Read An Unkindness of Ravens for Free Online Page B
Authors: Ruth Rendell
formulae.
‘We’re trying to find your father, Sara. I wouldn’t exactly say he’s disappeared but he’s making himself very hard to find.’
She had fixed him with her grave contained look. He noticed her skin, creamy and smooth like velvet, with a gold dusting of freckles on her small nose. When she opened the door to him she had been holding a green felt tipped pen in her hand. On the back of the other hand she had drawn a green snake. Teenagers had always drawn on their hands, they had done so when he was in his teens and when his daughters were in their teens, but now some sort of specific fashion for it had sprung up. To have black and red and green drawings on your hands and arms and body was the ‘in’ thing. Sara had drawn with her green pen a spotted snake, not curled round itself but stretched out and slightly undulant, its forked tongue extended.
‘Have you any thoughts about where he might be?’
She shook her head. She put the cap on the pen and laid it down.
‘Would you like to tell me about the last time you were with your father? Were you here when he left?’
She hesitated, then gave a nod. ‘It was the second day of term after the Easter holidays. I was late home because I went to the library. They’d got a book in for me, a new book I’d put my name down for and they’d sent me a card to say it was in.’ She lifted two books off the stack and handed him one from underneath. She was out to impress and the book was a learned work: Stern’s Principles of Human Genetics. He didn’t take much notice of that but he did look at the date stamp in the back. ‘I rang the library to renew it,’ she said defensively. ‘I couldn’t read it in three weeks. It’s very difficult.’ She smiled at last and became at once a beauty. ‘I’m not saying it’s too difficult for me but genetics is an abstruse subject. I’ve got my A levels and they have to take priority.’
‘You’re interested in this sort of thing?’
‘I’ve been offered a place in medical school, St Biddulph’s.’ Crocker had trained there, Wexford recalled. ‘I shall get it, of course, but in theory it depends on my A-level results.’ Her tone was such as to show she was in no real doubt that these would meet the standard. ‘I have to get at least three Bs but an A and two Bs would be better.’
She must be a bright girl. A year or two back statistics had been published showing an excess of medical students and that at this rate there would be a surplus of forty thousand doctors by the end of the century. Medical schools were being instructed to raise their standards and cut their intake. So if Sara Williams had been offered a place at the highly prestigious St Biddulph’s .. .
‘Your mother and father must be proud of you.’
The sweeping glance she gave him told him he had said something stupid or at least wide of the mark.
‘I can see you don’t know my parents.’
‘They’d prefer something else for you?’
‘I could be a shorthand typist, couldn’t I? I could be a nurse. I’d get paid while I was being those things, wouldn’t I?’ Her voice was full of scorn and anger. ‘I can’t be stopped, though. I’ll get a grant anyway. I don’t know what I’d have done in olden times.’
By ‘olden times’ he supposed she meant the days of his own youth when your parents paid for your education or you borrowed the money or worked your way. Things were different now. A father couldn’t put his foot down with the same effect. He could only persuade or dissuade.
‘The last time you saw your father,’ he reminded her.
Her anger had died. She was practical again, crisply reciting facts. But there was something derisive in the way she spoke of her father, as if he were a joke to her—or an organism under a microscope.
‘I came in and he was just leaving. I heard him talking to Mum about the route he was going to take. The A26 for Tonbridge, then the Dartford Tunnel on to the M25 and the M25 to the
‘We’re trying to find your father, Sara. I wouldn’t exactly say he’s disappeared but he’s making himself very hard to find.’
She had fixed him with her grave contained look. He noticed her skin, creamy and smooth like velvet, with a gold dusting of freckles on her small nose. When she opened the door to him she had been holding a green felt tipped pen in her hand. On the back of the other hand she had drawn a green snake. Teenagers had always drawn on their hands, they had done so when he was in his teens and when his daughters were in their teens, but now some sort of specific fashion for it had sprung up. To have black and red and green drawings on your hands and arms and body was the ‘in’ thing. Sara had drawn with her green pen a spotted snake, not curled round itself but stretched out and slightly undulant, its forked tongue extended.
‘Have you any thoughts about where he might be?’
She shook her head. She put the cap on the pen and laid it down.
‘Would you like to tell me about the last time you were with your father? Were you here when he left?’
She hesitated, then gave a nod. ‘It was the second day of term after the Easter holidays. I was late home because I went to the library. They’d got a book in for me, a new book I’d put my name down for and they’d sent me a card to say it was in.’ She lifted two books off the stack and handed him one from underneath. She was out to impress and the book was a learned work: Stern’s Principles of Human Genetics. He didn’t take much notice of that but he did look at the date stamp in the back. ‘I rang the library to renew it,’ she said defensively. ‘I couldn’t read it in three weeks. It’s very difficult.’ She smiled at last and became at once a beauty. ‘I’m not saying it’s too difficult for me but genetics is an abstruse subject. I’ve got my A levels and they have to take priority.’
‘You’re interested in this sort of thing?’
‘I’ve been offered a place in medical school, St Biddulph’s.’ Crocker had trained there, Wexford recalled. ‘I shall get it, of course, but in theory it depends on my A-level results.’ Her tone was such as to show she was in no real doubt that these would meet the standard. ‘I have to get at least three Bs but an A and two Bs would be better.’
She must be a bright girl. A year or two back statistics had been published showing an excess of medical students and that at this rate there would be a surplus of forty thousand doctors by the end of the century. Medical schools were being instructed to raise their standards and cut their intake. So if Sara Williams had been offered a place at the highly prestigious St Biddulph’s .. .
‘Your mother and father must be proud of you.’
The sweeping glance she gave him told him he had said something stupid or at least wide of the mark.
‘I can see you don’t know my parents.’
‘They’d prefer something else for you?’
‘I could be a shorthand typist, couldn’t I? I could be a nurse. I’d get paid while I was being those things, wouldn’t I?’ Her voice was full of scorn and anger. ‘I can’t be stopped, though. I’ll get a grant anyway. I don’t know what I’d have done in olden times.’
By ‘olden times’ he supposed she meant the days of his own youth when your parents paid for your education or you borrowed the money or worked your way. Things were different now. A father couldn’t put his foot down with the same effect. He could only persuade or dissuade.
‘The last time you saw your father,’ he reminded her.
Her anger had died. She was practical again, crisply reciting facts. But there was something derisive in the way she spoke of her father, as if he were a joke to her—or an organism under a microscope.
‘I came in and he was just leaving. I heard him talking to Mum about the route he was going to take. The A26 for Tonbridge, then the Dartford Tunnel on to the M25 and the M25 to the