Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Dropping in on Olive, she rang her bell in the lobby. No answer. Nor did the porter get an answer when she asked him to phone Mrs. Fordyce in 11C. He thought he had seen her go out. Gwendolen was extremely annoyed. It was feckless leaving your rubbish in other people's houses and then giving no sign of the social solecism you had committed. She was tempted to drop the bone in its wrapping into the nearest litter bin but a niggling doubt about the validity of doing that stopped her. It might amount to stealing.

After reading, Gwendolen liked shopping best of what she did. Not because of what she bought or the layout of the shops or the friendliness of staff but solely on the grounds of comparing prices and saving money. She was no fool and she knew very well that the amounts she saved on a tin of gravy powder here and a piece of Cheddar cheese there would never amount to more than, say, twenty pence a day. But she acknowledged to herself that it was a game she played and one that made trekking all the way over to the Portobello Road market or up to Sainsbury's a pleasure rather than a chore. Besides, crossing Ladbroke Grove, if she followed a certain route, took her past the house where, all those years ago, Dr. Reeves had had his surgery. By now the pain had gone from her memories of him and only a rather delightful nostalgia remained, that and a new hope, brought about by the announcement in the Telegraph.

Just after the war the Chawcers had thought of going to Dr. Odess. The first symptoms of Mrs. Chawcer's illness had showed themselves about that time. But Colville Square was rather a long walk away, while Dr. Reeves was in Ladbroke Grove and reached by simply taking Cambridge Gardens. It wasn't till the trial and all the publicity in the newspapers that Gwendolen discovered Dr. Odess had been Christie's doctor and had attended him and his wife for years.

She was tempted to go up to the market this morning. The sun was shining and flowers were out everywhere. The council had hung baskets of geraniums on all the lampposts. I wonder what that costs, thought Gwendolen. Sometimes when she went to the market for her vegetables, her cooking apples, and her bananas-the only fruit Gwendolen ever ate were bananas and stewed apple-she was able to save a lot and sometimes have forty pence more than she expected in her purse at the end of the day. She stopped outside the four-story house with basement and with steep stairs climbing to the front door, where Stephen Reeves had practiced. It was run-down now, its paint peeling, a pane in a front bay window broken and patched up with a plastic Tesco bag and tape.

Inside there had been the waiting room where she had sat and waited for prescriptions for her mother. In those days doctors had no lights and bells to signify they were ready to receive the next patient, often no receptionist or nurse on the premises. Dr. Reeves used to come to the waiting room himself, call out the patient's name, and hold the door open for him or her to pass through. Gwendolen never minded how long she had to wait for the prescription to be handed to her for he would do this himself and might come two or three times into the waiting room to receive the next patient before he did so. She knew he only did this so that he could catch glimpses of her and she have sight of him. He always smiled and the smile for her was different from those directed at others, warmer, wider, and somehow more conspiratorial.

It was as if they shared a secret, as indeed they did-their love for each other. She hadn't minded having to leave the surgeryon her own. He would be at St. Blaise House in a day or two and then they would be alone, having tea and talking, talking, talking. To all intents and purposes they were alone in the house. Bertha, the last maid, was long gone, and by this time domestic workers wanted higher wages than the Chawcers could afford. Mrs. Chawcer was asleep, or certainly immobile, upstairs. The professor might be home by five but seldom before, threading his way on the old bicycle through the increasing traffic on the Marylebone Road into the complexities of Bayswater and Notting Hill. It was very quiet in St. Blaise House in the fifties while Stephen Reeves and Gwendolen sat side by side and talked and whispered, putting the world right, laughing a little, their hands and knees very close, their eyes meeting. Because of these sessions and the intimacy that had grown up between them, because he had once said he was awfully fond of her, she considered herself irrevocably bound to him. In her mind it was an until-death-us-do-part agreement.

For a long time she had been bitter against him, seeing him as treacherous, a man who had jilted her. If he had never said he loved her in so many words, actions spoke louder. Later on, she had looked at the situation more rationally, understanding that he had no doubt been entangled with this Eileen before he had met her, or before he had got to know her, and had perhaps been threatened with an action for breach of promise. Or her father or brother had threatened him with a horsewhip. Such things happened, she knew from her reading. Dueling, of course, was illegal and long since gone out of fashion. But he must have been inescapably entangled with the woman, so what could he do but marry her? As for her, Gwendolen, she too was tied to him, as good as his wife.

It was interesting, she thought as she pushed her trolley along Westbourne Grove, the number of people she had heardof lately who, widowed or losing their wives in old age, came back to their past and married the sweetheart of their youth. Queenie "Winthrop's sister was such a one and so was a certain member of the St. Blaise Residents' Association, a Mrs. Coburn-French. Of course, Gwendolen was a realist and had to face the fact that women lost their husbands more often than men lost their wives. But sometimes women were the first to die. Look at her father. Not that he had married any long-lost sweetheart, but Mr. Iqbal from the Hyderabad Emporium had done just that, meeting outside the mosque in "Willesden a lady he had known from the same village in India fifty years before.

And now Eileen was dead…

Stephen Reeves was a widower now. Would he come backfor her? If she had married someone else and that someone had died, she would look for him. The bond between them must be as fixed and enduring for him as it was for her. Perhaps she should take steps to find him…? He might be shy, he might even feel guilty about what he had done and be afraid to face her. Men were such cowards, that was a well-known fact. Look how squeamish the professor had been about taking on any of the tending of her mother when she was so ill.

It was half a century since last she had seen Stephen, or it soon would be. There were ways of finding people these days, much easier and surer ways than when she was young. You didi t somehow with a computer. You used this computer and got into something called the "net" or the "web" and it would tell you. There were places-there was one in Ladbroke Grove called Internet cafes. For a long time Gwendolen had thought that meant a place to have coffee in and eat cakes, but Olive, laughing stupidly, had set her right. If she went to such a place would she be able to find Stephen Reeves after fifty years?

She thought about all this as she walked home with her shopping. After he had told her she was a nice girl and he was fond of her, she sat up in her bedroom and practiced writing her name as it would soon be. Gwendolen Reeves or G. L. Reeves , she would sign herself, but on invitation cards she would be Mrs. Stephen Reeves. Mrs. Stephen Reeves at home and Dr. and Mrs. Stephen Reeves thank you for your kind invitation but regretthey cannot accept… As it turned out, these last had been reserved for Eileen. That need not trouble her now, for Eileen was dead. Somehow she knew it hadn't been a happy marriage, in spite of that "beloved wife." He had to put it like that, everyone did, it was the convention. Possibly, when he and Eileen quarreled, as no doubt they often did, he told her he should never have married her.