Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“You’d better come in.”

Serve her right if Jock came and talked to her, Minty thought as she went upstairs. Julianna might be one of those people who could see him. It would be a relief to get rid of the blue dress and jacket. In spite of dry-cleaning it twice, she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that it was still dirty and contaminating the house. “Polo, Polo,” Jock whispered to her as she went into Auntie’s room. He was still there, then, though she couldn’t see him any longer.

She’d zipped the outfit up inside a dry cleaner’s bag, taken it downstairs, and handed it over to Julianna. “It’s a bit gloomy in here,” Julianna said. “Why don’t you pull the curtains back?”

“I like it that way.”

“Minty?”

“What?”

“You wouldn’t come back with me, would you, and say hello to Mum and sort of make things all right? It’d really please my dad if you would. He says it gets up his nose not being on good terms with the neighbors.”

“Tell your mum,” said Minty, “it’s her fault, she started it. She can say she’s sorry and then I’ll start speaking.”

From the window she watched the girl go. She thought of all this while she was ironing and Josephine said, “Did you ever make it up with what’s-her-name that lives next door to you? The one that made all that fuss about her dress?”

“She’s called Sonovia.” Minty slipped the last white shirt but three into its plastic bag, tucked the cardboard collar round its neck, and took the last striped one from the pile. “Her husband came in here begging me to apologize but I said I’d nothing to apologize about, it was all her. It was all her, wasn’t it? You were there.”

“Of course it was. I’d say that in any court of law.” Josephine looked at her gold and rhinestone watch, a wedding present from Ken. “I tell you what, Minty, when you’ve finished that lot you can take the afternoon off if you want. And tomorrow morning. It’s only what you deserve, looking after the place while me and Ken were on honeymoon.”

Minty thanked her and managed a half-smile. She’d rather have had a raise but thought it was hopeless asking. The last three shirts were always a drag to do, but she’d finished them by five to one.

At home again, she took her second bath of the day, feeling fresh resentment against Jock when she thought how he’d done her out of the money she could have spent on a shower cabinet. Sometimes, while in the bath, she thought of the dirt that came off her floating about in the water and getting back on her again. The dirt from her body into her hair and the dirt from her hair on to her body. It might be the reason for her never feeling clean enough. Would she ever be able to afford a shower now?

She ate one of her clean hygienic lunches: carefully washed chicory leaves, a skinned chicken wing, six small boiled potatoes, two slices of white bread with good unsalted butter on them. Then she washed her hands. She’d spend her afternoon off at the cinema.

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. Even Kensal Green had smelled fresh and floral as she walked home from Immacue. Beyond the high wall, the trees of the cemetery made it look as if some verdant park lay behind. Auntie used to say it was a wicked shame going to the cinema on a fine day, you ought to be outside enjoying it. But she didn’t say it now, though Minty listened for her voice to come. Should she go to Whiteley’s or to the Odeon at Marble Arch? The Whiteley’s complex was nearer, but to reach it she’d have to go through one of the underpasses below the Westway. An underpass was just the sort of place Jock might be waiting for her and she didn’t want to see him today, she didn’t want him spoiling her time off. So Marble Arch on the 36 bus. The House on Haunted Hill was showing there and she quite liked the sound of it. Ghosts in a film weren’t frightening when you had a real ghost of your own.

Ages passed before the bus came, or it seemed like ages, though it was only ten minutes. As if making up for time, it raced along Harrow Road and down Edgware Road, dropping her off at the bottom at exactly three o’clock. By this time she was an old hand at buying her own ticket, showing it to the usher, and making her way alone to a seat. Ten people were sitting in the auditorium. Minty counted. She sat in a seat at the end of a row, so that no one could sit next to her on the right, and unless the place filled up, which it wouldn’t, nobody would choose to sit on her left. The present occupants of the cinema all looked older than she and were isolated except for a couple of pensioners, man and woman, seated in the very front row. She was pleased to find herself almost alone in the whole block of seats on the right-hand side. It was much better going to the cinema in the afternoon than with Laf and Sonovia in the evening.

The auditorium darkened and advertisements appeared on the screen. Minty had often before watched such commercials with puzzlement, for she understood not a word of them and not an image. The noise they made was loud and the voices that uttered incomprehensible words raucous, while music pounded and brilliant colors and explosive lights flashed across the screen. They were succeeded by something romantic and dreamy, accompanied by a soft sonata: the first trailer of films to come.

To her annoyance, a man had come in and was edging along the row in front of her. He probably couldn’t see where he was, the place was dark as pitch but for the pastel colors on the screen. He turned light-dazzled eyes in her direction and she saw it was Jock’s ghost. There seemed nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t follow her and haunt her. He wasn’t wearing his black leather jacket today, it was too warm for that, but a stripy shirt like one of those she’d ironed that morning and a linen jacket that looked new. Where did ghosts get new clothes from? She’d never thought of that before.

He sat down, not directly in front of her, but in the seat in front of the one next to hers, and took a packet of Polo mints out of his pocket. How long would he stay? Would he get up again and vanish through the wall as he’d done the night before in Auntie’s room? Minty was more angry than she’d been for a long time, perhaps than she’d ever been. Fear of him had almost gone, it was all anger now. He half-turned his head, then looked back at the screen. The romantic film trailer faded away and a violent one came on, the sort that shows high-powered cars in brilliant colors and blazing lights crashing into other cars and careering over precipices while maddened men crane out of their windows, firing guns. The ghost took a mint out of the packet and put it in his mouth. Carefully and silently Minty lifted her T-shirt, unzipped her trousers, and pulled the knife stealthily from its plastic sheathing and the strapping round her leg. She laid it on the seat beside her, zipped up her trousers, and pulled down her T-shirt. She thought she’d been quiet but she must have made a little sound.

Jock’s ghost turned round again, more fully this time. As he looked into her face in the dimness and the roaring noise, his eyes opened wide and he began to get to his feet as if he were afraid of her instead of her of him. More swiftly than she could have believed she’d do it, she snatched up the knife and, rising, thrust it into where she guessed his heart was. If a ghost had a heart, if a ghost could die.

He didn’t cry out, or if he did she couldn’t hear it above the car crashes and the guns and the beat of the music. No one could have heard anything with that noise going on. But maybe he hadn’t made a sound, perhaps ghosts didn’t. It took both hands to pull the knife out. There was something reddish brown on it that looked like blood, only it couldn’t be, ghosts didn’t have blood. It must be whatever ghosts had in their veins that made them able to walk and talk. Ectoplasm, maybe. Auntie had talked a lot about ectoplasm in her last years. Minty wiped the dirty knife on the upholstery of the seat next to her. It still wasn’t clean, of course it wasn’t, it would have to be put in a pan of water and the water brought to the boil before it was really clean. But there was no water here, no stove, and no gas. Shuddering, she unzipped her trousers and pushed the knife back against her leg, thankful for the plastic wrapping which kept it from contact with her skin.