Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

Philip returned her gaze, but puzzled, not as happy as he had been moments before. He was well aware that she hadn’t given him any sort of opinion he might want to hear, hadn’t really answered him. Her terms were vague, open to any sort of definition; they bore no relation to concrete things, to rules and restrictions, decency, socially acceptable behaviour, respect for the law. She talked well, he thought, she was beautifully articulate, and the things she said, they couldn’t be nonsense. That feeling came from his own inability, as yet, to understand. He learned something as she spoke, though not what she had meant him to learn. It was interesting but disquieting at the same time. What he learned was that if you have told a lie about something you have done, as in his case about the murder of the vagrant, you very quickly forget all about it, something inside your memory blots it out. He knew that if, instead of speaking as though she took this act of his for granted, she had asked him artlessly what he had been doing the previous Sunday night, he would have replied that after he left her, he had driven home and gone to bed. He would have done the natural thing and told the truth.

The sun crept through the splits in the old shutters, making gold bars on the ceiling and laying rods of gold on the brown quilt. That was the first thing Philip saw when he woke up very late on Sunday morning, a string of sunlight drawn across his hand, which lay limply outside the covers. He withdrew the hand and, turning over, reached for Senta. She wasn’t with him. She was gone.

Again she surprised him. He was sitting up, already full of fears that she had left him, he would never see her again, when he saw the note on her pillow: “Back soon. I had to go out, it was important. Wait for me, Senta.” Why hadn’t she written “love”? It didn’t matter. She had left him the note. Wait for her? He would have waited for ever.

His watch told him it was past eleven. Most nights he simply didn’t get enough sleep, he never seemed to get more than five or six hours. No wonder he had been tired, had slept on and on. Fully awake now but still relaxed, he lay thinking about Senta, relieved and happy because in the region of his mind which was the place for Senta and himself he had at this moment no worries and no fears. But as if his consciousness didn’t want him to be without anxieties, it allowed Cheryl to creep into it. For the first time since he had witnessed that act of hers, the enormity of it struck him. He had been in a state of shock but now the shock had worn off. He knew at once that he couldn’t just let it alone, pretend he hadn’t seen what he had seen; he was going to have to confront Cheryl. The alternative would inevitably be the phone call from the police to say they had arrested Cheryl on a theft charge. Would it be worse or better to tell Christine first?

After that, Philip couldn’t just lie there, he had to get up. In the nasty corner where the lavatory was and the dripping, bandaged brass tap, he managed a wash of sorts. Back in her room he folded back the shutters and opened the window. Senta said opening the window let flies in, and as the sash went up a great blowfly sang past his cheek, but the room seemed sometimes to gasp for air. It was a bright shimmering summer’s day, the last sort of weather you would have expected to follow the bleak grey week that had preceded it. The short shadows up there on the concrete were black and the sunlight a burning dazzling white.

Something happened then which had never happened before and which brought him an enormous exciting pleasure. He saw her come to the house. He saw her legs in jeans and her feet in running shoes—unprecedented, he had never before seen her in trousers. Would he even have known it was she if she hadn’t bent down at the railings and looked at him through the bars? She put her hand through the bars, then her arm, stretching it towards him in a yearning kind of way. Her hand was open, palm upwards, as if she wanted to take his hand in hers. The hand was withdrawn and she came up the steps. Listening intently, he heard every step she took, along the hallway, down the passage, down the stairs.

It was a slow entry she made. She closed the door behind her with extravagant care, as if the house were full of sleeping people. He wondered how he could say of someone who was white-skinned, who never had colour in her cheeks, that she was very pale. Her skin had that greenish-silvery look. With the jeans and the shoes, she was wearing a kind of loose tunic of dark red cotton, with a black leather belt round her waist. Her hair was twisted up or tied up on the top of her head under a flat cap of cotton cord like a boy’s. She took this cap off, threw it on the bed and shook out her hair. Philip saw her looking at him, the beginnings of a smile on her lips, and saw the back of her in the misty spotted mirror, her hair spread over her shoulders in a great silver fan.

She extended her hand and he took it in his. He drew her towards him, to where he sat on the end of the bed. He smoothed her hair back from her face in both his hands, turned her face and brought it to his, kissed the lips, which felt cool for so warm a day.

“Where have you been, Senta?”

“You weren’t worried, Philip? You had my note?”

“Of course I did, thank you for it. But you didn’t say where you were, only that it was important.”

“Oh, it was. It was very important. Can’t you guess?”

Why did he naturally think of Cheryl? Why did he assume she had been to Cheryl, had said something he would want unsaid? But he didn’t answer her, he didn’t put this into words. She spoke softly, her lips almost against his skin.

“I went to do for you what you did for me. I went to prove my love for you, Philip.”

It was strange how any mention of those reciprocal acts immediately made him uneasy. More than uneasy, causing a recoil, a reflex of shying away. In those few seconds he thought, she may be going to try and teach me her philosophy, but I’ll also teach her mine: that fantasising has to stop. But all he could say was, “Did you? You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

She never heard what he said when she didn’t want to. “I did what you did. I killed someone. That’s why I went out so early. I’ve trained myself to wake up when I want to, you know. I woke up at six and went out. I had to go so early because it was a long way. Philip will worry, I thought, so I’ll leave him a note.”

In the midst of his growing exasperation, warmth touched him at her sweetness, her concern for him. He was aware of something wonderful, yet frightening. She loved him more now than before their separation, her love for him was always growing. He took her face gently in his hands to kiss her again, but she broke away.

“No, Philip, you have to listen to me. It’s very important what I’m telling you. I was going to Chigwell, you see, on the tube and it’s a very long way.”

“Chigwell?”

“Well, a place called Grange Hill, it’s the next station. It was the nearest one to where Gerard Arnham lived. You haven’t guessed, have you? It’s Gerard Arnham I killed for you. I killed him at eight o’clock this morning.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

For perhaps half a minute he actually believed her. It seemed infinitely longer, it seemed hours. The shock of it made something strange happen in his head, a kind of singing throbbing and a dark redness before his eyes, a sensation as of wheels turning and rolling behind his eyes. Then reason dispelled all that. You fool, he told himself, you fool. Don’t you know by now she lives in a world of daydreams?

He dampened dry lips with a dry tongue, shook himself a little. His heart was thudding and shaking his ribs. Strangely, she seemed not to notice these earthquakes in him, these overturnings and attempts to grasp at reality, these splits in reassurance through which nightmares came grinning.