by Ruth Rendell
When they got back from Waitrose to their house in Holmdale Road, West Hampstead, Michelle set about preparing Matthew’s lunch. It was to include several of the foodstuffs Fiona had suggested and that Matthew found acceptable.
“Peanuts!” Fiona had said. “Very nourishing, are peanuts.”
Matthew managed to utter the word “greasy.”
“Not at all. Dry-roasted peanuts. Delicious. I love them.”
It would be an exaggeration to say that so did he. He loved no kind of food but he tolerated dry-roasted peanuts, as he tolerated her other suggestions: crispbread, Pop Tarts, madeira cake, hard-boiled eggs chopped up with parsley, Parmesan cheese grated to a powder. Baby spinach leaves and arugula, Japanese rice crackers, muesli. Over that year, his health improved a little and he was slightly less emaciated. Since then, though, the Pop Tarts, which were the most caloric on the list, had fallen from favor. He couldn’t help it. With all his heart, he wanted to go on liking them but it was no good. Fiona recommended sponge fingers and shortbread instead.
Michelle put a lettuce leaf on his plate, twelve dry-roasted peanuts, a slice of hard-boiled egg with powdered Parmesan, and a piece of Ryvita. She hoped, too, that he would drink the small wineglassful of pineapple juice but she wasn’t banking on it. While she decorated his plate with these scraps, she ate peanuts herself and the rest of the egg and a hunk of olive bread with butter. Matthew smiled at her. It was his way of not looking at his plate, to turn his head away from it and smile at her as he thanked her.
“I just saw Jeff Leigh go by,” he said, picking up one peanut. “Is he never going to get a job?”
Neither of them much cared for Fiona’s boyfriend. “I’d so much like to think he wasn’t with her for her money,” said Michelle. “I’d like to think he was disinterested, darling, but I don’t. He expects her to keep him and that’s the truth of it.”
“Fiona likes to be in control. I don’t mean to criticize. To some it would be a compliment. She may want him to be dependent on her.”
“I hope you’re right. I want her to be happy. They’re getting married in June.”
Matthew ate another peanut and a fragment of Ryvita. Michelle had long ago mastered the art of not watching him. He sipped the juice. “I’m afraid her friends won’t think much of him if he does nothing and lets her keep him. He seems to have some skills. He’s done a few useful jobs about the house for Fiona, putting in an electric outlet for one, and if you remember, he was something of a wizard on the computer when he came in here to write those letters or whatever it was he did.”
“Job applications, he said. That was in October, nearly five months ago. I can’t eat this lettuce, darling, or any more nuts. I’ve eaten the Ryvita.”
“You’ve done very well,” said Michelle, taking his plate away and bringing in a kiwi fruit, sliced, the core removed, and half a sponge finger.
Matthew ate two slices, then a third to please her, though he nearly choked on it. “I’ll do the dishes,” he said. “You sit down. Put your feet up.”
So Michelle heaved her huge bulk on to one end of the sofa and put her slender legs and dainty feet, in which every delicate bone showed, up on the other end. She had the Daily Telegraph to read and Matthew’s Spectator, but she felt more like just resting there and thinking. Six months ago Matthew wouldn’t have had the strength to carry out the plates and glasses, stand at the sink, and wash them. If he’d insisted on washing up, he’d have had to sit on a stool to do it. The small improvement in his health and weight was due to Fiona. Michelle had come to care for Fiona, who was a real friend, almost like a daughter. Without envy and nearly without longing-for hadn’t she her darling Matthew?-she could look at Fiona’s slender figure, long, straight, blond hair, and sweet, if not classically good-looking, face with nothing but admiration. Their houses were semidetached, but hers and Matthew’s-though now considered a very valuable property more for where it was than for its design or convenience-was greatly inferior to Fiona’s with its rear extension, large conservatory, and loft conversion. Michelle had no envy about that either. She and Matthew had enough space for their wants, and the value of their house had gone up by a dazzling 500 percent since they bought it seventeen years before. No, it was Fiona’s future happiness that concerned her.
Jeff Leigh had first been seen in Holmdale Road in the previous August or September. Fiona introduced him to them as her boyfriend, but he didn’t move in until October. He was handsome, Michelle had to acknowledge, healthy-looking, regular-featured, a little heavy for her taste. Thinking like that made her laugh. It seemed in the worst of taste to say she could fancy only thin men. Jeff had a sincere and almost earnest face. You could say that he looked as if he really cared about you, what you were saying, and who you were; he was a truly concerned human being. This made Michelle think he didn’t care a toss. And when he offered her one of his Polo mints, as he always did, he smiled to himself as she took it as if saying, Aren’t you fat enough? She loathed his jokes. Though he was out a great deal, he earned nothing, while Fiona, a successful banker, earned a lot and had inherited a sizeable sum when her father died last year.
Michelle wished she and Jeff would postpone their marriage for a while. After all, they were living together; it wasn’t as if they were sexually frustrated-she recalled with tenderness how she and Matthew hadn’t been able to wait more than twenty-four hours-so marriage surely wasn’t imperative. Would she have the courage or the impertinence to suggest gently to Fiona that waiting a little might be a good idea?
It was comforting, Michelle thought before she drifted off into sleep, how the worst things that happen to one can sometimes lead to good. For instance, when Matthew had twice fainted in the classroom, when he had to sit down all the time in the science lab and could barely walk the distance to the Senior Staff Room, they had known he would have to resign. What would they live on? He was only thirty-eight. Apart from a little dabbling in journalism, there was nothing he could do but teach. She had long ago given up work to look after him, to occupy herself in the neverending, nearly hopeless, task of attending to his nourishment. Could she go back? After an absence of nine years? She’d never earned much.
Matthew had done some writing for New Scientist and an occasional piece for the Times. Now, because it was the most important thing in his life after her, he settled down to write, in his despair, about what it meant to have his particular kind of anorexia. To hate food. To be made ill by that which was the staff of life. Eating disorders were becoming very fashionable at the time. His article was snapped up. It led to his being asked by a prestigious weekly if he’d contribute a column to be known as “An Anorexic’s Diary.” Matthew, the purist, objected at first and said the word should be “anorectic” but gave in because the money was so good. Michelle often thought how strange it was that though he could barely talk about certain foodstuffs he could write of them, describe his nausea and horror at particular kinds of fat and “slop,” define with a searching precision the items he could just bear to eat and why.
“An Anorexic’s Diary” saved them selling the house and going on benefits. It was immensely popular and inspired a lot of letters. Matthew got a huge postbag from middle-aged women who couldn’t get off diets and starving teenagers and fat men who were addicted to beer and chips. It didn’t make him famous-he and she wouldn’t have liked that-but his name was once mentioned on a TV quiz show and was the answer to a crossword puzzle clue. All this afforded them a little quiet amusement. She hadn’t liked it when Jeff Leigh clapped Matthew on the back and said insinuatingly, “Wouldn’t do for you to gain weight in your position, would it? Mind you keep the rations low, Michelle. I’m sure you can eat for two.”
That had hurt her because it was what you said to pregnant women. She thought of the child she’d never had, the daughter or son who would be sixteen or seventeen by now. Dream children she often dreamed of or saw before her closed eyes when she lay down. When Matthew came back into the room, she was aslee
p.
Chapter 6
THE KNIFE WOULDN’T do. It was too big to carry about easily. Auntie had had quite a lot of knives, carvers and saws and choppers, which was funny because she’d never cooked much. Maybe they’d all been wedding presents. Minty went through them carefully and selected one which was eight inches long with a sharp point and a blade that was nearly two inches wide at the hilt.
She’d never really got rid of Auntie’s stuff, apart from a few clothes she’d taken to the Geranium blind shop. They weren’t as clean as they might have been, and carrying them, even in a plastic sack, made her feel dirty all over. The rest she’d shut up in a cupboard and never opened again. She opened it now. It smelled awful. Just her luck when she was off to work; she’d have to have another bath before she went. The purse on a belt some people called a fanny pack or a bum bag but Auntie wouldn’t, it was too crude, hung by its strap over a hanger on which was a coat that smelled of mothballs. Minty resolved to have a real clean-up and clear-out that evening, take the stuff to Brent Council’s old clothes bank, and wash out the cupboard. The bum bag she brought delicately to her nose. One sniff was enough. She washed it in the bathroom basin, laid it to dry on the edge of the bath, then washed herself all over. When it was dry, it would make a convenient holder for the knife.
As a result of all this, she was a bit late for work, very unusual for her. Josephine, all smiles, said nothing about her lateness but announced that she and Ken were getting married. He’d asked her over the wontons and shrimp toast they’d had last night. Minty wondered what form the proposal had taken since Ken didn’t speak any English.
“I’m starting my Cantonese conversation class next week,” said Josephine.
Minty accepted an invitation to the wedding. As she began the ironing, she asked herself if she would ever meet another man who would want her as Jock had done. If it happened, it mustn’t be while Jock continued to haunt her. It wouldn’t do to be out with a man in the pub or at the pictures and have Jock appear between them, or watching them. Besides, she’d promised him there would never be anyone else. She was his for ever, and ever might be another fifty years. What did he want? Why had he returned? Because he was afraid she’d met a new man?
The shirts smelled of that indefinable clean scent she liked so much, newly washed linen. She savored each one, bringing it to within an inch of her nose when she lifted it from the pile. Minty ironed the shirts not just as they happened to come-picking up the top one first, then the next one and so on-but choosing them according to color. There were always more white ones than colored, about twice as many, so she would do two white, then a pink, two more white, then a blue stripe. It upset her if the sequence went wrong and she found she had four or five white ones left at the end. This morning there were fewer whites than usual and she could see as she progressed that she was going to have the luck to make the ironing of a pink-and-yellow-striped shirt her final task.
It was more than a week since she’d seen Jock and then, just when she thought he’d satisfied himself, found what he was looking for, or simply got tired of the search, he’d appeared again. She’d gone to the pictures with Sonovia and Laf, one of the cinemas in Whiteley’s, and seen Sleepy Hollow, a film people found frightening about a headless horseman-a ghost of course-that kept appearing in this town in America and chopping people’s heads off.
“Never seen anything so ridiculous in all my life,” Sonovia said scornfully, passing her the popcorn. Laf had fallen asleep, snoring softly.
“It’s scary,” Minty whispered, but more out of politeness than truth. Films weren’t real.
But just as the tree split open again and the phantom horseman and his horse leaped out from its roots, Jock’s ghost came into the cinema and sat down in the end seat of their row on the other side of the aisle. The way they were sitting, she three seats in from the end, Sonovia next to her and Laf next to Sonovia, meant she had an uninterrupted view of him. He’d sat down without looking at her, but now, no doubt because he felt her eyes on him, he turned his head and fixed on her a dull, expressionless gaze. She was wearing Auntie’s silver cross on a ribbon round her neck and she put her hand up to it, clasping it tightly. This action, supposed to be a sure specific against visitants from another world, or so Auntie had said, had no effect on Jock. He stared at the screen. Minty touched Sonovia on the arm.
“D’you see that man at the end of the row?”
“What man?”
“On the other side, sitting at the end.”
“There’s no one there, my deah. You’re dreaming.”
It didn’t altogether surprise her that he was invisible to others. Josephine hadn’t been able to see him that time in the shop. What was he made of? Flesh and blood or shadows? She’d promised him that once she’d been with him she’d never go with anyone else. Was it possible he wanted to keep her to her vow and he’d come back to take her away with him? Minty began to tremble.
“Not cold, are you?” Sonovia whispered.
Minty shook her head.
“Must have been a cat walking over your grave.”
“Don’t say that!” Minty spoke so loudly that a woman behind tapped her on the shoulder and told her to be quiet.
She was silent, shivering. Somewhere in this world was the place where her bones or her ashes would be buried. A cat, going about its nocturnal business, had trodden on that ground and passed on. Jock wanted to take her there, to that grave, and have her ghost with him, wherever that was. She couldn’t watch the film. Reality was more frightening. Jock had only been there ten minutes, but he got up to leave. As he passed her he whispered, “Polo,” and touched her on the shoulder.
She shrank back in her seat. His touch wasn’t like a shadow or a breeze but real, a warm hand with a natural hand’s pressure, heavy, possessive. “Go away,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
Sonovia turned and glared at her. Minty looked round, toward the exit, but Jock had gone.
After the film was over, Laf and Sonovia took her for a drink in the Redan.
“What were you muttering about in the cinema?” Laf asked, grinning. “Sitting there with your eyes shut, nattering away to yourself and making faces.”
“I was not.”
“Yes, you were, my deah. What’s the point of going to the pictures if you keep your eyes shut?”
“I was scared. Everyone was scared.”
They denied it. But she couldn’t talk about the film, neither able to agree with Laf, who pretended to have enjoyed it, nor with Sonovia, who couldn’t stop laughing over the frequency of the horseman’s decapitations. Jock’s ghost had distracted her entirely. It seemed that he had been threatening. She could still feel the pressure of his hand. He shouldn’t take her with him; she didn’t want to die, to be taken to some awful scary place inhabited by ghosts. She’d take steps to defend herself.
When she first saw him, she wouldn’t have believed a weapon would be effective against him, but the hard and heavy feel of his hand had convinced her that, ghost though he was, he was solid and unyielding. So she needed the knife and needed to carry it with her at all times. For who knew where he’d next turn up?
She finished the last shirt and slipped it into its cellophane bag, inserting a cardboard bow tie, spotted blue-and-white, under the collar. Josephine had popped down to the car hire place to make transport arrangements for her wedding, and when the doorbell rang, Minty thought it was Jock. It would be just like him to come today, the last time she’d ever be out without the knife. She picked up a pair of scissors from the shelf where they kept the stain remover and the spray starch. But it was only Ken, who pretended to be scared of the blades pointing at him and began clowning about with his hands up.
Josephine came back and the two of them started canoodling, kissing with their mouths open and all that. Funny, because Josephine had told her before she met Ken that the Chinese never kissed, they didn’t know how to. Maybe she’d taught him. Minty quite liked them, but their going on like
that made her want to stab them with the scissors. She felt left out, isolated, shut into a world of her own, inhabited only by herself and Jock’s ghost. Like someone sleepwalking, she trailed into the back room and sat down on a stool, staring at the wall and turning the scissors over and over in her hands.
Jock had always had a pack of Polo mints in his pocket. That was why he’d called her Polo, she thought. He’d passed them to her when they were at the cinema and she’d liked them, they were a clean sort of sweet, they didn’t come off on your hands. Pinch, punch, first of the month, she remembered, no returns. Just walk on by, wait on the corner…
She’d brought her lunch with her, sandwiches of grated cheese and lettuce, a small plain yogurt. You never knew what went into the flavored kind. When she’d eaten it, she wrapped the remains in newspaper, then a plastic carrier, and put the lot in Josephine’s rubbish bin in the backyard. Even touching it made a more than usually thorough wash necessary. She scrubbed her nails with a brush, left her hands soaking in clean, soapless water for five minutes afterward. When they came out and were dried, the fingers were pallid and wrinkled, which Auntie had used to call washerwoman’s hands. Minty rather liked them that way, it meant they were really clean.
It was one of those afternoons that passed uneventfully. A man came in with his seven shirts. He always did, once a week. Josephine asked him once if he hadn’t a wife or a girlfriend to bring them in for him, not to mention wash or iron them. Josephine hadn’t put it that way, but she did mention it and the man hadn’t liked it one bit. Minty thought he might not come back but take his shirts to the place down Western Avenue. As it was, he took a fortnight before reappearing and Josephine was especially nice to him, remembering how tactless she’d been.
After that there was no one until a teenager came just as they were closing and wanted to know if she could pay by installment for having her dress cleaned. It was a short red dress with bootlace shoulder straps and hardly any skirt, and Minty thought it would have washed. She’d have washed it. Josephine said, “Certainly not,” and the poor kid had to take the dress away again.
