Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

of the quiet house. They were everywhere. In the midst of anything, sleep, bathing, masturbation, they would knock and step straight in on you.

The house with infested with them, the servants.

On Sunday, dinner was taken at two o’clock, a Basulte tradition, in the Great Dining-Room.

This room was enormous, flanked on one side by windows pierced to the floor as in the smaller dining-room. It was papered and draped in a rich toffee blue. The ceiling had been painted by a minor luminary of the eighteenth century. It was a lighter blue, with clouds: the sky. (Outside the English heaven scowled and urinated on the park.)

To match the Great Dining-Room, a huge side of beef, black without and reddish within, was carved before them. They drank claret. This quickly gave her a headache, but the Basultes swallowed it undaunted.

She had come to see the Father was very greedy. He ate in an ugly mannered way, still managing to stuff his mouth with large forkfuls of food. She had been told by now, (Raoul) the Basulte grandfather, who had begun the peasant tradition of the two o’clock dinner, would stalk straight in from the hunt, reeking of horse, hound and blood, put his feet on the table, tearing chunks by hand off the roast, so aroused was his appetite.

The woman, the Mother, was greedy too, but she ate very slowly, outlasting everyone, going on and on.

Margaret Lilian would get up and go over to the windows to smoke.

Normally, when the midday meal was over, they dispersed, and Anna would ascend to her room to play patience, or to doze. Later she would read parts of a novel taken from the Basulte library. These books were old-fashioned, their language outdated to the point of seeming another tongue, and bound in leather. She would make herself stick at a book until four-thirty, the usual hour for the (unwanted) tea.

After the Sunday meal, at last the Mother-woman rose, casting down her napkin soiled with lipstick. She led the way into another orangery. As they sat among the sullen palms for their coffee, she said to Anna, “Sunday is the day I visit the kitchen. You must go with me, Anna.”

Evidently this was a command.

When the coffee was drunk, the woman went upstairs to prepare herself, and returned once more crimson of mouth, her nose floured with powder.

Beyond what was called the Smoking Room, was a door with felt on it, behind a curtain.

The butler held this door open, and the woman walked through and down a stair, Anna following dubiously.

Anna did not want to know any more about the servants.

But this was the understairs, the below-stairs. A curious fact, the servants slept in the attics overhead, and toiled all day down here, under their feet.

The kitchen was such a big room, conceivably much bigger than the Great Dining-Room.

Anna had recalled those rubicund kitchens of the past, the baskets of washing pushed aside, the plants crouched on windowsills. This was not like that.

It seemed they would have had to tidy it, after all the Sunday food, for this – weekly? – inspection.

The long tables were bare as bones and nearly as white. The linoleum floor was still damp in patches. A mousetrap stood sentinel in one corner. Even that looked tidy, the bait of cheese fresh and cheery.

The ovens, which still exuded heat, were clean. A black iron box of fire – a range – had been scoured by devils.

Even the windows shone.

There were no vegetables hanging, only on a table a basket of early apples, a jug of intact roses. Picturesque.

The cook was there, a big fat woman. She wore a starched dark dress and apron of blue-white. She and the butler were the only ones to keep their heads unbowed. All the rest, clean as new pins, waited in a line, starched and ironed, hands raw from work, heads bent as if for a dire punishment – as if they had gravely sinned. Bobbing, bobbing.

“Very good, Mrs Ox,” said the Basulte Mother of Raoul, (Ox? Had she truly called the cook that? But an ox was a male cow of some kind, wasn’t it?)

“Thankum, Madum.”

“And your dinner was quite good. The meat… a little well-done, perhaps.”

“I regretuz, Madum.”

“No. Don’t trouble. The butcher is probably the one at fault. Just be a little more careful.”

The Basulte woman moved along the line of maids and boys, examining their shirts, aprons, their starchiness, seeing presumably that their hands were properly flayed and red enough. One hand she pointed to. “Mrs Ox, are these nails quite pristine?”

Mrs Ox said, fawningly, “Is ona the mushrooms, madum. No hurm.”

“Harm isn’t the point, Ox.”

“No um, Madum. I beg pardon. I’ll seeuz she go wont her tea, Madum.”

The girl, whose nails looked only torn down to Anna, made no remonstrance. And when the woman added, “Very good,” this girl bobbed again, as if she had received her due, some sort of medal.

As they left, the whole roomful was bobbing, like corks. It made Anna seasick.

The Mother smiled at her as they came up from the nether regions.

“You see, Anna.”

“About her nails?” asked Anna. “It seemed a pity.”

“Yes. They are so dirty if you don’t watch them.”

No one had spoken, Raoul had not spoken again, about a wedding. Yet, was this instruction so Anna should learn how the great house must be ordered.

I, Anna thought, the Jew.

After the Sunday dinner there was to be a supper, but that was at ten.

Lilith told her, coming in the room as Anna slept, and beginning to lay out, unasked, a suitable dress. “M’slilum says wulla golong anin.”

Anna shook her head. “I’m sorry – go along… where?”

“Toer room.” Lilith Izzard said something else, which Anna didn’t catch at all. She didn’t know where Lilian’s room might be.

Lilith put a paper in her hand. It was a map of the way, drawn in an impatient yet curlicued manner.

Raoul had never, though he had drawn her a map of the route to the dining-room, given her a map