by Ruth Rendell
She dreamed of the grave. She was lying in it under the earth but not in a box. They couldn’t afford the cost of a coffin. She lay under the cold, wet earth, the worst place she’d ever been in, and she was coated all over with dirt, on her skin, in her hair, in her fingernails. Mr. Kroot’s old cat came and scratched the earth, scraping with its paws the way they do. She saw it above her, looking down through the hole it had dug, its gray muzzle all bared teeth and angry flashing eyes and shaking whiskers. Then it scraped back all the earth into her mouth and nose, and she awoke fighting for breath. After that dream she had to get up and have a bath, though it was the middle of the night.
What Laf had said about her muttering and her eyes being shut and Josephine that talking to yourself was the first sign of insanity, she hadn’t liked either. She hadn’t been muttering, she never did, and she’d had her eyes shut because she was scared. They’d been laughing at her all the time they were in that pub. Next time she wanted to see a film, she’d decided, she’d go on her own. Why not? She used to go on her own and she could again. She’d buy herself a packet of Polo mints. Or a banana because he didn’t like them-but no, not that, she’d have to dispose of the outside of it somewhere.
In the bus on the way back, a man came and sat next to her. She wouldn’t look round because she was sure it was Jock’s ghost and she could hear a voice whispering, “Polo, Polo.” But when she edged her head very cautiously and slowly toward the right, an inch at a time, she saw it was someone quite different, an old man with white hair. Jock must have sneaked off when she wasn’t looking and made this old man sit there.
People didn’t often go to the three-thirty showing. The multiplex cinema was always nearly empty then. Immacue closed at one on a Saturday, so in the afternoon Minty went to see The Talented Mr. Ripley. She bought one ticket and was told which theater to go in. There were only two other people there and she had the whole row to herself. Jock didn’t appear. She hadn’t seen him for a week, for you couldn’t count that meeting on the bus. It was nice being alone; you didn’t have to keep saying thank-you when someone passed you the popcorn or a chocolate, or have the person behind you telling you to shut up.
The evenings were getting light now. She could buy flowers for Auntie from the man at the cemetery gate and walk down to the grave in sunshine. There was no one about. It had rained so much lately that the vase was brimming over, though the flowers in it were dead. Minty threw them away under a holly bush and put her daffodils into the water. Then she took two tissues from her bag, laid them on the slab, and knelt down on them, holding the silver cross between her forefinger and middle finger. Her eyes tight shut, she prayed to Auntie to make Jock go away forever.
Sonovia was at her front gate saying good-bye to Daniel, who’d come in for a cup of tea. Minty hadn’t seen him for months, not since she got the letter saying Jock had been killed.
“How are you today, Minty?” he said in his busy doctor’s voice, all breezy and bedside manner. “Feeling a bit better?”
“I’m all right,” she said.
“Been somewhere exciting?” Sonovia asked it in the sort of tone that implies a person only does dull things, a tone with laughter somewhere underneath it. Minty didn’t answer. She was aware of the bum bag with the knife in it sliding round under her clothes. “You want a lend of my blue dress and jacket for Josephine’s wedding?”
How could she say no? She couldn’t think of a way, but stood there nodding, feeling awkward. Daniel went off to his car that he could park anywhere because it had a doctor sticker in its window. Minty wanted to go home, have a good wash, check Jock wasn’t in the house, and shut all the doors. Instead she had to go into Sonovia’s, have a look in her clothes cupboard, and choose the blue dress and jacket, whether that was what she wanted or not, because it was the only thing to fit her.
“I haven’t been able to get into it since I put on weight,” Sonovia said.
Minty tried it on. There wasn’t a choice. She hated Sonovia seeing her bare skin, so pallid and soap-smelling, and staring at the bum bag, hanging round her thin waist. The dress was a bit big but it would do. She shuddered so much as she pulled it over her head-how did she know how many times it had been worn and whether it had ever been cleaned?-that Sonovia asked that regular question of hers: was she cold?
“You look ever so nice. You really suit it. You ought to wear blue more often.”
Minty studied herself in the mirror, trying to forget about the dress being dirty. It was a full-length mirror that Sonovia called a pier glass. Behind her, opening the door and walking into the room, Jock’s ghost was reflected. He laid his hand on the back of her neck and, bending his head, pressed his face against her hair. She lashed out at the thing behind her. “Go away!”
“What, me?” asked Sonovia.
Minty didn’t answer. She shook her head.
Sonovia said, “Where were you this afternoon, Minty?”
“I went to see a film.”
“What, all on your lonesome?”
“Why not? I like being alone sometimes.” Minty pulled off the dress. Jock had disappeared. She handed it to Sonovia like a woman buying a garment in a shop.
Sonovia said, in a voice Minty didn’t care for, dry and tolerant, like someone talking to a naughty child, “I’ll put it in a bag for you.”
Downstairs again, Minty refused the proffered cup of tea and the alternative, a gin and tonic. “I’ve got to get home.”
Mr. Kroot was in his front garden and his sister was with him. She had a suitcase as if she’d just arrived. She wasn’t called Kroot but something else, she’d married someone about a hundred years ago. Minty didn’t look at them. She let herself into her house. The dress and jacket smelled of something. Stale scent mainly. There was a spot of grease on the jacket hem, a splash of fat maybe. She shuddered, glad Sonovia wasn’t there to ask if she was cold. All the pleasure she’d taken in the film had gone, driven away by what had happened since. She felt vulnerable, endangered. Going upstairs, she touched wood all the way, the banister bars that were cream-colored, the rail that was brown, the skirting board at the top that was pale pink. Auntie had liked variety in house decoration, and Minty was thankful for it. What would have become of her if all the woodwork had been white like in Sonovia’s place?
She ran a bath and got into the water holding the knife, she didn’t know why. Except that lying in the water with the knife in her hands, she felt safer than she did anywhere else. Jock’s ghost had never come into the bathroom, and it didn’t come in now. She washed her hair and lay in the water until it began to grow cool. She wrapped a towel round her body and another round her head while she dried the knife. Now there were three towels instead of two for the wash but she accepted that, all in the good cause of being spotless. Clean cotton trousers went on and a clean T-shirt. Before handling the contents of Sonovia’s bag, she put on a pair of Auntie’s black cotton gloves but she still held dress and jacket at arm’s length. She’d take them to Immacue on Monday and dry-clean them herself, put them through the luxury valet service. Leaving the dress in the spare room, well away from anywhere she might be, she took off the gloves and washed her hands.
It was the purest chance that Sonovia went into Immacue. Usually she took any clothes she and Laf needed cleaning to the place in Western Avenue, but he hadn’t been very pleased with the job they’d done on his dinner jacket, and for her part she’d not been amused by the crack the manager had made about the policeman’s ball.
Now he wanted his gray flannels and houndstooth check sports jacket cleaned. “Take them round to Minty’s place, why don’t you? Give it a go.”
At Immacue, clothes ready for collection were hung on a coat rack. The rack stood on the left-hand side of the shop and extended from behind the counter to the rear wall. When Sonovia entered there was no one about, so she waited a while, letting her gaze rove from the various aids to cleanliness on sale on the counter to the stacked shirts on the shelves on the right to the
coat rack on the left. She was about to give a discreet cough when she spotted the garment hanging at the very front of the rack. It was on a hanger with a Styrofoam collar and sheathed in transparent plastic, but still she had no difficulty recognizing her own blue dress and jacket. Angrily, Sonovia slammed her hand on the bell on the counter.
Josephine came out. “Sorry to keep you,” she said. “How may I help you?”
“By fetching Miss Knox, that’s how. I’ve got a bone to pick with her.”
Josephine shrugged. She went to the door at the back and called, “Minty!”
Sonovia was growing crosser by the second. When Minty came out she was standing there fuming, with her arms folded. “I’d just like to know who you think you are, Miss Araminta Knox, to be so fastidious. Borrowing a person’s clothes and then deciding they’re not clean enough for you. I suppose you had one of your famous baths after you’d tried them on. I’m surprised you’d keep them in the house, or did you put them out in the garden over Sunday?”
Minty didn’t say anything. She hadn’t thought of that, putting Sonovia’s dress out in the garden. It would have been a good idea. She advanced toward the coat rack and peered at the clothes through their plastic sheath.
“I call it a disgrace, considering how long we’ve known each other. The times you’ve enjoyed our hospitality! That you’d think I’d keep dirty clothes in my wardrobe, that’s what I can’t get over. Laf says I spend more on dry-cleaning than I do on food.”
“You don’t spend it in here,” said Josephine.
“I’ll thank you to keep out of this, Miss O’Sullivan. As for you, Minty, Laf and me were going to treat you to American Beauty tomorrow night and drinks after, no doubt, but we’ve changed our mind; we’ll be going on our own. Him and me might not be clean enough for you to sit next to.”
Sonovia, flouncing out, forgot to take her dress and jacket with her. Josephine looked at Minty and Minty looked at her, and Josephine burst out laughing. Minty couldn’t quite do that. But she was glad she could keep the dress. Sonovia might never want it back now and that meant she’d always have something to put on in case anyone else ever asked her to a wedding. She went back to her ironing.
Someone had once given Auntie a boxed set of stereo LPs of something called Porgy and Bess. Minty couldn’t remember why, a birthday maybe, but Auntie hadn’t anything to play them on even if she’d wanted to, so the records were as good as new. If Minty had been on speaking terms with Sonovia and Laf she could have asked their advice, they had a thing that played CDs, but she wasn’t, so that was out. In the end, she bought wrapping paper with wedding cakes and silver bells printed on it at the paper shop next to Immacue, wrapped up the LPs, and took them with her to Josephine’s wedding.
The dry cleaners didn’t open that Saturday morning. They put a notice in the window that said: Closed for Wedding of Proprietor. The marriage ceremony in the Ecumenical Church of Universal God the Mother, Harlesden High Street, was followed by a reception at the restaurant where Ken cooked, the Lotus Dragon. It was all very enjoyable with dancing and tambourine-playing in the church and a four-woman rock band, while a smiling green dragon, operated on the principle of a pantomime horse, cavorted in when lunch was in progress and made a speech in Cantonese. Minty had quite a good time, at least at the start. She’d hoped to secrete the bum bag with the knife in it under Sonovia’s blue dress, but the outline of it showed through and it looked funny. For some reason she expected Jock’s ghost to turn up. Once she’d seen the empty chair next to hers, she was sure of it.
“Why’s there no one sitting there?” she asked Josephine’s best friend from Willesden.
The best friend said Josephine’s mother was supposed to be coming over from Connemara but she’d had a fall yesterday and broken her ankle.
“They oughtn’t to leave that chair there,” said Minty but nobody took any notice.
Josephine said the empty chair reminded her of absent friends. She looked quite nice if a bit flashy in a scarlet chiffon salwar kameez and a big, black, ostrich-feather hat. Ken wore a gray morning coat and topper. There were red lilies all the way down the table and green dragons on the napkins.
They ate shrimp toast and spring rolls, followed by Peking duck. Even Minty ate it, she had to. During a long argument as to why not Beijing duck between the best friend from Willesden and Ken’s brother, who could speak quite good English, Jock’s ghost came in and sat in the chair next to Minty. He was dressed as she’d sometimes wanted him to be but had never seen him, in a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie with white spots.
“Sorry I’m late, Polo,” he said.
“Go away.”
He never answered her. He just started laughing, as if he were a real living person. She wouldn’t look at him, but she heard him whispering, “I went into the garden and met a great she-bear…”
Someone a long way down the table was taking photographs. While the flash blinded them, she picked up from the table the knife you were supposed to use if you couldn’t handle chopsticks. Holding it down by her thigh and between them, she thrust it upward into his side through the shirt. She expected blood, ghost blood that might be red like living people’s or might not, but there was none. Instead of vanishing speedily, he seemed to blur like a reflection shuddering when the water surface is disturbed, then to melt and trickle away. The chair beside her was empty once more.
So it worked. Even a blunt knife got rid of him. But would it be forever? She laid the knife back on the table. It was quite unmarked as if it had passed through no more than air. People were looking oddly at her. She managed a bright smile for the cameras. Dozens of them seemed to have appeared, flashing and snapping. Would the ghost show on the photographs? If it did, filling the empty chair, they were sure to put it in the Sunday papers.
Ken’s brother made a speech, and so did Josephine’s sister. More and more drinks came out. Minty thought it was time to leave, though no one else did. She’d seen a sign saying LADIES, so she followed the arrow, passed through a room where all the wedding presents were laid out on a table, though she couldn’t see hers, and escaped by the back door into a dirty yard. It took her quite a long time to find her way back into Harrow Road, and by the time she did she was shivering, frightened of running into Jock’s ghost.
Just as Laf and Sonovia had for years put their Mail through her letter box when they’d done with it, so Laf regularly popped round with the Evening Standard, the Mail on Sunday, and the Sunday Mirror. Only he hadn’t for the past two Sundays and Minty didn’t expect he would this week.
Next door, the Wilsons were arguing hotly over just this question. Both still in dressing gowns, lingering over a protracted breakfast of bagels, Danish pastries, and coffee, they failed to see eye to eye as to continuing their quarrel with Minty, or “sending her to Coventry,” as Sonovia called it.
“I don’t want you taking those papers in there this morning, my deah, and that’s that. I want them for Corinne. She’s stopped taking a Sunday paper and I’m sure your own daughter’s got more right than the woman next door.”
“And for another,” said Laf, “you want to keep up this row you’re having, though God knows why you do, with a poor girl who’s daft as a brush and doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.”
“I like ‘girl,’ I really do. Minty Knox is a mere nine years younger than I am, as you surely should know. As for ‘daft,’ she knows how to borrow a person’s clothes and accuse her of keeping a dirty home. And I’ll tell you something else, she’s enough sense to wear a money belt under her clothes. I saw it when she tried my dress on, a bag on a belt round her waist.”
“Well, good luck to her. It’s a pity more women don’t in a neighborhood like this. There wouldn’t be so many handbags snatched and muggings and all. As soon as I’ve got my things on, I’m going to take that page you want for Corinne out of the paper and pop the rest round to Minty. Bury the hatchet, that’s what I say.”
“If you do that, Se
rgeant Lafcadio Wilson, you can find someone else to cook your roast pork for Sunday lunch. I shall take myself round to Daniel and Lauren and my dear little granddaughter. So you’ve been warned.”
The more she thought about it, the more Minty wanted to see the Mail and the Mirror. No one would take all those photographs if they didn’t mean to get them in the papers and one of them might have Jock in it, must have, even if in shadowy or transparent form. It would be proof to show people, she thought vaguely, people like those Wilsons and maybe Josephine. When she’d stuck the knife into Jock she’d seen Josephine looking at her under that big black hat as if she were mad, an awful stare with her lip curled up.
When it got to half past midday and Laf still hadn’t come, Minty washed her hands, put her coat on, and went round to the paper shop, the one opposite the cemetery gates. There she bought three Sunday papers. Going home, she passed Laf and Sonovia’s gate and smelled the rich, savory aroma of roasting pork, inviting for others but enough to make Minty shudder. She dragged her thoughts away from the bubbling fat, the spitting crackling, and the browning potatoes-you could never get a roasting pan really clean-and went indoors and washed her hands. Maybe she’d have another bath in a minute.
That the papers contained no pictures of Josephine’s wedding, not only none of Jock taking his seat in the empty chair but none at all, was a bitter disappointment. Minty had to content herself with front-page photographs (and more inside) of someone called James Melcombe-Smith MP to a Ms. Zillah Leach. The bit of print underneath said,