Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

In a cold tone, quite unlike the usual way he spoke to her, he said abruptly that he had done what she wanted. Her face became alive with expectancy. The sea-wave eyes, green and water white, flashed. She took hold of his wrists. He found it impossible to say the words baldly. He gave her the cutting.

“What’s this?”

He spoke as if testing his knowledge of a foreign language, listening to each word. “It will tell you what I did.”

“Aaah!” It was a long, satisfied indrawing of breath. She read the paragraph two or three times, gradually smiling. “When did you do it?”

He hadn’t supposed too many details would be required. “Last night.”

“After you left me?”

“Yes.”

It reminded him of an amateur production of Macbeth he had seen while still at school.

“You took up my suggestion, I see,” she said. “What happened? You left here and drove to the Harrow Road, did you? I suppose you had a piece of luck and just found him there hanging about?”

He experienced a tremendous revulsion of feeling, not from her but from the subject itself, a physical distaste as strong as the recoil would be from the dog’s turds on the step, from a seething mass of maggots. “Let’s just take it that I did it,” he managed to say. His throat was constricted.

“How did you do it?”

He would have shunned the idea if he could. He would have escaped from the knowledge, absolute and indisputable, that she was excited, was revelling in a kind of lustful, pleasurable prurient interest. She moistened her lips, parted them as if a little breathless. The hands that held his wrists moved up his arms drawing him to her. “How did you kill him?”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Senta, I can’t.” And he shuddered as if he had actually committed some terrible act of violence, as if he remembered a knife going in, a gush of blood, a scream of agony, a struggle and a final helpless yielding to death. He hated these things and other people’s gloating fascination with them. “Don’t ask me, I can’t.”

She took his hands and held them out, palms upwards. “I know. You strangled him with these!”

It was no better than contemplating the knife and the blood. He fancied he could feel his hands tremble in hers. He forced himself to nod, to answer. “I strangled him, yes.”

“It was dark, was it?”

“Of course. It was one in the morning. Don’t ask me any more about it.”

He could see she didn’t understand why he refused to give details. She expected him to furnish her with a description of the night, the empty silent street, the victim’s helpless trust—and his own predatory seizing of opportunity. Her face blanked as it sometimes did when she was disappointed. All animation departed, all feeling, and it was as if those eyes turned inwards to contemplate the workings of her mind. With her little girl’s hands she took hold of two thick locks of her silver hair and drew them down across her shoulders. Her eyes seemed to turn outwards and fill with light.

“You did it for me?”

“You know it. That’s what we agreed.”

A long shudder, that might have been real or equally might have been contrived, shook her body from head to foot. He reminded himself that she was an actress. This kind of thing was necessary to her and he would have to live with it. She laid her head against his chest as if to listen to his heartbeat and she whispered, “Now I shall do the same for you.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

To follow Cheryl had been far from his intention when they set out. It was the first time he had actually been out with his sister since the day they had all gone to Arnham’s house, and Christine and Fee had been with them then. Not since before his father’s death had he and Cheryl gone out alone.

It was Saturday evening and he was on his way to Tarsus Street. It was somehow harder to tell a mother who never asked questions that you wouldn’t be back till the following evening than if she probed and pried. But he had told her, in a casual way, and she had given him her innocent, unsuspecting smile. “Have a nice time, dear.”

Soon it would all be out in the open. Once he was engaged there would be no problem about saying he would be staying overnight at Senta’s. He was getting into the car when Cheryl came running out and asked for a lift.

“I’m going down the Edgware Road, that way.” “Go on, make a detour and take me to Golders Green.” It would be a hefty detour but he agreed; he was curious. There was something disquieting in the idea that while she had a secret from him, he also had one from her. No sooner had they turned the corner into Lochleven Gardens than she was asking him for a loan.

“Just a fiver, Phil, then you could take me straight down the Edgware Road.”

“I’m not lending you money, Cheryl, not anymore.” He waited a moment and when she didn’t say anything, “So what’s going to happen in Golders Green? What’s the big deal there?”

“A friend I can borrow it from.” She said it airily enough.

“Cheryl, what’s going on? I’ve got to ask. I know you’re into something. You’re never home except at night, you don’t have any friends, you’re always alone, and you’re always trying to get money. You’re in some kind of bad trouble, aren’t you?”

“It’s nothing to do with you.” The old brooding sulky note was back in her tone but there was indifference too, an edge of don’t-care to it that told him questioning didn’t bother her, interference amounted to nothing because she could parry it by admitting nothing.

“It’s to do with me if I lend you money, you must see that.”

“Well, you’re not going to, are you? You’ve said you’re not, so you might as well shut up.”

“You can at least tell me what you’re going to do this evening.”

“Okay, you tell me what you’re doing first. Only don’t bother. I know. You’re seeing that Stephanie, aren’t you?”

Her conviction, quite erroneous, as to what he had been and would be doing made him wonder fleetingly if his own certainty that she was addicted to drugs or drink might be equally mistaken. If she could be wrong—and she was wrong—so could he. He didn’t even bother to deny what she had said, and he was aware of her triumphant nodding. At Golders Green, by the station where the buses turned round, he dropped her. It was his intention to drive down the Finchley Road, but as he watched Cheryl move off in the direction of the High Road, the idea came to him to follow her and watch what she did. It struck him as very odd that she was carrying an umbrella.

It had been raining and looked as if it would rain again. The few people he saw about were carrying umbrellas, but for Cheryl to do so seemed to him unprecedented. What could she want to protect from the rain? Not her short spiky hair surely. Not her jeans or the shiny plastic jacket. It was as incongruous seeing her with an umbrella as it would be if Christine were to put on jeans. He parked the car in a side turning. When he emerged into the main street again, he thought he had lost her and then he spotted her quite a long way away in the curve of the High Road, walking along the rather wide pavement.

When the green figure of the marching pedestrian lit up, he ran across the Finchley Road. It was midsummer light and would be for two hours yet, but the light was gloomy from rain and a threatening dark overcast. This place would be crowded when the shops were open, cars double-parked on the roadway and the passage of buses between them slow. It was a shopping centre only, and now, without cinemas or pubs, with scarcely a wine bar, the street was deserted but for Cheryl walking along close to the windows. Not quite deserted. Philip realised rather unhappily that what he meant was, it was empty of a responsible, conventional, orderly sort of people. There were three punk boys looking into the window of a motorcycle accessories store. A man walked alone on the other side, Cheryl’s side, a tall thin man in leather and with his hair in a pigtail.