The Fever Tree and Other Stories by Ruth Rendell Page B

she had picked the raspberries herself and that her ‘we’ve got to take them’ had its origins in her own wishes and was in no way a directive from their mother. But he didn’t much mind going. There was a mulberry tree in Aunt Julie’s garden and he would be glad of a chance to examine it. He was thinking of keeping silkworms.
    It was a warm sultry day in high summer, a day of languid air and half-veiled sun, of bumble bees heavily laden and roses blown but still scented. The woods hung on the hillsides like blue smoky shadows, and the fields where they were beginning to cut the wheat were the same colour as Rosamund’s hair. Very long and straight was the village street of Great Sindon, as is often the case in Suffolk. Aunt Julie lived at the very end of it in a plain, solidly built, grey brick, double-fronted house with a shallow slate roof and two tall chimneys. It would never, in the middle of the nineteenth century when it had been built, have been designated a ‘gentleman’s house’, for there were only four bedrooms and a single kitchen, while the ceilings were low and the stairs steep, but nowadays any gentleman might have been happy to live in it and village opinion held that it was worth a very large sum of money. Sindon Lodge stood in about two acres of land which included an apple orchard, a lily pond and a large lawn on which the mulberry tree was.
    James and his sister walked along in almost total silence. They had little in common and it was hot, the air full of tiny insects that came off the harvest fields. James knew that he had only been invited to join her because if she had gone alone Aunt Julie would have wanted to know where he was and would have sulked and probably not been at all welcoming. He wondered if she knew that the basket in which she had put the raspberries, having first lined it with a white paper table napkin, was in fact of the kind that is intended for wine, being made with a loop of cane at one end to hold the neck of the bottle. She had changed, he noticed, from her jeans into her new cotton skirt, the Laura Ashley print, and had brushed her wheat-coloured hair and tied a black velvet ribbon round it. Much good it would do her, thought James, but he decided not to tell her the true function of the basket unless she did anything particular to irritate him.
    But as they were passing the church Rosamund suddenly turned to face him and asked him if he knew Aunt Julie now had a lady living with her to look after her. A companion, this person was called, said Rosamund. James hadn’t known – he had probably been absorbed in his own thoughts when it was discussed – and he was somewhat chagrined.
    â€˜So what?’
    â€˜So nothing. Only I expect she’ll open the door to us. You didn’t know, did you? It isn’t true you know things I don’t. I often know things you don’t, I often do.’
    James did not deign to reply.
    â€˜She said that if ever she got so she had to have someone living with her, she’d get Mirabel to come. And Mirabel wanted to, she actually liked the idea of living in the country. But Aunt Julie didn’t ask her, she got this lady instead, and I heard Mummy say Aunt Julie doesn’t want Mirabel in the house any more. I don’t know why. Mummy said maybe Mirabel won’t get Aunt Julie’s money now.’
    James whistled a few bars from the overture to the Barber of Seville. ‘I know why.’
    â€˜Bet you don’t.’
    â€˜O.K., so I don’t.’
    â€˜Why, then?’
    â€˜You’re not old enough to understand. And, incidentally, you may not know it but that thing you’ve got the raspberries in is a wine basket.’
    The front door of Sindon Lodge was opened to them by a fat woman in a cotton dress with a wrap-around overall on top of it. She seemed to know who they were and said she was Mrs Crowley but they could call her Auntie Elsie if they liked.