Chief Inspector Wexford - 13 - An Unkindness of Ravens by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780091602000
Publisher: Hutchinson
Published: 1985-02-15T07:29:06+00:00

12

WITH INSCRUTABLE FACE JENNY BURDEN sat reading ARRIA’S manifesto. She was past the stage now of prettifying disguises of her pregnancy. It was beyond disguise and her condition didn’t flatter her. Younger than her years though she had always looked, she now appeared too old to be having a baby. Her face was not so much lined as lacking in its former firmness, caverns hollowed out under the eyes and chin muscles sagging. She had no lap now so she held the flimsy sheets against a book propped upon the table in front of her.

But Wexford could tell by Burden’s pleased expression that he was content to see his wife making even this small effort to escape from the apathy that had settled on her as the psychotherapy she was having progressed. No longer in revolt, no longer violent in her hatred of the child, she had become resigned. She waited in hopeless passivity. When Wexford arrived she had taken his hand, put up her face for a kiss, inquired in a limbo voice after Dora and the girls. And he had thought: when the baby is born she could go completely mad, enter a schizophrenic world, and pass the rest of her life in hospital. She wouldn’t be the first to whom such a thing had happened.

Still, now she was reading ARRIA’S constitution, and apparently reading every word with care. Wexford wouldn’t talk about the Williams case in her presence and Burden knew that. Suddenly she began reading aloud.

“Rule 6: With certain limited exceptions, no woman shall be financially dependent on a man. Then they list the exceptions. Rule 7. All women shall take a course in some martial art or self-defense technique. Rule 8: All women shall carry a permitted weapon for self-defense, i.e., ammonia spray, pin, penknife, pepper shaker, etc. Rule 9: No member shall marry, participate in the bourgeois concept of becoming “engaged,” or share accommodation with a man in a cohabiting situation. Rule 10 … Do you want Rule 10?”

“Oh, I have read it,” Wexford said. “It is heresy!”

She didn’t recognize the quotation. “You’re bound to think that way, aren’t you? Perhaps I should have read all this before I met you, Mike.”

He took the blow with a physical flinch.

“ARRIA didn’t exist then. It was around earlier this year before I gave up work, though. I always wanted to get hold of their manifesto but no one would even talk to me about it. I was a married woman, you see.”

“I suppose I was lucky to get it,” Wexford conceded.

Burden was making an effort to recover from the pain she had given him. “I want to hear Rule 10.”

“All right. Rule 10: Women wishing to reproduce should select the potential father for his physique, health, height, etc., and ensure impregnation in a rape or near-rape construct.”

“In a what? What the hell does it mean?”

Wexford said, “Margaret Mead says men of the Arapesh fear rape by women just as women in other cultures fear rape by men.

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