Read Online The Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell - Free Book Online
Authors: Ruth Rendell
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and was sure he was ill again, was dying, then the nine-month report and the twelve-month came simultaneously. Oliver continued well. She kept the updates away from Alistair but inadvertently let out that Oliver was thriving.
Alistair claimed to have seen a decline in her own health since the donation and a fading of her looks. She told him she was perfectly well, she looked just the same. Her grandmother, in spite of earlier opposition, had remarked on her appearance. Perhaps it was bringing Frederica into it that had set him off. He had taken hold of her by the shoulders.
“You need some sense shaken into you,” he had said, and had proceeded to shake her, gently at first, then with a kind of frenzy. She had fallen against a table, dislodging a glass vase, which had broken and cut her leg. He had had to take her to the hospital, to the emergency room, and when her leg had been stitched and strapped up, had wept all over her, bemoaning the loss of her beauty, the draining away of her “life-blood.”
“Why did you make that stupid sacrifice? Why did you destroyyour health and your looks? Now you can see what it’s led to.”
It was the beginning of the end. Some of the worst of it for Mary was the realization of her own poor judgment. How could she have loved him or even have thought she loved him? Why hadn’t she detected this behavior in him before? And then there came back to her the slight unease she had always felt when he seemed to judge people by their physical appearance. She met his mother and found this aging woman doing the same thing. Like Sir Walter Elliot in
Persuasion
, Marina Winter remarked constantly on the propensity of those around her “to lose something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young,” and made irrelevant comments on “freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist.”
Discovering where this trait in Alistair had come from went some way to excusing it in Mary’s eyes, but later on she came to wonder how it would be if they stayed together and when she too aged and began to lose her looks. Would he call her a dog as she had once or twice been shocked to hear him describe an older woman? Would everything else she was, her closeness to him, the sexual life they enjoyed, the gentle tranquillity she knew was hers, her skills as a crafts-woman, would all this go for nothing when lines came on her face and gravity pulled her earthward?
She had found out sooner than she expected. He punished physical diminution, not with words but with blows. Remembering, she felt the blood mount into the cheek where he had struck her. She felt it settle there and burn the skin.
5
W ith Gushi in her lap, Frederica Jago said, “Where will you go when the Blackburn-Norrises come back?” And without waiting for an answer, “Come back and live with me.”
Mary laughed. “That’s a rash invitation. I might take you up on it.”
“It’s your home, my dear. Where else would it be natural for you to go?”
“To a place of my own.”
“Of course my house is much bigger, but it’s not in the same league as this one. But what is, when you come to think of it? Still, you would have the run of it and you’d often have it to yourself. You know I’m always away.”
It was true. While Mrs. Jago’s husband was alive they had never set foot west of Cornwall or east of Suffolk, for Lucian Jago had a fear of flying and a tendency to seasickness. Since his death and Mary’s departure, if she had not wandered the earth, she had taken every available package tour, to India, to Tashkent and Samarkand, the rose-red city of Petra, up the Yangtse and down the Nile, California, New England. Lately, as she passed eighty, she had restricted her traveling to Europe, forsaking the travel agent’s recommendation and visiting out-of-the-way places.
She was a small, thin, pretty woman, bird-faced with a crest of white wavy hair and her granddaughter’s green eyes, and indeedvery much as
Alistair claimed to have seen a decline in her own health since the donation and a fading of her looks. She told him she was perfectly well, she looked just the same. Her grandmother, in spite of earlier opposition, had remarked on her appearance. Perhaps it was bringing Frederica into it that had set him off. He had taken hold of her by the shoulders.
“You need some sense shaken into you,” he had said, and had proceeded to shake her, gently at first, then with a kind of frenzy. She had fallen against a table, dislodging a glass vase, which had broken and cut her leg. He had had to take her to the hospital, to the emergency room, and when her leg had been stitched and strapped up, had wept all over her, bemoaning the loss of her beauty, the draining away of her “life-blood.”
“Why did you make that stupid sacrifice? Why did you destroyyour health and your looks? Now you can see what it’s led to.”
It was the beginning of the end. Some of the worst of it for Mary was the realization of her own poor judgment. How could she have loved him or even have thought she loved him? Why hadn’t she detected this behavior in him before? And then there came back to her the slight unease she had always felt when he seemed to judge people by their physical appearance. She met his mother and found this aging woman doing the same thing. Like Sir Walter Elliot in
Persuasion
, Marina Winter remarked constantly on the propensity of those around her “to lose something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young,” and made irrelevant comments on “freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist.”
Discovering where this trait in Alistair had come from went some way to excusing it in Mary’s eyes, but later on she came to wonder how it would be if they stayed together and when she too aged and began to lose her looks. Would he call her a dog as she had once or twice been shocked to hear him describe an older woman? Would everything else she was, her closeness to him, the sexual life they enjoyed, the gentle tranquillity she knew was hers, her skills as a crafts-woman, would all this go for nothing when lines came on her face and gravity pulled her earthward?
She had found out sooner than she expected. He punished physical diminution, not with words but with blows. Remembering, she felt the blood mount into the cheek where he had struck her. She felt it settle there and burn the skin.
5
W ith Gushi in her lap, Frederica Jago said, “Where will you go when the Blackburn-Norrises come back?” And without waiting for an answer, “Come back and live with me.”
Mary laughed. “That’s a rash invitation. I might take you up on it.”
“It’s your home, my dear. Where else would it be natural for you to go?”
“To a place of my own.”
“Of course my house is much bigger, but it’s not in the same league as this one. But what is, when you come to think of it? Still, you would have the run of it and you’d often have it to yourself. You know I’m always away.”
It was true. While Mrs. Jago’s husband was alive they had never set foot west of Cornwall or east of Suffolk, for Lucian Jago had a fear of flying and a tendency to seasickness. Since his death and Mary’s departure, if she had not wandered the earth, she had taken every available package tour, to India, to Tashkent and Samarkand, the rose-red city of Petra, up the Yangtse and down the Nile, California, New England. Lately, as she passed eighty, she had restricted her traveling to Europe, forsaking the travel agent’s recommendation and visiting out-of-the-way places.
She was a small, thin, pretty woman, bird-faced with a crest of white wavy hair and her granddaughter’s green eyes, and indeedvery much as
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