The Death of Ruth (13 page)

‘He's not taking any more calls,' the girl said coldly. ‘Are you from the Press?' The girl cut me off.

The Press …? What had happened? Was there something about Ralph in the newspaper? I do not bother to read the papers any more, and John had never got around to replacing the television and radio. Had there been something about Ruth?

I had not replaced the telephone receiver and I watched
the black cord slide, like a snake, across my worn, faded nightdress.

The walls of the living room began to close in on me, and as they hit me on all sides, I called out, ‘Oh, God—poor Ralph! Poor Ralph!'

Molly's request for ice-cream was unexpected and it sent me scurrying to buy it. I also bought pipe tobacco and two evening newspapers and tucking them under my arm, I started the trek homewards.

Before reaching the corner of our street, I stumbled and the papers fell to the sidewalk. Picking them up I saw the headlines, and I walked back in the direction from which I had just come. On reaching a bus seat, I sat down and saw a photo of Ralph Moyston splashed on the front page. I thought it was a poor likeness of Ralph.

Beneath his photo was a luridly written account of the police calling Ralph in for questioning about the disappearance of his wife, ‘who' so the article read, ‘had disappeared from her home under mysterious circumstances.'

I read the trashy article through, disgusted by the over-exaggerated account of Ruth having left her home, and as I went on my way, I was even more convinced that Grey was mistaken in his suspicions about Ralph.

I decided not to take the papers home with me. Molly would be extremely upset if she read the article. She had always liked Ralph so much, and so had I. I still liked him, and I still believed in him. I sympathized with him and I hoped that the entire affair would just fizzle out and leave Ralph to make a life for himself with the woman he was living with. I thought him a fool to have made the mistake of applying for a marriage licence, but maybe the woman was pregnant. The thought occurred to me that—living or dead—Ruth Moyston would always be a drag on Ralph.

My amoral attitude startled me, and, dropping the newspapers
into the gutter, I hurried on home, only to discover Molly lying on the living room floor.

God! I had believed for several moments that she had died! Then, realizing that she had fainted and was out cold, I called the doctor. The fact that the telephone receiver was lying on the floor beside Molly had not registered with me at the time, but later, much later, I wondered who Molly had been trying to call.

The doctor! Perhaps she had been trying to call the doctor? I never found out. The doctor was seriously concerned and called for an ambulance to take Molly to the hospital. Whilst awaiting the ambulance, with a heavy heart I packed Molly's two frayed nightgowns into an old case, along with a few other necessities, and I spent that night waiting at the hospital.

Grey arrived about midnight and stayed with me for a few hours. He was extremely sympathetic. We spoke very little and he did not mention Ralph and neither did I. I asked about Jodie, and Grey said that she was completely broken up and that Rob was also deeply upset.

For a week I spent my days, and nights, between home, work and the hospital. I was in a peculiar state of deep depression and every moment I expected to hear that Molly had passed away, the doctor, from the beginning, had been gravely concerned about the condition of her heart. I did not like the doctor's attitude towards me. It was accusatory, rude, for he had decided that Molly was a neglected, browbeaten wife and that I was an unkind, callous husband.

On the sixth day, the head nurse approached me as I sat in the gloomy waiting room, saying sombrely, ‘You can see Mrs Blake now—if you wish.'

‘If I wish?' I stammered. ‘See her! Is she—?' I was sure that Molly must have passed away and to my shame I felt no emotion at all, then the nurse spoke even more sombrely, saying, ‘There has been a great improvement. It was unexpected. We are delighted, Mr Blake.'

I do not think that I was delighted but I was thankful.

I no longer have any love for my wife, but I do have a deep and abiding pity for her and there is nothing I would not do to help her live on for years, in, at least, a happier frame of mind than the one she has lived in for so long.

I have given up my job. I have some money put by, and I have confidence that somehow the property will be sold and there will be more than enough money to buy a new place, live on, reasonably, until I find a new job. When Molly is brought home from the hospital I will employ a woman to come in and care for her. Maybe I will even find work that will really interest me. I am not yet senile; I am forty-seven and my health is excellent.

My heart? My heart is heavy and devoid of any expectation of personal happiness.

Grey and I both agreed, that, in a way, it was a good thing having Molly in the hospital, but when she was able to sit up and take an interest in the life about her, then, Grey suggested, that I have her brought home as soon as permission could be obtained.

‘Get a nurse in your home, John,' he said firmly. ‘We don't want Mrs Blake hearing things. At home, you can keep any upsetting news that might arise from her until she is strong enough to deal with it.'

I agreed, not believing that any further upsetting news would arise. Grey asked me, curiously, why it was that both Molly and I thought so highly of Ralph Moyston. I told him that Ralph had always been a pleasant and a most self-effacing man and …

He shrugged and said that in his opinion we were certainly not good judges of character. We left it at that.

Molly is home, and a nurse comes in every day from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon. She is a pleasant woman, quite impersonal, and seems satisfied with the
conditions in our home, but to me the place has a cold, sad smell.

I have warned the nurse that no newspapers are to be given to Molly. All news about Ruth and Ralph has fizzled out just as I had expected.

Whilst Molly was in hospital the Moyston home and yard was gone over by detectives. They came into my house too and questioned me several times. I had no information to give them and at last we are being left in peace.

I went into the city one day, going to the Railway Hotel, but although Ralph was still registered there he had not been in. Following that visit I had attempted to reach him by telephone on several occasions but always failed to catch him. On those occasions I had left my name requesting that he should call me back but he had not bothered to call. I did not blame him, feeling that if I had been in his shoes I would not want to be troubled by people, who, in most cases, would be merely curious and even interfering.

I went to call on Jodie and for the first time in years, she spoke bitterly about her mother. She thinks always and only about her father, telling me that she had seen him on several occasions and saying, quite cheerfully, ‘Uncle John, Daddy is as cool as a cucumber! I met his girlfriend and she's real nice! Daddy deserves some happiness after the hell my mother put him through. Well, he was loving to me, even laughing and he told me not to worry even one jot about the stupid way the police are treating him. You know, like making him report to them and things like that.'

Jodie, like myself, had utter confidence in Ralph. However, it was not quite like that with her husband, Bill, or with young Rob. They seem fascinated by the situation and seem rather proud of the newspaper article about Ralph. Grey tells me that such attitudes are not unusual. Many people, he says, no matter what the circumstances, delight
in being connected with the news media, as though it gives them a mantle tinged with fame.

‘Haven't you ever noticed, John,' he grinned, ‘how people, especially women, doll themselves up when they appear as a witness in the Courts? They do, and it's a sick thing to see.'

Life has taken on a steady, dull routine. My only relaxation is taking long morning walks before Molly awakes.

The nurse comes, the nurse goes.

I give Molly her supper. I have my own, I wash the dishes and sit about the house until it is time to go to bed.

Whenever he is able to, Grey comes over and sometimes we play chess. I know that he is convinced of Ralph's guilt, but apart from a personal interest he is not involved in the case. I am thankful that he no longer brings the subject up with me, for I am sick and tired of the drawn-out, distasteful business. Ralph is no longer mentioned in the newspapers. A sensational double murder has occurred and the police, the press, and public, are full of it.

Molly is becoming stronger every day. I suppose that it is only in my imagination but I feel that she is trying to build herself up for something. There is a stubborn tenaciousness in the way she slowly chews at her food, as though determined to draw strength from it. We have become a strangely impersonal couple with no interests in common.

I am borrowing books from Grey, losing myself again in the world of reading and the monotony of my life is almost pleasing as I move through each day, suspended, without ambitions and without any thoughts other than those of living the day through and sleeping the night away.

Sometimes, Grey and I sit on canvas chairs in the back garden, by the kitchen door. The garden is beginning to take on a sadly neglected appearance with flowers withering away on their stalks, and weeds crowding up between
the shrubs. The grass is badly in need of attention.

No one but the nurse, the tradesmen, and Grey, sometimes, ever call to the house. But this morning one of the women from the apartment house came over to the dividing fence and called to me, asking if she could come in and pick a few flowers from the garden.

‘Go ahead,' I told her. ‘Pick as many and as often as you wish to.'

Molly is now able to walk about the house. She never gets herself fully dressed but wears a soft blue robe that I bought for her. Occasionally I have heard her moving about in the kitchen when Grey and I were in the garden, and I never bothered to check, to see what she was after, because she is really well enough now to do more than she is doing.

I leave her to herself, hoping that she will regain more confidence and eventually be less dependent and less of a drag on me.

I am pleased to be alive. God is merciful! I repeat again and again, God is merciful, because He is prolonging my life when the doctors had despaired of it. If I had died, I would not be alive to clear Ralph.

I have given up thinking of the hereafter. I have made up my mind not to dwell on thoughts like that, but to go on building up my strength, and then, to confess to Mr Grey that Ralph is innocent; entirely, utterly and completely innocent.

Young Nurse Phillips thinks of me as the ideal patient. With a determination that amazes me, I eat when she tells me to eat, struggling through plates of food that I do not want. I drink milk and swallow my pills and I suffer my vitamin injections with never a flinch. I allow my hair to be brushed and my nails to be cut. I suffer the agony of having a talcum powder sprinkled on my body, powder with a perfume that nauseates me, reminding me of the flowers I was forced to cultivate.

‘Don't you like this perfume?' Nurse Phillips queried solicitously, ‘Would you prefer violet? I—myself—adore this carnation.'

‘Me too,' I lied, ‘I adore it. I adore this carnation perfume.'

When she, Nurse Phillips, had been with me for several weeks I began to encourage her to talk about herself. She talked about herself and about nothing else from that time on. It surprised me that a young woman with such a simple past, present, and, I imagine, future, could find such interest in her own doings and likes and dislikes. There is no end to them. She is utterly fascinated with herself.

I began to listen, not to what she was saying but to the soothing tone of her voice. I think she enjoys being my nurse. In the weeks she has been with me I have made only one request, and of course, when I eventually made it, she felt, as I had planned, that she could not refuse me, saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess I can manage that for you, Mrs Blake. I don't see why not. My father, you know, I told you how my Dad can never bear to throw anything away, well, I'm sure we have all the newspapers from way back piled up in his workshop. You know, I told you about Dad's workshop.'

The following day she brought me the newspapers that I had asked for.

‘Please put them in the bottom drawer of my dresser, Nurse,' I requested. ‘I shall read them later on, I don't want Mr Blake to know that you've brought them. You'll remember that, won't you?'

‘Oh, sure,' she replied, and went on to tell me of the young man she had met at a friend's house and how he, Peter, had called her and how she was going to the theatre with him. ‘We are going to a restaurant first, then on to the show.'

As she babbled on I had a feeling that the story she was telling me was one that I had heard before. As her voice droned on I closed my eyes. I knew she was anxious to leave so that she could put her hair in rollers, beautify herself for her big date, so when I suggested that she leave an hour earlier she was off and away almost before I had finished speaking to her.

Now, there was only John to manage. I knew that it was useless to ask John to leave the house because he no longer had any confidence in my word since discovering me lying unconscious on the floor. It is strange that he has never asked me why I had used the telephone that day. Maybe I
had
put the receiver back. I must have done so. My memory is hazy about that time.

Although I was quite desperately wanting to read those newspapers I knew there was nothing to do but wait until night. When at long last John was in bed and asleep I got up, closed my door and I took those newspapers out of the drawer. Nurse Phillips, for all her shortcomings, is efficient. She had brought the editions I wanted so much.

There was only one edition that was important. Ralph's photograph was splashed on its front page …