Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

Her daily society since then had made him believe, all experience to the contrary, that Darren, being her cousin, must be a far more interesting and clever person than he remembered. He must have been wrong about Darren. Perhaps it was natural to feel no man was really good enough for one’s sister. But now that he was in the company of his new brother-in-law, he realised he hadn’t been mistaken. Thickset and with a fat belly already developing at twenty-four, Darren sat guffawing at some television serial which it seemed imperative for him to see, never to miss, even though he might be in someone else’s house. He had insisted on watching it the two Sundays they were away, Fee said in the proud tone of a mother talking of her baby’s feeding requirements.

Returned home the day before, they had come to tea, though tea as such wasn’t a meal ever eaten in the Glenallan Close household. Christine had supplied one of her culinary masterpieces in the shape of sliced ham sausage and canned spaghetti rings. Afterwards she was going to do Fee’s hair, was childishly delighted because Fee, for once, was permitting this. Philip thought Christine was looking rather nice. There was no doubt she had looked better—younger and somehow happier—since the wedding. It couldn’t be relief at getting the wedding over and Fee married, for she had once or twice suggested—she never did more than suggest—that Fee, at her age, could easily afford to wait a couple of years before settling down. It must be the new friend, having the companionship of someone her own age. She had pink lipstick on, rather well applied and not muzzy at the edges, and had given her hair one of those golden rinses that had hitherto been reserved for clients.

They disappeared to the kitchen. Philip heard his mother compliment Fee on the navy blue jumper she was wearing and say wasn’t it funny to buy a guernsey actually in Guernsey. Fee’s patient explanation that the garment took its name from the island, as jersey did, gave rise to cries of wonderment.

Cheryl, as usual, was out somewhere. Philip was left alone with his brother-in-law. Denied further television, Darren was talkative on the subjects of international sport, the new Fiat, and congestion on the roads, and expansive on his honeymoon location. The cliffs of Guernsey were the highest he had ever seen, they must surely be the highest in the British Isles, he couldn’t begin to estimate their height. And the currents in the Channel were particularly treacherous. He wondered how many swimmers had come to grief through those currents. Philip, who had been abroad on several package tours, thought Darren would be one of those tourists who are always asking the guide how old or new something is, how deep this water, how high this mountain, how many bricks did it take to build this cathedral, how many men to paint this ceiling.

Photographs were produced, though no colour slides yet, thank God. Philip longed to speak to Darren about Senta. Here, he had thought, while the women were absent, was his opportunity. Of course, he didn’t intend to break his word to Senta and reveal their relationship. In a way there would be something delightful in speaking of her while concealing that she was any more than an acquaintance. But so far, Darren—talking nonstop, entranced by his chosen subject of conversation—gave him no chance. Philip had to bide his time. He had already discovered the joys of speaking her name to others and had mentioned her, in a lighthearted, indifferent sort of way, to his mother and Cheryl.

“Senta, that girl with the sort of silvery blond hair, who was Fee’s bridesmaid, I bet she’ll come out well in the photographs,” and, rather more daringly, “You wouldn’t think that girl Senta who was Fee’s bridesmaid was related to Darren, would you?”

Her father was his mother’s brother. It was hard to believe. They had no feature, no shade of skin, hair, or eye in common. They were of totally different build and might have belonged to different races. Darren’s hair was yellow and thick and rather rough, like new thatch. He had blue eyes and strong handsome features and ruddy skin. One day wine-coloured jowls would hang down over his shirt collar and his nose would become an outsize strawberry. He was a square man, the jack on a playing card.

Philip said suddenly, filling the brief silence which fell while Darren was putting all his photographs back into the yellow envelope, “I’d never met your cousin Senta till the wedding.”

Darren looked up. For a moment he didn’t say anything and it seemed to Philip that he was staring in astonishment. Philip had the extraordinary notion, coupled with the start of panic, that he was going to deny having a cousin or even say, “Who? You mean Jane, don’t you? She only says she’s called that.”

But it wasn’t astonishment. It wasn’t wonder or indignation or anything like that, just Darren’s habitual slowness at comprehension. Gradually a sly smile spread across his face.

“You fancy her, then, do you, Phil?”

“I don’t know her,” Philip said. “I’ve only met her once.” He realised he had told his first lie for Senta and he wondered why he had done it. But he plunged on. “She’s your first cousin?”

This was too much for Darren who said with some bewilderment, “First, second, I don’t reckon I’ve been into all that. All I know is my mum is her auntie and her dad is my uncle, and that makes us cousins in my book. Right?” He returned to safer and better-known ground. “Come on now, Phil, you do fancy her.”

The knowing look and sophisticated smile were all Darren required, and these Philip, without too much strain, supplied. Darren responded with a wink. “She’s a funny piece, Senta. You should see the place she lives in, a real rat hole, a dump. Fee wouldn’t set foot there when they were fixing up about the dresses and whatnot, and I don’t know as I blame her. And she could have a nice home with Uncle Tom in Finchley, she must want her head tested.”

Although he felt he was betraying himself with every word, Philip couldn’t stop yet. “Fee doesn’t know her very well, then?”

“Don’t let that worry you, old lad. I know her. I can get you in there if that’s what you’re after.”

He wasted no more words on Senta but reverted to Guernsey and his passion for heights, depths, weights, measures, and extremes of temperature. Philip let him run on, then excused himself. He was due at Senta’s at nine. Before leaving the house, he had something to see to upstairs. It had occurred to him that Fee might go into his room if she was still in the house after he had gone out. She never had gone in there during the days when she lived in Glenallan Close and there was no reason for her to do so now. But he had been struck by some kind of premonition or simple apprehensiveness. The marble girl still stood, uncovered, in the corner between clothes cupboard and window wall.

It was ten to nine but not dark yet and the glimmering light made her marble skin very radiant, pearllike yet human too, as if she lived. She was Senta to the life. Was not that calm yet starry gaze at distant horizons hers alone? Those folded lips set in exquisite proportion to the straight delicate nose? She had even done her hair like that when they went out together, bound closely around her head in little waves from where the plaits had crimped it. He had a sudden desire, which he recognised as absurd and to be quickly suppressed, to kiss that marble mouth, to press his own lips against the lips that looked so soft. He wrapped the statue up again, not in the cold slippery plastic, but in an old Aran sweater and thrust her into the back of the cupboard.

Talking of Senta, hearing her declarations confirmed—he felt treacherous there, but it was true: he had doubted and feared—tasting her euphonious name on his lips, and hearing it spoken so idly by another fired him somehow with a newer, fiercer ardour. He could hardly wait to be with her and he was breathless in the car, cursing at red traffic lights. Down the dirty stairs he ran, his body taut and tense with longing for her, his fingers fumbling the key in the lock, the scent of smoking joss stick coming to him as the door slid open and admitted him to her pungent, dusty, mysterious domain.