The Fever Tree and Other Stories by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online

still holding the cigarette box, and now he closed its lid, feeling the coolness of the onyx on his fingertips.
    She had gone white. ‘Just to get your things? Maurice, did you come back just for that?’
    â€˜They are my things,’ he said evenly.
    â€˜You could have sent someone else. Even if you’d written to me and asked me to do it –’
    â€˜I never write letters,’ he said.
    She moved then. She made a little fluttering with her hand in front of her mouth. ‘As if I didn’t know!’ She gasped, and making a great effort she steadied her voice. ‘You were in Australia for a year, a whole year, and you never wrote to me once.’
    â€˜I phoned’.
    â€˜Yes, twice. The first time to say you loved me and missed me and were longing to come back to me and would I wait for you and there wasn’t anyone else was there? And the second time, a week ago, to say you’d be here by Saturday and could I – could I put you up. My God, I’d lived with you for two years, we were practically married, and then you phone and ask if I could put you up!’
    â€˜Words,’ he said. ‘How would you have put it?’
    â€˜For one thing, I’d have mentioned Patricia. Oh, yes, I’d have mentioned her. I’d have had the decency, the common humanity, for that. D’you know what I thought when you said you were coming? I ought to know by now how peculiar he is, I thought, how detached, not writing or phoning or anything. But that’s Maurice, that’s the man I love, and he’s coming back to me and we’ll get married and I’m so happy!’
    â€˜I did tell you about Patricia’.
    â€˜Not until after you’d made love to me first.’
    He winced. It had been a mistake, that. Of course he hadn’t meant to touch her beyond the requisite greeting kiss. But she was very attractive and he was used to her and she seemed to expect it – and oh, what the hell. Women never could understand about men and sex. And there was only one bed, wasn’t there? A hell of a scene there’d have been that first night if he’d suggested sleeping on the sofa in here.
    â€˜You made love to me,’ she said. ‘You were so passionate, it was just like it used to be, and then the next morning you told me. You’d got a resident’s permit to stay in Australia, you’d got a job all fixed up, you’d met a girl you wanted to marry. Just like that you told me, over breakfast. Have you ever been smashed in the face, Maurice? Have you ever had your dreams trodden on?’
    â€˜Would you rather I’d waited longer? As for being smashed in the face – ‘ he rubbed his cheekbone ‘ – that’s quite a punch you pack.’
    She shuddered. She got up and began slowly and stiffly to pace the room. ‘I hardly touched you. I wish I’d killed you!’ By a small table she stopped. There was a china figurine on it, a bronze paperknife, an onyx pen jar that matched the ashtray. ‘All those things,’ she said. ‘I looked after them for you. I treasured them. And now you’re going to have them all shipped out to her. The things we lived with. I used to look at them and think, Maurice bought that when we went to – oh God, I can’t believe it. Sent to her!’
    He nodded, staring at her. ‘You can keep the big stuff,’ he said. ‘You’re specially welcome to the sofa. I’ve tried sleeping on it for two nights and I never want to see the bloody thing again.’
    She picked up the china figurine and hurled it at him. It didn’t hit him because he ducked and let it smash against the wall, just missing a framed drawing. ‘Mind the Lowry,’ he said laconically, ‘I paid a lot of money for that.’
    She flung herself onto the sofa and burst into sobs. She thrashed about, hammering the cushions with her fists. He wasn’t going to be