Ruth Rendell
The  Fall  of  a  Coin
The story of a marriage on the rocks, with Ruth Rendell the
acute observer of all the telling details, the acute listener to all
the mean, petty, accusing, recriminating thrusts and counter-
thrusts in the duel of the sexes . . .
The manager of the hotel took them up two flights of stairs to
their room. There was no elevator. There was no central heat-
ing either and, though April, it was very cold.
"A bit small, isn't it?" said Nina Armadale.
"It's a double room and I'm afraid it's all we have left."
"I suppose I'll have to be thankful it hasn't got a double bed,"
said Nina.
Her husband winced at that, which pleased her. She went over
to the window and looked down into a narrow alley bounded by
brick walls. The cathedral clock struck five. Nina imagined what
that would be like chiming every hour throughout the night, and
maybe every quarter as well, and was glad she had brought her
sleeping pills.
The manager was still making excuses for the lack of accommo-
dations. "You see, there's this big wedding in the cathedral to-
morrow. Sir William Tarrant's daughter. There'11 be five hundred
guests and most of them are putting up in the town."
"We're going to it," said James Armadale. "That's why we're
here."
"Then you'll appreciate the problem. Now the bathroom's just
down the passageturn right and it's the third door on the left.
Dinner at seven thirty and breakfast from eight till nine. Oh, and
I'd better show Mrs. Armadale how to work the gas fire."
"Don't bother," said Nina, enraged. "I can work a gas fire." She
was struggling with the wardrobe door which at first wouldn't
open, and when opened refused to close.
The manager watched her, apparently decided it was hopeless
to assist, and said to James, "I really meant about working the
gas meter. There's a coin-in-the-slot meterit takes fivepence
piecesand we really find it the best way for guests to manage."
James squatted on the floor beside her and studied the gray
metal box. It was an old-fashioned gas meter with brass fittings of
the kind he hadn't seen since he had been a student living in a
furnished room. A gauge with a red-arrow marker indicated the
amount of gas paid for, and at present it showed empty. So if you
turned the dial on the gas fire to ON, no gas would come from the
meter unless you had previously fed it with one or more fivepence
pieces.
But what was the purpose of that brass handle? There were dif-
ferences between this contraption and the one he'd had in his col-
lege days. Maybe, while his had been for the old toxic coal gas,
this had been converted for the supply of natural gas. He looked
at the manager and asked her.
"No, we're still waiting for natural gas in this part of the coun-
try and when it comes the old meters will have to go."
"Then what's the handle for?"
"You turn it to the left like this, insert your coin in the slot,
and then turn it to the right. Have you got fivepence on you?"
James hadn't. Nina had stopped listening, he was glad to see.
Perhaps when the inevitable quarrel started, as it would as soon
as the manager had gone, it would turn on the awfulness of going
to this wedding for which he could hardly be blamed, instead of
the squalid arrangements in the hotel for which he could.
"Never mind," the manager was saying. "You can't go wrong,
it's very simple. When you've put your fivepence in, you just turn
the handle to the right as far as it will go and you hear the coin
fall. Then you can switch on the fire and light the gas. Is that
clear?"
 James said it was quite clear, thanks very much, and im-
mediately the manager had left the room, Nina, who wasted no
time, said, "Can you tell me one good reason why we couldn't
have come here tomorrow?"
"I could tell you several," said James, getting up from the floor,
turning his back on that antediluvian gadget and the gas fire
which looked as if it hadn't given out a therm of heat for about
thirty years. "The principal one is that I didn't fancy driving a
hundred and fifty miles in a morning coat and tophat."
"Didn't fancy driving with your usual Saturday morning hang-
over, you mean."
"Let's not start a row, Nina. Let's have a bit of peace for just
one evening. Sir William is my company chairman. I have to take
it as an honor that we were asked to this wedding, and if we have
an uncomfortable evening and night because of it, that can't be
helped. It's part of my job."
"Just how pompous can you get?" said Nina with what in a less
attractive woman would have been called a snarl. "I wonder what
Sir William-Bloody-Tarrant would say if he could see his sales di-
rector after he's got a bottle of whiskey inside him."
"He doesn't see me," said James, lighting a cigarette, and add-
ing because she hadn't yet broken his spirit, "That's your
privilege."
"Privilege!" Nina, who had been furiously unpacking her case
and throwing clothes onto one of the beds, now stopped doing this
because it sapped some of the energy she needed for quarreling.
She sat down on the bed and snapped, "Give me a cigarette.
You've no manners, have you? Do you know how uncouth you
are? This place'll suit you fine, it's just up to your markgas
meters and a loo about five hundred yards away. That won't
bother you as long as there's a bar. I'll be able to have the
privilege of sharing my bedroom with a disgusting soak."
She drew breath like a swimmer and plunged on. "Do you re-
alize we haven't slept in the same room for two years? Didn't
think of that, did you, when you left booking until the last min-
ute? Or maybeyes, that was it, my God!maybe you did think
of it. Oh, I know you so well, James Armadale. You thought being
in here with me, undressing with me, would work a miracle. I'd
come round. I'dwhat's the expression?resume marital rela-
tions. You got them to give us thisthis cellon purpose. You
bloody well fixed it!"
"No," said James. He said it quietly and rather feebly because
he had experienced such a strong inner recoil that he could hardly
speak at all.
"You liar! D'you think I've forgotten the fuss you made when I
got you to sleep in the spare room? D'you think I've forgotten.
about that woman, that Frances? I'll never forget and I'll never
forgive you. So don't think I'm going to let bygones be bygones
when you try pawing me about after the bar closes."
"I won't do that," said James, reflecting that in a quarter of an
hour the bar would be opening. "I shall never again try what you
so charmingly describe as pawing you about."
"No, because you know you wouldn't get anywhere. You know
you'd get a slap on the face you wouldn't forget in a hurry."
"Nina," he said, "let's stop this. It's hypothetical, it won't hap-
pen. If we are going to go on living togetherand I suppose we
are, though God knows whycan't we try to live in peace?"
She flushed and said in a thick sullen voice, "You should have
thought of that before you were unfaithful to me with that wom-
an."
"That," he said, "was three years agothree years. I don't want
to provoke you and we've been into this enough times, but you
know very well why I was unfaithful to you. I'm only thirty-five,
I'm  still  young.  I  couldn't  stand  being  permitted  marital
relationspawing you about, if you like that betterabout six
times a year. Do I have to go over it all again?"
"Not on my account. It won't make any difference to me what
excuses you make." The smoke in the tiny room made her cough
and, opening the window, she inhaled the damp cold air. "You
asked me," she said, turning round, "why we have to go on living
together. I'll tell you why. Because you married me. I've got a
right to you and I'll never divorce you. You've got me till death do
us part. Till death, James. Right?"
He didn't answer. An icy blast had come into the room when
she had opened the window, and he felt in his pocket. "If you're
going to stay in here till dinner," he said, "you'll want the gas fire
on. Have you got any fivepence pieces? I haven't, unless I can get
some change."
"Oh, you'll get some all right. In the bar. And just for your in-
formation, I haven't brought any money with me. That's your
privilege."
When he had left her alone, she sat in the cold room for some
minutes, staring at the brick wall. Till death do us part, she had
told him, and she meant it. She would never leave him and he
must never be allowed to leave her, but she hoped he would die.
It wasn't her fault she was frigid. She had always supposed he
understood. She had supposed her good looks and her capacity as
housewife and hostess compensated {or\ revulsion she couldn't
help. And it wasn't just against him, but against all men, any
man. He had seemed to accept it.
In her sexless way she had loved him. And then, when he had
seemed happier and more at ease than at any time in their mar-
riage, when he had ceased to make those painful demands and
had become so sweet to her, so generous with gifts, he had sud-
denly and without shame confessed it.
She wouldn't mind, he had told her; he knew that. She wouldn't
resent his finding elsewhere what she so evidently disliked giving
him. While he provided for her and spent nearly all his leisure
with her and respected her as his wife, she should be relieved, dis-
liking sex as she did, that he had found someone else.
He had said it was the pent-up energy caused by her repres-
sions that made her fly at him, beat at him with her hands,
scream at him words he didn't know she knew. To her dying day
she would remember his astonishment. He had genuinely thought
she wouldn't mind. And it had taken weeks of nagging and
screaming and threats to make him agree to give Frances up.
She had driven him out of her bedroom and settled into the bit-
ter unremitting vendetta she would keep up till death parted
them. Even now, he didn't understand how agonizingly he had
hurt her. But there were no more women and he had begun to
drink.
He was drinking now, she thought, and by nine o'clock he
would be stretched out, dead-drunk, on that bed separated by only
a few inches from her own,
The room was too cold to sit in any longer. She tried the gas
fire, turning the switch to ON; but the match she held to it refused
to ignite it, and presently she made her way downstairs and into
the little lounge where there was a coal fire and people were
watching television.
They met again at dinner.
James Armadale had drunk half a pint of whiskey, and now,
to go with the brown Windsor soup and hotted-up roast lamb, he
ordered a bottle of burgundy.
"Just as a matter of idle curiosity," said Nina, "why do you
drink so much?"
"To drown my sorrows," said James. "The classic reason. Hap-
pens to be true in my case. Would you like some wine?"
"I'd better have a glass, hadn't I, otherwise you'll drink the
whole bottle."
The dining room was full and most of the other diners were
middle-aged or elderly. Many of them, James supposed, would be
wedding guests like themselves. He could see that their own arriv-
al had been noted and that at the surrounding tables their ap-
pearance was being favorably commented upon. It afforded him a
thin wry amusement to think that they would be judged a hand-
some, well-suited, and happy couple.
"Nina," he said, "we can't go on like this. It's not fair on either
of us. We're destroying ourselves and each other. We have to talk
about what we're going to do."
"Pick your moments, don't you? I'm not going to talk about it in
a public place."
She had spoken in a low subdued voice, quite different from her
hectoring tone in their bedroom, and she shot quick nervous
glances at the neighboring tables.
"It's because this is a public place that I think we stand a better
chance of talking about it reasonably. When we're alone you get
hysterical and then neither of us can be rational. If we talk about
it now, I think I know you well enough to say you won't scream at
me."
"I could walk out though, couldn't I? Besides, you're drunk."
"I am not drunk. Frankly, I probably shall be in an hour's
time and that's another reason why we ought to talk here and
now. Look, Nina, you don't love meyou've said so often
enoughand whatever crazy ideas you have about my having de-
signs on you, I don't love you either. We've been into the reasons
for that so many times that I don't need to go into them now, but
can't we come to some sort of amicable arrangement to split up?"
"So that you can have all the women you want? So that you can
bring that bitch Frances into my house?"
"No," he said, "you can have the house. The court would prob-
ably award you one-third of my income, but I'll give you more if
you want. I'd give you half." He had nearly added, "to be rid of
you," but he bit off the words as being too provocative. His speech
was already thickening and slurring.
It was disconcertingthough this was what he had expected
to hear how inhibition made her voice soft and kept her face con-
trolled. The words she used were the same, though. He had heard
them a thousand times before. "If you leave me, I'll follow you. I'll
go to your office and tell them all about it. I'll sit on your
doorstep. I won't be abandoned. I'd rather die. I won't be a di-
vorced woman just because you've got tired of me."
"If you go on like this," he said thickly, "you'll find yourself a
widow. Will you like that?"
Had they been alone, she would have screamed the affirmative
at him. Because they weren't, she gave him a thin, sharp, and
concentrated smile, a smile which an observer might have taken
for amusement at some married couple's private joke.
"Yes," she said, "I'd like to be a widow, your widow. Drink
yourself to death, why don't you? That's what you have to do if
you want to be rid of me."
The waitress came to their table. James ordered a double
brandy and "coffee for my wife." He knew he would never be rid
of her. He wasn't the sort of man who could stand public disrup-
tion of his life, scenes at work, the involvement of friends and
employers. It must be, he knew, an amicable split or none at all.
And since she would never see reason, never understand or for-
give or forget, he must soldier on. With the help of this, he
thought, as the brandy spread its dim cloudy euphoria through
his brain.
He drained his glass quickly, muttered an "excuse me" to her
for the benefit of listeners, and left the dining room.
Nina returned to the television lounge. There was a play on and
its theme was a marital situation that aJmost paralleled her own.
The old ladies with their knitting and the old men with their
after-dinner cigars watched it apathetically.
She thought she might take the car and go somewhere for a
drive. It didn't much matter whereanywhere would do that was
far enough from this hotel and James and that cathedral clock
whose chimes split the hours into fifteen-minute segments with
long brazen peals. Inhere must be someplace in this town where
one could get a decent cup of coffee, some cinema maybe where
they weren't showing a film about marriage or what people, she
thought shudderingly, called sexual relationships.
She went upstairs to get the car keys and some money.
James was fast asleep. He had taken off his tie and his shoes,
but otherwise he was fully dressed, lying on his back and snoring.
Stupid of him not to get under the covers. He'd freeze. Maybe he'd
die of exposure. Well, she wasn't going to cover him up, but she'd
close the window so it wouldn't be too cold when she came in.
The car keys were in his jacket pocket, mixed up with a lot of
loose change. The feel of his warm body through the material
made her shiver. His breath smelled of spirits and he was sweat-
ing in spite of the cold. Among the change were two fivepence
pieces. She'd take one of those and feed that gas meter.
It would be horrible dressing for that wedding in here at zero
temperature. Why not feed it now so that the room would be
ready for the morning, ready to turn the gas fire on and give her
some heat when she came in at midnight, come to that?
The room was faintly illuminated by the yellow light from the
street lamp in the alley. She crouched down in front of the gas
fire and noticed she hadn't turned the dial to OFF after her match
had failed to ignite the jets. It wouldn't do to feed that meter now
with the dial turned to ON, and have fivepence worth of old-
fashioned toxic gas flood the room. Not with the window tight
shut and not a crack round that heavy old door. Slowly she put
her hand out to turn the dial to OFF.
Her fingers touched it. Her hand remained still, poised. She
heard her heart begin to thud softly in the silence as the idea in
all its brilliant awfulness took hold of her. Wouldn't do? Was she
mad? It wouldn't do to feed that meter now with the gas fire dial
turned to ON? What would do as well, as efficiently, as finally?
She withdrew her hand and clasped it in the other to steady it.
Rising to her feet, she contemplated her sleeping husband.
The sweat was standing on his pale forehead. He snored as
rhythmically, as stettorously, as her own heart was beating. A
widow, she thought, alone and free in her own unshared house.
Not divorced, despised, disowned, laughed at by judges and so-
licitors for her crippling frigidity, not mocked by that Frances and
her successors, but a widow all the world would pity and respect.
Comfortably off too, if not rich, with an income from James's
life assurance and very likely a pension from Sir William Tarrant.
James wouldn't wake up till midnight. No, that was wrong. He
wouldn't have wakened up till midnight. What she meant was he
wouldn't wake up at all.
The dial on the gas fire was still on. She took the fivepence coin
and tiptoed over to the meter. Nothing would wake him, but still
she tiptoed. The window was tight shut with nothing beyond it
but that alley, that glistening lamp, and the wall of the cathedral.
She studied the meter, kneeling down. It was the first time in
her sheltered, cosseted, snug life that she had ever actually seen a
coin-in-the-slot gas meter. But if morons like hotel servants and
the sort of people who would stay in a place like this could work
it, she could.
There was the slot where the coin went in, there the gauge
whose red arrow showed empty. All you had to do, presumably,
was slip in the coin, fiddle about with that handle, and then, if
the gas fire dial was left on, toxic coal gasthe kind of gas that
had killed thousands in the past, careless old people, suicides,
accident-prone foolswould rapidly begin to seep out of the un-
lighted jets.
James wouldn't smell it. Drink had paralyzed him into an un-
consciousness as deep as that which her own sleeping tablets
brought to her.
Nina was certain it wouldn't matter that she hadn't paid close
attention to the manager's instructions. What had she said? Turn
the handle to the left, insert the coin, then turn it to the right.
She hesitated for a moment, just long enough for brief fractured
memories to cross her mindJames when they were first mar-
ried, James patient and self-denying on their honeymoon, James
promising that her coldness wouldn't matter, that with time and
love . . . James confessing with a defiant smirk, throwing Frances'
name at her, James going on a three-day bender because she
couldn't pretend the wound he'd given her was just a surface hurt,
James drunk night after night ...
She didn't hesitate any longer.
She got her coat, put the car keys in her handbag. Then she
knelt again, between the gas fire and the meter. First she checked
that the dial, which was small and almost at ground level, was
set at ON. She took hold of the brass handle on the meter and
turned it to the left. The coin slot was now fully exposed and
open. She pressed in the fivepence piece and flicked the handle to
the right. There was no need to wait for the warning smell,
oniony, acrid, of the escaping gas. Without looking back, she
walked swiftly from the room, closing the door behind her.
The cathedral clock chimed the last quarter before nine.
When the bar closed at eleven thirty, a crowd of people coming
upstairs and chattering in loud voices would have awakened even
the deepest sleeper. They woke'James. He didn't move for some
time but lay there with his eyes open till he heard the clock
chime midnight. When the last stroke died away he reached out
and turned on the bedside lamp.
The light was like a knife going into his head, and he groaned.
But he felt like this most nights at midnight and there was no use
making a fuss. Who would hear or care if he did? Nina was evi-
dently still downstairs in that lounge. It was too much to hope she
might stay there all night out of fear of being alone with him.
No, she'd be up now that television was over, and she'd start
berating him for his drunkenness and his infidelitynot that
there had been any since Francesand they would lie there bick-
ering and smarting until gray light mingled with that yellow
light, and the cathedral clock told them it was dawn.
And yet she had been so sweet once, so pathetic and desperate
in her sad failure. It had never occurred to him to blame her,
though his body had suffered. And his own solution, honestly con-
fessed, might have worked so well for all three of them if she had
only been rational.
He wondered vaguely, for the thousandth time, why he had
been such a fool to confess when, with a little deception, he might
be happier now than at any time in his marriage. But he was in
no fit state to think. Where had that woman said the bathroom
was? Turn right down the passage and the third door on the left.
He lay there till the clock struck the quarter before he felt he
couldn't wait any longer and he'd have to find it.
The cold air in the passageLord, it was more like January
than Aprilsteadied him a little but made his head bang and
throb. He must be crazy to go on like this. What the hell was he
doing, turning himself into an alcoholic at thirty-five? Because
there were no two ways about it, he was an alcoholic all right.
And if he stayed with Nina he'd be a dead alcoholic by forty.
But how can you leave a woman who won't leave you? Give up
his job, run away, go to the ends of the earth. . . It wasn't un-
usual for him to have wild thoughts like this at midnight, but
when the morning came he knew he would just soldier on.
He stayed in the bathroom for about ten minutes. Coming back
along the passage, he heard footsteps on the stairs, and knowing
he must look horrible and smell horribly of liquor, he retreated
behind the open door of what proved to be a broom closet. But it
was only his wife.
She approached their room door slowly as if she were bracing
herself to face somethinghimself, probably, he thought. Had she
really that much loathing of him that she had to draw in her
breath and clench her hands before confronting him? She was
very pale. She looked ill and frightened, and when she had opened
the door and gone inside he heard her give a kind of shrill gasp
that was almost a shriek.
He followed her into the room, and when she turned and saw
him he thought she was going to faint. She had been pale before,
but now she turned paper-white. Once, when he had still loved
her and had hoped he might teach her to love him, he would have
been concerned. But now he didn't care, and all he said was,
"Been watching something nasty on the TV?"
She didn't answer him. She sat down on her bed and put her
head into her hands. James undressed and got into bed. Presently
Nina got up and began taking her clothes off slowly and mechan-
ically. His head and body had begun to twitch as they did when
he was recovering from the effects of a drinking bout. It left him
wide-awake. He wouldn't sleep again for hours.
He watched her curiously but dispassionately, for he had long
ago ceased to derive the slightest pleasure or excitement from see-
ing her undress. What intrigued him now was that, though she
was evidently in some sort of shock, her hands shaking, she still
couldn't discard those modest subterfuges of hers, her way of turn-
ing her back when she stepped out of her dress, of pulling her
nightgown over her head before she took off her underclothes.
She put on her dressing gown and went to the bathroom. When
she came back her face was greasy where she had cleaned off the
makeup and she was shivering.
"You'd better take a sleeping tablet," he said.
"I've already taken one in the bathroom. I wanted a bath but
there wasn't any hot water." Getting into bed, she exclaimed in
her normal fierce way, "Nothing works in this damned place!"
"Put out the light and go to sleep. Anyone would think you
have to spend the rest of your life here instead of just one night."
She made no reply. They never said good night to each other.
When she had put out her light, the room wasn't really dark be-
cause a street lamp was still lit in the alley outside. He had sel-
dom felt less like sleep, and now he was aware of a sensation he
hadn't expected because he. hadn't thought about it. He didn't
want to share a bedroom with her.
That cold modesty, which had once been enticing, now repelled
him. He raised himself on one elbow and peered at her. She lay in
the defensive attitude of a woman who fears assault, flat on her
stomach, her arms folded under her head. Although the sleeping
pill had begun to take effect, her body seemed stiff, prepared to
galvanize into violence at a touch.
She smelled cold. A sour saltiness emanated from her as if
there were sea water in her veins instead of blood. He thought of
real women with warm blood, women who awoke from sleep when
their husband's faces were near theirs, who never recoiled but
smiled and put out their arms. She would keep him from them
forever until drink or time made him as frozen as she was.
Suddenly he knew he couldn't stay in that room. He might do
something dreadfulbeat her up perhaps or even kill her. And
much as he wanted to be rid of her, spend no more time with her,
no more money on her, the notion of killing her was as absurd as
it was grotesque. It was unthinkable. But he couldn't stay here.
He got up and put on his dressing gown. He'd go to that lounge
where she'd watched television, take a blanket and spend the rest
of the night there. She wouldn't wake till eight or nine and by
then he'd be back, ready to dress for the wedding.
Funny, really, their going to a wedding, to watch someone else
getting into the same boat. But it wouldn't be the same boat, for
if the office gossip was more than that, Sir William's daughter
had already opened her warm arms to many men.
The cathedral clock struck one. By morning the room would be
icy and they'd need that gas fire. Why not put a fivepence piece in
the meter now so the fire would work as soon as he wanted it?
The fire itself lay in shadow, but the meter was clearly illumi-
nated by the street lamp. James knelt, trying to remember the in-
structions of the manager. Better try it out first before he put his
coin in, his only fivepence coin. Strange, that. He could have
sworn he'd had two when he first went to bed.
What had the manager said? Turn the handle to the left, insert
the coin, then turn the handle to the right. No, turn it to the
right as far as it will go until you hear the coin fall. Keeping hold
of his coinhe didn't want to waste it if what Nina said was true
and nothing worked in this placehe turned the handle to the
left, then to the right as far as it would go.
Inside the meter a coin fell with a small dull clang. The red-
arrow marker on the gauge, which had stood at empty, moved
along to register payment. Good. He was glad he hadn't wasted
his money. The previous guest must have put a coin in arid
failed to turn the handle until the coin fell. So Nina had been
wrong about things not working. Still, it wasn't unusual for her to
get the wrong idea, not unusual at all.
Gas would come through as soon the dial was switched to ON.
James checked that the window was shut to keep out as much of
the cold as possible, gave a last look at the sleeping, heavily se-
dated woman, and left the room, closing the door behind him.