Ivoria, Tanith Lee [popular ebook readers .TXT] 📗

maze of a reality if anything more unwieldy and sinister. Pausing outside the Festival Hall, amid the concrete Toytown of the South Bank, he looks out over the black river splashed with lights, and thinks of taking a boat down to Greenwich, or a train, and so avoiding Serena.

But then, just as had happened when he ran towards her voice and took up the phone, even as he contemplates being elsewhere he begins to walk on towards their meeting, with firm, organised steps.

14

She is not as he remembers. She is much smaller and more slight. Her dark hair is well cut, a long, casual-seeming wave, and it shines like satin. She has a delicacy he has not remembered either. Perhaps, rather than getting older, she has undergone refining during the intervening years. Apart, apparently, from when writing some of her letters. As he approaches her he is struck by the way she looks up at him, smiling yet not quite composed, despite her training, (or does she let him see this deliberately? Even put it on?), and also he is struck by the way he sits down, takes her hand briefly, the very fact he is here with her, this (unknown?) attractive, poised young woman, solvent, and with her career to uphold, yet all alone until his arrival. He is being reminded irresistibly of those other first ‘dates’ he has so often had with women, in his other role. But Serena is his sister.

“I didn’t think you’d turn up,” she says, as they try their drinks.

Nick does not say anything about his thoughts near the bridge. “Of course I’d turn up. Here I am.”

“Yes. You always were - are - you’re very honourable, Nick.”

“No. But this is different.”

“Is it? If I were you I’d never have gone near me again. As long as I lived. Oh Nick - I’m so sorry – what I wrote - Christ. I was just off my head - and drunk – blind drunk. I was sick all night and in the morning - well, I’d gone out and sent the damned letter hadn’t I? I mean I went out at two in the morning to mail it you.” She stops and looks at the fake marble table. “I’m not making excuses. I’ve had a bit of a rough time. A really grotesque relationship I got into - like nothing I’ve ever - never mind. But I got out and then - Laurence.”

Nick thinks about her horrible rounded ugly handwriting, resembling that of a vicious ten-year-old. This Serena might be another person. She would not have written in that hand.

“But - oh, Nicky,” she says, “all that shit I put about when Claudia - when I called you that time in Scotland…”

“I’m sorry too,” he hears himself say. “I just don’t remember. I never have. I know you called, and then it’s a blank. Nothing till the train coming back.” It is almost true. But he has pretended he does not recollect either her side of the call - me - me - fool - you fucking fool - dead, dead, died, dead. Letting her off. Or himself? He does not know; it does not count.

Serena sighs. “We say things we don’t mean when we’re afraid and grief-stricken.” Does she mean herself - or the hidden things he, at eighteen, may have said?

Nick comments, “Or things we do mean.”

“No. No, Nick. Oh God.”

They look away from each other, she at the table, he across to the bar, where a rich builder in fleece and joggy-bottoms is ordering champagne for himself and his mates. They have ripped someone off, it seems, from their loud asides, someone even more rich, though conceivably now less so.

Serena speaks in a new tone, crisply. “Anyway, it turns out none of us are invited to Laurie’s funeral. Dear Angela threw me out of her house a few days ago, or rather I left. She said I had corrupted him. Or we had, you, I, and originally Claudia. All of us. Laurence would have been an upright faithful guy, but we kept dragging him off to theatre parties or publishers do’s or whatever - as if Laurence would have gone anywhere like that unless he was the only centre of attention. I told her finally Laurence had never been faithful, to anyone or thing. But I added she had made it much easier for him, by being such a fucking deadly cow.” Serena stares at her own words, as if seeing them (in that handwriting?) scratched on the table top. “Christ, Nick. What am I?”

“You said. Grieving, afraid.”

“Yes. It was such a shock - I mean, Laurence. How can Laurence be - how can he be dead?” Now she gazes at Nick, her eyes pleading for an answer or a reprieve. As if Nick might suddenly say, “Oh, he isn’t, Reenie. It was all a joke. Like that trick he played on me when I was a kid.”

“What trick?” she would ask, wonderingly.

And then Nick would have to produce Laurence, maybe from a sack - hey presto! And Serena would probably kick both of them in the cobblers and run out screaming into the night.

Nick says instead, “I know. Laurence dying - it doesn’t seem credible.”

But it does, of course.

That is the really peculiar thing. Once you take it in, it only seems incredible they were ever alive, all those dead, those dead who probably never will awaken. The living make them up, imagine them, mothers, brothers, lovers. And are, in turn, imagined.

Two tears fall like glass drops, one from each of her eyes. She blinks and the tears are gone.

“Sorry. I am not going to make a scene.”

“Well, why not,” he says, “you’re a well-known TV actor. We could charge, couldn’t we? Or put it down as expenses – a preview of some coming episode of 999 - 24/7.”

And she laughs.

Pretty laugh. Like Claudia’s.

“Let’s have another drink,” he says.

“Let’s. No, I shouldn’t. Oh, why not. Let’s. But as