by Ruth Rendell
It would have been nice to go in the car, but Laf said where was he supposed to park? Down there, finding somewhere to put your vehicle was a nightmare. Taking the tube to Charing Cross meant you’d nothing to worry about. But the Bakerloo Line train was jam-packed and the streets were almost as bad.
Like many suburb dwellers, though their suburb wasn’t far out, Sonovia and Laf had only a sketchy knowledge of inner London. Laf occasionally drove through the Park to Kensington or even past Buckingham Palace. He knew roughly where the big streets led, while she had her shopping trips to the West End, and both, as inveterate picture-goers, visited the Odeon Metro and Mezzanine. But Sonovia had no idea of the way places linked up and couldn’t have told you how to get from Marble Arch to Knightsbridge or Oxford Street to Leicester Square. As for Minty, she hadn’t been down here for years, she’d had no occasion to come, and the big buildings of Trafalgar Square intimidated her with their rows of tall pillars and flights of stairs. It was as if she’d never seen them before or that she’d found herself transported to some foreign city. At the same time they reminded her of those Roman temples in the cemetery.
“Why is he up there?” she said to Laf, pointing to Nelson on his column. “He’s so high up you can’t see what he looks like.”
“I don’t know why, love. Maybe he wasn’t much to look at and it’s better not to see him close. I like the lions.”
Minty didn’t. Crouching there like that, they reminded her of Mr. Kroot’s cat. Maybe in the middle of the night they got up and walked about, treading on tall buildings and stamping on trees. She was glad when she and the Wilsons had pushed their way through the crowds and were seated in the Garrick Theatre. Laf bought a program for her and one for Sonovia and a box of Dairy Milk. Minty didn’t want a chocolate, it stood to reason they couldn’t come in those shapes unless someone handled them, but she took one so as not to be rude and felt funny for the next half-hour as the germs ran about inside her stomach.
An Inspector Calls wasn’t a bit like they’d imagined, though there was a policeman in it, or perhaps not a real one, perhaps a ghost or an angel. Minty didn’t want it to be a ghost, she had enough of those in reality, and sometimes she had to shut her eyes. The set was the best thing, they all agreed on that, not like something made to be the background to a play but like a real house in a real street, transported inside the stage. When it was over and Minty got up to go, the point of the knife pushed against the stuff of her trousers at the knee, but she adjusted them quickly before Laf or Sonovia saw.
It was quite late but cafés and restaurants were open everywhere; she had never seen so many all together and it made her wonder how they could make enough money to exist on. They went into a little one in a side street and ordered pizzas. Minty wouldn’t have had salad or cooked meat or anything she couldn’t see being cooked but a pizza was all right, you could watch the man take it out of an oven with a pair of tongs on to a clean plate. And he was wearing gloves. They had a couple of glasses of wine each and that reminded her of Jock.
“Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,” she said.
“You what?”
They’d never heard it before. “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?”
“Well, Pinch Me, of course,” said Sonovia and Minty pinched her.
Laf laughed uproariously. “You had her there, Minty. I didn’t know you had it in you.”
“Yes, well, the joke was on me,” said Sonovia and, in a patronzing tone, “But it’s not ‘drownded,’ my deah. You’re wrong about that. ‘Drowned’ would be correct.”
“Jock said ‘drownded.’ ” Minty finished her pizza. “It was him who told me.”
She shivered. Thinking about him often had that effect.
“Not cold, are you? It’s very warm in here. I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t put a thinner jacket on.”
But by this time it was growing colder outside, whatever Sonovia said. They passed a pub and then another, and Laf asked if they wanted a drink, one for the road, a nightcap, but Sonovia said no, enough was enough and it’d be one in the morning before they were in their beds as it was. The tube train came and it was so full that Laf said, “Let’s wait for the next one, it’s due in one minute,” so they waited and it came and it was nearly empty. A lot of people got in at Piccadilly, a lot got out at Baker Street, and one old woman got in. It was Mrs. Lewis.
The empty seat nearly opposite Minty was one of those intended for the old or disabled. Not that many took much notice of that, but it happened to be empty and Mrs. Lewis sat down in it. She was still in her dark red coat and hat. Auntie was nowhere to be seen. Evidently she’d taken to heart what Minty had said about not associating with Mrs. Lewis on account of her being Jock’s mother and never paying Jock’s debts. Minty stared fixedly at Mrs. Lewis, who refused to meet her eyes. She had settled herself carefully to avoid sitting on the knife, though it was wrapped first in plastic and then in a clean white rag, but she was very aware of it now.
“What are you staring at, my deah? You’re giving me the creeps.”
“She’s not real,” Minty said. “Don’t you worry, she’s only a ghost, but she’s got a nerve coming after me here.”
Sonovia looked at her husband, shaking her head.
Laf raised his eyebrows. “Must be the wine,” he said. “She’s not used to it. They gave you really big glasses in that pizza place.”
Mrs. Lewis got up to go at Paddington. For the first time Minty noticed she had a holdall with her. She must be catching a train to Gloucester, back to the old home she’d had when she was alive. “Can you get a train to Gloucester at this time of night?” she asked Laf.
“I shouldn’t think so. It’s gone half past midnight. What d’you want to know for?”
Minty didn’t reply. She was watching Mrs. Lewis leave the train and make her way along the platform. A bad walker, shuffling more than walking. Then she remembered some of the money Jock had borrowed had been to pay for his mother’s hip operation. “She never had it,” she said aloud. “I don’t reckon she lived long enough to have it.”
Again the Wilsons exchanged glances. As Laf said to his wife later, all the people in the train were looking uneasily at Minty. You got used to seeing some funny sights in the underground-he’d once seen a chap racing maggots across the floor-but Minty looked crazy, her face as white as chalk and her wispy hair standing on end. Besides, anyone could tell she’d been talking to the empty air. They got out at Kensal Green and walked home; it wasn’t far. The only people in the streets were groups of young men, black and white and Asian, all around twenty years old, all looking somehow like a threat.
Sonovia put her arm through Laf’s. “I wouldn’t feel all that comfortable if you weren’t with us, love.”
“Well, I am,” said Laf, gratified. “They won’t mess with me.”
On the corner of their street was a seat with a sort of flower bed behind it. The flowers had to compete with empty beer cans, fish and chip paper, and cigarette ends, and the rubbish was winning. Mrs. Lewis hadn’t gone home to Gloucester. She was sitting on the seat, the holdall open beside her. Laf and Sonovia probably thought she was the old bag lady who sometimes sat there at night, but Minty knew better. In the ten minutes since Mrs. Lewis had left the tube at Paddington she’d changed her clothes again for a black coat and headscarf, and somehow got up here. But ghosts could do anything, get through walls and floors, travel long distances at the speed of light. She was here now but before Minty could get there she’d be in her house, waiting for her.
Down here there was no one else about. The boys in gangs stuck to Harrow Road. Sonovia and Laf said goodnight and see her soon. Minty was so preoccupied with Mrs. Lewis that she forgot her manners and all the things Auntie had taught her, and didn’t say Thanks for taking me to the theater or anything. She didn’t even say goodnight.
The Wilsons went indoors and Sonovia said, “I’ve never known her so pecul
iar. Talking to herself and seeing things that aren’t there. D’you reckon we ought to do something?”
“What can we do? Send for the men in the white coats?”
“Don’t you be silly, Laf. It’s not funny.”
“She just had too much wine, Sonn. People can have hallucinations when they’ve had too many. If you don’t believe me you can ask Dan.”
Mrs. Lewis wasn’t waiting for her. Minty searched the house. She wasn’t anywhere and neither was Auntie. She’d still be on that seat, fumbling about in that holdall, planning something, laughing maybe because she’d managed to die before she had to pay that money.
Minty knew what she had to do. She patted the knife, opened the front door and closed it quietly behind her. The street was deserted, silent. The lamps were out. Only in the flat opposite was there a light, a gleam in one of the windows like a candle flame. It looked as if the Wilsons had gone straight to bed, for their bedroom light went out as Minty looked upward. She walked up to the corner, suddenly sure Mrs. Lewis would have gone and the seat be empty.
But she was still there. She’d decided to sleep there, Minty couldn’t think why. She’d put the battered holdall under her head for a pillow. What did a ghost want with a holdall? The flowers behind her had closed up for the night, their leaves faintly gleaming from among the crumpled cartons and polythene bags and cigarette packets. Mrs. Lewis would never give her back her money now, it was gone forever. Minty, drawing out the knife from its strapping, was suddenly consumed with righteous anger. This would show Auntie that she meant business, teach her to be more careful in future.
It was quite silent in the street now. Mrs. Lewis didn’t make a sound. If she’d been real Minty would have thought her heart had stopped the minute the point of the knife touched her.
Chapter 27
ALONE IN THE car, Jims escaped from Fredington Crucis House, pursued for several hundred yards down the lane by reporters and photographers. Leonardo he had left behind to fend for himself. They had had a row.
Half an hour had passed before he understood why the reporters and cameramen were there. During that time, having berated Leonardo for being such a fool as to put the light on, he had showered, shaved, and dressed, and braced himself to go outside and meet them. But that had to be postponed, for first he looked out of a window. The eyes and cameras of the crowd were turned to the front door and he was able to observe them for a moment or two without being seen. “Predators,” he said to himself, “vultures,” and, rather outmodedly, the legacy of a classical education, “harpies.”
Then, as one, they turned toward the gates. Mrs. Vincey was shutting them behind her and had started up the drive. The reporters closed in upon her, but not before Jims had seen she was carrying a newspaper, the only word of which he could read from this distance in the large-lettered headline was “MP.” Since he’d asked her not to come this morning, the idea was inescapable that the newspaper and curiosity had fetched her. He could see she was quite willing to talk to them and if they weren’t all that anxious to take her photograph this wasn’t for her want of readiness to pose for them. What was she saying? And what was it all about, anyway? He soon knew.
She let herself in, and herself alone, by the front door. Jims met her in the hall and found himself in a situation comparable to that Zillah had experienced with Maureen Peacock. Mrs. Vincey held up the newspaper’s front page in both hands and told him she’d never been so disgusted in all her life. For the first time, she didn’t call him Sir or Mr. Melcombe-Smith. In the words of Cleopatra when her power was waning, he might have asked, “What, no more ceremony?” Instead, he stood in silence, reading the headline over and over: THE GAY MP, TWO WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? A member of Parliament! I wonder what the queen thinks about you.”
“Mind your own fucking business,” said Jims, “and get out. Don’t come back.”
He went upstairs. At that moment, immediately, he couldn’t bring himself to read more. But he had seen the photographs on page three, notably the one of himself and Leonardo in the Maldives, and he blamed Leonardo for all of it. Leonardo had talked, gossiped perhaps, at any rate told someone, had given their picture to a gutter rag. He found him in the bedroom, sitting on the bed fully dressed but looking very hangdog and, to Jims’s mind, guilty as hell. Jims began to shout and rave at him, waving the newspaper, accusing him of treachery, perfidy, and barratrous betrayal-his once-successful career was in part due to his command of language-and not listening to his indignant defense.
Leonardo stood up. “I haven’t talked to anyone. You’re mad. I’ve got my career to think of as much as yours, remember. Let me see that.”
They struggled with the paper, pulling it this way and that until the front page was torn in half. Leonardo finally got possession of it. “If you’ll read it instead of ranting like a maniac you’ll see it’s your precious wife who’s been talking, not me. And talking, my God!”
Jims half believed him but he refused to look in his presence. He grabbed the paper, shouted, “You can get yourself back to London. Walk to bloody Casterbridge, it’s only six miles,” then ran downstairs.
Mrs. Vincey had gone. The pack was still outside. Jims put the newspaper in his briefcase, his wallet and car keys in his pocket, and, like General Gordon solitarily confronting the Mahdi’s soldiery at Khartoum, opened the door and stepped outside. The pack roared with pleasure and flashbulbs popped.
“Look this way, Jims!”
“Give us a smile, Jims!”
“I’d like just two words, Mr. Melcombe-Smith.”
“Is it true, Jims?”
“If you’d like to make a statement…”
Jims said in his patrician tones, “Of course it isn’t true. It’s all lies.” He embroidered, recalling Leonardo’s words, “My wife is having a mental breakdown.”
“Did you know you were a bigamist, Jims? Will your wife stand by you? Where’s Leonardo? Do you expect to lose your seat?”
This last, which they all seemed to take as some sort of ghastly and obscene pun, raised a roar of laughter. Jims, in what was nearly a reflex because he’d felt his face grow hot and therefore red, put up his briefcase to hide it. Bulbs flashed. One exploded almost in his face. He tried to grab the camera, failed, and plunged for his car. They were all over it, he thought, like monkeys in a safari park. He pushed a girl off and she fell over, shouting she’d get him for assault. He got the door open, squeezed in, and shut it, hoping to slam a man’s fingers in it but the hand was snatched back in the nick of time. As he drove down the drive he could see ahead of him that the gates were closed. That bitch Vincey had shut them after her on purpose, he thought, when nine times out of ten she left them open, in spite of his admonitions.
“Open the bloody gates!” He shouted it out of the window but they took no notice. Or rather, one of them stuck a camera in through it.
He got out and they clustered about him, plucking at his clothes, cameras in his face. Someone was actually sitting on the top bar of the left-hand gate.
“You off to London, Jims?”
“What’ll you say to Zillah when you get there?”
“Was it a contract killer who murdered Jeff Leach?”
“Will Zillah stick by you, Jims?”
Jims pulled open both gates, The reporter sitting on one of them tumbled off and lay on the ground, shouting that he’d broken his leg. He shook his fist and said he’d get Jims for that if it was the last thing he did. While they were trying to bar his exit Jims, resigned to sacrificing his expensive oak gates if necessary, drove straight at the pack and forced them to jump out of his way. Most of them pursued him into the village, only giving up when they saw that the Crux Arms was open. He drove through Long Fredington, eyeing with bitterness Willow Cottage, where his courtship, such as it was, had begun, and then with a glimmer of interest, for he saw it was up for sale. He was reminded of what Leonardo had said about his “precious wife” talking
. There was nothing for it but to stop being a coward and read that newspaper. He pulled off the road at Mill Lane, where Zillah, on her way to Annie’s house, had once dreamed of her future with him, its affluence and its glamour, and read the story.
It was even worse than he’d expected, but now, after making his getaway from the pack and, thanks to them, becoming somewhat inured to a rain of onslaughts on his privacy, his proclivities, and his reputation, he was more able to take it. Plainly, Zillah was entirely responsible. He had underrated her, had treated her in a way he thought she would tolerate but had not. This was her revenge. There were imponderables in the story, though, things for which she could surely not be blamed. He turned back to page one and saw Natalie Reckman’s byline. It was she who’d done that snide article about Zillah in the early days of their marriage! Jims could easily imagine her watching Leonardo’s house, spying on his arrival, probably bribing the neighbors. Ah, the world was a wicked place, and those caught in the fierce light that beats upon its high shore, exposed to perpetual threat and peril.
For all that, everything was over between Leonardo and him. If he’d fancied himself in love for a few short weeks, all that had vanished in the blink of an eye. He never wanted to see Leonardo again. Jims was nothing if not a snob and he asked himself what sort of a fool would walk about a gentleman’s house wearing only a pair of vulgar underpants from Cecil Gee. And not have the sense to know a light in an uncurtained room showed up the occupants clearly to anyone outside? He wouldn’t be at all surprised if Leonardo’s mother lived on a council estate. That it was in (or more probably well outside) Cheltenham meant nothing. Congratulating himself on his escape, both from Fredington Crucis and Leonardo, Jims drove eastward and left the road to mount the steep escarpment that rises out of the Vale of Blackmoor and on which Shaston stands. Even today the view from Castle Green over “three counties of verdant pasture” is almost unchanged from Hardy’s time and still a sudden surprise to the unexpectant traveler, but Jims didn’t linger to look at it. He put the car in Shaston’s pay-and-display car park and walked along Palladour Street to an estate agent’s. The woman seated behind the desk was probably the only person in the United Kingdom, thought Jims, who hadn’t read the story in the newspaper and who didn’t recognize his name when he gave it. That was all to the good. His business transacted, he returned to the car and headed back to the London road.
