Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“There is no food in the house,” said Jims.

“I know there isn’t. I couldn’t go out shopping, could I? Not with all that lot outside.” Zillah very much wanted to placate him. “I could now if I go through the basement. They aren’t in the back.”

“They are. They nearly flattened my car when Malina and I came in.”

“Miss McMurty says that if you don’t have enough to eat you’ll get a vitamin deficiency. Your eyes will go blind and your teeth drop out,” Eugenie said.

“I will get one of the porters to shop for us,” said Jims.

Zillah wondered when the showdown would come, when he’d ask her why she’d deceived him over the nonexistent divorce. She prepared lunch. The porter had bought inferior quality food from some corner shop, besides getting all the things the children didn’t like. The lettuce was wilted and the tomatoes soft. Jordan screamed when he was expected to eat corned beef.

“Can I phone Matilda and get her to come here?” Eugenie suggested.

“I’m surprised you condescend to ask.”

“Well, can I?”

“I suppose so. You’ll have to play in your bedroom. I’ve got a splitting headache.”

Too late Zillah remembered Matilda’s father would probably bring her. But when the child arrived half an hour later she was in the care of a very young and beautiful au pair. She supposed she ought to be thankful Eugenie’s friend was allowed to come at all, permitted to associate with the Melcombe-Smiths, after what had been in the papers.

“I’ll come back for you at six, Matilda.”

They had to have her for three whole hours? That meant Zillah must find something to feed them. She watched them go off toward Eugenie’s room, chatting happily, her daughter giggling like a normal child. The phone began to ring. Zillah lifted the receiver fearfully. It was her mother, saying nothing this time about newspapers but asking if she was so indifferent to her father’s fate that she had forgotten he’d had a heart bypass that morning. After making wild promises she knew she’d never carry out, once Nora Watling had slammed down the phone she was left alone with Jims.

He took from the bookcase an as yet unread biography of Clemenceau, returned with it to his armchair, and, in total silence, opened it at the preface. Zillah picked up a glossy magazine and tried to read a piece about collagen lip implants. Suppose he never spoke to her again? What would she do? She remembered, back in December, how she’d foreseen this marriage as the chaste and charming companionship of two best friends, two people who would have fun together, enjoy life, and at the last have a greater affection for each other than either had for any lover.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked him when she could bear the silence no longer.

He looked up, a shade of irritability crossing his face. “I beg your pardon-what?”

“I asked you what you wanted me to say.”

“Nothing,” he said. “There is nothing to say. The newspapers have already said it.”

“We can get through it together, can’t we, Jims? All the fuss will die down. You’ve done nothing wrong. The statement will stop it, won’t it? Oh, Jims, I’m so desperately sorry. I’d have died before I let something like this happen, I’m so sorry .”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Abjectness doesn’t suit you.”

She’d have gone down on her knees to him but for the phone ringing at that moment. “Don’t answer it, let it ring.”

He got up, crossed the room to where the phone was, and lifted the receiver. His expression changed subtly as he listened. “Yes,” he said, and “yes” again. “May I ask why?” She couldn’t remember ever having seen him dismayed before. “I would like to phone my lawyer first,” and then, “Half an hour, right.”

“What is it, Jims?”

“They want me at the police station. Here won’t do. They’re coming to fetch me.”

“My God, Jims, but why?”

Instead of answering he lifted the receiver and dialed the home number of his solicitor.

Eugenie came in, trailing Matilda behind her. “You owe me five pounds, Mummy. You’d better write it down or you’ll forget.”

ALONE AT HOME, Fiona hadn’t set foot in her garden or conservatory since the news reached her of Jeff’s death. Nor had she been back to work. She had barely been out. When Violent Crimes and Miss Demeanor weren’t there, and their visits grew shorter and shorter until they no longer happened, she sat in her living room, not reading, not watching television or listening to the radio, but just sitting. Her hands were usually folded in her lap, her knees close together. It was days now since she’d cried. She’d phoned no one and when the phone rang she left it to ring.

Michelle, who had been with her every day up until Thursday, hadn’t been back since. She’d have liked to see her, for her next-door neighbor was the only company she wanted. But Michelle, she supposed, had grown tired of comforting a grief-stricken woman and had doubtless run out of things to say.

Fiona marveled at the intensity of her own sorrow. She was as wretched as any widow after a twenty-year marriage. Her heart was broken. In the past she had laughed at the absurdity of this phrase and others like it: heartbreak, heartbroken. “You will break my heart,” her mother had said to her over some minor offense she’d committed while at university. What nonsense. So she’d thought then but now she understood. Her own heart was broken, shattered to bits, and she told herself that since Jeff died she hadn’t been able to feel it beating. When she placed her hand under her left breast there was no fluttering movement, nothing but a dull ache. Sometimes, sitting alone, she worried over this and took her own pulse, not knowing whether to be relieved or not at its gentle regular throb.

Every day the newspapers had a fresh story in them about Jeff. His marriage, his idle life. Fiona swore not to look at these articles but she couldn’t help herself. They’d said everything they could about the murder and now they were on to Jeff’s womanizing activities, his failure ever to have worked for his living, the base advantage he took of women who kept him and were then abandoned. Reading about this brought her an intense physical pain, which fetched little sobs and moans from her. One woman he’d moved in with five years ago had parted with her savings amounting to two thousand pounds, had later lost her job, and was now living on the benefit. Fiona, still believing herself the great love of Jeff’s life, the one to change him, felt she ought to compensate this woman for her losses.

All this added to her grief. Next week she would have to go back to work. She had grounds no longer for staying away. It wasn’t a close relative she had lost, not a husband or partner in a long, steady relationship, not even really a fiancé. That word had become a dirty one to Fiona, who would never again read it on the page or hear it spoken without recalling how Jeff had not given her a ring and had lied to her about their wedding date. That knowledge did nothing to reduce the strength of her love, but it tinged that love, loss, sorrow, with bitterness.

At work they would all, of course, say they were sorry about her boyfriend, what a shock, what a ghastly thing to happen, and that would be it. Until the police caught the person who’d done it, when their sympathy would be revived and her boss would tell her to take the day off. She’d be a curiosity, to be pointed out as the woman whose boyfriend had been murdered. Forever, probably. Fiona imagined herself at fifty, still single, of course, still alone, the middle-aged solitary whom people got to know, wherever she might live, as the cinema victim’s girlfriend.