media. Right?”
Zillah nodded. She was remembering the charming boy of her adolescence who had been such a sweet and funny companion, and the gracious man who visited her in her loneliness at Long Fredington and who always seemed close to her in a happy and intimate conspiracy-Zillah and Jims versus the world. Where had he gone? Her heart sank like a stone when she thought: This is my husband.
“I would like to hear you say it, Zillah.”
“I won’t talk to the media, Jims. Please don’t be so angry with me.”
“I shall tell Malina Daz to hold you to that. Now you’re off to fetch the children today, I think you said. It would be a good idea if you were to stay a few days with your parents.”
“In Bournemouth?”
“Why not in Bournemouth? It’s a very pleasant watering place and the children like it. It will give you an opportunity to check on your father’s health. How do you suppose it would look if it got about-if it got into a newspaper-that (a) you failed to return from the Maldives when your father had had a coronary, and (b) you failed to rush post-haste to his bedside once you did return?”
“But I didn’t know he’d had a coronary till last night!”
“No, because you didn’t once take the trouble to phone your mother while you were away, although your children were with her.”
It was unanswerable. Even Zillah could see that. “How long do you want me to stay there?”
“Until Friday.”
It was a lifetime.
The traffic was heavy, and it was nearly six by the time Zillah reached her parents’ house. Her father lay on the sofa, boxes and bottles of medicaments on the little table beside him. He looked perfectly well, his eyes bright and a rosy flush on his face.
“Poor Grandad fell down on the floor,” said Eugenie importantly. “He was all alone. Nanna had to bring me and Jordan down to save his life and I said, ‘If poor Grandad dies, we must get someone to bury him in the ground,’ but he didn’t die.”
“As you see,” said Charles Watling, grinning.
“We went to the hospital and Nanna said to Grandad, ‘Your daughter’s gone to the ends of the earth and I don’t know her phone number.’ ”
Nora Watling had packed up the children’s things and prepared sandwiches for them to eat in the car on the way home. When Zillah said they would be staying till Friday, she sat down heavily in an armchair and said flatly that they couldn’t. Even one more day of Jordan’s crying and Eugenie’s officiousness would be too much, not to mention the presence of Zillah herself.
“No one ever wants us,” Eugenie said calmly. “We’re just a burden. And now our poor mummy is too.”
Weakening, Nora put an arm round her. “No, you’re not, my darling. Not you and your brother.”
“If we can’t stay here,” said Zillah, “where are we supposed to go?” Had she known the passage, she might have said that the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air their nests, but she had not where to lay her head. “To a hotel?”
“Your husband had enough of you, has he? That’s a good start, I must say. I suppose you’ll have to stay, if that’s what you want. But you’ll have to help me. Do the shopping, for one thing, and take the children out in the afternoons. Never mind about Eugenie’s schooling. That’s the last thing on your mind. But you mark my words, there’s no doubt one never gets rid of one’s children. No matter how often you think they’ve gone for good this time, they always come back.
Look at me with you.”
“You see, you’ll never get rid of us, Mummy,” Eugenie said happily.
Zillah had to sleep in the same room as the children. Jordan went to sleep crying and woke up in the night crying. This began to worry her and she wondered vaguely if she should take him to a child psychiatrist. In the daytime the three of them spent the mornings food shopping and fetching prescriptions, and in the afternoons, because the weather was fine, they went to the beach. It was as bad as being back in Long Fredington. On Thursday morning Charles Watling became ill again, breathless and with a pain down his left side. The GP came and he was rushed into hospital.
“It’s no good, you’ll have to go, Sarah. I can’t stand the worry and the noise, not with your father like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hearing Jordan crying all the time that set this second attack off. You can stop tonight in a hotel. Goodness knows, it’s not as if you were short of money.”
At five that afternoon Zillah checked them into a hotel on the outskirts of Reading. Eugenie and Jordan were tired and after they’d eaten pizza and chips, went immediately to bed and to sleep. For once, Jordan didn’t cry but nevertheless Zillah slept badly. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she remembered to phone her mother in the morning, was told her father was “comfortable” and would probably be having a bypass at the end of the following week. At just after eight she started the drive home in heavier traffic than she’d ever experienced, and it was past eleven when she drove into the Abbey Gardens Mansions car park.
Once in the flat she phoned Mrs. Peacock. Would she have the children? Take them somewhere for lunch and then maybe to the zoo or Hampton Court or something? Please. She’d pay her double her usual rate. Mrs. Peacock, who’d spent a lot more than she’d meant to while in the Netherlands, readily said yes. Zillah rang the porters, told them she wasn’t to be disturbed on any account, unplugged the phones, and fell into bed.
The quest for his children Jeff might have postponed for a while had it not been for Fiona’s urging. It must have been seeing his dilemma down in black and white in the newspaper that affected her, for she’d spent most of Monday evening encouraging him to arrange a meeting with Zillah, demand to see his children, and, if such attempts failed, consult her solicitor. Jeff knew it wasn’t the plain sailing it seemed to her. Too much of this sort of thing and his marital status would come out. He couldn’t exactly promise he’d free himself from Zillah, for how could you divorce a woman who’d already married someone else? How could he say he was a Catholic when he’d never mentioned it before?
On Tuesday he’d taken the Jubilee Line tube from West Hampstead to Westminster and walked down to Abbey Gardens Mansions. No one was at home in number seven and this time the head porter said he’d no idea where Mrs. Melcombe-Smith was. Someone must have warned him to be discreet, for he denied all knowledge of any children living in the flat. For all he knew, as he said afterward to his deputy, that chap might be a kidnapper or a pedophile.
It was a lovely day. Jeff sat on a seat in the Victoria Tower Gardens and called Natalie Reckman on his mobile. At first he got her voice mail, but when he rang again ten minutes later she answered.
Her tone was cordial. “Jeff! I suppose you read my piece in the magazine?”
“I didn’t need that to remind me,” he said. “I think about you a lot. I miss you.”
“How nice. All alone, are you?”
“You could say that,” Jeff answered carefully. “Have lunch with me. Tomorrow? Wednesday?”
“I couldn’t before Friday.”
He had the five hundred he’d won on Website. Unashamedly he said, “I’ll pay. Where shall we eat? You choose.”
She’d chosen Christopher’s. Well, he could use Zillah’s Visa card and hope he hadn’t already gone over its limit with the handbag he’d bought Fiona for her birthday and the roses for the six months’ anniversary of their moving in together. These cards should have their limit printed on them for the sake of people like him. He’d crossed the street and tried the Melcombe-Smith flat again, but Zillah still wasn’t in.
On Thursday, a bit recklessly, he’d backed a horse called Spin Doctor to win and it came in first. The odds had been long and he’d picked up a packet. Next day he went back to Westminster and got to Abbey Gardens Mansions just as Zillah and the children were coming off the M4 at Chiswick. He rang the bell, got no answer, made more inquiries of the porter, and was told the man didn’t know, he couldn’t keep tabs on all the residents, and no one expected him to. As it happened, Jims had gone down to his constituency on the previous afternoon, by chance passing Zillah outside Shaston. Neither saw the other.
Jeff wondered how he could consult a solicitor without its coming out that he was still married to Zillah. Dared he confess this to Natalie? Probably not. She was a very nice woman, clever and good-looking, but she was above all a journalist. He wouldn’t trust her an inch. The only person he could confess to was Fiona. As he wandered along the Embankment in the sunshine, he pondered the possibility of this. The danger was that she wouldn’t forgive him, she wouldn’t say something on the lines of “Darling, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” or “It doesn’t matter but you’d better set about it now,” but would throw him out of the house. She was strictly law-abiding, he’d never known such rectitude in a woman or man either, come to that. Whatever she advised or whatever she warned him about, she’d want those Melcombe-Smiths told the truth, she’d want to know his intentions. Jeff didn’t care much for Zillah, and he actively disliked Jims, but he stopped short at making her destitute and wrecking the man’s career. No, he couldn’t confess to anyone. Except perhaps to a solicitor? What he told such a person would be in confidence. There might be some way of serving divorce papers on Zillah without Jims or anyone else being any the wiser. But what about the children? Would it be possible to get a divorce without mentioning the children’s existence? After all, they didn’t need anyone to support them, they had Jims. One of those postal divorces…
With these thoughts rotating in his head, he bought himself a cup of coffee in the Strand, drank a half of bitter in a pub in Covent Garden, and arrived at Christopher’s at five to one. Natalie came in at five past. As always, she was severely dressed, this time in a gray pinstriped trouser suit, but with her upswept blond hair-she had that kind of stripy fair hair, gold and flaxen and light brown, that no dye can emulate and that Jeff admired-and discreet silver jewelry, she looked very fetching.
After some small talk and, in Jeff’s case, a lot of lies about his recent past, he grew mildly sentimental about what might have been.
“I don’t know about that,” said Natalie sharply. “You left me.”
“It was what they call constructive desertion.”
“They call it that, do they? And by that they mean, presumably, a certain amount of questioning on my part as to why I always paid the rent and bought the food?”
“I’d explained I was between jobs, you know.”
“No, you weren’t, Jeff. You were between women. Just in a spirit of enquiry, who came after me?”
Minty had. Looking back, Jeff thought he’d never sunk so low. But he’d been impoverished and desperate, living in that dump in Harvist Road. The Queen’s Head barmaid Brenda had told him Minty had her own house and a lot of money, her aunt had left her God knew how much. A quarter of what rumor said, if he knew anything about it, but as he’d put it to himself, any port in a storm. He might as well be more or less honest about it with Natalie.
“A funny little thing, lived up near Kensal Green Cemetery. I called her Polo because of her name.” He hesitated. “I don’t think I’ll tell you what that was. I owe her some money actually, only a thousand. Don’t look like that. I mean to pay her back as soon as I can.”
“You never paid me back.”
“You were different. I knew you could afford it.”
“You’re incredible, you really are. She came after me. Who was before me?”
The chief executive
of a charity and a restaurateur, but he could leave them out. He’d told enough of the truth for one day. “My ex-wife.”
“Ah, the tarty Mrs. Melcombe-Smith. You should have cured her of decorating herself like a Christmas tree. I suppose she never had the chance while she was with you. Funny I remembered your children’s names, wasn’t it? I must have been fond of you.”
“I was hoping you still are.”
Natalie smiled as she finished her double espresso. “Up to a point, Jeff. But I’ve got someone, you see, and I’m very happy with him. You didn’t ask, though I asked you. Does that say something about us?”
“Probably that I’m a selfish bastard,” said Jeff cheerfully, though he wished she’d told him before he’d asked her to lunch and was on the way to forking out eighty pounds. One thing about Jeff, as women were to say later, was that he’d no false pride. He didn’t try to put himself on her level by mentioning Fiona.
“Where are you off to now?” she asked when they were out in Wellington Street.
“Movies,” he said. “I don’t suppose you’d feeling like coming too?”
“You don’t suppose right.” She kissed him on the cheek, one cheek. “I’ve work to do.”
He’d told Natalie he was going to the cinema, but this was because it was the first thing that came into his head. It wasn’t what he’d intended. Revisiting Abbey Gardens Mansions was what he’d had in mind. But getting back to Westminster wouldn’t be easy from Kingsway. He’d done enough walking for one day and there was no bus or tube from here that went that way. A taxi with its light on came along and he almost stepped off the pavement and put up his hand. The driver began to pull in. Jeff thought of the money he’d spent on Natalie’s lunch and the credit card that was probably over its limit and shook his head. Thus he sealed his fate.
