Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

Minty wasn’t going to eat her lunch with that old woman watching her. She’d rather starve. Mrs. Lewis moved about the kitchen, looking down at the cupboards and up at the shelves. If she was thinking Minty wasn’t a good enough household manager, wouldn’t have made a suitable wife for her son, she had another think coming. Everything in that kitchen was spotless.

Mrs. Lewis lifted the lid off the teapot and looked inside the bread bin. “She keeps it nice, I will say.”

“Say what you like,” said Minty. “I couldn’t care less. Why didn’t you give me back my money?”

No answer, of course. The old woman was close beside her now. Minty had a brilliant idea. She pulled open the cutlery drawer and seized the knife, the twin to the one she used in the cinema. The knife in her hand, she drew back her arm and lunged, but Mrs. Lewis had gone, faded into the wall or swallowed up by the floor.

It seemed then that just threatening got rid of them. But Minty didn’t immediately put the knife back. She washed the blade because she felt it was contaminated, though it had touched nothing. Then she carved some slices from a piece of ham and chopped some lettuce and tomato. The knife needed washing again and this time she put it right into the sink with plenty of hot water and detergent. It might be necessary, she thought as she dried it, to carry this knife with her as she had the one she’d used, find a more efficient way of carrying it, though wrapped up and laid along the side of her leg under her trousers would do. She poured herself a nice fresh glass of cold milk.

Her lunch was just finished and all the crockery in hot water when the doorbell rang. Laf, it would be, with the papers. “You want a cup of tea?” she asked, letting him in.

“Thanks, love, but I won’t stop. Where d’you think we’re going tonight, me and Sonny and you? We’re going to a show. In the West End.”

“In a cinema, d’you mean?” She wasn’t going back to that Marble Arch one, whatever he said. That was just the place Mrs. Lewis and Auntie were likely to be, haunting the spot where Jock had last appeared. “I don’t know, Laf.”

“In a theater,” he said. “It’s a thriller about the police.”

“Well, I can’t say no, can I?”

“Of course you can’t. You’ll love it.”

She wouldn’t be able to wear those clothes, that was for sure. Not after carrying those dirty towels and the trousers and top she’d taken off. Shame, because these white trousers were really nice. Anyway, she’d have to undress to put the knife down the side of her leg and once she’d got that far it was only another step to have a bath. She washed the dishes, took the papers outside, and sat in a clean cane chair she’d scrubbed, and with a cushion whose cover she’d washed and ironed. This made her feel very superior to Mr. Kroot and Gertrude Pierce, who’d stopped playing cards and eaten their lunch on the green baize table, sandwiches and Fanta by the look of it, for they’d piled up the dirty dishes on a tray and left it on the grass right by the cat’s nose, a real magnet for flies. Minty looked once but never again.

It would have been nice to go in the car, but Laf said where was he supposed to park? Down there, finding somewhere to put your vehicle was a nightmare. Taking the tube to Charing Cross meant you’d nothing to worry about. But the Bakerloo Line train was jam-packed and the streets were almost as bad.

Like many suburb dwellers, though their suburb wasn’t far out, Sonovia and Laf had only a sketchy knowledge of inner London. Laf occasionally drove through the Park to Kensington or even past Buckingham Palace. He knew roughly where the big streets led, while she had her shopping trips to the West End, and both, as inveterate picture-goers, visited the Odeon Metro and Mezzanine. But Sonovia had no idea of the way places linked up and couldn’t have told you how to get from Marble Arch to Knightsbridge or Oxford Street to Leicester Square. As for Minty, she hadn’t been down here for years, she’d had no occasion to come, and the big buildings of Trafalgar Square intimidated her with their rows of tall pillars and flights of stairs. It was as if she’d never seen them before or that she’d found herself transported to some foreign city. At the same time they reminded her of those Roman temples in the cemetery.

“Why is he up there?” she said to Laf, pointing to Nelson on his column. “He’s so high up you can’t see what he looks like.”

“I don’t know why, love. Maybe he wasn’t much to look at and it’s better not to see him close. I like the lions.”

Minty didn’t. Crouching there like that, they reminded her of Mr. Kroot’s cat. Maybe in the middle of the night they got up and walked about, treading on tall buildings and stamping on trees. She was glad when she and the Wilsons had pushed their way through the crowds and were seated in the Garrick Theatre. Laf bought a program for her and one for Sonovia and a box of Dairy Milk. Minty didn’t want a chocolate, it stood to reason they couldn’t come in those shapes unless someone handled them, but she took one so as not to be rude and felt funny for the next half-hour as the germs ran about inside her stomach.

An Inspector Calls wasn’t a bit like they’d imagined, though there was a policeman in it, or perhaps not a real one, perhaps a ghost or an angel. Minty didn’t want it to be a ghost, she had enough of those in reality, and sometimes she had to shut her eyes. The set was the best thing, they all agreed on that, not like something made to be the background to a play but like a real house in a real street, transported inside the stage. When it was over and Minty got up to go, the point of the knife pushed against the stuff of her trousers at the knee, but she adjusted them quickly before Laf or Sonovia saw.

It was quite late but cafés and restaurants were open everywhere; she had never seen so many all together and it made her wonder how they could make enough money to exist on. They went into a little one in a side street and ordered pizzas. Minty wouldn’t have had salad or cooked meat or anything she couldn’t see being cooked but a pizza was all right, you could watch the man take it out of an oven with a pair of tongs on to a clean plate. And he was wearing gloves. They had a couple of glasses of wine each and that reminded her of Jock.

“Adam and Eve and Pinch Me,” she said.

“You what?”

They’d never heard it before. “Adam and Eve and Pinch Me went down to the river to bathe. Adam and Eve were drownded. Who was saved?”

“Well, Pinch Me, of course,” said Sonovia and Minty pinched her.

Laf laughed uproariously. “You had her there, Minty. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Yes, well, the joke was on me,” said Sonovia and, in a patronzing tone, “But it’s not ‘drownded,’ my deah. You’re wrong about that. ‘Drowned’ would be correct.”

“Jock said ‘drownded.’ ” Minty finished her pizza. “It was him who told me.”

She shivered. Thinking about him often had that effect.

“Not cold, are you? It’s very warm in here. I’ve been asking myself why I didn’t put a thinner jacket on.”

But by this time it was growing colder outside, whatever Sonovia said. They passed a pub and then another, and Laf asked if they wanted a drink, one for the road, a nightcap, but Sonovia said no, enough was enough and it’d be one in the morning before they were in their beds as it was. The tube train came and it was so full that Laf said, “Let’s wait for the next one, it’s due in one minute,” so they waited and it came and it was nearly empty. A lot of people got in at Piccadilly, a lot got out at Baker Street, and one old woman got in. It was Mrs. Lewis.