The Fever Tree and Other Stories by Ruth Rendell Page A

for herself.
    Of the past she thought not at all and the present seemed to exist only as a palpable-nothingness, a thick silence that lay around her. She thought of the future, of three months hence, and into the silence she let forth a steady, rather toneless peal of laughter. Miss Patricia Gordon, 23 Burwood Park Avenue, Kew, Victoria, Australia 3101. The Pretty, greedy, hard face, the hands so eager to undo that padlock and prise open those golden clasps to find the treasure within . . .
    And how interesting that treasure would be in three months’ time, like nothing Miss Patricia Gordon had seen in all her life! It was as well, so that she would recognize it, that it carried on top of it a note in a familiar hand: All this is for you, darling Patricia, for ever and ever .

An Outside Interest
    Frightening people used to be a hobby of mine. Perhaps I should rather say an obsession and not people but, specifically, women. Making others afraid is enjoyable as everyone discovers who has tried it and succeeded. I suppose it has something to do with power. Most people never really try it so they don’t know, but look at the ones who do. Judges, policemen, prison warders, customs officers, tax inspectors. They have a great time, don’t they? You don’t find them giving up or adopting other methods. Frightening people goes to their heads, they’re drunk on it, they live by it. So did I. While other men might go down to the pub with the boys or to football, I went off to Epping Forest and frightened women. It was what you might call my outside interest.
    Don’t get me wrong. There was nothing – well, nasty, about what I did. You know what I mean by that, I’m sure I don’t have to go into details. I’m far from being some sort of pervert, I can tell you. In fact, I err rather on the side of too much moral strictness. Nor am I one of those lonely, deprived men. I’m happily married and the father of a little boy, I’m six feet tall, not bad-looking and, I assure you, entirely physically and mentally normal.
    Of course I’ve tried to analyse myself and discover my motives. Was my hobby ever any more than an antidote to boredom? By anyone’s standards the life I lead would be classed as pretty dull, selling tickets and answering passengers’ queries at Anglo-Mercian Airways terminal, living in a semi in Muswell Hill, going to tea with my mother-in-law on Sundays and having an annual fortnight in a holiday flat in South Devon. I got married very young. Adventure wasn’t exactly a conspicuous feature of my existence. The biggest thing that happened to me was when we thought one of our charters had been hi-jacked in Greece, and that turned out to be a false alarm.
    My wife is a nervous sort of girl. Mind you, she has cause to be, living where we do close to Highgate Wood and Queens Wood. A woman takes her life in her hands, walking alone in those places. Carol used to regale me with stories – well, she still does.
    â€˜At twenty past five in the afternoon! It was still broad daylight. He raped her and cut her in the face, she had to have seventeen stitches in her face and neck.’
    She doesn’t drive and if she comes home from anywhere after dark I always go down to the bus stop to meet her. She won’t even walk along the Muswell Hill Road because of the woods on either side.
    â€˜If you see a man on his own in a place like that you naturally ask yourself what he’s doing there, don’t you? A young man, just walking aimlessly about. It’s not as if he had a dog with him. It makes your whole body go tense and you get a sort of awful crawling sensation all over you. If you didn’t come and meet me I don’t think I’d go out at all.’
    Was it that which gave me the idea? At any rate it made me think about women and fear. Things are quite different for a man, he never thinks about being afraid of being in dark or lonely