The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell Read Free Book Online Page B

and, apart from the occasional foray into St John the Divine, she was quiet and dull and staring. The dosage had been carefully administered on Christmas morning well before Ismay and Heather came upstairs with bags full of presents and food, for Beatrix hadn’t cookedanything for years and Pamela called herself an expert in microwaving ready meals.
    They had only been there five minutes when Edmund phoned. Ismay, unloading everything in the kitchen, a large glass of Sauvignon already beside her, heard Heather whispering, then laughing, then saying, ‘Me too.’ This obvious response to a declaration of love was quite unlike her sister, or unlike how she used to be. Ismay knew she ought to be pleased for Heather and she was in one way. As far as she knew, her sister had never before had a happy love affair, one which wasn’t a case of one loving and the other permitting the loving, but mutual pleasure and happiness. It was developing in just the way these things did when they were going to lead to engagement and marriage. And then … ?
    In the living room Beatrix sat under the influence of a calming drug, a drowsy skeleton with shoulder-length grey hair and staring pale eyes, dressed in the kind of robes worn by Dürer’s
Melancholia
. She never drank alcohol, never seemed to want to, which was a blessing as it might have reacted with the drug. She was a prey to obsessions, the present one being gum chewing.
    Pamela fought a losing battle with the dropped and squashed gum circles on the floor, scraping away from time to time with a blunt knife. She looked the way Beatrix might have looked if Heather hadn’t gone into the bathroom that day or perhaps if she had never married Guy in the first place. She was an upright, well-built woman with a young face and white hair discreetly tinted blonde, and alone since Michael’s departure, she made no secret of the fact that she wanted a lover. ‘I don’t mean a partner,’ she said to her nieces. ‘That wouldn’t be possible, not with Beatrix the way she is.’ And, seeing Ismay’s stricken look, ‘I’m perfectly happy living here with Beatrix. It’s fine. I don’tthink I want to live with a man on a permanent basis but I – well, I would like someone.’
    An industrious accountant, modern technology had made it possible for her to work from home and she had enough clients for her needs. An aunt to her nieces when they were children, she had become a friend almost as if she were their contemporary. She got down on her knees and began scraping blackened gum off the floor. ‘It’s as bad as the pavement in Bedford Hill down here,’ she said and laughed. Beatrix’s only sign that she had heard was a shifting of the handbag on her lap.
    Heather came back into the room, looking pleased and happy. ‘I told him to ring off,’ she said. ‘I thought Andrew might be trying to get you.’
    Pamela, who knew nothing about what had happened twelve years before, asked Heather whom she had been talking to. Always calm and self-possessed, Heather said, ‘A friend.’
    â€˜A boyfriend?’
    â€˜Well, yes. There’s a difference, isn’t there?’
    â€˜A big difference,’ said Pamela. ‘I envy you.’
    The meal eaten on 25 December, whether at one p.m. or two or four, is always called dinner and never lunch. The turkey was pre-cooked by Heather, the potatoes ready peeled by Heather and the Brussels sprouts cleaned and washed. The bread sauce she had made at home the night before. Pamela, balked of going through the
Spectator
’s dating columns, drank a bottle of wine entirely to herself. Beatrix picked at her food, remarked that an angel had told her not to eat sprouts because, though they were like unto an emerald, they came from the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.
    The Queen’s broadcast was listened to at Beatrix’s insistence, not