Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“No, because you didn’t once take the trouble to phone your mother while you were away, although your children were with her.”

It was unanswerable. Even Zillah could see that. “How long do you want me to stay there?”

“Until Friday.”

It was a lifetime.

The traffic was heavy, and it was nearly six by the time Zillah reached her parents’ house. Her father lay on the sofa, boxes and bottles of medicaments on the little table beside him. He looked perfectly well, his eyes bright and a rosy flush on his face.

“Poor Grandad fell down on the floor,” said Eugenie importantly. “He was all alone. Nanna had to bring me and Jordan down to save his life and I said, ‘If poor Grandad dies, we must get someone to bury him in the ground,’ but he didn’t die.”

“As you see,” said Charles Watling, grinning.

“We went to the hospital and Nanna said to Grandad, ‘Your daughter’s gone to the ends of the earth and I don’t know her phone number.’ ”

Nora Watling had packed up the children’s things and prepared sandwiches for them to eat in the car on the way home. When Zillah said they would be staying till Friday, she sat down heavily in an armchair and said flatly that they couldn’t. Even one more day of Jordan’s crying and Eugenie’s officiousness would be too much, not to mention the presence of Zillah herself.

“No one ever wants us,” Eugenie said calmly. “We’re just a burden. And now our poor mummy is too.”

Weakening, Nora put an arm round her. “No, you’re not, my darling. Not you and your brother.”

“If we can’t stay here,” said Zillah, “where are we supposed to go?” Had she known the passage, she might have said that the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air their nests, but she had not where to lay her head. “To a hotel?”

“Your husband had enough of you, has he? That’s a good start, I must say. I suppose you’ll have to stay, if that’s what you want. But you’ll have to help me. Do the shopping, for one thing, and take the children out in the afternoons. Never mind about Eugenie’s schooling. That’s the last thing on your mind. But you mark my words, there’s no doubt one never gets rid of one’s children. No matter how often you think they’ve gone for good this time, they always come back. Look at me with you.”

“You see, you’ll never get rid of us, Mummy,” Eugenie said happily.

Zillah had to sleep in the same room as the children. Jordan went to sleep crying and woke up in the night crying. This began to worry her and she wondered vaguely if she should take him to a child psychiatrist. In the daytime the three of them spent the mornings food shopping and fetching prescriptions, and in the afternoons, because the weather was fine, they went to the beach. It was as bad as being back in Long Fredington. On Thursday morning Charles Watling became ill again, breathless and with a pain down his left side. The GP came and he was rushed into hospital.

“It’s no good, you’ll have to go, Sarah. I can’t stand the worry and the noise, not with your father like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hearing Jordan crying all the time that set this second attack off. You can stop tonight in a hotel. Goodness knows, it’s not as if you were short of money.”

At five that afternoon Zillah checked them into a hotel on the outskirts of Reading. Eugenie and Jordan were tired and after they’d eaten pizza and chips, went immediately to bed and to sleep. For once, Jordan didn’t cry but nevertheless Zillah slept badly. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she remembered to phone her mother in the morning, was told her father was “comfortable” and would probably be having a bypass at the end of the following week. At just after eight she started the drive home in heavier traffic than she’d ever experienced, and it was past eleven when she drove into the Abbey Gardens Mansions car park.

Once in the flat she phoned Mrs. Peacock. Would she have the children? Take them somewhere for lunch and then maybe to the zoo or Hampton Court or something? Please. She’d pay her double her usual rate. Mrs. Peacock, who’d spent a lot more than she’d meant to while in the Netherlands, readily said yes. Zillah rang the porters, told them she wasn’t to be disturbed on any account, unplugged the phones, and fell into bed.

The quest for his children Jeff might have postponed for a while had it not been for Fiona’s urging. It must have been seeing his dilemma down in black and white in the newspaper that affected her, for she’d spent most of Monday evening encouraging him to arrange a meeting with Zillah, demand to see his children, and, if such attempts failed, consult her solicitor. Jeff knew it wasn’t the plain sailing it seemed to her. Too much of this sort of thing and his marital status would come out. He couldn’t exactly promise he’d free himself from Zillah, for how could you divorce a woman who’d already married someone else? How could he say he was a Catholic when he’d never mentioned it before?

On Tuesday he’d taken the Jubilee Line tube from West Hampstead to Westminster and walked down to Abbey Gardens Mansions. No one was at home in number seven and this time the head porter said he’d no idea where Mrs. Melcombe-Smith was. Someone must have warned him to be discreet, for he denied all knowledge of any children living in the flat. For all he knew, as he said afterward to his deputy, that chap might be a kidnapper or a pedophile.

It was a lovely day. Jeff sat on a seat in the Victoria Tower Gardens and called Natalie Reckman on his mobile. At first he got her voice mail, but when he rang again ten minutes later she answered.

Her tone was cordial. “Jeff! I suppose you read my piece in the magazine?”

“I didn’t need that to remind me,” he said. “I think about you a lot. I miss you.”

“How nice. All alone, are you?”

“You could say that,” Jeff answered carefully. “Have lunch with me. Tomorrow? Wednesday?”

“I couldn’t before Friday.”

He had the five hundred he’d won on Website. Unashamedly he said, “I’ll pay. Where shall we eat? You choose.”

She’d chosen Christopher’s. Well, he could use Zillah’s Visa card and hope he hadn’t already gone over its limit with the handbag he’d bought Fiona for her birthday and the roses for the six months’ anniversary of their moving in together. These cards should have their limit printed on them for the sake of people like him. He’d crossed the street and tried the Melcombe-Smith flat again, but Zillah still wasn’t in.

On Thursday, a bit recklessly, he’d backed a horse called Spin Doctor to win and it came in first. The odds had been long and he’d picked up a packet. Next day he went back to Westminster and got to Abbey Gardens Mansions just as Zillah and the children were coming off the M4 at Chiswick. He rang the bell, got no answer, made more inquiries of the porter, and was told the man didn’t know, he couldn’t keep tabs on all the residents, and no one expected him to. As it happened, Jims had gone down to his constituency on the previous afternoon, by chance passing Zillah outside Shaston. Neither saw the other.

Jeff wondered how he could consult a solicitor without its coming out that he was still married to Zillah. Dared he confess this to Natalie? Probably not. She was a very nice woman, clever and good-looking, but she was above all a journalist. He wouldn’t trust her an inch. The only person he could confess to was Fiona. As he wandered along the Embankment in the sunshine, he pondered the possibility of this. The danger was that she wouldn’t forgive him, she wouldn’t say something on the lines of “Darling, why didn’t you tell me sooner?” or “It doesn’t matter but you’d better set about it now,” but would throw him out of the house. She was strictly law-abiding, he’d never known such rectitude in a woman or man either, come to that. Whatever she advised or whatever she warned him about, she’d want those Melcombe-Smiths told the truth, she’d want to know his intentions. Jeff didn’t care much for Zillah, and he actively disliked Jims, but he stopped short at making her destitute and wrecking the man’s career. No, he couldn’t confess to anyone. Except perhaps to a solicitor? What he told such a person would be in confidence. There might be some way of serving divorce papers on Zillah without Jims or anyone else being any the wiser. But what about the children? Would it be possible to get a divorce without mentioning the children’s existence? After all, they didn’t need anyone to support them, they had Jims. One of those postal divorces…