Collected Short Stories

by Ruth Rendell

  ‘Maybe he came – well, professionally,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you ask her?’

  ‘I didn’t like to, dear. You know what Pauline is.’

  Marjorie did. And now they had to stop talking about it, for Pauline had come in with the tea things. She buttered a scone for Mother, cut it into small pieces, tucked a napkin round Mother’s neck, and all this she did in silence.

  ‘Why are you using the best china?’ Mother said.

  ‘What d’you mean, dear?’ said Marjorie. ‘This is the old blue china you always use.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Marjorie started once more to protest, but Pauline interrupted her. ‘Leave it. She can’t see. You know how bad her sight is.’ She gave mother one of her bright nurse’s smiles. ‘OK, so we’re using the best china,’ she said, and she wiped the corners of Mother’s mouth with a tissue.

  Not long after they had finished Marjorie left. She had the perfectly valid excuse of George and the children. It wasn’t possible for her to stay long, Mother understood that. And she had, after all, washed the dishes before she went, with Pauline’s eye on her and Pauline’s silence more difficult to bear than any noise. On Saturday afternoon she was back again, ‘just looking in’ as she put it, on her way to the shops.

  ‘He was here again last night,’ Mother whispered.

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘That doctor friend of Pauline’s. He was here ever so late. I rang my bell for Pauline because I wanted to go to the toilet. It was gone eleven and I could hear him talking after I’d gone back to bed.’

  Pauline had been in the garden, getting the clean linen, drawsheets and towels and napkins and Mother’s nightgowns, in from the line. When she re-entered the room Marjorie studied her appearance uneasily. Her sister looked exhausted. She was a tall gaunt woman, dark and swarthy, and now she was so thin that the shapeless old trousers she wore hung loose against her hips. Dark shadows ringed her eyes, and those eyes had a glazed look, due perhaps to the drugs she had been on ever since she came out of ‘that place’.

  ‘Have I got a spot?’ said Pauline. ‘Or am I so lovely you can’t take your eyes off me?’

  ‘Sorry, I was off in a dream.’ Marjorie said she had better get away before the shops shut, and Mother thanked her for coming ‘to see an old nuisance like me’. After that one, Marjorie didn’t dare look at Pauline again. She did her shopping and went home in a troubled frame of mind, but she waited until the children had gone out before opening her heart to her husband. Seventeen-year-old Brian and sixteen-year-old Susan were apt, with the ignorance of youth, to remark when their grandmother was mentioned that Nanna was ‘a dear old love’; that they wouldn’t mind at all if she came to live with them; and that it was ‘a drag for Auntie Pauline’ never being able to go out.

  ‘Pauline’s got a boy friend, George.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, I’m not. He’s a doctor she met when she was in that Hightrees place, and he’s called round twice in the evenings and stopped ever so late. Mother told me.’

  ‘Well, good old Pauline,’ said George. ‘She’s forty if she’s a day.’

  ‘She’s forty-two,’ said Marjorie. ‘You know very well she’s seven years younger than I am.’

  ‘Doesn’t look it though, does she? People always take you for the younger one.’ George smiled affectionately at his wife and took up the evening paper.

  ‘You’re to listen to me, George. Don’t read that now. I haven’t finished. George, suppose – suppose she was to get married?’ The words came out in a breathless, almost hysterical rush. ‘Suppose she was to marry this doctor?’

  ‘What, old Pauline?’

  ‘Well, why not? I know she’s not young and she’s nothing to look at, but when you think of the women who do get married . . . I mean, looks don’t seem to have much to do with it. I don’t care what these young people say nowadays, all women want to get married. So why not Pauline?’

  ‘A man’s got to want to marry them.’

  ‘Yes, but look at it this way. He’s a doctor, and Pauline always wanted to be a doctor, only Mother wouldn’t have it so she had to settle for nursing instead. And she’s got a masculine sort of mind. She can talk way above my head when she wants. They might have a lot in common.’

  ‘Good luck to her then, is what I say. She’s never so much as been out with a man all the time I’ve known her, and if she can get herself one now and get married – well, like I said, the best of luck.’

  ‘But, George, don’t you see? What about Mother? A doctor’s bound to have a practice and be overworked and everything. He wouldn’t want Mother. You don’t know how awful Mother is. She gets Pauline up five or six times some nights. She rings that bell by her bedside for the least little thing. And when she’s up she keeps Pauline on the trot, wanting her glasses or her knitting or her pills. Pauline never complains but sometimes I reckon she’d do anything to get away. I know I shouldn’t say it, and yet I wonder if she didn’t stage that breakdown when Mother had her first stroke in the hope she’d never have to go back and . . .’

  ‘Aren’t you getting steamed up about nothing?’ George said placidly. ‘As far as we know, the bloke’s only been there twice and maybe he’ll never go there again.’

  But this was the major worry of Marjorie’s life: that the time might come when Mother would have to live with her. She hardly understood how she had managed to escape it so long. From the onset of Mother’s illness, she had been the obvious person to care for her. For one thing, she was and always had been Mother’s favourite daughter. Pauline was to have been a boy. Even now Marjorie could remember, as a child of seven, Mother saying to her friends, ‘I’m carrying forward, so it’ll be a boy this time.’ Paul. The name was ready, the blue baby clothes. Mother had never really got over having a second daughter. There had been, Marjorie recalled, some neglect, some degree of cruelty. Scathing words for Pauline when she wanted to take up medicine, cruel words when she had never married. Marjorie had quite a big house, big enough for Mother to have a bedsitting room of her own; she had no job; her children fended for themselves. How lucky it was for her Pauline hadn’t been Paul, for no man would have given up his job, his flat, his whole way of life, to care for an unloved, unloving mother . . .

  While Mother lived, though, it would never be too late for a change. And Marjorie knew she couldn’t depend on George and the children for support. Even George would surrender quietly to the invasion of his home by a mother-in-law, for it wouldn’t be he Mother would get up in the night to or nag about draughts and rheumatism and eyedrops and hot milk. He wouldn’t be expected to listen to interminable stories about what things were like in nineteen-ten, or be asked daily in a mournful tone:

  ‘D’you think I’ll see another winter out, dear?’

  She had always, in spite of her seniority, been a little afraid of Pauline. As a child, her sister had been a very withdrawn person, spending long hours shut up in her bedroom. She had had an imaginary friend in those days, one of those not uncommon childhood creations – Marjorie’s own Susan had behaved in much the same way – but Pauline’s Pablo had persisted almost into her teens, and had always been put forward as the mouthpiece of Pauline’s own feelings. ‘Pablo says he doesn’t want to go,’ when some outing had been proposed on which Pauline herself didn’t want to go; ‘Pablo hates you,’ when there was a need to express Pauline’s own hatred. He had disappeared at Pauline’s puberty, and since then Marjorie couldn’t remember her sister once showing her feelings. No, not when Father died or Marjorie’s first baby was born dead. And when she had been told that the only alternative to Mother’s going into a sixty-pound a week nursing home was her abandoning her job and her home, she had said merely, with a blank face:

  ‘I suppose I’ve got no choice, then.’

  Never once had she suggested Marjorie as an alternative. But the first time Marjorie called at the new Pauline-Mother ménage Pauline, who in the past had always kissed her when
they met and parted, made a quiet but marked point of not doing so. And since that day they had never exchanged a kiss. Not when Mother had her second stroke; not when Mother was temporarily in hospital and Marjorie visited Pauline in Hightrees. No complaints about the arduousness of her duties ever escaped Pauline’s narrow set lips, nor would she ever protest to Mother herself, however exigent she might be. Instead, she would sometimes enumerate in a cold monotonous voice the tasks she had accomplished since the night before.

  ‘Mother got me up at midnight and again at four and five. But she still had a wet bed. I got everything washed out by eight and then I turned out the living room. I went down to the shops but I forgot Mother’s prescription, so I had to go back for it.’

  Marjorie would cringe with guilt and shame during this catalogue and actually shiver when, at the end of it, Pauline turned upon her large glazed eyes in which seemed to lurk a spark of bitter irony. Those eyes said, though the lips never did, ‘To her that has shall be given, but from her that has not shall be taken away, even that which she has.’ Marjorie could have borne it better, have worried less and agonized less, if they could have had a real ding-dong battle. But that was impossible with Pauline. Apologize to Pauline for a missed visit and all she said was ‘That’s OK. Suit yourself.’ Tell her to cheer up and you got ‘I’m all right. Leave me alone.’ Offer sympathy combined with excuses about having your own family to attend to, and you got no answer at all, unless a stare of profound contempt is an answer. So Marjorie felt she couldn’t, as yet at any rate, tackle Pauline about her doctor friend.

  But she was driven to do so a week later. She could see something had happened to upset Mother the minute she walked into the room. Mother’s mouth was turned down and she kept looking at Pauline in a truculent injured kind of way. And Pauline just sat there, determined not to leave Mother and Marjorie alone for a moment, although she must have been able to see Mother was dying to get Marjorie on her own. But at three the laundryman called, and luckily for Mother, there seemed to be some problem about a missing pillowcase which kept Pauline arguing on the step for nearly five minutes.

  ‘That man was here again last night, Marjorie,’ Mother said, ‘and he came into my room and spoke to me. He bullied me, Marjorie, he said awful things to me.’

  ‘What on earth d’you mean, Mother?’

  ‘Oh, dear, I hope she won’t come back for a minute. I heard him talking down here last night. About ten, it was. I’d drunk my water and Pauline had brought me another glass, but I couldn’t sleep, I was so hot. I rang the bell for Pauline to take the eiderdown off me. I had to ring and ring before she came and of course I couldn’t help – well, I was feeling a bit weepy by then, Marjorie.’ Mother sniffed and gave a sort of gulp. ‘The next thing I knew that man, that doctor, had marched right into my room and started bullying me.’

  ‘But what did he say?’

  ‘He was very rude. He was very impertinent, Marjorie. I wish you’d heard him, I wish you’d been there to stand up for me. Pauline wasn’t there, just him shouting at me.’

  Marjorie was aghast. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Just because he’s a doctor . . . Doctors don’t have the right to say what they like if you’re not their patient, do they?’

  ‘Mother, please tell me before Pauline gets back.’

  ‘He said I was a very lucky woman and I ought to understand that, and I was selfish and demanding and I’d driven my daughter into a breakdown, and if I didn’t stop her getting up in the night she’d have another one and . . . Oh, Marjorie, it was awful. He went on and on in a very deep bossy sort of voice. I started crying and then I thought he was going to get hold of me and shake me. He just stood there in the doorway against the light, shaking his finger at me and – and booming at me and . . .’

  ‘Oh, dear God,’ said Marjorie. Now she would have to speak to Pauline. She sighed wretchedly. Why did this have to happen? Not that she cared very much about what anyone said to Mother – do her good, it was all true, anyway – but that someone should point out to Pauline facts which Pauline herself had possibly never realized! Much more of that and . . . She went out into the hall and intercepted Pauline parting from the laundryman.

  ‘Mother’s been on about nothing else since first thing this morning,’ said Pauline.

  ‘Well, I don’t wonder. You know I don’t like to criticize you, but you really shouldn’t let people – I mean, strangers – upset Mother.’

  Pauline dumped the heavy laundry box on the kitchen table. She looked even more tired than usual. Her skin had a battered appearance as if lack of sleep and peace and recreation had actually dented and bruised it. She shrugged.

  ‘You believe her? You take all that rubbish for gospel?’

  ‘You mean you don’t have a friend who’s a doctor? He didn’t go into Mother’s room and boss her about last night? It’s all her imagination?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Pauline laconically, and she filled the kettle. ‘She imagined it, she’s getting senile.’

  ‘But Mother never had any imagination. She heard him. She saw him.’

  ‘She can’t see,’ said Pauline. ‘Or not much. It was a dream.’

  For a moment Marjorie was certain that she was lying. But you could never tell with Pauline. And what was more likely, after all? That Pauline who had everything to gain in esteem and interest by having a man friend should deny his existence, or that Mother who was eighty and half-blind and maybe senile like Pauline said, should magnify a nightmare into reality? Could it be, Marjorie wondered, that it had been Mother’s conscience talking? That was very far-fetched, of course, what her son and daughter would call way-out – but if only it were true! The alternative was almost too unpleasant to face. It took George to put it into words.

  ‘Old Pauline’s always been a dark horse. I can see what game she’s playing. She’s keeping him in the background till he’s popped the question.’

  ‘Oh, George, no! But she did look very funny when I spoke about him. And, George, the awful thing is, if he does marry Pauline he’ll never have Mother to live with them when he feels like that about her, never.’

  Worrying about it brought on such a headache that when the time came for her next duty visit, Marjorie had to phone Mother’s house and say she couldn’t come over. A man’s voice answered.

  ‘Hallo?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I think I’ve got a wrong number. I want to speak to Miss Needham.’

  ‘Miss Needham is lying down, having a well-earned rest.’ The voice was deep, cultured, authoritative. ‘Is that by any chance Mrs Crossley?’

  Marjorie said breathlessly that it was. But she was too taken aback to ask if her mother was all right, and who was he, anyway? She cared very little about the answer to the first question and she knew the answer to the second. Besides, he had interrupted her reply by launching into a flood of hectoring.

  ‘Mrs Crossley, as a doctor I don’t think I’m overstepping the bounds of decorum by telling you that I think you personally take a very irresponsible attitude to the situation here. I’ve hoped for an opportunity to tell you so. There seems to me, from what your sister tells me, no reason at all why you shouldn’t share some of the burden of caring for Mrs Needham.’

  ‘I don’t, I . . .’ Marjorie stammered, thunderstruck.

  ‘No, you don’t realize, do you? Perhaps you haven’t cared to think about it too deeply. Your mother is a very demanding woman, a very selfish woman. I have spoken to her myself, though I know from experience that it is almost useless telling home truths to someone of her age and in her condition.’

  So it was true, after all. Marjorie felt a spurt of real rage against Pauline. ‘I should have thought it was for my mother’s own doctor,’ she blustered. ‘I don’t know what an outsider . . .’

  ‘An outsider?’ She might have levelled at him some outrageous insult. ‘I am a close friend of your sister, Mrs Crossley, perhaps the only true friend she has. Please don’t speak of outsiders. Now if you
have any feeling for your sister, I’m sure you’ll appreciate . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Marjorie almost shouted. Her head was splitting now. ‘It’s no business of yours and I don’t want to discuss it.’

  She told George.

  ‘He said he was a close friend, her only true friend. They’re cooking this up together, George. He means to marry her, but he’ll get Mother out of the way first. He’ll foist Mother on to me and then they’ll get married and . . . Oh, George, what I am I going to do?’

  Not see Mother or Pauline, at any rate. Marjorie extended her headache over the next two visiting times, and after that she half-invented, half-suffered, a virus infection. Of course, she had to phone and explain, and it was with a trembling hand that she dialled the number in case that awful man should answer. He didn’t. Pauline was more abrupt than ever. Marjorie didn’t mention her doctor friend, though she fancied, just as she was replacing the receiver, that she heard the murmur of his voice in the background talking to Mother.

  It was George and Brian together who at last paid a visit to Mother’s house. Marjorie was in bed when they came back, cowering under the sheets and trying to make the mercury in her thermometer go above ninety-eight by burying it in her electric blanket.

  They hadn’t, they said, seen Pauline’s friend, but Nanna had been full of him, now entirely won over to him as a charming man, while Pauline, as she talked, had sat looking very close with an occasional flash of impatience in her eyes.

  ‘He’s got some Russian name,’ said George, though he couldn’t remember what it was, and Brian kept talking nonsense about dogs and reactions and other things Marjorie couldn’t follow. ‘He lives in Kensington, got a big practice. One of those big houses on Campden Hill. You know where I mean. Pauline did a private nursing job in one of them years ago. Quite a coincidence.’