Darkness, I

by Lee, Tanith

  Rachaela went out to meet her, reluctantly.

  ‘Did you see the plane?’

  ‘Oh, yes. And I watched it take off.’

  ‘That’s good. You can go and meet her when she comes back.’

  ‘Will you come, then?’

  ‘I might. I was tired today. I don’t like long car drives.’

  ‘Reg is happy with his car,’ said Anna. She stood in the hall, patiently. Rachaela thought, Am I, somehow, barring the way into the house? Anna said, ‘Did Jelka miss me?’

  ‘Yes. She looked for you. I expect they’ll all look for Althene.’

  Anna said, ‘What did Elizabeth leave for dinner?’

  ‘Chicken and quiche and salad. And there’s a cold trifle.’

  Anna nodded.

  Ruth would have wanted to eat at once. Ruth was always almost insatiably hungry. But Anna ate only normally, in fact rather frugally. She had probably only asked about the meal to be courteous, to ease the tension.

  ‘Would you like tea, or a cold drink?’

  ‘Just some water,’ said Anna.

  Rachaela went into the kitchen and took a bottle of carbonated water from the fridge. She poured it into one of the tall green wine glasses. Anna would drink a glass of white wine with dinner.

  When you thought of it, of her age, that was absurd.

  But Anna was not her age.

  The evening passed calmly, but separately. Anna played with the cats and listened to Rachmaninov preludes on the music centre. Later she put on a video, The Fugitive Kind. Anna, unlike the Scarabae at the house on the common, liked older films.

  Rachaela painted in the fifth bedroom, which she used as a studio. The painting was ineffectual, would not coalesce.

  Althene had said she would be gone for six or seven days. Rachaela had not asked her anything further about the visit.

  They had not been apart for three years, more. It must be a wrench. At least a vacancy... but then, they had already parted. Anna had parted them. No longer was Althene whole for Rachaela, not complete. She was divided, luminously and amorphously, into her dual nature. Her maleness, thought always invisible, save at its most intrinsic and momentary, had taken on a strong and threatening life.

  And I don’t like men, do I? I want them, but I don’t like them.

  I never forget them, but I never love.

  Adamus, in the church, kissing her mouth. And on the stair of the Dutch house, the one Althene called Cajanus, kissing his hand, the light in his jewel blue eyes.

  Anna went to bed about ten o’clock.

  Rachaela stole in presently, trying to be dutiful. To see if Anna needed anything. But that was foolish. For Anna was not a baby. Even if she should have been.

  And in any case, Anna was already quiescently and silently sleeping.

  How have I accepted this? But then I haven’t. It has simply occurred.

  Yet, Anna was in so many ways, mentally, still so very young.

  There in her arm Ursula the fox, who filled the bed with loose fur, and on the other side, the rabbit. How long had Ruth retained her bear? Until she was nine, ten? And then, there had been no cat, and here, as now, Jelka would lie on the pillow, black satin to compliment the wash of ice pale hair.

  Was this room, this second bedroom of the grand shuttered house, like Ruth’s area in the London flat?

  In the dim influx of light from the hall, Rachaela stared about.

  The walls decorated in pastel, the floor thick-carpeted in dark green. An old-fashioned carved wardrobe, and beside it, the carved chest that was the dressing-up box. Book shelves bricked in by books. A few ornaments, a shell, a bronze Libran scales with a fruit of amber marble in one dish. On the ground no dolls, but various toy animals carefully arranged for their own comfort. A kaleidoscope, paints—but no paintings on view. More books piled up. And there the mattress, its almond pillows and sheet, and the patchwork blanket folded off, and Jacob also in a nest there, sleeping before his nightly sortie to the garden.

  She must miss Althene very much.

  Had she cried, or tried not to cry, at the airport?

  Ruth had always been rather repulsively controlled.

  Until that last time, on the stairs. When they carried her up screaming. Malach! Malach!

  Anna’s hair was just like Malach’s hair.

  She could have been his daughter.

  But she’s mine.

  Anna stirred in her sleep, and turned a little, and Jelka mewed. Anna opened her eyes, and as she reached to caress the cat, saw Rachaela.

  Does she think I’ve crept in to smother her? The wicked step-mother?

  ‘Hallo,’ said Anna, ‘did you want me?’

  ‘Just to see you were all right.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Thank you. I dreamed Althene was in Amsterdam, by the canal.’

  ‘She will be by now.’

  ‘I hope it’s okay for her.’

  ‘Yes.’ How much had Althene confided to Anna? ‘You’ll miss her a great deal, but she’ll soon be back.’

  ‘I know,’ said Anna.

  And there before her, peaceful as the sleep which had gone before and now returned, Rachaela beheld the pure and utter trust of true love. Anna had not cried. Anna had no doubts. Althene loved her and Althene would come back to her.

  But the world is never sure, Anna.

  Unless, perhaps, for the Scarabae.

  Rachaela went out and drew the door closed, as Anna preferred it. (Ruth had liked to be private.) Rachaela went down and opened another bottle of wine. She sat drinking from the cold glass in front of the cruel TV, watching news of the unsure world.

  There were altered warnings in the doctors now, to go along with the old ones. The Facts About Aids. And on the tables were leaflets on the menopause, food sense, and child abuse. An attractive poster of drinks informed the waiting room that more than two small glasses of wine a day could seriously injure a woman’s health. There were no warnings about BSE, radioactivity or aluminium in tap water. However, the No Smoking notices were enormous.

  Rachaela thought, I know more and it’s made me angry. Or only facetious.

  The questionnaire she had had to fill in was like an application for a top-secret job. She had not completed every section. The receptionist did not seem to notice, but then she was rather busy talking to her colleague.

  The panel of doctors had agreed to accept them, in the absence of their own doctor. After all, they were also entitled to National Health advice.

  ‘Ms Day? Doctor Collins will see you now. Pink door.’

  They got up, and Rachaela walked with Anna, neat in her fashionably short white dress, to the pink door.

  Doctor Collins was about thirty years old, attractive and calm.

  She held their questionnaire, which had come through a hatch, but barely glanced at it.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘This is my daughter, Anna,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Hallo, Anna,’ said the doctor, smiling. From the movements of her hands and the inflexion of her voice, one could tell she would never be rough, except perhaps to save a life.

  Anna did not speak. She waited.

  Rachaela said, ‘Anna’s been having some problems. With her right hand. And could I ask you to examine her?’

  ‘What seems to be the trouble?’

  ‘It’s a general problem,’ said Rachaela, ‘I don’t know. I’d prefer a complete check-up.’

  ‘Well, your daughter’s at that age—we all go through it. Don’t worry, Anna, I won’t be doing anything to hurt. Just slip your top off.’

  The doctor proceeded, very gently, politely, to test Anna’s chest and heart. It seemed she had reacted to Rachaela and Anna’s tension. But as the examination went on, the doctor began to look more and more serenely pleased. Rachaela recalled Kate Ames. Doctor Collins was delighted, because everything was in order.

  Last of all, after the eyes and throat and ears, the doctor investigated Anna’s right hand.

  There reall
y isn’t any cause for worry. You’re left-handed, aren’t you, Anna?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Anna had submitted gracefully.

  Even to being naked, before the stranger, and the other stranger, her mother.

  Rachaela had looked quickly, and away. Seen.

  The doctor presently reiterated that Anna was in excellent health. Doctor Collins said she wished she saw all young girls this fit and well coordinated. Perhaps a little mild anaemia. But calcium and iron would see to that. It was not uncommon, after the onset of the menarche.

  ‘She doesn’t have periods,’ said Rachaela.

  ‘Oh? Really. Then I would definitely recommend a course of vitamins. It isn’t that unusual. Sometimes worrying about it can delay it.’

  They sat now in a conspiratorial ring.

  Rachaela said, quietly and firmly, ‘I’m afraid I didn’t completely fill in your form.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. We can catch up on that.’

  ‘How old, Doctor, would you say my daughter, is?’

  Doctor Collins looked up again, and now lit a collusive smile at Anna.

  ‘Well—let’s see. Anna appears to be sixteen. Perhaps a well-developed fifteen?’

  ‘My daughter, Doctor, is less than two years of age.’

  Doctor Collins did not laugh. Something withdrew inside her clever, elegant face. She gazed hard at Rachaela. Then she said, ‘Ms Day, I’m afraid I have a lot of patients waiting, but I think we should talk again. Perhaps you could call by tomorrow, after eleven-thirty, when Anna’s at school. I can spend some time with you then.’

  ‘All right,’ Rachaela said. She stood up and took the prescription for calcium and iron, and she and Anna went out, leaving the doctor very serious at her desk. Rachaela, of course, had not given their real address.

  Outside they walked speechless up the sunny street. Cars passed. The large houses, with their gardens of shaped conifers and rose roses, summer spreading its last gold randomly; a leaf, a sill, a snoozing cat on a path.

  ‘I know you want to say something to me, Anna.’

  Anna said nothing.

  ‘You must be furious. Upset. I’m very sorry. I apologize. But it’s done.’

  I stripped her naked. I whipped her with humiliation.

  Anna said, ‘Why did you?’

  ‘Why did I take you to an unknown doctor and have you examined? Don’t you know?’

  ‘Because I’ve grown very quickly.’

  ‘Yes, Anna. You’ve grown extremely quickly.’

  ‘I thought I had,’ said Anna. ‘Sometimes I ached. Althene said...’ Anna paused.

  ‘She said it didn’t matter? Yes?’

  ‘She said I was different. She said we all are.’

  ‘You’re Scarabae.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna.

  ‘I think I took you to that doctor to punish you, Anna, and that is very unfair, because it isn’t your fault. Whoever the hell you are.’

  ‘I’m Anna.’

  ‘Are you?’

  They walked. The street ended on the brink of a busy road, and here they stopped, in stasis, and faced each other, while everything else rushed by.

  Will she soon be my height?

  Anna, in her white short dress, a lovely girl of sixteen. And naked, so healthy, the doctor said. But Doctor Collins had not said beautiful. Like a dagger in the heart. While on Anna’s left lovely breast, like a pale blue feather, the ghost of a real dagger, the memory of a knife?

  ‘Someone threw you from a battlement,’ Rachaela said, ‘but I’m the castle you haunt. You’re haunting me.’

  Anna looked at her, no fear, no distress. More serene than Doctor Collins.

  ‘Do you think that I’m Ruth?’

  ‘Yes. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Rachaela said, more questioningly, ‘Don’t you? Do you remember anything—’

  ‘Oh, yes. But not that.’

  ‘Then—what?’

  ‘Places,’ said Anna, musingly. ‘But I can’t paint them. Old rooms.’

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Malach.’

  Anna looked into Rachaela’s face and for a moment a tide moved behind her skin, colourless and emotionless, yet like a blush.

  ‘Althene told me the name,’ she said. ‘I know the name.’

  ‘What did she tell you about him?’

  ‘Nothing much. That he’d been kind to her. That he had a lot of dogs. He lives in a castle.’

  ‘Then haunt that one,’ Rachaela said.

  Anna suddenly began to cry. The water spilled from her silvery eyes as if from a bottomless vault of rain. Rachaela stared at her. Anna cried as she did. Anna was her daughter.

  And Rachaela reached out, awkwardly, to touch Anna, but Anna only stood like a pillar of ice, ungiving, noiseless, crying, in the rushing street.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Rachaela said. ‘Oh Christ.’

  Anna said, clearly and softly, ‘It will be over in a minute.’

  And, in a minute, it was.

  People squinted at them curiously as they walked on, the exquisite blonde girl brushing the rain from her cheeks, the beautiful black-haired woman, obviously too young to be her mother, walking by her, her fists clenched, her neck bowed. Lovers maybe? A little tiff.

  Chapter Six

  By train it took half an hour to get into London. At the station they found a taxi. The yellow afternoon went by, Madame Tussauds, the park, the river.

  Anna did not seem apprehensive. She had enjoyed the train journey. And in the taxi she looked about. Like a child.

  She wore another of her short white dresses, with pale purple and green flowers coined over it, green tights, and green flat shoes. At her throat was a tiny slender silver snake Althene had bought her. (Talisman?)

  The taxi drove up the slope.

  The common above, and the house with the tarot card windows, and turrets. The sun was westering over, adding a dramatic photographic filter of bronzy sheen to the sky.

  Rachaela half turned to Anna. She meant to say, ‘What do you think?’ But Anna-Ruth had seen the house before. Only she did not remember.

  Anna did look, but she had looked at everything.

  They got out, and as Rachaela paid the driver, Anna stood on the driveway, gazing up.

  The taxi reversed and rumbled off down the hill. A butterfly flew out of one of the hedges that were planted now in the gravel. And Anna held out her hand and the butterfly settled on it.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful, Rachaela.’

  ‘Yes. How did you do that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Rachaela went cautiously to regard the butterfly. It was palest lemon, and its wings trembled with life. As suddenly as it had come to rest it lifted away and up into the trees beyond the house.

  Rachaela knocked on the door. The green man face of the knocker glared at her above leafy lips. She had not telephoned them. The visit was to be a surprise.

  A straight, not very tall, old man opened the door.

  ‘Good afternoon, Michael.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Rachaela. Miss Anna.’

  I should have known better. Of course, Althene has secretly kept them posted.

  Anna said, ‘Hallo, Michael.’

  They went into the gracious hall with its pillars and waiting lamps. The stained-glass women were still in their windows, and the minstrels over the stairs. Down that stair Ruth had stolen with her golden razor. And up it, when the man lay dead in a riot of blood on the floor, Michael and Kei had dragged her.

  But someone else was coming down.

  They always knew, when one of their own had arrived.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t call, Eric. But I’ve brought Anna to see you.’

  Did she imagine it, or was he taller? Straighter, more solid? Quite possibly. The Scarabae could do this, grow younger and more hale. His hair was a very dark
grey, almost a muted black. His eyes were bright. In one hand he carried a large book from which dripped a black silk marker.

  He reached the bottom of the staircase and came towards them. He took Rachaela’s hand and touched his dry firm lips to it. To Anna, he bowed.

  ‘My daughter by Althene,’ Rachaela said. ‘This is Eric.’

  ‘I am glad you have come,’ Eric said.

  Thank you,’ Anna said, ‘for your welcome.’

  Not a flicker between them.

  Does he not know, then? Or is it only rude to take umbrage at an old enemy reclad in a new skin?

  They went into the white drawing room.

  It had been thoroughly dusted, gleamed with polish. Flowers were in a stone bowl on a table, and by the television lay a scatter of twenty-five or thirty videos in gaudy cases. Books sat on the sofas. The room looked lived-in. Alive.

  They too sat. Eric said, ‘Michael will bring us something. Will you have tea, Rachaela? Anna?’

  Anna said, ‘Could I have coffee, please?’

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t keep it,’ Eric said, regretfully.

  ‘Then tea, thank you,’ said Anna.

  She was like a perfectly gorgeous nineteenth-century young girl, taken calling on a rich uncle by her chaperone.

  Ruth had never been like that.

  Anna was, in fact, not like Ruth. Though beautiful, it was an unlike beauty; though graceful, an alien grace. And Anna’s remoteness, her unearthly quality, they were not the same as the clandestine demoniac locked silences of Ruth.

  Eric opened his book and Rachaela saw a page with black lines ruled across one of the paragraphs. In the margin was a neat column of insectile and minute writing. Sylvian had ruled through all the books, at the last house, by the sea. But Sylvian had not made notes in them.

  Eric said, ‘I must amend. History—they’ve changed it.’

  ‘They? Do you mean the Scarabae?’ Rachaela said.

  ‘The Scarabae... We are history. We are the truth.’

  Rachaela glanced at Anna. ‘Then Anna is the truth also.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Anna smiled. She smiled at Eric. And even the smile was not like Ruth’s, which had been so wonderful. Anna’s smile was like soft light.

  Eric nodded, just as Anna had done.