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

now, this interlude of void, strapped down, pissing himself,thirst raging. As if it had not happened in relatively recent time – a week, amonth – even a year before – butmany years, two decades. Back then, then, when he was thirteen, fifteen,sixteen years of age –

Mind–fuck.Let it go. Some portion of hisbrain might still unravel it, if left alone to do so. In its shed of skull.

Heturned over in the bed. He thought instead of the woman who had entered his roomtonight. Anjeela. AJ, MV – The four letters ticked pointlessly in his head. Helet them. Was she his sop, a prize, promise of other goodies to come? If he didwhatever in Christ they thought they wanted – if even he could do it, thisobscured and to him unknown thing.

Hethought of Donna. The vague image of her flittered by him like a sulky moth.She had gone crazy, or Maggie had. So many crazy people in his life. Sara, hismother. The insane monster that had been his father.

Tick.A.J. Tick. M.V. The moth had disappeared. Tick.

The bedroom wasnot quite a replica of the spare room at his house. Nothing in it was, quite,either. The bed, for example, was both harder and more flexible, (asintuitively he had found when Anjeela had joined him – a liaising bed for sex.How thoughtful of...someone,or other). It also included, the room, a very small en suite bathroom, ratherdissimilar to the bathrooms at his house, but with a shower, lavatory andbasin, these a pristine cream, where the other sets had been Arctic white –Donna’s decision. (And everything unlike the rabid collection of toilets andsinks and tubs he had shared with Sara, their enamel old or chipped, and stained nomatter how often she scoured and bleached them.)

Hehad not noticed the en suite here, when first he came to. He wondered, now verybriefly, if it had even beenhere, or been there but somehow hidden, that initial time. But of course it hadbeen there, and not hidden. He had only been in the last lingering grip ofwhatever drugs they had used.

Washe still?

Thefirst day of awakening had passed with bacon and coffee, and a steak he hadeaten in the room later, brought to him with a salad and a pot of more coffee.And the day had ended, logically in nightfall, and surprisingly in Anjeela’swarm-cool smoky edible body. And in her hair, which had seemed to be longer –so he had murmured about it, somewhere in the dark. And had she replied? – hethought she had – “I grew my hair longer for you.” Then, “Extensions, Car. It’ssimple.”

Andit was all simple, was it not? All this.

Thenext day was verypleasant, nearly restful, with one more beaming girl knocking on the door at 8a.m., and asking him if she should bring him anything, as they had his ‘supper’last night, or would he prefer to go down to the kitchen in this section, (thekitchen through the arch, with the door-occluding fridge-freezer.) Havingshowered, shaved, dressed, he accordingly went down. There in the kitchen satthe two men, Van Sedden and Ball, and another man they addressed as Fiddy, in a sort ofboiler suit. She was not there.Carver had rather expected that. It fell into place inside the uneasy pattern: Ofcourse Anjeela, having played her intimate game with him (AJMV), would ratherabsent herself. Then she walked in. Looking, as at the beginning, more heavythan voluptuous, her hair short, her blue eyes uninterested in anything savethe coffee mug and her today’s choice of white toast and Marmite.

Shedid not speak to him, he did not speak to her, though he had exchanged briefflaccid greetings with the three men, lacking awkward inquiries this morningon why anyone was here. They were engaged anyway in discussion of a footballgame, (witnessed on some TV or computer in the building), that seemed to havetaken place in the Czech Republic. Naturally they – whoever, whatever ‘They’were comprised – would be watching Carver.

Hekept it all toneless, not overly relaxed, not visibly tensed. Taking things asthey came.

Notmuch did come of that day at all.

Heleft the kitchen after eating and took a walk around the ‘grounds’, (alone,though doubtless on camera), observing, checking over without much expression,body-language under control.

Thesea lay beyond the front of the up-and-down building, approximately southward,with a slight bias to the east. On this side some of the upper storeys bulgedoutward, particularly those some distance from the centre. His would be amongthose. The bulge would be what had omitted any direct downward view, opening exclusivelyon the vista of the sea. The gravel drive skirted much of the house; the potsof roses stood on it in formal groups. What seemed the main doorway was centralto the sea-facing side. Two large shut wooden doors, behind a shut multi-glazedglass partition. Bullet-proof? For about five and a half metres stretching outfrom the gravel, there was a width of paved stone, closed along its finishparallel with the house, by a tall blued iron railing. This was the lookoutposition, for those who wanted it, the promenade, set with the familiar stone,griffin-armed benches. Over the railing the edge of the cliff tumbled off intoair, and the sea unrolled bellow. There were gulls, again. Why not, they livedhere. One was parading slowly along the railing’s flat top. Aristocratically proprietary,it ignored him.

Carverdid not investigate to see if there was an easy route by which to descend thecliff, other than climbing on the rail and diving off, (hoping not to encounterany juts or outcrops of cliff-work on the rush down). He doubted the sea, orany beach, would be straightforwardly accessible from here. He looked just longenough to satisfy a perhaps probable unseen watcher. Then moved off, unfast, throughthe rest of the wooded park.

Hespent some hours on this, going back and forth, into, or mostly outward fromthe building, now and then sitting on some bench. Aside from the railed sea-viewhe met no barriers, that was, no perceived physical ones. How far did the ‘grounds’stretch? Some distance, apparently.

Thoughoccasionally he gazed up, or around, at the trees, he could make out no spy-devices,not even the more subtle ones he had seen