Ruth Rendell: A Demon in My View

Stanley Caspian sat at the desk, as he always did when he came to 142 for his Saturday morning conference with Arthur Johnson. Arthur sat in the other chair. On the desk were spread the rent books and cheques of the tenants. Each rent book had its own brown envelope with the tenant’s name printed on it. This had been an innovation of Arthur’s and he had done the printing. Stanley wrote laboriously in the rent books, pressing his pen in hard and making unnecessary full-stops after every word and figure.

“I’ll be glad to see the back of that Dean,” he said when he had inked in the last fifty pence and made the last full-stop. “Middle of next month and he’ll be gone.”

“And his gramophone,” said Arthur, “and his wine bottles filling up our little dustbin. I’m sure we’ll all be devoutly thankful.”

“Not Kotowsky. He won’t have anyone to go boozing with. Still, thank God he’s going off his own bat, is what I say. I’d never have been able to get rid of him, not with this poxy new Rent Act. Put the kettle on, me old Arthur. I fancy a spot of elevenses.”

And tenses and twelveses, Arthur thought. He plugged in the electric kettle and set out the cups. He wouldn’t have dreamed of eating anything at this hour, but Stanley, who was enormously fat, whose belly almost burst open the front of his size-seventeen-collar shirt, opened one of the packages he had brought with him and began devouring sandwiches of bread rolls and processed cheese. Stanley spluttered crumbs all over his shirt, eating uninhibitedly like some gross, superannuated baby. Arthur watched him inscrutably. He neither liked nor disliked Stanley. For him, as for everyone, he had no particular feeling most of the time. He wished only to be esteemed, to keep in with the right people, to know where he stood. Inclining his head towards the door behind him, he said:

“A little bird told me you’d let that room.”

“Right,” said Stanley, his mouth full. “A little Chinese bird, was it?”

“I must confess I was a bit put out you told Miss Chan before telling me. You know me, I always believe in speaking out. And I was a little hurt. After all, I am your oldest tenant. I have been here twenty years, and I think I can say I’ve never caused you a moment’s unease.”

“Right. I only wish they were all like you.”

Arthur filled the cups with instant coffee, boiling water and a dribble of cold milk. “No doubt, you had your reasons.” He lifted cold eyes, of so pale a blue as to be almost white. “I mustn’t be so sensitive.”

“The fact is,” said Stanley, shovelling spoonfuls of sugar into his cup, “that I wondered how you’d take it. You see, this new chap, the one that’s taking Room 2, he’s got the same name as you.” He gave Arthur a sidelong look and then he chortled. “You have to laugh. Coincidence, eh? I wondered how you’d take it.”

“You mean he’s also called Arthur Johnson?”

“Not so bad as that. Dear oh dear, you have to laugh. He’s called Anthony Johnson. You’ll have to take care your post doesn’t get mixed up. Don’t want him reading your love letters, eh?”

Arthur’s eyes seemed to grow even paler, and the muscles of his face tightened, tensed, drawing it into a mask. When he spoke his accent smoothed into an exquisite, slightly affected English. “I’ve nothing to hide. My life is an open book.”

“Maybe his isn’t. If I wasn’t in a responsible position I’d say you could have a bit of fun there, me old Arthur.” Stanley finished his sandwiches and fetched a doughnut from the second bag. “Sexual Behavior in the Human Male , that’s the sort of open book his life’ll be. Good-looking young devil, he is. Real flypaper for the girls, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Arthur couldn’t bear that sort of talk. It made him feel sick. “I only hope he’s got a good bank reference and a decent job.”

“Right. He’s paid two months’ rent in advance and that’s better than all your poxy bank references to me. He’s moving in Monday.” Stanley got heavily to his feet. Crumbs cascaded onto desk, envelopes, and rent books. “We’ll just have a look in, Arthur. Mrs. Caspian says there’s a fruit bowl in there she wants and young Anthony’ll only smash it.”

Arthur nodded sagely. If he and his landlord were in agreement about anything, it was the generally destructive behaviour of the other tenants. Besides, he enjoyed penetrating the rooms, usually closed to him. And in this one he had a special interest.

It was small and furnished with junk. Arthur accepted this as proper in a furnished room, noting only that it was far from clean. He picked his way over to the window. Stanley, having secured his fruit bowl, of red and white Venetian glass, from heterogeneous stacks of crockery and cutlery on the draining board, was admiring the only object in the place less than twenty years old.

“That’s a bloody good washbasin, that is,” he remarked, tapping this article of primrose-coloured porcelain. “Cost me all of fifteen quid to have that put in. Your people did it, as I remember.”

“It was a reject,” said Arthur absently. “There’s a flaw in the soap dish.” He was staring out of the window which overlooked a narrow brick-walled court. Above an angle of wall you could see the topmost branches of a tree. The court was concreted and the concrete was green with lichen, for into the two drains on either side of it flowed—and sometimes overflowed—the waste water from the two upstairs flats and Jonathan Dean’s room. In the wall which faced the window was a door.

“What are you looking at?” said Stanley, none too pleasantly, for Arthur’s remark about the washbasin had perhaps rankled.

“Nothing,” said Arthur. “I was just thinking he won’t have much of an outlook.”

“What d’you expect for seven quid a week? You want to remember you pay seven for a whole flat because the poxy government won’t let me charge more for unfurnished accommodation. You’re lucky, getting your hooks on that when I didn’t know any better. Oh yes. But times have changed, thank God, and for seven quid a week now you look out on a cellar door and lump it. Right?”

“It’s no concern of mine,” said Arthur. “I imagine my name-sake will be out a lot, won’t he?”

“If he’s got any sense,” said Stanley, for at that moment there crashed through the ceiling the triumphant chords of the third movement from Beethoven’s Eighth. “Tschaikowsky,” he said learnedly. “Dean’s at it again. I like something a bit more modern myself.”

“I was never musical.” Arthur gravitated into the hall. “I must get on with things. Shopping day, you know. If I might just have my little envelope?”

———

His shopping basket in one hand and an orange plastic carrier containing his laundry in the other, Arthur made his way along Trinity Road towards the launderette in Brasenose Avenue. He could have used the Coinerama in Magdalen Hill, but he went to Magdalen Hill every weekday to work and at the weekends he liked to vary his itinerary. After all, for good reason, he didn’t go out much and never after dark.

So instead of cutting through Oriel Mews, past the Waterlily pub and making for the crossroads, he went down past All Souls’ Church, where as a child he had passed two hours each Sabbath Day, his text carefully committed to memory. And at four o’clock Auntie Gracie had always been waiting for him, always, it seemed to him, under an umbrella. Had it invariably rained on Sundays, the granite terrace opposite veiled in misty grey? That terrace was now gone, replaced by barracklike blocks of council flats.

He followed the route he and Auntie Gracie had taken towards home, but only for a little way. Taking some pleasure in making the K.12 bus stop for him alone, Arthur went over the pedestrian crossing in Balliol Street, holding up his hand in an admonitory way. Down St. John’s Road, where the old houses still remained, turn-of-the-century houses some enterprising but misguided builder had designed with Dutch façades, and where plane trees alternated with concrete lamp standards.