Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

For a moment Philip thought Cheryl was going to accost this man. He was walking towards her but much nearer the kerb, and as he approached, she seemed to veer out from the shelter of the shop windows. By this time Philip had stationed himself in the doorway of a building society’s office on the same side as the punk boys. He had wondered from time to time if it were some kind of prostitution Cheryl engaged in. The idea was extraordinarily distressingly distasteful. It would account for her sudden accessions of money but not for her desperate need of small temporary loans. And now he saw that he had been wrong—at least in this instance—for Cheryl walked past the leather-clad man with head averted. She had let him pass by and now she stood, looking warily about her. There was no doubt she was looking to see if the street was as empty as it appeared to be.

Him she couldn’t detect, he was sure of that. She stared directly at the punk boys who had come away from the window and looked across the street at her, but without interest, without thought of involvement. And Philip realised something. Before Cheryl performed the act that was to overthrow all his guesses as to what she had come here for, he realised that she didn’t care if she was observed by the punk boys, for they and she were of a kind, not only heedless of the law but joined in a silent pactless conspiracy against it. They were the last people who would tell on her.

Tell on her for what misdeed?

Satisfied that she was unobserved, she slipped into the entry of one of the shops. It was a clothes boutique with a plate glass door. Philip saw her crouch down in front of this door and apparently insert something through the large letterbox of silver-coloured metal. Was she breaking in? A cry of protest sprang up in him and he suppressed it, hand over his mouth.

It was impossible for him to see from this distance and in this light what she was doing. He could only see her back and bent head and the action she performed, which was that of a person spearing something. The street remained empty, though a car passed in the direction of the station. Philip was aware of a purring silence, the purr being the distant, eternal, regular throb of traffic. Suddenly Cheryl gave a sharp tug with her right arm, backed, still on her haunches, sprang to her feet, and drew something out through the letterbox. Then Philip saw it all, understood it all.

The umbrella, used as a hook, had withdrawn a garment from some rack or counter inside the shop. It might have been a sweater or a blouse or a skirt. He couldn’t tell. She gave him no chance to see but rolled whatever it was up and thrust it inside her jacket. He was stunned by what he had seen, his feelings temporarily deadened, but he was also fascinated. It wouldn’t be true that he wanted her to do it again, but he wanted to see it done again.

For a moment he thought this would happen, for she approached another boutique a few shops along and stood there with her nose pressed to the glass. But then, shocking him once more with the suddenness of it, she spun round and began to run. She ran, not in the direction he expected—that is, back to the Finchley Road—but the opposite way, crossing the road and plunging down a side street near a railway bridge. Philip considered following her but very quickly dismissed this idea and returned to his car.

Was that what it was about? Was that all it was about, a kind of crazy addiction to stealing things from shops? He had read somewhere that kleptomania was nonsense, it didn’t really happen. What did she do, anyway, with the things she stole?

When he first considered telling Senta about it, he dismissed the idea almost at once. Second thoughts, surfacing as he drove across north London and down West End Lane, made him confront this proposition again. Wasn’t that what a relationship like theirs ought to be about, confiding in each other, telling each other their doubts and fears? If they were going to be together always, in a lifelong partnership, they must unburden themselves to each other, they must share their troubles.

He drove to Senta’s by way of Caesarea Grove, passing the big gloomy church of rough-hewn grey stone in whose west porch Joley sometimes encamped himself for the night. But the porch was empty and the iron gates into the graveyard fastened with chains and a padlock. When he was a child, Philip had been afraid to pass places of this sort, churches or houses built to look like some grim edifice of the Middle Ages, and would have made a detour or gone by at a run with eyes averted. He remembered this now, the memory of his fear strongly felt, though not the fear itself. A dozen gravestones, no more, remained under the trees with their black trunks and pointed leathery leaves. He had slowed for some reason to look in there, but now he accelerated, turned the corner, and parked outside Senta’s house.

More shutters were closed at the upper windows than he had ever seen before. The only light came from the basement, and the sight of that light alone was enough to make his heart beat faster. The breathless feeling was back. He ran up the stairs and let himself in. Music drifted to him but not the kind of music Rita and Jacopo danced to. It was coming up the basement stairs. This was so unusual that he had a momentary fear she might have someone with her and he hesitated outside her door for a moment, listening to the bazouki music, wondering. She must have heard his feet on the stairs, for she opened the door to him herself and came immediately into his arms.

Of course there was no one else there. He was moved with love for her by what she had done, what she seemed so proud of: food and wine set out on the bamboo table, the tape playing, the room somehow cleaner and fresher, the purple sheets on the bed changed for brown ones. She was wearing a dress he had never seen before, black, short, thin, and clinging, with a low oval neck that showed her white breasts. He held her in his arms, kissing her softly, slowly. Her little hands, warm with cold rings on them, stroked his hair, his neck.

He whispered, “Are we alone in the house?”

“They’ve gone away up north somewhere.”

“I like it better when we’re alone,” he said.

She poured glasses of wine for them and he told her about Cheryl. It was a strange treachery in him, he sometimes thought, a mistrust without foundation, that he expected her not to be interested in the things he told her, in his family, his doings. He expected her to be preoccupied, anxious to return to her own concerns. In fact, she was interested, did like to hear, gave him all her attention, sitting there with hands clasped, looking into his eyes. When he got to the bit about Cheryl poking the umbrella through the letter box, a smile dawned on her face, which, if you didn’t know it couldn’t be, you might have taken for admiration.

“What do you think I ought to do, Senta? I mean, should I tell anyone? Should I even tell her?”

“Do you really want to know what I think, Philip?”

“Of course I do. That’s why I’m telling you. I want your opinion.”

“My opinion is that you worry too much about the law and society and things like that. People like you and me, exceptional people, are above the law, don’t you think? Or let’s say beyond it.”

All his life he had been taught to be law-abiding, to respect authority, man-made government. His father, gambler though he had been, was adamant about honesty and strict integrity in his dealings. Making one’s own rules savoured to Philip of anarchy.

“Cheryl won’t be beyond the law if she gets caught,” he said.

“We don’t see the world in quite the same way, you and I, Philip. I know you’re going to learn to see it as I do, but that hasn’t happened yet. I mean seeing it as a place of mysticism and magic, as if on a different plane from the dull practical things most people waste their lives on. When you come onto that plane with me, you’ll find a world of wonderful occult things where everything is possible, nothing is barred. There aren’t any policemen there and there aren’t any laws. You’ll start seeing things you never saw before, shapes and wonders and visions and ghosts. You took one step towards that plane when you killed the old man for my sake. Did you know that?”