Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Now he wanted his gray flannels and houndstooth check sports jacket cleaned. “Take them round to Minty’s place, why don’t you? Give it a go.”

At Immacue, clothes ready for collection were hung on a coat rack. The rack stood on the left-hand side of the shop and extended from behind the counter to the rear wall. When Sonovia entered there was no one about, so she waited a while, letting her gaze rove from the various aids to cleanliness on sale on the counter to the stacked shirts on the shelves on the right to the coat rack on the left. She was about to give a discreet cough when she spotted the garment hanging at the very front of the rack. It was on a hanger with a Styrofoam collar and sheathed in transparent plastic, but still she had no difficulty recognizing her own blue dress and jacket. Angrily, Sonovia slammed her hand on the bell on the counter.

Josephine came out. “Sorry to keep you,” she said. “How may I help you?”

“By fetching Miss Knox, that’s how. I’ve got a bone to pick with her.”

Josephine shrugged. She went to the door at the back and called, “Minty!”

Sonovia was growing crosser by the second. When Minty came out she was standing there fuming, with her arms folded. “I’d just like to know who you think you are, Miss Araminta Knox, to be so fastidious. Borrowing a person’s clothes and then deciding they’re not clean enough for you. I suppose you had one of your famous baths after you’d tried them on. I’m surprised you’d keep them in the house, or did you put them out in the garden over Sunday?”

Minty didn’t say anything. She hadn’t thought of that, putting Sonovia’s dress out in the garden. It would have been a good idea. She advanced toward the coat rack and peered at the clothes through their plastic sheath.

“I call it a disgrace, considering how long we’ve known each other. The times you’ve enjoyed our hospitality! That you’d think I’d keep dirty clothes in my wardrobe, that’s what I can’t get over. Laf says I spend more on dry-cleaning than I do on food.”

“You don’t spend it in here,” said Josephine.

“I’ll thank you to keep out of this, Miss O’Sullivan. As for you, Minty, Laf and me were going to treat you to American Beauty tomorrow night and drinks after, no doubt, but we’ve changed our mind; we’ll be going on our own. Him and me might not be clean enough for you to sit next to.”

Sonovia, flouncing out, forgot to take her dress and jacket with her. Josephine looked at Minty and Minty looked at her, and Josephine burst out laughing. Minty couldn’t quite do that. But she was glad she could keep the dress. Sonovia might never want it back now and that meant she’d always have something to put on in case anyone else ever asked her to a wedding. She went back to her ironing.

Someone had once given Auntie a boxed set of stereo LPs of something called Porgy and Bess . Minty couldn’t remember why, a birthday maybe, but Auntie hadn’t anything to play them on even if she’d wanted to, so the records were as good as new. If Minty had been on speaking terms with Sonovia and Laf she could have asked their advice, they had a thing that played CDs, but she wasn’t, so that was out. In the end, she bought wrapping paper with wedding cakes and silver bells printed on it at the paper shop next to Immacue, wrapped up the LPs, and took them with her to Josephine’s wedding.

The dry cleaners didn’t open that Saturday morning. They put a notice in the window that said: Closed for Wedding of Proprietor . The marriage ceremony in the Ecumenical Church of Universal God the Mother, Harlesden High Street, was followed by a reception at the restaurant where Ken cooked, the Lotus Dragon. It was all very enjoyable with dancing and tambourine-playing in the church and a four-woman rock band, while a smiling green dragon, operated on the principle of a pantomime horse, cavorted in when lunch was in progress and made a speech in Cantonese. Minty had quite a good time, at least at the start. She’d hoped to secrete the bum bag with the knife in it under Sonovia’s blue dress, but the outline of it showed through and it looked funny. For some reason she expected Jock’s ghost to turn up. Once she’d seen the empty chair next to hers, she was sure of it.

“Why’s there no one sitting there?” she asked Josephine’s best friend from Willesden.

The best friend said Josephine’s mother was supposed to be coming over from Connemara but she’d had a fall yesterday and broken her ankle.

“They oughtn’t to leave that chair there,” said Minty but nobody took any notice.

Josephine said the empty chair reminded her of absent friends. She looked quite nice if a bit flashy in a scarlet chiffon salwar kameez and a big, black, ostrich-feather hat. Ken wore a gray morning coat and topper. There were red lilies all the way down the table and green dragons on the napkins.

They ate shrimp toast and spring rolls, followed by Peking duck. Even Minty ate it, she had to. During a long argument as to why not Beijing duck between the best friend from Willesden and Ken’s brother, who could speak quite good English, Jock’s ghost came in and sat in the chair next to Minty. He was dressed as she’d sometimes wanted him to be but had never seen him, in a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie with white spots.

“Sorry I’m late, Polo,” he said.

“Go away.”

He never answered her. He just started laughing, as if he were a real living person. She wouldn’t look at him, but she heard him whispering, “I went into the garden and met a great she-bear…”

Someone a long way down the table was taking photographs. While the flash blinded them, she picked up from the table the knife you were supposed to use if you couldn’t handle chopsticks. Holding it down by her thigh and between them, she thrust it upward into his side through the shirt. She expected blood, ghost blood that might be red like living people’s or might not, but there was none. Instead of vanishing speedily, he seemed to blur like a reflection shuddering when the water surface is disturbed, then to melt and trickle away. The chair beside her was empty once more.

So it worked. Even a blunt knife got rid of him. But would it be forever? She laid the knife back on the table. It was quite unmarked as if it had passed through no more than air. People were looking oddly at her. She managed a bright smile for the cameras. Dozens of them seemed to have appeared, flashing and snapping. Would the ghost show on the photographs? If it did, filling the empty chair, they were sure to put it in the Sunday papers.

Ken’s brother made a speech, and so did Josephine’s sister. More and more drinks came out. Minty thought it was time to leave, though no one else did. She’d seen a sign saying LADIES, so she followed the arrow, passed through a room where all the wedding presents were laid out on a table, though she couldn’t see hers, and escaped by the back door into a dirty yard. It took her quite a long time to find her way back into Harrow Road, and by the time she did she was shivering, frightened of running into Jock’s ghost.

Just as Laf and Sonovia had for years put their Mail through her letter box when they’d done with it, so Laf regularly popped round with the Evening Standard , the Mail on Sunday , and the Sunday Mirror . Only he hadn’t for the past two Sundays and Minty didn’t expect he would this week.

Next door, the Wilsons were arguing hotly over just this question. Both still in dressing gowns, lingering over a protracted breakfast of bagels, Danish pastries, and coffee, they failed to see eye to eye as to continuing their quarrel with Minty, or “sending her to Coventry,” as Sonovia called it.