Greyglass, Tanith Lee [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

Then he half turned and said, “Oh, that’s my wife signalling. I’ll catch you later, Susan.”

Rod Ayres had actually got her the job at Paragon. Or, his ‘friend’ Mike Hammond had done so. Mike had leafed through her folder as Rod perched on a chair-arm, a fifty-year-old avuncular teenager. “There’s some pretty good stuff here, Susan. And your qualifications are fine. Now, you’ve done this design course, you say?”

Susan, on Rod’s suggestion, had done six months by then of the course, for which the council had refused her a grant, but Anne had sent her money.

Rod said, “She’s a star pupil, Mike,” and Mike had looked at him, and long after, when Susan was working for Paragon as a dogsbody in the art department, Mike had said, “Do you still see Rod?”

“Oh, no,” Susan had said.

“That’s probably as well. I think he was a bit serious about you.”

And embarrassed by it all, and by Rod, she had said forcefully, “It wasn’t ever anything like that. He was my college tutor, that’s all.” But Mike only shrugged.

Of course, there had been the inevitable scene, after she got the job, when Rod insisted – that was insisted – on taking her for a meal in an Italian restaurant.

He ordered a bottle of wine, (the first of three) at once, and before the food came downed three large glasses. He kept talking about the divorce he had had from his wife ‘last August’, stressing he was a free man, saying the things he would like now to do, such as going to France or Rome to paint in the summer, trying to entice her.

They ordered desert, which Susan didn’t want, but, “Oh you must. Go on. Look, they’ve got Death-By-Chocolate –” disappointed when she only selected a fruit salad, and saying, “God, I hope you’re not trying to lose weight, Susan. You’re lush and lissom, you know, just right –” so she felt herself redden. Rod had the chocolate death, spooning it up like a famished child. Then he reached across and took her hand.

“You’ll come with me to France, won’t you, Susan?”

“To France?” She looked blank, surprised. “Why?”

“Why. You know why. I thought you understood what I’ve been trying to say.”

“No,” she said dimly.

Rod still didn’t give up. He leaned towards her in a wave of Mandate and said, “I really like you,” in an eager young voice.

“Oh – I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”

“Don’t be sorry. Now you do.”

“You see, I’m – with someone.”

He looked at her. Then he drew back. “Oh yes?”

“Yes. We’ve been together for a year.”

“You never mentioned it.”

“Well… I didn’t see how it was relevant.”

“Come on.”

Ashamed now of herself, (though why? It wasn’t because she was lying) she looked away and said, “I’m sorry. But Joe and I are living together.”

“Joe.”

“I’m in love with him,” she rushed out angrily. “I’m not going to want anyone else.”

Rod looked both squashed and belligerent. “I think you might have said. I’ve been trying to help you.”

Susan wanted to say, So you wouldn’t have helped me if you thought there was nothing in it for you? But she said, “Yes, I know. Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” And then, fawningly, hollowly, “I’d never think someone like you would be interested in me.”

“Why not?” he roared, making other people turn and stare, to add to the jollity of the occasion. “I’m too old, is that it?”

Then he pushed back his chair, which drunkenly fell over, threw some notes on the table, and walked right out of the restaurant. Leaving her to settle the bill, which after three bottles of wine and the deathly chocolate was considerable; the twenty pounds he had flung down did not remotely cover it. Luckily Susan had meant to go to Sainsbury’s on the way home and brought extra cash.

About ten days after this, a letter arrived. ‘Dearest Susan, can you forgive my irrational behaviour?’ It hadn’t been, she thought, at all irrational, perfectly logical. ‘I know the situation with your boyfriend, but I’d still like to see you. Nothing heavy. Do say you will–’

She tore the letter up and put it in the bin.

Two weeks later, receiving a now regular monthly pay cheque, she had moved into another flat, where she would not have to share a bathroom. She did not send Rod Ayres her new address.

Following the Paragon party, where she had met R.J., Susan began work on a cover commission for a difficult manuscript she had been trying to read without much success. Something strange occurred. The book’s anti-hero had dark curling hair and eyes described as hazel. Though in his late thirties, the anti-hero now assumed the lineaments of R.J. And suddenly, Susan could read the book. She tore up her provisional sketches and started inadvertently to draw R.J. She had been warned before never to use the appearance of any well-known actor, even where the author likened a protagonist to one. Houses had apparently been sued.

Susan did draw R.J. however, several times, on a sketchpad. The drawings dissatisfied her, naturally.

Four or five nights after the party, she dreamed she and R.J. were walking in London; somewhere, she thought, near to the British Museum.

The next morning he called her.

“Hello, Susan.”

She knew who it was and her breathing stopped. She said, without a breath, and uncertainly, “Hello…?”

“I’d like to talk to you. Is that possible?”

“…yes.”

“That’s good. Shall we meet for a drink somewhere? Do you have a place you like?”

When she went to meet him that evening, the compendium of terror and joy she felt worried Susan almost in proportion to her exhilaration.

She kept saying to herself that undoubtedly he only meant to discuss something to do with business. Perhaps he had a contract with another publishing house and wanted her for another cover, there, which might cause bad feeling since she still worked part-time in Paragon’s art department.

Now and then too she reminded herself he was married, and had made no secret of it in front of her.

He