Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Mix got on his bike, or rather, drove as fast as the traffic alloweddown the Outer Circle and Baker Street. It was still nearly twelve forty-five when the assistant showed him into Mr. Pearson's office. Pearson was the only person Mix had evercome across who called people, in this case his staff, by their surnames alone. He associated such usage with what he knewof the army, men in prison or up in court, and he didn't like it.

"Well, Cellini?"

What kind of response was he supposed to make to that?"

“No answer was the stern reply," said Pearson, laughing athis feeble joke. He added as if it were an afterthought, "We're going to have to let you go."

From her sofa in the drawing room Gwendolen saw the postman come. She saw him walking up the path and heard the clatter of the letterbox as he dropped Stephen Reeves's letteron the mat. Already feeling stronger, she got herself off the sofa without too much strain and went to the front door for theletter. It wasn't from Stephen but from a charity appealing for funds to research cystic fibrosis. Her disappointment quicklygave way to reason. If he was away on holiday he wouldn't havecome back until Saturday or Sunday, so could hardly have got a letter to her by today.

She was hardly back on the sofa, thinking that in an hour or so she would go upstairs and have a bath, when Queenie arrived. Queenie refused to burden herself with bags and had brought her offerings in a shopping trolley.

"What an enormous appetite you and Olive must think I have," said Gwendolen. She examined the packet of Duchy Originals, the bag of marshmallows, the two tubes of Rolos, the dairy-free yogurts, and the pack of couscous salad without enthusiasm. "Perhaps you'll put it all in the fridge. Oh, and"-as Queenie went-"please don't mislay the flashlight again."

Queenie wondered what eccentric quirk or whim would make anyone keep a flashlight in a fridge but she didn't move it and, coming back, sat meekly in a chair opposite Gwendolen.

The weather being so unseasonably warm, she had put on her new pink suit and, though she knew such a happening unlikely, she had been hoping for her friend to compliment her on her appearance. Instead she was shown a red and black pouch thing on a kind of narrow belt that, without ever having seen anything like it before, she immediately knew to be part of the costume (if you could call it that) of a certain kind of dancer. The realization made her flush darkly.

"I suppose you know what it is and that's what you're blushing about."

"Of course I know what it is, Gwen."

She had spoken as she always did, very mildly, but Gwendolen chose to see it as recalcitrance. "All right, no need to bite my head off. Olive thinks it may be the property of a-er, paramourof Mr. Cellini's."

"Does it matter, dear? It doesn't look as if it cost very much."

"I don't like these mysteries," said Gwendolen. "It means he or she or both of them have been in my washhouse."

"You could ask him."

"I intend to. Of course he's out at present, doing whatever it is he does." Gwendolen sighed. "I think I shall have a bath in a minute."

This was a hint to her friend to leave, but Queenie took it differently. "Would you like me to help you, dear? I shouldn't mind at all. I bathed my dear husband every day when he was so ill."

Gwendolen contrived a stagy shudder. "No, thank you very much. I can manage perfectly. By the way," she said, though it wasn't by any way, "that Indian has written to me that Otto has eaten his guinea fowl." Temporarily forgetting Mr. Singh's prose prowess, she said, "Of course no decent English person would break the law by keeping what amounts to chickens in urban surroundings, virtually in the middle of London."

Very little roused Queenie, but as a voluntary worker forthe Commission for Racial Equality, she. could become irate when discriminatory remarks were made'.'"you know, Gwendolen,or perhaps you don't know, that if you said something like that in public you could be prosecuted. You're actually committing an offense." She added in a less haughty tone, "Mr.S ingh is a lovely man. He's very clever, he was a professor in the Punjab."

Gwendolen burst out laughing. "How ridiculous you are, Queenie. You should hear yourself. And now I'm going to have my bath, so you'd better run away."

On the way out Queenie met Otto in the hallway. He was sitting on the stairs near the bottom, part of a mouse grippedin his jaws, its head lying beside him on the worn carpet. "Go away,you horror," she said to him.

Otto gave her the sort of look that made Queenie very glad she was quite a large human being instead of small, four legged,and covered in fur. He managed to pick up the mouse's head as well as its hindquarters and streaked toward the first floor with his burden. Mix coming in the front door at that moment muttered something incomprehensible to Queenie and followed the cat upstairs.

Mr. Pearson had insisted he continue working through the week, though Mix would have liked to leave then and there. As for working out four weeks' notice…! They'd pay him till the end of next month, that was something. Of course it hadn't been the missed appointments and failed calls that had made Pearson sack him but a call he'd had only that morning fromthat old bitch Shoshana. Mounting the tiled flight, Mix thought self-pityingly that nothing but trouble had come to him from his association with Shoshana's Spa. He had gone there in the first place only in the hope it would introduce him to Nerissa, but he had got to know her anyway, she was almosthis friend now, and through his own determination not through any help from the spa. That had simply brought him an association with Danila, who had so insulted and provoked him thathe'd had to react violently against her. Frankly, she'd forcedhim to kill her. He'd agreed to produce and sign that contract, again because of Danila, and now the result of it was that Shoshana had called Pearson and told him about it and then had the nerve to allege he'd never carried out his part of it. Thespite, the malevolence, took his breath away.What had he everdone to her? Nothing but fail to restore two pieces of equipment, not because he hadn't seen to them and told her what was wrong but because he hadn't yet been able to get the parts. He went into the flat and took a Diet Coke out of the fridge. When he had peeled back the cover and opened the hole in the lid, he drank about an inch of it and filled the can up with gin. That was better. Of course he'd have to get another job. That meant the Job Centre and probably drawing benefit for a while. The DSS would pay his rent, thank God. It was time he got something out of the government, it was his right, he'd paid enough in. Of course it wasn't just Shoshana's treachery that had stitched him up, it was Ed too, going to head office instead of keeping quiet for a few days when Mix hadn't made those two calls for him. That was what started it.

One thing Pearson could be sure of. He'd take with him as many of his clients as he could persuade to come. He'd undercut his old firm-why shouldn't he set up in business on hisown? This might be the making of him. He drank some moreof the gin and Coke mixture. Everyone knew how much betterit was to be self-employed than an employee. A fantasy beganforming in Mix's mind of himself as founder and boss of the largest exercise equipment and gym fittings company in th ecountry, a mega-conglomerate that took over Tunturi and PJFitness and of course Fiterama. He pictured the joy of sitting at his huge ebony desk in his glass-walled thirtieth-floor office, two glamorous secretaries in micro-skirt in the anteroom, and Pearson coming to him cap in hand to beg a small pension for his enforced early retirement…

Meanwhile, freedom lay before him. He'd use the time in cementing his friendship with Nerissa. Maybe think of some other reason to call on her and get inside the house. Suppose he delivered a parcel to her? It wouldn't have to be real, itwouldn't have had to come from a mail order company or besomething she'd ordered from a shop, it could be just old magazines wrapped up in brown paper. She'd understand once it had got him inside and she'd talked to him properly. Or he could pretend to be peddling election campaign literature, takeher some candidate's manifesto that had been delivered first tohim. There must be a local election coming up next month, there always was, wasn't there? Anyway, she wouldn't know anymore than he did.