Cruel Pink, Tanith Lee [universal ebook reader TXT] 📗

like, an ambulance.”

72

It had been the prawns, it seemed, and Vanessa, with her normal intolerance of all irritations, both voided herself and recovered remarkably quickly. George nevertheless sent her home in the cab asking Max to wait on there, for us, clock still running.

George’s triumph was to get Vanessa to drink a single brandy, for ‘medicinal’ reasons. She obeyed him. Afterwards she got into the cab, pale, but reasonably self-possessed.

“Poor old bat,” George said to me, as we again sat down.

Forrel was now drinking tap-water, but standing up. He told us how sorry he was about my aunt, and thanked us for a ‘great break’. He said he would need to catch the one-thirty back to town. Someone had called his mobile, someone he had to see, and he winked at me. By a quarter past one he was gone.

“Silly chap,” said George. “He’s not your boy, is he? No, thought not. Besotted with a stripper, well, he could do worse, but he’ll need funds.” Then, turning back to me, he said, “And I need a word with you, Roderick.”

Now what? I found I was frowning at him.

“Roderick,” said George, “I’d like to buy your flat off you. Private sale. Will save me no end of money.”

“My—flat.”

“I’ll give you a good price, and a bit over. I don’t mind you getting something, old lad. Just not the damn government and estate agents, all the rest of the vultures. Why should I pay for their holidays and lunches and porno films? I need to pay for my own. And we’ll square it with your landlord. After all, my first deal there was easy enough.”

He explained that he was very fond of Vanessa, in his way. He enjoyed sparring with her, it kept him up to scratch. But inside the one small flat it was too much. And sharing a bathroom with a woman was bloody hell. You could never get in there.

So if I could let him have my place, he’d be just across from her and they could go at it kick and bucket (as he put it) whenever they wanted, and both get a bit of peace too.

“You could move closer to your work,” he added, “or farther out.”

Then he named the sum he had in mind. For a man who had had to run because of imminent bankruptcy, or whatever he had said and implied before, he seemed to have plenty of dosh. His credit card, as I’d already observed, still operated.

The thing was, the moment he added those words or farther out, a beautiful rural landscape welled upwards in my mind, like a rising chord of music.

It was the farmhouse, below the hills. The house of my peculiar beginnings. Obviously, even with extra cash, I could never afford to go back there. Yet… to the neighbourhood—why not? I’d never really seen much of it, beyond the grounds. And no one much had ever seen me, save those persons my father paid to forget. And I was very different now. Oh, entirely different. No longer in pink. No longer a little girl.

Did I, truly, want to go there? For sure I didn’t want to stay either in my current apartment, or employment. They could go. I could find a little place somewhere, off the beaten track. Some little job, anything, just to pay the bills. I was thirty-two. I was fifty-nine. It was time I found a proper life that could suit and sustain me. That even, possibly, could wake me up.

The title of Don Quixote was still floating in my head, just over the resonance of my rural dream. Now another title came. Five of My London Lives. Not a book, I thought, puzzled. A play, perhaps? Why had I thought of that?

“What do you say,” George asked me, “yes or no?”

Nothing could get out of me apart from thoughts. I said, “George, look, give me till this evening. Come across for a drink, about six.”

“Make it a big drink, and I will,” he said. He smiled his alert, serene, teenagéd smile. “Don’t worry, I’ll bring the booze.”

Klova:

73

A shadow bends over me.

How has it got in?

Is it the landlady?

No…

Of course. It’s Coal. He works in Security. He can go anywhere he wants.

I was thinking about getting up and trying the lipstick, before I went out.

But I’m not.

Not going out.

I’m going… in.

Like a flower closing in darkness or too strong sun.

Like that.

I didn’t steal the lipstick. Like I’d had the money-gift wired into my account.

Who cares where it came from?

Who…

Who’s bending over me?

“Klova,” he whispers. “Klova-Spice. What have you done? Klova—what have you done?”

“Turned off the youth,” I said.

“But…”

“I turned it off. Then you grow old. I grow old. And—that’s it. Then I die.”

I can’t see him. Only the shadow.

He begins to tell me lots of things. That he made a mistake. It was all his fault. He didn’t understand. He is sorry. He loves me.

Who is he?

Coal.

He is Coal.

He says, he can get a medic.

I said, “Too late.”

74

Coal fetched that light-thing he used in the place upstairs, and it lighted, not dazzling me, but I closed my eyes, and I hear him breathing.

“It doesn’t work like this, Klova,” he said. “You can’t kill yourself just by—what in hell did you say? Turning off the youth…?” And then there was silence, as he stared down at me. He said, “Klova.” That was all.

Then he started to cry.

It doesn’t mean anything. We all cry.

Like as if we rain. Like the rain-beads on my dress. Pink and gold.

Then he tried to lift me, move me, and it hurt me, and I screamed. I heard the scream from miles off. It sounded angry.

But then the inside comes in again and washes up over me, and I’m comfortable again. It’s nice to die.

75

Who is there?

Oh, it’s Coal. He can break in anywhere.

He is holding my hand, which is now all bones. My body like is bones. My skin,