A Demon in My View by Ruth Rendell Page B

With this in mind, he knew he would want to refer to it in their telephone conversation, would use it to reinforce his pressures on her, and he didn’t want that conversation overheard by the Kotowskys, Li-li Chan, or the new tenant of whom he had once or twice caught a glimpse.
    Why not ask Linthea Carville if he could make the call from her flat? This seemed to have a twofold advantage. He would have complete privacy and, at the same time, the very making of such a request, involving as it would an explanation of his situation with Helen, would reinforce the friendship that was growing between Linthea and himself.
    But by Tuesday, October 29, that situation had changed again. He retrieved Helen’s letter from under the huge pile of correspondence for Winston Mervyn which had fallen on top of it, and tore open the envelope only to be bitterly disappointed.
On Wednesday when you phone I know you will ask me if I’ve come to a decision. Tony, I haven’t, I can’t. We have had a terrible weekend, Roger and I. First of all he started questioning me
about my movements during that fortnight he was away in the States in June. I’d told him before that I’d spent one weekend with my sister and apparently he’s now found out from my brother-in-law that I was never there. He made a lot of threats and raved and sulked but in the evening he became terribly pathetic, came into my room after I’d gone to bed and began pouring out all his miseries, how he’d longed for years to marry me, served seven years like Jacob (of course he didn’t, I’m not old enough) and now he couldn’t bear to be frozen out of my life. This went on for hours, Tony. I know it’s blackmail but most people give in to blackmail, don’t they?
    He was glad now he hadn’t made that request to Linthea. Hedging his bets? Maybe. But the West Indian girl had seemed more attractive to him than ever when he had had lunch with her and Leroy after they had collected the wood and when they had met again at the Tenants’ Association last Saturday afternoon. And if, as it would seem, he was going to lose Helen, be dismissed in favour of that sharpshooting oaf …? Was it so base not to want to jeopardise his chances with Linthea—her husband, at any rate, was nowhere in evidence—by making her think herself a second choice, a substitute?
    Rather bitterly he thought that he didn’t now much care who overheard his phone call, for there would be no reminiscing over past love passages. One who wouldn’t overhear it, anyway, was Vesta Kotowsky who rushed past him in a floor-length black hooded cloak as he was coming up the station steps. He went to the kiosk and bought a box of matches with a pound note, thus ensuring a supply of tenpence pieces for his phone call. He was going to need them, all of them.
    Her voice sounded nervous when she answered, but it was
her
voice, not heard for a month, and its effect on him was temporarily to take away his anger. That voice was so soft, so sweet, so civilised and gentle. He thought of the mouth from which it proceeded, heart-shaped with its full lower lip, and he let her talk, thinking of her mouth.
    Then he remembered how crucial this talk was and what he must say. “I got your letter.”
    “Are you very angry?”
    “Of course I’m angry, Helen. I’m fed up. I think I could take iteven if you decided against me. It’s probably true what you said in your other letter, that we’d forget each other in time. What I can’t take is being strung along and …” He broke off. The Kotowskys’ door opened and Brian came out. Brian started making signals to him, ridiculous mimes of raising an invisible glass to his lips. “Can’t,” Anthony snapped. “Some other night.”
    Helen whispered, “What did you say, Tony?”
    “I was talking to someone else. This phone’s in a very public place.” He shouted, “Oh, God damn it!” as the pips sounded. He shovelled in more money. “Helen, couldn’t you call me on this