Ruth Rendell - The Bridesmaid

“Of course I do.” It rather irritated him, the way she sometimes had of treating him as if he were ignorant.

“Don’t be cross. You must never be cross with me. It’s why I don’t go out very much, you know, and why I like living below ground. Psychiatrists say it goes with schizophrenia. Did you know that?”

He tried a light approach. “I hope we’re going to live together all our lives, Senta, and I can tell you I don’t intend to spend fifty years in a burrow. I’m not a rabbit.”

It wasn’t very funny but it made her laugh. She said, “I’ll think about the flat. I’ll ask Rita. How will that do?”

It did wonderfully. Everything was at once made smooth. He marvelled, but in a calm and simply interested way, that things could have been tragic and terrible yesterday and that today, only because he had seen and spoken to a man who was the merest acquaintance, they were restored to perfection. He took her in his arms and kissed her.

“I want everyone to know about us now.”

“Of course you can tell them, Philip. It’s time to tell.”

As soon as he got Christine alone, he told her about Senta.

She said, “That’s nice, dear.”

What response had he expected? While Christine pottered about the kitchen, getting their evening meal, he thought about that. The truth was that Senta was so beautiful in his eyes, so wonderful, so utterly different from any other girl he had ever known, that he expected awe first, then amazed congratulations. Christine had received his announcement in a rather preoccupied way, or as if he had said he had been going about with some ordinary girl. He would have got more enthusiasm, he thought, if he had said he’d taken up with Jenny again. Doubtful if she had really taken it in, he said, “You do know who I mean, don’t you? Senta who was one of Fee’s bridesmaids?”

“Yes, Philip, Tom’s girl. I said it was nice. So long as you’re fond of each other, I think it’s very nice.”

“Tom?” he said, surprised she could place Senta in this way, as if her parentage were the most remarkable thing about her.

“Tom Pelham, Irene’s other brother, the one with an ex-wife that dances and lives with a young boy.”

What did she mean, “other” brother? He didn’t ask. “That’s right. Senta’s got a flat in their house.”

“Flat” was a bit over the top, he thought, but in a month or two it might be true. Should he also tell Christine about meeting Arnham?

No, it would only upset her. Somewhere, treasured among other mementoes, he had no doubt she still kept that postcard with the White House on it. Arnham would never phone, anyway; Arnham would have been put off by what he had told him of another man in Christine’s life. Now that his euphoria was past, Philip wondered if he had spoiled his mother’s chances by inventing that other man. Still, Arnham was married himself or at least living with a woman. It was all too late.

They sat down to one of Christine’s specialities, rounds of toast topped with scrambled egg into which flakes of tuna and a spoonful of curry powder had been stirred. Philip didn’t want to have to think about the future, about how she was going to manage on her own and with no one but the ghostly flitting presence of Cheryl. But sooner or later he would have to think about it.

“I’m popping over to Audrey’s for a couple of hours,” Christine said, reappearing in a floral cotton dress Philip couldn’t remember having seen before but which she had probably resurrected from some summer wardrobe of the past. “It’s such a nice evening.”

She beamed at him. She looked happy. It was her innocence and her ignorance that made that sunny temperament, he thought. He would have to support her financially, emotionally, companionably for the rest of her life. The world out there was no place for her, even its manifestation in the shape of a job in a hairdresser’s salon would overwhelm her. It was as if his father had sheltered her under his great sweeping protective wings. A fledgling that never grew up, she peeped about her in amazement. He wondered sometimes how, on her own, she managed such ordinary things as paying her bus fare.

Cheryl, coming in, must have passed her on the doorstep. Philip would have been surprised if she had come into the living room. She didn’t come in. He heard her feet dragging their way up the stairs. It was more than a week since he had spoken a word to her. Her reaction to any news he might give about himself and his future would be met, he knew, with blank indifference.

Her footsteps sounded above his head. She was in Christine’s bedroom, walking about. He heard the creak the wardrobe door made when it was opened. No longer worrying about Cheryl’s welfare, he found himself seeing her only as an added burden. As a minder for his mother, she would be worse than useless.

The bedroom door slammed, and standing just inside the living room with the door open a crack, he listened to her descent of the stairs. She was indifferent, he realised, to whether he heard her or not, to whether he knew or not. Only a fool would fail to understand that she had been in Christine’s bedroom to take whatever money was concealed there, to rob the handbag in whose zip pocket Christine kept her hairdresser’s tips or open the china teddy bear with detachable head that usually contained ten- and twenty-pee pieces.

The front door closed. He waited a few moments for her to have disappeared, and then he drove to Senta’s.

“I don’t believe it,” Fee said. “You’re kidding.” It was such a shock that she had to light a cigarette from the stub of the last one.

“He’s pulling our legs, Fee,” said Darren.

Philip was very taken aback. He had expected his announcement to be greeted with rapturous pleasure. Senta was Darren’s cousin and had been Fee’s bridesmaid. You would have thought they would be overjoyed to welcome a member of Darren’s extended family into their immediate circle.

“You were always teasing me about Senta,” he said. “You must have realised how I felt about her.”

Darren started laughing. He was sitting, as usual, in an armchair in front of the television. Fee snapped at him.

“What’s so funny?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

It was rude and it was also disconcerting. Fee made things no better.

“Do you mean that all the time we were sort of making cracks about you fancying Senta and asking you if you wanted her phone number and all that, all that time you were actually meeting her and going about with her?”

“She didn’t want people to know, not then.”

“Well, I must say I do think it’s very underhand, Phil. I’m sorry but I do. It makes you feel such a fool when people deceive you like that.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you’d take it this way.”

“No good making a fuss now, I suppose. It’s too late for that. And now you say she’s supposed to be coming here to see us?”

He began to regret he had ever arranged it. “We thought it would be best for me to tell you first and for her to come over after about half an hour. Fee, she is supposed to be a friend of yours, she is Darren’s cousin.”

Darren, who had stopped laughing, put one hand up and snapped his thick fingers. “Can we have a bit of hush while the snooker’s on?”

Philip and Fee squeezed themselves into the kitchen, which was the size of a moderately spacious cupboard.

“Are you engaged or something?”

“Not exactly but we will be.” He thought, I will propose to her. I will make her a formal proposal, I might even go down on my knees. “When we are,” he said rather grandly, “we’ll put an announcement in the paper. In The Times. ”

“No one ever does that sort of snobby stuff in our family. It’s just showing off. Will she want things to eat? Will she want a drink? There isn’t any drink in the place.”