Ruth Rendell - Kissing the Gunners Daughter

WEXFORD went home early. His feeling was that this might be the last time he got home by six for a long while.

Dora was in the hall, replacing the phone receiver, as he let himself in. She said, 'That was Sheila. If you'd been a second sooner you could have talked to her.'

A sardonic retort rose to his lips and he suppressed it. There was no reason for being unpleasant to his wife. None of it was her fault. Indeed, at that dinner on Tuesday, she had done her best to make things easier, to dull the edge of spitefulness and soften sarcasm.

'They are coming,' Dora said, her tone neutral.

'Who's coming where?'

'Sheila and and Gus. For the weekend. You know Sheila said they might on Tuesday.'

'A lot of things have happened since Tuesday.'

At any rate, he probably wouldn't be home much during the weekend. But tomorrow was the weekend, tomorrow was Friday, and they would arrive in the evening. He poured himself beer, an Adnam's which a local wine shop had begun to stock, and a dry sherry for Dora. She had her hand on his arm, moved it to enclose the back of his hand. It reminded him of Daisy's icy touch. But Dora's was warm.

He burst out, 'I've got to have that miscreant here for a whole weekend!'

'Reg, don't. Don't begin like that. We've only met him twice.'

'The first time she brought him here,' said Wexford, 'he stood in this room in front of my books and he took them out one by one. He looked at them in turn with a little contemptuous smile on his face. He took out the Trollope and looked at it like that. He took out the short stories of M. R. James and shook his head. I can see him now, standing there with James in his hand and shaking his head slowly, very slowly from side to side. I expected him to turn his thumbs down. I expected him to do what the Chief Vestal did when the gladiator had the net-man at his mercy in the arena. Kill. That's the verdict of the supreme judge, kill.'

'He has a right to his opinion.'

'He hasn't a right to despise mine and show he despises it. Besides, Dora, that's not the only thing and you know it isn't. Have you ever met a man with a more arrogant manner? Have you ever well, as a friend in your own family circle or that you know well have you ever come across anyone who so plainly made you feel he despised you? You and me. Everything he said was designed to show his loftiness, his cleverness, his wit. What does she see in him? What does she see in him? He's small and skinny, he's ugly, he's myopic, he can't see further than the end of his twitching nose...'

'You know something, darling? Women like small men. They find them attractive. I know big tall ones like you don't believe it, but it's true.'

'Burke said...'

'I know what Burke said. You've told me before. A man's handsomeness resides entirely in his height, or something like that. Burke wasn't a woman. Anyway, I expect Sheila values him for his mind. He's a very clever man, you know, Reg. Perhaps he's a genius.'

'God help us if you're going to call everyone who was short-listed for the Booker prize a genius.'

'I think we should make allowances for a young man's pride in his own achievements. Augustine Casey is only thirty and he's already seen as one of this country's foremost novelists. Or so I read in the papers. His books get half page reviews in the book section of The Times. His first novel won the Somerset Maugham Award.'

'Success should make people humble, modest and kind, as the donor of that prize said somewhere.'

'It seldom does. Try to be indulgent towards him, Reg. Try to listen with with an older man's wisdom when he airs his opinions.'

'And you can say that after what he said to you about the pearls? You're a magnanimous woman, Dora.' Wexford gave a sort of groan. 'lf only she doesn't really care for him. If only she can come to see what I see.' He drank is beer, made a face as if the taste were after all not congenial to him. 'You don't think ' he turned to his wife, appalled ' you don't think she'd marry him, do you?'

'I think she might live with him, enter into what shall I call it? a long-term relationship with him. I do think that, Reg, really. You have to face it. She's told me oh, Reg, don't look like that. I have to tell you.'

'Tell me what?'

'She says she's in love with him and that she doesn't think she's ever been in love before.'

'Oh, God.'

'For her to tell me that, she never tells me things well, it has to be significant.'

Wexford answered her melodramatically. He knew it was melodramatic before the words were out but he couldn't stop it. The histrionics brought him a tiny consolation.

'He'll take my daughter from me. If he and she are together that's the end of Sheila and me. She will cease to be my daughter. It's true. I can see it. What's the use of pretending otherwise, what is ever the use of pretending?'

He had blocked off that Tuesday evening's dinner. Or the events at Tancred House and their consequences had blocked them off for him, but now he opened his mind to them, the second beer he poured opened his mind, and he saw that man entering the little provincial restaurant, eyeing his surroundings, whispering something to Sheila. She had asked how her father, their host, would like them to sit at the table they were shown to, but Augustine Casey, before Wexford had a chance to speak, had chosen his seat. It was the chair backing a corner of the room.

'I shall sit here where I can see the circus,' he had said with a small private smile, a smile that was for himself alone, excluding even Sheila.

Wexford had understood him to mean he wanted to watch the behaviour of the other diners. It was perhaps a novelist's prerogative, though scarcely that of such an extreme post post-modernist as Casey was. He had already written at least one work of fiction without characters. Wexford had still been trying to talk to him then, to get him to talk about something, even if the subject was himself. Back at the house he had spoken, had delivered some obscure opinions on poetry in eastern Europe, every phrase he used consciously clever, but once in the restaurant he became silent, as if with boredom. He confined his speech to answering briefly requests that had to be made.

One of the things about him which had angered Wexford was his refusal ever to use an ordinary phrase or to indulge in the usage of good manners. When 'How do you do?' was said to him, he replied that he was not at all well but it was useless to enquire because he seldom was. Asked what he would drink he requested an unusual kind of Welsh mineral water which came in dark-blue bottles. This unavailable, he drank brandy.

His first course he left after one mouthful. Halfway through the meal he broke his silence to talk about pearls. The view from where he sat had afforded him a sight of no fewer than eight women wearing pearls round their necks or in their ears. After using the word once he didn't repeat it but referred to 'concretions' or 'chitinous formations'. He quoted Pliny the Elder who spoke of pearls as 'the most sovereign commodity in the whole world', he quoted Indian Vedic literature and described Etruscan jewellery, he delivered a thousand words or so on the pearls of Oman and Qatar that come from waters one hundred and twenty feet deep. Sheila hung upon his words. What was the use of deceiving himself? She listened, gazing at Casey, with adoration.

Casey was eloquent on the subject of Hope's baroque pearl that weighed eleven ounces and on La Reine des Perles which was among the crown jewels of France stolen in 1792. Then he talked of the superstitions associated with 'concretions', and with his eyes on the modest string round Dora's neck, spoke of the folly of older women who used to believe and no doubt still did, that such necklaces would restore their lost youth.

Wexford had made up his mind then to speak, to rebuke, but his phone had started bleeping and he had left without a word. Or without a word of admonition. Naturally, he had said good-bye. Sheila kissed him and Casey said, as if it were some received rubric of farewell, 'We shall meet again.'