Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

“I hope you’ll excuse the intrusion, but it’s about the little matter of the rent.”

“You needn’t have bothered. I’d have put it out before Caspian came.” Anthony Johnson finished his tea. “It’s on the table,” he said casually, “among all that other stuff.”

“All that other stuff” was a formidable array (or muddle, as Arthur put it to himself) of books, some closed, some open and face downwards, scattered sheets of foolscap, dog-eared notebooks and a partially completed manuscript.

“With your permission,” Arthur said, and delicately picked about in the mess as if it were a pile of noxious garbage. He came upon the brown rent envelope under a weighty tome entitled Human Behaviour and Social Processes .

“The rent book and my cheque are in there.”

Arthur said nothing. Under the rent envelope was another, stamped and addressed, but without his glasses he was unable, from this distance, to read the address. At once it occurred to him that this letter might be to H in Bristol. He thought quickly, said almost as quickly:

“I have to go to the post with a letter of my own. Would you care for me to take this one of yours?”

Anthony Johnson’s hesitation was unmistakeable. Was he remembering that other occasion on which Arthur had posted a letter for him and the unfortunate antagonism that action had led to? Or did he perhaps suspect a tampering with his post? Anthony Johnson threw back the bed covers, got up and came over to the table. He picked up the envelope and looked at it in silence, indecisively, deep in thought. Arthur managed a considerate patient smile, but inwardly he was trembling. It must be to her, it must be. Why else would the man linger over it like this, wondering, no doubt, whether posting it would risk a violent confrontation with the woman’s husband.

At last Anthony Johnson looked up. He handed the letter to Arthur with a funny swift gesture as if he must either be rid of it quickly or not at all.

“O.K.,” he said. “Thanks.”

Once more in the hall and alone, Arthur held the envelope up to within two inches of his eyes. Then he put on his glasses to make absolutely sure. But it was all right. The letter was addressed to a Mrs. Pontifex in Gloucester. He was savouring his relief when Stanley Caspian banged in, sucking a toffee. Arthur put the kettle on without waiting to be asked and handed Stanley his rents. Stanley opened Winston Mervyn’s envelope first.

“Well, my God, if Mervyn’s not going now! Given in his poxy notice for the first week of Jan.”

“A little bird told me he’s getting married.”

Stanley munched ill-temperedly, jabbing so hard into Arthur’s rent book that his pen made a hole in the page. “That’ll be the whole of the first floor vacant. Makes you wonder what the world’s coming to.”

“The rats,” said Arthur, “might be said to be leaving the sinking ship.”

“Not you, though, eh? Oh no. Those as have unfurnished tenancies don’t go till they’re carried out feet first. You’ll die here, me old Arthur.”

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Arthur. “Now, if I could have my little envelope?”

He took it and set off with his laundry, pausing outside Kemal’s Kebab House to drop both letters in the pillar box.

19

————

During the week which followed Arthur was oppressively aware of the emptiness of 142 Trinity Road. Li-li had never been at home much, was flying to Taiwan for Christmas, and now Winston Mervyn was out every night. Soon he too would be gone. Then, if the pressure of the London housing shortage wasn’t strong enough to overcome people’s semi-superstitious distaste for 142, he and Anthony Johnson would in effect be the sole tenants. He would once have welcomed the idea. Once he had savoured those moments when he had had the house to himself, when the last of them to leave in the mornings had given the front door a final bang. And he had dreamed of being its only occupant, living high on the crest of silent emptiness, while she who inhabited the depths below awaited the attentions and whims of her master.

But now that empty silence disturbed him. For three nights out of the seven no light fell on to the court from the window of Room 2, and the dark well he could see below him when he drew his curtains brought him temptations he had no way of yielding to. It frightened him even to think of them, but these suppressed thoughts blossomed in dreams like tubers which, put away in the dark, throw out sickly, sluglike shoots. Not since he was a young man had he dreamed of that act he had three times performed. But he dreamed of it now and awoke one morning hanging half out of bed, his hands clenched as if in spasm round the leg of his bedside table which, unknowingly, he had dragged towards him.

The postman had ceased to call. In all the years Arthur had been there no such week as this, without a single letter, had passed. It was as if the Post Office were on strike. Of course it was easily explicable. Winston Mervyn had seldom received any post except that from estate agents; Li-li’s father wouldn’t write when he expected to see his daughter next week; little had ever come for Anthony Johnson but those mauve-grey Bristol envelopes. And yet this also seemed to contribute to Arthur’s feeling that all the forces of life were withdrawing from the house and leaving it as a kind of mausoleum for himself.

But on the morning of Saturday, December 14, something resembling a convulsion took place in it, like a death throe. The phone ringing wakened him. It rang for Winston Mervyn three times before nine o’clock. Then he heard Winston Mervyn running up and down the stairs, Anthony Johnson in Mervyn’s room, Anthony Johnson and Mervyn talking, laughing. He went down to see if there was, by chance, any post. There wasn’t. The door of Room 1 was open, music playing above the whine of the vacuum cleaner. Li-li had decided, unseasonably and uniquely, to spring-clean her room. And Stanley Caspian, usually so mindful of the fabric of his property, added to the noise by slamming the front door so hard that plaster specks lay scattered on his car coat like dandruff.

Stanley detained him so long with moans about the rates, the cruelty of the government towards honest landlords, and the fastidiousness of prospective tenants that he was late in getting to the shops. Every machine at the launderette was taken. He had to leave his washing in the care of Mr. Grainger’s nephew’s wife who was distant with him and demanded an extra twenty pence for service.

“I never heard of such a thing,” said Arthur.

“Take it or leave it. There’s inflation for me same as for others.”

Arthur would have liked to say more but he was afraid it might get back to Mr. Grainger, so he contented himself with a severe, “I’ll call back for it at two sharp.”

“Four’d be more like,” said the woman, “what with this rush,” and she paid Arthur no compliments as to the superiority of his linen.

It was a June-skied day but hazeless and clearer than any June day could be, and the sunlight was made icy by a razor wind. Angrily, Arthur shouted at the children who were climbing on the statues. They took no notice beyond shouting back at him a word which, though familiar to any resident of West Kenbourne, still brought a blush to his face.

A taxi stood outside 142, and as he approached, Winston Mervyn and Anthony Johnson came out of the house and went up to it. Arthur thought how awkward and embarrassed he would feel if called upon to say to a taxi driver what Winston Mervyn now said:

“Kenbourne Register Office, please.”

He said it in a bold, loud voice, as if he were proud of himself, and favoured everyone with a broad smile. Arthur would have liked to pass on up the steps without a word, but he knew better than to neglect his social obligations, particularly as Stanley Caspian had told him this coloured fellow, obviously well off, was buying a house in North Kenbourne.