Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

The door opened and Lucy came in. It was she who picked up the receiver when the phone rang and held it at arm’s length to defend herself from Mrs. Ripple’s ear-shattering blast.

The letter he composed sitting at the table in the living room, where he was subject to a series of interruptions. First Hardy wanted a walk. Philip took him as far as the end of Kintail Way and began again: “Dear Senta …”

It looked cold. He wrote “Darling Senta,” and though he had never in his life called anyone “darling,” liked it better. “Darling Senta, I have missed you so terribly, I didn’t know what it was to miss anyone before. Please don’t let us ever be apart like that.” He would have liked to write about the sex they had, about making love to her, and the terrible deprivation not making love to her had been, but some deep inner shyness held him back. The act was lovely and open and free but the words embarrassed him.

The sound of a key in the lock made him think it must be Christine, though it was early for her. He had forgotten Fee was coming round with a loaf and the ham. She had also bought Danish pastries, a basket of strawberries, a carton of double cream.

“Who are you writing to?”

He had quickly covered the letter with the TV Times on which he had been resting the paper, but a corner showed. The truth would never be believed, so he told her the truth in an airy tone.

“Senta Pelham, of course.”

“You should co-co. Chance’d be a fine thing. That reminds me, I had that bridesmaid’s dress cleaned, the one she kindly dumped on the floor, and it’s come up looking super. Will you tell Mum I picked up her winter coat at the same time and I’ve put it up in her wardrobe?”

He waited until the front door had closed behind her.

“Darling Senta, I have tried and tried to see you, I don’t know how many times I have been to your house. Of course I can understand now why you wouldn’t let me in and didn’t want to see me. But please don’t ever do that again, it hurts too much.

“I have thought a lot about what you asked me. All this time I have been thinking of you, I don’t think I have had a thought for anything or anyone else, and of course I have naturally thought about what you said I should do to prove I love you. Personally, I think the proof is in what I’ve been through since I left you that day and you took the keys to your house away from me….”

Perhaps he shouldn’t put that bit in. It sounded too much like a reproach, it sounded like whining. The throbbing of a diesel engine outside told him Christine had arrived. He put the TV Times over his letter again and went to the door. She was alone, without Cheryl. Her skin was tanned, her face golden with pink cheeks, her hair bleached by the sun. She looked young and pretty, and she was wearing a dress he hadn’t see before, a natural-coloured linen coat-dress that was plainer and more sophisticated than what she usually wore. Hardy rushed past him and hurled himself at Christine, yelping with joy.

She came up the step with the dog in her arms and kissed Philip. “You said to have a taxi, so I did, and it was ever so nice, but he charged me over five pounds. I said to him I didn’t think it was fair that clock or meter or whatever it is still ticking the price up even when you’re stuck in a traffic jam. It ought to stop when the taxi isn’t moving, I said, but he just laughed.”

“What happened to Cheryl?”

“It’s funny you should ask that because she was with me right up until we’d been in the taxi for ten minutes. We were going along this street with lots of quite nice shops and she suddenly said to the driver to stop and let her out and he did and she said, Good-bye, see you later, and got out, and I must say I did think it was funny because all the shops were closed.”

The Edgware Road, he thought. “Did you have a good time in Cornwall?”

“Quiet,” she said. “It was very quiet.” This was what she said when people asked her if she had enjoyed Christmas. “I was on my own a lot.” She wasn’t complaining, just stating a fact. “Cheryl wanted to be off by herself. Well, a young girl, you know, she doesn’t want an old bat flapping after her. Isn’t Hardy pleased to see me? He does look well, dear, you’ve been taking good care of him.” She peered into the dog’s adoring face and then into Philip’s in her gentle rather apprehensive way. “I can’t say the same for you, Phil, you’re looking quite peaky.”

“I’m okay.”

Thanks to Cheryl’s defection, he would have to stay with her now instead of finishing the letter. He couldn’t go upstairs and desert her on her first evening at home. Looking back over those terrible ten days, he thought, what a waste, what a waste! We could have been together every night, all night, if I hadn’t been such a fool….

It was gone ten-thirty when he got back to his letter. Christine wanted an early night. A quick scan of her appointments book had shown her she was doing a shampoo, trim, and blow-dry at nine next morning. Philip sat on his bed, rested the letter paper on the TV Times and the TV Times on his old school atlas on his knees.

“Darling Senta, I have missed you so terribly….” He read over what he had written, felt fairly satisfied. At any rate he knew he couldn’t do better. “I don’t know why I made such a fuss when you suggested what we should do to prove our love for each other. You know I would do anything for you. Of course I will do it. I would do fifty times that for you, just to see you again I would do it. I love you. You must know that by now, but I will tell you again because this is what I want you to know and what I will prove to you. I love you. With all my love for ever and ever, Philip.”

CHAPTER TEN

She didn’t reply.

He knew she must have got his letter. Unwilling to entrust it to the post, he had taken it to Tarsus Street himself on his way to work and put it through the letter box. Then he had looked through and seen it lying there, not on the doormat—for there was no doormat—but on the dirty red and black tiles. The house had been quite silent, the shutters closed at the basement window and the two windows above it. The phone on the table was hidden behind a pile of leaflets, freebie magazines, and junk mail.

Once the idea of writing to her had come to him, or rather, once the idea of what he should write had come, his unhappiness had gone and he had been filled with hope. This euphoria was quite baseless. Simply writing a letter and delivering it wouldn’t bring her back. He knew that this was true on one level of consciousness, but on another that seemed most to affect his emotions, he had solved his problems, put an end to misery, won her. At work he was happy, he was almost as he had been before that Sunday when he had said those things to her and she had turned him out.

What form her return to him would take he hadn’t considered. A phone call, surely. Yet she had never phoned him in the past, not once. He couldn’t imagine her writing a letter in return. Should he go to her house as in the old days? It was less than a fortnight ago, but just the same it was the old days. Thursday passed without his going back to Tarsus Street. On Friday he phoned her number from work and got Jacopo on his answering machine. He left the same message as he had last time, to ask Senta to phone him. But this time he stipulated that it should be that evening and added his phone number. It occurred to him, strange though this seemed, that Senta might not know his phone number. There were unlikely to be phone directories in that house.

Christine took Hardy out for his evening walk. Philip wouldn’t leave the house. He told her he was expecting the art director to call from head office. Christine believed anything he told her, even that a company like Roseberry Lawn had an art director and that this mythical personage might work late on Friday evenings and need to consult very junior executives like Philip. While she was out with the dog, he experienced one of the worst possible emotional torments: to wait by the telephone for long hours for a call from the person you are in love with. It comes at last—from your sister.