by Ruth Rendell
Minty wasn’t a very practical person, but Auntie had taught her some of the principles of thrift and neither a borrower nor a lender be. She’d already done the lending and now she was going to start borrowing-but all that much? “I’ll have to see,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Jock had been spending every evening with her and most nights. When he hadn’t come round or phoned for three days she phoned the number he’d finally given her in Harvist Road but no one ever answered. Perhaps it was just that he was with his mum again. If he never came back it would be because she’d hesitated over the mortgage. She imprisoned herself in rituals, praying, taking extra flowers to Auntie’s grave, hardly moving about the house without touching wood, walking round the room like an old person who couldn’t get about without holding on to the tables and chairs. The rituals brought him back, and the prayers and the flowers. She’d decided to let him have the ten thousand.
He wasn’t as happy as she thought he’d be. He seemed a bit absent, as if his thoughts and his interests were elsewhere. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but he was changed. When he explained she understood. His mum was ill, he said. She’d been on a hospital waiting list for months. He’d like to take her out of the National Health Service and pay for her op privately if he could afford it. The whole thing was a worry. He might have to go down and be with her for a bit. In the meantime he’d get the application forms from the building society.
Minty said she’d got about £250 left in the bank and he was to have that toward his mother’s op. His bank still hadn’t completed the changeover to the other branch, so she drew the cash out of the bank and emptied her account. He put the notes in the pocket of his black leather jacket and said she was an angel. The jacket looked new, it was so stiff and glossy, but he said, No, he’d had it for years, just never got around to wearing it. Next day he phoned her on his mobile-she didn’t know he’d got a mobile-and said he was in the train going to the West Country. Thanks to her, his mother would be able to have her hip done next week.
Minty told Sonovia about the op, leaving out her personal involvement. They were in the cinema, waiting for the big picture to start and Laf to get back from the gents’. It was the first time Minty’d been out with them since Jock came on the scene.
“His mum’s getting a hip replacement for two hundred and fifty pounds? You have to be joking.”
“Ops cost a lot when they’re private,” Minty said.
“I don’t mean it’s a lot, my deah, I mean it’s nothing.”
Minty didn’t like that. She’d always suspected Sonovia was jealous because her Corinne hadn’t got a boyfriend. The lights went down and she accepted the pack of popcorn Laf handed her, She usually liked popcorn, it was dry and clean and not messy to eat, but this evening somehow it tasted stale. It’d be a shame if Sonovia and Laf were to turn against Jock when he’d soon be coming to live next door permanently.
Like the rest of the country, she saw about the Paddington train crash on television. She didn’t connect it with anyone she knew. Jock had phoned her the day before from his mum’s as he’d promised and he hadn’t said anything about coming home soon. When he hadn’t phoned or appeared for three days she looked so pale and ill that Josephine asked her what was wrong.
“Jock’s gone missing,” she said. “I don’t know where he’s got to.”
Josephine didn’t say much to Minty, but she said a lot to Ken. He couldn’t understand a word but she talked to him just the same. He liked the sound of her voice and, as he listened, smiled with the tranquillity of the Buddhist at peace with himself and the world.
“Maybe that Jock’s ma lives in Gloucester, Ken, or near it. What’s the betting he was on that train, the one the local train smashed into? They haven’t named all the casualties yet, there were horrific injuries. Minty’ll be devastated, it’ll about break her up.”
It did. She got the letter when Jock had been missing a week.
Chapter 3
THE GHOST CAME into Immacue. Minty was in the back, ironing shirts but keeping an eye on the shop while Josephine had popped down to Whiteley’s. She heard the bell and came out. Jock’s ghost was there in jeans and black leather jacket, reading the card on the counter that gave details of their special offer to pensioners. One free of charge if you bring in three items. She screwed up her courage to speak to it. “You’re dead,” she said. “You stay where you came from.”
It raised its eyes to look at her. They had changed color, its eyes, being no longer blue but a pale, washed-out gray. She thought its expression threatening and cruel.
“I’m not afraid of you.” She was, but she was determined not to show it. “If you come back I’ll find ways of getting rid of you.”
The bell sounded as the door opened and Josephine came in. She was carrying a bag of food from Marks and Spencer and another one from the shop that sold cut-price makeup and perfumes. “Who were you talking to?”
She could see through the ghost to Josephine on the other side. It was fading, blurring round the edges. “Nobody,” she said.
“They say it’s the first sign of madness, talking to yourself.”
Minty didn’t say anything. The ghost was melting away like the genie going back into the bottle in the pantomime Auntie took her to when she was little.
“But I see it this way. If you’re nuts you don’t know you’re talking to yourself. You think you’re talking to someone because you see things normal people don’t see.”
Not liking that sort of talk, Minty went back to her ironing. It was five months since Jock had been killed. She’d been out of her mind with worry, though, funnily enough, she never thought he might have been in that train crash. It hadn’t sunk in that the express was coming from the West Country, and even if it had she hadn’t known where Gloucester was or that Jock’s mum lived there. Besides, he’d said on the phone he wouldn’t be coming back till the day after. Lists of casualties appeared in the papers but Minty didn’t often read a paper. Laf brought round the Evening Standard when they’d finished with it but mostly she made do with the telly. You got a better idea from seeing pictures, Auntie always said, and there was always the newscaster to explain things.
She didn’t get many letters either. Something coming in the post was an event and even then it was mostly a bill. The letter that came when she hadn’t heard from Jock for a week had Great Western printed along its top in big sloping letters and it was done on a computer. Well, Laf said it was. It addressed her as Dear Madam and regretted to inform her that her fiancé Mr. John Lewis had been among those traveling in the Gloucester express who were fatally injured. Minty read it standing in the hall at 39 Syringa Road. She went out just as she was, without a coat, letting the door slam behind her, and into next door. Sonovia’s son Daniel, the doctor, who’d been out on a late night and had stopped over, was sitting at the kitchen table eating his breakfast.
Minty thrust the letter into Sonovia’s face and burst into a storm of tears. Crying wasn’t something she did much of, so when she did it was a violent explosion of long-pent-up misery. It wasn’t just Jock she was grieving for, but Auntie and her lost mum and being alone and not having anyone. Sonovia read the letter and handed it to Daniel and he read it. Then he got up and fetched a drop of brandy in a glass that he personally administered to Minty.
“I have my doubts about this,” Sonovia said. “I’m going to get your father to check up on it.”
“Don’t let her go to work, Mum,” Daniel said. “See she lies down and rests, and you could make her a warm drink. I’d better go or I’ll be late for surgery.”
Minty lay down till the afternoon and Sonovia brought her several warm drinks, sweet tea and her own recipe for cappuccino. Luckily, her neighbor had a key to 39 or Minty wouldn’t have been able to get back in again. Whether Laf ever did check she never found out. She thought that maybe she’d dreamt Sonovia saying that. Jock was dead all right or the train people wouldn’t have written. Josephine
was very nice about her taking time off work. After all these years when she’d been as regular as clockwork, she said it was the least she could do. Minty got a lot of sympathy. Sonovia personally made an appointment for her with a counselor, and old Mr. Kroot on the other side, who hadn’t spoken for years, got his home help to put a card with a black border through her letter box. While Josephine sent flowers, Ken brought round a dish of lemon chicken with fried rice and Butterfly’s Romance. He wasn’t to know she never ate stuff from restaurant kitchens.
For five days she wept nonstop. Touching wood or praying should have stopped it but it didn’t have any effect. All that time she only had one bath a day, she was so weak. It was remembering the money that stopped her crying. Ever since she had the letter she hadn’t thought about it but she did now. It wasn’t so much that it was her savings that were all gone but the money that Auntie had left her and which she’d seen as a sacred trust, something to be looked after and treasured. She might as well have thrown it down the drain. As soon as she felt able to go out again, she bathed and washed her hair, put on clean clothes, and took her engagement ring to a jeweler in Queensway.
He looked at the ring, examined it through a magnifying glass, and shrugged. It might be worth twenty-five pounds but he couldn’t give her more than ten. Minty said, in that case she’d hold on to it, thank you very much. It took only a few more weeks for her love for Jock to turn sour and change into resentment.
Laf told Sonovia no Jock or John Lewis was numbered among the rail crash victims, no one with a name even remotely like that. He got on to Great Western and found that sending letters of that kind wasn’t their policy and, in any case, the woman who signed the letter didn’t exist. Laf knew very well that news of a death in those circumstances would come via the police. A couple of police officers would have come to Minty’s door. He’d very likely have been one of them himself. If, of course, they’d known of her existence. How would anyone have known? Minty wasn’t married to Jock, she wasn’t even living with him. The woman they’d have contacted was Jock’s mother-if he had a mother, if any of what he’d told Minty was true.
“It’s tipped her over the edge,” said Sonovia.
“What d’you mean, over the edge?”
“She’s always been peculiar, hasn’t she? Come on, Laf, face it, a normal person doesn’t have two baths a day and wash her hands every ten minutes. And how about jumping over the cracks in the paving stones like a kid? Have you seen her touching wood when she’s scared of something?”
Laf looked troubled. When something upset him, his face, the same dark rich chestnut brown as his shoes and as glossy, fell into a mass of pouches, his underlip protruding. “He made a fool of her and when he got himself a better proposition he was off. Or the idea of marriage scared him. One thing’s for sure, he wasn’t killed in any train crash, but we won’t tell her that. We’ll take her out with us a bit more. Get her out of herself.”
So Minty, who’d been shown the world by Jock and liked it, who’d late in life discovered sex and been going to get married, had her social life reduced to a once-a-fortnight cinema visit with her next-door neighbors. She never said another word to them about Jock until she saw his ghost sitting in the chair in the front room. Telling her not to be so daft and that she was hallucinating decided her against ever saying any more to those two about it. She’d have liked someone she could talk to and who’d believe her, someone who wouldn’t say there’s no such thing as ghosts. Not a counselor, she didn’t mean that. She’d kept the appointment Sonovia had made for her, but the counselor had only told her not to bottle up the grief but let it all pour out and to talk to other people who’d been bereaved in that crash. How could she? She didn’t know them. It hadn’t occurred to her to bottle up her grief, she’d cried for a week. What would it look like, a bottleful of grief? A cloudy gray liquid, she thought, with no foam or bubbles in it. Anyway, it didn’t work the way she’d been promised it would. She still felt terrible about Jock, wishing she’d never met him so that he couldn’t come ruining her life. What she wanted most was someone who knew how to get rid of ghosts. There must be people, vicars or something like that, who’d tell her what to do or do it for her. The trouble was no one believed in her ghost. Sometimes it looked as if she’d have to get rid of it herself.
After the sighting in Immacue, she didn’t see him again for a week. By now it wasn’t so dark in the evenings and she was coming home from work in the light. She took care never to leave that chair in the middle of the room and she told Josephine she mustn’t be alone in the shop, it made her nervous. Her nerves had got bad since she lost Jock. It was a funny position to be in, hating someone and missing them at the same time. Once she went up to Harvist Road to look at the house where he’d finally told her he’d lived. She thought the woman he rented the room from might have hung a black wreath in one of the windows or at least kept the curtains drawn but there was nothing like that. What would she do if the ghost came out of the front door and down the steps? Minty was so afraid she ran all the way back to the bus stop.
“It’s best for her to think he’s dead,” Sonovia said to her daughter Corinne. “Your dad says he’d like to get his hands on him and if he shows his face round here after what he’s done he won’t answer for the consequences. What’s the use of that sort of talk, is what I say. Let her get her mourning over with, that’s the best way, and then she can get on with her life.”
“And what life would that be, Mum? I never knew she’d got one. Did he have any money off her?”
“She’s never said, but I have my suspicions. Winnie left her a bit; I don’t know how much and I wouldn’t ask. Your dad says he can see the whole scenario. That Jock got talking in the pub and someone-Brenda, very likely, she can never keep her mouth shut-she pointed Minty out to him and said about Winnie Knox leaving her the house and a bit of money, multiplied it by ten, no doubt, and Jock saw the gravy train coming out of the tunnel.”
Corinne went to the window and looked out into the back garden, which was divided from next door’s by only a chain-link fence. On the other side of it, standing on a black plastic bin liner that she had spread on the grass, Minty stood pegging out the washing. “I’m being serious, Mum. How do you know if he ever existed? Did you ever see him?”
Sonovia stared at her. “No, we never did. We keep ourselves to ourselves, as you know.” Her daughter looked as if she didn’t know, as if it was a surprise to her, but she said nothing. “Wait a minute, though. We did see his car, a real old banger. And your dad heard his voice through the wall. Laughing. He had a very deep, warm sort of laugh.”
“All right. Only people do fantasize. And now she’s seeing his ghost, is she? D’you know if she’s ever had psychiatric treatment?”
“Who? Minty?”
“No, Mum, Mr. Kroot’s cat. Who else but Minty?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“I only ask because normal people don’t act the way she does. Seeing ghosts and not knowing any men before Jock and always wearing the same sort of clothes, exactly the same. And all the compulsive things.”
“Now you mention it, that’s just what I was saying to your dad.”
“I had a client like that. She was up on a charge of Actual Bodily Harm but she was doing most of the bodily harm to herself, cutting herself to relieve her tension, she said. She had so many compulsions she lost her job because she was too busy arranging things in the right order and going back ten or a dozen times to check, that she’d no time to do her work.”
“You’d have to be mad to go on like that.”
“Well, you said it, Mum,” said Corinne.
Auntie said Agnes meant to call her Arabella. Then her best friend apart from Auntie had a baby-she was properly married-and named her Arabella, so Agnes settled on Araminta, it being that bit different. They’d once talked about names, she and Jock, and he’d said that though his name was John, his mother called him Jock because she came from Scotland. That was really al
l Minty knew about Mrs. Lewis, that she was Scottish and must have lived somewhere in Gloucester.
Jock hadn’t had time to buy a van or start a business, so he must still have had all her money when he died. Where would it be now? Minty asked Josephine, not mentioning names, of course, but just saying what would happen to someone’s money if he died and hadn’t made a will like Auntie had? She knew he hadn’t made a will because he said so and said they must both make them after they were married.
“It’d go to his next of kin, I suppose,” said Josephine.
That wouldn’t be his ex-wife because she was ex. It would be old Mrs. Lewis. She ought to give Minty’s money back. It wasn’t rightfully hers; it’d only been a loan to Jock, not a gift, and not even a loan to Mrs. Lewis. You wouldn’t be far wrong if you said she’d stolen it. Minty often thought about Mrs. Lewis having the enjoyment of it. Living in her nice house in Gloucester, using Minty’s money at bingo, and buying luxuries in the shops, Belgian chocolates and cherry brandy. She’d intended to use the money to have a shower installed. You didn’t use so much water under a shower but you got cleaner. It would be easy having two showers a day and washing her hair at the same time. And it wasn’t a hosepipe on the taps she had in mind but a real shower cabinet you walked into with a glass door and tiled walls. She’d never have it now, or not for years and years.
When Jock appeared again, sitting in the kitchen chair, she wasn’t as frightened as she’d been the first time. Maybe that was because he was vague and misty, almost transparent. You could see the green-painted bars on the back of the chair through his chest. She stood in front of him and asked him why he’d let his mother have her money. He didn’t answer-he never did-and he soon went away, doing his genie-vanishing-into-a-bottle act, disappearing like melting snow.
