Ruth Rendell - Thirteen Steps Down

Backache woke him in the small hours. It was so bad that he groaned aloud, put the light on and saw it was ten past three. I Just his luck when he'd been congratulating himself on his total recovery. This felt the way they said it did when you slipped a disc. Four ibuprofen and a cup of neat gin sent him off to sleep again but he woke at seven. No chance of beginning on his exercise regimen, as he had intended to do today.The backache felt as if it was there to stay and it was far worse than the last time. It seemed to affect the whole length ofhis spine.

A hot bath and two more ibuprofen helped, though he was left feeling rather dizzy. He took the bus along WestbourneGrove and got off at the Portobello Market, for food had to be bought. The market was always crowded, particularly around the stalls, but Saturdays you could only move by becoming part of the throng and going where it took you. He bought takeawaya nd a roast chicken, bread and cakes, his only concessionto what the papers called "healthy food" a bunch of bananas.

Any more and he wouldn't be able to carry it, not with his backi n agony like this.

In a halfhearted attempt to scan the ads for a job to tide him over until he'd established his own business, he bought an Evening Standard and walked down to Notting Hill high street to find a pharmacist. More ibuprofen was needed if sleep werenot to be a problem and he'd better get something to rub on his back. Outside the big Boots a man was begging. He was sitting on the pavement with an open biscuit tin in front of him,but no dog to win sentimental hearts and no sign proclaiming that he was blind or homeless or had five children. Mix never gave money to beggars and there were already twenty or so coins in the box, but something made him look at the man, a sense of familiarity, perhaps a kind of chemistry between them. He found himself staring into the face of Reggie Christie. It was him to the life, the clear-cut jaw, the narrow lips, the bignose, and the glasses over cold eyes.

Mix went quickly into Boots and bought his analgesic. If there had been another way out he would have taken it but he had to go back into the high street. The beggar had gone. Mixcrossed the road to wait for a bus that would take him home.There was no sign anywhere of Reggie. Had he really been there? Had his own mind invented him as a result of thinking of him so much and of looking at those pictures? And was it theresult of stress? The horrible idea that Reggie's ghost had followedhim down here or had come down, expecting to see him, was too frightening to think of.

Gwendolen had looked everywhere for the object she hadcome to call "the thing," "thong" being a word she associated with sandals. Supposing she must have put it in "a safe place," she investigated, among many other possibilities, the ovenand the space behind the dictionaries in one of the numerousbookcases. She even unzipped the stomach of the toy spaniel nightdress case her mother had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. It wasn't in any of these potential hiding places. She was irritable with frustration. How could she take the lodger to task without the thing to prove her case?

No letter had come from Stephen Reeves. She was sure now that he had written to her but the letter had gone astray. It was the only explanation. Before she wrote again she would talk to the lodger. What more likely than that he had taken her letter, either by mistake or with malice? She was beginning to think that many of her present problems stemmed from Cellini. Mysteries and misfortunes had seldom come her way before he moved in. He had probably infected her with the germ that brought on her pneumonia.

She meant to catch him when she heard him come down the stairs preparatory to going out. Or when he entered the house. Her difficulty was that since her illness she fell asleep far more easily than she used to do and she was afraid she must have dozed off when last he came in or left the house. Climbing all fifty-two stairs to his flat was too much for her at present,though she would have admitted this to no one. Nor would she have told Olive or Queenie that making her way up to her bed-room and getting ready for bed exhausted her so enormouslythat she barely had the strength to wash her face and hands.

No doubt the lodger did enter the house at some time in the late morning. She was almost sure she heard his footsteps mounting the stairs. Would he come down again? She doubted she could tell for she fell into catnaps throughout the afternoon. Olive came in at about five but she didn't offer to go upand see ifhe was at home. She wasn't weak from illness, Gwendolenthought scornfully, but far too fat.

"You could phone him."

Gwendolen was shocked. "Make a telephone call to someoneliving in the same house! 0 tempora, 0 mores ."

"I don't know what that means, dear. You'll have to speak English."

"It means, a times, a customs. That was my reaction when you suggested phoning an individual who lives upstairs."

Olive decided. Gwendolen must be exhausted to speak in that ridiculous way, and offered to make "your evening meal,Gwen." Her friend's adamant refusal had no effect. She had brought all the materials for a meal with her."

Not 'meal,' Olive," Gwendolen said feebly. "Please not 'meal.' Dinner-or supper if you must."

The moment Olive had gone she prepared to go to bed. It took her an hour to get up there and into her nightgown. The house was silent, more silent than usual it seemed to her, and not at all warm. The forecast on her wireless had said it wouldbe a fine day, the temperature in the high twenties, whatever that meant, and the night exceptionally mild for the time of year. The wind was supposed to be westerly and therefore warm, but it felt cold to her as it penetrated ill-fitting windows and plaster cracks. There were two windows in her bedroom, but from the front one she could see nothing but darkness and gray branches. The street lamp had gone out, its glass broken,probably by the thugs with bottles who roamed the street. Down in the garden, seen from the other window, the shrubs bent and twisted in the wind and the tree branches swayed this way and that.

Earlier she had heard Mr. Singh's geese cackling but now they were quiet, shut up for the night. There was nothing alive in the windswept garden but Otto sitting on the wall, eatings omething he had caught himself. From the window in the darkness, glazed by yellow light, Gwendolen could just see or divine that he was making his supper off the pigeon that roosted in the sycamore. She wrapped a thick wool cardigan about her shoulders, went to bed and fell asleep before she had pulled the bedclothes up to cover her.

Sunday had meant nothing to Mix since the death of his grandmother. Now it was just a pallid version of Saturday, rather unpleasant and irritating because some of the shops were shut,s treets were empty, and men who had girlfriends or wives or families took them out in cars. Still, it was also the day he had resolved to renew his campaign of really getting to know Nerissa. He hadn't yet got used to being without a car and, as he had yesterday, he went downstairs at nine-thirty and sauntered outside to begin the drive to Campden Hill Square. No car, and then he remembered what had happened to it, cursin groundly. Heavy doses of ibuprofen had numbed his back and he set off to walk.

The wind was cooler this morning. Autumn was coming.Being used to the warm interior of a vehicle, he was inadequately dressed in a T-shirt and he shivered as he walked. As he approached her house he saw that the Jaguar was on the frontdrive and his spirits rose. He had forgotten to supply himselfwith something to take to her door, a campaign leaflet or anenvelope to be filled for a children's charity, so all he could do was wait and trust to the inspiration of the moment.