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

low outer wall. Now, his own walls, all his. And enoughchocolate in the fridge – even if it was for Donna – to coat those wallswith. The night was overcast by huge troop-movements of cloud, that were slowlyrolling their tanks in from the southeast. From in here you could not see thelights of the village, the flutter of late TV and computer screens. The woodstook over out there, at the garden’s end, and after that swallowed up the lane,just Robby Johnston’s cottage netted in them, and tied to them by ropes of ivyand chains of unlopped briar. (“Only things that keep the old place standing,”said Johnston.) Carver’s garden – he supposed he must call it ‘his’ – had nosubstance to it in the dark. Or it was all substance, the three smaller trees andthe huge old pear, the weedy lawn, and the benches Donna had bought in a fit ofgardenicity, everything amalgamated and amorphous. But at the garden’s farend, almost invisible, and then more visible, and more, the faint shimmer ofgreenish-bluish illumination, trapped there, or poised there, like a living entity. Andcasting out from itself those slender streaks, to paint the trunks of the birchtrees beyond the wall.

Theshed.

Havingcrossed the cloud-blackened nocturnal garden, passed between the fruit trees,stepped by or over the bushes, he reached the rectangular concreted space leftfor a shed, where the shed, ready-constructed, had, a while back, been set.Parked and anchored, it was taller, longer and more wide than most suchoutbuildings; reinforced and fully weather-proofed. Two stone steps elevatedbefore the middle door, which, once unlocked, opened inward.

Therewere three doors, each with a window, and four other windows between and toeither side. In the strange glow of these seven front-facing panes, one couldmake out easily the flat black roof, the wooden walls that, by night and byglow were a greenish, bluish, greyish brown. The window-glass imperviouslyshone. Inside the shed, a sort of snow seemed to have fallen, and then formedinto slopes, mounds, thingswhich resembled other things, but were not such other things.

Carvermounted the steps and undid the shed’s central door. It required three keys.

Hewent inside and the door was shut, and locked three times.

Theinterior of the shed, seen still from outside, did not exactly darken then –yet a kind of obscuration fell there. Carver’s shadow, perhaps.

Oronly one more vagary of the advancing enemy cloud.

Three

During the lastthree days of that schedule Carver left his car at the office, and took thetrain into London either from Lynchoak or Maidstone, reaching the stations andcoming back by cab.

OnThursday evening he drove himself back in the repaired car, but using another,more time-consuming route, which sent him via Croydon.

Itdid not matter in the least about Donna’s opinion of return times, since shewas no longer at the house.

Shehad said, quietly, the morning after his dinner with Latham, that she thoughtshe would go over and see her mother for a week. She had done this now and thenin the past. There was no reason she should not, and the journey was hardlytaxing, taking only about three quarters of an hour. Donna did not drive ofcourse, but Maggie did, and came to pick her up on the arranged evening.

Carverhad got home early enough to see the departure. Donna seemed fine, and Maggie,as ever, glamorous and optimistic, in her sensibly-dieted and reasonably self-indulgentfifty-year-old way. Not cabbing, she had brought her car. He had wondered ifMaggie would, once Donna was safely installed in the bold red vessel, whiskback to have a last word with him. Something friendly and casual, but also someversion of a last minute attentive scrutiny of his reactions, his mood. Maggiewas always very civil to Carver, somewhat over-appreciative, and slightlyflirtatious in a carefully non-predatory way. It was her set method of dealingwith men, he thought; it had paid off in her own personal relationships.However, Maggie simply waved, and then drove away.

Nomention had been made by Maggie, nor by Donna, of a mooted pregnancy. He hadbeen aware that Donna, since the prior dramatic demonstration, had stoppedvomiting. Or at least, she had stopped doing so audibly when he was in thehouse. The magazine on kid-suitable room-changing had also gone.

Afterthe departure, and the dark having fully settled on the lane, a film of silenceformed. It was only the silence of the modern English countryside and imbued bydistant blurs of sound – traffic far off, the passage of planes, unspecifiedelectronic, or other, outlying mechanisms. Nevertheless.

Nevertheless.

Next morning,routinely, he tried the games key Icon on his iPhone. It said: Clue up: One down. Carver hadseen this message a handful of times, and in many forms, during his servicewith Mantik. Seldom without a twist of the gut. He waited a moment beforetouching the screen for the 2nd Clue. Which read: Always Justified Marketable Value.

Carverstruck the clue back into nothingness.

Workingfrom the current code-series, Always Justified Marketable Value gave him theinitials S.D.

Heswitched on all the house radios, and the kitchen TV and the enormous TV in thefront room, and caught the various news bulletins through the morning, acrossdifferent channels. Nothing relevant was mentioned. Almost certainly it wouldnot be or at least not yet.

Carverwas more than glad now Donna was not in the house. He paced about, not properlythinking, trying to remember, mentally to order things.

Atlast he went up to what Donna called his ‘playroom’, across the landing fromthe spare bedroom. There was only one lock, but this was ‘faulty’. It wouldonly ever let Carver in.

Hissecond phone was where he always left it, ready-charged .

“Yes,Carver,” said Latham’s voice, in a rich, mournfully appropriate tone. Carverhad not needed to speak. “Better come in. We all need to look at the new deal,don’t we? About six, OK?”

She had beenmissing, or at least not visible to him, since they separated in the park. Hehad noted her absence, inevitably, from the day after his dinner of misquotes,steak and lamas with Latham. But people were not always at the building inWhitehall. There were three other Mantik venues alone, subsidiaries, to whichyou might get sent at twenty minutes notice, or less. He had been aware, therefore, alert, but concludedthat doubtless his was