A Sight for Sore Eyes (30 page)

just with her hands, with some heavy object. She was shouting too - Julia thought she had never heard her shout before - calling, 'Help me, help me!' Julia put her hand over the mouthpiece, muttered through it, 'This is a very bad line.' 'What's that noise. 'The builders next door,' said Julia. 'On a Sunday, too, it's a disgrace.' She knew her voice was slurred and thick with drink. Perhaps he would think that also was due to the bad line. 'We're both fine,' she said. 'The girl is fine. She was going out with Jonathan Nicholson in his red sports car, she was going to his home in Fulham. But she didn't because it's pouring with rain.' 'If I didn't know you better, Julia, I'd say you'd been drinking.' Julia giggled. 'Francine and I did share a bottle of sauvignon with our lunch.' When he had rung off she sat down and recovered her composure. The noise from above had stopped. Julia went upstairs again and listened. Not a peep, not a creak. Perhaps she had fallen asleep for want of anything else to pass the time. Julia, too, was very tired. She shouldn't drink brandy, it wore her out. She made her way down again, walking wearily, saw from the hall clock that it was after six-thirty, nearly a quarter to seven. She felt at ease now, tranquil and sleepy, too calm to be in need of food. Francine would be growing hungry and it pained Julia to think of her deprivation. But it couldn't be helped, they must both suffer for her earlier disobedience, her recalcitrance. Julia walked idly about the house. Pacing was past, she would never pace again. Her legs felt weak and back in the living-room she fell to her knees. Crawling on her hands and knees was a more comfortable way of getting about. She crawled clockwise round the room once, then turned round and crawled round it anti-clockwise. The sofa, over which at some point during the day Francine had draped a woollen throw, looked particularly inviting. Julia kicked off her shoes, clambered up on to the sofa and, pulling the throw over her, fell into an exhausted sleep.

Chapter 33

Who had made that phone call Francine didn't know. Her father, possibly, or Noele or Susan or some other of Julia's friends, or Holly or Isabel - or even Teddy. It didn't much matter who it was so long as she could make them hear her prisoner's sounds of pleading to be set free. But of course they didn't hear or else they believed whatever Julia had invented to account for the noise. To beat on the door she had used the first thing her eye lighted on, her tennis racquet. It had been leaning up against the wall, but now she went to put it back in the place where it was kept, along with a box of tennis balls, her track suit, her running shorts and trainers, in the drawer at the bottom of her wardrobe. As she pushed in the drawer it scraped on something underneath. Francine reached under the drawer with one hand and drew out her mobile phone. She punched out Teddy's number. She felt a surge of faith in him, trust of him. He would get her out. Julia's action in locking Francine up and hiding her mobile under the wardrobe had neither shocked nor much surprised Teddy. He expected people to behave bizarrely, madly. In his experience most of them did. A quiet, orderly life of routine and normalcy he had never known. Human beings, in his estimation, were wilder than animals and far uglier. Only Francine stood apart and she was not quite real, she was too beautiful for reality and too pure. His resentment and hatred of her were forgotten. She hadn't left him, she hadn't been with James, but locked up in her bedroom by her wicked stepmother. It was what happened to princesses. He drove out to Ealing along the North Circular Road. The Sunday evening traffic was light and the Edsel attracted a lot of attention. He cursed the frequency of traffic lights where he had to stop and endure comments and admiring stares. On the phone she had told him she would throw her front-door key out of the window. 'I'll do it now,' she had said, 'so that I can tell you where it's fallen.' He was rather disappointed at such an easy solution to the problem. He had pictured himself breaking into the house or at least climbing up a ladder to fetch Francine down. She had come back to the phone and said the key was on the lawn, not under her window but a bit to the left. 'The side gate won't be locked. You come through that way, but be very quiet and just pick the key up off the grass.' 'Why are you whispering?' 'I don't want Julia to hear,' she said. The Edsel he parked in a side turning and walked the hundred yards or so to her house. To his surprise it was all in darkness. He felt a certain curiosity. Houses always interested him, all houses. He was looking forward to seeing the inside of this one. The side gate was unlocked, as she had said it would be. He looked up at the rear of the house, where behind an upper window a light was on, but not a very powerful light and the curtains appeared to be drawn. Half expecting her to be waiting for him, watching for him, her face at that window, he felt a pang of disappointment. But he couldn't call out, he had promised to be very quiet and he would be. Hampered by the darkness, he looked for the key in vain for a while, found it at last hidden by a clump of longer, very wet, grass. It, too, was wet and he wiped it carefully on his sleeve. The key went very smoothly and almost soundlessly into the front-door lock and the door swung open silently. It was dark inside, but not totally, for from round the corner of a passage a low-wattage lamp shone faintly. It showed him a hallway, all the doors to it closed but one which stood ajar. The floor was carpeted, the walls papered in a showy brocade design he disliked on sight. A large coloured china jar in one corner was full of dried flowers with dusty, fluffy heads. He set his foot on the lowest tread of the stairs, hesitated and turned back. Francine wouldn't be expecting him immediately, he had got here faster than he had expected. He put out his hand to the door that stood ajar, pushed it a little wider open and went in. Darkness in here, but the curtains were not drawn across and light from the street came in. An ugly room, he thought, the kind of furnishings he most disliked. Suburban, bourgeois, Ideal Home Exhibition. Fitted carpet and rugs on top of it, a fat floral three-piece suite, reproduction tables, a nest of tables, a glass-fronted china cabinet. The back of the sofa was towards him. He had walked past before he saw that a woman was lying on it, fast asleep. The wicked stepmother. The cause of all Francine's troubles and of his, too, for she kept Francine from him. A strange, but immediately convincing, idea came to him. That it was this woman who caused his impotence, like a witch who sucks out men's strength and seizes their souls and saps their power. She was fat and pale, with a pallor quite unlike Francine's rose-petal whiteness. The light from the street showed him her plump white hands and the rings set deeply in her flesh. The woollen thing that half covered her reminded him of the shawls his mother used to crochet. It awakened in him a slow, intense surge of anger. Without thinking much, without pausing or asking himself why, he reached out his hands towards her. But he knew he couldn't bring himself to touch her. His knees would give way or he would be sick if he did. He withdrew his hands and looked around him, around the room. Cushions were everywhere, soft, fat cushions, covered in velvet or silk. When you have killed twice it is easy to do it a third time. He picked up a big velvet cushion, rectangular and as far as he could tell in this light, red, and held it up a foot from her face. Tightening his grip on the edges of it, he slowly pressed the cushion down on to her face. She stirred, but otherwise remained immobile. He fetched more cushions, piled them on her, pressed down hard with his hands, leant on the cushions, then knelt on them. Under him and through the mass of silk and feathers, he felt her struggle, heard sounds. Her legs moved and her heels thudded against the sofa arm. With all his strength he kept up the pressure, for more than seconds, for minutes, five minutes, until he knew. Strange how he knew and that he would need to feel no pulse, search for no breath. Life had gone and he felt its departure as plainly as if it had taken wing and flown away through that window. He had managed it without touching her. You could take life at one remove, by remote control almost. All you had to do was hold the channel changer and at a distance blank out the screen. It was as easy as that. Should he tell Francine? Not yet. One day perhaps, but not yet. He lifted off the cushions, one after another, replacing them on the chairs from which he had taken them. Her face was revealed, the mouth slack, the eyes staring. In the half-dark he thought he detected a blueness about her features, but it was hard to tell. Still without touching her, he drew the woollen cover up to her chin. Then he closed the door and went upstairs to Francine. 'You were so long!' she whispered from behind her door. 'Why were you so long?' 'I came as soon as I could,' he said. 'Have you found a key to my room?' He had forgotten that, though she had told him. 'Where do you think it is?' 'It might be in the downstairs cloakroom or her bedroom; I don't think there are any other keys in the house. Where's Julia?' 'Downstairs. She's asleep.' He heard Francine give a little. laugh. He took the key out of another bedroom door and the one out of the cloakroom door. That fitted. She came into his arms, hugging him, laughing with relief. She was wearing the white dress. He pulled the pins out of her hair to let it hang loose. When she was the way he liked her to look, he picked up her suitcase and they crept down the stairs, so as not to wake Julia. He would have liked to tell her that there was no waking Julia and never would be, but he had already decided not to do this, so he went along with the pantomime of tiptoeing and whispering until they were out of the house and crossing the road to where the Edsel was parked. Then Francine broke into a flood of words. She talked more than he had ever known her to - and if the truth were told, more than he wanted. But he let her continue without interruption, how Julia had seemed to go mad, how she had hidden her mobile, locked her in her room, told ridiculous lies on the phone and apparently invented a boyfriend for Francine called Jonathan Something. That was the only thing that interested Teddy. 'Who is he? Do you know him?' 'Teddy, he doesn't exist. Don't you understand? Julia invented him. Julia's mad.' He didn't really understand, but he felt calm and free, and very nearly happy. Francine was coming with him, she would stay with him now, there was no other place for her to be. She couldn't go back and she couldn't go anywhere else. She had been Julia's prisoner, but now she was his; he had killed Julia for her. The first thing she wanted when they got to Orcadia Place was food. It was nine and she hadn't eaten since lunch-time. There were eggs in the fridge and bread and cheese, and she made herself a meal, but she wouldn't drink his wine. He gave her the liqueur chocolates and she ate one that had cherry brandy in it, but she wouldn't have another. All she wanted was to talk, go over and over it: why had Julia done it, what was wrong with Julia? Teddy had no opinion and didn't care. It was the aspect of Francine he liked least, this desire of hers to talk and discuss and speculate and conjecture and wonder. When he thought she must have talked enough, even for her, he gave her the dress. He wanted her to put it on, but she wouldn't. it's beautiful and I love it,' she said, 'but I don't want to wear it now. We're not going anywhere, we're just at home on our own -well, not exactly at home but together and relaxed, it's not the occasion for your lovely dress.' 'I want to see you in it,' he said stonily. i'll put it on tomorrow, Teddy. I'm tired now. What I'd really like is to go to bed. I want to go to bed in a place where I'mfree and no one's locked me in and just sleep and sleep and sleep.' It was not the way he had envisaged it. All the way here in the car the idea had been growing in his mind with increasing excitement that things would be all right now. He had won, he had succeeded. He had rescued her, done murder for her, and gained possession of her. By these actions, whatever it was that inhibited him and dulled his flesh would be banished. His troubles were over and would never return. But instead of coming to him, a passive and silent beauty, obedient to his command that she wear his dress, she had talked and talked until he was sick of the sound of 'Julia' and 'Dad' and how awful it had been. A vague, irritable depression settled over him and when he went up to the bedroom he found her, to his disgust, lying in Harriet's bed in a white cotton night-shirt and already asleep. He lay down beside her, listening to the rain that spattered in the wind against the glass. Desire seemed to come back, a flicker of it, and he put his hands on her, lifted that horrible white cotton garment and felt her warm, sleek flesh. She neither turned towards him nor shuddered away, she was still and heavily asleep, but he was powerless just the same, as dead as a block of wood. There must be ways. He lay awake thinking of them, of how it might be different if he could silence her, close her eyes, dress her in the dark-green velvet, take that. white night-shirt thing away and burn it, or put it out with the rubbish. Hang jewels on her, buy flowers for her and fill her arms with lilies. Now he had money he could do that. Tomorrow he would buy lilies, and maybe peacock's feathers and a length of heavy white silk. He would lay her on the floor on the silk, gathering it up a little, ruffling it, and he would spread out her hair and weave gold chains into it. Paint her eyelids peacock-green and gold, and close them over her eyes like the domed covers of jewel boxes and place a lily in one of her hands and a green plume in the other. She slept beside him, breathing steadily, and after a while he slept too. It was eleven before she woke up and then it was the phone ringing that woke her. She picked up the receiver and said hallo and a man's voice asked to speak to Franklin Merton. Francine said she thought he had the wrong number. Teddy had been up for hours. He took the Edsel up to Cricklewood, filled the tank and used Harriet's Connect card to collect another two hundred pounds. Back at Orcadia Cottage, he carefully rested the flagstone in its wire netting cradle. A lot of space remained around it. He really ought to break the stone into two pieces or find another smaller piece of stone to slip in beside it. The important thing was to avoid an odd appearance, something that would attract attention. He dabbed cement on to the pins that held the wire in place, then spread on a smooth layer. The rain had held off long enough for him to do the job, but now it began to fall again, a fine but insistent drizzle. He covered up his work with a square of plastic, weighting down the four corners with pebbles. After that he went back into the house and found Francine looking at his new wall where the Alpheton still life now hung. 'I thought there was a door here. I thought I remembered a door to the cellar. Memory playing tricks on me, it must be.' She had dressed herself in the hideous uniform of jeans and boots and sweater. The effect on him was to make him speak roughly, though the words would please her. 'I'll take you out tonight,' he said. 'We'll go wherever you want. I've got plenty of money. 'Have you got work, Teddy?' 'As much as I can handle. More. We can go anywhere you like. You can get dressed up and put on her jewellery, anything you want.' 'I must phone my friends,' she said as if he hadn't spoken. 'Phone them and tell where I am.' They went into the kitchen. She ground coffee, put a filter paper into the coffee machine and poured the coffee in. 'Why must you?' he said. 'Why do you want to do that?' She didn't answer. 'And phone Julia, too. I can't just vanish into thin air. She'll be frantic with worry about me. When she woke up - just think of how she must have been when she found me gone. She's probably got on to Dad in Germany and been ringing round my friends.' He stared at her with a kind of despair. What was she talking about? He had got her out of there and she was his now, bound to him, here with him. Then anger drove out his dismay. He took her by the shoulders, gripping the thin flesh, the fine bone, digging in hard fingers. 'You're not making any phone calls, right? Have you got that? You can't just use her phone to call your friends. There's no need for it, d'you understand?' 'Teddy, you're hurting me! Why are you doing that?' She shrank away from him, but he held on. He moved her backwards and forwards, it was almost but