Dark Corners: A Novel by Ruth Rendell

encounter had been when Elizabeth had roughly removed her from the seat of an armchair, and Sophie had turned on her, teeth bared, claws out, and inflicted some nasty wounds before returning to her favourite spot. These days they gave each other a wide berth.
     
    Days passed and no rent had appeared. Carl hadn’t expected it, but he was still angry and miserable. He also knew that Dermot was playing some sort of complicated game, for after a week or two, the noise had stopped. Even the front door was closed silently. It was so quiet that there might have been no tenant on the top floor if he had not occasionally seen Dermot walking down Falcon Mews, on his way to or from work or leaving for church. Then, in the middle of the next week, something made of metal – a watering can, perhaps – was dropped, and crashed resoundingly, bouncing across the floor above. Because he was no longer used to it and had believed the noise had come to an end, Carl shivered and actually cried out.
    There was no more noise that day, but it left him trembling. Nicola was due home at six thirty, but he couldn’t bear to wait that long, not so much because he wanted her company as out of terror that the dropping of things was due to start again.
    When he phoned her, she said she had the afternoon off and would come home in an hour’s time. Having her here would be wonderful, were it not for the fact that she would constantly urge him to stand up to Dermot and demand the rent. But he had to have her here for this coming weekend. He couldn’t live without her. He had done no work for weeks now. The book was a dead loss, not a book at all in fact, for he had destroyed all of it, even the plan and the notes he had made before he started. He had never wanted a real job, but now he wished he had one. It would get him out of the house. He read in the paper and saw on the television that jobs were very hard to get. It was hopeless for him even to look for employment.
    On Friday afternoon, on his way back to work, Dermot knocked on Carl’s living room door. Carl was asleep. He got off the sofa and opened the door.
    ‘Yes, what is it?’
    ‘Just to ask you if it’d be all right to use the garden sometimes, sit out there, I mean. I’ve got a couple of deckchairs.’
    Carl said, ‘That would mean coming through my kitchen.’
    ‘That’s right. OK with you?’ Implicit in the enquiry was
it had better be.
‘“A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot”,’ said Dermot.
    Carl shrugged, nodded, shut the door. He wondered why he ever spoke politely to Dermot. Why even answer him? Silence would be best, but he knew he wouldn’t keep silent. Was it because he clung to some hopeless hope that Dermot would
relent, that he would say he hadn’t meant it, it was a try-on, and now, soon, he would pay the rent as he had always known he must?
    When Nicola came in from work, Carl was waiting for her, sitting on the front step, maybe just to escape from breathing the same air as Dermot. Money was short. The lack of it was beginning to make itself felt in a serious way, and this was something Carl couldn’t admit to Nicola. Even though he had grown up in a world where women were becoming increasingly equal to men, where equality was the subject of almost daily TV programmes and constant newspaper features, he had still absorbed enough of a male supremacy culture to believe that, if he were to mention his financial crisis, Nicola would think he was asking her for a loan or even a gift. And she would press him again to confront his tenant.
     
    On Sunday, they watched from a window as Dermot went to church. Like churchgoers in times gone by, he carried a prayer book. They had talked about Dermot for half the night, what he would do if crossed, and what the consequences would be. They did make love, at just before three, and afterwards fell into a heavy sleep until nearly ten. Saturday’s rain had stopped during the night. The sun was out, the wind had dropped and