The Death of Ruth (11 page)

‘“Mummy …” Jodie cut into her story, “ …Mummy is a darling but she was awfully strict in some ways. Like, she wouldn't let me use lipstick and she made all my dresses herself and not very well at that! Well, Mr Grey, anyway, Daddy took me shopping. It was wonderful and good fun but I was a bit surprised about the expensive things he let me choose, and a bit worried too, about how when Mummy came home she might blame
me
. But I didn't say anything because Daddy and I were so happy that day, and we got some nice things for Rob too, and it's a bit queer but I never thought about that money till a few days ago …”'

Grey had broken off to light a cigarette, then he took up his story again, saying that he had asked Jodie to continue, and she had done so in a puzzled voice, saying,' “Mr Grey.
that day we went shopping, Daddy had a pocket stuffed full of money. Not like the money he always kept in his wallet, but rolled into tight bundles the way my mother kept money in
her
wallet. It's a long time ago, but I'm sure I never thought it queer then—but, about three months ago, just before Daddy went off on his vacation, he left the suit he had worn that day because it was old and shabby and he had never worn it again after our shopping spree. He told me to give the suit away, along with some other old junk.

‘“Well, I forgot to do as he had asked, but a few days back I remembered, and before I packed the suit and things into a carton, I went through the pockets of the suit and I found an old red plastic wallet. It was Mum's wallet, and it was empty. I felt—well—I felt a bit queer—you know—seeing something of Mum's. I'm sure Dad will be able to explain everything. Really, Mr Grey, that was what made me blow off steam tonight at Uncle John's. I just couldn't believe that Mum would go off leaving the money she had gone to such trouble and through so many fights with Dad, to save.”'

Grey had gone on, saying, ‘Then John, Jodie threw me one of those cute smiles, saying, “Mr Grey, I don't really think Mum is dead. I was just upset, you know—the baby so new and all—and seeing the wallet.”'

Grey had talked on, telling me that after he dropped Jodie off he had driven away with his mind buzzing and perturbed.

My own mind buzzed and I also was perturbed, so perturbed that I forgot to pick up Molly's all-important medication, and during the night—a night during which I lay awake tossing and restless—I was aware that Molly also lay sleepless, I heard her tossing and turning and I knew that I should at least offer to take warm milk to her, but my thoughts upset and disturbed me. I began to fantasize—most atrociously—about the possibility of Ralph
having killed his wife. Try as I would I could not get off to sleep, and in the morning I got up, showered, dressed and left the house much earlier than was my wont and without even bothering to take Molly a cup of tea.

This evening, before coming home, I dropped into the library, at first not really understanding why. Not to pick up a new book, but perhaps to delay my homecoming, or just for the utter quiet of the place. Then, I saw Lorraine and I knew why I had gone to the library.

I knew that I was in love with her. Deeply in love!

It was as though a dam had burst in my mind and my heart. I knew that I had never known the meaning of love. I was shattered and just as I was about to move away, Lorraine had glanced up, our eyes met and I knew that I not only loved but that I was loved.

‘Lorraine …' I moved to her side and as I was about to take her hand in mine, I remembered Molly. I hesitated. I heard Lorraine gasp, softly, in puzzlement and I walked away.

My eyes were blurred and my chest and my throat ached as never before in all the years of my life. I knew that I would never call at the library again. I would parcel up the
Shakuntala
, mail it back to the library.

Life stretched ahead, dismally, and as I reached the familiar corner of our street the problem of Ruth Moyston hit at me with a foreboding force. I had completely forgotten about Ralph too. Lost in the welter of my own emotions, I wanted nothing more than to be alone, to lick my wounds in private.

Last night, insomnia returned to be my sadistic bed-partner, and John had already left the house this morning when I struggled wearily from bed and limped to his room. He had never left for work so early, and never without saying goodbye to me.

I sat on the edge of his neatly made bed. I had wanted to ask him to buy some sleeping pills for me. I knew that I must have them. Never again would I endure another sleepless night. During the long night, I had relived every minute of the past four years, not only once but again and again, I relived it all.

Jodie's anguished weeping … Ruth's figure, turning to face me, the wild, twisted hatred on her face … the menace of her raised arm. The dull thud of her head on the tiled floor. The blood …

The shock of Ralph returning home, of seeing Ralph standing at Ruth's bedroom door.

On and on, and I knew that I must have sedatives. I
must
sleep to be able to face that which lies ahead of me. I would beg the doctor, if necessary. If he were an intelligent, clever doctor, he would have prescribed a sedative for me.

I felt an irreparable sorrow that God's grace was not, after all, being shown to me, and I began to fear death again.

I dressed myself. I made tea and carried it into John's small bedroom. I felt a desperate need for comfort, and in the room where his pipes, his books, his clothes were, I did receive some comfort, and my heart was filled with love for John, for his dearness and his goodness, and I lay on his bed and wept. I wept so much that his pillow became damp. I
turned it over and the other side of the pillow also became wet with my tears. I wept because I knew that if I had confided in John from the start, somehow, he would have taken charge. I would have had him behind and beside me, all the way.

After a time, my weeping ceased and I lay dry-eyed. The hours dragged by wearily and the sounds of the neighbourhood seemed to come from another world, and had no meaning to me and instead of the precise, cool, forward-looking mind that I had begun to see as my strength, my mind blurred and dipped and sprang from thought to thought and from memory to memory, and my head began to ache so badly that at times small mewing sounds of anguish escaped from my lips. I despised my weakness but I could not stop those sounds; they were as much beyond my control as an attack of the hiccoughs.

The men on the building site knocked off work and the neighbourhood became deadly quiet. My mewing sounds ceased and I crept from John's room into my own bedroom. I caught sight of myself in the mirror, old and ugly. So old and ugly …

I showered, I dressed myself carefully. I brushed my hair for a long time and pinned it neatly. I wanted to look as nice as was possible for John so I used the bright red lipstick he had bought me and I rubbed a little of it on to either cheek. Then once more I examined myself in the mirror and a garish old clown gazed back. I turned away in disgust and with great shame, for I heard John's footsteps approaching the front door.

He had come home a little later than usual. I did not want him to see my ghastly painted face. His footsteps came slowly up the path; they were much slower than usual and I was glad, because it gave me time to wipe the lipstick from my cheeks and lips. I did, but the lipstick smudged and looked worse than ever; then—before I could set it right—John
was already in the house and we encountered each other, face to face, in the hallway.

‘Hello, Molly,' he said, flatly, and he went into his room and shut the door.

I knew that he shut the door because he could not bear the sight of me—the old clown—and as I crept along the hallway, covering my smudged, reddened mouth with both of my calloused hands, those little mewing sounds began again.

I went out into the garden—and like an arrow to its target—straight to the rock-garden, where I stood, staring down at the medley of colour, at the flowers and the leaves, the delicate ferns, and my eyes pierced through them, to the soil beneath and further, further down …

I covered my eyes but that did not hide what I saw. Not Ruth, not Ruth Moyston's decomposed body, but myself—lying there, staring up.

If only John had not been at home. It was not fair to him, and more—much more—it was not fair to me that my husband should have heard the long, dreadful cat-like yowl that the mewing sounds developed into and knowing that John must have heard, I flung my arms towards the evening sky and I yowled again, in shame and agony, then I saw John come running from the house towards me …

The four weeks that went by after Molly's breakdown dragged wearily. Seeming more like three months than one. I felt that I could not do enough to care for my wife, to try and make up for the unfeeling way I had treated her that evening.

On hearing those frightful animal-like howls coming from the rock-garden I stood as though frozen in my bedroom. What was
making
that sound? There was no human element in the weird call then, at the second spine-chilling howl I ran from the house. Grey arrived at the rock-garden simultaneously with me. It was Grey who gathered Molly into his arms and carried her to the bedroom. I walked beside him, fearful and pitying, as I listened to my wife's stumbling, pathetic little tale of how she had ‘tried so hard to look nice for John …'

‘ …Brushed and brushed and brushed my hair and brushed … the lipstick was too bright … made me such a clown … so ugly … ugly …

‘John, poor John. I am so ugly, so …'

Grey placed Molly on her unmade bed and held her work-worn hands in his. His voice was as gentle as his manner as he told Molly that she was one of the nicest women he had ever known. ‘One of the nicest!' he repeated firmly and as he threw a dagger-like look at me, I attempted to take Molly's hands in mine but she hid them beneath her armpits, whispering sanely, and so quietly that we could scarcely hear her, ‘Please! Please—may I be alone?'

Grey nodded and tucked the blanket about her and
taking my arm he steered me from the room. ‘Poor woman,' he said. ‘Poor little thing.' He advised me to call the doctor, at once.

When the doctor arrived he gave Molly an injection, to make her sleep, and then he rounded on me, accusing me of going against his orders by neglecting to give Molly the sedative he had prescribed. I apologized, saying that I had not realized how ill my wife was. Then I suggested that maybe Molly should be in a hospital for treatment.

The doctor replied, saying that he wanted no new pressures, no new upsets for his patient, and that for the time being she must relax, stay in bed but he most definitely wanted a nurse installed in the house, and he had advised, saying, ‘I want Mrs Blake to know that she is now receiving sedation.'

I was relieved when the nurse finally left. For one month she ruled the roost and complained about the lack of modern appliances in the home, declaring waspishly, ‘No wonder poor little Mrs Blake has broken down. Nothing works in this house, even your vacuum cleaner doesn't work. Mr Blake, aren't you aware of the help other women have in their homes?'

She had gone on and on, day after day, and I had put up with her for Molly's sake. The day she left Molly sat in the living room. She refused to allow me to turn her chair to face the window.

‘But,' I suggested gently, ‘You could see your garden. You love the garden.'

‘No. Please, no, John,' she whispered.

Molly has become a wisp of a woman, her eyes are melancholy and it actually hurts me to look at her, and I feel that she prefers to be alone, so I went off to see Grey who is now installed in his new home.

Before entering the now completed apartment building, looking at the shabbiness of my own home, at the desolated
emptiness of the Moystons' house, I was unable to prevent a degree of spleen rising up in me against Molly. Then—what the hell—I thought, and then I faced the fact that my spleen had nothing to do with property. The truth was that I was painfully and deeply in love and unable to do a thing about it.

Grey is inordinately proud of his new home and I complimented him on his excellent taste. Although we are good friends I had never asked about his private life and when, rather abruptly, I asked, ‘Grey, have you ever thought about getting married?' he grinned, saying, ‘Tried it once, John! Didn't like it!'

Actually, I had gone over to see him hoping for a game of chess, but when I suggested that we get the chess men out Grey had hesitated, then said that he was waiting on an important telephone call, which I took to mean that it was time to make myself scarce; also, I realized, it could be unwise to leave Molly alone for too long a period.

Once back home, I could not settle down and my restlessness made Molly nervous. Every time our eyes met we looked away from one another, almost furtively, and when we spoke it was as though we were strangers.

‘Would you like another coffee, Molly?'

‘No. No, thank you, John.'

‘John, why don't you read?'

‘Read? Oh, I have nothing to read.'

I repeated that I had nothing to read and Molly asked me if I had given up going to the library. If there was one place in the world I did not want to be reminded of it was the library. ‘No,' I said, ‘I just haven't been there lately.'

After a slight pause, Molly said, ‘Is Miss Prentice on holidays, John?'

‘Who?' I stammered, ‘What did you say?'

‘I asked you whether Miss Prentice—the librarian—was away on vacation?'

I replied, saying that I had no idea and it took me a
moment or two to realize that Molly could often have heard Lorraine's name mentioned during my talks with Grey.

In a way, I envy Molly. I am desperately sorry that she has become such a mixed-up, neurotic woman, but at least her mind is not in the torment that my mind is in.