Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“I’ve nothing to apologize for. She ought to be glad I had her outfit cleaned. I’ve still got it, did you know that? And I’ve had it cleaned again since I wore it. If she wants it back she can fetch it.”

Laf tried more persuasion about the cinema visit but Minty only said, No, thanks. She’d been going to the pictures on her own lately, it was quieter and there was no one whispering at her. Because she had no quarrel with Laf she didn’t say anything about the popcorn. He went off, shaking his head and saying she hadn’t heard the last from him, he’d mend the rift if it was the last thing he did.

Anyway, she didn’t want to see that film. She didn’t care for the sound of it. Jock had once bought her a half-pint of cider and she’d had to leave it, it tasted so sour. Jock. She’d seen him several times since the wedding, so she knew sticking a blunt knife in him hadn’t got rid of him. Again he came into the cemetery when she was putting tulips on Auntie’s grave, called her Polo, and said he preferred narcissi because they had a lovely scent. All the rest of that day, though she couldn’t see him, he kept whispering “Polo, Polo” at her. The next sighting was in her own house. Once more he was in that armchair. He got up when she came in and, lifting his shirt, showed her the bruise the dinner knife had made in his side, a purplish blue blotch. Minty went out of the room and shut the door on him, though she knew closed doors couldn’t keep him in just as they couldn’t keep him out. But when she went back again, he was gone. She’d been trembling so much she’d been walking through the rooms touching one color wood after another, but there weren’t enough different colors to do any good.

Bruising him wasn’t much use. The knife she had used had been too small as well as too blunt. She needed one of Auntie’s long carving knives. As a police sergeant, Lafcadio Wilson had had to be an observant man and when he came into Immacue to reason with Minty he’d noticed something like a bar or wooden baton lying horizontally across her waist. But it was mostly concealed by the loose garment she wore, and it was only when she was backing away from him and turning her body round to face the other way that he saw the end of it push out the hem of her sweatshirt. He thought no more about it. Minty was eccentric, everyone knew that. He never suspected the truth, that what he detected was a fourteen-inch-long butcher’s knife with a sharp point and a bone handle.

Minty had sharpened it on Auntie’s old-fashioned oilstone and she was surprised at the edge she’d achieved. She laid it against the skin on her forearm. One touch and the blood leapt from her arm in a string of beads. She wrapped the knife in one of Auntie’s linen table napkins, securing it in place with elastic bands, then with more bands attached it to the bum bag. Provided she wore really loose tops, it wouldn’t show.

Often now she heard his voice, but it never said more than “Polo, Polo.” Not so Auntie’s, which had joined his. All the time she’d been praying to Auntie at the grave she never got an answer and she didn’t now. It seemed to her that Auntie spoke when days elapsed since she’d been to the cemetery, as if she protested at neglect. The first time she heard the voice she was frightened, it was so clear, so plainly Auntie’s. But in life she’d never been afraid of her and gradually she became used to this new invisible visitor from beyond the grave; she’d even have liked to see her, as she saw Jock. Auntie never appeared. She only talked. The way she had when she was alive, about her sisters, Edna and Kathleen, about her friend Agnes who’d brought the baby Minty to be looked after for an hour and had never come back, about the puréed prunes and the duke of Windsor and about Sonovia not being the only person on earth with a son a doctor and a daughter a lawyer.

Then, one day, while Minty was having a bath and washing her hair, Auntie’s voice came very clearly and said something new. “That Jock’s evil, Minty love, he’s really evil. He’s dead but he can’t ever come where I am because he’s an imp of Satan. If I was back on earth, I’d destroy him, but I can’t touch him from this holy place. I’m telling you it’s your mission to destroy him. You’ve been called to destroy him, and then he can go back to hell where he belongs.”

Minty never answered Auntie because somehow she knew that though she could speak, she couldn’t hear. She’d been deaf for a couple of years before she died. The voice persisted for most of the evening. From her front room Minty watched Sonovia and Laf go off to the cinema. The evenings were light now, the sun still shining. But it had always been rather dark inside this house, perhaps because Auntie and now Minty only drew the curtains back halfway across the windows. For inner London and in parts a rough area, it was also very quiet. Mr. Kroot on one side lived in dim silence, while the Wilsons weren’t keen on television or loud laughter. Into the absence of any sound Auntie’s voice came back, telling her to destroy Jock and rid the world of his evil spirit.

Next day the top she put on was tighter and shorter, and the knife showed through, sticking out like some sort of frame. She tried other ways of carrying it and finally found that wearing it under her trousers against her right thigh, strapped in place by a belt, answered best.

A lecture awaited Zillah in the morning. Jims was dressed as she hadn’t seen him for the past ten days. Perhaps she’d never seen him so svelte and elegant. He wore a charcoal suit, impeccably cut, for which he’d paid £2,000 in Savile Row, a frostily white shirt, and a slate-colored silk tie with a vertical saffron stripe. Zillah belonged to that school of taste that holds that a man is never so attractive as when dressed in a dark formal suit, and gloom descended on her. She hadn’t slept well and her hair needed washing.

“I’ve something to say to you. Sit down and listen, please. Recriminations are quite useless, I realize that. What’s done is done. It’s the future I’m concerned about.” All of Eton and Balliol were in his tone. “I don’t wish you to speak to any journalists at all, Zillah. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not any at all. There must be no exceptions. Frankly, I had no idea when you began on your press campaign that you would be as rash and uncontrolled as you have been. I expected a modicum of discretion, but I’ve said there are to be no recriminations, so let that be an end to them. The key phrase for you to remember is, no contact with the media. Right?”

Zillah nodded. She was remembering the charming boy of her adolescence who had been such a sweet and funny companion, and the gracious man who visited her in her loneliness at Long Fredington and who always seemed close to her in a happy and intimate conspiracy-Zillah and Jims versus the world. Where had he gone? Her heart sank like a stone when she thought: This is my husband .

“I would like to hear you say it, Zillah.”

“I won’t talk to the media, Jims. Please don’t be so angry with me.”

“I shall tell Malina Daz to hold you to that. Now you’re off to fetch the children today, I think you said. It would be a good idea if you were to stay a few days with your parents.”

“In Bournemouth?”

“Why not in Bournemouth? It’s a very pleasant watering place and the children like it. It will give you an opportunity to check on your father’s health. How do you suppose it would look if it got about-if it got into a newspaper-that (a) you failed to return from the Maldives when your father had had a coronary, and (b) you failed to rush post-haste to his bedside once you did return?”

“But I didn’t know he’d had a coronary till last night!”