Talking to Strange Men by Ruth Rendell Page A

to make any heart-to-heart unburdenings impossible, to rule out the possibility of confidences. Yet it seemed to him there hung in the very air a yearning for confession, for openness. He knew he would never do it yet on another level he longed to tell Mark about Jennifer and listen while Mark spoke to him of Cherry. They had much to say to one another but they would not say it while Colin was there.
    The snooker came to an end and no one wanted to see the play which followed it. John switched off the set. Kim Philby’s
My Silent War
lay on the low table which stood between the settee where Colin and Mark sat and the television. The table, like almost everything else in the house, had belonged to John’s mother. It was of oak with an inlay of olive-green leather and his mother had kept it highly polished. John noticed how dusty and fingermarked it had become. On the crosspiece that joined the four legs together a few inches from the floor dust lay like grey fungus. Generally men don’t notice these things, John thought, only women notice them. It wasn’t the dust that Mark had been looking at but the Philby book which he now reached forward to pick up. John remembered that Mark had always been a great reader, though it was almost unknown for Cherry to open a book. For his part he had not much enjoyed
My Silent War
. Indeed he had begun but not finished it. Aromantic man – well, sentimental, why not say it? – it was fiction that he liked. What really happened didn’t much interest him, he had enough of that in his own life. Mark was slowly turning the pages, absently helping himself to peanuts with the other hand.
    â€˜Still racking your brains, are you, over that code?’ Colin said.
    John nodded.
    â€˜John’s got this pal sends him letters in code, only he can’t read them.’
    Mark didn’t seem much interested. John wouldn’t have said this to anyone else but it was all right thinking it. Mark wasn’t interested in others and their affairs. His favourite word was ‘I’, John’s father had once said, with ‘me’ a close second. John had thought this a bit unfair at the time but now he wasn’t so sure.
    â€˜Nineteen sixty-eight, this was published, the year I met Cherry. I always think of it as the year I met Cherry.’
    â€˜Was it really that long ago?’ Colin looked embarrassed, sounded gruff.
    â€˜We were engaged for nearly two years,’ Mark said.
    His eyes met John’s and it seemed to John that they were full of sorrow – no, more than that, full of grief. He was sure then that Mark was going to say something more, that in spite of Colin’s presence, he was going to speak of his love for Cherry that still endured. And John felt mean for thinking him such an egotist. But instead Mark put the book back on the table and said in quite a different tone from that he had used when talking of her:
    â€˜There’s rather a good novel I read about him, about Philby I mean. Well, a thriller. By Ted Allbeury. I can’t remember what it’s called. They’d know at your library, I should think.’
    John said he would ask them. If he remembered, he added to himself. Colin was looking at his watch. They had come in Mark’s car so there was no question of last buses, but it was late, it was after eleven. The rain that was forecast had started and John offered them an umbrella to the car but they didn’t want that. Mark shook hands with him rather formally. He hadn’t mentioned Jennifer all evening whichmade John think Colin must have said something before he got to the restaurant. John imagined them in the car, Mark asking what exactly did happen about his wife, and Colin saying, she left him, went off with some chap she used to be engaged to.
    Colin would add that the marriage was over. But John refused to think of it in those terms. He preferred to say to himself that they were temporarily apart.