The Keys to the Street by Ruth Rendell Page B

exercise.”
    “Won’t she be able to run on the beach?”
    He never answered questions. She wondered why she bothered to ask. Bean countered questions with a statement or a question of his own as competently as any politician trained to do this on television. Sometimes his statements were relevant, sometimes not.
    “A hound can run twenty miles and think nothing of it,” he said.
    She felt like saying, but can hounds think? Instead, she remarked on Bean’s expertise in the handling of so many dogs. He nodded, accepting the praise as his due, and said in the tone that sounded disparaging, though probably was not, “I’ll say good-bye then, Miss. We mustn’t detain you.”
    “Good-bye.”
    “Mind how you cross the road. The traffic’s very treacherous in these parts.”
    Had he once been a butler? Perhaps. His manner was that of a superior upper servant—well, a superior upper servant in a film of the fifties. Her experience of the real thing was nonexistent. Thegrandparents who had brought her up, though by no means poor, had only run to a cleaner who had come in twice a week. She took the lower path, the one that runs close up against the fence of the Abika Paul Memorial Gardens, the better to see the cattle and deer.
    Her grandmother had sometimes brought her in here as a child, had once taken her to the zoo with a friend who lived in Primrose Hill. A sheltered childhood and youth it had been, she supposed. Her grandparents had been discreetly wealthy, what they called “comfortably off.” Such strange expressions, “comfortably off,” “well off”—off what? Off the poverty line, the breadline?
    Their income had never been mentioned, money never talked about. Even now she had no idea how much Frederica had, even if she was rich or genteelly poor. Alistair had shown an interest, but her grandmother had never been forthcoming to Alistair, had never liked him. If she had agreed with Alistair in anything it had been over the bone marrow donation, and her opposition had been mild compared to his, had been no more than a fear of “unnecessary” anesthesia and a conviction, despite all evidence to the contrary, that Mary must be as vulnerable as she looked.
    People were a mixture of subtle contrasts. Malleable, weak, diffident she might be, but she had gone ahead with her resolution. She had persisted. It’s a man, the trust had told her, twenty-two years old, suffering from acute myeloid leukemia. The donation would take place in this country, they said, but they had not told her whether the recipient was British or of some other nationality.
    After the transplant they gave him the card she had written to him and they gave her the letter he had written to her. Both were unsealed, both had been scrutinized to make sure identification of either donor or recipient was impossible. His name was Oliver, but they smiled when they said it, making clear this was a pseudonym. Her name, that she was told to put on the card, was Helen, and they had told him she was twenty-eight and in perfect health. Shehad chosen “Helen” because it was her dead mother’s name and she wondered why he had picked “Oliver” or if it had been chosen for him.
    She had not known what to write on the card, so had done no more than call him “Dear Oliver,” wish him a speedy recovery, and sign herself, “Yours sincerely, Helen.” It was rather ridiculous. What could it mean to him? His letter to her was typed, not very expertly. It was formal, lifeless. “Dear Helen, I want to thank you for what you have done for me,” but ended as if emotion had broken through, “In undying thankfulness, Oliver,” and she wondered that they hadn’t demurred at that, that most unfortunate word, for he very likely would die, in spite of the donation; he was rather more likely to die than to live.
    Then came the updates from Oliver’s transplant center. He was well at three months and at six. There was a delay, she heard nothing for six months