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

of the way to his own room. And he hadn’t come to hers since that first – or second – occasion.

None of the men came to the afternoon tea now, in the orangery. But when Anna had not gone either, a maid had arrived to remind her. (Today dinner had eclipsed the tea.)

Anna had lit the fire laid in the grate because the bedroom was depressingly dank. And Anna could visualise Mrs Pin telling her she should not have lit the fire, but rung for someone to see to it. A long velvet tail hung by the mantelpiece, to summon the servants. Anna had never used it. Pulling tails seemed unwise.

Lilith said nothing about the fire. Her hands and eyes, and the beads on the supper dress, glimmered peculiarly in the firelight.

“What’s the nearest town, Lily?” said Anna.

The fox maid said a name, but it was incomprehensible and unknown.

“How far are we from London?”

Lilith stared right at her. Her eyes seemed to leave the glim of her face and float luminously, like topazes in the air.

“Lonun? Oh thabee fur off.”

It was all very stupid, this, wasn’t it? Anna was a displaced person, but she did not need to be a prisoner.

One got into these habits, like carrying heavy laundry, the pressures of what was expected of you, forcing you round and round in a dull trance. Just so she had gone to school day after day, as a child, the school where she could barely speak the language, and the other children ripped her hair. Until the day it occurred to her she need not go, they would not bother, and so all summer, until the next flight, she sat on the hawk-swooped hills, where the olive trees anciently grew, twisted in adolescent gossamer, about the ancient fort. It was simple.

Lilian sat in her apartment. A dressing room opened from it, and two closed doors. It was all done in tones of cream and milk, but the bed was a strawberry.

She sat like a woman in a painting, her Chinese robe of embroidered ochre silk fallen wide open. She was naked.

Her body was plump but not very firm, the breasts drooping. At her belly’s pit the fleece of her hair was a ripe black, shining as if oiled and brushed, permed and even set, like her upper hair.

“Oh, Anna. Do sit. I wanted to talk to you.”

It was reminiscent of a harem. The black beetle-dogs of the maids, three, four of them, eddied about her. One did not fan Lilian with an ostrich plume, but instead stoked the fire.

Firelight played over skin and black dresses.

A girl sorting garments, another sewing something in a corner. One mixing cocktails at a lacquer table. There were even olives.

The air smelled of women, flesh and hair, alcohol, scent.

Anna sat down.

Her own dress was black, but the beads were malachite. She turned a little sideways, from the pouting collapsing staring breasts.

“Oh God. You’re not embarrassed, are you?”

Lilian laughed, and her vagina opened. Just a momentary glimpse. Like a rosy wink.

Anna shook her head.

“Oh good. I know you foreigners can be a bit stuffy. Oh for Christ’s sake…” Her voice lifted to a shout. “Haven’t you found it yet?”

“Noum.”

“Hurry up, you arse.” It was the maid sorting through the dresses. “Fucking useless,” said Lilian. This was another personality, or the inner life revealed. Abruptly she picked up her cigarette case, heavy gold, and threw it directly at the head of the maid bending to the drinks. “Hurry up, fuck you.”

The girl was struck. She reeled. But the cocktail did not spill, and after a second, she was in place again, setting an olive in each glass.

Anna swallowed. She felt dizzy from the blow.

They drank the cocktails.

(Margaret) Lilian began to talk.

She spoke about clothes, how it was impossible to get anything decent. She must go to London. Anna ought to come with her. Anna thought of Raoul’s pledge, which might be unmeant, as this almost definitely was, wasn’t it?

Lilian spoke as if Anna were quite a close friend. Almost as if Anna were of Lilian’s class, or status. Whatever her status was. Then again, she assumed Anna would be happy to accompany her, happy to listen. This demonstrated that Anna was an inferior in many ways, socially and humanly, eager for titbits from this more important table.

“Tommy’s hopeless.” said Lilian. Anna did not ask who Tommy was, for surely he must be the husband with the scarred eyebrow. Lilian went on, “All he cares about is the business.” What business? Anna did not ask. “And the Basulte land. He likes the land. That’s what he married, after all.”

“Do you know,” said Lilian loudly, raising her arms for the silk slip to be slipped on, since by now the maids were dressing her. “Our first night, I mean our wedding night, he was downstairs drinking until nearly six a.m. Six, I ask you.” But she was not asking, only telling. “Hopeless that way, too, of course. But most of them are. Don’t you find that? I need three or four gins even to feel like it nowadays. I keep saying, Slow down, Tommy, for Christ’s sake. It’s not the fucking Derby.”

She must be talking about the sexual act. Internally Anna twitched, not a flicker of pleasure or anticipation, uncomfortable actually.

The leering breasts had hooded their eyes in silk and lace, and now Lilian was being hooked into an old-fashioned cherry-coloured dress.

A maid came and held out a lipstick and a mirror coped in silver. Lilian crayoned her mouth on and on, as if she were eating something. Between layerings, she still spoke.

“I suppose you’ve had quite an exciting life, Anna.”

Was this a question? No.

“God, I almost envy you. They value women on the continent, make them into little goddesses. I bet you could teach me a few tricks. But I wouldn’t be able to use them. Wouldn’t be worth it, with bloody old Tommy.”

Was Tommy old? He hadn’t seemed to be.

“Raoul though. I suppose Raoul’s all right.”