by Ruth Rendell
“Being first with someone. It’s when you’re the most important person in someone’s life.”
“What about you?” I said. “What about when it’s you doing the loving?”
She had never thought of that. Love, to her, is something you receive—or don’t receive. “My mother and father. I was first with them till Susan came along. I thought I was first with Mark. No one was first with Silas except maybe Silas.” I could tell she didn’t mind talking about it, Bell never minded talking about people, including herself. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, “it’s got to be the person you want wanting you, the rest don’t count.”
It seemed safer not to pursue this. And yet do I care at all for her now? Does she care even a little for me? There is another passion in Bell’s life that we never talk about and that has never yet been gratified. Isn’t that the very heart and essence of frustration? To pursue always through unimaginable suffering yet never to attain? I say we never talk of it, yet in a way it was what our visit to the solicitor was all about.
Bell wouldn’t come in, though she came with me as far as the offices, which are in Knightsbridge. The next hour she said she would spend in Harrods, where she hadn’t been for fourteen years. Among the antiques, the jewelry, the dress materials. The bit of Harrods I like best is the zoo, but Bell looked uncomprehendingly at me when I suggested this.
I went to make my will. It was Bell’s suggestion, because I am really quite rich now and if I die intestate, who will it all go to, the two houses and my father’s savings? The state? There is literally no one. Cousin Lily is dead now, they are all dead, or for obvious reasons have never been born. I have left everything to Bell, everything except a thousand pounds to Elsa for being my executor.
“Mrs. Sanger is older than you,” the solicitor said.
“Yes, I know.” I didn’t say any more and he didn’t ask. It hurts my head if I start arguing.
When he has drawn the will he will send it to me for me to sign in the presence of two witnesses, each to sign in the presence of each other. He said he would get it in the post on Friday so it should be here by tomorrow. The people next door will be my witnesses. They used to feed the cats while I was away and before Bell came. Occasionally we go in there for a drink with them or they come in here. Their interest in us and the looks they exchange tell me they take us for a lesbian couple and this they find exciting.
I haven’t told Bell what else I have done, that I have written to Cosette. I was determined not to do this, but Bell’s telling me of her first meeting with Mark has changed my mind. Showing me my guilt, though my involvement was unconscious, has changed things for me. I know how much Cosette has to forgive and I know she will forgive me. Since I talked of her to Bell, I keep seeing her in her old habitat but translated to Maurice Bailey’s house, I imagine her planting lilies in the garden. How do I know she is once more a significant presence in the Wellgarth Society, an officer in the Townswomen’s Guild, a school governor, a voluntary hospital visitor? I just know. I know she has her gray worsted suits made for her by Maurice Bailey’s tailor. I know she has a Volvo and he a Jaguar. Perpetua comes to clean and Jimmy to do the garden and Dawn Castle comes around and tells Cosette what a trouble her grandchildren are but she wouldn’t be without them. I dream of Cosette and of those things, I dream of her coming here to rescue me, but from what? From what? After fourteen years I have written to her and now, each time the phone rings, I start and I tremble.
Bell watches me when I tremble. She watches me as if she is weighing things up, calculating her chances. She has been out house-hunting and is full of some house in Notting Dale she wants me to buy and which is so expensive I would have to take out a mortgage and, for safety’s sake, cover it with an insurance policy in her favor. I may just do it, to avoid argument. I shall probably give in, though now as I in turn watch her, dressed in silvery gray and wearing my cats as if they too were part of her clothing, taking and lighting another cigarette, her youth returned to her as when Cosette was happy it returned her, I think how infinitely I should prefer to do what Cosette herself had in mind and buy her a home of her own.
I have my fantasies about the bloodstone. Some would call them delusions. Sometimes I see it as the bearer of love, as if love were contained inside it, in the pinpoints of jasper perhaps that are embedded in the dark green chalcedony and glitter of its depths. When Bell gave it to me I see her as giving me back Cosette’s love, so long suspended. And sometimes it seems to be a carrier of affliction, resting on the fingers of those genetically prone to the disease so many of its wearers died of, passing the others by. It was loose on Bell’s finger, is tight on mine, and I pretend to her it won’t come off, that unless it is cut off it must stay there forever.
The phone is ringing. I start, of course I do, and in the seconds that separate its rings, wonder if I can in fact have a happy ending, wonder who will get to me first, Bell, who may be my fate, or Cosette, who would certainly be my salvation. Or will it be that third possibility on which Bell pins her faith …?
I put out my hand to stop her getting up and I cross the room to answer the phone.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1988 by Kingsmarkham Enterprises Ltd.
cover design by Jaya Miceli
ISBN: 978-1-4532-1489-3
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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