Ruth Rendell - Adam And Eve And Pinch Me

“Don’t let her go to work, Mum,” Daniel said. “See she lies down and rests, and you could make her a warm drink. I’d better go or I’ll be late for surgery.”

Minty lay down till the afternoon and Sonovia brought her several warm drinks, sweet tea and her own recipe for cappuccino. Luckily, her neighbor had a key to 39 or Minty wouldn’t have been able to get back in again. Whether Laf ever did check she never found out. She thought that maybe she’d dreamt Sonovia saying that. Jock was dead all right or the train people wouldn’t have written. Josephine was very nice about her taking time off work. After all these years when she’d been as regular as clockwork, she said it was the least she could do. Minty got a lot of sympathy. Sonovia personally made an appointment for her with a counselor, and old Mr. Kroot on the other side, who hadn’t spoken for years, got his home help to put a card with a black border through her letter box. While Josephine sent flowers, Ken brought round a dish of lemon chicken with fried rice and Butterfly’s Romance. He wasn’t to know she never ate stuff from restaurant kitchens.

For five days she wept nonstop. Touching wood or praying should have stopped it but it didn’t have any effect. All that time she only had one bath a day, she was so weak. It was remembering the money that stopped her crying. Ever since she had the letter she hadn’t thought about it but she did now. It wasn’t so much that it was her savings that were all gone but the money that Auntie had left her and which she’d seen as a sacred trust, something to be looked after and treasured. She might as well have thrown it down the drain. As soon as she felt able to go out again, she bathed and washed her hair, put on clean clothes, and took her engagement ring to a jeweler in Queensway.

He looked at the ring, examined it through a magnifying glass, and shrugged. It might be worth twenty-five pounds but he couldn’t give her more than ten. Minty said, in that case she’d hold on to it, thank you very much. It took only a few more weeks for her love for Jock to turn sour and change into resentment.

Laf told Sonovia no Jock or John Lewis was numbered among the rail crash victims, no one with a name even remotely like that. He got on to Great Western and found that sending letters of that kind wasn’t their policy and, in any case, the woman who signed the letter didn’t exist. Laf knew very well that news of a death in those circumstances would come via the police. A couple of police officers would have come to Minty’s door. He’d very likely have been one of them himself. If, of course, they’d known of her existence. How would anyone have known? Minty wasn’t married to Jock, she wasn’t even living with him. The woman they’d have contacted was Jock’s mother-if he had a mother, if any of what he’d told Minty was true.

“It’s tipped her over the edge,” said Sonovia.

“What d’you mean, over the edge?”

“She’s always been peculiar, hasn’t she? Come on, Laf, face it, a normal person doesn’t have two baths a day and wash her hands every ten minutes. And how about jumping over the cracks in the paving stones like a kid? Have you seen her touching wood when she’s scared of something?”

Laf looked troubled. When something upset him, his face, the same dark rich chestnut brown as his shoes and as glossy, fell into a mass of pouches, his underlip protruding. “He made a fool of her and when he got himself a better proposition he was off. Or the idea of marriage scared him. One thing’s for sure, he wasn’t killed in any train crash, but we won’t tell her that. We’ll take her out with us a bit more. Get her out of herself.”

So Minty, who’d been shown the world by Jock and liked it, who’d late in life discovered sex and been going to get married, had her social life reduced to a once-a-fortnight cinema visit with her next-door neighbors. She never said another word to them about Jock until she saw his ghost sitting in the chair in the front room. Telling her not to be so daft and that she was hallucinating decided her against ever saying any more to those two about it. She’d have liked someone she could talk to and who’d believe her, someone who wouldn’t say there’s no such thing as ghosts. Not a counselor, she didn’t mean that. She’d kept the appointment Sonovia had made for her, but the counselor had only told her not to bottle up the grief but let it all pour out and to talk to other people who’d been bereaved in that crash. How could she? She didn’t know them. It hadn’t occurred to her to bottle up her grief, she’d cried for a week. What would it look like, a bottleful of grief? A cloudy gray liquid, she thought, with no foam or bubbles in it. Anyway, it didn’t work the way she’d been promised it would. She still felt terrible about Jock, wishing she’d never met him so that he couldn’t come ruining her life. What she wanted most was someone who knew how to get rid of ghosts. There must be people, vicars or something like that, who’d tell her what to do or do it for her. The trouble was no one believed in her ghost. Sometimes it looked as if she’d have to get rid of it herself.

After the sighting in Immacue, she didn’t see him again for a week. By now it wasn’t so dark in the evenings and she was coming home from work in the light. She took care never to leave that chair in the middle of the room and she told Josephine she mustn’t be alone in the shop, it made her nervous. Her nerves had got bad since she lost Jock. It was a funny position to be in, hating someone and missing them at the same time. Once she went up to Harvist Road to look at the house where he’d finally told her he’d lived. She thought the woman he rented the room from might have hung a black wreath in one of the windows or at least kept the curtains drawn but there was nothing like that. What would she do if the ghost came out of the front door and down the steps? Minty was so afraid she ran all the way back to the bus stop.

“It’s best for her to think he’s dead,” Sonovia said to her daughter Corinne. “Your dad says he’d like to get his hands on him and if he shows his face round here after what he’s done he won’t answer for the consequences. What’s the use of that sort of talk, is what I say. Let her get her mourning over with, that’s the best way, and then she can get on with her life.”

“And what life would that be, Mum? I never knew she’d got one. Did he have any money off her?”

“She’s never said, but I have my suspicions. Winnie left her a bit; I don’t know how much and I wouldn’t ask. Your dad says he can see the whole scenario. That Jock got talking in the pub and someone-Brenda, very likely, she can never keep her mouth shut-she pointed Minty out to him and said about Winnie Knox leaving her the house and a bit of money, multiplied it by ten, no doubt, and Jock saw the gravy train coming out of the tunnel.”

Corinne went to the window and looked out into the back garden, which was divided from next door’s by only a chain-link fence. On the other side of it, standing on a black plastic bin liner that she had spread on the grass, Minty stood pegging out the washing. “I’m being serious, Mum. How do you know if he ever existed? Did you ever see him?”

Sonovia stared at her. “No, we never did. We keep ourselves to ourselves, as you know.” Her daughter looked as if she didn’t know, as if it was a surprise to her, but she said nothing. “Wait a minute, though. We did see his car, a real old banger. And your dad heard his voice through the wall. Laughing. He had a very deep, warm sort of laugh.”

“All right. Only people do fantasize. And now she’s seeing his ghost, is she? D’you know if she’s ever had psychiatric treatment?”