by Ruth Rendell
But in the night he spoke to her. Or he spoke. It might not have been to her or to anyone. His voice woke her out of deep sleep, saying, “She’s dead, she’s dead…” That soft, sweet, brown voice. It didn’t sound sad, but then it never did. Whom did he mean by “she”? Not his ex-wife, she’d be too young. Minty lay in bed, thinking. The darkness was impenetrable when the curtains were drawn and the street lamps out. She looked for his ghost in vain, peering into the blind empty corners.
It must have been his mother he meant. And he wouldn’t have been sad because old Mrs. Lewis would be joining him wherever he was. Minty closed her eyes again but it was a long time before she went back to sleep.
Chapter 4
IN ZILLAH’S EXPERIENCE, men didn’t propose except in old-time novels. They just talked about “one day” when you and they got married or even “making a commitment,” or, more likely, as an unwelcome duty because you were pregnant. They never said, as Jims had just said, “Will you marry me?” It made her hesitate about taking him seriously. Besides, there was another reason why he couldn’t possibly be asking her to marry him. “Did you really say what I think you did?” asked Zillah.
“Yes, I really did, darling. Let me explain. I want to marry you, I want to live with you, and I want it to be for the rest of our lives. I like you. I think we’d get on.”
Zillah, who had been driven by poverty to stop smoking a week before, took a cigarette out of the packet he had put on the table. Jims lit it for her. “But you’re gay,” she said.
“That’s the point. I am also the Conservative member of Parliament for South Wessex and between you and me I think I shall be outed some time in the next six months if I don’t do something to stop it.”
“Yes, okay, but everyone gets outed these days or comes out. I mean, I know you haven’t been, but it was always only a matter of time.”
“No, it wasn’t. What makes you say that? I take the greatest care to be seen about with women. I’ve been talking about that ghastly model, Icon, for weeks. Just think about my constituency. You live in it, you ought to know what it’s like. Not only have they never returned anyone but a Conservative, they have never, until me, returned an unmarried man. They are the most right-wing bunch in the United Kingdom. They loathe queers. In his speech at the annual dinner last week the chair of the North Wessex Conservative Association compared what he calls ‘inverts’ to necrophiliacs, practitioners of bestiality, pedophiles, and satanists. There’ll be a general election in less than a year. I don’t want to lose my seat. Besides…” Jims put on that mysterious look his handsome face often wore when he made reference to the corridors of power. “Besides, a little bird told me I have the weeniest chance of a post in the next reshuffle if I keep my tiny paws clean.”
Zillah, who had known James Isambard Melcombe-Smith since her parents moved into the tied cottage on his parents’ estate as land agent and housekeeper twenty-five years before, sat back in her chair and looked at him with new eyes. He was probably the best-looking man she had ever seen: tall, dark, film star-ish in the way film stars were when beauty was a Hollywood prerequisite, slim, elegant, too handsome, she sometimes thought, to be hetero, and far too handsome to sit in the House of Commons. It amazed her that those people like this chairman and the chief whip hadn’t rumbled him years ago. She’d even have fancied him herself if she hadn’t known since she was sixteen that it was hopeless. “What do I get out of it?” she asked. “No sex, that’s for sure.”
“Well, no. Best to call a spade a spade, darling. It would be, as you might say, a mariage blanc but also an open marriage, only that part would be our little secret. As to what you get out of it, that will not be cat’s meat, not in anyone’s estimation. I have quite a lot of dosh, as you must know. And I’m not talking about the weeny pittance I get from the Mother of Parliaments. Plus my charming home in Fredington Crucis and my very up-market apartment within the sound of the division bell-valued, I may add, at one million smackers only last week. You get my name, freedom from care, lots of lovely clothes, the car of your choice, foreign trips, decent schools for the kids…”
“Yes, Jims, how about the kids?”
“I love children, you know that. Don’t I love yours? I’ll never have any of my own unless I set up home in a same-sex stable relationship and contrive to adopt one. Whereas I’d have yours ready-made, lovely little pigeon pair with blond curls and Dorset accents.”
“They have not got Dorset accents.”
“Oh, yes, they have, my darling. But we’ll soon change that. So how about it?”
“I’ll have to think it through, Jims,” said Zillah.
“Okey-dokey, only don’t take too long over it. I’ll give you a bell tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow, Jims. Thursday. I’ll have decided by Thursday.”
“You’ll decide in my favor, won’t you, sweet? I’ll say I love you if you like, it’s almost true. Oh, and about the open marriage aspect, you’d understand, wouldn’t you, if I draw the line at that ex-husband of yours? I’m sure you know what I mean.”
After he’d gone, in the Range Rover, not the Ferrari, Zillah put on her duffel coat, a scarf that had been her mother’s, and a pair of over-large wellies some man had left behind after a one-night stand. She walked down the village street, thinking about herself and her situation, about Jerry and the future, about Jims and her relations with her parents, but mostly about herself. She had been christened Sarah, as had six other girls in her class at primary school, but discovering by means of a blood test in her teens that her group was B, a fairly rare blood group in all but Gypsies, and that Zillah was a favored Romany name, she rechristened herself. Now she tested it out with a new double-barreled surname. Zillah Melcombe-Smith sounded a lot better than Zillah Leach. But then almost anything would.
Fancy Jims knowing about Jerry. That is, knowing about the sort of unwritten arrangement she had with Jerry. Or had. Of course, she didn’t believe the letter she’d had, that was an insult to anyone’s intelligence. He didn’t own a computer. Some new woman must have written it. “Ex-husband” was the term Jims had used. Naturally he would, everyone did, though she and Jerry weren’t actually divorced; they’d never got round to it. And now if Jerry wasn’t dead, he wanted her to think he was, which amounted to the same thing. It meant he wouldn’t come back; the “arrangement” was over and the kids had lost their dad. Not that he’d ever been much of a father to them, more of a here-today-gone-tomorrow dropper-in. If she accepted Jims-how romantic and old-fashioned that sounded-would she be able to describe herself as a widow, or would it be safer to call herself single? If she accepted him it would be one in the eye for her mother and might stop her being so insufferably patronizing.
The village of Long Fredington was so called for the length of its main street, a full half-mile from Burton’s Farm in the cast to Thomas Hardy Close in the west. It was the largest of the Fredingtons, the others being Fredington St. Michael, Fredington Episcopi, Fredington Crucis, and Little Fredington. All were picturesque, the stuff of postcards, every house, even the newest, every barn, the church, the mill, the pub (now a private house), the school, and the shop (also now private houses) built of the same golden gray stone. If you were well-off, especially if you were well-off and retired, it was a charming place to live. If you had a car or two and a job in Casterbridge or Markton, a husband, and a nanny, it wasn’t so bad. For someone in Zillah’s position it was hell. Eugenie went to school on the bus, that was all right, but there was no nursery or preschool for Jordan and he was at home with her all day. She had no car, she hadn’t even got a bike. Once a week, if they hadn’t anything better to do, Annie at the Old Mill House or Lynn at La Vieille Ecole drove her ten miles to the Tesco to pick up supplies. Much less often, someone asked her round for a meal, but these were rare outings. They had husbands and she was a very good-looking unattached female. Anyway, she couldn’t get a babysitter.
At All Saints’ Church, a handsome fourteenth-century build
ing from whose interior all the priceless brass had been stolen and melted down and the unique medieval wall paintings defaced with graffiti, she turned left down Mill Lane. After two smartly refurbished cottages were passed, all occupied dwellings ceased. But for birdsong, it was silent. The lane narrowed and beech branches met overhead. Although late autumn, the day was sunny and almost warm. If this was global warming, thought Zillah, she couldn’t get enough of it. Never mind the seas rising and the coastline disappearing, she didn’t live near the coast. And maybe she wouldn’t live down here at all much longer, not if she married Jims, her best friend, her childhood friend, really the nicest man she knew.
At the ford she trod carefully on the flat stones that formed a causeway across the brook. Ducks stared indifferently at her from the bank and a swan glided downstream. She had to admit it was pretty, and it would be a whole heap prettier if she could venture out into it from Fredington Crucis House wearing Armani jeans, a sheepskin jacket, and Timberland boots, having left the Range Rover parked outside the church. But Jims was gay, a difficulty not to be underrated. And what about Jerry? He wouldn’t have got whoever it was to send her that letter if he didn’t want her to think he was dead, but he was brilliant at changing his mind. If there was one thing beyond his liking mints and hating bananas that-well-defined Jerry, it was his rapid mind changes. Suppose he had a rethink and wanted to be alive again?
A large duckpond dominated the front garden, if this it could be called, of the Old Mill House. Although no rain had fallen in Long Fredington for a week and the stream water was exceptionally low, the banks of the pond were a quagmire. Waterfowl had been slopping about in it, animals with hooves had churned it up, and now Annie’s three children and her two were sitting in it, Annie’s Rosalba instructing her sister, Fabia, her brother, Titus, and Zillah’s children in the art of face-painting with mud. When Zillah came up the drive, she had just completed a rendering of a Union Jack in monochrome that extended from Jordan’s chin and round cheeks to his high domed forehead.
“Jordan ate a slug, Mummy,” said Eugenie. “Titus said there was this man ate a live goldfish and the cruelty to animals people made him pay a lot of money.”
“And Jordan wanted to eat one,” said Rosalba, “because he’s a naughty boy but there’s no goldfishes in our pond. So he ate a slug. And that’s cruel too and he’ll have to pay a hundred pounds.”
“Not a naughty boy,” Jordan wailed. Tears gushed out of his eyes and he rubbed them with his fists, ruining the Union Jack. “Won’t pay a hundred pounds. I want my daddy.”
Those words, frequently uttered, never failed to upset Zillah. She picked him up. He was wet through and covered with mud. Rather late in the day, she wondered indignantly what Annie was thinking of, leaving five children, the eldest of whom was eight, alone beside a large pond that must be at least six feet deep in the middle.
“I only left them for two minutes,” Annie cried, running out from the front door. “The phone was ringing. Oh, look at them! You three are going straight in the bath.”
Though she had no need to think of the cost of hot water as Zillah did, she didn’t offer to put Eugenie and Jordan in the bath. She didn’t ask Zillah in either. Jordan hung round Zillah’s neck, wiping his hands on her hair and rubbing his muddy cheek against hers. The chances were she’d have to carry him all the way home. She waited for Annie to say something about picking her up in the morning and taking her shopping, but Annie only said she’d see her soon and if she’d excuse her she’d have to get this lot cleaned up as she and Charles were going out to dinner in Lyme and they’d have to leave by seven.
Zillah sat Jordan on her right hip with her right arm round him. He was a heavy boy, big for his age. Eugenie said it was getting dark, which it wasn’t, not yet, and she’d be frightened if she didn’t hold Zillah’s hand.
“Why am I too big to be carried, Mummy?”
“You just are. Miles too big,” said Zillah. “Four is the upper limit. No one over four gets carried.”
Jordan burst into loud wails. “Don’t want to be four! Want to be carried.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Zillah, “I am carrying you, you halfwit.”
“Not a fwit, not a fwit! Put me down, Jordan walk.”
He trudged along, very slowly, trailing behind. Eugenie took Zillah’s hand, smiling smugly over her shoulder at her brother. The sinking sun disappeared behind a dense wall of trees and it suddenly became viciously cold. Jordan, snuffling and whimpering, rubbing at his eyes with muddy fists, sat down in the road, then lay down on his back. It was at times like these that Zillah wondered how she had ever got into this mess in the first place. What had she been thinking of to get involved with a man like Jerry at the age of nineteen? What had induced her to fall in love with him and want his children?
She picked Jordan up and, in the absence of any handkerchief or tissue, wiped his face with a woolen glove she found in her pocket. A bitter wind had got up from nowhere. How could she hesitate about saying yes to Jims? She was suddenly visited by fear that maybe he wouldn’t phone for his answer on Thursday, maybe he’d find some other woman who wouldn’t keep him waiting. That Icon or Ivo Carew’s sister Kate. If it weren’t for Jerry…She was going to have to sit down when she’d got this lot to bed and seriously think about what Jerry was up to and what that letter meant.
It took three times as long to get back to Willow Cottage with the children as it had taken her to get to the Old Mill House on her own. Twilight was closing in. The front door opened directly into the living room, where the bulb in the light had gone. She hadn’t a replacement. The cottage wasn’t centrally heated, of course it wasn’t. It belonged to a local landowner and had been let at a low rent to various more or less indigent people for the past fifty years. No improvements had been made to it in that time, apart from perfunctory painting carried out by tenants and mostly left unfinished. Thus, the inside of the front door was painted pink, the cupboard door black, and only an undercoat in uncompromising gray had been applied to the door to the kitchen. Electrical fittings consisted mostly of partly eroded cables passing, looped and knotted, from ten- and five-amp points, obsolete in the rest of the European Union and rare in the United Kingdom, to extension leads connected to a lamp, a fan heater, and a very old 45-rpm record player. The furniture consisted of rejects from the “big house,” where Sir Ronald Grasmere, the landlord, lived. It had been discarded forty years before, was old then, and had come from the housekeeper’s room.
The kitchen was worse. It contained a sink, a gas cooker circa 1950, and a refrigerator that looked huge because its walls were nearly a foot thick, though its usable interior quite a small space. Originally it must have been a very good one, for it had lasted more than sixty years. There was no washing machine. Zillah stripped off the children’s clothes and put jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, and Jordan’s anorak to soak in cold water in the sink. She switched on the fan heater and put a match to the fire she had laid earlier. It was strange how Jims never seemed to notice the state of the place or the inadequacy of the fittings or, come to that, the cold. At any rate, he never mentioned them. Did this augur well for a life companion or not? Of course, he was a pal of Sir Ronald. If she married him she and Jims would no doubt occasionally have Sir Ronald to dine. Perhaps in the members’ dining room…
As she began making scrambled eggs for the children’s tea, Zillah decided that if she did marry Jims, no way was she going to do the cooking in the future. Or any housework as long as she lived. Who was it said, “I’ll never be hungry again?” Oh, yes, Scarlett O’Hara. If only she had a video in this bloody bloody place and the film of Gone With the Wind, she’d play it tonight after the kids were in bed. If she married Jims she’d be able to watch videos every night. What an ambition! But she’d also be able to have unlimited babysitters and go to the cinema and the theater and nightclubs, shop all day long, have facials and her hair done at Nicky Clarke, and stay at health farms and be a lady who lunched at Harvey Nich
ols.
Was she going to marry him, then? Had she made up her mind?
The children would be able to play video games and have computers instead of watching whatever rubbish was currently on television: Baywatch or something of that ilk. Not great in black-and-white. She’d better bathe them. Jordan had mud on his feet and in his hair. But Jims was gay. Besides, there was another pressing reason, not just for not marrying him but for not marrying anyone.
The letter had come in October of the previous year. For about five minutes, if that, she’d believed what it said and that it came from the people it said it did. Maybe that was because she’d wanted to believe it. But had she wanted to? Not entirely. Anyway, that hardly mattered, for she’d soon seen it was an obvious nonsense. Jerry hadn’t been on a Great Western train going from Gloucester to London. He’d left her and the kids and Willow Cottage ten minutes before that train collided with the other one and driven himself off somewhere or other in his battered Ford Anglia, which was twenty years old if it was a day.
The letter purported to come from the Great Western. In fact, since she was his wife and still was on the day of the train crash, she’d have been the first to hear of his death and not ten days afterward. Not in a phony letter that cried out to be disbelieved, but from the police. They’d very likely have wanted her (or someone she named) to go and identify the remains. There’d have been a funeral. So after the first five minutes she hadn’t believed the letter. But she’d wondered who’d written it and what Jerry was up to. Certain things seemed clear. He’d arranged for the letter to be sent to her and this must mean that he wanted her not necessarily to think he was dead, but to act as if he were dead. What he was really saying was: “This is to show you I’m off, I won’t be troubling you again. Just act as if I was dead. Shack up with someone, get married if you like. I won’t interfere or put a spoke in your wheel.” Was he saying that? She couldn’t think what he’d meant if he hadn’t meant that.
