The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell Page B

Beatrix and Heather and Pamela as well as Guy himself. Michael Fenster fancied himself as the lead tenor in the local amateur operatic society and he had sung an aria. Poetry was Beatrix’s choice and she had read a long poem of Tennyson’s. In time Ismay got tired of it. Almost the last thing she recorded was a long apology to her mother for having been rude to her. Rude to her in what way she couldn’t now remember but she had said she was sorry at great length and said it on tape because she felt better about giving Beatrix the tape than saying the words to her. Tape recorders must be almost obsolete now. Only journalists used them. She hadn’t used hers for years and she didn’t know where it was but it must be somewhere in the house and she could find it.
    She walked about the flat, searching for the tape recorder. It was just as likely to be upstairs, more likely, seeing that hers and Heather’s bedrooms had been up there. It would be in a cupboard in one of those rooms. Pausing at her own bedroom window, she looked down into the street below and saw Pamela on her way out somewhere. Beatrix would be sitting with her ear to her radio, chewing gum, or eating chocolate. She would take no notice if Ismay went up there and hunted for the tape recorder. Maybe she wouldn’t even see her, certainly show no curiosity as to what she might be doing. Ismay didn’t much like using her key to get in but it wasonly for once. She could ring and ring the bell and Beatrix would never answer the door. Beatrix wouldn’t notice if someone broke the door down.
    Ismay looked first in the rooms that had been hers and Heather’s bedrooms. They were Beatrix’s and Pamela’s now. They had been painted but not otherwise altered. Ismay looked inside the built-in cupboards, which were full of the older women’s clothes just as they had once been full of hers and Heather’s. No sign of the tape recorder. She tried the kitchen, though it was an unlikely place. As soon as she set foot inside the living room she knew where that recorder was going to be. When the conversion was made cupboards and shelves had been built into the walls round the area where the bathroom had been. Open one of those doors and there it would be.
    Although Beatrix invariably ignored her she never liked to be in her mother’s presence without acknowledging her. It was as if she feared that if she did it once she would always do it and Beatrix would disappear, become worse than she was now, a nothing, a shadow, a ghost muttering madness. So she went up to her, kissed her cheek and did something unusual with her. She took her mother’s hand and held it for a few seconds. The hand in hers seemed the limpest thing she had ever handled, cool but not cold, utterly relaxed and immobile, until suddenly it tensed shockingly and was snatched away.
    The tape recorder was where she thought it would be, in that changed place, in the box it had originally come in. She said, ‘Goodbye, Mum. See you later,’ and went downstairs, carrying the box.
    In the bathroom was a shower cabinet in which Guy and Beatrix took their daily showers but as he slowly recovered from his illness and no longer needed to besponged down from a basin of water, Guy started taking an afternoon bath. It was more restful and relaxing. Standing up with hot water spraying him was still too much for him. The bath (or ‘tub’ as Americans called it) wasn’t free-standing but stood against the wall on your right-hand side when you faced the balcony. The end nearest the doors was also against the wall but the other stood free, and between it and the interior wall was sometimes the space for the soiled-linen bin and sometimes, when Beatrix changed things round, for a chair or a dark-leaved ficus in a ceramic pot. The taps were in the middle of the long side of the bath. At the time of Guy’s recovery from his illness the chair stood in the