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Tigerlily's Orchids: A Novel, by Ruth Rendell
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INCLUDES AN EXCERPT OF RENDELL’S FINAL NOVEL, DARK CORNERS
Is it dangerous to know too much about your neighbors?
When Stuart Font throws a housewarming party, he invites all the residents of his new building—among them, three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death. He definitely does not want his girlfriend, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband. But careful planning can only get a person so far. As it turns out, this party will be one everyone remembers.
Meanwhile, living in a town house opposite Stuart’s building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily. As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell.
In Tigerlily’s Orchids, Ruth Rendell has written a darkly humorous and psychologically thrilling novel about the eccentric inhabitants of a London terrace—about the secrets they keep, and what they will do to hide them.
- Sales Rank: #1275304 in Books
- Published on: 2012-03-13
- Released on: 2012-03-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x .40" w x 5.50" l, .55 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
Review
"Disgraceful behavior has rarely been written about so gracefully.”—Boston Globe
“There is widespread agreement among both readers and reviewers that Ruth Rendell is the best crime fiction writer of our time.”—San Diego Union Tribune
“Exquisitely paced drama… Rendell once again creates an addictive read in which the characters are drawn and defined by the author's wry observations.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch
About the Author
Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writers’ Association. Her remarkable career spanned a half century, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she was one of the great literary figures of our time.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1
Olwen was in Wicked Wine, buying gin. She understood from Rupert, whose shop it was, that these days wicked meant “smart” or “cool,” not “evil,” just as gay in some circles was starting to signify bad or nasty. She didn’t much care, though she wondered why a shop which sold beer and spirits and Coca-Cola and orange juice advertised itself as purveying only wine. Rupert said, “That’s the way it is,” as if this explained everything.
She bought three bottles of the cheap kind. Bombay Sapphire came expensive if you consumed as much of it as she did. Gin was her favourite, though she had no objection to vodka. Purely for variety’s sake, she had tried rum, but rum was vile if you drank it neat, and she couldn’t stomach orange juice or, God forbid, black currant.
“Can you manage,” said Rupert, “or do you want me to do you a double bag?”
“Not really.”
“Your neighbour Stuart, is it?—don’t know his other name—was in here this morning stocking up on champers. ‘Having a party?’ I said, and he said it was a housewarming, though he’s been here for months and it’s not till February. He was inviting all the other folk in Lichfield House.”
Olwen nodded but said nothing. Outside it was snowing, and not the kind of snow that becomes a raindrop when it touches the ground. This snow settled and gradually built up. Olwen, in rubber boots, trudged through it along Kenilworth Parade. The council had cleared a passage in the roadway for cars—a passage that was rapidly whitening—but done nothing for pedestrians apart from scattering the ice-coated, slippery pavement with mustard-coloured sand. She passed the furniture shop, the pizza place, the post office, and Mr. Ali’s shop on the corner and turned up into Kenilworth Avenue. Most of the time the place was as dreary as only a London outer suburb can be, but the veiling of snow transformed it into a pretty Christmas card. Small conifers in the front gardens of the block poked their dark green spires through the snow blanket, and the melting icicles dripped water.
Olwen staggered up the steps with her bag of bottles. The automatic doors parted to receive her. In the hallway she encountered Rose Preston-Jones with her dog, McPhee. On the whole Olwen was indifferent to other people or else she disliked them, but Rose she distrusted, much as she distrusted Michael Constantine. If not herself a doctor, Rose, with her acupuncture and dabbling in herbalism, her detoxing and her aromatherapy, was the next best (or worst) thing. Such people were capable of interfering with her habit.
“Is it still snowing?” Rose asked.
“Not really.”
Olwen had long ago discovered that this is a response which may be made with impunity to almost any enquiry, including “Are you well?” and “Are you free on Saturday?” Not that people often asked her anything. She made it plain that she was mostly inaccessible. Rose looked at the carrier bag, or Olwen thought she did. Maybe she just looked down at the dog, looked up again, and said she must get on with McPhee’s walk.
The lift was waiting, its sliding door open. Olwen had just stepped in when Michael Constantine came running through the automatic door. He had the sort of legs which, when possessed by models, are described as so lengthy as to reach up to their neck, and he was six and a half feet tall, so his stride was long. He was the politest of the residents and asked Olwen if she was well.
“Not really.” Olwen forbore to ask him how he was and, though she knew his flat was on the second floor, pressed the button for the third. A peculiarity of the lift was that once this floor had been signalled, the intermediate could not be, so Michael had to go up to the top with her.
He remembered to be a doctor, though he had only recently become one.
“Keep warm. Look after yourself.”
Olwen shrugged, her alternative response. She got out of the lift without a word just as one of the girls came out of the flat she shared with two girls of similar age. None of them had ever been seen dressed otherwise than in jeans with a T-shirt, sweater, or flouncy dress on her top half. One was rather overweight, one thin, and one in between. As well as jeans, this one had a red quilted coat over what seemed like several jumpers. Olwen had been told their names over and over, but she had contrived to forget them. She let herself into Flat 6 and put the transparent bag down on the kitchen counter.
The flat was furnished for comfort, not for beauty. There were no books, no plants, no ornaments, no curtains, and no clocks. A deep, soft, shabby, comfortable sofa occupied one wall of the living room and faced, along with a deep, soft, and comfortable armchair with a detachable footrest, the large flat-screen television set. A window blind was seldom raised or lowered from its present position of halfway up, and beneath it could be seen the solid cupola-topped tower of Sir Robert Smirke’s church and the tops of trees at Kenilworth Green. And of course the snow, now falling in large, feathery flakes. The bedroom was even more sparsely furnished, containing only a king-size bed and, facing it, a row of hooks on the wall.
All but one of the kitchen cupboards were empty. Food, such as there was of it, lived in the fridge. The full cupboard was rather less full than it had been at the beginning of the week, but Olwen replenished her stock by putting her three new bottles on the shelf alongside a full bottle and one that was half-empty. This one she removed and poured from it about three inches of gin into a tumbler. There was no point in waiting until she was sitting down to start on it—there was no point in Olwen’s present life of ever doing anything she didn’t want to do—so she drank about half of it, refilled the glass, and took glass and bottle to the sofa. It was low down near the floor, so no need for a table. Glass and bottle joined the phone on the woodblock floor.
Reclining, her feet up on a cushion, she reflected, as she often did, on having, at the age of sixty, attained her lifelong aim. Through two marriages, both unsatisfactory, seemingly endless full-time work, houses she had disliked, uncongenial stepchildren, and dour relations, she was at last doing what she had always wanted to do but had rigidly, for various reasons, stringently controlled. She was drinking the unlimited amount of alcohol she had longed for. She was, she supposed, but without rancour or regret, drinking herself to death.
The list Stuart Font had made read Ms. Olwen Curtis, Flat 6; girls—don’t know names, Flat 5; Mr. and Mrs. Constantine, Flat 4; Marius something, don’t know other name, Flat 3; Ms. Rose Preston-Jones, Flat 2; me, Flat 1. This last entry he crossed out as it was unnecessary to invite himself to his own housewarming party. The flat he had moved into in October was still unfurnished but for three mirrors, a king-size bed in the bedroom, and a three-seater sofa in the living room. The place looked a bit desolate, but Stuart had noticed a furniture store in Kenilworth Parade, its prices much reduced due to the credit crunch. Remembering to take his key with him—he had twice forgotten his key and had to hunt for and eventually find the porter or caretaker or whatever he called himself—he went out into the foyer to check on names and flat numbers on residents’ pigeonholes.
The girls at Flat 5 appeared to be called Noor Lateef, Molly Flint, and Sophie Longwich, and the man on his own at Flat 3, Marius Potter. That was everyone documented. Stuart, who hadn’t yet been outdoors that day, ventured onto the front step. The snow was still falling and had settled on pavements, patches of grass, rooftops, and parked cars. Stuart noticed that if he stood on the step, the front doors remained open, letting in a bitter draught. He hurriedly went indoors and back into his own flat, where he sat down once more, added names to his list, and wondered whether he should ask the porter (Mr. Scurlock), the Chinese (Vietnamese, Cambodian?) people opposite, the elderly chap next door to them, Rupert at Wicked Wine, his best friends, Jack and Martin—and Claudia. If he invited Claudia, wouldn’t he also have to invite her husband, Freddy, incongruous though this seemed in the circumstances?
Stuart added the names to his list, went into the kitchen, and made himself a mug of hot chocolate, a drink he was particularly fond of. He was realising, not for the first time, that though he was twenty-five, he had serious gaps in his knowledge of social usage, a deficiency due to his having lived at home with his parents all his life. Even his three years of business studies had taken place at a university easily reached by tube. The company where he had worked since taking that degree, until he resigned on coming into his inheritance, was also accessible by the same means, being no more than a hundred yards from Liverpool Street Station. The only breaks from home life had been holidays and the occasional nights he had stayed away in various girlfriends’ flats.
All this had meant that inviting people round, stocking up on drink, buying food, gaining some understanding of domestic organisation, remembering to carry his keys with him, arranging with people his mother called tradesmen, and paying services bills were closed books to him. He couldn’t say he was learning fast, but he knew he had to. Since coming here he hadn’t done much but run around with Claudia. Making that hot chocolate without scalding himself was a small triumph. He was thinking how pleasant it would be if he could have his mother living here, but his mother changed, different, tailored as it were to his requirements: as admirable a housekeeper and cook and laundress as she was but silenced so that she spoke only the occasional monosyllable; able to remove herself without a word or a look when Claudia came round; deaf to his music, invisible to his friends, never, never criticising or even appearing to notice the areas of his behaviour of which she might disapprove. But if she became this person, she wouldn’t be his mother.
He was thinking of this, finishing his drink, when she phoned.
“How are you, darling? Have a nice weekend?”
Stuart said it was all right. In fact, it had been spectacularly good, since he had spent most of Saturday and part of Sunday afternoon in bed with Claudia, but he couldn’t even hint at that.
“I’ve been thinking.”
He hated it when his mother said that. It was a new departure for her, dating from since his own departure, and invariably led to something unpleasant.
“I’ve been thinking that don’t you think you ought to get a job? I mean, I know you said when you came into Auntie Helen’s money that you’d take a gap year, but a gap year’s what people take between school and university. I wonder if you didn’t know that.” She spoke as if she had made some earthshaking discovery. “Daddy is getting very anxious,” she said.
“Has he been thinking too?”
“Please don’t use that nasty sarcastic tone, Stuart. It’s your welfare we’re worried about.”
“I haven’t time to get a job. I’ve got to buy some furniture, and I only spent half what she left me on this place. I’ve got plenty of money.”
His mother laughed. The noise was more like a series of short gasps than laughter. “No one has plenty of money anymore, dear. Not with this economic downturn or whatever they call it, no one. Of course you would go ahead and buy yourself a flat the minute you came into your inheritance. Daddy always thought it a mistake. I don’t know how many times he’s said to me, ‘Why didn’t he wait a little while? With house prices falling so fast he’d soon get that place for half what he paid. It only calls for a little patience.’?”
Stuart was beginning to think that there could be no circumstances in which he would want his mother here, no matter how much washing, cooking, and cleaning she might do, for he could imagine no radical change taking place in her character. He held the phone a long way from his ear, but when she had said, “Are you there, Stuart?” three times, he brought it back again, said untruthfully that his doorbell was ringing and he had to go. She had barely rung off when his mobile on the floor on the other side of the room began to play “Nessun dorma.” Claudia. She always used his mobile. It was more intimate than the landline, she said.
“Shall I come over this afternoon?”
“Yes, please,” said Stuart.
“I thought you’d say that. You’re going to give me a key, aren’t you? I’ve told Freddy I’ll be at my Russian class. Russian’s a very difficult language and it’ll take years to learn.”
“What shall we do when you get here?” Stuart asked, knowing this would provoke a long description in exciting detail. It did. He sat down on the sofa, put his feet up, and listened, enraptured. Outside, it continued to snow, coming down in big flakes like swan’s feathers.
The Constantines lunched late, the only customers at that hour in the Sun Yu Tsen Chinese restaurant, which was between the hairdresser and Wicked Wine in the parade.
“I must get some pictures before the light goes,” Katie said, producing her camera from her bag. “We could have a little walk. We never get any exercise.”
She was enchanted by the snow and skipped along, picking up handfuls of it. Michael wondered if he could write something about it for his column, something about the crystals all being of a different pattern, or maybe he should disabuse readers’ minds of the fallacy that it could get too cold for snow to fall at all. But by the time his piece appeared the wretched stuff would no doubt have disappeared.
“Can we make a snowman, Michael? When we get back, can we make a snowman in the front garden? They won’t mind, will they?”
“Who’s to mind?”
“I’ve seen pictures of snowmen. I want one of my own.”
“It will melt, you know. It will all be gone tomorrow.”
“Then I’d better get taking my photos.”
The extent of their exercise was walking round the block, up the roundabout, down Chester Grove, along the parade, and home, Katie pausing now and then to get a shot of children throwing snowballs, a dog rolling in the snow, a child with a toboggan. Back at Lichfield House she pointed out to Michael the houses opposite, their roofs all covered with snow but for the central pair.
“Isn’t that funny? I’ll just take a picture of it and then we’ll go in, shall we? It will soon start getting dark.”
In the hallway they encountered the three girls from Flat 5, plump Molly Flint and skinny Noor Lateef shivering in see-through tops and torn jeans, Sophie Longwich comfortable in a padded jacket and woolly hat.
“I’m frozen,” Molly was saying. “I think I’ve got pneumonia.”
“No, you haven’t,” said Michael, the medical man. “You don’t get pneumonia through going out dressed like it was July. That’s an old wives’ tale.” Maybe he should write something about that too . . .
Noor had gone back to the swing doors, looking out through the glass panel. “It’s started to snow again.” She stepped back and the doors closed.
“That roof will get covered up now,” said Michael to Katie, pressing the button for the lift. While they waited, Noor and Sophie told Molly that if she put on any more weight, she would have to travel in the lift on her own. Its doors had just closed on the five of them when Claudia Livorno came through the swing doors, carrying a bottle of Verdicchio and walking gingerly because the step outside was icy and her heels were high. She rang the bell of Flat 1.
Olwen had nothing in Flat 6 to eat except bread and jam, so she ate that and, when she woke up from her long afternoon sleep, started on a newly opened bottle of gin. She never went near a doctor, but Michael Constantine said it was his opinion she had the beginnings of scurvy. He had noticed her teeth were getting loose. They shifted about, catching on her lips when she spoke. In the flat below hers, Marius Potter was sitting in an armchair that had belonged to his grandmother reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the second time. He would finish the bit about the murder of Commodus, then go downstairs to have supper with Rose Preston-Jones. This would be his third visit, the fifth time they had met, and he was looking forward to seeing her. He had already once cast the sortes for her and would do so again if she asked him.
The first day he moved in, they had recognised each other as kindred spirits, though they had nothing much in common but their vegetarianism. Marius smiled to himself (but only to himself) at her New Age occupation and lifestyle. Rose was no intellectual, yet in his estimation she had a clear and beautiful mind, was innocent, sweet, and kindly. But something about her teased and slightly troubled him. Taking Paradise Lost from his great-uncle’s bookcase, Marius once again thought how he was almost sure he recognised her from further back, a long way back, maybe three decades. It wasn’t her name, not even her face, but some indefinable quality of personality or movement or manner that brought back to him a past encounter. He called that quality her soul, and an inner conviction told him she would call it that too. He could have asked her, of course he could, but something stopped him, some feeling of awkwardness or embarrassment he couldn’t identify. What he hoped was that total recall would come to him.
Carrying the heavy volume of Milton, he went down the stairs to the ground floor. Rose, admitting him to Flat 2, seemed to be standing in his past, down misty aeons back to his youth, when all the world was young and all the leaves were green. But still he couldn’t place her.
© 2011 by Kingsmarkham Enterprises Limited
Most helpful customer reviews
107 of 111 people found the following review helpful.
5 stars
By sb-lynn
Ruth Rendell is one of my favorite mystery writers, and I have read everything she has written. (She also writes under her pseudonym, Barbara Vine.) I have been a little disappointed with some of her recent books, such as The Birthday Present and Portobello but I was not disappointed with this one.
Brief summary and review, no spoilers:
At the beginning of this novel, a handsome young man named Stuart Font is planning to throw a party in his new flat. He is planning the guest list that includes all the residents in his apartment complex.
We also know from the start that Stuart is having an affair with a married woman named Claudia, and when Claudia's husband Freddie finds out about this affair he is definitely not happy. Many of the other characters in this novel are apartment tenants such as sad alcoholic Olwen, 3 young female college students, an ex- doctor newspaper columnist and his wife, a sleazy flat manager and his wife, a homeopathic healer, an ex-hippie who thinks the healer looks very familiar, and finally an elderly fussy retired policeman who is very concerned about keeping his flat warm.
There is also a very pretty young Asian girl across the street - Tigerlily from the title - and Stuart becomes obsessed with her.
As we become acquainted with all of these tenants in typical Rendell fashion, their lives will all intertwine in strange and sinister ways as the tension ratchets up. Full of the typical eccentric and oddball characters, I read this novel in one sitting. This is my favorite Rendell since Adam and Eve and Pinch Me
If you have never read Ruth Rendell before, this is a fine start although I would recommend my personal favorite, A Sight for Sore Eyes
I also highly recommend any of her Barbara Vine novels (with the exception of The Blood Doctor: A Novel which I thought was an unusual slow read.) You just can't go wrong with any of the others.
Recommended. She's just one of the best mystery writers out there.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
The Folly of Obsession
By Mr. August
It's hard to believe Ruth Rendell is 80 years old. I have read her work for years and she is not timid about changing her focus. In the past decade, she has triumphed when writing about an array of characters. Likewise, in this clever book, there is not a main character but, instead, a diverse group of college-age girls, working class whites, a drunk, a rich handsome boy and hippies. This group and others live outside of London in a small suburban block of private flats, not very expensive but more than a cut above public housing. We Americans would consider them the middle-class living through the recession. Rendell better describes this post Blair era with local stores closing, lost jobs and mortgage arrearage.
Rendell links these denizens and peripheral friends with the way they live now, not how they will die. The most narcissistic character is the one that is murdered, however. We are initially introduced to Stuart Font, a handsome, young heir who purchased one of the flats with the money left to him from an aunt. He is not very smart, rather a slow learner who doesn't know money runs out and cannot seem to refrain from seeing a married woman, Claudia, even after a broken arm courtesy of her husband. Claudia is obsessed with Stuart (the thrill of the chase), Stuart becomes obsessed with a beautiful Asian girl who is thus named Tigerlily.
I found all of her characters interesting, particularly Olwen, the middle-aged drunk, whose goal is to drink herself to death. Olwen's pursuit of gin and other potent alcohol is a staggering drama; the many ways she obtains her bottles are quite astonishing and sad.
Many of the tenants pursue each other allowing Rendell to delve into their obsessions. Up front and center is the caretaker who loves watching little girls; he never touches them but has a penchant for pedophilia leading to his destruction. Money is always an issue especially for a tenant who obsessed after Stuart and found herself later reduced to living with a filthy abuser.
Rendell moved me from character to incidents without pause. She is a master at creating quirky people who reveal absurd habits or possibly sinister ones. The plot and murder are manipulated, but it makes sense when all is revealed.
17 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
Very Disappointing
By Zev de Valera
I have read most of the books written by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine and have come to consider her one of my all-time favorite authors. She is actually the only writer who's books I will purchase in hardcover because I've always been certain that they will be worth the price and I will want to keep them. Rendell's last novel, Portobello, was brilliant and I thought: "wow, she just gets better!". Well, Tigerlily's Orchids is far from brilliant. All the ingredients are there:well-drawn characters,a setting so finely illustrated that one feels part of it, the potential for many plot twists with a surprise at the end. However, it never moves beyond potential and there are no surprises. It is like a soap opera story line that hooks the viewer at first but eventually disappoints when the writers are replaced and do not know how to wrap it up. Rendell is famous for exposing the horror beneath a mundane surface. In Tigerlilly's Orchids, all is surface and there are no surprises. If you have never read a Ruth Rendell novel, pass this one over- or wait until it is available for free at the public library.
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