No one knows what’s become of Harriet Oxenholme. Franklin Merton has recently passed away. The action of The Vault takes place in the present, almost forty years after Simon Alpheton created his iconic image. No, not much like them at all, actually…. Her response to Simon’s words is to crow: “Like us.
The graceful image, not to mention the subtle implication conjured by these words is well nigh lost on the rock musician and his preening girlfriend. They’re obviously wealthy, they’re very richly dressed, but you can see that they’re sensitive, thoughtful people and they’re in love.’ ‘It’s a very tender painting, it expresses the protective love of the man for his young submissive bride. While Marc and Harriet are posing for him, Simon tells them about a painting by Rembrandt called The Jewish Bride: Orcadia Cottage is of central importance in A Sight for Sore Eyes, just as it is in The Vault. One is particularly likely to encounter prose of this caliber when she is describing dwelling places. I often feel that Ruth Rendell is not given sufficient credit for the vivid beauty of her writing. The whole surface of the house seemed to shiver and rustle, a vertical sea of green ruffled into wavelets by the wind. But at this time of year, midsummer, almost all the brickwork was hidden under a dense drapery of Virginia creeper, its leaves green, glossy and quivering in the light breeze. The house they stood in front of was described by those who knew about such things as a Georgian cottage and built of the kind of red bricks usually called mellow. The painter was Simon Alpheton, an artist of considerable note at the time, that time being 1973.Ī Sight for Sore Eyes opens with Simon Alpheton in the act of painting Marc Syre, star of the rock band Come Hither, and his girlfriend Harriet Oxenholme as they stand before a house – their house, Orcadia Cottage. The painting he’s referring to is entitled Marc and Harriet in Orcadia Place. The Vault opens with Franklin Merton commenting that although he could afford to buy a particular house, he could not afford to purchase a painting of it. In the more than ten years since I read it, I have not forgotten his name: Teddy Brex.
Sight features one of the most genuinely frightening characters I’ve ever encountered in a work of fiction. It is a novel of psychological suspense, not a police procedural – Reg Wexford does not appear in the narrative. Novemat 1:32 pm ( Book review, books, Mystery fiction, The British police procedural)Ī Sight for Sore Eyes came out in 1999. The Vault: Ruth Rendell’s sequel to A Sight for Sore Eyes
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