by Tanith Lee
“Bows and all,” George would have answered.
And they would both commiserate with poor old Roderick. And then later Max would tell someone else. “Here, you’ll never believe what I heard the other day…”
What to do? Should I tackle George the minute he arrived in my sitting room? I could feel my blood boiling even as my hands and feet froze in their skins.
I’d break the bloody new vodka he bought me over the bastard’s head.
84
However. It wasn’t yet half past five. I had another vodka myself, calmed down and sat down, and thought, Look, you’re not used to so much booze. Don’t go rushing to conclusions—rushing at windmills because you think they’re giants. It’s almost certainly some mistake. Those cretins are no doubt on stuff, and they probably try that mindless trick on anyone over forty. Or over thirty-two. They think it’s witty. They probably shout ‘Look it’s ’im’ at older women. Let it go. Don’t fall out with George. He is offering you far more for this flea-pit than it cost you, or has ever, could ever be worth. Take the money and run. Wherever you go, it will be a brand new start. No one will know you, not even if you end up back where you started. That’s the irony. That’s the place they never could know you. Rosalind. Roderick. Rod.
After this I went to the bedroom and looked in the wardrobe. When I had got out the other coat for Forrel to borrow—and so go off with—I must have knocked the two curtains at the end. Must have, since when I pulled them both back, the dress had dropped off its hanger, and crumpled into a glittering pink-gold puddle on the wardrobe’s floor.
Somehow it looked—I can only put it this way—as if it had died. I was disconcerted. I picked it up, and hung it back up at once, smoothing it down, rearranging its fringes.
Of course there is this puzzle always, and I can’t answer it. Nor do I especially want or need to. I don’t hanker after my girlhood. I don’t miss it or want to recreate it. I have never, past the age of late thirteen, when things were so harshly spelled out to me, desired to dress as a female. To be honest, I’d never that much wanted, or consciously enjoyed, dressing as a girl in my youth. It was just what, as a girl, I did. What girls did. And being a little girl, and then an adolescent girl, naturally, I did it.
Once I had been shunted over onto the other track, aside from some initial difficulties with what can be imagined in the way of dressing, and generally preparing myself, I had no problems with it. In fact, for fairly obvious reasons, I found some articles of dress and hygiene a great deal more comfortable. I cite Y-fronts, and later, boxers, as the very obvious example.
But the pink and gold dress, to me, is a magical thing. Yes, magical. I have no solution as to why, if I don’t yearn for my female alter-ego, it should be. Maybe it represents some gorgeous and loving woman I might, had I been myself more exotic, aspired to attract. But as I’ve said, though I like to look at pretty and well-dressed women, though I like them, I have never felt, or feel, any actual physical desire.
Nor have I, beyond that seemingly spontaneous and private ability to grow erect and effortlessly come with a complete and non-complex enjoyment, been aroused—so far as I can tell—by anyone or thing. I have never experienced an erotic dream, either, concerning anyone—or thing. Now and then, particularly since in a way self-examination had been rigorously instilled in me by my post-thirteen ‘helpers’, I have pondered my self-sufficient, and inevitably suspect and dubiously limited repertoire. My lack of lust. Anyone else would assure me I am lacking, I am deprived, I must be miserable and forlorn. Therefore no one has ever been told. Nor will be, I should guess.
I had just finished smoothing off the dress and drawing the curtains over and locking the wardrobe once more, when the flat doorbell went. George had arrived. George and the money and the plan of future escape.
As I went to open the door to all this, the strangest frisson passed over me. I don’t consider myself highly superstitious. I’m not prone to sensing atmospheres, or having premonitions which turn out to be correct. I just get on with things. Yet, between one step and the next, one moment and another, I felt a deep and sourceless anxiety. Like a miniature gale it blew between my bones, coming from nowhere, going back to nothing, in a space no longer than it would have taken me to exclaim “Oh—but…” And as it passed it stirred up something which, if it had itself been given words, would have said to me: How is it feasible you can ever leave here? Of course it is impossible. Of course you never can, or will.
85
Two weeks later, and when the snow George predicted was well and truly down, private contracts had been exchanged; I had packed up anything I wanted from the flat, (it was little enough), and either put it into storage, or two negotiable suitcases.
We did, then, have a bizarre little party, George, Vanessa and I. Not Forrel, for despite Vanessa’s constant demands, I did not invite him. “Oh,” she had disapprovingly told me, “then you two have quarrelled. Well, you must sort things out yourselves.” Quite so. In fact I hadn’t seen Forrel since his visit. Nor, for that matter, my spare coat. I had given in my notice to the firm, but had not worked out the time, thus incurring some loss of pay and, as they put it ‘precarious pension difficulties’, about none of which I gave a damn.
At least for the time being, George had made me very well off. I intended to go westward, back to the rural landscape of my past. I could stay in some modest pub or B and B, look around, make my decision. Providing every bank in Europe didn’t crash to earth during the next few months, I could secure myself somewhere or other. And if they did, well we were all done for. It was like the initial atomic era, post the Cuba Crisis. In the end you just gave up on it. Astonishing, really, the genius of government and big business to turn pure terror into sheer boredom.
At the party we drank, even Vanessa had a sherry, and ate the salad and cold meats Vanessa had prepared. There was another of the curious cakes, too, with the thinnest chocolate ever able to be recognized by name skimmed over the top.
Neither of them seemed very regretful to see me go. Vanessa, however, eventually informed me that she agreed with my choosing to part from Forrel, (presumably evidenced by my departure.) She trusted I’d meet someone more suitable, and closer to my own age, in ‘pastures new’.
Age. How old both of them looked that night. How old, too, did I. What age were we all then? George ninety, Vanessa eighty. And Rod sixty-five going on seventy-four.
For some reason, raising my glass to them, as they to me, I thought of my last tipple at The Red Stag in London. Once gone I’d probably never go there again. The Stag, and London, both. And come to that, despite my avowal to ‘keep in touch’, I’d probably never see Vanessa, or George, again either. At least, alive.
86
At 11a.m. next morning I, with my suitcases, left the flat, and the house. Max, polite and cheery, stowed the bags in the cab.
The schedule had been we would drive straight out and on to the motorway, heading for London, and Euston Station. To take a cab into the metropolis was, inevitably, a last luxury before I undertook the rest of the journey by various trains. I had hoped to find the cab-start relaxing. The rush hour was over, and I had three hours to make it, with ease, to my embarkation point. I’d have some lunch somewhere near the station. Then board the train, sit back and take in the view. Writing now and then, it goes without saying, a few more notes.
However Max immediately had a small favour to ask.
“Sorry, mate. My wife, she’s got bad bronchitis. I need to put a prescription in the chemists in the High Street. Then I can pick it up soon as I get back.”
How could I refuse? This poor woman coughing and gasping, the very same poor woman Max had, perhaps, told, to her astounded amusement, how once I had been a little girl dressed in pink. After which she passed the information on.
“You go ahead,” I said.
He thanked me, and we drove into the High Street, which was very crowded, both by people and other parked cars.
“
Won’t be a mo,” said Max old-fashionedly, and got out and crossed between the intermittent traffic.
Now I sit here. I’ve been here ten minutes. Presumably he has had to queue up. Oh well. Be philosophical.
The road is untidy here and there with uncleared slush. Patches of ice? The cars that thump by seem to be, all of them, travelling much too fast, and gradually it occurs to me they are veering off slightly as they reach the spot where I sit in the immobile cab. Max hasn’t, it seems, parked very well. The pavements are mostly clear of snow; I consider getting out and stretching my legs. After all, it will take at least an hour to reach the hub of the city and get across to Euston.
That car was very close. It seemed to rush straight at me. Yes. Maybe I will get out. I’m growing edgy after all. And given the way time is elongating, not to mention the bad organisation of the local chemist, I could be stuck here another twenty minutes. Though I can pay for the cab, I’m pleased to note the clock isn’t running. The fee is a set one, and Max, whatever else his failings, is prepared to stick to that.
87
My hand is on the door handle. I’m half turning in order to get out.
I don’t see the last car until it is almost on top of us, me and the cab. I don’t believe what I see when I do.
And then we meet, the car and its flurried-looking male driver, and Max’s cab, and I.
There is an incredible thump, a crunching and splintering noise, which I feel stabbed all through me, since it is happening both to each of the vehicles and also to me. Pains like slivers of broken glass flash inside my body or in the air, and I hear things snapping sharply, breaking, which—from at least a mile away—I realise absurdly and unconvincingly are my bones. Flying pieces like bright water cut my forehead and a curtain of scarlet mostly puts out my sight. That is all, for now. Nothing else… except, through the darkening haze, abruptly I notice Max running across the road, where all the other traffic has now stopped. He seems frantic, staring at what has been done to his cab.
Irvin:
88
Out of sorts. Yesterday I forced myself to the theatre and turned off a very vile performance. Was lucky not to be harangued with missiles from the crowd. As for Merscilla Peck, when we were from the stage she slapped me across the face. It seems I had ruined her own presentation with my lazy clowning.
Home with the carter, who tells me I have the winter plague, and also, (gratis) how many so far have expired of it, and that they are piled up near the Ravensburn marshes for burning, there being too many of the inconsiderate wretches to permit them Christian burial.
It was brooding on Mis’us Templeyard, I believed, had lowered my spirits. Try as I might I could not get her, as last I had seen her, from my mind.
The next night to the theatre again, and so to the stage, despite a raging ache in my skull, and too in every joint. Like an ancient tope of sixty or ninety years I crawled about there, and at length went off and fell headlong in a swoon. I recall little of that, and the fall could not bruise me worse than already my rheumatics made me. Waking I found I lay in Merscilla’s lap, and her face all concern, and calling me her dove and her best darling.
This cheered me mightily, and after some brandy I felt so much the better, off to The Red Stag tavern with her, but as we sat to our wine and pigeon, first came some news that general opinion thought the Thames would be freezing over, a thing it has not done, as I understand it, since two hundred years or more.
Next minute though there comes another bursting into the inn, with the fresh snow pluming him and aureole all about him, like the white smoke that comes up with the Devil in the play.
It was none other than Jemmy Templeyard, and his face set like a gargoyle’s with some bitter, terrible grimace.
Straight to our table strides Jem, and stands over us, shimmering with cold and his terrible unnamed emotion. No longer now a boy, I think. Something has made a man of him, and this thing, as so often it is, unkind and without clemency.
“Well, Thessaris,” says my lover, “turn off your strumpet.”
At which, it can be guessed, Mis’us Peck stands up and says glowering to him, “Will you be turned off then, sir?” Meaning of course he is the trull, not she.
But he neither answers nor looks at her, only at me. And his anguish brings back the aching into me, so cold and steely as a bite, or the sword’s edge.
“Do it,” he says.
And I say to Merscilla, “Best leave us, sweetness. I will…”
“Oh. He is preferred then to me, you donkey? Well, may you have much pox of each other.” And she exits.
At that Jem Templeyard sat down. He took up her cup and drained it. Then staring away into the wall, he said to me, in such a low hoarse voice I must strain to catch every syllable:
“Her mother wrote to me, and I not getting the letter till this eve. She is dead, Thessaris, my Sophia. Not seventeen years, and dead.” After which he put down his head on his arms across the table and wept.
89
He had pronounced her name an outlandish way, so for a minute I did not at all know who he meant. For as a rule it is spoken as if one said So Fire. But he had it So Fear.
“Your wife,” I tendered at last. He wept and nodded into the table’s wood. “How is this?” (I thought, Pray God she was not with child. For it might even be mine.)
Jem raised his head and wiped off his face on his sleeve.
“God knows how. But all my fault, as I must think,” he said. “Her mother believes so. For Sophia was returning to her mother’s house at Levishamm, but then the carriage comes very late, and when the door is undone, she does not step out and the servant gives up a howl. She is sat there, my wife, in the seat’s corner, and a trickle of red blood from her mouth and down her white throat. And still, as only the dead ever are, so she is. Since you and I, she’d have nothing to do with me. And I was ill-tempered with her, yet she said nothing but went to her mother. And then it seemed Sophia was to come into the town, and her mother thinks this was to call on me, but I swear it never was, and never did I see her. I have not seen her even as now she is. In Christ’s golden name, what shall I do, Irvin?”
I had no answer. And so for a long while after this we sat silent, drinking. And from somewhere then the clocks began to chime, all out of time and tune with each other as ever, and it was midnight.
A man came in presently to say the river had not frozen after all, and a great load of bets had been lost thereby. And that another great load, this of snow, had fallen from a roof at Covent Garden, and crushed two drunkards under it. Which caused much mirth.
Shortly after that a staid and sober servant entered, as they do in the play, and stealing over to Jem, plucked his sleeve, gave over something, and drew back. It was another letter. This Jem read, and his pale face turned from white to blue. I have seen that colour in life only once before, and that one was my father’s, after I had so sorely beaten him.
“Oh God, how am I to bear it?” Jem said, yet in the most ordinary and measured of tones.
“What?” I said. I braced myself to confront new dread, but was not braced enough.
“The physician has attended, and says my wife is poisoned. She had poisoned herself. The paste has been found in a little box among her skirts. He says he knows the venom, and that she has taken it by mouth. Invariably, though it acts only slowly, a slight taste does the business, and it is quite fatal. Doubtless she thought she would be home before it ended her. Or not, mayhap. Or not.” Then he got straight up. “I must go there,” he said, but not to me.
And turning, he walked from the tavern, with the servant following like his black shadow, out into the white nothingness beyond the door.
90
At home, and a shoddy, ache-rattling carriage to be paid off, and then upstairs. No dog, no fire alight, a room like a grave. By now I was so ill I had called up the beggar from his bivouac along the track, and given him money to fetch the doctor. A good time next the beggar below the window sh
outs up the doctor will not turn out so late, but will attend me in the morning. At which he, and the doctor by proxy, are recommended to the most taxing pits of Hell.
I seek my bed and lie down in it, and so racked with torturer’s pains and fever by then, I soon lose all proper awareness. Yet in and out of my distemper moves little Sophia, and I feel her death always heavy on me like an icy rubble, like the snow that fell and killed the drunkards.
Of course the fault is mine that she died. Did she not tell me she would never see me more in life? What does a woman mean by that except she will throw life off, and leave it to lie down instead beside you, and rot there, as your punishment. But her punishment on me may be just, and I, now, too sick to care.
91
About ten o’clock in the morning, the doctor arrived, having been shown up by the brown crone, or some other of the freak-show of the house.
He told me at once I was vastly ill, for which I did not thank him, being able to deduce as much for myself, nor wishing to charge myself any fee for so doing.
Then he came more near, examining me with his cold, gnarled and comfortless hands. Then, he seemed perplexed, and said he would bleed me, to see what mysteries he can uncork with my blood. This process, achieved with a knife not sharp enough, was terrible in my pain. But he seemed satisfied. He asked me next if I had eaten any strange thing, or been attacked in any fashion. I reminded him I was an actor, and often attacked on the stage, either by a fellow actor at the playwright’s instruction, or some unsatisfied person from the audience.
He laughed heartily at my wit. Then recalled for me I had been involved in a duel, so he had heard it. (One’s business is never secret, I find.)