Bitterhall, Helen McClory [red queen free ebook TXT] 📗

the man of the night, smoking a cigarette with a silver fox in a black tuxedo. The overhead light from the eaves lit him so that he looked like an angel in his whites. Like an angel who has sex, because if I’ve retained anything from Catholic school rumours it’s that angels don’t have genitals and so are excluded from that world of experience. In the dirty, manual way at least. I suppose they have a communions of souls or some shit. But anyway, there was Tom, like a seraph stepped out of heaven to sneak in a fag and get back before anyone saw.

‘Do you think the fairies can have sex?’ I said, sinking lower on the stair.

‘Ha, yes. They have offspring, don’t they?’

‘I thought that was just changelings, ugly things that get swapped for pretty human babies,’ I said.

‘Presumably something gives birth to them,’ Daniel said, looking at the contents of his glass; nothing. ‘Or they’re made from trees. Lumps of bog butter,’ I said. I felt a realisation wanting to come on, like a migraine. ‘What about ghosts?’

‘What were we talking about again?’ said Daniel, wiping his face with his hand. His eyes were soft and he was looking at Tom through the entranceway window and we were both looking at Tom through the window, and both holding empty glasses.

‘I think Tom needs rescuing,’ I found myself saying. ‘He stands in the light and he dwells in the darkness. And neither are particularly bad or good, but they do need to be understood as states of being, that he is at the centre of. And I don’t think he knows, Daniel, I don’t think he does.’

‘I don’t know,’ Daniel said, stubbornly. He rose and went away somewhere. I had decided. I got up and went to my man.

Rescuing Tom

Outside it was bitterly cold. The silver fox saw me come swinging – metaphorically. I wasn’t moving my fists. He stepped aside and walked away to talk to the other group of white haired, balding smokers down by the driveway. Tom stood with his cigarette deft between his two fingers. It looked flimsy in my hands. I tapped off the ash. It landed on my shoe. Tom snatched it back, only to stub it against the wall and flick the stub away.

‘Tom, what are you doing?’

He looked at me. Man was drunk as anything, or high, or drunk and high. Slack-mouthed he laughed, high pitched and too long, and wobbled his head.

‘I’m waiting for them to come and get me,’ he said, still laughing and shaking with it.

‘Waiting for who?’ I said. The shock of the cold air was getting to me. I was shaking too. We were both in suits, hopping from foot to foot on the doorstep like posh children who had wandered there out of the wastes.

‘I feel like we’re supplicants,’ I said, because it sounded better. Tom looked around. He drew me in close and kissed my forehead.

‘We are, Ore, we are. Someone good needs to come for us,’ he gave a gasp, then in a lighthearted singsong, ‘but I don’t think they will. No, it’s the villains for us. The villains in disguise of the most ordinary, run of the mill – ah, babe.’ He started laughing again and lurched against the door. I was just surprised he knew what a supplicant was.

‘Let’s get inside,’ I said, and dragged open the door. The warm air buffeted against us, and a few people in the party turned to take us in. Uninterested faces. I looked round for Daniel. Tom was leaning on my shoulder and he was heavy. Just like that, someone will switch from independent agent of their own good time to slumping rock of drunkenness and your problem now. I decided he needed his bed. But that was miles off. I cast about looking for the answer and there she was, Maggie, smiling slyly at us from across the room at the kitchen counter. I humped Tom’s arm around my shoulder and monstrous we waddled and stumbled over to her.

‘A bit worse for wear?’ she said. ‘Tsk.’

I nodded. ‘What do you think we should do with him?’

‘Oh, well, we have plenty of room here,’ she said, ‘I’ll have Mark help you get him upstairs. The guest bedroom.’

‘Brilliant,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ Maggie said, ‘brilliant.’ I couldn’t tell anything from her tone. I was drunk and eager to set down my burden some safe place.

Mark came over and took the other side of Tom and we got him upstairs and on to the bed. Tom sat up immediately, though he should have sprawled back. He sat up and I could only think of him in his bedroom in the midst of his nightmare.

Mark looked away.

‘Oh, well, um. Should leave you to it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No. I mean, could you fetch Daniel?’

‘Sure,’ Mark said. He had a very soft-focus face but when he smiled he looked more like his mother, part malice, part teenage glee at something salacious about to take place in his vicinity. I wondered if he and Daniel had ever been together.

‘Don’t smile like that,’ I said, ‘I just need to work out—’ hesitating because I had no really good reason to want Daniel there. Not a reason that would sound sane to others. But what did I care of that, and I said quickly, ‘He knows what to do.’ And gave him with as much dignity as I could a cold shoulder until he hurried away.

Sitting With It

I did not want to touch Tom. He sat up on the bed listing mildly, eyes closed. I hate the silence of people waiting for something to happen. My own silence, in this case. He probably would have sung to himself or muttered if I hadn’t been there. I tried to think of other times in my life when I had been in a situation like this and how I had overcome it. The job interview method for feeling like a successful person. It just served