Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

For a moment, naked, she half wanted to see him. She opened the bathroom door, stepped outside, crossed to her bedroom. He was nowhere. In the clean clothes she’d wear for the evening, an evening of a hygienic meal, an hour of television, two hours of cleaning up, she went downstairs into the dark hall. The ghost came in darkness or in light, nothing seemed to make a difference to that. She felt it with her, all around her, though she couldn’t see it. As she was peeling her two potatoes and carving her home-cooked cold chicken, his voice came singing, like music heard from a long distance away: Today I started loving you again…

ONCE SHE HAD said yes, Zillah thought she and the kids would move in with Jims and arrangements would be made for the wedding to take place later, say six months later. Jims had different ideas about that. The proprieties must be observed. The chairman of the South Wessex Conservative Association had said only last week, apropos of some local pop singer, his girlfriend, and their baby, that couples living together outside marriage should be banned from owning property and have their passports and driving licenses withdrawn. Jims could think of no surer way of losing his seat at the next election than by letting Zillah move in with him. Besides, he’d engaged the services of a PR company and the woman acting for him was doing her best to get photographs of Zillah and himself into national newspapers. That slum in Long Fredington would be an unsuitable background and his duplex in Great College Street an improper one. He took a three-month lease on a flat in a purpose-built block in Battersea with a view of the river and the Houses of Parliament from the front windows. Jims, who knew about these things, said this struck just the right note. It was more serious than Knightsbridge and less raffish than Chelsea; it was dowdy but solid, besides having a suitably political air. As to her possessions and property in Willow Cottage, he recommended she set fire to the lot, then revised this advice, remembering the owner of the house, his old pal Sir Ronald Grasmere.

Much as she’d have liked to tell Jims she was now a widow, Zillah didn’t quite dare do this. The first thing he’d have wanted to know was when did she hear of Jerry’s death and why hadn’t she told him before. So she plucked up the courage needed to tell him a lie he wouldn’t much like but would mind less than the truth. “I wasn’t actually ever really married to Jerry.”

“What d’you mean, darling, ‘really’ married? Did you have one of those funny affairs on the beach in Bali like Mick Jagger?”

“I mean we weren’t married at all.”

He accepted it. The South Wessex Conservative Association chairman would very likely never find out. Zillah had a few qualms when she remembered her wedding to Jerry in St. Augustine’s Church, Kilburn Park-but not many and not for long. The PR woman, Malina Daz, was told Zillah was single but had lived for several years in a “stable relationship” with the children’s father. Wisely, she decided to say nothing to the newspapers about Zillah’s marital or nonmarital status and not to mention the children, counting on Jims’s relatively low notoriety quotient to make it unlikely questions would be asked. She was counting also on Zillah’s beauty to solve everything. Zillah looked ravishing when the photographer arrived and she had dressed herself in her new Amanda Wakeley cream silk trouser suit with the Georgina von Etzdorf scarf knotted at her throat. Handsome Jims leaned negligently over the back of her chair, his perfectly manicured hand lightly caressing her long black hair.

But when Malina changed her mind about Jims’s fame and suggested they might describe Eugenie and Jordan as her niece and nephew, children of her sister tragically killed in a car crash, Zillah drew the line. So, rather surprisingly, did Jims. Malina must remember, he said, that he wasn’t all that well known, he wasn’t a celebrity .

“Temporarily,” said Malina briskly.

“If I get a post,” Jims said, dropping his voice, “it will of course be rather different.”

All this was making Zillah nervous. “My children won’t go away.”

“No, darling, and we don’t want them to.”

“It might be wise,” said Malina, “not to give any interviews to the print media for a year. Could we have your first husband tragically killed in a car crash?” Reluctantly she was forced to relinquish this favorite scenario. “Well, no, maybe not. But by then,” she added coyly, “another wee one may be on the way.”

Zillah thought the chances of another wee one slender in the extreme. She had no experience of interviews or journalists but was already frightened of them. Still, she had long ago cultivated the art of banishing unpleasant thoughts from her mind. It was the only form of defense she knew. So, every time a picture of Jims as shadow minister of state at the Home Office or under-secretary for health came into her head and she had a vision of a reporter appearing on her doorstep, she thrust it away. And whenever a voice whispered in her mind’s ear, “Tell me something about your previous marriage, Mrs. Melcombe-Smith,” she plugged it up. After all, she knew Jerry wouldn’t reappear. What surer way could there be of making plain your intention to disappear than by announcing your death?

Jims bought her an engagement ring, three large emeralds mounted on a square cushion of diamonds. He’d already given her a Visa card in the name of Z. H. Leach and now gave her an American Express platinum card for Mrs. J. I. Melcombe-Smith and told her to buy any clothes she liked. Wearing her new Caroline Charles green suit with the bead-encrusted bodice, she dined with Jims in the Churchill Room at the Palace of Westminster and was introduced to the leader of the Conservative party in the Commons. Seven years ago Zillah would have described herself as a Communist, and she didn’t know if she really was a Conservative.

“You are now, darling,” said Jims.

After dinner he took her into Westminster Hall and down into the Chapel of St. Mary Undercroft. Even Zillah, who took very little notice of such things, had to admit that Sir Charles Barry’s stonework was impressive and the lavish fittings magnificent. Obediently, she looked at the bosses showing St. Catherine martyred on her wheel and St. John the Evangelist boiling in oil, though she was squeamish about such things and St. Lawrence being grilled made her feel a bit sick. She’d take care not to look up during the marriage ceremony. Against all this rich and brilliant color, she decided, an ivory wedding dress would be most effective. Because she’d fixed on the single-woman option, she was determined to push aside the memory of her marriage and was almost reconciled to a church ceremony.

It was a pity the children couldn’t be there. She rather fancied Eugenie as bridesmaid and Jordan as page. They’d have looked so chic in black velvet with white lace collars. Apart from these frivolous considerations, she was seriously concerned about her children. Their existence was one of those not exactly unpleasant, more disturbing facts she couldn’t banish, though she tried. That is, she tried not to think about them except as the two people she was closest to in the world, possibly the only people she loved, for her affection for Jims hardly came into that category. But the circumstances were too awkward to allow her to forget the troublesome aspects. For one thing, they constantly asked when they were going to see Jerry again. Jordan had a disconcerting habit of declaiming loudly out in the street or, worse, when Jims brought an MP friend to call, “Oh, I do want to see my daddy!”

Eugenie, though less emotional, always spoke more to the point. “My father hasn’t been to see us for months,” or, quoting the babysitter Zillah now employed almost daily, “Mrs. Peacock says my father is an absentee dad.”