Ruth Rendell - Not in the Flesh

Anoushka, in her mother's arms, managed a scribble but Mary really was too little to do more than crow and laugh.

“I've been calling on the Imrans,” Sylvia said when he and she were briefly alone.

“You have?”

“I'm a child care officer-remember?”

“And what have you found?”

“Not much,” she said. “Shamis starts school next month. She's excited about it. I don't tell them why I'm visiting and they haven't asked. Maybe they think it's all part of the service, something that we do for every family with a preschool child. If only we had the resources!”

“Do you tell them when you're coming?”

“Not to the time, Dad. I tell them I'll be along Monday or Tuesday, say. I can't tell them to stop at home for me. I've no grounds for that. There's just one thing to tell you and it's nothing really. They've got someone staying with them, a woman of about fifty. Mrs. Imran calls her ‘auntie,’ so I assume she's a relative.”

“She came back with them from Somalia?”

“I think so.”

“Can't you ask her?”

“She doesn't speak a word of English,” said Sylvia.

“And you don't trust the Imrans to interpret?”

“What do you think?”

Karen Malahyde was also paying friendly visits to the Imrans and not always notifying them of the precise time she was coming. Possibly they thought this too was all part of the service.

Two days later than he had intended, he walked into the reception area at Pomfret Hospice and asked for Owen Tredown. As he had predicted, he was a mass of bruises and his whole body ached. Though supported by a sling, the cast on his right arm felt heavy and cumbersome. He was all right sitting down, provided he was padded with a cushion, but walking made him wince at almost every step. Returning to the hospice gave him a strange feeling, and he told Donaldson to drop him outside the front doors. The sight of the fairly narrow defile-its walls scarred with dark red paint like a bloodstain-in which Maeve Tredown's car had trapped him and tossed him onto its bonnet, showed him how easily, if she had been going a fraction more slowly, she might have run over instead of under him. Had her action been aimed at preventing him being alone with Tredown? Or was it designed to expel him from the inquiry altogether?

The advantage to the driver of a car as lethal weapon was that the intended victim doesn't believe until the very last minute that any fellow human being deliberately means to run him over. He, who ought to have known better, hadn't believed it. He'd simply set her down as the bad driver she boasted she was.

The receptionist directed him to the lift and told him he would find Tredown in Room Four on the second floor. It was only when he was past the first floor that it occurred to him Claudia Ricardo might be there. Tredown's request that he come, his urging a nurse to phone him (“He insists you come yourself,” the woman had said. “He won't take no for an answer. And could you be alone please.”) would have no effect on her. He hoped too that the other inmates of the ward might be far enough away for no conversation to be overheard or that curtains could be drawn around Tredown's bed. At least, this time, he wasn't an inmate himself but a visitor, free to come and go.

Tredown was in a private room off the corridor that led to the main ward. The door was shut. He knocked and, getting no answer, opened it. Inside it was light and airy, but excessively warm. A blue glass vase held white dahlias, another branches of red rowan berries. Room Four had only one occupant and he, as Wexford himself had been when in the infirmary, was sitting in a chair by the bedside with a blanket across his knees. There the resemblance ended. Tredown was asleep, his head turned to one side; and ill as the man had been last time he had seen him, now the advanced stage of his disease made him almost unrecognizable. All his flesh seemed to have been pared from him and the skin that was stretched over sharp but frail bones was a reptilian green. Tredown slept with his mouth closed, his face peaceful in repose and, in spite of wasting disease, protracted suffering, and discolored emaciation, remained handsome. So might be the sculpted face of some medieval ascetic carved from olivine stone.

Pulling himself out of these fanciful flights, Wexford sat down in the other chair. In the absence of a cushion, he took a spare pillow from a pile and stuffed it behind his back. That was better. He reminded himself that this time it was Tredown who had asked for him and not he for Tredown-though he would have asked the next day-but still he hesitated to wake him. Perhaps a nurse would come and do it for him, but as yet there was no sign of one. The place was silent except for the occasional soft, steady footfall along the corridor outside.

Ten minutes went by. Outside, he heard a car arrive. In the corridor someone whispered to someone else. A petal dropped off one of the dahlias and fluttered to the ground. Tredown slept, his breathing light but uneven and once or twice he made a little sound that Wexford interpreted as distress without quite knowing why he did so. Next time he heard the footsteps he opened the door and asked a man in a white boiler suit if it would be all right to wake Mr. Tredown. The man looked at his watch, said it was time he woke anyway, and entering the room, spoke gently and in a very low voice into Tredown's ear.

Stirring, Tredown muttered, “It was so wonderful I was envious-no, I was consumed with envy…”

The nurse who had awakened him looked inquiringly at Wexford, and Wexford stared at him too, slightly shaking his head.

“I'll leave you, then,” he said. “He gets very tired.”

“I'll try not to exhaust him.”

“Would you like a cup of tea? I'm bringing one for him.”

Wexford thanked him. He watched the man in the chair as he opened his eyes. Tredown had slipped down while asleep and now he struggled to pull himself up.

“I'm sorry I can't do anything to help you,” Wexford said, lifting up the arm with the cast and attempting a smile.

“I can manage.” Tredown heaved himself higher in the chair with difficulty. It was painful to watch, but when he had raised his upper body an inch or two he seemed satisfied and he sighed. “What did I say just now? I was half asleep.”

“You didn't say much,” Wexford said. “Just that something was wonderful and you were envious.”

“Yes.”

The silence endured for a full minute, Wexford saw from the clock on the wall. All of our lives were ticking by, he thought, but for this man its passing must be more poignantly prescient than for most of us. Another precious minute would pass and another and another until one more of those last days was gone. Lord, let me know mine end and the number of my days…

Suddenly Tredown said, speaking in a strong voice, “I'm going to die. I shan't last long now.” He looked hard at Wexford. “Please don't say anything cheerful such as ‘while there's life there's hope.’ ”

“I wasn't going to.”

“I want to tell you about it before I die. It's weighed with me for eleven years, yet-I don't know if I did anything wrong. If I did it was a sin of omission. ‘I left undone those things which I ought to have done.’ I failed to ask questions when I should have asked them. I accepted.”

There was a knock at the door and the nurse came in with a teapot, milk and sugar, and two cups on a tray. He poured the tea, suggested to Tredown that a biscuit would be a good idea, but Tredown shook his head.

When the man had gone he said, “ ‘Life is but a process for turning frisky young puppies into mangy old dogs and man but an instrument for converting the red wine of Shiraz into urine.’ ”

Wexford didn't recognize the quotation. “Who said that?”