Ruth Rendell - A Demon in My View

He knew now. He would have laughed at himself if this had been a laughing matter, for the irony was that he who was writing a thesis on psychopathy, who knew all about psychopaths, had lived three months in the same house as a psychopath and not known it. So, of course, he must go to the police. Knew? Did he? Well, he was sure, certain. When we say that, Helen had once said, we always mean we are not quite sure, not quite certain. He shivered in the hot, fuggy yet draughty room. It had been a shock. Presently he began looking through his books, finding Arthur Johnson or aspects of him in every case history, finding what he well knew already, that if hardly anything is known of the causes of psychopathy, even less has been discovered of ways to cure it. Forever a prison for the criminally insane then, forever incarceration, helplessly inflicted and helplessly borne. But he would go to the police in the morning …

At last he undressed and got into bed. The triangle of sky was a smoky red scudded with black flakes of snow. He found it impossible to sleep and wondered if the man upstairs, lying in bed some twenty feet above him, also lay sleepless under his far greater weight of care.

At eight-thirty in the morning Arthur phoned Mr. Grainger at home. He wouldn’t be coming in, would have to take at least three days off. While he was on the phone he heard Anthony Johnson go into the bathroom, but the man didn’t come to the foot of the stairs. Why had he knocked on his door last night? To borrow something, to get change for the phone? Still fresh with him, still aching in his bruised ribs, was the terror those repeated knocks had brought. But nothing would have made him let Anthony Johnson in to see his face. For hours he had hunched over the window ledge, intermittently leaving his post to look at his face, to listen by the door for Anthony Johnson to phone the police, watching for Anthony Johnson to go out and fetch the police. By midnight, when nothing had happened and the little court had gone dark, he had lain down, spent but sleepless.

The last of four lectures by a distinguished visiting criminologist was to be given at the college that morning. Anthony had attended them all, been rather disappointed that they were more elementary than he had hoped, and now took notes abstractedly. He was tired and uneasy.

Still he hesitated to go to the police, although he had noted where the nearest station was, having passed its tall portals, its blue lamp, on his way to college on the K.12. One o’clock came and he was in the canteen, vacillating still, nauseated at the idea of betraying a man who had done him no injury. He seldom had much to say to the students. They were all younger than he and they seemed to him not much more than children. But now a girl who had sat next to him in the lecture room brought her tray to his table and pointed out to him a long-haired boy who was holding court at the far end of the room, surrounded by avid listeners.

“That’s Philip Harrison.”

“Philip Harrison?”

“The guy who was attacked in the car park on Saturday.”

Anthony didn’t look at him. He looked at the young girls who were his audience, one of whom was distressingly like Helen. If that girl had been in the car park she wouldn’t be here now, listening with innocent relish. She would be dead. He had only to go to the police station and tell them what he knew, so little that he knew, so tenuous as it was, yet so true a pointer. Dully, he pushed away his plate. He had eaten nothing. A great weariness overcame him and he wanted nothing so much as to lie down and sleep. He remembered how, once in the summer, he and Helen had lain in each other’s arms in a field in the West Country and for an hour he had slept with her hair against his cheek and the scent coming to him of seeded grass and wild parsley. Since then, it seemed, he had never slept so sweetly as during that hour. But the summer was past, in every sense, and the sweet hours of sleep. He got his coat, walked down the long hall, through the swing doors, out into the snow.

The police station was perhaps ten minutes’ walk away. The college grounds were empty and barren as if the cold had shaved all vegetation away but for the clipped turf and swept up all people like so much litter. There was no one in the grounds but himself and a girl whom he could see in the extreme distance coming in by the main gates. He walked towards her and she towards him down the long gravel drive.

And now he began collecting together his knowledge and suspicions of Arthur Johnson for a coherent statement to the police. But he was distracted by the sight of the approaching girl. By now he ought to be used to the deceptions practised on him by his eyes and his mind. He wasn’t going to catch his breath this time because a strange girl walked like Helen, moved her head like Helen, and now that she came nearer could be seen to have Helen’s crisp, golden hair. He trudged on, looking down at the gravel, refusing any longer to contemplate the girl who was now only some twenty or thirty yards from him.

But, in spite of himself, he was aware that she had stopped. She had stopped and was staring straight at him. He swallowed hard and his heart thudded. They stared at each other across the cold bare expanse. As he saw her lift her arms and open them, and as she began to run towards him, calling his name, “Tony, Tony!” he too ran towards her with open arms.

Her mouth was cold on his mouth but her body was warm. As he held her he knew he hadn’t been warm like this for weeks. The warmth was wonderful and the feel of her, but he was afraid to look at her face.

“Helen,” he said, “is it really you?”

23

————

They sat on a bench on College Green, not feeling the cold. Anthony held her face in his hands. He smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead, relearning the look and the feel of her. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I really can’t yet believe it.”

“I know. I felt like that.”

“You won’t go away? I mean, you won’t say in a minute that you’ve got a train to catch or anything like that?”

“I’ve nowhere to go. I’ve burned my boats. Tony, let’s eat. I’m hungry, I’m starving. You know I always want to eat when I’m happy.”

The Grand Duke was crowded. They went into a café that was humble and clean and almost empty.

“I, don’t know whether to sit opposite you or next to you. One way I can look, the other way I can touch you.”

“Look at me,” she said. “I want to look at you.”

She sat down and fixed her eyes on his face. She reached across the table and took his hand. They held hands on the cloth, hers covering his. “Tony, it’s all right now, it will always be all right now , but why didn’t you answer my letters?”

“Because you told me not to. You told me never to write to you.”

“Not my last three. I begged you to write to me at the museum. Didn’t you get them?”

He shook his head. “Since the end of October I’ve only had one letter from you and that was the one where you told me you never wanted to see me again.”

She drew back, then leaned forward, clutching his hand. “I never wrote such a thing!”

“Someone did. Roger?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—well, it’s possible, but … I wrote and told you I was leaving him and coming to you. But how could I come when you didn’t answer? I was crazy with misery. Roger went to Scotland and I waited at home alone night after night for you to phone.”

“I phoned,” he said, “on the last Wednesday of November.”

“By then I’d gone to my mother’s. I’d got a fortnight’s holiday owing to me and I went to my mother because I couldn’t bear being alone any more and being with Roger in Scotland would have been worse. I thought I’d never see you again.”