Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“We used to live in a house. It was nice and we had friends. We had Rosalba and Titus and Fabia.”

“Want Titus,” said Jordan, but instead of screaming he began quietly to sob.

As Zillah waited in the middle of the street to turn right into the car park under Abbey Gardens Mansions, she saw Jerry running along the pavement toward her. Without looking to her left she began to turn, causing the van coming from the left to brake violently and the driver, already galvanic with road rage, put his head out of the window and let forth a stream of obscene abuse. Zillah went on down the ramp into the car park.

“Mummy, did you hear the word that man said? Nanna said that if I used that word I’d come to a bad end. Will the man come to a bad end?”

“I hope so,” Zillah said viciously. “Stop crying, Jordan. Do you think you two could manage to call Nanna Granny?”

Eugenie shook her head slowly from side to side. “That would make her into another person, wouldn’t it?”

Zillah didn’t answer. She was confirmed in her belief that her daughter would be called to the Bar at an early age.

There was no more sign of Jerry. Jims again came home very late. In the morning he told her his new friend Leonardo Norton would also be in the Maldives while they were there, staying, in fact, in the same hotel.

“YOU COULD COME with me to the Television Centre,” Matthew said. “I’d like that.”

But Michelle said no, she wouldn’t. “You’ll be better off without having me to worry about, darling.” The truth was she couldn’t face the stares and surreptitious giggles of all those long-legged girls and young men in jeans. Jeff Leigh’s “Little and Large” jibe still rankled.

It was heartening to see Matthew set off for the tube station, walking along almost like a normal person, his shoulders back and his head high. Michelle dusted the living room and vacuumed the carpet. As she lumbered around, breathless, her heart thudding, she tried to recapture what it had felt like to be a normal person herself, to have an ordinary body. Not like a model girl, not even like Fiona, but to be an average rounded woman, wearing a size fourteen. Usually, when Matthew was there, as he almost always was, she stifled such thoughts, pushing them away, pretending she wasn’t thinking them. This was the first time in how long-five years? seven?-that she had been alone in the house. There’s nothing like being on your own for having space to think.

Michelle stood still in the middle of the room and felt her body, really felt what it was like, from her three chins to the cushions on her upper thighs. First with her brain, then with her hands, growing at last fully aware of the mountain of flesh in which her delicate and fastidious mind and her loving heart had their being. She closed her eyes and in the darkness seemed to see Matthew as he might be if restored to health and herself as she was, or nearly as she was, when first they married. And into that dream came a hint, like a winged insect, a fragile wisp, fluttering across her closed lids, of the old desire they had once had for each other, the passion that sprang from physical beauty and energy. Could it ever be recaptured? The love was there, just the same. Surely with that love present, they could return somehow to making love…

It was a long time since Michelle had been able to bend down. They had had to get rid of the vacuum cleaner they used to have, the kind with a long hose you pull along like a little dog, because she couldn’t bend down enough to fetch it out of the cupboard and put it back. The upright one they had now was better, but only marginally, because to connect the attachments, she had to make the huge effort of lifting the cleaner by its handle onto a chair and performing this operation at thigh level. Afterward she had to stand still for a moment, one hand pressed against the mountain of her bosom. But once she’d got her breath back, she managed to screw in the nozzle on the brush hose and finish the cleaning of the room. Then she went out shopping.

Not to Waitrose this time but nearer home to the Atlanta supermarket at West End Green. She put kiwi fruit into the trolley, Ryvitas, and a large pack of dry roasted peanuts, but as, almost automatically, she took a big bag of doughnuts from the shelf, her hand was stayed in midair and very slowly she put it back again. The same with the thick wedge of Cheddar cheese and the Cadbury’s Milk Flakes. She was bracing herself not to succumb but to leave the cheesecake where it was in the chilled foods cabinet when a voice behind her said, “Stoking up the boilers, are we? Maintaining the avoirdupois ?”

It was Jeff Leigh. Strange things were happening to Michelle in Matthew’s absence. Her mind was in a turmoil as she thought thoughts she hadn’t had for a dozen years and looked at people she was used to with new eyes. For instance, she was seeing Jeff as if for the first time and perceiving him as very good-looking, that it was obvious why women found him attractive. And equally obvious that his charm was spurious and his looks skin-deep. Any reasonable person, not blinded by a love that must be mostly physical desire, would dislike and distrust him. She didn’t answer his question but asked him where Fiona was.

“At work. Where else?”

“To keep you in the luxury to which you’re accustomed, I suppose.” Michelle surprised herself, for she couldn’t remember saying such a thing or using such a tone in all her life before.

“It always amazes me,” he said, smiling genially, “how you women scream for equality with men but you still expect men to keep you and never to keep them . Why? In an equal society some men would keep women and some women keep men. Like Matthew keeps you and Fiona keeps me.”

“Everyone ought to work.”

“Excuse me, Michelle, but when did you last set foot in a nursery for a living?”

After she’d walked off in silence he was sorry he’d said that. It was cheap. Also it would have been funnier to have said something more about her shape and weight. Something on the lines of applying for a post with the Fattist Society, if she was in need of a job. Jeff bought the half-pint of milk he needed for his morning coffee and the smoked salmon sandwiches which would be his lunch and went home to think about the hours ahead before Fiona came home.

For years now Jeffrey Leach had planned each day with care. He gave an impression of casual insouciance but in fact he was meticulous, well-organized, and industrious. The trouble was that he couldn’t exactly tell people how hard he really did work, for most of what he did was dodgy or downright illegal. Yesterday, for instance, he’d driven himself to an Asda store and, presenting at the checkout the J. H. Leigh credit card he’d found to pay for their week’s groceries, had asked for cash back. The weary girl, who’d been on for three hours, asked how much. Jeff, who’d been going to say fifty, asked for a hundred pounds. She handed it over and he wished he’d asked for two. Yet she’d looked long and hard at the card before giving him the money, so that he’d heard a little warning bell tinkling.

Home now, he took the card out of his wallet and, resolutely but not without regrets, cut it into six pieces with Fiona’s kitchen scissors. These he put into the waste bin, careful to cover them with an empty cornflake packet and a pair of Fiona’s laddered tights. Better safe than sorry even if safety was going to cost him. The card had served him well as cards go, and as cards go it went. He’d get another somehow or other. Maybe Fiona would get him one. American Express was always writing letters telling their clients to apply for cards for family members. A live-in lover was a family member, wasn’t he? For the life of him he couldn’t see how he was actually to marry Fiona unless he got up his nerve and committed bigamy like Zillah. He’d give more thought to that when August approached.