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

said, lazily, “Oh. Look in the big shops. Go to a cinema, watch a film. Eat in a fancy restaurant. Have a drink or two. Th’fellers ud be artor you, an no muztaikn.”

“And the producer in his car?”

“He might. Oh yes.”

Lilith took up the wine bottle, filched from below and ready unsealed. She took a deep valorous swig. She passed the bottle to Anna. No matter the mouth of the bottle wasn’t wiped. Anna had probably swallowed Lilith’s saliva before, not to mention bathed in it.

“London,” breathed Lilith. She added, “I was born in that pub. Jacko’s Lizard. And then up here, scrubbing and running about. Once that old Raoul promised me we’d go.”

“There are no trains, though,” said Anna, vacantly.

“There’s the car. Not that old rusty thing you came back in. It’s smart. Can go for miles.”

“In the village? Whose car?”

“Me da’s,” said Lilith. She smiled radiantly and threw herself on to her bed, in the spangling dress and a flair of hair.

“Who’d drive?” Anna, wonderingly.

“I ud. He’s taught me how.”

Anna laughed. “When we goin?”

Powers of speech, of thought, realigning.

Lilith closed her eyes. “It’s a dream. Sometime, never.”

Emotion, like violent pain, lanced in Anna’s body, between womb and brain. She knew she must not protest. She hadn’t wanted to go, after all, escape, such things were not on her mind at all. Next second she heard Lilith begin, quietly, to snore. The exciting day had finally tired her out. Anna went and lay down on her own bed. She was trembling, weakly, her heart drumming against her ribs as if too strong for the rest of her.

Oh Christ, Christ. Would this monster remember? Tomorrow would she still desire London, the fairy tale producer, the glamours of an unknown country?

And did a proper car truly exist?

Anna turned on her side, away from Lilith Izzard.

It was useless to mourn. Ony binna bidda fun, hant it?

In the night somewhere, the dregs of it, before dawn began, Anna found Lilith lying close by her. Lilith caressed Anna’s breasts. So Anna stroked Lilith’s hair, and cradled Lilith’s waist.

Eventually Lilith murmured, “Like a couple of those funny women, aren’t we?”

“Are we?”

“Do you know what they do?”

“No,” said Anna. (She lied.)

“No, they can’t do anything,” said Lilith mazily. “They haven’t got anything, have they?”

“No.”

“So if we tried,” said Lilith, nuzzling into Anna’s shoulder, “I expect it would be no good.” (“Aspek ayud beena god.”)

Anna lay still, her arms cramping, as Lilith resumed her snoring.

In the morning Lilith would wake her again, this time pinching her arm viciously.

Then Lilith would catch two flies from the wall to take down to Hell, for some breakfast dish of the Basultes’.

And Lilith said no more. She did not even come to the room with three beds, and was seldom in the kitchen.

They asked again for the foreign song. Anna sang it. They jeered and whistled, and guffawed and jested all through it. Anna laughed, so tickled by their acumen and wit, her bowels churning with an unnoted tumult.

Beyond the windows, the English rain fell, thick as slime.

It was evening, and they were preparing the dinner. They had not done very much to it, tonight. Perhaps they were enervated.

Mrs Ox turned from the ovens, ox-red. “Get up, you lazy minx. Get into the house and serve them. They want their drinks.”

Anna was astonished. The ox-woman was talking directly to her.

You mustn’t argue.

“Yes, Mrs Ox.”

She recalled the butler stationed in the salon, the maid and footman. She supposed she could serve drinks.

What was this? One of the girls was tying a new apron round her, and handing her, Oh God, the appalling Puritan bonnet.

Anna put the bonnet on. No one mocked her. Now they were pushing her out of the kitchen, and here was the stair, and then the footman was in front of her, opening the door into the Smoking Room.

“Don’t fret. I’ll tell you what to do.”

The door was wide, and there was the room, and so the Basulte house, the part of it which belonged to the Family.

Anna was stunned, almost breathless. She was about to see them. To see Raoul, and Lilian and Tommy, and William. The Father, the Mother. These… gods.

They passed along a corridor. A maid trotted by, going elsewhere. Five days ago Anna had watched her sneezing in a pudding. She was different now.

Now they were going into the salon, its damp greenness, the blood-blotches of roses. The butler loomed at the sideboard, a bald ocean liner. All those bottles and glasses and none of it for them. Save what they stole.

They were lined up now, three correct dolls.

Anna felt a wave of vertigo. The Family was thrusting in, in a band again, a tribe. The Mother swept through first. She wore black, an awful gown with large black bows, and then came the Lilian-daughter, in a dress the colour of fresh gutted salmon, which was nauseous among the green, and would be unbelievable in the red dining-room.

The men followed. The too-young Father, with his greyed hair, and next the three younger males. But – they were so unalike, after all. Comparable only in the black hair and eyes. How stupid she had been to confuse them. And not handsome. Quite ugly. Particularly that one, who was, decidedly, Raoul.

Was she seeing them now as the servants always had, as servants always must? Hideous, and mindlessly obdurate in their power?

They had consigned her to this, because she would not be subservient and malleable in the first role they allowed her. She had let them down and tried to run away.

The footman nudged her sharply.

Anna recollected. For a moment she was resistant, and then she took a piercing lost delight in bobbing to the Basultes. She did it perfectly. She might have been trained, a cringing abasement faultlessly delivered. How simple it always was, to give in.

But as she hung her head before their might, Anna felt the breath on her neck of some mysterious and terrible fiend.

She only played a part, she acted