Rue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He lived alone in the house after his wife died. They had not got on for years and he was vaguely surprised when he found that she had made no will, so that everything came to him: what was left of her father’s money, his collection of snuff-boxes, all she had owned. He had often wondered what it would be like to leave her; but the loneliness in the house after she died was appalling. The silence was the worst; that and opening the door to a room and knowing she would not be there. Her absence was like the ache in an amputated limb.

He was the managing director of a printing firm, was paid a director’s fee on top of a substantial salary and was given a new car every two years. Fifty-three years old now, he would retire at sixty with a pension and a block of shares in the company.

Always reserved, he had many acquaintances but no close friends. The people who visited the house had come to see his wife. They stopped coming when she died and he thought they must have been relieved when he did not take up the invitations to dinner parties and the like which they sent him in the early days of his widowerhood.

A woman had come in two half-days in the week to help with the cleaning. He gave her his wife’s key so that she could let herself in, but after a short time she left a note to say she would not be coming any more. He went to see her, wondering if he had offended her in some way and ready to offer her more money. She did not express herself clearly, but he gathered that she did not like the empty house either, preferring company while she worked.

At night he lay awake in his bed straining his ears for every small sound as the house cooled.

He thought about moving. He could sell the house at a handsome profit, buy a flat and invest the rest of the money. But he dreaded finding himself at the mercy of neighbours, who might have children, might quarrel, might play pop music into the night. He had always prized the quiet of the house, but not this silence. It was as though what the house lacked now was the sound of his wife’s breathing.

There had been one child, a boy, who died in a swimming accident in his early teens. His wife had blamed him for that, said he could have saved the lad. In time he came to believe it himself. He found that he could no longer touch her. From being a tired routine, their intimate life died altogether. He gave himself occasional relief and tried not to let the subject preoccupy him.

Now he thought about the new relationships his freedom made possible and began to take stock of himself. He had felt middle-aged for years, but though he was a little overweight (he had always inclined to tubbiness), he still had his teeth, most of his hair, and managed without glasses except for reading. He took note of the age of politicians and others who came into the news, looked at them on television and compared his appearance with theirs.

He took up jogging. He bought a tracksuit and the right kind of shoes and at first drove out of the neighbourhood and began with short runs which would not put too much sudden strain on his heart. As the nights drew in, he also started trotting round the local streets, last thing. This served the double purpose of giving him exercise and tiring him for bed.

One night, after dark, he was stopped and questioned by two policemen, in a car. They asked him his name and address and what he did for a living. There was a man going about murdering women on the streets. He had been doing it for five years. Jordan realised when they had let him go what a good disguise the role of a jogger could be. It was natural for a jogger to be seen running; he could carry his weapons on a belt under his tracksuit and remove any blood from the suit by putting it straight into the washer.

Still the nights troubled him. It was then that he felt his loneliness most. He tried comparing his loneliness with that of a man who was impelled to murder strange women. It did not help him much.

 

He tried taking a nip of Scotch before going to bed and gradually increased his consumption until one night, when he had drunk a third of a bottle, he realised he was talking to himself. His mind, calm and concentrated at work, slipped late at night into a turmoil. When he had had a lot to drink he felt that there was something that made sense of everything lying just beyond the grasp of his thoughts. That was what whisky did to him, and drinking alone.

He had never frequented public houses but one evening, having noted the warmly lighted windows of the local at the end of the street, he forewent his run and walked along there instead. About to order Scotch, he changed his mind and asked for a pint of bitter. It was cool and palatable, making a good mouthful. He stayed an hour, standing at one end of the bar counter, and drank three pints. He felt the tension gradually drain out of him. His thoughts drifted. He vaguely recognised several people he had seen in the neighbourhood. A couple of them nodded to him, but none of them struck up a conversation. The barmaid, whom he had never seen before, wished him goodnight as he left. Her hair was the colour of partly burned corn-stubble. Her top teeth protruded slightly and her tongue occasionally flicked saliva from the corners of her lips, which remained apart in repose. Her sudden smile as she reached for his glass and dipped it into the washing-up machine behind the bar remained with him as he strolled home and let himself into the empty house.

He thought about her as, too sleepy to read more than half a page, he switched off his bedside light; and again when his radio-alarm woke him out of a deep, unbroken sleep. His bladder was full and as he padded briskly along the landing to the bathroom he wondered how old she was and tried to remember whether she had worn a wedding ring.

He had a ticket for the opera that evening. It was his greatest interest outside his work. There had been a time when he thought his wife enjoyed it too. But when he played gramophone records from his considerable collection or tuned in to a radio broadcast, she found excuses to do other things, and he began to realise that she had little ear for music and that only the stage spectacle made it tolerable for her. Latterly, she had sneered at what she called opera’s ‘unreality’ and people standing about ‘bawling their heads off’. He had found solace in shutting himself in another room and escaping through music into the world each score conjured up. Yet since her death he could not concentrate for more than a few minutes. Without her unsympathetic presence in the house, his thoughts wandered and even those favourite passages which could start to sing in his mind at any moment of the day slid by only half noticed.

Tonight he saw a performance of Verdi’s Don Carlos in a new production not yet run in, with small troubles that lengthened the intervals and kept the audience late. He had thought of calling at his local for a last drink, but by the time he had driven up out of the city the pub was closed.

Lights still burned inside where the staff would be washing glasses and clearing up. He wondered if the woman lived on the premises and, if not, how she got home and how far she had to go. His wife would have called her common, a millgirl, and pointed with distaste to the unnatural colour and spoiled texture of her hair. Yet he could not forget the direct genuineness of that smile, and ‘genuine’ as the one word he found himself applying to her.

When he went into the pub the next evening, there was a woman serving whom he took to be the publican’s wife. He did not like to ask how often the other woman was on duty and when she would be here again. They might have several casual staff for all he knew, and he had no name with which to identify the woman with the corn-stubble hair and that appealing open smile. Nor was she there on either of the two crowded weekend nights. He was being silly, behaving like an adolescent. She was no different from any number of the women employed at the works. He must have sunk low in personal resource if he could be so affected by a single friendly smile from a complete stranger. If the pub had been any farther away, he would not have returned. But it was so convenient. He had taken to the beer and he liked the atmosphere. But not at weekends. Then there were too many people, too much noise and tobacco smoke. He was constantly jostled at the bar as he stood aside to let people get served.

He had other things to think about. He must work out a way of living instead of drifting from day to
day. The house was becoming neglected. Every Saturday morning he dusted and vacuumed, but knew that it needed more than that. He had pinned a typewritten postcard advertising his need of a cleaner to the works’ noticeboard, hoping that one of the women would know someone who wanted the work, but there was no response. Now he redrafted it as a small ad for the evening paper: ‘Widower (businessman) requires cleaner, two sessions a week (no heavy work). Old Church Road area. References. Telephone outside business hours.’

She rang on a payphone when the ad had appeared three times. ‘Are you the man that’s wanting a cleaner?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Can I ask you what two sessions a week means?’

‘Two mornings or two afternoons, whichever is more convenient.’

‘No evenings?’

‘Well, no.’

‘That’s all right, then. I’ve got an evening job.’

‘You could probably combine the two nicely,’

‘Yes...’ There was a silence, as if she were thinking, or trying to assess him from his voice.

‘Are you interested?’

‘It is a genuine advertisement, isn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There’s some funny folk about these days. You’ve got to be careful.’

‘My wife died six months ago,’ Jordan said. ‘Things have been getting out of hand.’

‘Hmm. I suppose I’d better come over.’

‘When can you come?’

‘Would tonight be all right? I’m not working tonight.’

‘That’s all right. Where are you speaking from?’

She told him a district of the city that was about twenty minutes away by bus and he gave her the number of the house.

‘Shall I give you directions?’

‘Is it anywhere near the Beehive?’

‘It’s just round the corner. Five minutes away.’

‘I’ll find it, then.’

‘I’ll expect you.’

‘By the way, what’s your name?’

‘Jordan.’

‘I’ll be seeing you, then.’

He supposed it would mean nothing to this woman, but he had very occasionally to remind people in whom his name touched a distant chord of memory that he shared it with the hero of a Hemingway novel. ‘Except that you don’t look like Gary Cooper,’ a local academic – a lecturer in American literature at the university – had once remarked. ‘And I’ve certainly never had the pleasure of sharing a sleeping bag with Ingrid Bergman.’ Jordan had added.

That had been at a gathering in the neighbourhood he’d been taken to by his wife. He supposed they still went on, those Sunday morning or early evening sherry parties, but he was never asked to them now. You could live very privately in these tree-lined roads of stone houses in what had once been a village with a couple of miles of open land between it and the city. That had suited him: he was a private man. But that had been before the loneliness which assailed him after his wife died. Perhaps, he thought, now, if he could get some help in the house he would give a party himself, renew some acquaintanceships, meet some new people. He did not want to think about living much longer as he was doing now.

He had already eaten a light supper and now he washed his hands and face and brushed his hair, and, after switching on the porch light, settled down in the sitting-room with a glass of Scotch and Cosi fan tutte on the record player. Though he knew the plot and what the characters were singing about, he found that following the translated libretto helped his concentration.

She came when he had just put on the second record. He left it playing and went to the door. She was half turned away, shaking her umbrella, and the scarf covering her head hid her hair; so that it was not until she had stepped inside and they faced each other in the hall that he saw who she was. His surprise then was such that his voice lifted involuntarily in a second greeting.

‘Oh, hullo!’

‘Do you know me?’

‘You once served me in the Beehive.’

‘Did I? You weren’t a regular, though, were you?’

‘Oh, no. There was just the once while you were there.’

‘I’m not there any more now.’

‘Ah! That explains it.’

‘What?’

‘Why I hadn’t seen you again.’

‘Were you looking?’

Her directness was unexpected. ‘I noticed.’ He held out his hands. ‘I didn’t know it had started to rain. Let me hang up your coat.’ He took it from her while she unfastened her headsquare, shook her hair free and smoothed the hem of her pastel-pink jumper.

‘Come through.’

In the sitting-room he had to indicate twice that she should sit down, while he took the record off the player. She sat on the edge of the deep armchair, ankles crossed as she looked round the room. She had pretty legs, Jordan noticed, and she was probably vain
about them because her tights were flatteringly fine and of a better quality than the rest of her clothes.

‘They’re big, aren’t they?’ she said.

‘Beg pardon.’

‘These houses. They’re bigger than they look from the outside.’

‘You’d soon find your way around. I’ll show you, later.’ He sat down near her. ‘Have you done this kind of work before?’

‘Not for other people, no.’

‘Well, nobody asks for a diploma in cleaning.’

‘No.’

‘Just for thoroughness. My wife was very thorough.’

‘Did she do it all herself?’

‘Oh, no. She had a regular woman.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘She gave up coming when my wife died. I don’t think she liked being in the house on her own.’

‘Why? There’s nothing strange about it, is there?’

‘Oh, no. I think she just liked someone to talk to. Is that the kind of thing that would bother you?’

‘If you’re here to work, you’re here to work.’

‘Quite. But it’s why I have to ask for references. I’d have to give you a key and the run of the house.’

‘Oh, yes. You can’t be too careful these days.’

‘What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Audrey Nugent.’ She was looking into her handbag.

‘Mrs Nugent, is it?’

‘It was. I was married once.’

‘No children?’

‘No. Just as well, as it turned out.’ She shrugged. ‘I picked a wrong ’un.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He took the folded manilla envelope she was holding out to him. ‘There’s these.’

They were both from publicans she had worked for; one, recently dated, from the landlord of the Beehive.

‘You say you’re doing evening work now?’

‘I’m at the Royal Oak, in Ridley.’

‘Didn’t you like the Beehive?’

‘It was further to travel and only a couple of nights a week. I wanted a bit more than that.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Was that opera you were playing on your gramophone?’

‘Yes. Mozart.’

‘I used to like Mario Lanza.’

‘A bit before your time, surely.’

‘I was only a kid. I had some of his records, though. He got fat.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘It just piled on to him at the back end. He got like a barrel. Have you got any of his stuff?’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’

‘They all seem to get that kind of weight, the best singers. Look at Harry Secombe.’

‘And Pavarotti.’

She frowned. ‘I don’t think I know him.’

‘You’ll have seen him on television, perhaps.’

‘I don’t get to see much TV, working nights.’

‘No.’

She gave a sudden sigh, more like a catch of breath, clasping her fingers in her lap, then examining the nails of one hand. ‘Are they all right?’

‘The references? You seem to have given satisfaction.’

He didn’t know. Employers sometimes gave a reference to get rid of someone. It was hard to refuse anyone who had not been downright dishonest. Whoever came to him without a personal recommendation he would have to take on trust. Was she the one? She seemed more subdued now than when she had arrived, different altogether here from what he thought of as her natural surroundings, in the lounge bar of the Beehive, at ease, efficient, chatting
with the regulars, flashing on that smile which had so enchanted him.

He realised that neither of them had spoken for several moments and that he was staring at her. He wondered what he could say to make her smile. He shifted in his chair.

‘Would you like to look over the house?’

‘If you like.’

‘You’re still interested...?’

‘I need the work,’ she said bluntly. ‘I can’t make enough behind a bar at night. I was a machinist in ready-made clothing,’ she went on, ‘but everybody’s cut back. It’s all this cheap stuff coming in from abroad. They work for nothing there. It’s not as if we were rolling in it.’

Jordan stood up. ‘Come and look round.’

She followed him through the house.

‘Of course, I don’t use all these rooms now.’

‘No.’

‘But I like the privacy.’ Not the loneliness, though, he thought. Not that.

The choice was his. He would have to decide soon.

‘What were you thinking of paying?’ she asked as they came back down the stairs.

He told her, having added a little to what he had found out was the going rate.

‘How many hours?’

‘Say three hours, two mornings a week. That should keep things spick and span.’

‘You’d have to take my time-keeping on trust, wouldn’t you?’

‘My wife was very fussy,’ Jordan said. ‘She had a time-clock installed in the hall cupboard.’

Now she laughed. She put her head back and her lips drew away over her teeth, a thin skein of saliva snapping at one corner of her mouth.

He smiled with her. He felt committed now. He asked her if she would come for the first time on a Saturday morning so that he could show her where everything was.

It was as she was putting on her coat that he sensed an uneasiness in her.

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘I don’t like to ask you, but it’s dark outside and there’s this maniac about. I wonder if you’d be good enough to see me to the bus stop.’

‘If you’re nervous, I’ll drive you home.’

‘Oh, no, no.’

‘You’re quite right to take care. There’s no knowing where he might pop up next.’

‘I’ll be all right at the other end.’ He went for his coat. ‘I’m not usually timid, but you don’t know what it’s like to be a woman with him about. You begin to look sideways at every man who comes near you.

‘There’s one thing you can be sure of,’ Jordan said. ‘He isn’t coloured green and he hasn’t got two heads.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean, he’ll look like a million other men. Like me, for instance.’

‘Give over’ she said.

‘Sorry.’ Jordan opened the door. ‘Is it still raining? I’d better have a hat in any case.’

Her bus went from the other side of the main road. He saw her across and stood with her at the stop.

‘I’ll be all right now.’

‘I’d rather see you safely on.’

‘You can call for a quick one.’ She nodded at the lighted windows of the Beehive, opposite.

He thought of asking her if she would like a drink before she went, but said instead, ‘What’s the pub like where you work now?’

‘Different.’

There was a double-decker bus standing in a line of traffic at the lights. It swung towards them and pulled up.

‘I’ll see you Saturday,’ she said, stepping on.

‘Yes,’ Jordan said. ‘Saturday.’

 

One morning several weeks later he had to get out of bed to let her into the house.

‘I’d forgotten about the bolt,’ he apologised.

‘I wondered, when me key wouldn’t open it.’ She looked at him as he stood in the hall, in his pyjamas and dressing-gown. ‘Did you sleep in, or are you–?’

‘I’m not very well,’ Jordan said. ‘I think I may have the flu.’

It had started yesterday, with a prickling sensation in the soft flesh behind the roof of his mouth. In the afternoon he had begun to sneeze. By evening, his bones were aching and he could not keep warm. He had been sweating in the night and now his pyjamas felt clammy against his skin.

‘You get back to bed, out of these draughts,’ Mrs Nugent said.

‘I must just phone the office.’

She was carrying the vacuum cleaner and dusters from the cupboard under the stairs as he finished his call.

‘Don’t hang about here. Go back where it’s warm. Shall I get you some breakfast?’

‘A cup of tea would be welcome.’

‘You get off up. I’ll bring it in a minute.’

He had not seen her since that first Saturday morning. Every Thursday he left her money in an envelope on the hall table. The house shone and was fragrant with the smell of polish.

‘Have you taken anything for it?’ she asked when she brought in the tray. ‘Can I fetch you anything from the shops?’

He dozed, hearing the whine of the cleaner from downstairs. He was not aware that he had fallen asleep until he woke to find her standing there again.

‘How are you feeling now? Is your head thick?’

‘No.’ He could breathe quite freely.

‘Perhaps it’s not ready to come out yet. Perhaps it’s only a chill.’ She put her hand on his forehead in a movement that was totally without diffidence, as though she were a nurse, or someone who had known him a long time. It was cool and dry. He wanted her to leave it there. ‘You don’t feel to have a fever.’

‘I really felt quite dreadful last night.’

‘A night’s sleep and a good sweat. They can work wonders.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt the pressure of her buttocks against his leg. Jordan had to remind himself that he had seen her only three times. It was as though the time she spent alone in the house had given her a familiarity with him. Yet her voice remained level and impersonal.

‘I expect you usually have your lunch out.’

‘Yes.’

‘What will you do today?’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘What if I stopped on a while and got you something ready?’

‘Oh, no, there’s no need for that.’

‘I’m not in any rush to get away.’

‘I don’t know what you’d find.’

‘There’s bacon and eggs in the fridge. You must eat, y’know.’

‘Yes. Perhaps I will, later.’

She looked at him contemplatively, like someone about to make a diagnosis or recommend a course of treatment.

‘I’ll tell you what you ought to do.’

‘Mmm?’

‘You ought to get up and have a hot shower and get dressed in some warm clothes. Then come downstairs and have some bacon and egg.’

Jordan smiled. ‘If you say so.’

She nodded and got up. ‘I do.’

When, some time later, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of egg and bacon and fried bread before him, Jordan said, ‘Don’t you want anything yourself?’

‘Well, I...’

‘You must have something. You can’t stay behind to feed me and miss your own lunch.’

‘All right, then.’

He was finished and drinking a second cup of tea by the time she sat down opposite him.

‘You made short work of that.’

He had eaten with a good appetite. Odd, he thought, how different the same food could taste when somebody else had cooked it.

‘I hope you’re settled,’ Jordan said. ‘Happy in your work,’ he explained as she looked at him.

‘Oh, yes. It’s easy now I’m on top of it. There’s nobody to make much of a mess.’

‘No.’

‘I was thinking I’d wash some of your paintwork down.’

‘Whatever you think.’

‘Who does your washing for you?’

‘You mean my clothes? I’ve been sending them to a laundry.’

‘I didn’t know there were any left. That must cost a bomb nowadays.’

‘It’s not cheap, but–’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve all that much. You could put a bundle through the launderette once a week and leave ’em out for me to iron.’

‘If you’re sure you don’t mind.’

An idea came to him. He was silent for a time, not knowing how best to express it.

‘I still have all my wife’s clothes.’

‘Oh?’

‘She was about the same build as you.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I don’t want to offend you, but she had some nice things. If there was anything you fancied…’

‘What made you keep them?’

‘I’ve just never bothered about them. I did wonder if I might donate them to an Oxfam shop.’

‘Hadn’t she any friends who might fancy something?’

‘I’ve lost touch. Besides, some people don’t like to –’ He stopped.

‘Wear a dead person’s clothes, you mean?’

‘Perhaps not somebody they’ve known.’

‘I couldn’t entertain anything intimate myself.’

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Jordan said. ‘I could put all that out for jumble. But why don’t you look at the rest?’

‘All right.’

‘Come upstairs,’ Jordan said. ‘I’ll show you what there is.’

A few minutes later he was taking suits and coats out of the fitted wardrobes in his wife’s room and laying them on the bed. To them, he added woollens from the tallboy.

‘Of course, he said, ‘they might not be your style, but it would be a pity to let anything go that you could make use of.’

‘There’s some nice things,’ she said. She was looking at the labels in the garments. ‘Things I could never afford.’

‘She was particular,’ Jordan said. ‘She always went to good shops. But, as I say, please don’t be offended, and don’t think you’ll offend me. It was just an idea.’

She was holding a wool frock against her. It was maroon, with a belt. ‘What was her colouring? Was she fair or dark?’

‘Fair-skinned. Her hair was sort of nondescript. Mousy, I suppose you’d call it.’

‘Like mine when I don’t do anything with it.’

‘Why do you do things with it?’

‘I dunno. Makes a change. D’you think it looks common?’

‘Oh, please...’ Jordan said. ‘I didn’t mean to be personal.’

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘say what you think.’

‘Well, perhaps you could use a rinse or something to bring out its natural colour, without... without going so far.’

‘Perhaps I could.’ She had picked up another frock and was looking into the glass. ‘Maybe I will.’

‘What do you think, then?’ Jordan asked. ‘About the clothes.’

‘Could I try some of them on?’

‘Help yourself. I’ll leave you.’

He wandered into his own room where he stood looking aimlessly round before pulling down the duvet and spreading it to air over the foot of his bed. Downstairs in the kitchen, he put on coffee, then, running hot water into the sink, he began to wash the pots they had used. He was standing there with his back to the door when he heard her come in.

‘You should have left them to me.’

‘I’m not altogether helpless,’ Jordan said. ‘And you’re on overtime already.’

He had switched on the ceiling light which hung low over the table and as he glanced up the darkening window gave him her reflection. For an astounding second he was convinced that it was his wife standing there.

‘What do you reckon, then?’ she asked as he turned.

She had on the maroon frock, but over it she was wearing his wife’s fur cape that she must have gone into another compartment of the wardrobe to find. She seemed suddenly unsure how he would react to this.

‘Splendid,’ Jordan said.

His stomach churned with a sudden desire to touch her. Looking away, he reached for a towel and dried his hands.

‘Course, I know you didn’t mean this, but I couldn’t resist just trying it on.’ Her hands were stroking the fur in long soft movements.

‘Why not?’ Jordan heard himself saying. Then, when he realised she did not understand: ‘Why shouldn’t I have meant that as well?’

‘You can’t,’ she said, lifting her gaze to his. ‘It must be worth a small fortune.’

‘Not all that much,’ Jordan said. ‘And so what?’

‘You can re-sell furs like this,’ she said. ‘Don’t shops take ’em back?’

‘I don’t want to sell it.’

‘You can’t give it to me, though. I couldn’t take it.’

‘Why not? I bought it. Why shouldn’t I give it to whom I like?’

‘You’ll want it for a lady friend.’

‘I haven’t got one.’

‘You will have. You’ll want to get married again, some time. Won’t you?’ she said after a moment, all the time her fingers moving along the lie of the fur. ‘What is it, anyway?’

‘Blue fox, I think,’ Jordan said. ‘Yes, blue fox.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Won’t you let me give it to you?’

‘Hang on a tick,’ she said on a slight laugh, ‘I’m just your cleaning woman. You don’t hardly know me.

‘I don’t want to embarrass you...’

‘You are, though.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll have to think about it.’

‘Was there anything else you fancied?’

‘I’ll take this frock. There’s one or two other things I like.’

‘Take anything you want,’ Jordan said. ‘And think about the cape. It will still be there when you’ve made up your mind.’

She had taken off the cape and was standing with it over her arm, her free hand still moving in long strokes across the fur.

‘I ought to be going, before it gets dark.’

‘I’ve kept you late. I’ll put it on your wages on Thursday.’

She laughed. ‘Nay, I reckon I’ve been paid enough.’

‘Would you like me to drive you home?’

‘You stop in and keep warm. How are you feeling now?’

Jordan put the back of his hand to his forehead. ‘I don’t really know.’

‘You get a few whiskies inside you and have an early night. You’ll likely feel better tomorrow.’

He sat for a long time at the kitchen table after she had gone, while the light faded in the sky beyond the garden. She had left in a casual, almost offhand manner which had taken him by surprise after the near-intimacy of their talk about the clothes. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ she had said, and before he could stir himself from the reverie in which he was peeling the maroon frock off her shoulders and freeing her breasts for the touch of his hands, the front door had closed behind her. He told himself that he had made her uneasy; that she lacked the social grace to handle the situation he had created. She would brood about its implications, wondering what his generosity implied, and – never crediting its spontaneity – from now on keep up her guard. Not that any of it really mattered, for they would not meet again unless he contrived it.

He asked himself if he could justify taking two more days off work so that he could be here when she came again, on Thursday. Could he risk scaring her off altogether by doing that? But he must, he told himself, build now on what had been started – on that curious apparently disinterested familiarity with which she had felt his temperature and sat on his bed; the way they had looked at his wife’s clothes together; her coming down in the fur cape. Why had she done that if she had not coveted it and wanted to give him a chance to offer it to her?

At first he drank one cup of coffee after another, telling himself that if he did not move he could pretend that she was still in the house, moving about those empty rooms. Then he got up to fetch whisky and as he was coming back through the hall the telephone rang.

It was his secretary. He had not spoken to her earlier, but left a message in her absence. Now she asked how he was and if he thought he would be well enough to keep an appointment he had made for Thursday morning with the representatives of the unions.

Jordan’s firm enjoyed good industrial relations, but increasingly sophisticated technology entailed keeping the unions sweetened. It was vital always that nothing should go by default.

‘If I feel like I do now,’ he told Mrs Perrins, ‘I’ll be in at the usual time tomorrow.’

 

The first thing he noticed when he came into the house after work on Thursday was her envelope lying on the hall table. With her wages he had slipped in a note saying, ‘Do please think seriously about the coat.’

Wondering why she had not telephoned, it occurred to him that she probably did not know his office number. Perhaps she would ring this evening. Perhaps, on the other hand, she was ill and could not leave the house.

It came to him now how little he knew about her. He had never made a note of the address she had given him and his only clue to where she could be found was the name of the pub where she had said she was working. It took him a few minutes, while he poured himself a drink and began preparing his evening meal, to bring that to mind.

He looked it up in the yellow pages, then got out a street map of the city and its suburbs. He did not like to think of her being short of money over the weekend, nor of the possibility that she was too ill to get out to the shops.

There had been no call from her by mid-evening, when he got his car out again and drove across the city. The Royal Oak was a big, square, late Victorian pub with two floors of letting rooms above the tall windows of the public rooms on the ground floor. Its best days had obviously finished when commercial travellers abandoned the train for the motor car and no longer spent three or four nights in one place. Now its badly lighted and greasily carpeted bars served as a local for the occupants of the score of streets of three-storey redbrick terraces which climbed the hill beside the main road – and, Jordan thought, only the seediest of them. He detested everything about the place, from the smell of stale beer and the garish wallpaper to the few people he could see – the lads in motor bike gear round the pool table under the wall-mounted television set; the shabby, earnestly gesticulating men drinking in the passage by the back entrance; and the shirtsleeved landlord who put his cigarette on the rim of an already full ashtray before coming to serve him. Jordan wondered when trade here justified Mrs Nugent’s wages. He ordered a Scotch and looked with distaste at the glass it came in.

‘Does Mrs Nugent work here?’ he asked when the man brought his change.

‘Audrey?’

‘Yes. Is she on tonight?’

‘She should be, but she sent word she was poorly.’

‘Does she live nearby?’

‘Are you looking for her?’

‘I’m a friend of hers from when she worked at the Beehive.’

The landlord had taken in his clothes and now an expression Jordan couldn’t read flickered briefly in his pale eyes.

‘She lives in Birtmore Street.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Second on your left going back towards town. I couldn’t tell you what number. Happen the wife’d know.’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d ask her.’

‘You’re sure you’re not after her for something else?’

‘I don’t follow you,’ Jordan said. Perhaps the publican did not know that Mrs Nugent had another job. How did Jordan know what compartments she chose to divide her life into? He had told the man enough of his business.

‘Some folk round here, y’know,’ the landlord said, ‘they’re no better than they ought to be.’

‘I’m only enquiring about Mrs Nugent,’ Jordan said. ‘I’m not interested in anybody else.’

Jordan sipped his whisky. The man nodded at the glass as he put it down. ‘Same again?’

Jordan looked. There was still some left. ‘Go on, then.’

The man went away, taking the glass, and spoke into a house phone.

‘She’ll be down in a minute.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be enough work for a barmaid,’ Jordan said.

‘That’s where you’re wrong. We get the young ’uns in disco nights.’

‘Is that the kind of thing you enjoy yourself?’

‘Times is bad. You’ve got to move with ’em. When Audrey and the missus are on together, I get in the public bar and leave ’em to it.’

He went to serve a youth in a studded leather jacket whose head was shaved to the bone up to the crown, where the hair sprayed out in lacquered vermilion fronds. When a woman with wispy fair hair, wearing a yellow hand-knitted jumper with short puffed-out sleeves appeared, she spoke to the man, who nodded his head in Jordan’s direction.

‘Audrey, was it, you was asking about?’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d give me her address.’

‘From the social security, are you?’

‘I’d have her address if I were, wouldn’t I?’

‘Does she know you’re coming?’

‘I thought I’d see her here.’

‘You would have in the normal way, but she’s poorly.’

‘So your husband says. He says she lives in Birtmore Street. What number is it?’

‘Twenty-seven.’ She looked at him as though regretting the ready answer.

Jordan left the premises wondering if everyone who frequented them had things to hide. It depressed him to think of Audrey Nugent spending her evenings there, and depressed him yet more to reflect that she had probably more in common with that place and its clientele than she had with the Beehive, and even more so than with him himself.

He sat in his car for several minutes before starting the engine and considered the wisdom of what he’d set out to do. Would she welcome his visit or think he was prying? He did not, he admitted now, seriously think she was in need of the money – not in urgent need, or she would have taken steps to get it. Now that he knew her address, he could put it in the post. Yet if he turned back now he would only castigate himself for his indecisiveness. ‘Be honest,’ he said out loud. ‘Own up. You’ve come because you want to see her.’

He drove in second gear back along the main road and turned up the hill when his headlights picked out the cracked nameplate on a garden wall. Some of the houses had been fitted with incongruous new doors and windows. Others showed neglect in broken gates and leggy, overgrown privet hiding the small squares of soil that passed for front gardens. One such was number twenty-seven, which Jordan found when he had traversed the length of
the street and kerb-crawled halfway down again. A dormer window had been let into the roof of this house and a dim light showed through the frosted-glass upper panels of the front door.

The money was in his pocket, still sealed in the envelope he had left for her with her name on it. All he need do was slip it through the letterbox. Then, he thought, she might, in that occasional direct way of hers, rebuke him later. ‘Why didn’t you knock? What were you scared of? Coming all that way and going away without knocking and having a word.’

He got out of the car and approached the house, still undecided. He was standing there with the envelope in his hand when a shape loomed up between the source of the light and the door, and the door was suddenly flung open wide before him. A man coming out at speed stopped in his tracks as Jordan stepped back to avoid being shouldered aside.

‘Are you looking for somebody?’

‘I believe Mrs Nugent lives here.’

The man grunted, his glance raking Jordan in a quick appraisal. ‘Number three, first floor back.’ He half turned and bawled up the stairs. ‘Audrey! Bloke to see you,’ then plunged out past Jordan, leaving him facing an empty hallway, with an image of a strongly built man in his middle thirties, with close dark curly hair, a dark polo-neck sweater and a tweed jacket which Jordan, for some reason, was convinced had been handed on or picked up second hand.

He stepped into the hall and closed the door as a woman’s voice called from above. ‘Who is it?’ He hesitated to call back and began to mount the stairs, hearing as he went up the creak of boards on the landing. ‘Are you still there, Harry?’ the voice asked. The woman’s head and shoulders appeared over the rail and as she saw Jordan’s shape she said sharply, her voice rising, ‘Who are you? What d’you want?’

‘It’s all right, Mrs Nugent. It’s only me – Mr Jordan.’

She straightened up and stepped back as he reached the landing and light fell on him from the open door of the room behind her.

‘What the heck are you doing here?’

Her question was almost insolent in its phrasing and abruptness. He would have reprimanded anyone at the works who spoke to him like that. But she was on her home ground: he was the intruder, and he had startled her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jordan said. ‘I came to bring your money and ask if you’re all right.’

‘Oh, that could have waited.’

‘And when there was no word...’

She had backed into the doorway of her room and was standing with a hand on either jamb, as though denying him entrance, or – it suddenly struck him – looking, in the creased, floor-length plum-coloured housecoat, its neck cut in a deep V to a high, tight, elasticated waist which clung to her ribcage under her breasts, like a still from a Hollywood film noir of the 1940s.

‘You took a bit of finding,’ Jordan said, and wondered at his exaggeration. Perhaps it was all of a piece with his new image of her as the femme fatale of a Fritz Lang movie.

‘How’s that?’

‘I had to enquire at the pub.’

‘The Royal Oak, y’mean?’

‘Yes. I hope you don’t mind. They seemed a bit... a bit cagey.’

‘They wouldn’t know who you were.’

‘No.’

‘Did you tell ’em?’

‘No. I didn’t think it was any of their business.’

‘You’re right, it isn’t.’

Jordan held out the envelope. ‘The money’s here, just as I left it for you. You might need it if you’ve lost your wages at the pub as well.’

‘Thanks. You’re very thoughtful.’ Taking the envelope, she lifted both hands to rub at her upper arms. ‘There’s a rare draught coming up them stairs. Didn’t you shut the front door?’

‘Yes, I’m sure I did.’ He went to the top of the stairs and looked down. ‘Yes, I did.’ He glanced back at her. ‘Well, I hope you’ll soon feel better. Can I expect you on Tuesday? I mean, don’t worry if you’re still not up to it.’

‘Don’t you want to come in a minute?’

‘I mustn’t disturb you.’

‘Come in, if you want. I’ll warn you, though, it’s a tip. I haven’t cleaned up today.’

Jordan followed her into the room. A sink, electric cooker and a small fridge occupied a curtained-off corner. She cleared some garments and magazines off the seat of a wooden-armed easy-chair. ‘Sit down.’ She went and sat on the edge of a divan whose covers were crumpled as though she had been lying on it. ‘See how the other three-quarters live,’ she said. ‘Cosy, isn’t it?’ There was a sardonic glint in her eyes as she looked at him.

‘Is this all you have, just the one room?’

‘That’s all.’

‘You rent it furnished?’

‘If you can call this junk furniture.’

Jordan’s was the only chair. He wondered where the man he had met at the door had sat, if he had been in the room.

Mrs Nugent was tearing open the envelope. As Jordan remembered that his note about the fur coat was still in there, she took it out, glanced at it and replaced it with the banknotes, without comment.

‘You seem nicely back on your feet, anyway.’

‘I had a couple of important meetings. It seemed to leave me as quickly as it came. I hope you didn’t catch it from me.’

‘No, mine’s a woman’s ailment. I wait every month, wondering if it’ll be a bad one. When it is, it crucifies me. Fair cuts me in two. No wonder they call it the curse.’

‘Surely nowdays there are things…’

‘I was fine while I was on the pill. But then they began to get windy about keeping women on it too long.’ She shrugged. ‘So now it’s back to codeine and cups of tea.’

‘The chap I bumped into,’ Jordan said, ‘is he a fellow tenant?’

‘My step-brother. He comes and goes. Works away a lot. Oil rigs and suchlike. Sometimes abroad, among the Arabs.’ She got up. ‘He brought some whisky. Would you like some?’ There was a half-bottle of Johnny Walker on the draining board.

‘Well, I…’

She was rinsing a tumbler under the tap. ‘Have a drink. You like whisky, don’t you?’

‘Just a small one, then,’ Jordan said. ‘I had a couple in the pub.’

‘Another one won’t get you into trouble.’

He asked for water and she handed the drink to him, half and half.

‘Cheers, then.’

‘All the best.’

‘And thanks for coming over with the money.’

‘I had visions of you laid up without any.’

‘I wonder you’ve no more to think about than me. Do you look after all your people that way?’

‘I try to see they get a fair deal. But I have staff for that.’

‘Are there any jobs going at your place?’

‘I’m afraid not. We’ve enough on finding work for those we have. Perhaps when things pick up.’

‘If they ever do.’ She drank, her face suddenly sombre. Jordan wondered if she ever allowed herself to think about the future, or simply lived from day to day.

‘Could I ask you,’ he said, ‘if it’s not too personal. But do you manage to make ends meet?’

‘Look at this place,’ she said, ‘and work it out for yourself.’

After the chill of the night outside and the draughty stairs, the heat in the room was beginning to make Jordan’s head swim. An electric fire blazed at full a few feet from his legs. He would, he thought, have to take off his overcoat or leave. About, for the moment, to shift the chair back for
fear of scorching his trousers, he paused in his movement and relaxed his weight as the orange glow of the fire’s elements suddenly faded to a dull red, then to black.

‘Blast!’ Audrey Nugent said. She reached for a purse and poked her forefinger into its pockets. Then she got up and looked on the narrow mantelshelf.

‘Is it on a meter?’ Jordan asked.

‘You bet it’s on a meter. He could nearly let you live rent-free, the profit he makes on that.’

‘Let me...’ Jordan took change out of his pocket and counted out half a dozen tenpence pieces. ‘Here...’

‘If you can make it up to the pound, I’ll give you a note for it.’

‘There’s not enough,’ Jordan said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

She knelt by the sink and fed coins into the meter. ‘Lucky you came.’

As the fire began to glow again, Jordan said, ‘I wonder you can breathe in such heat.’

‘Happen you’re right. I do overdo it a bit when I’m not feeling well.’ She switched off one of the bars, then drew on a woollen cardigan over the housecoat. At once all the presence – the allure, even – bestowed by the coat was gone. ‘I was going to make meself a hot drink and get into bed, anyway.’

‘I’m being a nuisance,’ Jordan said.

‘You walk on eggshells trying not to offend people, don’t you?’

‘Not everybody,’ Jordan said. ‘Not by any means.’

‘What’s so special about me, then?’

‘You’re in my private employ,’ Jordan said, and wondered what other, less pompous form of words he could have used.

She drew the cardigan together across her chest and fastened the top buttons. Then she felt about in the crumpled folds of the divan cover until she found a cigarette packet, which she shook before tossing it towards a wastebox by the sink.

‘You wouldn’t have a cigarette on you?’

‘I don’t smoke,’ Jordan said. ‘I’ll go and get you some, if you like.’

‘Don’t bother. Harry ’ull bring some back with him, if he remembers.’

‘He’s coming back?’

‘He’s kipping down here for the time being.’

‘Oh...’ Despite himself, Jordan let his gaze take in once more the limits of the room. ‘You mean...?’

‘I mean in here. That’s his sleeping-bag on the floor behind your chair. It’s just till he finds a place of his own, or takes his hook again. It won’t be for long. He says it won’t, anyway.’ She shrugged. ‘It helps with the expenses.’

Letting his imagination run free, Jordan had been rehearsing in it an exchange in which he offered to pay her rent for the privilege of visiting her one evening a week and making love to her on that narrow divan. Only an idle fantasy, he told himself. But he was sick of cold women with pretensions; he wanted someone direct, earthy, warm. He tried to imagine her response should he venture the suggestion, and saw her laughing in his face before ordering him out.

An alternative began to form – one more drastic in its way, but an offer she could refuse without offence, while leaving him with room for further manoeuvre. While he was turning it over, wondering if now was the right time to put it to her, she got up with a restless movement and taking the whisky bottle held it out to him without speaking, her hips moving inside the housecoat as she shifted her weight from one leg to the other, like one waiting for some overdue event.

She probably wanted him to go, he thought, as he shook his head and she carelessly slopped another half-inch into her own glass; wondering why he was hanging about now that his errand was done. Yet although this single cluttered room with its cheap tat of fittings and furniture oppressed him, he was held by the intimacy of their being alone here. The material of the housecoat – some kind of thin stretch velvet, he thought – hugged her hips in a clean slim line, and as she sat again its weight settled into the V of her thighs at the bottom of her flat belly. She carried no spare weight and her breasts would be small, small and firm and white, high on her long white body.

‘Aren’t you sweltering in that overcoat?’ she asked suddenly, when neither of them had spoken for a time.

Jordan realised how long his silence had been and that this might have brought on the nervous energy of her movements.

‘I must go,’ he said. ‘I’ve taken up too much of your time.’

‘You’re not spoiling anything. But I wondered why you’d turned so broody.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jordan said, ‘but I –’

‘I’ve never heard anybody apologise so much. What d’you think you’ve done?’

‘Made you slightly uneasy, perhaps. I don’t know you well enough to go quiet in your company like that.’

‘Be my guest,’ she said. ‘Was it something important?’

‘Yes,’ Jordan heard himself admitting, and knew that he must now carry the thought through. ‘I was just weighing the pros and cons of –’

‘The what?’

He was thrown for a moment. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s me that doesn’t understand you. The pros and...what did you say?’

‘Things for, things against,’ Jordan said.

‘For and against what?’

‘Asking you to come and be my housekeeper.’

It silenced her. She looked quickly at him and just as quickly away. A small smile touched her lips – whether of amusement, embarrassment or gratification he could not tell.

‘If you’ll just let me explain,’ he went on.

‘I think you’d better.’

Jordan was struck by the panicky thought that the step-brother might return before he could say it all.

‘The house needs a woman in it,’ he said. ‘I mean, more than you can give it by just coming in twice a week. And I’m tired of cooking for myself. If it comes to that, I don’t like living on my own there, either. There’s plenty of room. You could easily –’

‘You are talking about living in, then?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Jordan said. It was not, in fact, what he’d immediately had in mind, but the idea had grown as he was talking. ‘You could have your own, er, quarters. I could easily make one of the upstairs rooms into a bedsitter. But other than that you’d have the run of the place and be perfectly free to do what you liked with your spare time. You could carry on working in the evenings if you felt you needed the change and the company. You might think that what I could offer you wasn’t a full wage. I’m sure we could work something out, though, and you would have a comfortable home and all found.’

‘Wait a minute,’ she said as he stopped talking. ‘Hold on a tick. This is all a bit fast for me. It wants some thinking about.’

‘You don’t have to decide now.’

She had clenched the fingers of one hand and was pushing the fist deep into her abdomen. The sudden pallor of her face perturbed Jordan.

‘Is there anything I can get you, Mrs Nugent?’

‘It’ll go,’ she said. ‘That’s the only good thing about it.’

Jordan got up. ‘We’ll talk about it another time, when you can put your mind to it.’

‘You’re a fast worker, I’ll say that for you.’

‘Please,’ Jordan said, ‘don’t get me wrong.’

‘I mean, you know next to nothing about me.’

‘Nor you me, if it comes to that.’

‘Haven’t you thought what a risk you’d be taking?’

He had. Yet he also knew that a desire to do something for this woman had been growing in him ever since she had first smiled at him, in the Beehive. Why, if she would only let him, he could transform her life: he could take her out of this squalor, put her into decent clothes, give her a security that picking up part-time work where she could had never offered her. He would become her benefactor, friend, protector. Gradually, she would learn that she had someone of substance to turn to.

He held in his excitement at the prospect and curbed the urge to press his offer now, though the spasm of pain seemed to have left her as she drew herself upright, arching her back and taking a deep breath which she let out in a long sigh.

‘What if it didn’t work out?’ she said. ‘Where would I go then?’

‘Why not come for a week or two first?’ Jordan suggested. ‘Keep this place on in the meantime. Let your step-brother look after it.’

‘When would you want to know?’

‘There’s no hurry,’ Jordan said. ‘Don’t bother about it now. Think it over when you’re well again.’

 

On his way home Jordan was stopped by the police, who had put a barrier across the suburban road he had chosen on no more than a whim. They did not tell him what they were looking for, only that they were on a routine check, before they asked him who he was, where he lived, where he had been and how long he had been away from home. Then they requested permission to shine their torches over the interior of his car and to examine the contents of the boot.

Jordan guessed what had happened and the local news on his alarm-radio woke him next morning with the details. A girl had been done to death only two hundred yards from a busy main road. It seemed that she had been found more quickly than some of the others and that she must have died while he was talking to Mrs Nugent. There were no details of how the killing had been carried out, but there were the usual hints of appalling savagery. Women were once again warned not to go out alone after dark: the attacks were no longer confined to one type of woman and all women should now consider themselves at risk.

During the next few days he found himself fretting about Audrey Nugent’s safety. True, she had her step-brother at hand, but Jordan did not know how responsible he was; and Mrs Nugent herself, though sometimes anxious, was unlikely to let her movements be restricted.

He wanted to go and see her again, to reassure himself and to warn her. But he dared not seem to be pestering. It was best that she be left to get used gradually to the idea he had planted. So he spent a restless weekend that only hardened the conviction that he was planning the right course for him, and contented himself by leaving a note for her on the Tuesday morning, which did not refer to his offer, but merely said, ‘Do please take care when you are out.’

He returned from the works in the early evening and let himself into the house, his pulse suddenly racing as he saw the light in the kitchen and knew she was still there. He made no effort to keep the pleasure out of his voice as she came out to meet him.

‘Hullo! Have you been here all day?’

‘I came after dinner. Thought I’d stop on a bit.’

‘I am glad. You’ve no idea how good it is to come home and find someone in the house.’

‘Have you never lived on your own before?’

‘As a young man, yes. I lived in a flat for a while. But that was different.’

‘I expect you still miss your wife.’

He said, ‘I miss her not being here. We were married for a long time. You get used to things. Even things you don’t especially care for at the time.’

She frowned a little, turning that over, until she realised that he was frowning too as he looked at her, or at the clothes she was wearing under her pinafore: a skirt and fawn jumper, sleeves pushed to the elbow, that he vaguely recognised.

‘I found something else that fitted me. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Didn’t I tell you? I couldn’t quite bring them to mind. There were some things she stopped wearing when she put on a bit of weight. As long as you don’t find them too conservative.’

‘Conservative?’

‘Plain. A bit dull.’

‘Oh, I sometimes think I’m a bit too tempted by bright colours, myself. I like folk to see me coming.’

‘You must trust your own taste in things.’

‘All the same, you could mebbe pull me up when you think I’m going too far.’

Jordan was delighted. ‘Would you let me do that? Wouldn’t you mind? Really?’

‘You’re a gentleman. You don’t want a housekeeper who looks like – well, a barmaid from the Royal Oak.’

He could hardly believe what she was saying. ‘Does that mean you’re coming? Have you made up your mind?’

‘You said something about giving it is a try. Me bag’s upstairs. I thought I’d stop for a day or two and see how it works out.’

 

At the end of each working day, Jordan sat for a few minutes after clearing his desk and basked in the pleasure of knowing she would be there when he got home. They would have a glass of sherry then, his the fino, hers something rather sweeter, and discuss their evening meal. She was a competent plain cook and all he had to do was unobtrusively add the spices and herbs whose uses she seemed unaware of. She remarked on their flavour with approval.

‘You seem to do all right by yourself. I don’t know what you need me for.’

‘There’s a difference between helping and doing it all the time.’

‘I was wondering about your shopping.’ They had so far used food from his freezer.

‘Do you want to do it?’

‘If you tell me what to get and how much to spend. You’ll have to see to the fancier things yourself.’

‘Perhaps we could do it together to start with.’

‘If you like.’

‘When, though? When could we fit it in?’

‘What about Saturday morning?’

‘That’s all right by me, but –’

‘You don’t work then, do you, or go playing golf?’

Jordan laughed. ‘Whatever made you think about golf?’

‘I just thought you might play.’

‘I did try it once,’ Jordan said, ‘but I couldn’t take to it. No, Saturday’s all right, but what about your weekend?’

‘What about it?’

‘Do you mean you’re staying over?’

‘If you want me to.’

‘What about your job at the pub?’

‘I told ’em I was going away for a few days. I’ll mebbe pack it in altogether if things turn out right here.’

‘I hope they will.’

‘You’re satisfied with it so far?’

‘So far,’ Jordan said, smiling.

His greatest fear was that, alone all day, she would become bored and begin to pine for the old life: the lights, the noise of crowded places, the kind of company she had been used to.

‘You mustn’t think you’ve got to stay in all the time,’ he told her. ‘Just be careful not to be alone on the streets after dark.’

‘I’m all right,’ she said, ‘for now. I’m enjoying the change.’

She liked to bathe before she went to bed; he, in the morning. He wondered how often she had bathed before and suspected that it was not every day. But now each evening she made the most of the privacy of the bathroom, the huge soft unused towels he had got out for her and the abundant hot water. Going in after her, he would brush his teeth standing in the humid scent of bath oil and talcum powder and think of her long slim body lying in one of the two single beds in the guest room she had chosen to sleep in. Each morning, as his radio switched on, she brought him a cup of tea and quietly informed him that breakfast would be ready in fifteen minutes. He had not asked for this and was startled by her first appearance at his bedside in the plum-coloured housecoat he had seen her in before, though she performed the service in the same matter-of-fact way in which she had put her hand to his forehead when he was not well, and she was out of the room again before he had lifted himself onto his elbow. In everything it was as if she were striving to do exactly what he expected of her; in all but the smallest, most routine matters she waited for his cue. He, in turn, longed for a familiarity in which he would know instinctively how to please her, while savouring the novelty, the strangeness of her presence in the house.

On Saturday morning Jordan and Mrs Nugent moved slowly along the aisles of the best of the nearby supermarkets, he choosing articles from the shelves while she pushed the trolley beside him. His wife had loathed supermarkets and had patronised a number of local shops, where she was known by name and could ask for precisely what she wanted, and, in some cases, have it delivered.

‘What shall we have for dinner tonight? There’s tomorrow as well, isn’t there? Are you fond of steak? Do you think as there are two of us we could run to a small joint? If there’s anything left we can eat it cold – or I can – in the week. What kind of vegetable do you like best? No, you say; I really don’t mind: brussels sprouts, cauliflower, whatever you fancy. Look, there’s some asparagus. We could have it with the steak, or perhaps as a starter. Don’t you like it? Oh, you don’t know. Well, let’s take some; I know you’ll enjoy it when you taste it. I quite like fish as a change, too. I have one or two good recipes for fish. But if we want that we shall have to go to the fishmonger down the road.’

They were nearing the checkout when the woman – a friend of his wife’s – whom he hadn’t noticed, spoke to Jordan.

‘Hullo, Robert. You’re quite a stranger. Where have you been hiding yourself?’

Mrs Nugent turned her head to look, then moved on a few discreet yards and examined a display of tableware. Jordan made polite noises.

‘How are you bearing up? Time does slip by, doesn’t it? Henry and I were only speaking about you the other day and reminding ourselves that we ought to be getting in touch. But you’re not alone, I see. I spotted you from over there, before I saw your friend. I’ve got to confess that it gave me something of a turn.’

‘Mrs Nugent helps me in the house.’

‘Oh, I see. It was the coat that did it. I caught a back view and I could have sworn it was just like one that Marjorie wore.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Perhaps I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. Henry always says I’m just as likely to get hold of the wrong end of the stick as the right one. But then, he’s not to be relied on in all things. You look as though you’ll have quite spent up. I expect you like to get it all done in one fell swoop, instead of popping out for bits and pieces. That’s more a man’s way. And it was such a comfort to Marjorie’s friends to know that you could cope. “Oh, he’s quite capable, Robert,” I remember telling someone at the time. “Robert can cope.” And of course you never know just how much people prefer to be left to their thoughts at such sad times. Some people like to be taken out of themselves, others to be left alone with their memories. I did wonder, though, how long you’d be before you put the house on the market. A lovely house – a real family home – but I always thought it just a touch big even for the two of you. I know Marjorie loved it. She told me so once. “I like space to breathe and room to turn round without falling over Robert,” she said. Just her joke. You’ve still got Marjorie’s father’s snuff-boxes, I suppose? Henry was talking about them the other day too. Always admired those. Not that he could afford to buy them, even if you wanted to sell. They must be worth thousands... Yes... poor Marjorie. I do still miss her, you know. But perhaps I shouldn’t say things like that to you when you’ve learned to come to terms with it. And if you’ve got someone bobbing in and out and helping you to keep things spick and span – wasn’t Marjorie the house-proud one? – you won’t feel so entirely alone. I must say you’ve been very fortunate to find somebody. It’s so hard to find help nowadays, even with all this unemployment. Reliable help, I mean, because you can’t be too careful who you let over your doorstep. Did you find her through an agency, or... ?

‘Recommended by a friend.’

‘Oh, well, that’s ideal... That back view. It gave me quite a moment. Do give us a ring and come round some time. We rarely go out now that Henry’s retired, except for the occasional drive. And of course none of us goes out in the dark any more. We daren’t. Terrible, terrible. What can the police be doing not to have caught him before this?’

Jordan walked unhurriedly after Mrs Nugent, who had moved out of sight. She turned to him as he rounded the end of the shelves. ‘Silly bitch,’ he said, and for a second her face retained its thoughtful gravity before breaking into that smile which, rare as it was now, always seemed to him like the sun coming out.

‘Did you tell her who I was?’

‘Of course. What is there to hide?’

Nothing. Except his thoughts. His occasional reveries. His projections of a future for which he could see no durable shape. ‘Live each day as it comes,’ he told himself, ‘and be grateful for it. Build on whatever we’re establishing.’ She seemed content and he was happier than he had been in years: conscious of his happiness and trying not to spoil it by fearing that it would not last.

After supper, which they ate together, using the dining-room at her suggestion (and she had washed up, refusing his offer of help) he read for an hour while she watched television in another room. He wanted to join her, but as she respected his privacy so he must respect her free time. Perhaps later, if she stayed, he would hire a video recorder so that she would not be deprived of programmes by her evening chores.

At a little after eleven she looked into the room and said, ‘If you don’t want the bathroom for a while I’ll go up now.’

‘Okay. Isn’t the late-night film any good?’

‘It’s foreign, and I’m tired.’

‘Bed’s the best place, then.’

‘By the way, what time do you like breakfast on a Sunday?’

‘Any time we both feel like it. I think you could lie in for an hour, if you want to.’

‘I’ll see. Goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight.’

He put a record of singing on the player and poured himself a Scotch. After a time he went across the hall to the room where she had been sitting to unplug the television set from the mains. The room smelled of cigarette smoke and there were four stubs in the ashtray. He left them. She would, he had no doubt, tidy in here in the morning and open the window briefly for fresh air. Before disconnecting the set he switched on. A man was speaking to a woman in passionate French. She answered him, accusing him of using her for his own devices. Jordan’s French was not good enough for him to follow the exchange and a stilted moment in the translation in the subtitles made him suddenly laugh out loud.

 

Something woke him in the small hours. He lay there, trying to make out what it was. He had no recollection of a dream, yet his heart was racing as if he had surfaced from a nightmare. He turned onto his back and listened to the house as he had listened every night for a time after his wife had died. The feeling of unease persisted. Finally, he gave in to it and switched on his bedside light and threw back the duvet. Pushing his feet into his slippers, he got up and drew on his dressing-gown before stepping onto the landing.

He was standing looking over the rail into the darkness below when he heard the sound. It was like the soft, plaintive whimper of some small animal, trapped and bewildered; and it was coming from Mrs Nugent’s room. As he moved to the door and put his ear to the panel, the animal-like plaint changed to indistinct words uttered in a rapid, low-pitched stream. When the voice all at once rose in a cadence of defiance, Jordan tapped lightly on the door and opened it. He had to step round the door before he could make out the shape of her lying in the nearer of the twin beds. For a moment then it was as though his presence had soothed her without her knowing it; then one of her arms began to thrash as she spoke again in a vehement outburst:

‘No! No! You can’t. I won’t let you. You can’t! You can’t! You can’t!’

‘Mrs Nugent.’ As he touched her shoulder, she twisted violently away from him, then back again. ‘Mrs Nugent.’

She spoke as if still held in her dream. ‘Who is it? What d’ you want?’

‘It’s only me, Mrs Nugent. Don’t he alarmed. You were only dreaming.’ He knelt beside the bed now, one hand hold­ing her hand that was free of the covers. With his other hand he found himself softly caressing her brow, then her cheek. ‘You’re all right now. Don’t be afraid. You’re safe with me.’ There were tears on her face. He cupped her cheek and ran his thumb in the moisture under her eyes. She lay still now, allowing herself to be soothed.

Jordan raised himself and sat on the bed. She shifted herself to make room for him as she felt his weight settle. He began again to caress the pale shape of her face. Her hair was damp on her forehead.

‘You’re quite safe,’ Jordan said. ‘You’re perfectly safe with me. I won’t let them hurt you.’

In a few moments more her breathing was steady and deep. He wondered if she had really awakened.

 

He found her sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and smoking a cigarette.

‘Good morning.’

‘Hullo. You’re up early. I thought you were going to sleep in a bit.’

‘I forgot to reset my radio. It woke me at the usual time.’ He got a cup from the cupboard and reached for the teapot, motioning her to stay seated as she made to rise. ‘I can do it.’ He nodded towards the thin plume of smoke which rose lazily in the still air beyond the tall creosoted fence of his neighbour’s garden. ‘It must be going to be a nice day.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘He always makes a fire on the nicest days.’ He joined her at the table. ‘I thought you might have slept longer yourself.’

She drew on the cigarette. Her hand trembled slightly as she tapped ash into the glass tray.

‘Did you come into my room last night?’

‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Somebody was touching me.’

‘You were dreaming. You woke me up.’

‘I took a sleeping pill. I didn’t know where I was.’

‘You were frightened.’

‘I must have been.’

‘What was it about, can you remember?’

‘Not much now.’ She frowned. ‘I was here on me own. It was different, somehow. Somebody came.’

‘Who was it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you often have nightmares?’

‘I dream sometimes, but not like that. I haven’t had one like that since I was a little lass. I mean as bad. They used to have to take me into bed between them.’

‘Your father and mother?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were you an only child?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they still alive?’

‘Me mother died, after me dad ran off. I never heard what happened to him.’ Jordan drank tea and waited, saying nothing. ‘Do you want some breakfast?’

‘There’s no hurry.’

‘Have you got any family?’

‘My parents are dead. I have a married sister in New Zealand and a brother living in London,’ said Jordan.

‘Do you ever see them?’

‘My brother came up for my wife’s funeral. I hadn’t seen him for some time before that.’

‘You’re not close, then?’

‘No.’

‘I think that’s a shame. I pined for brothers and sisters when I was a kid.’

‘You’ve got your step-brother.’

‘Well... He’s not really me step-brother. I just call him that. It’s what he calls himself.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Me mam was never married to his dad.’

‘You all lived together?’

‘For a year or two. Then me mam died. An auntie took me in. I never saw Harry again till we were both grown up. He come looking for me, one time. “Don’t you know me?” he says. “It’s your step-brother.” I didn’t know him from Adam at first. Then I begun to see it was him. He always calls me his step-sister. I don’t mind, if that’s what he wants. It makes things look a bit more respectable, I suppose, when he turns up and wants a place to sleep for a week or two. Not that that matters much. Nobody cares nowadays, do they?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘Does it bother you, then, that sort of thing?’

‘Oh, I always say people can do what they like, as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.’

‘You what?’

‘Just an old joke. What did Harry think of you coming to live in here?’

‘I don’t really know.’

‘Didn’t he say anything? Did he think it was a good move or a bad one?’

‘He said it was up to me.’

‘Do you think you can still settle, after last night?’

‘…Nothing happened last night, did it?’

‘You were crying out in your sleep. I came in and calmed you.’

‘Was that all?’

‘Can’t you remember?’

‘I must have had another dream, after you’d gone.’

‘What about? Her cup was empty. He reached for the pot and refilled it for her, not wanting her to start moving about. ‘What was your other dream, then? You weren’t frightened again, were you?’

‘No.’ She shook her head and lowered her face, one hand to her forehead.

‘Do you mean I was in it?’

‘It’s too silly…

‘Silly?’

‘Embarrassing. It’s best not talked about.’

‘But you thought it might actually have happened. Is that what you mean?’

‘Not really.’

‘It was vivid, though. It must have been.’

‘I told you, I’d taken a sleeping pill. I didn’t know where I was.’

‘If it wasn’t frightening, was it curious or pleasant, or what?’

‘Let’s forget about it.’

‘You brought it up.’

‘I just wanted to be sure.’

‘I don’t know why you want to make such a mystery of it,’ Jordan said. She lit another cigarette. He noticed that her hands were still unsteady. ‘You smoke too much.’

‘Only sometimes. Do you still want me to stop on here?’

‘You haven’t changed your mind, have you?’

‘I was still making it up.’

‘Is there anything I can do to help you decide to stay? I obviously can’t guarantee to keep out of your dreams.’

‘You won’t get it out of me that way.’

Emboldened by her small smile, Jordan said, ‘Well, at least tell me this much: did I seem to enjoy being in your dream?’

She got up. ‘Shall I make another pot of tea or are you ready to go on to coffee?’

‘Make which ever you prefer.’

‘Say which you want.’

‘I’ll leave it to you.’

‘You don’t sulk, do you?’ she asked. ‘I can’t abide people who sulk.’

‘I don’t sulk; I show my displeasure.’

‘I wish I’d never mentioned it.’

‘But you wanted to be sure.’

‘There’s no need for sarcasm, either.’

‘Well, what did you want to be sure of, for heaven’s sake?’

She banged down the full kettle, slipped home the plug, closed the switch.

‘If you must know,’ she said, ‘I didn’t want to spend the next couple of weeks wondering if I might be pregnant.’

‘You mean to say,’ Jordan said, on his feet now, ‘that you think I’m the kind of man who’d creep into your bed and take advantage of you while you didn’t know what you were doing?’

‘What are you getting mad about?’

‘I’m wondering what sort of a man you take me for.’

‘You are a man, aren’t you?’

‘What does that mean?’

‘If I invited you into my bed, what would you do?’

Jordan turned to the window. His neighbour’s garden fire was burning well now. A sudden spring of breeze fanned out the smoke before lifting it over a nearby roof. He was astounded that things between them had come so far so fast. It was not the way he’d imagined it at all.

‘Can’t you answer?’

He tried to keep his voice cool and level. ‘What makes you think I’m interested in you that way?’

‘If you’re not, you’re not. But I want to know. I want to know if that’s what you had in mind when you asked me to come and live here.’ When he didn’t speak, she went on, ‘I reckon I’ve a right to know that much.’

‘Which is the answer that will keep you here?’ Jordan asked.

‘Try telling the truth.’

Whatever happened now, Jordan thought, things could never be the same. He felt like a small boy caught in some shameful action. Yet if he denied what he wanted he was sure she would feel obliged to go.

‘I want to make love to you,’ he said.

She was silent for so long he thought she must have left the room. He forced himself round.

‘Did you hear me?’

‘I heard you.’ She was pouring boiling water into the teapot. ‘You should have said. You should have told me.’

He stepped towards her and put his hands on her shoulders from behind.

‘Audrey…’ But she turned and brushed past him to set the teapot down on the table.

‘Don’t be in such a rush,’ she said. ‘It’s time I made your breakfast. And then there’s one or two things we have to talk about.’

 

‘I’m scared stiff of getting pregnant,’ she was saying to him a long time later that day.

‘You won’t.’

‘You can get something, can’t you?’

‘Tomorrow.’

Reminded by his neighbour’s activity, he had spent most of the daylight hours in his neglected garden, keeping away from her and trying through physical labour to curb his mounting excitement.

But images of her came again and again to fill his mind until, by nightfall, he was almost sick with longing and could only toy with his evening meal.

‘You should have said. You should have told me.’

‘I didn’t know how. I didn’t want to frighten you off. I hoped you’d come to the idea in your own time.’

‘I don’t know what it is you see in me.’

‘I’d like to look after you. Do things for you. Nice things.’

‘What for? I’m not your sort.’

‘Perhaps that’s why.’

‘You’re a gentleman. I’m nothing.’

‘You’re talking rubbish.’

‘You know next to nothing about me.’

‘You’re what you let yourself be.’

‘Seems to me I’ve nearly always been forced.’

‘I won’t force you,’ Jordan said.

‘No, you’d kill me with kindness.’

‘Would I?’

‘You will. If I let you.’

‘Promise me,’ she was saying to him now. ‘Promise you won’t go any further than I let you.’

‘I promise.’

Her mouth moved against his as her tongue probed. She tasted faintly of tobacco smoke. He shuddered as her hand explored his groin. When his own hand slid down across her flat belly she took it firmly and led it to her breasts. He clutched them and gasped as the spasm started in him.

 

The papers were needed for the meeting. Mrs Perrins said she had searched high and low but could not find them. ‘You took them home with you, didn’t you? I remember you saying you’d take them home to read in peace.’

‘I thought I’d brought them back.’

He was slipping. He forgot things. Yet he felt in bounding physical condition. She had noticed the difference in him and he had caught her once or twice looking at him in a mildly speculative way.

He had just returned to his office after lunch. The meeting was called for three-thirty.

‘I shall have to go back and look for them,’ he said. ‘We can’t manage without them, that’s for sure.’

He left the car in the street and walked up the drive. The house was afternoon-still. Audrey got most of her work done in the morning. He supposed she could have gone out, though he knew she quite often took a nap after lunch.

He went straight upstairs, his feet moving lightly, two steps at a time. Her door stood ajar. It opened without a sound over the carpet as he stepped round. She was asleep, the sheet down to her hips exposing the long curve of her naked back. Jordan thought the man lying on the other side of her was sleeping too until, in the second before the closing door cut off his view, a head lifted off the pillow and Harry’s eyes looked directly into his.

The telephone in the hall began to ring as he got to the top of the stairs. He was down and reaching for it when he heard movement on the landing and she came into view, drawing a wrap about her. She paused for a second as she saw him and he noticed that she could not resist a quick look behind her.

‘What are you–?’

There was something in her face beyond instinctive apprehension: something he couldn’t in his present state define, and which was gone almost as soon as he had discerned it.

He waved her to silence, the receiver filled with the effusive apologies of his secretary. He listened, said a couple of words and hung up.

‘How long have you been back?’ Her voice was lifted, unusually carrying.

‘I’ve just come in.’

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘I came to get some papers, but my secretary’s found them.’

‘I was lying down.’

‘So I gathered.’

He felt suddenly as though he would fall. She took a step towards him as his hand groped for the wooden arm of the chair beside the telephone. He sat down heavily, bending forward to thrust his head between his knees.

‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you well?’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘You look as pale as lard,’ she said when he straightened up. Her hands fluttered at the stuff of the wrap, drawing it closer, smoothing it down.

‘I just went dizzy for a second, that’s all.’

‘Shouldn’t you rest for a while?’

She had to say that, he thought. She couldn’t avoid saying that.

‘I’ve got an important meeting. They can’t hold it without me.’ He got up and stood very still for a moment, checking his balance.

‘Well, you just be careful driving.’

‘I will.’ He turned at the door. ‘By the way, there’s been a slight change in my plans.’ Her eyes held his. He was the first to look away. ‘I have to entertain a customer. I shan’t be in for dinner.’

 

From his office Jordan drove into the city centre and found a place to park. He went into a pub and drank two large whiskies then walked across the street to a cinema. He sat in an almost empty auditorium until he became slowly aware that what he was looking at on the screen was what he had seen when he first came in. Then he went out into streets upon which night had fallen and drove home.

The house was in darkness. He went about the ground floor, switching on lights, before going upstairs to her room. The wardrobe and drawers were empty of her belongings. The suitcase she had brought them in was gone too.

 

Nearly two weeks passed before Jordan brought himself to drive across the city to Birtmore Street. Time after time he had conjured up the image of her as she had come down the stairs towards him, drawing the wrap around her nakedness. Again and again he had analysed and reinterpreted the expression on her face as she had seen him. Slowly, over the days and nights, the idea grew in him that her look had been that of one who realises she has committed perhaps the greatest folly of her life. Only when this notion became fixed in him did his misery relax its paralysing grip. Only then did some lingering vestige of hope tell him that, in spite of everything, all might not yet be lost.

When he had struck a match by the dark glass of the door and rung what he took to be her bell, he tried once more to rehearse what he might say, and once more gave up the attempt. He did not know what he would say until he saw her reaction. Perhaps he would need to say very little. He wanted her back. She would know that when she saw him.

He rang again, making a slow count to five as his finger held the push. More than likely she was at the pub, working. He had thought of looking in there first, but balked at the prospect of meeting her again for the first time in public. But better that than not seeing her at all. There was no need for a fuss. His appearing would tell her and if there was in her anything at all of what he had imagined – no, known – she would make it in her way to have a private word.

The voice challenged him as he reached the gate. ‘Were you ringing my bell?’ A girl stood in the now lighted doorway, a plump girl, as round as a bouncing ball. She took a couple of steps back into the hall as Jordan approached her. A deep lateral crease in her pale green T-shirt marked the division between belly and breasts. ‘What d’you want?’

‘I was hoping to see Mrs Nugent.’

‘You were ringing my bell.’

‘Sorry. I thought it was hers. Is she in, d’you know?’

‘Who did you say?’

‘Mrs Nugent.’

The girl’s right hand had a firm hold on the edge of the door, as though she were ready to slam it on him.

‘I don’t know anybody of that name.’

Do I look like a woman-killer? Jordan thought. And yet, what did a woman-killer look like? He kept a reassuring distance as he said, ‘She lives in the first floor back.’

‘She doesn’t, you know,’ the girl said. ‘That’s where I live, as of yesterday. And I’d be out as of tomorrow, if I’d anywhere better to go. It’s a right bloody dump.’

‘She can only just have moved,’ Jordan said helplessly. ‘Are you sure you’ve not seen her?’

‘What name was it again?’

‘Nugent. Audrey Nugent. She was sometimes with a man called Harry. In his middle thirties, well built, dark curly hair.’

‘There’s nobody like that here now, mister.’

‘Then I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

‘If you say so.’ As the door began to close, she added, ‘Better luck next time.’

Jordan forced himself to enter the Royal Oak. It was busier than before and he had to wait to catch the landlord’s eye.

‘You might remember me asking for Mrs Nugent some time back.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Does she still work here?’

‘Hasn’t for some while now. I heard she’d gone to housekeep for a feller, somewhere the other side of town.’

‘You’ve no idea where I might find her now?’

‘Did you find her before?’

‘Yes.’

‘You shouldn’t have lost her again, then. Scotch, wasn’t it?’

‘No, thanks,’ Jordan said. ‘So you’ve no idea where she is?’

‘None at all, mate.’ The man was already moving away.

Jordan called at the Beehive and drank a couple of pints. He had done that two or three times while she was with him. She had sent him. ‘Walk on to the Beehive and have a pint while I watch the telly. Do you good.’ He had stood at the bar, savouring the cool beer and recalling in his mind’s eye the first time he had seen her and the extraordinary warmth and charm of her smile; his own smile, bestowed like a blessing on all who came near him, wrapped round the knowledge of just where she was, what she was doing, who she was waiting for.

The beer got to him quickly. He stood with his head down in his shoulders, both hands on the bar
counter, thinking again of how she had looked as she came downstairs, with uppermost in her mind, the instant after seeing him, the realisation of all she had put at risk. ‘I would tell you,’ he said softly, aloud, ‘if I knew where you were.’

He went home. He hated the place now and wondered how quickly he could sell it. But suppose he did sell it and, as he had with her, she came looking for him and did not know where he had gone? How his wife would have mocked him...

On a thought, he went straight upstairs to his wife’s room where he opened the wardrobes. The fur cape was gone, as was her jewellery box from the dressing-table drawer. He couldn’t think now why it had not occurred to him to look before. Downstairs again, he crossed the hall to the small sitting-room that his wife had used in the evenings, a room he had no more than glanced into for several weeks. The display cabinet housing her father’s collection of snuff-boxes stood against the wall behind the door. A sliver of glass broke under his feet. It had needed only a small hole, just big enough for an arm to reach in. The heel of a woman’s shoe could easily have made that.

 

When, a few weeks later, the chairman of the group that controlled his firm called Jordan to head office to tell him personally that owing to a major reorganisation in difficult times the board was compelled to ask him to take early retirement, but there was a sizeable golden handshake and his pension to see him through in comfort (and, after all, wasn’t business these days full of younger men who had every intention of throwing off their responsibilities when they were little older than Jordan was now?), Jordan sat as though he was not hearing a word that was said to him.

‘How did he take it?’ a fellow director asked afterwards.

‘How did he take it?’

‘Was he surprised, shocked, resentful?’

‘It’s hard to describe. I can’t remember his saying a single word. He was like a man who’s given up altogether, a man who quite simply doesn’t give a damn about anything.’