Turquoiselle, Tanith Lee [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

be alarmed. Please stay seated and enjoy the view. A combine ofrich fudge – and malice – enormous sympathy, empathy – and utter frigidindifference.

Andyheard that faultlessly and knew it, even if perhaps he could not, then, havelabelled it with total accuracy. Faker. Taker. Snake.

“You haven’tbeen going to school, Andrew, have you.” (Not a question.) “Why’s that?” (Andthis was a question?Andy did not reply. The suited man regarded him with a half-smile, notfriendly, nor inviting confidence, nor angry, but something – something.) “I thinkvarious people have spoken to you about this, Andrew. And to your mother.Outlining the possible consequences of your non-attendance.” (Sara had goneinto the kitchen, another miniscule space packed with minute sink, three thincupboards, a miniaturised fridge, and an electric cooker of unwillingtemperament – they consumed a lot of takeaways – to make the suit coffee. Andyhad asked for coffee too, but Sara had not acknowledged his request, perhapsthinking it publically unfitted to a growing youth just fifteen.) “It seems,”said the suit, “you’re not keen on school.”

Youcould not call him a suit, really. He dominated the suit, somehow. At first itwas what you saw, then you saw him, and the suit much less. You only sawhis shirt because it was blue, and his eyes were blue. Vivid blue. Contacts,maybe. He had brownish hair, well-cut in a way his generation – late thirties,early forties – favoured – a bit long, loose, hankering back to the liberationsof the Seventies. (It vaguely suggested itself to Andy that in twenty-five moreyears he too would be around the age of this man now, and the man would be,perhaps, in his sixties. Heavy might have pointed this weird sort of actualityout; Andy, by now often in contact with Heavy, had partially picked up thepeculiar mind-set. Though to Andy, of course, at fifteen, trapped for themoment in the flat with the suit, it was a floating concept. More immediatelyhe could smell the coffee, instant and cheap, and below that the faintly greasyunderlay of the room – Sara did not clean thoroughly at home, being worn out bythe work elsewhere. (Or, judging by the sackings, maybe not elsewhere either.)Beneath the coffee too, there was the well-known rising hint of rotted alcohol.Last night some gang had had a noisy play-fight under the windows with lagercans.)

Thesuit was called Sunderland.

“You’rereally quite bright,” said Sunderland. “Or so they say. Do you think you are?”

Afresh question.

Andydecided to answer.

“No.”

“Howinteresting. I’d have said you thought you were very bright, too bright in fact to have togo to classes, or obey stupid rules.”

Andystared at him. Then looked away as the over-vivid eyes met his. Andy shiftedslightly. He was glad when the door opened and Sara slunk back in with thecoffee in the big red mug that had only one chip out of it. She had put it on alarge plate in place of a tray, with the packet of sugar and a jug of milk. ‘Graciousliving’ Sara termed that kind of thing, with a sort of mournfully scornfuljealousy.

“Thankyou, Mrs Carver.” Sunderland added nothing to the mug. He sipped the inferiortoo-weak brew, did not pull a face, (as the electrician had that time), and setthe mug back down. “Please don’t feel you need to stay, Mrs Carver,” he courteouslytold her, a caring prince with his rather thick domestic, “I’m sure you’resnowed under with stuff to do. Andrew and I are fine.”

Snowedunder. Sara, a jittery, shiny little bug, muttered some incoherentappeasement, and flitted back into the kitchen. She did not even leave the doorajar. Frightened all over again, very likely she preferred not to hear, as shehad not when his father had begun to rev up.

“Thething is, Andrew,” said Sunderland the suit, “We’ve been looking at your record,”(a vinyl album of hits, a file in police archives, an unbroken achievement atrunning the mile in one second), “and you truly have some potential, we feel.But you’re not going to realise it by skiving off all the time. The teachers atSacks, of course, are pure unmoderated shit,” (what? Andy found he was sitting boltupright, as if pulled by the sparking strings of the unexpected swear word), “sofrankly we don’t blame you for hiking your arse straight out of there and offto do something worthwhile. At least, that way, you’re learning about reallife, or you are to a certain qualified extent. More than the so-calledcurriculum will teach you, definitely.”

Apause.

Andynow was staring full-on at Sunderland, and trying to catch his eye. And Sunderland, anaccomplished flirt, was gazing instead upwards at a genuine fly that, nervousas Sara, was skittering along the ceiling.

Thefly and the pause continued.

Sunderlandspoke again. “Why don’t you,” he asked mildly, not glancing Andy’s way, “open thewindow so that poor little bugger can get out?”

Likean automaton Andy rose, reached the window, opened it.

“Goon,” said Sunderland, conversationally, to the fly, “make a break for freedomwhile you can, matey.”

Andthe fly let go the stained plaster, whizzed across the narrow space, and shotthrough the opening into the dismal onset of evening.

“Howdid you do that?” Andy said. As he had said it to Heavy, after the businesswith the dog.

“What?Oh, that. I didn’t. It’s called coincidence. Sit down, Andrew – or do youprefer Andreas?”

Andysat down. Sunderland must know his true original name from the ‘record’.

“Andy,”said Andy.

“OK.Andy. You’re fifteen now, aren’t you.” (Also no question. Sunderland knew, thatwas all. Knew all of it.) “How about we get you into a college? No, I don’t meanlike a university, and I don’t mean like a fob-off pile of crap. I meansomewhere you’ll have quite a bit of freedom, access to good tuition frompeople who respect you, and a range of choices, or at least up to a point, onwhat you learn and how and when you learn it.”

Andysat there. None of this made sense.

“Why?”he said. But only for something to say. He had reached the state of grasping hewould have to respond. Just as the fly had done.

Logicalor not, since the dog, they had hung out together quite a bit, he and Heavy.

Heavyusually instigated their meetings, if you could call his approaches that. Hewould just turn up, arrive.