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

Raoul had mentioned to her earlier. The salon. He had drawn her a map of the route. It was perhaps a test of her skill, to see if she could find her way.

The salon was all dull dark green, with flares of blood-scarlet – roses, and some other flower, that looked African, glassware, wines in decanters.

A fire was burning in the ample fireplace, on this filthy English summer evening.

And about the fire they sat. The Family. Had they been waiting for her? Or were they utterly indifferent? Had they been told she had dismissed the maid: how eccentric and lower-class – the English were reportedly obsessed by class, like Hindus.

They were like a pride of animals up on their home rock.

No. Not animals. They were not, at all, like that.

Nor like a family. Yet they were – a group, a band – and they were very alike, you saw this at once. They were all – like Raoul.

That was natural, wasn’t it? A familial similarity. His father, his mother, a sister, a brother. But then, there was one who was the sister’s husband, surely, or had Anna misremembered? And he too was indistinguishable.

The table-lamps glowed on their black, smooth hair, in their black clear eyes. They were all impeccably dressed, black and white for the men, shades of jade and rose for the women. A few precious stones, gold.

Only Raoul was not there.

Raoul, who had brought her here, given her a ring and a map, as if in a fairy story.

At her entrance, no one had altered. The three men had already been standing, smoking at the fireplace. The two women remained seated.

Their heads had turned. Their faces were arrested. Two of the men had been smiling, and smiled still. The others were expressionless.

Anna poised before them. She felt naked in her expensive underclothes, dress, shoes, her diamond.

“Oh,” said the woman in the rose-red, “Raoul is too bad. He was to have brought you down.”

Anna realized, she should have waited, to be brought.

“I’m sorry, I…” She closed her lips hurriedly.

One of them – Raoul’s father? – said, “It’s so nice you didn’t wait. Anna, if I may call you that.”

“Of course,” she said. She did not know how to address him, since Raoul had not explained.

Across the room, the butler stood, and a maid, and a young boy in black, a footman, by a sideboard that was laid with bright bottles and decanters. When Anna glanced at them, the butler nodded his head, the footman bowed, the maid bobbed, and the bottles flashed.

The man who had spoken to Anna walked over to the sideboard and inspected it, as if he had forgotten it was there. When he did this, the maid cowered away into the wall. That was no exaggeration. She cowered. But it wasn’t fear. It was some excessive show of respect. The footman stood, head bowed now, as if in church.

Raoul’s relation made a pass over the array of drinks.

“We have everything, Anna. What would you like?”

She wanted absinthe, she thought. That wouldn’t do. And despite the foolish boast, they wouldn’t have it. These English were supposed to drink sherry, were they not? She asked for sherry.

Something in the way she pronounced the word must have made the woman in jade-green laugh sharply. Or it was a coincidence?

Startled, Anna stared a second at her.

Which of the women was Raoul’s mother? They looked virtually the same age. And the men were equals, but for the one who had spoken to her, and had a grey line in his hair. This was too fanciful. The light was dazzling and deceptive.

The fatter woman was probably the elder one, the mother, Raoul’s mother.

The maid came with a sherry on a tray and bobbed, her head held down. Anna took the drink, which was small, in a thimble, a shard of crystal.

They – the Family – had already had their drinks.

The sherry was dry, almost salty. Two sips and it was gone.

“I wonder,” said Anna; they looked at her. “I wonder… where Raoul is?”

“He went out riding,” said the woman in green. “In this rain.” She sounded for a second nearly normal.

“As a boy, horses were his passion,” said the other woman. “But he can’t be long, tonight.”

Anna disconcertingly recalled those moments proceeding orgasm on the train, the horse galloping between her thighs. Did Raoul once have such a fantasy?

One of the other men came up to her and offered her a cigarette. She took it and the butler was there at once, lighting it for her, stepping between them like an invisible air. Anna thanked the butler, and the woman in green laughed again. But again, that might be nothing.

On the mantelpiece an ormolu clock, with nymphs and a rayed sun, chimed the half hour. Anna had been shown a clock rather like that, in Prague. Figures had danced slowly round it. But she had been crying, and not seen it clearly.

“Shall we go in?” said the man with the line of grey in his black hair. He nodded to one of the other men – Raoul’s brother, his sister’s husband. “Since Raoul is so late, take Anna in, won’t you?”

“My great pleasure,” said this other Raoul, stepping up to her.

My God, on his arm, half impossible to tell the difference.

But the fat woman was the Mother. She was stiff when she got up, and the maid assisted her. And the woman allowed herself to be assisted, as if by a mechanical thing, and the maid fell away from her, when no longer needed, like a discarded shawl.

The dining-room – the small dining-room – was red, with flutes of green, plants, candles, glass. There were green vegetables on the plates, and bloody meats.

Raoul did not arrive. No one mentioned his absence again. They spoke of him, however.

“I suppose Raoul took you to Versailles. Oh, what you missed, Anna. A heavenly place.”

“When Raoul was travelling with you, you’ll have noticed, he gets tetchy if kept waiting. Tetchy – oh, that means bad-tempered.