Authors: Ruth Rendell
The Bridesmaid
The Bridesmaid
Ruth Rendell
For Don
Contents
Violent death fascinates people. It upset Philip. He had a phobia about it. Or that was what he called it to himself sometimes, a phobia for murder and all forms of killing, the wanton destruction of life in war, and its senseless destruction in accidents. Violence was repellant—in reality, on the screen, in books. He had felt like this for years, since he was a small child and other children pointed toy guns and played at death. When it had begun or what began it he didn’t know. A curious thing was that he wasn’t cowardly or squeamish, he was no more nor less frightened by it than anyone else. It was rather that unnatural death neither entertained him nor exercised a goulish attraction. His reaction was to shy away from it in whatever form it might be presented to him.
He knew this was unusual. He hid his phobia, or tried to hide it. When the others watched television, he watched it with them and he didn’t close his eyes. He had never got into the way of denouncing newspapers or novels. But the others knew and had no particular respect for his feelings. It didn’t stop them talking about Rebecca Neave.
Left to himself, Philip would have taken no interest in her disappearance, still less speculated about her. He would have turned off the set. Of course, he would probably have turned it off ten minutes before and avoided Northern Ireland, Iran, Angola, and a train crash in France as well as a missing girl. He would never have looked at the photograph of her pretty face, the smiling mouth and eyes screwed up against the sun, the hair blown by the wind.
Rebecca disappeared at about three on an autumn afternoon. Her sister spoke to her on the phone on Wednesday morning, and a man who was a friend of hers, a new friend who had been out with her just four times, phoned her at lunchtime on that day. That was the last time her voice was heard. A neighbor saw her leave the block of flats where she lived. She was wearing a bright green velvet tracksuit and white running shoes. That was the last anyone saw of her.
Fee said, when the girl’s face appeared on screen, “I was at school with her. I thought I knew the name. Rebecca Neave. I thought I’d heard it before.”
“I’ve never heard it. You’ve never had a friend called Rebecca.”
“She wasn’t a friend, Cheryl. There were three thousand of us at that school. I don’t suppose I even spoke to her.” Fee was staring intently at the screen while her brother made as conscious an effort not to look. He had picked up the newspaper and turned to an inside page where the Rebecca Neave story had not penetrated. “They must think she’s been murdered,” Fee said.
Rebecca’s mother appeared and made an appeal for news of her missing daughter. Rebecca was twenty-three. Her job was teaching ceramics to adult classes, but needing to supplement her income, she advertised her services as a baby-sitter and house-sitter. It seemed possible that someone had phoned in answer to her advertisement. Rebecca had made an appointment for that evening—and kept it. Or that was what her mother believed.
“Oh, the poor woman,” said Christine, coming in with coffee on a tray. “What she must be going through. I can just imagine how I’d feel if it was one of you.”
“Well, it’s not likely to be me,” said Philip, who was well-built though thin, and six feet two. He looked at his sisters. “Can I turn this off now?”
“You’re so squeamish. You can’t stand anything like that, can you?” Cheryl had a ferocious scowl she seldom bothered to restrain. “She may not have been murdered. Hundreds of people go missing every year.”
“There’ll be more to it than we know,” Fee said. “They wouldn’t make all this fuss if she’d just gone off. It’s funny, I remember her being in the same crafts group as I was for O Levels. They said she wanted to go on and be a teacher, and the rest of them thought it was funny because all they wanted was to get married. Go on, turn it off, Phil, if you want. There isn’t going to be any more about Rebecca anyway.”
“Why can’t they put nice things on the news?” said Christine. “You’d think they would be just as sensational. It can’t be that there aren’t any nice things, can it?”
“Disasters are news,” said Philip. “But it might be an idea to try your kind for a change. They could have a list of today’s rescues, all the people saved from drowning, all those who’d been in car crashes and didn’t get killed.” He added, on a more sombre note, “A list of kids who haven’t been abused and girls who’ve got away from attackers.”
He switched off the set. There was a positive pleasure in seeing the picture dwindle and swiftly vanish. Fee hadn’t gloated over Rebecca Neave’s disappearance, but speculation about it obviously interested her far more than discussing one of Christine’s “nice things” would have. He made a rather artificial effort to talk about something else.
“What time are we all supposed to be going out tomorrow?”
“That’s right, change the subject. That’s so like you, Phil.”
“He said to be there by about six.” Christine looked rather shyly at the girls and then back to Philip. “I want you all to come out into the garden a minute. Will you? I want to ask your advice.”
It was a small, bleak garden, best at this time of the day when the sun was setting and the shadows were long. A row of Leyland cypresses prevented the neighbours from seeing over the fence at the end. In the middle of the grass was a circular slab of concrete and on the concrete stood a birdbath and a statue, side by side. There was no moss growing on the concrete but weeds pushed their way through a split under the birdbath. Christine laid her hand on the statue’s head and gave it a little stroke in the way she might have caressed a child. She looked at her children in that apprehensive way she had, half-diffident, half-daring.
“What would you say if I said I’d like to give Flora to him for a present?”
Fee seldom hesitated, was invariably strong. “You can’t give people statues as present.”
“Why not, if they like them?” Christine had said. “He said he liked her and she’d look nice in his garden. He said she reminded him of me.”
Fee said, as if their mother hadn’t spoken, “You give people chocolates or a bottle of wine.”
“He brought me wine.” Christine said this in a wondering and gratified tone, as if taking a bottle of wine to the house of a woman you were having dinner with was exceptionally thoughtful and generous. She moved her hand along Flora’s marble shoulder. “She’s always reminded me of a bridesmaid. It’s the flowers, I expect.”
Philip had never looked closely at the marble girl before. Flora was just the statue which had stood by the pond in their garden at home ever since he could remember. His father, he had been told, had bought her while he and Christine were on their honeymoon. She stood about three feet high and was a copy in miniature of a Roman statue. In her left hand she held a sheaf of flowers; with the other she reached for the hem of her robe, lifting it away from her right ankle. Both her feet were on the ground yet she seemed to be walking or dancing some sedate measure. But it was her face which was particularly beautiful. Looking at her, Philip realised that generally he didn’t find the faces of ancient Greek or Roman statues attractive. Their heavy jaws and long, bridgeless noses gave them a forbidding look. Standards of beauty had changed perhaps. Or else it was something more delicate that appealed to him. But Flora’s face was how a beautiful living girl’s might be today—the cheekbones high, the chin round, the upper lip short, and the mouth the loveliest conjunction of tenderly folded lips. It was like a living girl’s but for the eyes. Flora’s eyes, extremely wide apart, seemed to gaze at far horizons with an expression remote and pagan.
“I’ve thought for ages she was wasted here,” said Christine. “She looks
silly.
Well, what I really mean is, she makes the rest of it look silly.”
It was true. The statue was too good for her surroundings. “Like putting champagne in a plastic cup,” said Philip.
“That’s it exactly.”
“You can give her away if you want to,” Cheryl said. “She’s yours. She’s not ours. Dad gave her to you.”
“I think of all the things as being ours,” Christine said, and then, “He’s got a lovely garden, he says. I think I’d feel better about Flora if I knew she was in her proper setting. Do you know what I mean?”
She looked at Philip. No amount of proselytising on the part of her daughters could persuade her of the equality of the sexes, no pressure from newspapers, magazines, or television convince her. Her husband was dead, so she looked to her son—not to her eldest child—for decisions, rulings, counsel.
“We’ll take her with us tomorrow,” Philip said.
It didn’t seem so very important at the time. Why should it? It didn’t seem one of those life or death decisions like whether or not to marry, have a child, change a career, have or not have the vital surgery. Yet it was as significant as any of those. Of course, it was to be a long time before he thought of it in those terms.
He tested Flora’s weight, lifting her up an inch or two. She was as heavy as he had expected. He suddenly found himself thinking of Flora as a symbol of his mother, who had come to his father on his marriage and was now to be passed on to Gerard Arnham. Did that mean Christine was contemplating marrying him? They had met the previous Christmas at Philip’s uncle’s office party, and it had been a slow courtship, if courtship it was. That might in part have been due to the fact that Arnham was always going abroad for his company. Arnham had only once been to his house, as far as Philip knew. Now they were going to meet him. That made it seem as if things were taking a more serious turn.
His mother said, “I don’t think we’d better take Hardy.” The little dog, the Jack Russell that Christine had named after Hardy Amies because she liked the clothes he designed, had come into the garden and stood close beside her. She bent down and patted his head. “He doesn’t like dogs. I don’t mean he’d be cruel to them or anything.” She spoke as if an antipathy to dogs often implied a willingness to torture them. “He just doesn’t care for them much. I could tell he didn’t like Hardy that evening he was here.”
Philip went back into the house and Fee said, “Seeing Flora reminded me Rebecca Neave once made a girl’s head.”
“What do you mean, ‘made a girl’s head?’”
“At school. In pottery. She made it in clay. It was life-size. The teacher made her break it up— she wouldn’t have it put in the kiln because we were supposed to be making pots. And, just imagine, she may be lying dead somewhere now.”
“I’d rather not imagine, thanks. I’m not fascinated by these things the way you are.”
