Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

She started up the stairs. All her life, since first she could walk, she had climbed up and down them. The flight going upto the top floor hadn't then been tiled but plain wooden boards covered in drugget. Whatever had happened to drugget? Younever saw it anymore. Papa had had them put down after the woodworm had been found and steps taken to eradicate it. Few builders, including plumbers and electricians, ever came to St.Blaise House. Exterior painting hadn't been done since before the Second World War, no interior painting since eleven or twelve years before that. But Papa had been fanatical about woodworm; worrying about it kept him awake at night.

She could write to Stephen Reeves that she remembered his seeing her in Rillington Place the day before they had met for the first time. Of course she couldn't really remember, she didn't even know for sure if he had seen her. If he hadn'the would think her very foolish, he might even think she hadthat illness-what was it called? Alzheimer's-yes, Alzheimer's disease.

Otto was sitting, sphinxlike, in the middle of the tiled flight. "What are you doing there?"

She couldn't recall ever having addressed him before. Talking to animals was ridiculous, anyway. Otto got up, arched his back and stretched. He glared at her before leaping down one of the passages and crouching in the shadows at the end. Gwendolen unlocked the door of the flat and went inside. Everything was again depressingly neat. What kind of a fanatic plumped up the sofa cushions before he went out in the morning? The Psyche figurine on the coffee table she thought vulgar, the kind of thing that came from furniture stores that sold cream leather three-piece suites and molded Perspex tables. She picked it up, finding it surprisingly heavy.

Its base was felted. It looked as if someone had put it down, surely by mistake, into a pool of coffee. What else could have caused the dark stain that covered half the base, turning the felt from emerald to maroon?

"The multitudinous seas incarnadine," quoted Gwendolen aloud, "making the green one red."

She was rather pleased with the aptness of that. Macbeth, ofcourse, had been talking about blood and Cellini's lump of marble had hardly stood in a pool of that. The paucity of the book collection in here made her shake her head. Nothing but works on that man Christie. Which reminded her she had that letter to write.

Still, she must first visit the room next door to this flat and take another look at that floor. Contrary to the way she remembered it, the floorboard wasn't sticking up. Or not much. She must have imagined it, tripped over something else. She stood, staring down at the splintery old boards, and suddenlyshe knew what all the little holes were. They were woodworm. Papa used to say woodworm were as bad as termites, they could destroy a whole house. What was she to do?

Indecisively, she stood in the doorway, thinking once more of her letter. She would make one more attempt at it, perhaps telling him obliquely that no one should believe gossip-but surely she hadn't been the subject of gossip? She couldn't tell him not to believe his own eyes. There was a slight smell in the room she was sure hadn't been there when she last came in. She would have noticed it. Not a pleasant smell, far from it. Did woodworm smell? Perhaps. If it got worse, there was no doubt about it, she would have to get a man in, get those people who did something to floors and boards and furniture to banish the things.

When she had written her letter she would look them up in the phone book. There was something called the Yellow Pages, and though she had never opened it since it was left on herd oorstep, she would do so now.

"Newfangled" was a word that figured predominantly in Gwendolen'svocabulary. She applied it to most things which, in another favorite phrase, had "arrived on the scene" since the sixties. Computers were newfangled, as were CDs and the means of playing them, mobiles, answerphones, parking meters and clamping (though she enjoyed seeing a clamp on animproperly parked car), color photographs in newspapers, caloriesand diets, the disappearance of telegrams, and of course,the Internet. In respect of most innovations, she managed to ignore them. But the Yellow Pages was a book and with booksof any sort she was familiar. Papa used to say that if he were insome isolated place with no company and only the telephonedirectory to read, he would read that. Gwendolen wouldn't goquite so far, but she didn't find this directory of services as newfangled and incomprehensible as she had feared.

There were whole pages devoted to firms that treated woodworm.It was difficult to know which to select. Certainly not afacetiously named one, such as Zingy Zappers (Let Zingy Zapperszap your woodworm and dry rot) or anything commercialr industrial. Eventually she chose Woodrid, mainly because itwas near at hand in Kensal Green. This did nothing to mitigatethe horror of failing to get through to a live human voiceon the phone. She had to press key 1, then 2, did it wrong and had to begin all over again. After she'd got over these difficultiesshe was asked to press something called "pound" and had to ask for an explanation. When there was no response fromthe automated voice to her inquiry she reasoned that since itwasn't a figure or a star it must be that thing that looked like acrooked portcullis. It was. She waited and waited while musicwas played, the kind of newfangled music that thumped out ofcars being driven by young men down her street on Saturdaynights. At last she was through but was told, to her dismay, thata "representative will come and make a survey" two weeks and four "working days" hence.

The phone call exhausted her and she had to lie down in the drawing room for a rest and half an hour's read of The Origin of Species . Olive was bringing her niece to tea. She had said both of them were on diets, but Gwendolen knew how seriously shes hould take that. It just made things more difficult, for they wouldn't want simply to drink tea but would expect calorie free crispbread, low-fat cake, or other newfangled nonsense. Besides, Gwendolen, who never put on weight no matter whatshe ate, liked something substantial for her tea. These people never thought what a lot of trouble they were causing others.

She and Stephen Reeves had so much in common. Therewas no reason to believe his tastes had changed. Gwendolen believed that people changed very little, only pretended to as part of a showing-off campaign. Stephen had loved his teas,sandwiches, and homemade cakes, especially her Victoria sponge. When they met again, would she be capable of makinga Victoria sponge for him? But the letter still had to be written,if not today, tomorrow or the next day. The more she thought about disabusing his mind of the impression he must have got of her, the more awkward it seemed to have to explain to a man how she hadn't had an abortion but was accompanying someone else who nearly had. And that itself might appear reprehensiblein his eyes.

Perhaps she could find a subtle way of doing it. She could begin practicing now and once more she took pen and paper. Dear Dr. Reeves … Why should the words "illegal operation"even have to be used ? Dear Dr. Reeves, I remembered something about our affection -no, that wasn't right, it had been more whatthey called a "relationship" today-I remembered somethingabout our relationship, yours and mine, after I had posted my previousletter. That would do, that was quite good. And she hadn'tcalled him Dr. Reeves for a long time before they parted. DearStephen, After I had posted my previous letter I remembered something about our relationship, yours and mine, which had slipped my mind. The day before we met in your surgery where I went to consult you about a minor ailment … Should she put the date of that meeting? Perhaps not… about a minor ailment I did not comment on the fact that we had seen each other the day before . Shec ouldn't know that he had seen her, any more than she had seen him, he might have been miles away and his desertion of her due to some quite other cause. But, no, that couldn't be. He had loved her, she knew he had, no doubt continued to love her but felt, in the circumstances, that she would make an unsuitable wife for a medical practitioner. As indeed she would have if she had done what he thought she had.