Introduction. Edmund’s mother wants to fix him up with Marion, but he falls in love with Heather, who reciprocates. Irene has set her sights on Barry, but he finds Marion a greater attraction and soon she, too, develops an interest in him. Ismay is infatuated with Andrew, but he is two-timing her with Eva. Meanwhile, Pamela is busy trying to find a man to date...

Towards the end of this story, one honeymoon has been conducted, another is in progress, an engagement has been announced, and a reunion of a once separated couple has taken place.

The above is not an outline for a romantic comedy or a convoluted soap opera. It is a synopsis – of sorts – of Ruth Rendell’s 2006 novel The Water’s Lovely, which carries a surprisingly cheerful title for the author of such previous tales of suspense as To Fear a Painted Devil, Make Death Love Me or A Demon in My View, and which seems to be all about the psychodynamics of male-female love.

Rendell and Love. Although Ruth Rendell’s books are usually to be found in the Crime section of bookstores, the author often deals with the subject of love in all three strands of her writing – the Chief Inspector Wexford police procedurals, the non-series noir thrillers, and the novels written under the name of Barbara Vine. That is not to say that, like most popular fiction today, including thrillers, her tales feature an obligatory love interest supposedly lending extra tension to the narrative. In their treatment of love, her works also differ from the Golden Age mysteries of writers such as Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers, where during the detection of a crime a romantic couple is formed, courtship takes place, and wedding bells chime in the end as ‘a crucial emblem of social healing on reformed lines’ (Rowland 2001:27). Nor do her stories belong to the so-called romantic suspense genre, practised mostly by American writers like Sandra Brown or Catherine Coulter, where stoic but lovelorn FBI agents or small-town sheriffs of either sex divide their time between investigating and soul-searching until they finally nail both the serial killer and the perfect life partner. Rendell, in contrast, examines the mental turmoils of weak or deluded characters caught up in warped relationships which typically conclude in anything but healing and happiness.

‘I don't write love stories,’ the author has said (Stasio 1990:16). ‘The darker side of things is what I write about, the shadowy places of the mind, the violent results of obsessive motivation.’ Obsession is certainly the overall theme of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine’s body of work, and it naturally accommodates the subtheme of love, which is frequently the driving force behind her characters’ obsessive behaviour. In her far-from-rosy worldview, love is not only blind, but more often than not proves to be selfish, tortuous and even murderous. People’s personalities, according to Rendell, may be twisted both by deprivation of love and by its pursuit, for it is not genuine love that the author explores, but her disturbed characters’ distorted and self-serving perceptions of it. Emotional or physical, parental, filial or marital, homosexual, heterosexual or sexless, love in Rendell’s tales is misconceived, misinterpreted or misdirected, often linked to tyranny and persecution and bringing misery to its bearer, its object, or both. Obsessive lovers and their (self-) destructive behaviour are at the core of novels such as >From Doon with Death, The Face of Trespass, Going Wrong, The Bridesmaid, Gallowglass and No Night Is Too Long, to name but a few.

These works of Rendell/Vine’s, however, differ from The Water’s Lovely in that they typically feature one central character obsessed with the idea of love and a particular addressee of that idea, or two characters trapped in a parasitical, damaging relationship. What mayhem is wreaked is the result of that one or two characters’ increasingly aberrant behaviour in pursuit of their fixations. 2004’s Thirteen Steps Down, the author’s previous non-series psychological thriller, to some extent formally marked a step in a new direction, as at one point it has three central characters driven by the notion that they need to find what each of them defines as love. In The Water’s Lovely, for the first time Rendell deliberately sets up all main characters – and nearly all secondary ones – in parallel situations of being engaged in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. Hardly a page goes by without the word ‘love’ being mentioned by one character or another in the context of interpersonal relations; even the very title of the book bears a derivative of the word. And since this novel, too, belongs to Rendell’s stand-alone noir strand, the quest for love does not, like in the Wexford procedurals, emerge in the end as a motive for murder. Nor does it serve to thread together and hopefully explain a particular character’s bizarre actions, as in the predominantly first-person narratives of Barbara Vine. Rather, it provides Rendell with a canvas on which, in Jane Austen fashion, to develop her characters’ intimate relationships, conduct her psychological investigations, and explore what forms love can take – and what part it can play – in modern life.

Tears and Sorrows. A typical Rendell noir thriller starts off with several disparate story lines, introducing a number of central characters living in ignorance of one another until their paths come to cross. The Water’s Lovely first meets the reader with Ismay Sealand, arguably the major character in the book: it is with her that the narrative begins and ends, and it is her viewpoint that is most often presented. Ismay is a thin, pale woman of twenty-seven who spends most of her time obsessing about two things. One is the mystery of how and why her stepfather Guy drowned in his bath a dozen or so years ago, and what possible role her sister Heather, then thirteen, had in that tragic event. The other is her relationship with her solicitor boyfriend Andrew Campbell-Sedge, with whom she, in her own words, fell ‘fathoms deep in love (p.4)¹ ’ a couple of years previously. These two fixations are, in fact, not unconnected. Andrew, she now tells herself and others, is the first love of her life (‘I love him so much. I’ve never been in love with anyone before’, p.99), but years ago, when she was a teenager, it was Guy she thought she loved. Guy, who called her his sweetheart and his angel, kindly let her sit on his knee while helping her with homework, and gave her increasingly intimate kisses – until, having convinced herself that he had married her mother only ‘to have access to her older daughter’ (p.35), she started fantasising about his coming to her bedroom and making love to her. The latter never happened, however, as Guy died, and now Ismay has Andrew, whom she may no longer idealise as ‘just judge, wise, forbearing and kind’ (p.43), but with whom she still cannot – or dares not – find any fault. For him, she is certain, ‘her passion and her devotion would endure until death’ (p.31). As can be expected, when this highly desired male specimen starts behaving somewhat strangely, and in disaccord with her romantic notions of him, Ismay is in for some serious discomfort.

No wonder, as double-barrelled Andrew is one of Rendell’s trademark upper-class cads: egocentric, supercilious and tyrannical. What precisely Ismay sees in him may seem a mystery, but then, she is not the most realistic or active of women, and makes for perfect victim material. For what Andrew sees in her is much clearer – someone to snub, humiliate and terrorise at will, despite recurrent professions of love. Andrew has never enjoyed the fact that Ismay lives with her aunt, her ill mother, and her sister, whom he particularly dislikes. When that sister acquires her own boyfriend, Andrew, enraged at yet another presence in the house, begins bitching about having to share space with the couple and issuing Ismay me-or-them ultimatums. (No one, least of all Ismay, points out to him that it is not his house to obsess about.) Then he starts to act distant, stops making or taking calls, and Ismay suspects – rightly so – that he may have found another woman. His commandments have not been fulfilled, as Ismay keeps postponing discussing the problem with her sister, so he punishes her by taking up with the ludicrous Eva Simber.

Andrew’s affair with Eva, if that is what it is, provides Rendell with further ground to explore the often farcical intricacies of intimate relationships – both in the details of the affair itself and in its effect on Ismay Sealand. Eva is young, tall, thin, and fair-haired (resembling Ismay in appearance, in fact). She is also vacuous and moneyed. Unlike the other characters in the novel, she has never had to work and is described by the papers as a socialite, which she vaguely thinks might mean the same as being in the Labour Government. After putting her through Swiss finishing school, Daddy furnished her with a stock portfolio, a flat, and a Mercedes Benz. Now Eva spends her day going for a run each morning and then pondering the logistics of her life, such as whether she will have time for both a pedicure and a facial later on, and how little she will manage to eat during lunch with Mummy. Somewhere into this busy schedule she manages to fit in Andrew Campbell-Sedge, who takes her out to posh restaurants and clubs, and whom her father consider a good match for her. Eva herself does not care much. When asked at one point if she is in love with Andrew, her reply is, ‘Am I what?’ (p.144) In a moment of introspection, she reflects that ‘[s]he didn’t want to marry anyone but just have a good time with a lot of men and get her picture in the papers’ (p.145), though later on she admits to herself that perhaps she would marry Andrew if he asked her, and even have a baby, it being common knowledge that a baby is ‘the best accessory you could have. Look at Britney and Kate Moss. If she had a baby newspapers might treat her more seriously.’ (p.182)

There already is, however, at least one person who takes Eva, or Eva’s existence, quite seriously. When Andrew becomes incommunicado, Ismay knows this is her penalty for not obeying his orders. Her response is to mope around the house and hang abjectly by the phone, inventing sorry excuses why he does not call and thinking adolescent-like melancholy thoughts: ‘He doesn’t care about me anymore. I know he doesn’t. And I can’t live without him.’ (p.94) Soon, however, she realises that it cannot be only Andrew’s dislike of her sister and her boyfriend which accounts for his absence, and that there must be something, or rather someone, else. Both her state of mind and her behaviour then become even more melodramatic, as she undertakes stalker-style action. Tired of being politely cut off on the phone by Andrew’s flatmate, she goes round to their house in person, hoping this will make her (ex-?) boyfriend finally face her. When she is once again brushed off and not even let into the building, she totters on the verge of hysteria as she realises that she does not care about humiliation anymore:

These effusions do not stop her from sinking even lower, however, as she goes rushing about again, hanging around Andrew’s favourite haunts and trying to engineer an encounter. And she progresses from seeing herself as Viola in Twelfth Night (‘that girl in the play who never told her love but let concealment like a worm in the bud feed on her damask cheek’, p.109) to likening Andrew and herself to Dante’s Paolo and Francesca, ‘doomed to drift forever in the void, blown by the winds’ (p.110). While thus waxing poetic, however, her prayer is answered and she does manage to bump into Andrew – and Eva as well. The ensuing confrontation leaves Ismay more miserable than ever, and from that point on she can only wallow in self-pity (‘I want to die,’ p.113), cry on her relatives’ shoulders, and indulge in fantasies of a profoundly apologetic Andrew coming back, for ‘he did love me. God knows he said so often enough’ (p.174). Momentary glimmers of another possible reality (‘Somewhere in all this Ismay was also thinking that Andrew was a hard-hearted cheat, a liar and a deceiver’, p.174) are soon lost to operatic declarations that she would do anything to bring him back.

Ismay thus emerges as a pathetic creature who has one critic note that while ‘[her] passive nature may be understandable, [...] the urge to slap her silly increases with each turn of the page’ (Weinman 2007² ). By sending her down the road of growing mental and emotional frustration, Ruth Rendell explores both the perils of false, romanticised notions of love and the psychological immaturity of her heroine. And the author does so to even greater dramatic effect by juxtaposing Ismay’s bathetic sufferings over the sadistic Andrew and the apparently cloudless relationship that evolves between Ismay’s younger sister and her boyfriend.

Hugs and Kisses. It is desperation that initially prompts Edmund Litton to ask Heather Sealand out for a drink: desperation to thwart his mother’s designs to burden him with the sycophantic, hyper-talkative Marion. At thirty-three, Edmund lives with his hypochondriac mother, works in the same hospice as Heather, and is only now beginning to wonder how much he has possibly missed out on life. His invitation to Heather is not a radical attempt to generally redress the situation, but rather a one-time ploy to avoid Marion. From that first drink, however, a relationship of peaceful love and understanding is to flower which will surprise all, not least those directly involved in it.

Perhaps it so happens because neither Heather nor Edmund start out with any great expectations or demands of each other. It is the simple things of life that help to bring them closer together, as Edmund gradually realises that he must finally face up to his overbearing mother, and that he will find the requisite support in his new girlfriend, as ‘somehow it was Heather’s presence in his life that helped him. Gave him confidence and cheered his heart’ (p.15). For Heather, he is also a welcome, relieving presence, as she admits to him that she is generally a silent person, but ‘I can talk to you. [...] It’s easy with you because you don’t say stupid things. It’s nice.’ (p.15) Then sex enters the picture as yet another revelation to Edmund, who due to his domestic arrangements has gone without it for over five years, and now finds the usually silent and composed Heather a passionate and uninhibited partner. The two quickly, and it seems effortlessly, become inseparable, and soon there is talk of moving out, engagement and marriage, despite the initial scepticism of those observing them. Andrew Campbell-Sedge, though more than eager to have them out of his way, gloatingly comments that ‘they are exactly the sort of people who would fall madly in love, marry in haste and repent at leisure’ (p. 30). Ismay is initially puzzled, as in her opinion ‘Heather’s love affairs, if she had any, must have been brief, superficial and lukewarm’ (p.5), and she seriously doubts whether Heather has the capacity to love Edmund, and love him enough to ‘overcome the inevitable cooling off or settling down which must come after a year or two of marriage’ (p.31). (Andrew and Ismay’s marriage, in her view, will never ever be humdrum.) It is not long, however, before – in typically florid style – Ismay comes to see Heather and Edmund as one of those rare couples who ‘would never even consider straying from each other [...] If [one] died the other would be eternally inconsolable’ (p.59).

Ruth Rendell goes to great lengths to contrast, in parallel situations, the characters of the two Sealand sisters and their boyfriends, as well as the relationships that develop within each couple. While Andrew rants and Ismay cringes, Heather and Edmund get on affably, and self-sufficiently, with each other. Hardly a scene goes by featuring Heather and Edmund where the two do not exchange words of affection, while there is rarely an encounter between Ismay and Andrew without the usual recriminations on his part and tearful responses on hers. On Christmas Day, which the sisters spend with their mother, the author has Heather happily chatting on the phone to Edmund while Ismay frets why Andrew has not called yet. Later on, after one of Andrew’s morning tirades on flat-sharing, Ismay glimpses Heather and Edmund standing in a naked embrace in their bedroom, ‘as she and Andrew had stood a few moments before [...] The difference was that they were kissing.’ (p.49) And as the novel progresses, the juxtaposition between Ismay’s lonely descent into depressive melodrama and Heather and Edmund’s calm and companionable plan-making for the future intensifies with each chapter.

The blissful relationship Heather and Edmund does somewhat stretch the reader’s credibility, but Rendell mostly manages to bring it off. Sympathy for both of them is built up well in advance. Heather’s quiet poise and polite but firm way of undertaking action when necessary seem even more impressive when set off against her sister’s histrionics. Edward, the shy, practically virginal male nurse in his thirties living alone with his mother, has the reader anticipating yet another typically Rendellian anal retentive, and the fact that he turns out quite different delivers a nice surprise. Besides, the author does not have the couple gazing starry-eyed at each other and chanting ‘I love you’ all the time; she has them busy house-hunting, making bookings, arranging their wedding – and above all trying to help Ismay out of her misery. Apart from providing as much comfort as they can or are allowed to, Heather sets out on a mission to track down and reason with Andrew and then Eva. It is the no-nonsense aspect of their relationship that makes it ultimately believable, and to Andrew’s snide comment of above, Rendell contrasts Heather’s reply when Edmund recalls how he fell madly in love with her: ‘Not “madly”, Ed. There was never anything mad about us. We’ve always been rational and practical’ (p.170) – though, on his part, her husband begs to differ.

If there is, indeed, anything to make the experienced reader somewhat uneasy about Heather and Edmund’s apparently perfect relationship, it should be the fact that it takes place in a novel by Ruth Rendell, whose overall body of work has demonstrated that she hardly views the world as a place where happy endings are the norm. Then again, perhaps in a tale so sunnily titled things might work out contrary to expectations. Before the author brings the storylines of the two Sealand sisters and their boyfriends to any resolution, however, she is to investigate further variations of relationships between the sexes.

Means and Ends. Women like Ismay pining for their first romantic love (be it real, imaginary or wishfully remembered), and women like Heather finally finding a peaceful and comfortable partnership, are certainly not a novelty in literature. Neither are women plotting and scheming to entrap a particular party in marriage in order to attain material and/or social betterment. This is where the third main plotline of the novel comes in, that of Marion Melville, one of Rendell’s most grotesque creations ever – a plotline as removed from romance and as close to farce as possible, shifting the novel from Austen-land to Thackeray territory.

Marmoset-faced, stick-legged, crimson-dyed and thirty-something – coquetry would never permit her to state her exact age – Marion is a woman who can neither stop talking nor keep still (Rendell delivers a lesson proper in semantics as Marion runs, races, skips, hops, prances, flits, scuttles, trots, dances, pirouettes and executes pas de deux and entrechats through the pages). Liar, fraudster, thief, blackmailer and aspiring murderess, she is also the woman who, in the beginning, Edmund’s mother would like to see as his ‘intended’. When Edmund makes his preferences clear, Marion, though having tried to court him for her own purposes, is not heart-broken, as ‘[w]hat she wanted was not a young man’s desire but the devotion and admiration of elderly people with money’ (p.20). The latter can be unobtrusively relieved of their possessions, discreetly blackmailed (Marion experiences thrills akin to sexual excitement only when rummaging in people’s drawers for valuable information), and persuaded to put her into their wills – after which her little bottle of morphine sulphate may come in handy. To these ends, she is not above flirting with men, elderly or not, and having failed with Edmund, she tries to ingratiate herself with one Mr Tariq Hussein, wealthy and advanced in age. The eventual discovery that he has no fewer than five sons likely to inherit him, and that he is quite content to be in the company of his mistress, makes Marion lose interest and seek other avenues of enrichment. Her storyline then follows the ups and downs of her money-making schemes and for a while does not have her involved in any intimate relationships. But involved she will eventually become, providing a third branching to the overall men-and-women narrative of The Water’s Lovely.

Marion, the only main character in the novel not actively seeking an intimate partner, is taken notice of by retired, and also widowed, Barry Fenix. When he invites her into his house for a drink, she is taken by ‘his rich, fruity voice and his old-world courtesy. It was a long time since a man had opened a door for her and stood aside to let her pass’ (p.167). Indubitably, the luxuriousness of his house must have made an impression too, for she finds a pretext to give him her number and further meetings are soon to follow. Marion enjoys the meals and drinks he plies her with, although she cannot understand a word of his outdated colonial-speak (Barry is in love with India despite never having been there) and does not particularly like it when he first kisses her but, ‘waving gaily to him, she reminded herself that there was no gain without pain’ (p.188). Soon, she comes to the realisation that, in his own way, he is falling in love with her, and that his love must be cultivated – though in her own estimation an attractive and charming woman, she recognises that ‘a fine prize like Barry Fenix had to be worked for, studied for’ (p.197). Rendell has a fine time with Marion’s ensuing tactics as she spends more time with Barry, listening to hours of encyclopaedic trivia about India and wondering when he will demand, and when she should consent to, sexual intercourse. Her lifetime experience in the latter matter is limited to two short-lasting affairs, entered into ‘more for status and kudos than love’ (p.207) and ending in charges of frigidity against her, and her true opinion is that ‘[sex] was a dirty untidy business at best [...] to be used for manipulation and possibly blackmail’ (p.208). Still, she knows it will be demanded at some point, and that she has to be strategically prepared. Rightly guessing that Fenix will adhere to Victorian-age attitudes about marriage and bed, she starts playing the vivacious but chaste maiden, bringing into the story many a comic scene of feigned moral rectitude, beguiling innocence and coy playfulness.

Further absurdity is lent to the Marion-Barry plotline when jealousy intervenes, in the form of Edmund’s mother Irene Litton. (As already noted, all but a few of the characters in this book are made to dance by its author, like puppets on strings, in the so-called game of love.) Self-righteous, domineering and attention-grabbing, Irene first solaces herself for her son’s failure to fulfil her expectations by inventing yet new ailments to discomfort him and complaining to the ever-sympathetic Marion. Realising eventually that Edmund has reached a point where he can no longer be browbeaten, she seeks new comfort in fantasies about new neighbour Mr Fenix’s interest in her, ‘sure he was going to invite her out. For a drink, wasn’t that what they said? Or maybe to watch his DVDs.’ (p.81) When that does not happen, Irene confides in Marion that Barry seems to be sulking because ‘she had made it plain that she wasn’t interested in “anything like that” [...] Why couldn’t men realise they weren’t all God’s gift to women?’ (p.213) This, however, is just before she sees Marion sneaking into Fenix’s house; following that, as a woman scorned, she executes a malicious act of revenge by which, unwittingly, she only forces Marion to speed up her plans for matrimony.

In the many parallel plot developments of The Water’s Lovely, the above ridiculous love triangle mirrors to some extent that of Ismay, Andrew and Eva, with the one major difference that Barry Fenix has never even thought of making overtures to Irene Litton. The situation is a product of a vain old woman’s imagination and is played by Rendell for pure comic effect. Meanwhile, however, the author takes readers on a fourth and final woman-wants-man storyline, and it is one she develops on a much more sombre note.

Risks and Damages. Fifty-six-year-old Pamela has been more or less house-bound for the last dozen years, looking after schizophrenic Beatrix, her sister and Ismay and Heather’s mother. She has also been without a man (years ago her fiance walked out on her a week before their wedding date), and would now like to find herself one. Not a partner to live with on a personal basis, but someone of her own age, attractive to her, who would ‘take her out, spend the night with her, [...] be a best friend [and] a good lover’ (p.120). To this end, she first tries newspaper columns, then takes advantage of the modern age and goes on the internet, progressing from chat-rooms to speed-dating. So far, she has had a sorry record – men have inspected her as if she were cattle at a market, insulted her as to age and appearance, been impotent with her and blamed her for it, had quick and joyless sex with her, and there was the one who wanted to chain her to his exercise bike and paint her all over with tomato soup. With each next blind date, she becomes more apprehensive, asking herself why she is doing this, and providing her own reply: because without it, tasteless as it is, ‘her existence would be a pathetic apology for a life’ (p.97). Then she tries a new form of quick first encounters, ‘romance walking’, where she meets Ivan Roiter and begins a kind of relationship with him.

Initially, Ivan seems a much better proposition than any of Pamela’s previous attempts. Tall, dark and slim, he is certainly attractive to her; also, he seems to enjoy spending time with her and, when the right moment comes, proves to be surprisingly good in bed. True, he does like to talk, on a very limited number of subjects: the rising cost of living, the sorry state of society – and above all, himself. Plus, he does appear to be rather mean, dragging Pamela from one restaurant to another until he has approved the menu prices. And yes, he does go livid with resentment that she has to live with, and look after, her ill sister. Still, Pamela consoles – and convinces – herself, she has her good moments with him, and it is not as if she is going to marry him.

Then Ivan surprises her by starting to refer to her as his ‘partner’, and eventually suggesting that they ‘get a real relationship going’, i.e. move in together, for ‘At our age we can’t afford to hang about. We know how we feel about each other’ (190). If Pamela is taken aback at this last presumptuous statement, she is even more so when Ivan proposes that he pay towards providing a live-in carer for Beatrix: ‘He must love her if he, a man so careful with his money, could make an offer like that’ (p.191). In her bewilderment, she promises to think about it, but the situation actually seems to help her decide that three months with him have been enough. The next time they meet, she gently tries to tell him that it is no use seeing each other anymore. As usual, Ivan has difficulty understanding what she means. ‘I’m simply telling you I don’t think this thing, relationship, affair, whatever it is, will ever work for us. Don’t you feel that yourself?’ (p.201) What he feels, however, is wounded-pride rage, and at that point things get really ugly.

Ruth Rendell, never a great optimist about human nature in general, particularly detests bullies and has the chilling capacity to bring out the worst in her odious male characters (not that in the twisted interpersonal power games she dissects it is always the men doing the bullying). When Ivan Roiter hears Pamela’s words of above, he informs her in a fury that what she probably really wants is a little excitement to spice up their relationship, and proceeds to rape her, then hurl her down the staircase and slam the door on her. Pamela ends up with multiple fractures in hospital, where, in a typical Rendell coincidence, she will run into Michael Fenster – the man who abandoned her just before they were to be married, and who she has never really stopped thinking about.

Prototypes, Family Matters, and the Art of Communication. In appearance, Michael Fenster reminds Pamela of Ivan Roiter, or rather Ivan reminds her of Michael the first time they meet. Indeed, even before going ‘romance walking’, she vocalises a wish that she could meet someone like Michael, surprising Ismay, who remembers how Michael deserted her aunt years ago. Later, however, Ismay will reflect on how interesting it is that ‘everyone had a type which they were drawn to above all others’ (p.53). Most of the pairings-off that take place in The Water’s Lovely seem to confirm this premise. Ismay herself realises early on that she is attracted to Andrew because he reminds her of Guy, who was ‘her type, the prototype of her type really, the first one of a few that ended in Andrew’ (p.49). When Andrew goes cheating on Ismay, he chooses to do so with Eva, who looks very much like Ismay. In her turn, Eva is to confide that ‘Andrew’s like Dad. A lot like him’ (p.162). After meeting Edmund, Ismay congratulates herself on guessing that ‘the type that attracted Heather would be a man who resembled their father or at least his qualities’ (p.53). As to Edmund himself, he notices that Heather and Irene have much the same sort of figure, but refuses to draw ‘the psychologist’s conclusion, that he was attracted to women who looked like his mother. Anyway, the resemblance ended there.’ (p.18)

That people prefer certain physical types to others, and that these types are often based on their mothers or fathers, is not a new theory. Ruth Rendell puts it to use here not so much to explain her characters’ choice of partners, but rather to extend the scope of the novel’s overall subject to cover family relationships as well. Consequently, an undercurrent theme to the often bizarre bonds between men and women is again love, in its mutant forms and frequent absence, but within the family. The typical protagonists of Rendell’s previous noir tales are loners and outcasts who for one reason or another have been deprived of, or have disassociated themselves from, family life. In this one, nearly all the characters are presented in family setups – some of which mirror one another – and the word love is mentioned in the context of family almost as frequently as in that of intersexual relationships.

Thus, the Sealand menage consists of two pairs of sisters of different generations, bound by a shared past and mutual obligation. Time and again, Ismay repeats to herself how much she loves her sister and how much Heather loves her back (which does not prevent her from thinking, when at her most hysterical over Andrew’s defection, that ‘I love my sister but I’d turn my back on my sister for him’, p.217). In fact, Ismay is sure that if Heather did have anything to do with Guy’s drowning, it was to protect her, Ismay, from his amorous advances, not knowing she actually welcomed them.

At the Litton household, Edmund is smothered by his mother’s peculiar brand of ‘love’, which includes finding the right woman for him. He starts coming to his senses not only because he meets Heather, but also because he sees a parallel situation to his at a colleague’s house: ‘He had never imagined that his strong-minded decisive friend could be so enfeebled and conciliatory, and under the rule of a parent’ (p.14). When Edmund makes it plain that he has resolved to break free, Irene bemoans his ingratitude for all the loving care she has lavished on him, and pronounces his decision something no loving son would do.

Even Marion Melville, whose only interest in life is her own well-being, carries the burdens of family in the form of her vagrant brother, Fowler, who subsists on begging, scavenging the litter bins of London, and sponging off her. In Fowler’s opinion, the world, and that certainly includes his sister, owes him a living: ‘When we were little kids [...] you said “I love you, Fowler. I’ll always take care of you.”’ Her response? ‘You say things like that when you are eight.’ (p.72) Nonetheless, she will find herself forced to take care of him now, as he gives her a dose of her own blackmailing medicine and wheedles her flat out of her in exchange for not presenting himself to Barry Fenix.

‘I'm inclined to think that most families don't work out, and that most trouble does begin in families,’ Rendell has said (Lyall 1995:9). In fact, one strand of her writing – the Barbara Vine novels – deals predominantly with that idea, leisurely exploring the long-term psychological effects of crimes, secrets and lies buried deep down in family history. In The Water’s Lovely – which one reviewer calls a ‘cold-eyed study of dysfunctional family relationships’ (Dobbin 2007:BO6) – Vine meets Rendell, both in treatment of love and family dysfunction, on the author’s distinctively quirkier noir territory, where ‘moments of black humour and a distinctive lopsided logic edge [the tale] close to farce’ (Birch 1991:34).

Ultimately, the novel’s overall premise is that at the heart of all family problems, and all intersexual conflicts, lies love lacking or misguided – due to miscommunication. And it is not a matter of deceptions and lies so much as of merely not asking, telling, or listening. Some of the characters in the book, like Ivan and Marion, talk a lot without ever saying much, caring for their audience’s reaction, or listening to the other side (except for Marion when mining for extortion-worth information). Others talk to each other at cross purposes and go around in futile circles, like Ismay and Andrew in their endless scenes regarding co-habitation with her sister, or Ivan and Pamela (‘She was always having to explain to [him] what she meant [...] most of the time they seemed to be speaking different languages’, p.164). There are those who refuse to believe what they are told or even discuss matters: when Andrew does make a comeback, Ismay, emboldened, tells him that they ‘have to talk’. ‘Oh, darling [...] not that awful cliche, please. I can’t bear it,’ he says (p.252), making Ismay realise that he is one of those people who simply clam up or walk away when something needs to be talked through. Exceptions do exist, of course, like Heather and Edmund, who have Ismay’s envy because ‘You tell each other everything [...] Without effort. How lucky you are’ (p.240); but even Heather has not told her husband about one important event in her life, and does not feel completely at ease until she does so. Close to the latter behavioural category also come those who are afraid to ask questions – lest they do not like the answers – and prefer to close their eyes to problems, thus doing perhaps the greatest damage possible to both themselves and all others.

The overhanging mystery of The Water’s Lovely is what precisely happened twelve years ago, when Beatrix’s second husband and Ismay and Heather’s stepfather, Guy, drowned in his bath. The coroner’s verdict was accidental death, but within the Sealand household there have always been doubts. Ismay and her mother were out shopping, Heather was supposed to go and visit a friend, and Guy was at home recovering from a viral infection; on returning, Ismay and Beatrix found Heather in the house, her dress all wet, beckoning them to the bathroom, where Guy’s dead body lay. Pamela was summoned for support, the police were called and lied to, and that was that. The matter was not discussed within the family afterwards. Pamela remained unaware that their story was not completely true. Beatrix went schizophrenic and now, when not under sedation, speaks only in Book of Revelations doomsday quotes about many-headed beasts and deluges. Ismay has been troubled by the incident all these years and vacillated, in typical fashion, between searching for alternative explanations and telling herself that Heather must have done it, and done it for her, Ismay’s, sake. What she – or anyone else – has not done is seek the truth from Heather:

There are times when Ismay also asks herself whether, if she had told Heather about her appreciation and anticipation of Guy’s attentions, his death could have been averted. On finishing the novel, the reader asks himself whether, had Ismay posed the pertinent questions, a lot of the present-day plot events which only serve to exacerbate her torment and despair might not have been avoided. When it becomes clear that Heather and Edmund are in love, Ismay deliberates over whether to tell Edmund about Guy’s drowning, and compromisingly makes a recorded statement – which falls into the blackmailing Marion’s hands. Then Eva Simber is murdered and Ismay is almost certain that it is Heather again who did it, this time to make Andrew once more available – because Heather loves her, and would do anything to help her. A nerve-racking time follows when a young man is arrested for the crime and Ismay has to decide whether to give up her sister or send an innocent man to jail. Finally, the truth must out. Heather is aghast at the suggestion that she might have killed Eva, and Ismay at long last summons up the courage to ask about Guy’s death; it then transpires that Heather has been waiting all these years for her family to put that question to her, but no one would.

The truth that emerges puts a grimly ironic twist on the overall theme of the novel, darkly echoing Carson McCullers’s treatment of the subject of love. Guy never came to Ismay’s bedroom at night simply because he was going to Heather’s all the time. ‘Guy wanted you but he stopped wanting you because you so plainly wanted him. [...] But I was the one he wanted because I didn’t want him.’ (p.290) Heather suffered in silence because she was afraid of him, but then came the day when he did and said something that she could not bear: calling her on a pretext into the bathroom, he invited her to join him in the bath with the assurance that ‘the water’s lovely’.

Just Desserts? In the end, writes one reviewer, ‘it's never a question of who drowned Guy in the bathtub. It's a question of why and whether he deserved it’. (Dobbin 2007:BO6) Most readers would probably say he did. An equally relevant and ultimately more interesting question, however, is whether the living characters in this novel get what they deserve – or deserve what they get – in their so-called romantic quests.

As noted previously, Thirteen Steps Down, the predecessor to The Water’s Lovely in Rendell’s stand-alone strand, had three central characters fixated on seeking out love – and not only not finding it, but ending up very much the worse for their misguided searchings. In this later novel, the resolutions to the four main storylines are much more erratic, and may raise quite a few eyebrows.

Thanks to Eva Simber’s conveniently getting murdered on one of her morning runs, Andrew does return to Ismay – and this time it seems he is here to stay. Despite the roses, champagne, and a diamond engagement ring, she knows it will not be easy sailing, but nevertheless takes him back. Having poetically acknowledged earlier on that ‘I’m the one who kisses and he’s the one who lets himself be kissed’ (p.163), she now resigns herself to the fact that she will be living a life of lies and infidelities to which, however, she does not see an alternative. On the penultimate page of the novel, Andrew is already eyeing a pretty blonde girl at a nearby restaurant table. This, however, does not stop Ismay from making wedding plans.

Pamela also gets her Michael back, and chooses to believe his rather improbable explanation for why he abandoned her years ago. Marriage is offered and refused, but only because she thinks they are too old for such formalities and prefers that they simply live together as partners. Whether he will hang around longer this time is left to the reader to decide.

Marion does manage to take Barry Fenix up to the altar, and finally become a lady of means. A honeymoon is conducted in Barry’s dreamland India but not enjoyed much, as he finds reality there rather different from what he imagined, and the food less to his liking than that offered by London’s Indian restaurants. Unfortunately, Marion only now discovers that before retiring he used to be a police inspector and, thanks to Ismay’s returning her blackmailing favours, will now live in perpetual fear that her criminal doings may one day come to light. She will also have to commit herself to hours of boredom as he regales her with detailed reminiscences of heroic exploits in his glory days.

And that perfect couple, Heather and Edmund? They get married, too, move into their own flat, and go on a long-delayed honeymoon – to Sumatra, where Beatrix’s dire Bible quotes will come true, and they will discover that the water certainly is not lovely. Ever abreast of current events, Ruth Rendell sends a tsunami their way and they become two of the four British tourists to be taken by the flood.

Nothing is fair in life – and love – especially in Rendell-land, but one still wonders what to make of such an ending. It could be argued that it is punishment for Heather’s killing her stepfather, no matter how vile the things he did to her were, with Edmund the innocent collateral victim. ‘Was she justified?’ Ismay thinks on hearing her sister’s confession. ‘If she had fought off his advances and killed him in self-defence, well, yes. But in cold blood? A calculated move because he had disgusted her?’ (p. 292) Heather herself does not think she was justified and, among the many literary references in the novel, the shadow of Tess of the D’Urbervilles hangs over her whole storyline as she hesitates whether to tell Edmund or continue to keep silent. She does tell him in the end and he stands by her, though a much quieter and sadder man than before. Ruth Rendell, however, does not abide murder and is, according to critic Charles Taylor, ‘one of modern fiction’s few true moralists’ who ‘lies in wait for her characters, like the cocked and loaded gun they were never fortunate enough to run into’ (Taylor 2004). The climax of the novel, writes Muriel Dobbin, ‘is a classic turn of the Rendell screw, as it makes a disaster in Sumatra the ultimate comeuppance in the case of the corpse in the bathtub’ (Dobbin 2007:BO6).

Other reviewers, however, have objected to the ‘chilly and amoral tone of [Ruth Rendell’s] novels’ (Macdonald 2005), and hold it that the ending of The Water’s Lovely is simply a ‘brilliantly spiteful twist in its tail’, evidence to the fact that in her later work Rendell ‘seems to lose her faith in humanity even more’ (Jawson 2007:BO9). This would seem to concur with the opinion that this novel displays ‘a disturbing recent lack of compassion’ (Weinman 2007), and go completely against another one which posits that the book has ‘the generous humanity of her best Inspector Wexford cases’ (Sims 2007:CO8).

Finally, one could side with Professor Susan Rowland, perhaps the academic expert on Ruth Rendell, who has it that ‘the social vision of Ruth Rendell […] looks forward to a utopian place – one which may never exist but which remains a quest object’ (Rowland 2001:13), if that statement is extended to cover the writer’s moral vision, too. In other words, one may choose to take it that ‘it is not a love of violence, but an abhorrence of suffering that makes Rendell put out the light on so many domestic situations’ (Cohu 2007:27).

As seen from the above, critics are extremely divided as to The Water’s Lovely – as is usually the case with Ruth Rendell’s work, and indeed with that of most significant authors. Suffice to say that, with its unexpected ending, the novel gives plentiful food for thought, confirms yet again Rendell’s bleak vision of the world we live in, and definitely does not make an optimistic case for love. The latter is further accentuated by the grimly ironic last lines of the book, when Ismay is brought the tragic news by Andrew: ‘He held her close, telling her she had no need of anyone else. Hadn’t he said he would love her forever?’ (p.295)

Conclusion. In The Water’s Lovely, Ruth Rendell uses the structural framework of a long-ago crime to bring together four disparate plotlines, each one dealing with characters who, for their own specific reasons, are in pursuit of what they perceive as love, or at least partnership. The author probes into wildly delusional notions of romantic love; practical love based on mutual liking, respect and understanding; mercenary tactics for enticement and entrapment; and the desperate search for companionship and sex born out of loneliness and the sense of personal incompleteness. The overall theme is complemented by an exploration of variations of love, or the lack of such, within families, and the psychological consequences these may bring about.

Into this multi-strand narrative, Rendell, in typical style, throws in obsessions, neuroses, hypochondria, narcissism, sociopathy, pedophilia, schizophrenia, blackmail, rape and physical abuse. Crimes feature too, including two murders, one of which is pivotal and the other almost peripheral – as it frequently is in this writer’s stand-alone work, despite her consistently being branded as a crime writer. The novel, again typically, constantly shifts from comedy of manners to grim tragedy to outright farce, ultimately reinforcing Ruth Rendell’s belief that the world as it is offers little place for happiness – and even less for what is generally assumed to be true love.

Birch 1991: H. Birch. Diamond Daggers in the Back. The Independent (London), 23 November 1991, Section: Weekend Books Page; Pg. 34.
Cohu 2007: W. Cohu. Lives to Make Death Look Cosy. The Daily Telegraph (London), 10 March 2007, Section: Books; Pg. 27.
Dawson 2007: J. Dawson. Living with Everyday Monsters. Hobart Mercury (Australia), 12 May 2007, Section: Weekend; Pg. B09.
Dobbin 2007: M. Dobbin. Two Sisters' Grisly Secret. The Washington Times, 23 September 2007, Section: Books; Page B06.
Lyall 1995: S. Lyall. Mysteries, of Course, But Ruth Rendell Also Sees Real Evil. The New York Times, 10 April 1995, Section C; Pg. 9.
Macdonald 2005: M. Macdonald. Her Dark Materials. The Daily Telegraph (London). www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/04/11/barendell11.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/04/11/ixartleft.html.
Rendell 2006: R. Rendell. The Water’s Lovely. Hutchinson, London.
Rowland 2001: S. Rendell. >From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell. Palgrave, London.
Sims 2007: M. Sims. Beware the Ruthless Killer. Washington Post, 19 July 2007; Pg. C08.
Stasio 1990: M. Stasio. The Love Slave. The New York Times, 10 June 1990, Section 7; Pg. 16.
Taylor 2004: C. Taylor. Woman with a Loaded Gun. www.powells.com/review/2004_12_03.html.
Weinman 2007: S. Weinman. Another Entry from Ruth Rendell. The Philadelphia Enquirer, 22 July 2007. www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20070722.

¹All citations in this paper are from the 2006 Hutchinson Trade Paperback edition of The Water’s Lovely
²Citations in this paper not referring to page numbers are from Internet sources