Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

What had happened to her to make her do what she’d just done? Jeff Leigh had happened. That made Michelle smile. It was absurd to think of the person you hated as doing you good. For he had done her good. She put on her shoes, went down to the kitchen again and tipped the food she’d prepared for her tea, a big bread roll (in the absence of doughnuts) with strawberry jam, two shortcake biscuits, and a slice of fruitcake, down into the waste bin.

THE HORRIBLE THING was that she’d begun to fancy Jims. Really to fancy him, a different matter altogether from the feeling she’d had when they were both teenagers. In those days it had been just an itch, coupled with resentment that here was one boy among all those she knew who wasn’t attracted to her. That in itself was enough to make her try to seduce him. But now things had changed.

Paradoxically, as she started to want to go to bed with him, so she liked him less. When they’d just been seeing each other every few weeks, having a drink together, talking over old times, Zillah would have said Jims was her best friend. Sharing a home with him made a huge difference. His peevishness was apparent, his selfishness, and, when there was no one else present, his absolute indifference as to whether she was there or not. If anyone called, one of his parliamentary pals, for instance, he was all over her, holding hands, looking into her eyes, calling her darling, pausing as he passed the back of her chair to drop a kiss on the nape of her neck. Alone with her he barely spoke. But this coldness, along with his appearance, his grace, his dark slenderness, and those large, dark eyes, fringed with black lashes like a girl’s, contributed to his appeal. Every day, it seemed, she sank deeper into wanting him very much.

In the Maldives it was worse. They shared a suite in which there were two bedrooms and two bathrooms, but Jims was seldom there, spending his nights in suite 2004, where Leonardo was. Ever cautious, he would sometimes return at eight in the morning, to be sitting opposite her at the glass table on the balcony, both in their white toweling robes, when the waiter brought their breakfast at nine.

“I wonder why you bother,” she said.

“Because you never know who else may be staying here. How do you know that redheaded woman we saw on the beach yesterday isn’t a journalist? Or that the very youthful couple, the topless girl and her boyfriend, aren’t media people? Of course you don’t. I have to be ever vigilant.”

Most women would be overjoyed, she thought, if their husbands could talk about a young girl going topless without a flicker of lust in their eyes, without the least deepening of their tone. In the mornings Jims lay on a sun lounger on the silver sands and Leonardo lay on another sun lounger beside him. But Zillah was there too on a third one. When she protested, saying she’d rather go in the pool or take a look at the village, such as it was, he reminded her of his reason for marrying her. And for giving her two homes, almost unlimited spending money, a new car, clothes, and security. He’d also, he said, become a father to her children. Zillah was beginning to understand that she’d taken on a job rather than a husband, while in exchange for all those worldly goods she’d abandoned her freedom.

Leonardo worked for a stockbroker in the City and was a high flyer at twenty-seven. From a family that, on the father’s side, had been staunch active Conservatives for the past hundred and fifty years, he was as mad about politics as Jims and the two talked Conservative party history, House of Commons procedure and personalities all day long, swapping anecdotes about Margaret Thatcher or Alan Clark. Leonardo was enthralled by John Major’s autobiography and constantly read bits out of it aloud to Jims. Zillah thought bitterly how unlike their dialogue was to the received opinion among the party mandarins she’d met as to the style in which gay men conversed.

She was worried as well. As to his vaunted role as Eugenie and Jordan’s father, so much for his saying he loved children. He’d barely spoken to either of them since their return from Bournemouth. When she’d mentioned this, he said he supposed Eugenie would be off to boarding school in a few months’ time. Then they’d get a live-in nanny for Jordan and he’d have the fourth bedroom converted into a nursery. She hadn’t said a word to him about Jerry. How could she? They were supposed never to have been married and he to have no rights over the children at all. Suppose Jerry did try to get the children? Suppose he renewed his threat to expose her as a woman who’d married one man while still married to another? Oh, it was so unfair! He’d utterly deceived her, sending her that letter saying he was dead.

And now, just to crown everything, she’d succumbed to Jims’s charms. In the dining room last evening, for the benefit of the other diners, he’d put his arm round her while they were waiting to be shown to their table and, once there, when he’d pulled out her chair for her, given her a soft little kiss on the lips. She’d actually heard some old woman nearby whisper to her companion how nice it was to see a couple so much in love. That kiss nearly finished Zillah off. She’d have liked to go upstairs and have a cold shower, but she had to sit here with Jims looking into her eyes and holding her hand across the table. Leonardo always took his dinner in his suite while watching, Zillah suspected, pornographic movies. Or maybe only videos of some Tory by-election coup.

The Daily Telegraph Magazine , the one with her interview in it, hadn’t yet come out. Unless it had on Easter Saturday. Zillah’s mother had strict instructions to look out for it and keep it if it appeared while she was away. The day before they left, she’d written to Jerry at the Hampstead address he’d given her, only it wasn’t Hampstead proper but West Hampstead, as she could tell by the postcode. Obscurely, this discovery made her feel a little better.

Zillah wasn’t accustomed to writing letters; she couldn’t remember when she’d written the last one. It had probably been to thank her godmother for sending her a five-pound note when she was twelve. The first effort she made looked very threatening when she read it over, so she started again. This time she threw herself on Jerry’s mercy, appealing to him not to expose her as a criminal, to remember what she’d been through, how he’d left her alone to fend for herself. That wouldn’t do either. She tore it up and finally wrote simply that he’d frightened her. She hadn’t meant to keep the children from their father. He could have access and visiting rights and anything he wanted if only he wouldn’t tell anyone she’d done what he knew she’d done. Without actually writing “bigamist” in case the letter fell into the wrong hands, she asked him please not to use “that word” anymore. It was cruel and unfair. This she sent.

The trouble with the Maldives was that beautiful though the island was, it was really only the sort of place you went to with someone you were having a big, sexy, and romantic affair with and wanted to make love to all the time. Like Jims and Leonardo. For anyone else it was just a yawn. She read paperbacks she’d bought at the airport, she had a massage, and got her hair done three times, and because Jims, sustaining his role of devoted husband, took photographs of her, she took some of him and a few times included Leonardo. But it was a relief to be going home on Sunday.

The newspapers that were brought round in midair were yesterday’s, thick Saturday papers stuffed with supplements. Zillah took the Mail while Jims opted for the Telegraph . She was reading a very interesting piece about fingernail extensions when a choking sound from Jims made her look round. He had gone dark red in the face, a change which made him a lot less attractive.