by Tanith Lee
It was Althene who began.
‘You’ve brought me grapes. How apposite.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know. But I thought you’d like the colour.’
‘Of course I do. We’ll eat grapes and drink wine. In one week’s time. And then. Then I must think of Anna.’
Rachaela said, ‘You instructed me not to tell them.’
‘Yes. Not yet.’
‘But—’
‘Obviously,’ Althene said, ‘you are devastated. So concerned.’
Rachaela threw back her head. She stared at Althene as she had stared at the trees above the cemetery.
‘What do you want? I’m terrified.’
‘Because she was stolen.’
‘Why?’ Rachaela said.
Althene turned her head on the petal pink pillow. ‘Someone wished to have her. I should have thought of this. Stupidly I did not. It’s my error, Rachaela.’
‘Who wished it? Who’s taken her? Why? What will you do?’
‘So many questions. I don’t know.’ Althene hesitated. She said, ‘Malach... will be told.’
‘She’s yours,’ Rachaela said.
‘And yours.’
‘Yours and mine, then. Not his. He pushed her away.’
‘And someone else has netted her in.’
Rachaela said, ‘I can’t stand this. I can’t, Althene. I’m lost.’
Althene said: ‘Mijn dochter is zoek.’
‘Your daughter’s lost. Yes.’
‘No, more than that I’ve lost her,’ Althene said. She closed her eyes as she had in the grass of pain. ‘I mean she has lost herself.’
‘How? She had no choice.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Althene—’
‘Listen, my beautiful one, go away. You come here and sit, and you’re’ no use to me, Rachaela. Go home. You’ll be more comfortable. I’m well. I’ll soon be with you.’
‘I’ve tried—’
‘It’s not enough to try.’ Althene looked through her. ‘I must sleep now.’
‘I’ll come back—’
‘No. Do as I say. Go home. To the house on the hill.’
‘And what shall I tell them? Elizabeth, Reg—’
‘What does it matter?’
Rachaela said, ‘They’ll want to know.’
‘Say I have had appendicitis. Anna has gone to stay with her friend... in France.’
Rachaela dug her long, unpainted nails into her palms. ‘Her little two-year-old friend who looks seventeen. You’re sending me away like a naughty child.’
‘You are a naughty child.’
Rachaela thought, What do I feel now? Nothing. Nothing.
She went home, by car.
The driver was chatty but not intrusive. She created for him a pack of lies. Her husband, whose city job she did not understand, and—oddly—her two daughters at grammer school.
He announced she looked too young for that.
She said he had made her day.
When they reached the town, she got him to drop her off near the supermarket. Dinner for her strapping family.
She gazed in at the women who shopped.
As she walked up the hill, the heavy overnight bag in her hand, she talked to herself, and soon she was out of breath. When she came to the wall of the house, she leaned there, and looked back the way she had come.
So far. And so far still to go.
The house was polished and airy, Elizabeth had kept up her attentions. A smoked-salmon salad and a gateau were in the fridge, and two bottles of Californian white wine. Someone had wired ahead.
Rachaela went up into her bedroom, her bedroom with Althene, after the fourth glass.
She stripped, and looked at her unmarked girl’s body in the mirror.
At six, she phoned the hospital, but Althene, doing excellently, was asleep.
Tell her I love her, Rachaela thought but did not say. Tell her I am alone.
She watched a TV film about a woman who wanted children and could not have them.
Rachaela laughed. She laughed until she cried.
It was someone from the hospital who phoned Rachaela on Friday morning, at ten a.m. Althene had discharged herself and was coming home.
Rachaela felt peculiar, like a young Victorian virgin whose fiancé was sent back from the front. Fluttery, that was it.
She had been still in bed. Now she showered and dressed, powdered her face, made up her eyes and lips. There was not much time. Althene would be travelling, too, by car.
At eleven, Rachaela ate half a piece of bread, and tried to drink some coffee, and could not. Instead she took the uncorked last glass of wine, the single refugee from the previous night’s two bottles, and drank that.
It did not really steady her. Her heart beat lightly and very fast.
The car arrived at noon. It was a Rolls. Ah, yes, it always was, was it not. The Scarabae car of rescue and escape.
Rachaela did not spy from the window.
She went across the living room and stood on the Chinese carpet.
Should she run to the door as it opened? And careful of the bandaging, fling her arms about her paramour?
She heard the door open.
In the hall, Althene’s footsteps were not quite right. Obviously, recuperating, she was not wearing high heels.
A bag went down on the floor.
Then the not-right steps crossed the hall, and someone walked into the soft-lit living room to which the sun did not come until later.
A pang, so violent as to be painful, twanged like a string inside Rachaela’s chest cavity, descending, twisting her stomach and bowel.
If she had still been holding the glass (refilled from a new bottle), she would melodramatically have dropped it. Luckily for the rug, she was not.
Who was it? Who was he? This man.
Adamus...
Ruth’s father.
The first love. The first demon.
He said, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.’
Rachaela heard herself say, ‘It’s all right. It’s just—I’ve never seen you like this, have I?’
And she did not follow what she said.
For the man was young, handsome, very pale. He wore black trousers and a black shirt. His black hair was not very short, only pulled back and tied, so the length of it hung down his back.
Yes. Adamus.
A family resemblance, then. They all looked like each other. Even Rachaela. Even Althene. Althene dressed as what, physically, she had always been. A man.
‘I should have forewarned you,’ Althene said. ‘Sit down.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’m not going to swoon. You just surprised me. It’s very effective.’
Althene shrugged. ‘There have been those who would have preferred it.’
‘Well, it’s up to you, isn’t it,’ Rachaela said. She sounded arch, idiotic.
Althene’s hair, of course, even tied in so severe and masculine a way, had a waviness to it. Not like Adamus. Her face was not really his face.
But it was a fact, Rachaela had never seen her like this. For even in bed, there were the silks and lace, the breasts, the fount of tresses, touches of powder for the night. The perfume of a beautiful woman.
Althene crossed the room. Lean and lightly muscular, it was easy to make out the ribs of the bandaging. Althene—he—sat on the sofa.
‘If you needn’t, I must.’
‘Can I get you something,’ Rachaela said.
‘Not yet. Let me explain.’
‘It isn’t necessary.’
‘Naturally it is. Please hear me out.’
Rachaela stood on the rug. ‘Yes, then.’
‘I have to look for Anna. I have to—to seek out various people. And to do it, it will be simpler, like this.’
‘Anna,’ Rachaela said.
‘Anna. The little two-year-old girl who appears to be seventeen.’
‘Do you know where to look?’
‘Perhaps. I don�
�t know.’
‘And what role do I play in all this?’
‘I’m afraid it would be better if you merely wait. That’s hard, I know.’
Rachaela said, ‘That, I take it, is cynicism.’
Althene—he—looked at her obliquely. The way Adamus had been used to do. Cold priest. But that was not Althene. Or never until now.
‘Your self-obsession, Rachaela, never fails to intrigue me. I’m trying to console you. Even if you’re jealous of Anna, she’s your possession. And someone has stolen her. You’ll be left alone. You’ll have to wait. Weeks may go by without news of her, or of me. I realize this is unpleasant. A thankless position. But it’s all I offer you.’
‘Well, I suppose I deserve it.’
‘And, added to your self-obsession, a guilt complex.’
‘Don’t analyse me. It’s already bad enough.’
‘That’s true,’ Althene said. And then, ‘Would you get me some water? It’s all I want.’
‘From the tap? Or can I open a bottle of celebratory Perrier?’
‘I would prefer it still.’
‘Like life? We’d all prefer life to be still. Yet here we are, aslosh with horrid waves of accident and treachery.’
Althene got up.
For a man she was not so very tall, yet taller than Rachaela. And built on a larger scale. The face of bones, the hair. Even the hands, on which, now, a faint male down had begun. No rings.
‘I want you to hold me,’ Rachaela said.
Then I’ll hold you.’
‘But it isn’t you.’
‘Yes. I would always be me. A law of physics.’
‘Your arms,’ Rachaela said, ‘are already full to bursting, with Anna.’
‘I don’t want Anna as my lover.’
‘Are you sure, Althene?’
‘Perfectly sure.’
‘You look like him now. Maybe she’ll like that. When you find her.’
‘If I find her.’
‘Or Malach will find her. Rivals?’
‘Rachaela, I’m very tired. All these iron nails being thrust home are tiring me worse.’
‘In the vampire coffin,’ Rachaela said. ‘At least, you never drank my blood, the way he did.’
Althene said, ‘Nor you mine. Let’s leave this now.’
She—he—went out of the room, and in the kitchen the water was poured.
Rachaela, so intent, had forgotten to do this. Unforgivable.
More lush fuel for the guilt complex.
They slept in their bed. Or, Althene slept, in exhausted silence. Rachaela watched.
When the light began to seep around the edges of the curtains, Rachaela put her hand on Althene’s neck, quietly, not to disturb.
What would it be like to make love with him? With him?
Thrilling? Dreadful? The same?
I’ll never know.
Rachaela went down into the lower house, and sat on the floor by the sofa and drank some wine.
The light came blue, and outside the dark-fronded poplars stirred with birds.
She had once said to Althene, I love you. Don’t leave me.
But in space, their hands had parted. Now they fell away from each other, separately, into the abyss.
It was very sad, but she did not feel it yet.
Not quite yet.
Chapter Twelve
It was a rainy gusty day, but Cimmie was dressed like summer, in a turquoise blue dress, gold earrings and bone bracelets. She was in a sunny mood also, because she was going shopping, and to the hairdresser’s to have her two inches of hair cropped back to one.
‘Don’t eat any of that cake until Ms Baldwin comes. Then you can have a piece if she has one.’
Faran concurred. He was always responsible. Since the age of five they had been able to leave him alone in the flat. He was not the type of child to stick scissors into his ear or set the place on fire with matches.
The cake was left over from a dinner party the evening before, black grapes and walnuts with cream.
Cimmie and Wellington had made love three times during the night, waking Faran with their noises.
After Cimmie had gone, Faran went into his room and got the geography books, and his arithmetic exercise, and laid them out on the oak table.
Then he went to the window with a chair.
Over the rushing road, the park rushed only with diagonal rain.
The fat man was there too, in the gateway.
But it was no use waving. The man would not see him through the rain.
Faran reached out to the ebony lampstand on the low pedestal by the window. He switched the lamp on, off, on, off. Perhaps that would do. It was better than nothing. It must be uncomfortable, just standing there, in the rain.
Faran went back to the table, replaced the chair, and sat down on it to wait.
Half an hour after, he was still waiting.
Ms Baldwin was never late. She knew the geography of the city and the mathematic of time, and there was no margin left for mistakes.
So it was peculiar.
Faran did not worry about Ms Baldwin, however. Although he did not wish her ill, he did not like her. She would have to take care of herself.
Finally he left the table and went to look in the refrigerator at the cake. But he was not hungry.
Just then the rain stopped and a bright glass-edged ray of sun struck through the windows.
Faran went back to the window, to see if the man in the gateway was relieved.
The man looked just as he always did, the cheap mac, his glowing blackness. But he waved at Faran.
Faran, on the chair, waved back.
And then, the man in the park gateway beckoned.
It was a brief, but not an obscure gesture.
Evidently the man did not grasp that Faran must not leave the flat.
Faran shook his head, regretfully.
He climbed down, and returned to the oak table and went over his essay on Scandinavian fishing.
About ten past four, when Ms Baldwin had still omitted to manifest, Faran pushed the books along the table.
The sun streamed through the flat, lighting up the Objegbo treasures, the baskets, and statues of elephants and lions, and Cimmie’s batik prints and splintery masks on the walls.
Faran looked about him, at the big room. The sun was cruel.
He went and gazed in at his room. There were pictures of animals on the swarthy yellow paint, he liked the animals. But his ‘toys’ were all clever devices to help him learn, puzzles and tests. They had not wanted him to have a bear. The books were lessons, too. A novel based on some children who had been at Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was delivered, others concerning the slave trade, and ten-year-old Jewish refugees in 1940.
The sun lanced in.
Faran felt a burst of impatience at Ms Baldwin, who should have been here. Her grim company was preferable to this sudden dense frustration.
Actually, Ms Baldwin was not at fault, only trapped in a blacked-out tube with several hundred other distressed passengers. She had been very unlucky. This line was the only one affected by a power failure all week.
Faran opened the door of his father’s study, looked, came out. Then the guest room, kept ready for tipsy guests, who last night had after all gone to their home. Then his parents’ bedroom.
There were ethnic cotton prints cast across the bed, whose seven pillows were of zebra-striped linen. A spear with a crimson tassel hung above, rather as the cricket bat hung above his father’s desk.
Faran frowned.
On his mother’s dressing table squatted bottles of Chanel and a face cream in a white and gold box, formulated for black women, costing thirty-five pounds.
It dissatisfied him. And her clothes in the little dressing room. And the scent of her left behind, peppery, attractive, and alien.
Just as Ms Baldwin was recrossing her legs for the fiftieth time and wiping the nervous sweat off her palms, hoping she would not be stupid and faint, Fara
n stalked back to the window and saw the man was still there.
Then Faran went into the kitchen and took out the cake and carved off a big, generous slice. He put this into one of the polythene bags kept for food, and was sorry when the cream squashed into the walnuts. But it would taste all right. He removed a silver dessert fork from its box and dipped up two lavender and blue paper napkins from the drawer.
Carrying everything carefully, Faran let himself out of the flat.
He allowed the door to shut, for Cimmie would be home by five-thirty, and even if the man in the park got bored with Faran, Faran could always come back and sit in the foyer of the flats.
Faran had been told, from the earliest age, that he must never speak to strangers. That he must never have anything to do with unknown men.
But then. One of Cimmie and Wellington’s prized white male friends had once cornered Faran in the kitchen, and, the new cold Riesling in one hand, put the other on Faran’s genitals. ‘Soon be a man,’ jovially had said the guest. ‘Let go,’ said Faran. The man did so, and laughed. ‘Only teasing.’ And, besides, black Mr Thorpe had been suspected, accused, of perverse paedophile desires, things as distant from him as the earth from Andromeda.
In any case, it was the known who were the strangers. Although he could not quite have put this concept into words, Faran gripped it.
If he had been reliable all these years, perhaps it had been because there was no other option.
Outside the elegant apartment block, the pavement was wet, and the buildings resembled damp newspaper. Crossing the road was not such a challenge. The traffic had slowed and lessened as it occasionally did.
Faran, having looked both ways, ran lightly over and up to the park gate.
The man smiled at him.
‘Hallo, Faran. It’s good to meet you.’
It was not bizarre that the stranger knew his name. It was, somehow, logical.
‘I brought you a piece of cake.’
‘Why, Faran, how kind. Thank you.’ And the man accepted the squash of cake and, there in the gate, began to eat it with obvious enjoyment, plying the silver fork.
Faran watched. He said, ‘Who are you?’
‘Call me Danny,’ said the man. ‘I hoped you’d come down. I guess you’d like to see Mr Thorpe, wouldn’t you?’
Faran said, with intent truth, ‘Yes.’
‘Then I’ll take you there.’