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

the terror his father hadimposed. It was not self defence, rather absenting of self – absenteeism.

Avondalehad rambled on since the car first brought them to the restaurant. And in thebar, as the golden evening melted into the nocturnal version of the Londonceiling, and was slit all over in neon slices, Avondale continued. He drankquite a lot, and talked a vast amount during their meal – for him, alefish, andthen some sort of exemplified liver stew. (It was a quieter menu for Carver.)Rattles had been reputedly so named for its more exotic dishes, curious fishand fowl and flesh, including rattlesnake. And the bill, whenestablished, after the dessert and cheese, coffee and brandy, was fabulous, butthe courtesy card took care of it, and the petty cash took care of the tip.

Thelimousine and driver came back promptly at twenty minutes to nine.

“There’sa matter I’d really like to run through with you, we didn’t get to it thisevening,” Avondale said, in the last two minutes before his journey to thedocklands and the plane. “A venture – I’d like to cut you in, Carver. It mightbe lucrative.”

Carverhad nodded, smiling, looking pleased but not too much so. Such proposals werebroached sometimes, freelance like this, here and there. A couple had been bizarre(a man called Simpson) and one discoloured enough Carver had carried itstraightback to Stuart. Most were cigar-dreams, brandy-fantasies, not worth evenrecollecting, and this one, unspecified, seemed exactly like that.

Theyshook hands out in the stuffy chilliness of an autumn London night.

“Takecare, son,” said Avondale, as the immaculate door was shut on him.

Carverwatched as he rode away between the prickly bristles of the city lights, red-facedand gentle with false sentimentality, irrelevant and over. The end of anotherday.

Andnow, for Carver, back to Trench Street, drop off the Third Person, then theshort wait to get his car, and next, his own long drive home.

Though withregular irregularity Carver varied his homeward route, he knew all thevariations by now quite well. Tonight he got across the London miles, cuttingout through the suburbs into Peckham and Lewisham, eventually reaching thenarrow by-lanes of Kent. Tree-massed dark then, but for the scaley wink of thecatseyes, and the isolated gleam from a closed-up pub, cottagey terrace, or thesudden towering gate of some secretive club. He passed the abandoned schoolwith broken windows, the distant vague group of squatting towers on the hill.The woods were thick, jet-black on moonless navy clumps of sky. Black leavescaught the headlamps and grew wetly drily green. At intervals a fresh blindingblaze of lights announced wider thoroughfares, then it was back again into theuncoiling serpent’s bowel of the lanes. Eight or ten years before, this late,often there was not that much else on the road but for Carver. But now manycars light-splashed by, or the tottery jingling behemoths of giant lorry-transports,like robot things from some computer game.

Carver,a careful, intelligent driver, alert but not involved, had again space tothink. He thought over the day, assessing its routine, and any short momentsit had had of the unusual – Stuart’s promptness at his appointment, the fatwoman in the canteen who had lost her temper, as he passed her, over somedisarrangement of her food, the new file Latham had given him that afternoon toread, with the latest on Scar.

Alltold, Carver had made slow time tonight. Reception after nine had been old BBS,(nickname Bugger Back-Scratcher), who could be officious and over-detailed, sothat returning the Third Person, and putting in the receipt and card fromdinner, took nearly half an hour. The London traffic was augmented too by somemaintenance work near the park; Carver had wondered if this was a cover forsomething else, as roadworks so often were. Whatever it was had caused moredelay. As he finally gained the approach to the village, his watch showedalmost 1 a.m.

Hedoubted Donna would still be up. He hoped she would not be. Mother Maggie hadprobably come over. They would have watched TV and drunk wine, (or orange juicefor Donna perhaps, if she thought she was pregnant). Maggie tended to come bycab for such evenings, and to take a cab back to her own place at Beechurst beforeeleven, and then Donna, alone, wandered about, had a bath and went to bed, readand fell asleep with the bedside lamp turned on full – to welcome or chide, asshe said, when he arrived “hours” after. Of course, sometimes it was hours after,three or four in the morning. “Mag thinks you have a girlfriend,” Donna hadsaid.

“Oh,does she?”

“Yes.But I don’t.”

“That’sall right then.”

“Doyou?” she asked at once.

Carverhad shaken his head. “No.” No, he thought. Donna was more than enough.

Ashe drove into the village, the car sliding slow now, with a long soft feralpurr, he saw dim yellow in the curtained side window of The Bell. The purringnote might be a signal the engine, as before, was about to play up. And TheBell was having another lock-in late drinking session.

Carverpulled over and parked in the yard. He did this now and then, Ted at the Belldid not object.

“Oh,it’s you, mate,” said Ted, letting him cautiously through under the porch likea secret lover. “What’ll you have? Usual?”

“Thanks,Ted.”

“Longold day for you, up town?” Ted asked the ritual question.

“Yes.Too long.”

“Hereyou are, then. Lock Heim.” Ted added the Jewish good wish with his emphaticregulation phonetic misspelling.

“Cheers.”

Carverdrank the black coffee in a corner of the bar, away from the rest of the smallgroup who were habitually here during a lock-in, and after harder stuff, notalways limited to alcohol.

Hewould spend a quarter of an hour, leave the car and walk the rest of the way.By doing that he could be home about 1.30. She must be asleep by then for sure.Donna slept easily and deeply. He would not wake her. The spare room was fine.

Abird was singing in the lane, up among the trees with the stretch of fieldsbehind them; there was unbroken woodland on the other side, behind the house.Despite this nocturnal aria it was not a nightingale, though musical enough. Ablackbird, very likely, but roused by what? The lane’s few and isolated street-lampshad failed to come on tonight; often they did not work.

Nolamps