Authors: Ruth Rendell
“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Desperately, forgetting the consequences, he said, “There’s no such thing as magic, Dolly. There never was and there never will be. They were all crooks or mad or superstitious fools who wrote those books. It’s all rubbish. You can’t reverse the laws of nature with water and incense and stupid words, you can only deceive people. If I’ve deceived you, I’m sorry, I’m desperately sorry, but you’ve got to know sometime, it may as well be now. I was just a kid dressing up and pretending, don’t you see?”
She didn’t. He saw, to his horror, disbelief in her face and pain and resentment.
“Why did you keep on with it then? Why do you go to the Golden Dawn?”
“I was wrong,” he said bitterly. “I was wrong and I’m sorry. I’ll never do it again, though, that I can promise you. I’m going to see to it I never can do it again.” He jumped up and went swiftly out of the room, closing the door behind him.
She sat there quite still. She could see herself in the small mirror that Myra had hung on the opposite wall and she turned her face aside. Pup’s footsteps running up the stairs made a soft pounding through the house. The front door opened, closed, and she heard Harold cross the hall and go into the breakfast room.
“He doesn’t mean it,” Edith’s voice said. “He’ll calm down in a day or two.”
Myra laughed. “The fact is, Edith, he’s been seeing Yvonne Colefax, he’s been in her house with her, I could smell that perfume she uses all over him. Well, she was bound to prefer him over Doreen, wasn’t she? It stands to reason.”
“He’s upstairs now looking through his books to see what he can do for poor Dolly.”
“Mind you,” said Myra, “once that fellow is dead and George goes back to her, he’ll put a stop to that. He won’t want Peter there and Yvonne won’t want Peter either. The sooner that happens the better for all concerned, I’d say.”
“He’s upstairs making holy water and studying high magic,” Edith whispered.
At 9:30 Dolly picked up the phone. Yvonne answered after the second double ring. This time she did not say it was Dr. Colefax’s residence but uttered a timid “Hello?”
“It’s Dolly.”
“Oh, Dolly, how are you?”
“I’m all right. I’ve made you something for a surprise. Well, two things. Something to wear and something else. Would you like to come and fetch them sometime?”
Yvonne did not reply immediately. Her voice sounded strained and awkward.
“I’m a bit busy at the moment actually, Dolly.”
“I could come to you.”
“Just let’s leave it a bit, shall we? I mean, unless you think your brother would run them up to me sometime in the van. I tell you what, I’ll ring you.”
Dolly felt cold. She needed a glass of wine. As soon as she had rung off, she would brave the passage and the kitchen and fetch herself a fresh bottle of wine. But first …
“How is Ashley Clare? Is he—is he dead?”
“Dead?” echoed Yvonne shrilly. “No, of course he isn’t dead. He’s much better. He’s coming out of hospital for Christmas and George is taking him to Morocco for a week to convalesce.”
Dolly put the receiver back and left the room. There were no voices now, no shapes in the dark corners, nothing but herself alone, walking towards the kitchen and her wine. She had failed Yvonne and because of that Yvonne would never want to see her again.
T
he girl downstairs was a policewoman. Either that or a spy set on him by the builders. He was not sure which or she might be both, it hardly mattered. What was important was not to have too much to do with her. He must never allow himself to forget that he was wanted for murder, the police wanted him for murder, only as things stood they couldn’t quite pin it on him.
The girl downstairs called him Diarmit, pronouncing it incorrectly. He supposed she did that because the name Diarmit Bawne was still under his bell at the front door. He had left it there deliberately to keep the police from knowing Conal Moore had come back. That she called him Diarmit proved she didn’t know. She said she was called Andrea, an obvious invention, laughable when you thought about it.
“You ever go down on the old railway line?” he had asked her.
She shook her head. She said she had never heard of it, she didn’t know there was an old railway line.
“There was a girl murdered down there a year and a half back,” he said. “You want to be careful. He might strike again.”
“I don’t go there,” she said. “I told you, I don’t even know where it is.” And he saw that he had frightened her.
But he must be careful to give her a wider berth now, not to get talking with her, he might say dangerous things. Before he said that about the girl being murdered, she had tried to persuade him that there was no fear of the house being pulled down. As if she would know! Sometimes he thought she was a bit mentally unbalanced. At Christmas, before she went off somewhere for the four days, she brought him a piece of cold roast turkey and four mince pies. He didn’t eat them, though, he knew for a fact they had a truth drug in them which would make him reveal everything next time he saw her. He took them across the road by night and left them on the green for the Dalmatian and the collie to find in the morning. Truth drugs were harmless to dogs, who couldn’t talk anyway.
The New Year was two days old when the builders came back and started pulling down a row of shops with mansion flats over them on the west side of the green. The shops had been boarded up for months. He felt very relieved to see the men so fully occupied over there because it meant they couldn’t start here yet. For the first time in months he went out in daylight and the place he went to revisit was the old railway line and the Mistley tunnel, scene of Conal Moore’s crime.
Coming home, he met Andrea in the hall and with her that police colleague of hers, the fair-haired cop who drove a van camouflaged to look like it came from a typewriter firm. He looked through them, he ignored them, not speaking a word, it was the only way.
“You see?” said Andrea. “Now don’t you think we ought to do something?”
“He’s harmless,” said Pup. “It’s no business of yours.”
“Yours,” not “ours.” She noticed that. They went upstairs and Andrea unlocked the door of her room. Knowing he was coming home with her, she had left the room spick and span before she went out in the morning. The steel of the draining board, glimpsed through the canework of her new room divider, shone like a mirror. On the coffee table lay a large and glossy Haringey Public Library book of Audubon prints, open at a printing of Columbian humming birds. He felt uncomfortable and sad.
She began making coffee. Overhead the pacing had started. “I still think I ought to do something,” she said. “I,” he noticed, not “we.” She looked at him. “Peter?”
“Mmm?”
“Mr. Manfred’s opening a new salon in St. Alban’s. He says if I’ll go there he’ll let me have one of the flats.”
As the footsteps pounded, “That might be the answer,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. “It was just that I thought … Oh, well.”
He knew what she thought. That there was a chance he might ask her to stay, to tell her they’d start going steady, get engaged.
“It wouldn’t work out,” he said gently. “Really. We’ve had a nice time but it wouldn’t work.”
She glanced at the bed where the cushions were arranged with perfect symmetry, as smooth and shiny as mint humbugs. “Is it because I wouldn’t—you know?”
“Oh, no.”
“My mother says that, if you do, a boy doesn’t want you afterwards but my girl friend at the salon says they only want you if you do. It’s hard to know.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. Really.”
Andrea poured two cups of coffee. “I’ll tell Mr. Manfred in the morning that I’ll go to St. Alban’s. I think it could be quite soon.”
“It’ll be the best thing, you know,” said Pup. “No more of that racket going on and you won’t have to do anything about him.”
“I wouldn’t have anyway. Not on my own.” She looked out of the window. It was snowing lightly, flakes melting on the glass and running down. She drew the curtains. “Is there someone else, Peter?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, there is.” He was tired of telling lies, he thought he might try never to tell any more.
Andrea looked as if she was waiting for him to go so that she could have a good cry. What could he do about that? He had never made her any promises or led her to believe that he felt any more for her than liking sometimes to be with her. She stood up and looked wanly at him. He hugged her and said goodbye and went downstairs out into the snowy evening. They were all gone now, Suzanne married, Philippa in Australia, Terri with a new boy friend. Caroline had never been more than a flash in the pan.
Fidelity now seemed extraordinarily attractive to him. He wondered if he could ever again fancy a girl who was not blonde, whose eyes were any shade but aquamarine or who weighed more than a featherlight seven stone. He got into the van, switched on the wipers and drove carefully through the driving sleet up to the Bishop’s Avenue.
It took Dolly a while to believe, fully to realize. Like a trustful cripple she had gone to her Lourdes and the miracle she knew must happen had not happened. There had been no surprise in hearing from Yvonne, the day after the conjuring of Anubis, that Ashley Clare was ill. She had expected that, known it already. And later on she had known he would die, it was simply a matter of time. That he was recovering, that he was better and would get well, was not only dismaying—for a while it was incredible.
She could not believe that Pup had failed. If the evocation had not worked, it was because he had not known what its purpose was or even of the existence of the little wax figure. It was she who had done it wrong, it was her fault. Gradually she was coming to understand that the evocation had not succeeded, that Ashley Clare was in truth recovering and that this was because she had made a mess of things.
Yvonne had promised to phone and Dolly waited almost hourly for that phone call. She disliked going out in case Yvonne phoned while she was out. The green cord dungarees hung on a hanger from the picture rail in the living room and the blonde doll in the white diaphanous dress sat on the mantelpiece between the ballet girl and Ashley Clare.
Dilip Raj phoned for Pup. Someone who said she was a friend of Caroline’s sister phoned for Pup. Wendy Collins phoned. She didn’t say what she wanted apart from asking Dolly how she was. A bit later on she came to the house and behaved in an abstracted way as if she were listening or looking for someone who wasn’t there. Dolly thought she had put on weight. She had never before seen Wendy’s hair in such stiff curls; it looked like a wig.
“I love your sweet dolls,” she said. “I’ve always liked dolls since I was a wee thing. I never had any time for other toys, only dolls.”
“Pity you never had any children of your own,” said Dolly.
Wendy tossed her head. “I’ve got plenty of time yet.
Would you make me some of those?” She pointed at the dungarees.
It was the first time Dolly had felt like laughing for ages. But it wasn’t for her to comment on what was suitable or unsuitable for potential customers.
“If you like.”
Dolly wondered why she lingered for a good five minutes in the hall before leaving. The phone rang. It was Christopher Theofanou for Pup. Each time the phone rang, every single time, Dolly thought it must be Yvonne. Yet she was never really surprised, for in her heart she knew why Yvonne didn’t phone, why she wanted no more to do with her. She recalled that breath of perfume she had smelt on Pup. Yvonne liked Pup better than ever. Now that she knew him personally, she had probably asked him herself to break up the friendship between her husband and Ashley Clare.
He might do it for her, Dolly thought, though he would do nothing for his own sister, who loved him like a mother.
“To be perfectly honest,” Myra said to Edith, “he was just having Doreen on when he said he didn’t believe in magic. Of course he believes in it, it’s his life. He’s still going to those meetings of his, isn’t he?”
Edith said something Dolly couldn’t catch.
“He’s at the Golden Dawn now,” said Myra. “It stands to reason he wouldn’t waste all those years of study.”
Pup didn’t want to
kill,
that was the trouble. It had upset him, killing Myra, he really only wanted to do white magic. Not even to please Yvonne, not even to bring her husband back to her would he kill Ashley Clare. That, Dolly thought, must have been why Ashley Clare hadn’t died, because Pup hadn’t willed it. She sat by the living-room window, her first glass of wine from the second bottle of the evening in her hand. It was snowing lightly. She heard Harold let himself out of the house. He walked along the pavement under the bare branches of the ginkgo tree without looking up at the lighted window. Since becoming an author, he had taken to wearing a brown tweed hat.
He was never much comfort to her, yet she felt more alone when he had gone out. If Ashley Clare didn’t die, she would never see Yvonne again. She knew that for certain, she knew it as positively as she believed in Pup’s spells. For promising to get her husband back and then failing, Yvonne would hate her forever.
During the night there was a frost and icicles hung in fringes from the eaves of houses in Manningtree Grove. In spite of the cold, Dolly got up very early and walked to the Archway and caught the No. 210 bus. She wore her old thick winter coat, one of the few garments she had that she had not made herself, and knee boots and a scarf round her head. She noticed people who had wrapped scarves yashmak-wise round their faces, and while she waited for the bus, she did the same with her scarf. Afterwards she felt just like anyone else, unscarred, unmarked, not set apart, and holding her head high, she looked others in the eye.
It was George Colefax she hoped to see emerge from the entrance to Arrowsmith Court, not Ashley Clare. She wanted only to check that they had returned from Morocco. Ashley Clare would still be convalescent, would hardly yet venture out early on an icy morning like this one.
She paced up and down the pavement, rubbing her hands together in their woollen gloves. People were knocking snow off the roofs and bonnets of cars. There was a silvery icing of hoarfrost on the branches of trees. The low sun had come just above the horizon, reminding Dolly of that lovely morning—years ago, it now seemed—when she and Pup had walked along the old railway line to cut the flowering hazel branch at sunrise.