Read Online Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online
Authors: Ruth Rendell
Tags: Fiction
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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
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
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