Tree of Hands by Ruth Rendell Page A

. . .
    Above her, beyond the window, against the pavement, she heard her own car draw up. She knew the sound of that car. Mopsa was back. It was only just gone three.
    She didn’t look. It was only Mopsa. The front door closed and footsteps sounded along the passage above her head. A moment ago Benet would have said that she could never wish passionately for anything again but she found herself wishing passionately that Mopsa was not with her, that Mopsa would go home, that she might be alone. It was kind of Mopsa, it was motherly, it was what mothers did – but it would be better if Mopsa were gone. At least, if not better, it would somehow be less intensely, grindingly, awful.
    Mopsa came into the room. She was holding a child by the hand, a small boy. She said rather stupidly, ‘Were you asleep, Brigitte? Did we wake you up?’
    Benet had eyes only for the child. Apart from the girlwalking the dog, this was the first child she had seen since James’s death.
    â€˜Who is that?’ she said. It was her voice but it sounded to her like someone else’s, coming from another part of the room.
    â€˜Don’t you like him?’ Mopsa said.
    That seemed to Benet one of the most absurd remarks she had ever heard. It was meaningless, not something you asked in connection with a child. A dog perhaps . . .
    â€˜Who is he?’
    Mopsa had begun to look frightened. The wary, alert animal look was on her face. The little boy still held on to her hand in a docile way. He seemed about two or a little younger, James’s age perhaps, but big and sturdy. Under a dirty red quilted jacket with a dirty white nylon fur lining, he wore blue denim dungarees, green-and-brown striped socks and sandals of red moulded plastic. His hair was fair, almost white, a thick thatch of it. He had bright shiny red cheeks and big coarse features. You could already see the man he would become in those features, in the strong nose and the rather bloated sore-looking lips. Benet thought him the ugliest child she had ever seen.
    â€˜He’s Barbara Lloyd’s little boy,’ Mopsa faltered.
    â€˜I don’t know any Barbara Lloyd.’
    â€˜Yes, you do, Brigitte. You’ll remember when I tell you. She’s Barbara Fenton that was, Constance’s girl. She married a man called Lloyd who’s something in computers. They’re living with Constance until their house is ready.’
    Then Benet did remember. Not so much Barbara Fenton whom she must once have known by sight if not to talk to, but the phone conversation she had had with Constance a thousand years ago, when things were all right, when she was happy, when James was alive and she was stupid enough to be worrying over Mopsa. Constance had told her then that she had her daughter and son-in-law and grandson staying with her.
    â€˜What’s he doing here with you?’
    â€˜I said I’d mind him for them for a little while. They were desperate.’
    The little boy had freed himself from Mopsa’s grasp. He took a step forward in this strange place, looked about him, then up at Benet, back at Mopsa, his face beginning to work in that open, unrestrained way children’s faces do. His mouth made a square shape and he started to cry.
    â€˜Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Mopsa. ‘Oh dear.’ She was saying it to herself, not to him. She bent to pick him up. In her arms he struggled and screamed.
    Benet went upstairs to her bedroom.
    It was dark when she came down again. She hadn’t heard the car go. She looked and saw that the car was still there. The boy was still there too and he was sitting in James’s highchair. Mopsa had given him a scrambled egg and fingers of bread and he was using his fingers and a spoon to eat it. Mopsa herself sat up at the table beside him with a cup of tea in front of her.
    â€˜Isn’t it time you took him home?’ Benet said.
    She could tell her mother was hiding something. Mopsa was tense