Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

“To marry,” said Dean, “is to domesticate the Recording Angel. Once you are married there is nothing left for you, not even suicide, but to be good.”

Only Li-li laughed. The Mervyn relatives looked blank. Winston Mervyn got up abruptly and stalked to the bar, while Anthony Johnson, with a violence which alarmed Arthur because he couldn’t at all understand it, said:

“For God’s sake, shut up! D’you ever stop and think what you’re saying?”

Dean’s face fell. He blushed. But he leaned across Arthur almost as if he wasn’t there and whispered on beery breath into Li-li’s face, “You like me, don’t you, darling? You’re not so bloody fastidious.”

Li-li giggled. There was some awkward dodging about, and then Arthur realised she was kissing Dean behind his back.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you’d care to change places with me?”

Why this should have caused so much mirth—general laughter after awkwardness—he was unable to understand, but he thought he could take it as his chance to leave. And he would have left had not Mervyn returned at that moment with another tray of drinks including a second small brandy. He edged along the settle, leaving Li-li and Dean huddled together.

It was a pity, in a way, about the brandy, because it necessarily brought memories and associations. But without it he couldn’t have borne the party at all, couldn’t even have looked on the conviviality or withstood the incomprehensible warring tensions. Now, however, when he had drunk the last vapourous, fiery drop of it, he jumped to his feet and said rather shrilly that he must go. He must no longer trespass on their hospitality, he must leave.

“Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once,” said Dean.

Such rudeness, even if it came out of a book, wasn’t to be borne. Arthur made a stiff little bow in the direction of Mervyn and the new Mrs. Mervyn, gave a stiff little nod of the head in exchange for their farewells, and escaped.

The joy of getting out was heady. He hurried home through the mews, that dark throat where once, in its jaws, he had made death swallow a woman who flitted like a great black bird. A mouse, a baby, Maureen Cowan, Bridget O’Neill, Vesta Kotowsky … But, no. Home now, encountering no one.

At the top of the empty house he settled down to watch John Wayne discharging yet again the duties of a United States cavalry colonel. He leaned against the brown satin cushion, cool, clean, luxurious. The film ended at half-past eight. Rather late to begin on his ironing, but better late than on Sunday. For twenty years he had done his ironing on a Saturday.

Entering the kitchen to get out the ironing board and the folded linen, he looked in vain for the orange plastic bag. It wasn’t there. He had left it behind in the Waterlily.

20

————

The first to leave the party was Jonathan Dean. Anthony, aware that for the past half-hour Jonathan had been busy entangling his legs with Li-li’s under the table, supposed they would remain after he and the Mervyns had gone and that the evening would end for them by Li-li’s becoming Vesta’s successor. Things happened differently. Li-li departed to the passageway that housed the ladies’ lavatory. It also housed a phone, and when she came back she announced that she must soon go, as she had a date at seven-thirty. Junia Mervyn, a woman who seemed to take delight in the general discomfiture of men, laughed merrily.

“What about me?” said Jonathan truculently.

Li-li giggled. “You like to come too? Wait and I go call my friend again.”

“You know very well I didn’t mean that.”

“Me, I don’t know what men mean. I don’t try to know. I love them all a little bit. You like to go on my list? Then when I come back from Taiwan I make you number three, four?” She and Junia clutched each other, laughing. Jonathan got up and without a backward look or a word to his hosts, banged out of the pub.

The men were heavily, awkwardly, silent. Anthony, suddenly and not very aptly identifying, felt through his depression a surge of angry misogyny. And he said before he could stop himself:

“As a connoisseur of bad behaviour in women, I’d give you my prize.”

Li-li pouted. She sidled up to him, opening her eyes wide, trying her wiles. He wondered afterwards if he would actually have struck her, at least have given her a savage push, had Winston not interrupted by announcing it was time to leave for the airport.

He interposed his body, spoke smoothly. “Feel like coming with us, Anthony? My brother will give you a lift back.”

Anthony said he would. In a low voice he apologised to Linthea. She kissed his cheek.

“Have women really behaved so badly to you?”

“One has. It doesn’t matter. Forget it, Linthea, please.”

“I’m not to bother my pretty little head about it?”

Anthony smiled. This description of her head, goddesslike with its crown of coiled braids, was so inept that he was about to correct her with a compliment when Winston’s brother said:

“Your friend left his shopping behind.”

“He’s not our fliend,” said Li-li, “and it’s not shopping, it’s washing.” She pulled it out from under the settle, pointing to and giggling at the topmost item it contained, a pair of underpants. “You,” she said imperiously to Anthony, “take it back for him.”

“Suppose you do that? I’m going to the airport.”

“Me take nasty old man’s washing out on my date?”

“You’ve got time to take it home first,” said Winston. “It’s only a quarter past seven.” Always a controller of situations, he closed her little white hand round the handles of the orange plastic bag and placed her firmly but gently back on the settle. A fresh glass of martini in front of her, she sat silenced, looking very small and young. “That’s a good girl,” said Winston.

The night was cruelly cold, its clarity turning all the lights to sharply cut gems. Linthea took Winston’s arm and shivered against him as if, now she was going home, she could allow herself to feel the cold of an English winter for the first time. As they crossed the street, Anthony saw a familiar red sports car draw up outside the Waterlily.

The contents of the bag were worth, Arthur calculated, about fifty pounds—all his working shirts, his underwear, bed linen … It was unthinkable to leave them in that rough public house which would fill up, on a Saturday night, with God knew what riff-raff. But to go out at this hour into darkness?

One of them might, just might, have brought the bag back for him. He went out on to the landing, and the light from his own hall shed a little radiance as far as the top of the stairs. But below was a pit of blackness. There was nothing outside his door, nothing at the head of the stairs. He put on lights, descended. First he knocked on Li-li’s door, then on that of Room 2. But he knew it was in vain. Slits of light always showed round the doors when the occupants of the rooms were in.

If only he dared forget about it, leave it till the Waterlily opened in the morning. But, no, he couldn’t risk losing so much valuable property. And it was only a step to the pub, less than five minutes’ walk. He went back upstairs and put on his overcoat.

He walked rapidly up Camera Street, keeping his eyes lowered. But Balliol Street was full of people, corpses in brown grave clothes, their faces and their dress turned pallid or khaki by the colour-excluding sodium lamps. Yellow-brown too was the sports car parked outside Kemal’s Kebab House, but Arthur recognized it as belonging to one of Li-li’s young men. Only the traffic lights were bright enough to compete with that yellow glare. Their green and scarlet hurt his eyes and made him blink.