Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

She glanced up at the time and it gave her a shock. Olive,with or without her niece, would be here in an hour and she hadn't yet bought the cakes. She couldn't even be sure she had enough milk. This letter would have to wait till later or even until she had had a reply to the first one.

For all Olive had said about her niece's passion for old Londonbuildings, Hazel Akwaa showed little interest in St. BlaiseHouse. She turned out to be a quiet well-mannered woman who drank her tea and ate a plain biscuit in silence while Olive chattered. Olive wore black trousers with bell bottoms and ared sweater patterned with fir trees and people skiing, moresuitable for someone a third of her age, but her niece was in agray wool dress with a valuable-looking gold necklace. WhenOlive introduced her, Gwendolen had to ask her first to repeatthe surname, then to spell it, it was so outlandish, it soundedAfrican. Gwendolen knew her Rider Haggard from childhoodand thought she remembered a character from She or King 'Solomon's Mines called Akwaa. Surely Hazel whatever-her-name-had-been hadn't married an African?

"Would you like to see over the house?" Gwendolen asked when tea was over. "There are rather a lot of stairs."

She expected the woman to say she wouldn't let a little obstacle like stairs put her off, but Mrs. Akwaa looked far from enthusiastic. "Not particularly, if you don't mind."

"Oh, I don't mind. I can go up there whenever I choose, of course. I was going for your sake, Mrs. Akwaa."

"Hazel, please. I can see this lovely room from where I'm sitting and I doubt if the rest of the house can be more beautiful than this."

Gwendolen was mollified by this gracious remark. She decided to unbend a fraction. "And where do you live?"

"Me? Oh, in Acton."

"Really? 1 don't think I've ever been there. And how will you get home?" Gwendolen made it sound as if her guest livedin Cornwall and she wanted to get rid of her as soon as possible."Not in an underground train, I trust? You take your life in your hands using those."

"My daughter said she would come and fetch us at five-thirty. We shall all go back to my home for supper."

"How nice. And would that be the paragon your aunt is always telling me about?"

"I don't know about 'paragon,' " said Hazel Akwaa in nearly as cold a tone as Gwendolen's. "I have only the one daughter. Her father and I think she's very special but we are her parents, after all. Would you mind telling me where your toilet is?

"Gwendolen smiled her tiny half-smile. "The lavatory is on the first floor, the door facing you at the top of the first flight of stairs."

She decided, in Hazel Akwaa's absence, to tell Olive about the woodworm. "I have just been up there to examine it again. I've sent for Woodrid, but like all these firms today they mean to keep me waiting over a fortnight before they'll come. I don't suppose the floor will collapse in a fortnight." She gave asmall humorless laugh. "Do you happen to know if woodworm smells ?"

"I really don't know, Gwen. I've never heard of it smelling."

"Perhaps it was my imagination. I'd take you up and showyou only that great-niece of yours is coming in five minutes."

Hazel came back, followed by Otto. "Your lovely cat rubbed himself against me and when I stroked him he followed me down."

"Yes, it does seem to bestow its favors on some people," said Gwendolen in the sort of voice that implied there was no accounting for tastes.

Watching outside Nerissa's house in Campden Hill Square, Mix was rewarded by the sight of her coming out of her front door soon after half-past four and getting into her car. This time she was elegantly dressed in a honey-colored trouser suit and a large golden hat that she took off and deposited on thepassenger seat. She drove past him down the hill, slowing and turning her head briefly to stare at him. He was pleased. She'll know me again, he thought.

He had one more call to make before going home. This was at a house in Pembroke Villas, home of one of those rare clients who possessed a treadmill and actually used it, if not daily, three or four times a week. The belt on the machine hadshifted on its rollers too far to the left and Mrs. Plymdale wasn't strong enough, despite all her working out, to ply the spanner and fix it herself.

Her house had a drive on which he could park his car. He congratulated her on her adherence to exercise, adjusted the belt and oiled the machine. But the belt really needed renewing and he advised her to order a replacement now. The visit was completed in fifteen minutes and he was free for the rest of the day. He drove home via the Portobello Road, LadbrokeGrove, and Oxford Gardens, stopping on the way to buy a half-bottle of gin, a bottle of red wine, and a frozen chicken masala.

The late afternoon was very hot and the wind had dropped.He thought, I wonder if they've started looking for that girl,that Danila, there's been nothing in the papers so no one's told the police. He was afraid to find out but at the same time he wanted to know. If Shoshana's Spa didn't care, surely the people she'd rented that room from, surely they'd be wondering. He turned into St. Blaise Avenue. Outside the house where he lived, on a single yellow line, was parked a golden Jaguar. Funny, it looked a lot like Nerissa's from here. But, great cars as they were, one Jaguar was very much like another. That sharp-faced traffic warden he'd spotted round the corner wouldbe down on its owner like a ton of bricks.

He couldn't help wishing he'd noted Nerissa's registration number but he never had. There had seemed no point. He put his own car on the residents' parking, locked it, and wentacross the street to the Jaguar. Her large golden hat was lyingon the passenger seat. So the car was hers. He lifted his eyes,turned around and came face to face with her. He couldn't beI dreaming, it must be real…

"Nerissa," he said, "it's wonderful to get to talk to you at last."She raised her large black eyes to his but said nothing. She was standing quite still, as if in shock.

"You're parked on a yellow line, Nerissa," he said. "The traffic warden will catch you. Let me move the car for you,Nerissa."

"Miss Nash to you," said a voice from behind her. He had had eyes only for her, he hadn't seen either of the other two women. They were the kind who might have been invisible,and he never noticed them. The one who had spoken said, "My daughter will drive her own car, thank you. She is about to do so."

Nerissa smiled at him. It was such a radiant smile, sweet, kindly, and forbearing, that he almost fell on his knees at her feet. "That was very thoughtful of you," she said, got into the car and tossed the hat onto the backseat. The window was wound down. "Bye, now."

The car disappeared around the corner just as the warden appeared, almost running, documentation in hand. Mix stood for a moment on the hallowed ground where the Jaguar had been, now occupied only by an empty beer can, a strip of oilyrag, and a Magnum ice-cream wrapper.

The warden fancied himself as a wit. "Stay there and you'llget clamped, sir."

"Ha, ha," said Mix.

He drifted toward the house. So much of what happened to him these days had this dreaml ike quality about it. The dreamswere either glorious like the most recent, or nightmarish. What had become of reality? Well, it was real that he had spoken to Nerissa and-wonder of wonders!-she had spoken to him. And she had been so nice, so charming. She had called him thoughtful. If that old woman who said she was her mother hadn't interfered she'd probably have let him move the car, would even have got in beside him and let him drive her home. But the old woman had interfered. Mix would have liked to knock her down and trample on her. How could she be Nerissa's mother with that reddish-gray hair and that pale dog-face?