Killing Violets, Tanith Lee [the two towers ebook .TXT] 📗

woman – Anna saw – a note of money. “Would you like some violets? Forced, I’d imagine.”

She thought of Árpád, the flowers in the bowls, the dorisa. Did they force violets here?

Her eyes filled with tears. They were tears of tiredness.

Then he had leant across, was pinning the violets on the mackintosh collar, for she had worn the mackintosh even in the summer evening.

She smelled the perfume of the violets, like confectionery almost, mixed with the aroma of moist earth and shadows. But then they had no scent after all. She had only somehow conjured it.

The woman was saying God would bless the man, Virág. Something like that.

She went straight to the bar and regally ordered stout.

Anna saw the flower-basket put on the floor, knocked against, of less importance now. One tear ran down her face. How tired she must be. Yes, she was, she was.

“Gin,” she said, “makes a woman cry, doesn’t it.”

“Does it?”

“They say so, here. Lilian said so. Or Lilith said so.”

“Lilian,” he said, consideringly, “Lilith. Are they the same?”

(She wondered when he would take her away, to his room. Soon, she hoped. She wanted to sleep.)

“They were women at the house of your friend?” he added.

“…Yes.”

“Perhaps they came up to London with you.”

“No. Why would they?”

“Oh, everyone in the country wants to come to the city. The people in the cities want to get out into the country.”

Anna’s head drooped. For a second she was asleep. Then the jerk of her neck brought her awake again, violently almost, and she was alert.

“You’ve dropped your cigarette.” He offered her the packet.

“No, thank you. I wonder…” she hesitated, placatory, “is there somewhere we could go? I haven’t been sleeping well, you see. If I could just sleep for an hour.”

“Men always like to look after you, don’t they, Anna,” he said. “Or use you. I knew a girl like that. She had this quality. You had to stop yourself putting your arm around her, protecting her. You wanted to take her to bed. It was difficult to resist, because she didn’t resist. Probably someone – your friend – brought you to England. What were the terms?”

“Terms…” she said.

“He wanted to go on sleeping with you, but you were to have a job in the house. Learn a maid’s work, something like that. And then he’d give you a magnificent reference, and you could find a good job in London.”

“No, it wasn’t that,” said Anna vaguely. “He wanted to marry me.”

“Did he? Are you sure, Anna? Perhaps you’re confused. Or I must have heard the story wrongly. He just wanted the use of you, I thought, and his payment was pretty mean. This false reference, and some clothes, some costume jewellery. But then. You were safer out of Europe.”

Anna leaned back and her head rested on the smooth wood of the booth. She saw the man – Virág – from a considerable distance. She reached down the miles for her glass, and drank the gin with the sweet thing in it.

“The girl I knew,” said the man, “something like that happened to her.” He nodded, attentively. His eyes were quite pure, not cruel or deadly at all. He had sorrowful eyes, like a saint in an icon. He put his hand over her hand, and his clasp was warm, it was a reassurance. He said, “Have you seen the papers?”

“What papers – do you mean my passport?”

He said, in French, “I mean the journals. The news.”

She shook her head, the smooth back of the booth helping her.

Virág – the man – said, “They found a young girl in a car in a side street. She was naked but for some underclothes. She’d been given poison, a strychnine derivative, probably. An odd thing. She’d come from a house in the country, a country family, and they too, Anna, were found dead, sitting round their teapot.”

Anna sighed. She withdrew her hand and put it to the forced violets on her collar, stroking them softly. Someone had told her, they only lasted a day. She should have taken them somewhere happy, to a theatre, in her hair, then set them in a glass which had held Champagne, to dream away the night into death.

“It began in Preguna,” he said. “Are you familiar with Preguna? A quaint place. They have a carnival.” He was a policeman. She had seemed to know it for some while. “There was a woman who lied for you, Anna, but no one was entirely satisfied. You killed him although you loved him, didn’t you, since you were in fear of your life. They might have saved you, Anna, then. But now look what you’ve done. Do you say you went mad in Preguna, Anna? Is that it?”

She looked away from him. His face was cool with sorrow, and he had told her, he wanted to hold her, shield her from it all.

“Poor little Anna. I don’t think you’re quite mad. Perhaps they will think so. Let’s hope they will.”

“Thank you for the drink,” she said. “And the violets. When we get there, will they let me put them in water? They’re thirsty, I can tell.”

“Yes, Anna. It will be all right.”

“I’m ready now,” she said.

He frowned. “Are you? You’re stronger stuff than I am. I kept hoping you wouldn’t look up, by the river. And then I thought you might give me the slip.”

She smiled, a little. “I’m too tired.”

She thought that was it, the answer. She was so tired by now. She had done enough. She was prepared to reach the end, and lie down, and sleep for ever.

Anna rose first, and then Virág got up. He offered her his arm, and she was still glad of it, to keep her attached to the world just a minute longer, to what was left of the world.

As they walked from the pub, the old flower-seller had begun to sing. She had a hard confidant voice, cracked like pavement. The stout slopped in her hand, spoiling the forgotten violets