Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

Yet you have ditched me in such a cold peremptory way that even now I can hardly believe it. When I think of that last letter of yours it takes my breath away. I don’t mean to reproach you for the pain you have caused me but to ask you what you think you are doing to yourself? Have you, in these past weeks, ever asked yourself what kind of a woman can live your sort of ambivalent life, pretending and lying to a husband and lover equally? What happens to that woman as she grows older and begins to lose any idea of what truth is? Life isn’t worth living for someone who is a coward, a liar and has lost self-respect, particularly when she is sensitive as, God knows, you are .

Think about it. Don’t think about me if you don’t want to but think about the damage fear and woolly mindedness and that sort of confusion are going to do to whatever there is under that pretty exterior of yours .

If you want to see me I’ll see you. But I won’t commit myself to more than that now. I think I would be wilfully damaging my own self if I were ever to get back into a relationship with the kind of person you are. A.

But who could he send it to? Who could be his go-between?

It was talking about Christmas with Winston that brought him what could be a solution. Helen had told him of friends in Gloucester with whom she and her mother and, since her marriage, Roger as well, spent every Christmas. He had never heard their address and their name eluded him, though Helen had mentioned it. She had told him, he remembered, that it was Latin for a priest …

“Linthea and I,” Winston said, “will still be on our honeymoon. Lovely having Christmas in Jamaica, only I feel a bit bad about Leroy. Maybe we ought to take him. On our honeymoon? Perhaps I’m being too conventional, perhaps …”

“What’s the Latin for a priest?” said Anthony abruptly.

Winston stared at him. “Sorry if I’m boring you.”

“You’re not boring me. I hope you’ll have a fabulous honeymoon. I should be so lucky. Take the whole Merton Street Primary School with you if you like, but just tell me the Latin for a priest.”

“Pontifex, pontificis , masculine.”

He knew it was the right name as soon as he heard it. Pontifex. He’d go to the public library, the main branch in the High Street, where they kept telephone directories for the whole country. “Thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” said Winston. “Just a dictionary, I am. Mr. Liddell or Mr. Scott.”

There were three Pontifexes (or pontifices , as Winston would have put it) in the city of Gloucester. But A.W. at 26 Dittisham Road was obviously the one, Miss Margaret and Sir F. being unlikely candidates. Anthony prepared an envelope: Mrs. Pontifex, 26 Dittisham Road, Gloucester, and on the flap: Sender, A. Johnson, 2/142 Trinity Road, London W15 6HD. The letter to Helen went into a blank, smaller envelope to be inserted inside it. But there would have to be a covering letter.

Anthony knew he couldn’t write to a woman he had never met, instructing her to pass an enclosure to another woman without the knowledge of that woman’s husband. But that wouldn’t be necessary. Helen and Roger would arrive at the Pontifex home on, say, Christmas Eve. Mrs. Pontifex would hand his letter over to Helen either when they were alone together—perhaps in Mrs. Pontifex’s bedroom immediately after their arrival—or else, and more likely, in public and full view of a company of festive relatives. Did that matter? Anthony thought not. This way, even if Roger were to demand to see it, Helen would see it first.

Dear Mrs. Pontifex, I know that Mrs. Garvist will be spending Christmas with you and I wonder if you would be kind enough to give her the enclosed when you see her. I have mislaid her present address, otherwise I would not trouble you. Yours sincerely, Anthony Johnson .

It looked, he thought, peculiar, to say the least. He had mislaid the address of someone with the rare name of Garvist whom he obviously knew well, but was in possession of the address of someone with the equally rare name of Pontifex whom he didn’t know at all. If one name could be found in the phone book so could the other. He stuck a stamp on the envelope. He looked at this result of so much complicated effort. Was it worth it? Would any possible outcome mitigate the depression which enclosed him? The letter need not, in any case, be sent till a few days before Christmas. Pushing it to one side with a heap of books and papers and notes, he wondered if, in the end, he would send it at all.

When Arthur spoke of “my solicitor” he meant a firm in Kenbourne Lane which had acted for him twenty years before in the matter of proving Auntie Gracie’s meagre will. Since then he had never communicated with this firm or been inside its offices, but he went there now and it cost him fifteen pounds to be told that unless there were any repairs outstanding to the fabric of his flat, he hadn’t a leg to stand on against Stanley Caspian in the matter of the rent increase. Although, as he put it to himself exaggeratedly, the rest of the place was falling down, Flat 2 was in fact in good order. Almost wishing that the roof would spring a leak, Arthur managed some petty revenge by telling a young couple whom he found waiting in the hall before Stanley Caspian’s Saturday arrival that Flat 1 had macabre associations and that its rent could be knocked down to eight pounds a week by anyone who cared to try it on. The young couple argued with Stanley but they didn’t take the Kotowskys’ flat.

The police had not reappeared. Everyone took it for granted Brian Kotowsky had murdered his wife. But Arthur remembered the case of John Reginald Halliday Christie. Christie had murdered, among others, another man’s wife and that man had been hanged for it. But in the end that murder had been brought home to the true perpetrator. Arthur never relaxed his surveillance of the post or failed to put his door on the latch when he heard anyone use the telephone. Wednesday, November 27, had been a bad evening but it had passed without Anthony Johnson making a call. No letters from Bristol had come for more than a fortnight. Surely there would be none? Arthur observed Anthony Johnson coming and going at his irregular hours, a little dejected, perhaps, as if some of that youthful glow and vigour which he had noticed on their first meeting, had gone out of him. But we all have to grow up and face, Arthur thought, the reality and earnestness of life. Once, passing beneath his window, Anthony Johnson raised a hand and waved to him. It wasn’t a particularly enthusiastic wave, but Arthur would have distrusted it if it had been. It signified to him only that Anthony Johnson bore him no malice.

On the morning of Saturday, December 7, he wrote a stiff letter to his solicitor, deprecating the high cost of such negative advice but nevertheless enclosing a cheque for fifteen pounds. He always paid his bills promptly, having an undefined fear of nemesis descending should he be in debt to anyone for more than a day or two. At nine he saw the postman cross the street and he went down to take in the mail. Nothing but a rates demand for Stanley Caspian which shouldn’t, by rights, have come to Trinity Road at all.

Li-li Chan’s rent envelope was on the hall table and so was Winston Mervyn’s. Anthony Johnson’s, however, was missing. Arthur listened warily outside the door of Room 2. Silence, then the clink of a tea cup against a saucer. He knocked softly on the door and gave his apologetic cough.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson,” said Arthur, feeling this was ridiculous, but not knowing how else to put it.

“One minute.”

About a quarter of a minute passed and then the door was opened by Anthony Johnson in jeans and a sweater which had obviously been pulled on in haste. The room was freezing, the electric fire having perhaps only just been switched on. From the state of the bed and the presence on the bedside table of a half-consumed cup of tea, it was evident that Anthony Johnson had been having a lie-in. And to his caller’s extreme disapproval, he intended to resume it, for, having offered Arthur a cup of tea which was refused, he got back into bed fully clothed.