Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Ruth Rendell]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

12

JASON SAT IN James’s seat in the back of the car holding the white rabbit Mopsa had bought him. Benet put Mopsa’s suitcases in the boot along with Jason’s old pushchair that had been there ever since Mopsa stole him. He was looking fit and well, she thought, his colour less high, his expression more alert. Is it my imagination, she thought, or is he actually a bit better-looking? When Mopsa was gone, when in an hour or two Mopsa was gone and she had to face the music, or at least seriously contemplate and plan facing the music, nobody was going to be able to say Jason had suffered in her care. They could only congratulate her on the improvement in him.

‘This is going to be a red letter day for Daddy,’ said Mopsa. ‘Do you know we’ve never been separated so long in all our married life?’

She had forgotten the long periods spent in psychiatric wards. This morning she was the epitome of sanity in her grey suit, a red chiffon scarf round her neck and lipstick to match but carefully blotted and powdered so as not to look too bold. As to her father’s reaction to this homecoming, Benet doubted if he faced the day with the enthusiasm Mopsa predicted. On the phone the other night he had been reproachful.

‘Surely you could have kept your mother with you for the month we planned on?’

And Mopsa herself had not helped when she took the receiver and said in a plaintive voice that there was nothing really to keep her in London now all the tests had proved negative. She didn’t want to outstay her welcome.

John Archdale’s voice was pregnant with unspoken miseries. You had her for three weeks, it implied, I have her for life. I don’t complain, I shoulder it, but all I asked was for four short weeks. It wouldn’t have hurt Mopsa in the circumstances, Benet thought, to tell the poor man that she was looking forward to coming home.

Now of course, in the car, it was evident she was. The climate for one thing. The temperature would be twenty degrees higher than in England. And there would be the sunshine and her own cosy little home that Benet had only seen once and showed no sign of wanting to see again. She chattered on about the amenities of southern Spain in the winter when most of the tourists were gone, the expatriate couple from High Wycombe they played bridge with, the beach. Jason, it seemed, she had forgotten. For days she had virtually ignored him, leaving him to Benet’s care. Once she had referred to him as James.

‘Isn’t it time James was in bed?’

The knife that was always poised, ready to rend Benet with reminders, struck home. But Mopsa had spoken unconsciously. She had never been much interested in James, still less in Jason, as a person. It seemed that, to her, they had blended and become one, little boys who were no more than tribal creatures sharing a group soul.

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