A Sight for Sore Eyes (22 page)

was at the eastern end of it. The further her taxi took her westwards the more Harriet~s misgivings increased. The driver set her down in Earl's Court outside a poky Italian restaurant between a betting shop and a tapas bar, its window full of fishing nets and packets of dried pasta. Simon, who was already there, said it was his favourite place. In the days when he was poor he had lived just round the corner. Harriet thought he looked awful, his hair quite white and down on his shoulders, his belly spreading expansively above the top of his jeans. Jeans! She was wearing a black and white striped silk dress and jacket, the skirt of the dress four inches above her knees and the jacket lapels very wide and thickly encrusted with red and black bead embroidery. But she could see they thought a lot of him at La Ruchetta. The proprietor came up to their table and made him a sort of bow and called him 'Maestro'. People at the other tables nudged each othe~r and stared. Simon's picture had been in the paper the previous week. He had done a big interview for The Times on the occasion of his new exhibition. 'Must be ten years,' he said to Harriet, without telling her she hadn't changed or looked younger than ever, or anything like that. 'How's Franldin?' 'Gone to San Sebastian on his hols,' said Harriet. Whatever might have been the rejoinder to that was lost when a gushing woman holding an album came up to Simon and asked if she could have his autograph for her daughter who was at the Chelsea College of Art. Simon signed and smiled at her and was very gracious. They both ordered the risotto and then the veal, and Harriet had to admit it was very good. The Frascati was very good and so was the Chianti. She was beginning to wonder what would have happened if she'd rung Simon in those distant days after Marc and before Otto and if she'd married him instead of Franklin, when Simon suddenly remarked that he had something to tell her. That was why he had responded to her phone call by asking her here. He wanted to try something out on her. Before he could say whatever it was there came into the restaurant and approached their table the most beautiful young man Harriet had seen for years. He was tall and slender and dark, with the features of Michelangelo's David and the smile of Tom Cruise, and he put Otto, Zak and Dilip, not to mention Teddy Brex, in the shade. A wild idea rushed into Harriet's head that Simon was doing her some kind of long-deferred favour, was for some reason of gratitude or simple generosity producing this boy for her. Disillusionment replaced it. Simon put out his hand and the way he squeezed the other's hand and looked into his dark eyes left no room for doubt. 'I am going to out myself, Harriet. This coming week. I'm actually holding a press conference - can you believe it? I really want to know what you think, about the wisdom of that, I mean. Not the wisdom of our relationship, I'm not in any doubt about that. Oh, by the way, this is Nathan.' 'But you're not gay!' said Harriet. 'Well, no, I wasn't. Or I thought I wasn't. People change with time.' He looked at Nathan again and said fondly, 'Look at him, he's enough to turn Casanova gay!' They had some champagne. Harriet felt chagrined, though she hardly knew why, for she didn't want Simon herself and she knew from experience the hopelessness of making overtures to such as Nathan. 'So am I making a wise move?' Simon asked her. She wanted to say that she didn't know and she didn't care. Instead that strange mantra or text she had first come across nearly thirty years before rose to her lips and she uttered it aloud. 'Fourteen Manvantaras and one Krita make one Kalpa.' 'Does that mean yes or no?' Simon asked. 'It means do as you like,' she said. He could tell he had upset her, but without knowing how could only say that he would stick to his decision. Harriet said rather spitefully that at least it would be something to read about in the papers and she looked forward to seeing what the gossip columnists made of it. A deep loneliness engulfed her, a sense of being left out of everything, and the prospect of the solitary homeward journey, the solitary homecoming, filled her with dread. She realised that she had anticipated something very different for the evening and when she was in the taxi that Simon had had the restaurant call for her she understood, in a rare moment of insight, that she had been looking for a friendship. Perhaps, more accurately, for the renewal of friendship, for someone to like and who would like her, as against someone to lust after. In the dim back seat of the cab she confronted her future and knew that the encounters with the Zaks and the Dilips must in the nature of things soon end. This year or next year and probably -she clenched her hands - with some instance of gross humiliation. That was when friends would be needed, but she had no friends beyond those social acquaintances of Franklin's, beyond the always a unavailable Anthers and Zithers of this world. An abyss seemed to open before her, the vacant hollow of the years ahead. In this mood of despair she let herself into Orcadia Cottage and went straight upstairs. A frightening feeling was replacing her loneliness, a sensation that she had no idea of what to do, no notion of how to pass the time, the night, there was absolutely nothing she wanted to do. Not eat, drink, watch television, read, listen to her phone messages, if any, not even go out again - where could she go? Not go to bed, not sleep, not even induce sleep with a sleeping pill. But she walked into her bedroom, took off her coat and threw it on the bed. Close up against the mirror she looked into her own face before turning sharply away. Far from weakening her, despair made her feel full of a wretched energy so that now she longed to do something active, even violent, attack a punchbag, kick at something soft and yielding. Or break the mirror and see her face and her body and the whole room crack and shiver and collapse. If she had been inclined to such things she would have gone running. Run around the block, stopped somewhere and worked out the way she had once seen a man exercise in Regent's Park, doing step aerobics up and down one of the seats. But she wasn't and she couldn't. She stretched out her arms, raised them above her head, thought of screaming. Then she heard it. The door that opened on to the top of the cellar stairs. Someone had come into the house by that door and closed it behind him, very nearly slammed it. It must be Franklin. Only Franklin had a key. For some reason he had come back. His woman had failed to be there to meet him. No one else, no intruder, would move with such confidence, make so much noise. Yet he never went near the cellar or the cellar stairs. She might almost have said he didn't know the cellar was there. An undefined anger filled her, rushing through her veins, heating her face. What was he doing? Why was he here? Knowing her to be out, guessing she would go out the moment he was gone, he was putting into action some plan that involved the cellar, that involved deceiving her. He must be hiding something there, and hiding it from her. Or even setting some sort of trap for her. That would be like him, she thought, envisaging his rictus grin and hearing his teasing voice. She looked for the pole with the hook that opened the fanlight and found it in the landing cupboard. It amused her to think of hitting him with it, striking him, perhaps mortally, and explaining afterwards that she thought he was a burglar, had been frightened out of her wits. She started down the stairs. The time-switch had caused the porch light to come on and should have done the same by the light in the dining-room. Inexplicably, it hadn't. But the light at the head of the cellar stairs had come on through human agency. The door at the head of the cellar stairs, which was never opened, which hadn't been touched for years, was open now. She forgot her anger in her desire to frighten him, simply to give him a shock. She wouldn't hit him -well, that depended on what he was doing. She took one step down, looked down and spoke Franklin~s phrase in Franklin's menacing tone. The commanding officer bidding reluctant troops go over the top. He had gone outside by the kitchen door, having turned off the dining-room light on his way. The courtyard that separated the house from the mews was an oblong, its entire area paved in natural limestone. On each side was a narrow border planted with a number of small silver-leaved shrubs. Teddy had not looked at it properly on his previous visit, then noticing only the manhole cover. This was roughly in the K centre of the courtyard, though rather nearer to the gate than the house. Now he saw that the wall which separated the area from the road on one side, the wall which divided it from the garden next F- door and the wall at the mews end were made of what looked, in the dim, hazardous light, like yellow brick. The height of all these walls had recently been increased and the new brickwork was a slightly different shade. A garden table and four chairs, cast iron painted white, stood in one of the corners at the house end and in the opposite corner was a large marble urn with a pointed tree growing in it. Something he hadn't noticed last time was that the back of the house, like tl~ front, was covered in those same luxuriant all-conquering leaves. More than the front, in fact, for here not a scrap of brickwork was visible and if those pinkish tendrils crept across the surface, leaves concealed them also. Only the windows, shining black rectangles, peered out, eye-like, and the barred glass doors. The two lamps in the mews gave enough light to show all this, but to show it in dark monochrome, black and charcoal and grey and flickers of silver on the leaves. He drew back the bolts on the gate. Then he tried to lift the cover off the manhole. This was of some sort of metal incised with the maker's name, Paulson and Grieve, Ironsmiths of Stoke, inside a laurel wreath. He pulled at the metal ring embedded in its centre but to no effect and he soon realised that no failure of his own strength was the problem but rather that something on the other side, probably a bolt, was holding the manhole cover in place. He would have to go down into the cellar from the inside. First he checked the Edsel and the mews. No one was about. The two parked cars were still there. Distantly, he could hear traffic in Maida Vale, crossing the hump over the canal. He went back into the house, opened the door at the top of the cellar steps and pressed the light switch. Nothing happened. By the light from the top of the stairs he could make out an unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling. It pleased him that it didn't work, that the bulb was used up and had never been replaced, for it confirmed what she had said about never going into the cellar. He could tell that he was not quite tall enough to reach that bulb hanging on its six inches of lead. From a table lamp in the dining-room he undid a hundred-watt bulb, took it down into the cellar and changed it for the defunct one. The light came on at once and showed him what he had come to see. The rest of the house was very clean, almost up to his own standard. Down here, if not exactly dirty, it was dusty and untended. Spiders' webs hung from the ceiling and clustered in its corners. The place was empty, no more than ten feet square, its floor of rough concrete, its walls plastered and painted white. Or they had been painted white long ago, but that white had cracked and faded to grey. In the wall to the right, the one at the rear end of the house, was a door, bolted at the bottom, composed of rough wooden boards from which the white paint was peeling, and in the lower half of which was a hatch. In the days when coal was delivered from outside to fill the hole, Teddy supposed, the hatch would be raised from the inside and coal pour through. A job for some servant with bucket or scuttle. The mess it must have caused, the filth, made him shudder. He drew back the bolt. The space he stepped into was perhaps half the area of the cellar proper and consisted of a cuboid chamber about eight feet deep. No coal remained, but the floor was black with coal-dust and a bitter carbon smell hung in the close air. He switched on his torch and its beam sent a spider scuffling away into a dark corner. At the top of the chamber the torch showed him the inside of the manhole cover. As he had expected, it was secured in place by a heavy steel bolt. Teddy was tall enough to reach it with his fingertips, but it would have taken a man of six feet six to be able to get sufficient purchase for the task of sliding back the bolt. He needed something to stand on and also, in case of need, a spanner and a wrench for the bolt. For a moment he forgot where he had left Keith's toolbag. Had he taken it outside? He came up the cellar stairs again, carefully brushing coal-dust off his shoes before entering the hall. The idea of dirtying this exquisite place was very distasteful to him. The door into the hall was one of those that slam shut at the least pressure. Then he remembered. He had left the toolbag just inside the back door when he went out to unbolt the gate. Now to find a pair of steps or failing that - and it almost certainly would be failing that - a chair or stool. Nothing suitable in the kitchen. He doubted if he could have brought himself to stand on one of those beautiful gilded chairs from the dining-room. A cast-iron chair from the courtyard would' do. He fetched one of these. It was heavy, it must weight twentyfive pounds. Carrying the chair and with the toolbag in his other hand, he returned the way he had come to hear a woman's shrill voice say, 'Don't move. Stay right where you are. I am armed,' and end with an hysterical giggle.

Chapter 25

For a moment he doubted it was a real voice. It must be coming from the radio or the television. Or the device that set lights to go on after a cunning delay could be programmed to switch on a tape. He thought that, but he came on, out into the hall, stepping softly on the thick carpet. The silence and then the sound of an indrawn breath told him it was a real woman who had spoken. It was she, Harriet. He saw her. She was wearing shoes with heels of an extravagant height, shoes for a teenage model on a catwalk, stiletto heels four inches high. At the top of the stairs she stood, looking down, her back to him, wobbling on those spiky heels, some sort of stick or staff in her hand. It was immediately clear that she thought he was down there. Wherever she had been in the house, and perhaps she had been here when he first entered it, she had heard the cellar door close and believed it had closed behind him as he went down the stairs. He stood absolutely still. The Edsel was in the mews, the gate unbolted. If she summoned help, if she called the police, he would be taken away, the car taken. He closed his hands tightly round the leg of the chair he held, the handle of the toolbag. She said, 'Come out, you fool. What the hell are you doing?' Adrenalin poured into his blood. He felt it zing in his head. She knew who it was, she was insulting him again. He drew in his breath and let it out in a roar, 'Turn round!' Never before had he seen anyone jump. Heard of it happening, yes, but never seen it. The start galvanised her, he could have sworn her feet left the ground. She spun to face him, cried out, 'You!' and at that he threw the toolbag at her. He hurled it with his left hand and the chair with his right. The bag caught her in the chest, the chair across her legs. She fell backwards and turned over and over, somersaulting down the cellar stairs, her hands grappling with the empty air. A wailing cry came from her and the pole she was holding flew out of her hand, wheeling in an arc out of his sight. He heard the clatter as it fell to the floor and the softer smash of her body. That it was a body and not the living woman, injured but alive, he hardly knew until he went down there. He even had a momentary anxiety - what to do if she was alive. But she had struck her head a violent blow on the floor, rather as if she had dived from a height into the sea, unaware that the water was shallow and the bottom unyielding rock. His first thought after that was a strange one. He need not touch her now. If anything were to stop him killing it would be the necessity of touching your victim first. Two people had died at his hands without his touching them. He smiled, the idea was so peculiar and so unexpected. He picked up the chair. Paint had chipped off it, but otherwise it was intact. Nothing had happened to the toolbag except that a screwdriver and a pair of pincers had fallen out of it. He looked at the body dispassionately, the dark-red blood on her dark-red hair, the waxen white of her face under the make-up. What had brought her home? It looked as if she had been away for just two nights. Two big suitcases for two nights away? Maybe, for a woman like that. Probably that was where she had been when he first opened the front door, upstairs at the back out of earshot, unpacking those two cases. Satisfied with his solution, he carried the chair into the coalhole, got up on to it and, using the pincers, wrenched back the bolt. It felt as if it had been rammed into that position years before and never touched since. The steadiness of his hands pleased him. He was almost unshaken. So much the better. He pushed against the manhole cover and it rose quite easily. He went upstairs again and into the hall, looked about him and, seeing her handbag on the small table just inside the front door, put it in the toolbag. To be on the safe side in case a cleaner or someone else with a key came into the house. He returned to the backyard, opened the gate and went out into the mews. One of the parked cars had gone. Most likely, it had belonged to someone visiting friends in a flat or house higher up the mews. He knew very little about dinner-parties or any social calls, come to that, but he calculated that this was about the right time to be leaving a place you had visited on a Saturday night. Now for the grand secret. Who used to say that? He had surprised himself with the words that rose unbidden in his mind. His grandmother perhaps, or his long-dead grandfather. Now for the grand secret. A sight for sore eyes. Or a sight to damage healthy eyes? He lifted the Edsel's boot lid, shut his eyes, opened them. With both hands he gripped the top of the big plastic bag that was Keith's shroud, grasped it just below where the masking tape secured it and lifted it. A smell there was, but not a strong, terrible, foetid odour, nothing like that. If the plastic were to be punctured, it would be a different story, he knew that. To tear it would be fatal, a disaster. He heaved the bag and its contents over the lip of the boot and down on to the flagstones. When it was out, no longer in that boot but on the ground, and the bag was still intact, he knew the worst was over. He dragged it through the gateway and up to the manhole. Then he went back to close the boot lid and shut the gate. The presence of a man and a woman in the mews, appearing it seemed from nowhere, suddenly materialising, gave him a shock. They were walking in th~ direction of the remaining parked car. How much had they seen? Probably nothing. He was sure they hadn't been anywhere in the vicinity while he was dragging that bag. And their behaviour seemed to confirm this, for as he unlocked his car the man called out to him, 'Lovely night!' Teddy nodded. He never knew how to answer remarks like that. 'Good-night, then.' 'Good-night,' said Teddy. He closed the boot lid. He tried to behave as a householder would who lived in a place like this. Check the interior of the garage, make sure the car was all right - there was no car, which didn't surprise him - examine the stack of bricks in there which must be left over from raising the height of the walls. Retreat through the gateway with a confident tread, born of years of practice of going in and out of here at midnight. But he was unable to resist looking over his shoulder as the car passed. The woman in the passenger seat rewarded him with a friendly wave. The gate shut and bolted, he raised the manhole cover, lifted it out and laid it on the flagstones. His principal worry now was that the bag might split as he lowered it down through that aperture. Still, it was hardly the end of the world if it did, only it would be -unpleasant. The end of the world had been averted and the worst of everything was past. He shoved and heaved the bag to the manhole. The dead-body hole, he thought. He pushed it through, feet end first, holding on to the head-and-shoulders end. Letting go wasn't an option until he could feel the feet end at least graze the stone floor down there. Holding on, breathing deeply, he hung over the edge, his arms stretched to a sense of bursting, until he felt the weight lessen, the tension slacken. The bottom of the bag was on the ground. He let go and there was a slithering, shuddering thump. For a brief second he thought he was going with it, but he managed to keep a grip on the flagstones with the muscles of his chest and thighs. He had left the iron chair down there and the bag fell across it and subsided, as if the body in its slippery shroud had sat down. He shivered. A strong press-up brought him to his feet. He replaced the manhole cover, checked that everything in the backyard was as he had found it and went back into the house. A sheet or a tablecloth, something like that was what he needed. Upstairs, in a cupboard on the landing outside the bedroom she had taken him into, he found both in abundance. The clean, crisply ironed white sheets pleased him. He would like linen like that for his own bed, his and Francine's, fresh on every day. And why not? The work needed to ensure that was nothing compared with the benefits. A blanket might be better for his purpose, though. There were several, blue and white, fluffy, spotless, on the bottom shelf. He pulled out a blue one and descended into the cellar once more. There was no more blood, it had stopped flowing, as he thought he had heard it did when you were dead. Unfortunately, quite a lot of blood had. got on to the floor. No doubt it would also stain this lovely clean blanket. But he had no choice. He laid the blanket on the ground and rolled Harriet's body up in it, not a difficult task, she must have been less than half Keith's weight. At this point an idea came to him, a wonderful plan. It was simple and beautiful, it solved everything. Rather than put Harriet's body in the coal-hole with Keith's he would bring Keith's out here. Thus, the coal-hole would be empty, a safety measure in case anyone ever lifted the manhole cover, and as for the cellar... Could he? He was sure he could. The thought made him smile, then laugh out loud. His laughter echoed in that subterranean place. First he pulled out the iron chair. He kept his eyes shut while he did it, but he couldn't shut his ears to the squelching sound of the body sliding to the floor. This was the last time he would ever drag it, though, this was the end. There had been some considerable disturbance of those contents and anyone would have been able to smell it now. He stood and smelt it. Horrible, really. How disgusting human beings were, in life, in dying and in death... He closed the coal-hole door and fastened the bolts. Harriet's blood made an almost black sticky patch on the cellar floor. He considered fetching water and scrubbing brush and cleaning it up, it was very much in his nature to clean up after himself whatever might be the task he had performed, but finally he decided against it. He was dirty enough already. As it was, he felt begrimed from all the energy he had expended and from coal-dust and spiders' webs. He could smell himself, a powerful oniony stink. It was more distasteful than if he had smelt it on somebody else. Why not do what he longed to do? He was alone, everything was done, the Edsel awaited him, his car, a strange car that attracted curious glances, but only a car and one that could now bear the scrutiny of any authority. So why not go upstairs and have a bath? He had a choice. A bathroom en suite with her bedroom, another opening out from the landing. Hers had a claw-footed tub standing on a tiled dais, the other a sunken bath of blue-green marble, and that was the one he chose, filling it with steaming, foaming water into which he poured a stream of orange-scented essence. He used a loofah to scrub himself - it was the first of its kind he had ever seen - and soap that smelt like a basket of citrus fruits. The towel was pale orange, fluffy on one side and velvety on the other. When he was dry he dried the bath and rubbed a facecloth over the taps to polish them. When he had noted the time, ten-past one, and checked that her handbag contained a key to the house, he left by the front door and walked round to the mews where the Edsel was waiting.