by Ruth Rendell
Or he almost sealed it. The seal was poised and it wavered above the hot fresh wax and he was given one more chance. At Holborn he got into a westbound Central Line tube train. As it approached Bond Street, he thought he might as well get off, change on to the Jubilee Line, and go home. But being at home on his own was something he’d never much cared for. He needed a woman there and some food and drink and entertainment. The train came into Bond Street and stopped, the doors opened, a dozen people got out and much the same number got in. The doors closed. Instead of proceeding, the train waited where it was. As usual there was no explanation for the delay offered over the public address system. The doors opened. Jeff got up, hesitated, sat down again. The doors closed and the train started. At the next station, Marble Arch, he got out.
He went up the steps, turned right, and made his way to the Odeon. One of the films showing was The House on Haunted Hill. He picked it because it started at three thirty-five and the time was now a quarter past three. For some reason, when he’d bought his ticket, he thought of what his mother used to say, that it was a shame to go to the pictures when the sun was shining outside.
Chapter 14
IT WOULD HAVE been more interesting, Minty sometimes thought, if the shirt colors and designs had been more varied. If there hadn’t been a preponderance of white ones, for instance, or if more had had button-down collars and pockets on them. She thought the white ones were getting more common; there must be a fashion for absolutely plain white shirts. This Friday morning it had meant ironing three white ones before she did a pink stripe and two more before coming to the blue with a navy stripe and button-down collar. She’d arranged them in order before starting. Just leaving it to chance was fatal. Last time she’d done that she’d ended up with six white ones and it was weary work getting through six shirts that all looked the same. Apart from being, in her estimation, unlucky. That morning, when she’d had the white ones left over, had been the last day she’d seen Jock, and it had to have something to do with the shirts being out of sequence.
His ghost had been in the hall when she’d got home last evening, standing there looking out for her, waiting for the sound of her key in the lock. She’d pulled up her sweatshirt, undone her trousers, and tugged the knife out of the strap that held it against her leg, but he’d slipped past her and run upstairs. Though she was shaking with fear, she’d run after him, chasing him into Auntie’s bedroom. Just as she’d thought she had him cornered he vanished through the wall, the way she’d heard spirits could but had never seen before. Auntie’s voice had said, “You nearly had him there, girl,” and said a lot more while Minty was having her bath, all about Jock being evil and a menace to the world, the cause of flood and famine, and the herald of the Antichrist, but it wasn’t the first time she’d said that and Minty knew it already. She was beginning to get as impatient with Auntie’s talking as she was with Jock’s appearances.
Drying her hair, strapping on the knife again, pulling on clean T-shirt and trousers, she shouted out as the voice persisted, “Go away! I’ve had enough of you. I know what to do!” She went on saying it as she went downstairs and heard the doorbell ring. Sonovia’s younger daughter, Julianna, the one who was at university, was outside.
“Were you talking to me, Minty?”
“I wasn’t talking to anyone,” said Minty. She hadn’t seen Julianna for about a year and only just recognized her, what with a gold stud in one nostril and her hair in about ten thousand braids. It made her shiver. How often could she wash it and how did she get that stud in and out? “Did you want something?”
“I’m sorry, Minty. I know you and Mum aren’t speaking, but now Mum wants her blue outfit back, she’s lost a lot of weight to get into it, and she’s going to wear it to a christening on Sunday.”
“You’d better come in.”
Serve her right if Jock came and talked to her, Minty thought as she went upstairs. Julianna might be one of those people who could see him. It would be a relief to get rid of the blue dress and jacket. In spite of dry-cleaning it twice, she couldn’t rid herself of the idea that it was still dirty and contaminating the house. “Polo, Polo,” Jock whispered to her as she went into Auntie’s room. He was still there, then, though she couldn’t see him any longer.
She’d zipped the outfit up inside a dry cleaner’s bag, taken it downstairs, and handed it over to Julianna. “It’s a bit gloomy in here,” Julianna said. “Why don’t you pull the curtains back?”
“I like it that way.”
“Minty?”
“What?”
“You wouldn’t come back with me, would you, and say hello to Mum and sort of make things all right? It’d really please my dad if you would. He says it gets up his nose not being on good terms with the neighbors.”
“Tell your mum,” said Minty, “it’s her fault, she started it. She can say she’s sorry and then I’ll start speaking.”
From the window she watched the girl go. She thought of all this while she was ironing and Josephine said, “Did you ever make it up with what’s-her-name that lives next door to you? The one that made all that fuss about her dress?”
“She’s called Sonovia.” Minty slipped the last white shirt but three into its plastic bag, tucked the cardboard collar round its neck, and took the last striped one from the pile. “Her husband came in here begging me to apologize but I said I’d nothing to apologize about, it was all her. It was all her, wasn’t it? You were there.”
“Of course it was. I’d say that in any court of law.” Josephine looked at her gold and rhinestone watch, a wedding present from Ken. “I tell you what, Minty, when you’ve finished that lot you can take the afternoon off if you want. And tomorrow morning. It’s only what you deserve, looking after the place while me and Ken were on honeymoon.”
Minty thanked her and managed a half-smile. She’d rather have had a raise but thought it was hopeless asking. The last three shirts were always a drag to do, but she’d finished them by five to one.
At home again, she took her second bath of the day, feeling fresh resentment against Jock when she thought how he’d done her out of the money she could have spent on a shower cabinet. Sometimes, while in the bath, she thought of the dirt that came off her floating about in the water and getting back on her again. The dirt from her body into her hair and the dirt from her hair on to her body. It might be the reason for her never feeling clean enough. Would she ever be able to afford a shower now?
She ate one of her clean hygienic lunches: carefully washed chicory leaves, a skinned chicken wing, six small boiled potatoes, two slices of white bread with good unsalted butter on them. Then she washed her hands. She’d spend her afternoon off at the cinema.
It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day. Even Kensal Green had smelled fresh and floral as she walked home from Immacue. Beyond the high wall, the trees of the cemetery made it look as if some verdant park lay behind. Auntie used to say it was a wicked shame going to the cinema on a fine day, you ought to be outside enjoying it. But she didn’t say it now, though Minty listened for her voice to come. Should she go to Whiteley’s or to the Odeon at Marble Arch? The Whiteley’s complex was nearer, but to reach it she’d have to go through one of the underpasses below the Westway. An underpass was just the sort of place Jock might be waiting for her and she didn’t want to see him today, she didn’t want him spoiling her time off. So Marble Arch on the 36 bus. The House on Haunted Hill was showing there and she quite liked the sound of it. Ghosts in a film weren’t frightening when you had a real ghost of your own.
Ages passed before the bus came, or it seemed like ages, though it was only ten minutes. As if making up for time, it raced along Harrow Road and down Edgware Road, dropping her off at the bottom at exactly three o’clock. By this time she was an old hand at buying her own ticket, showing it to the usher, and making her way alone to a seat. Ten people were sitting in the auditorium. Minty counted. She sat in a seat at the end of a row, so that no one could sit next to her on the rig
ht, and unless the place filled up, which it wouldn’t, nobody would choose to sit on her left. The present occupants of the cinema all looked older than she and were isolated except for a couple of pensioners, man and woman, seated in the very front row. She was pleased to find herself almost alone in the whole block of seats on the right-hand side. It was much better going to the cinema in the afternoon than with Laf and Sonovia in the evening.
The auditorium darkened and advertisements appeared on the screen. Minty had often before watched such commercials with puzzlement, for she understood not a word of them and not an image. The noise they made was loud and the voices that uttered incomprehensible words raucous, while music pounded and brilliant colors and explosive lights flashed across the screen. They were succeeded by something romantic and dreamy, accompanied by a soft sonata: the first trailer of films to come.
To her annoyance, a man had come in and was edging along the row in front of her. He probably couldn’t see where he was, the place was dark as pitch but for the pastel colors on the screen. He turned light-dazzled eyes in her direction and she saw it was Jock’s ghost. There seemed nowhere she could go where he wouldn’t follow her and haunt her. He wasn’t wearing his black leather jacket today, it was too warm for that, but a stripy shirt like one of those she’d ironed that morning and a linen jacket that looked new. Where did ghosts get new clothes from? She’d never thought of that before.
He sat down, not directly in front of her, but in the seat in front of the one next to hers, and took a packet of Polo mints out of his pocket. How long would he stay? Would he get up again and vanish through the wall as he’d done the night before in Auntie’s room? Minty was more angry than she’d been for a long time, perhaps than she’d ever been. Fear of him had almost gone, it was all anger now. He half-turned his head, then looked back at the screen. The romantic film trailer faded away and a violent one came on, the sort that shows high-powered cars in brilliant colors and blazing lights crashing into other cars and careering over precipices while maddened men crane out of their windows, firing guns. The ghost took a mint out of the packet and put it in his mouth. Carefully and silently Minty lifted her T-shirt, unzipped her trousers, and pulled the knife stealthily from its plastic sheathing and the strapping round her leg. She laid it on the seat beside her, zipped up her trousers, and pulled down her T-shirt. She thought she’d been quiet but she must have made a little sound.
Jock’s ghost turned round again, more fully this time. As he looked into her face in the dimness and the roaring noise, his eyes opened wide and he began to get to his feet as if he were afraid of her instead of her of him. More swiftly than she could have believed she’d do it, she snatched up the knife and, rising, thrust it into where she guessed his heart was. If a ghost had a heart, if a ghost could die.
He didn’t cry out, or if he did she couldn’t hear it above the car crashes and the guns and the beat of the music. No one could have heard anything with that noise going on. But maybe he hadn’t made a sound, perhaps ghosts didn’t. It took both hands to pull the knife out. There was something reddish brown on it that looked like blood, only it couldn’t be, ghosts didn’t have blood. It must be whatever ghosts had in their veins that made them able to walk and talk. Ectoplasm, maybe. Auntie had talked a lot about ectoplasm in her last years. Minty wiped the dirty knife on the upholstery of the seat next to her. It still wasn’t clean, of course it wasn’t, it would have to be put in a pan of water and the water brought to the boil before it was really clean. But there was no water here, no stove, and no gas. Shuddering, she unzipped her trousers and pushed the knife back against her leg, thankful for the plastic wrapping which kept it from contact with her skin.
Jock’s ghost had fallen to the floor and disappeared. Or at any rate, she couldn’t see what remained of it. She didn’t want to. And she didn’t care to remain where she was with the dirty stuff wiped off on the seat next to her, but she did want to see this film. Fastidiously, shrinking away from contact with that seat as she passed it, she moved to the aisle end of the row, walked a few yards up the aisle, and picked herself another seat. It was in the central block and there was no one in front of her and no one behind.
Sleepy Hollow hadn’t frightened her and this one didn’t. It was a disappointment. If these film people had had her experience of ghosts they’d know more about making things frightening. She wished she’d gone to The Green Mile, but it was too late now. Anyway, if she had, Jock’s ghost mightn’t have been there and she wouldn’t have had the chance of banishing him once and for all. When the film was about three-quarters of the way through she got up and left. The man in the back row left too, so she wasn’t the only one who hadn’t liked it.
Outside it was still hot and sunny. She looked at her hands to see if there was any mess on them but she’d wiped what there was off on the seat when she’d wiped the knife. Still she shivered because when she lifted her fingers up to her nose she could smell something that was like blood but stronger, she thought, more bitter and unholy. Spots and splashes of it were all over her clothes but they weren’t noticeable to anyone but herself because her trousers were dark red and her T-shirt was a red and blue and yellow pattern. Not that Minty much worried about anyone seeing; it was for herself that she cared. She’d never been concerned about what other people thought of her. They ought to be thinking about what she thought of them.
But she didn’t want to get on a bus. Sitting with that ghost juice on her would somehow be worse than walking in the fresh air. For one thing, it would be all around her, close to her, pressing on her, and for another she’d smell it more. The stench of it began to make her miserable, to make her want to tear her clothes off and plunge into water, any water. That wasn’t possible. So she walked. Up Edgware Road in the heat and the smell from the Middle Eastern takeaway restaurants, along the start of Harrow Road and through the underpass into Warwick Avenue. There was no longer any fear of meeting Jock there.
This was familiar territory, home ground. The people you passed never took any notice of you and they never sniffed, trying to smell you. Everyone sweated, there was no escaping it, but she hated it happening to her, the feel of the beads of moisture breaking out on her upper lip and forehead, the trickle of it dripping down her chest like tears. It wouldn’t smell, not with all the deodorant she used. But how could you be sure you hadn’t missed out a little bit of skin surface? She imagined the sweat leaking out of that little bit inside her armpit and that awful meaty, oniony smell breathing on to the air. Almost crying now with the filth that covered her, her own perspiration and the splashed ghost juice, she let herself into the house. She ran upstairs and fell into the bath. It was half an hour later that she boiled the knife. The clothes she’d worn were beyond saving, far far beyond washing. She wrapped them in newspaper, then in plastic, and put them into a black waste bag. Knowing they’d be there, albeit outside, for another four days, sent her out again. The heat met her, it was like opening an oven door. She walked slowly, shrinking her body to keep the sweat in, and dropped the bag into the big council rubbish bin a few yards up the road.
Chapter 15
MICHELLE SET OUT wineglasses on the coffee table, a heart-shaped dish filled with vegetable crisps that would neither thin down nor fatten up, and a rather larger oval one with dry-roasted peanuts. Fiona had said she liked the crisps and she hoped to persuade Matthew to eat a few as well. She, of course, would eat nothing, not even the pink and orange slivers of root vegetable, and would go sparingly on the wine. After her shower that morning she had stood on the scales, hardly daring to look, but found she’d lost three pounds. The week before it had been four pounds. Could there be any greater tonic to an overweight woman than to find she’d lost seven pounds in a fortnight? She’d been singing while she dressed herself and Matthew had smiled lovingly at her.
He and she had been out shopping in the afternoon and bought the wine. Michelle knew nothing about wine but Matthew did-in her opinion he was an expert on everything
-and he’d chosen a meursault. Fiona was coming, and Michelle knew she preferred white wine over any other alcoholic drink. There wasn’t much food to buy, just the few things Matthew would eat, and today he’d agreed to try a bit of chicken, another suggestion of Fiona’s, the kind you get at a delicatessen counter and which looks like a close-textured white loaf, from which the assistant saws wafer-thin slices. It would do for her too, along with some green leaves. The shopping bags were about twenty pounds lighter than usual.
It was such a lovely day that Michelle had suggested she drive them both up to the Heath, where they could sit in the sunshine and look at the view. So she’d done this and they’d stayed up there a long time, talking about Matthew’s TV successes. He was due to have lunch with a producer who planned to make a short series on the lines of the pilot program.
“When he said ‘lunch,’ ” Matthew said, “I started laughing, darling, I couldn’t help it. I thought, me having lunch with someone. In a restaurant. He thought I was laughing with pleasure at the idea of a series.”
“Can you do it?” Michelle was all concern. “Eat with someone in a restaurant, I mean? I know you can do the series.”
“I’m going to try. Before we start I’m going to remind him what I am and just why I got the job. And then I’ll eat salad and a bit of dry bread. By eat I mean nibble and leave three-quarters.”
When Michelle looked at her watch, it was past four and they had to get back. She hadn’t given Fiona a definite time, just said to come in for a drink when she returned from work. Jeff hadn’t been mentioned but Michelle knew that when people were a couple you had to accept the uncongenial one along with the one you liked.
