A Sight for Sore Eyes by Ruth Rendell Page A

bloated body and soggy face, begrimed hands and broken, yellowing teeth, offended him every time he saw him. For a little while he seriously considered leaving. But where could he go? At his university it was possible to live in one of the two overcrowded halls of residence, but not in one's third year. There was no way he could afford to rent even a single room. His grant was inadequate for just the bare living and travelling. It occurred to him - as a matter of interest, he didn't care that much -that never in his life had he bought a new garment or had one bought for him. He'd never been abroad or to a London theatre or into any restaurant more up-market than the Burger King. His plan, scarcely formed, taken for granted, had been to sell the house. Clear it out, do it up, paint the outside and sell it. It was probably worth about as little as any thirties-vintage semi anywhere in London, but it would still fetch thousands and thousands, maybe as much as forty thousand pounds. But it was Keith's. Teddy kept the ring in the pocket of his only other jacket, the zipper one that hung on a hook on the inside of the door. He held it in the palm of his hand and looked at it. He still hadn't had it valued. If he tried to sell it the jeweller would think he had stolen it. He could try pawning it. Teddy knew very little about pawning things but pawnshops existed, he had seen them, and he had an idea a pawnbroker would give him approximately half what the ring was worth. That would be a way of getting it valued. He wasn't going to sell it. He would never sell it. Money wasn't all that much of a serious problem, anyway. He could manage, he always had. While Keith continued to provide some of their food he wouldn't starve. And he could go on making things and learning to make things, and finish his course and get his degree. He had to make something for his degree submission, some artefact that would be a sample or demonstration of his particular skills. Most of the others would produce a coffee table or a desk and there was someone who was a gifted wood carver, who Teddy knew would be making a mermaid for a ship's figurehead. His talent was in inlaid work, but he also fancied himself as an artist in painted furniture. He would make a mirror. His would have a frame of pale wood, sycamore or the darker walnut, inlaid with holly and yew, painted blue and grey and gold. If only it didn't have to be here, in this place where everything his eye alighted on was a deformity or a vulgar affront. Outside the window even the Edsel was covered up in plastic under its fourlegged plastic-roofed shelter. Keith's motor bike had a black binliner over its handlebars and another covering its saddle. The place was a storehouse for plastic bags, there was even one drifting about on the concrete, where greyish blades of grass struggled up through the cracks. Another had plastered itself up against the chain-link fencing, its corners poking through into next door as if it were trving to escape. Teddy drew the curtains. Keith was asleep in the living-room. He had been drinking more since his brother died, you could say he was drinking for two, Jimmy's share as well as his own. Quite often he didn't go to bed, but came back from whatever job he had been doing, covered up the bike with the bin-liners and moved directly into the living-room with his two plastic bags, one containing the smaller and more portable of his plumber's tools, the other his preferred Chivas Regal and Guinness for the evening. The television went on, Keith uncapped his first can or bottle and lit his first cigarette for some hours. His customers refused to let him smoke in their houses. When he saw Teddy looking, he offered an explanation. 'I'm not leaving no drink in this place while I'm out working. I wouldn't trust you round my Chivas further than I could fuckin' throw you.' Teddy made no answer. What was there to say? He never touched alcohol and Keith knew it as well as he did