Talking to Strange Men by Ruth Rendell Page B

It made him cringe a bit to think of those two – though he liked them, though they were his friends – talking about his failed marriage, comparing it maybe with Mark’s own experience.
    He had replied to Jennifer and posted his letter on the way to the restaurant. Well, not on the way really, for he had made a detour to take in cats’ green. There he had unpeeled the plastic envelope from the inside of the pillar and copied down the coded message into his notebook. Perhaps because of the damp he had some difficulty in making the tape adhere to the metal once more. As he was walking away he saw an elderly woman cross the street with a bottle of milk in one hand and a carrier bag in the other. She was going to feed the cats. He didn’t think she had seen what he was doing and now, in any case, he was very purposefully making for the pillar box on the pavement outside the church building.
    He posted his letter. It wouldn’t go out till the morning but she should get it by Wednesday. She had asked him not to phone but had said nothing about not writing. Perhaps Peter Moran went out in the mornings before the post came, though would an unemployed man do that? He had begun his letter: ‘Dearest Jennifer’. Of course he would meet her, he was longing to meet her, he had written. Hartlands Gardens at three p.m. next Saturday. I hope the sun will shine on us, he went on and then crossed that bit out which meant he had to begin the letter all over again . . .
    Emptying Mark’s ashtray, putting their glasses into the sink, he came back to the living room, sat down in front of the electric fire once more and picked up the Philby book. Philby had been a spy, these were spy memoirs. Why shouldn’t the sender of the messages have used the first lines of this book for his code? It seemed as likely as any other. John got out his notebook and tried the coded messagesagainst the first lines of
My Silent War
. Wrong again. No again. Why do I bother? John asked himself. And he was aware that since the arrival of Jennifer’s letter cats’ green and the messages had meant less to him, they had been less of a diversion. They had not served to distract his mind as efficiently as he expected. He would look at the coded words and speculate and then gradually feel speculation being displaced by images of Jennifer and by memories of when they were together. Above all he would have this very vivid recollection of the second time they went out together and he had told her about Cherry and she told him about Peter Moran.
    â€˜I suppose we were really very dull ordinary sort of people in our family,’ he had said to her. ‘Not interesting, nothing special, any of us. My dad worked for the Post Office. I don’t think Mother had ever had any sort of job, it wouldn’t have crossed her mind. We were such a happy family, we honestly never had a cross word, I suppose we just didn’t disagree about anything. We – my sister and I – didn’t want to rebel and our parents didn’t try to stop us enjoying ourselves. We were always doing things for each other. I mean when someone wanted something one of us would jump up and say I’ll get that or I’ll do that. We all liked each other, you see. And we liked to see the others happy. We were always laughing. Does that sound crazy? I mean we had little family jokes and catchwords and we’d tell each other funny things that happened at work. It was a regular thing every evening and Mum would say, “Don’t you do any work, you lot? It’s all play by the sound of it.”’
    She was looking at him dubiously. Her expression was kindly but puzzled too. ‘It doesn’t sound like you – well, what I know of you.’
    â€˜I was different. I changed. We all changed. A death like that, it blows a world apart.’
    â€˜Your sister was going to be married?’
    â€˜In two months’ time. Her