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

from her. At the small tree she had dressed only last night, for tonight.

“She knows?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know who I am?”

“Yes. She said you looked pretty and smart. She likes your book jackets.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake –” Susan’s voice had become high and loud, not pretty or smart, or artistic at all.

“You asked me,” he said, flatly.

“Yes, all right. I asked you. Why does she put up with it?”

“She loves me,” he said.

“And I love you, so I put up with it. That’s very convenient, isn’t it, for you.”

He got up and walked round the small enclosure of the room restlessly.

She heard the chicken spitting in the oven. She ought to go and baste the bloody thing. Let it wait. Let it blacken.

“Susan, I’ve never made this a secret, to either of you.”

“Very noble.”

She thought, I sound like Anne.

She thought, was this how Anne went on to Wizz that time, over that girl – God what was her stupid name – Madison? Anne wouldn’t have behaved like Maria. She’d have got hold of me and shaken me to bits…

“I explained. You knew the situation.”

“That makes it all right.”

“No. But I didn’t lie. You could have told me to fuck off.”

They stood in silence, R.J. looking at the tree, Susan looking away into the kitchen, hearing the chicken spitting and spitting like a deranged feral cat.

The bell sounded tinny, as if its battery was going.

Susan stood there, holding the package for Crissie Fielding.

Now the hall seemed too hot, though beyond the main front door, only about ten feet away, the December wind was rising, howling in the empty garden trees.

She was not at home.

Susan considered leaving the package by the door of 6C, because otherwise this might become a nuisance, trotting back and forth and never finding the woman in.

The door opened.

Her hallway, similar in size to Susan’s, was illuminated by one soft rosy lamp on a side table. Its floor had stayed bare; the same waxed wood as in the outer hall. This, and the pale walls, totally unadorned, bloomed in the rose glow, floating, somehow unusual.

The girl too was limned by the light. It made her a veil around her fair, long hair. But her face, as she leaned closer, caught the low outer light in the main hall. She was beautiful, and like many beautiful things, even people, seemed familiar.

“Hello,” she said. She smiled. Her smile was one of familiarity, as if they had already met several times, always happily.

“Hi. I’m from 6E. The postman brought this, this morning.”

“How kind of you. Thanks.” She was Susan’s height. Her slim young hands slid out and took the package. She turned it over. She said lightly, “A gift from an admirer, I fear.”

She must have lots of those. She was very slender, wound like a delicious pen in a silvery-white wrap. No rings, no jewellery. No make-up even on that white and unmarked skin. She seemed, from the sophisticated way she was, at least twenty-two or – three. The flat was hers, too. Susan knew very well, no one not well-off or in a lucrative job, could handle these mortgages.

It was an old-fashioned turn of phrase, and an odd thing to say: An admirer, I fear.

Susan moved, about to go.

“We’ve never met before,” said the girl. “I’m Crissie.”

“Yes, I know from the parcel. I’m Susan Wilde.”

“Yes, I know too.” How did she know? Oh, no doubt more wrong deliveries – which she must have refused to accept for Susan, since she, Crissie, was so often away. “It was kind of you to bring it across. Would you like to come in and have a coffee?”

An appetising coffee smell had come stealing out of Crissie Fielding’s flat, along with another scent, equally appealing, fresh but faintly floral.

“I’d like to, but I have to take a call in a minute, from the States. My mother. Thanks anyway.”

“Okay. Hope to see you,” said Crissie.

Her smile was so carelessly inviting, it made Susan smile back.

She thought, Maybe she is a lesbian, and I’m giving her the wrong impression.

Then Crissie, stepping aside, shook the parcel and said, “I bet this is my Gerry. He will overdo the generosity.”

Susan didn’t know if she was expected to comment. Then Crissie said, “So long,” and the door of 6C glided shut.

She was extremely familiar looking. Who is she like?

Someone in the movies, conceivably. But then, not really anyone now. More like Vivien Leigh, or the most youthful Jean Simmons – someone like that. A bit.

As she closed her own front door, Susan heard something fall brutally in her kitchen. Going to see, she found a plate had slipped from the rack into the stainless-steel sink. It was in three pieces.

The wind hit the arched windows.

Once there had come the first lesion, others followed. Soon it became a habit with them to row. To begin with he was reluctant, trying to stay calm, non-committal, decent even. He tried to make it up to her, in all the wrong ways – through sex, excursions, even buying her a new TV and video she didn’t want. Vulgar and useless things.

They tried too, to be as they were. But that was now too difficult.

Susan became petulant. She whined and could not stop herself. R.J. grew taciturn. Then he stopped meeting her.

Their meetings had always depended on his phoning. He simply did not.

She thought of getting his and Maria’s ex-directory number from someone at Paragon, for whom he was again writing a novel.

But what would she do with it? For all her ghastly whining, she did not have the crassness to call up their home in Hampshire. This was partly her fear of Maria and partly her pity, her sympathy, for Maria.

Susan felt sick, from the moment she woke to the moment she managed to fall asleep each night about three or four a.m. She couldn’t really eat, lost half a stone in a month, which weight loss by now had no attributes of anything.

Only when she worked on a cover did she lose