Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Notices directing you were everywhere but they never seemed to point to what she wanted, never to Auntie’s grave. She read the one ahead, she didn’t know why, as she pounded along, afraid to look back in case she was pursued. It said: Exit. The relief was enormous. She knew where she was now, approaching the western gate that was opposite her own street and where the flower seller was. By the time she reached it she was walking quietly, managing a smile and nod for the flower man. And there was no one and nothing behind her.

It was rare for Minty to feel happy. Fear drives away happiness as much as sorrow does and she was mostly afraid. She lived in a climate of unnamable fears, terrors that could only be kept within bounds by strict routines. Something else had allayed them, had once or twice entirely banished them, and that had been what she’d never known in her first thirty-seven years, the feeling she’d had for Jock. When she’d told him, after he’d made love to her, that she would never be like this with another man, for she was his forever, she was expressing for perhaps the first time in her life her true and honest feelings, unaffected by cleanliness or tidiness or eating prejudices. And what he gave her back, or she thought he did, had given her a strange, unfamiliar sensation she didn’t know how to name. Happiness. She felt it now, returned in some small measure, as she left the cemetery and walked toward Syringa Road.

With Jock it had been relatively long-lived. If he hadn’t died, she sometimes thought dimly, not knowing quite what she meant or wanted, if he’d stayed alive and with her, those feelings she’d had and he’d inspired might have changed her into a different woman. This present scrap of happiness was doomed to be short, she knew it while it was with her, succeeding raw terror, for fear was returning as she approached her front door. She was afraid of what awaited her inside and she even thought of knocking on the Wilsons’ door, spending half an hour with them, having a cup of tea, a chat, maybe telling them about her experience looking for Auntie’s grave, of which, now it was over, she could see the funny side. What, a woman who’d lived a stone’s throw from the cemetery all her life, unable to find her own auntie’s grave! If she went into Sonovia’s house she’d only have to come out again and enter her own. She couldn’t stay in next door all night.

She put the key in the lock and turned it. Although it wouldn’t be dark for hours, she switched the hall light on. Nothing. Emptiness. She went upstairs, fearing to meet Auntie on the way, but there was no one, nothing. Very faintly, through the dividing wall, she could hear music, the kind of music very young people like. That wouldn’t be Mr. Kroot’s radio, it must be Gertrude Pierce’s. A strange woman she was, playing teenagers’ music. Minty ran a bath, using the kind of gel that makes foam, washed her hair in it, scrubbed the blood off her hands with a nailbrush. The punctures the thorns had made were a hundred tiny wounds. The music was turned off and silence followed. Minty dried herself, dressed in her usual clean T-shirt, clean trousers, socks. She never wore sandals, even in hot weather, because the streets were dirty. Things could burrow their way into your feet and give you a disease called bill-heart-something, she’d read about it in Laf’s newspaper. That was in Africa but she couldn’t see why it wouldn’t happen here.

She wasn’t hungry. Those sandwiches had been very filling. Maybe later she’d have a scrambled egg on toast. You never knew where the egg came from but it must be out of a chicken and, anyway, she’d cook it very thoroughly in a clean saucepan. Out of the kitchen window she could see washing sagging on the line in Mr. Kroot’s garden. It looked bone dry, had probably been there since before Gertrude Pierce came into Immacue. Minty went outside. It hadn’t been hot all day, there was too much cloud for that, but it had been gently warm and still was. She studied next door’s washing. So much sagging had taken place, one of the poles that supported the line leaning over at an angle of forty-five degrees, that the edges of the sheets and towels were on the ground, actually touching the dry, dusty grass. Minty was shocked but there was nothing she was prepared to do about it.

Sonovia’s voice called to her over the other fence, “Minty! Long time no see.”

In fact, it wasn’t very long. No more than two or three days. Knowing it would please, Minty told her, with many glances over her shoulder, about Gertrude Pierce coming into the shop, not realizing she worked there. Sonovia laughed, especially at the bit about her being amazed Minty knew her name. Some twenty years ago Mr. Kroot was reputed to have made a racist remark, though where and to whom he’d made it no one seemed to know, but it was enough for Laf, who’d never addressed a word to him since. Sonovia was often heard to say that she wished it hadn’t been so long ago but now instead and she’d have him up in court.

“Someone told me she’s going home on Saturday week. We’ll all be glad to see the back of her.” She listened, smiling, while Minty told her what had happened in the cemetery. The smile didn’t waver but when Sonovia went back into her own house, she said to Laf, “If Winnie Knox is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery it’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“She isn’t buried at all. She was cremated. You ought to remember that, you and I were there.”

“Of course we were. That’s why I said that was the first I’d heard of it. Minty had the ashes in a box on the shelf for months, but I noticed they’d gone. She’s just told me she got lost in the cemetery looking for Winnie’s grave. White roses she’d bought because she said her auntie was fed up with tulips. What d’you make of that?”

“We’ve always said Minty was peculiar, Sonn. Remember all that stuff about ghosts?”

Minty had for a moment forgotten all that stuff about ghosts. She went back into her kitchen and through to the living room thinking about Gertrude Pierce and the washing and the evil-smelling clothes she’d brought to be dry-cleaned. In the doorway she stopped. Two women were standing between the fireplace and the sofa, Auntie and an old bent person with a humped back and a witch’s face. Minty couldn’t speak. She stood there on the threshold, still as one of the cemetery statues, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were still there.

“You know very well that wasn’t my grave, was it, Mrs. Lewis? You put those roses on a stranger’s grave. How d’you think that makes me feel? Mrs. Lewis was disgusted.”

Auntie had never talked like this to her while she was alive, though Minty had often thought she’d like to but for some reason had resisted. There had been anger in her eyes, this anger that was now coming out, while she said nice things. Mrs. Lewis stood quite still, not looking at Auntie nor in Minty’s direction, staring at the floor, her gnarled old hands clasped.

“Can’t even manage a word of apology. She never could say she was sorry, even when she was little, Mrs. Lewis. There was never a word of regret passed her lips.”

Minty found a voice. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. There, will that do?” Her tone strengthened, though her fear hadn’t lessened, and the words came out in a throaty croak. “Go away, will you? Both of you. I don’t want to see you again. You’re dead and I’m alive. Go back to where you came from.”

Auntie went but Mrs. Lewis stayed. Minty could see Jock’s face in hers, the same features but wrinkled and aged as if by a thousand years. His eyes had looked like hers, defeated and tired, when they’d been to the racing and the dog he’d put money on came in last. One day he might have come to look like her if the train crash hadn’t taken him. The old woman raised her head. She was less solid than she’d been when Minty first saw her and again she was aware of that mirage effect, the watery waviness that made Mrs. Lewis’s loose cardigan and floppy skirt shiver as in a breeze. They stared at each other, she and Jock’s mother, and she saw that the eyes were not blue as she’d first thought but a dull, cold green amid the wrinkles, each one like a bird’s egg in a nest.