by Tanith Lee
“Damn you, Raoul Basulte,” she whispered. “I hope you rot in hell.”
Lilith pranced, pleased. “Go on – go on…”
Anna took off her shoe. There was nothing in it, but she emptied it in the lower part of the bed below the sheet, secretively, as if there was.
“Fuck you, Raoul,” said Anna.
Lilith crowed.
“He’s a dirty dog,” she cried.
But he was not a dog. They were the dogs. His bitches.
Lilith pushed her gently.
“Lie down. Go on. Let’s lie in his dirty old bed.”
Anna threw herself down and over, and lay on her back, her head on Raoul’s pillows. Lilith leaned over her, then climbed lightly on her body.
They stretched there a few seconds, like folded gloves in a box, the buttons of Lilith’s dress pressing into Anna’s breasts, as hers must do, she thought, into Lilith’s.
Lilith’s face, the flesh falling a little forward as she leaned up now and over Anna, swollen-looking and carnal, said, “I’ll be him. I’ll be Raoul.”
And she began to jerk her hips forward and back, forward and back.
“Go on,” said Lilith, to Anna, “tell him how grand he is.”
So Anna called softly, “Oh Raoul, you’re so lovely. Oh Raoul, how you fill me up!” Things she had never said, would never have thought to say, but which she knew Lilith would enjoy.
And Lilith shrieked thinly with mirth and jerked faster.
“It’s not a fucking Derby, dearie,” said Anna, remembering Lilian.
“Oh, I’ve got to, Annie, got to,” whimpered Lilith, rolling her eyes. Had this happened? Did Raoul behave in this way, selfish and pathetic, when with his servant doxy?
“Oh wait, Raoul, please wait…”
“Oh I can’t dear, no, no…”
“Oh Raoul…”
“Ooff! Ooff!” honked Lilith, grinding herself about on Anna’s belly, bruising her perhaps. Lilith collapsed, and Anna patted her. “Did you love it, Lily?” whined Lilith, forgetting that Anna was only playing herself.
“Oh, yes, Raoul, you were wonderful. Like a stallion,” said Anna. She found the awful witch’s laugh rising in her, and let it crackle out of her lips and through the space under the tester.
“Do you love me, Lily?” Asked Lilith of herself.
“Oh, Raoul, I love you, I do, I do.”
Insane merriment. They clung together, writhing in paroxysms of laughter in his bed. Anna was afraid neither of them would be able to stop.
Then Lilith pulled away and stood up, sober.
“We’d better tidy up.”
And Anna’s laughter too was utterly dismissed. They corrected the bed, pulled up the sheet and covers, folded them open again as in the best hotel. “When are you going to make me up?”
“When you like.”
“Mousie brought your dresses down. Some weren’t there. There were only two.”
“You have them.”
“We’ll put them on in our room.”
Our room. And one dress for Anna, as well.
Lilith would have to be at work by four, or perhaps not. She would have concessions, surely. As Anna had.
They ascended the backstairs, up and up, and Lilith had brought a bottle of wine, stolen under the nose of Mrs Ox, she said, because long ago Lilith had acquired a copy of the butler’s keys.
The butler wasn’t one of them. The housekeeper was, for although Anna had never seen her in the kitchen, as she had only once seen the butler, Mrs Ox spoke of the housekeeper familiarly as Pinnie.
“When Pinnie was on the boards,” had said Mrs Ox, only today, “she had a pair of legs that put them in a frenzy. Nothing else to her, mind. Jug of a face and no bosoms to speak of. But those legs kicked up a storm.”
“Is it true,” Anna had asked, since the cook had turned to her, expecting due reverence, “she was on the stage?”
“And she was a bad girl too,” said Mrs Ox, “like you and Lilith.”
Three bad girls.
The other girl from ‘our room’ had not come to bed. Lilith told Anna this girl, Mousie, slept more regularly with one of the footmen. She had been pregnant four times, and got rid of ‘it’ by drinking four cans of mustard in water. (Another bad girl.)
By the light of the soupy electric bulb, Anna saw two of her dresses spread like flat corpses on Lilith’s narrow bed.
How tawdry they looked, after all. Had they always been of such poor quality?
One, greyish silk, the other black and stitched with lurid green beads.
“Redheads should favour green,” announced Lilith, and took up this gown. “You dress me.”
Anna said, subserviently naturally, “You’ll have to take everything off, except your knickers.”
“Naughty cow,” said Lilith. “Got you excited have I?”
“You’re better than Raoul,” said Anna.
They laughed, shortly.
Lilith only stripped pragmatically and in fact totally. She was thin and wiry, with her little breasts set on like small soft-iced cakes, each with a cherry. But at her groin was the brush of the fox, redder than on her head.
Anna slid the beaded dress on to Lilith’s body, and did it up.
“How do I look?”
“Undo you hair.”
Lilith unpinned the coil, and it fell down her, shining and slithering like a snake. Such long hair. It feathered her waist.
“A shame you can’t wear it like that in the house.”
“Just see old Madam’s fat face if I did.”
Anna recalled watching Lilith on a horse, dashed over the park behind Raoul, hair flying.
She put back the hair behind Lilith’s left ear, and combed it out, flowering round the right side of her face. “We need a clip. And an earring.”
But these had not been brought. Make-up had.
Anna sat Lilith on the bed.
Lilith had a touching innocent eagerness now, a reliance on Anna, quite frightening in such a frightening being, for she was really so chancy, Lilith, so potentially lethal. A demon that wanted to play, and let itself be tarted up. One wrong step, and she might bite or rend or invoke fire.
But no, Lily was a charming and wonderful girl. Anna was liking it so much, powdering her face this way, putting the mascara on her lashes, and a little on her pinkish eyebrows to darken them. And these scarlet lips.
Oh then. The last time she had made up another’s face… at Preguna… just such ruby lipstick – oh, then.
“Why have you stopped?” challenged Lilith.
“I thought I heard a mouse.”
“Probably did. Finish me. Come on.”
Two or three more deft strokes. She had grown proficient, behind the dress shop at Preguna.
“There.”
Lilith rose. She was imperious. She stalked to the mirror.
As Anna watched fondly, admiringly, Lilith fell head-over-heels in love with her reflection. She flirted with it, turning this way and that, once almost right round, looking back at herself over her own shoulder.
“I’m a pretty girl.”
“Beautiful,” said Anna. “I don’t know about Pinnie. You’re the one ought to be on stage.”
“Oh, go on.” This time it did not mean continue. Although, too, it did. And Anna took her cue.
“No, you’re good enough for the films. You know, I’ve heard the producers just go round the city, in big cars, looking out for girls for a film. They want to find someone nobody’s ever seen before. Some of the biggest names got started that way.”
“The city? London, you mean?”
“Oh, yes. London, of course.”
“I’ve never been to London.” (Iner bin a lonun.)
“It would be fun to go,” said Anna, “wouldn’t it?”
Lilith spun to her with sparkling, black-lashed eyes. “What ud we do?”
Anna said, lazily, “Oh. Look in the big shops. Go to a cinema, watch a film. Eat in a fancy restaurant. Have
a drink or two. Th’fellers ud be artor you, an no muztaikn.”
“And the producer in his car?”
“He might. Oh yes.”
Lilith took up the wine bottle, filched from below and ready unsealed. She took a deep valorous swig. She passed the bottle to Anna. No matter the mouth of the bottle wasn’t wiped. Anna had probably swallowed Lilith’s saliva before, not to mention bathed in it.
“London,” breathed Lilith. She added, “I was born in that pub. Jacko’s Lizard. And then up here, scrubbing and running about. Once that old Raoul promised me we’d go.”
“There are no trains, though,” said Anna, vacantly.
“There’s the car. Not that old rusty thing you came back in. It’s smart. Can go for miles.”
“In the village? Whose car?”
“Me da’s,” said Lilith. She smiled radiantly and threw herself on to her bed, in the spangling dress and a flair of hair.
“Who’d drive?” Anna, wonderingly.
“I ud. He’s taught me how.”
Anna laughed. “When we goin?”
Powers of speech, of thought, realigning.
Lilith closed her eyes. “It’s a dream. Sometime, never.”
Emotion, like violent pain, lanced in Anna’s body, between womb and brain. She knew she must not protest. She hadn’t wanted to go, after all, escape, such things were not on her mind at all. Next second she heard Lilith begin, quietly, to snore. The exciting day had finally tired her out. Anna went and lay down on her own bed. She was trembling, weakly, her heart drumming against her ribs as if too strong for the rest of her.
Oh Christ, Christ. Would this monster remember? Tomorrow would she still desire London, the fairy tale producer, the glamours of an unknown country?
And did a proper car truly exist?
Anna turned on her side, away from Lilith Izzard.
It was useless to mourn. Ony binna bidda fun, hant it?
In the night somewhere, the dregs of it, before dawn began, Anna found Lilith lying close by her. Lilith caressed Anna’s breasts. So Anna stroked Lilith’s hair, and cradled Lilith’s waist.
Eventually Lilith murmured, “Like a couple of those funny women, aren’t we?”
“Are we?”
“Do you know what they do?”
“No,” said Anna. (She lied.)
“No, they can’t do anything,” said Lilith mazily. “They haven’t got anything, have they?”
“No.”
“So if we tried,” said Lilith, nuzzling into Anna’s shoulder, “I expect it would be no good.” (“Aspek ayud beena god.”)
Anna lay still, her arms cramping, as Lilith resumed her snoring.
In the morning Lilith would wake her again, this time pinching her arm viciously.
Then Lilith would catch two flies from the wall to take down to Hell, for some breakfast dish of the Basultes’.
And Lilith said no more. She did not even come to the room with three beds, and was seldom in the kitchen.
They asked again for the foreign song. Anna sang it. They jeered and whistled, and guffawed and jested all through it. Anna laughed, so tickled by their acumen and wit, her bowels churning with an unnoted tumult.
Beyond the windows, the English rain fell, thick as slime.
It was evening, and they were preparing the dinner. They had not done very much to it, tonight. Perhaps they were enervated.
Mrs Ox turned from the ovens, ox-red. “Get up, you lazy minx. Get into the house and serve them. They want their drinks.”
Anna was astonished. The ox-woman was talking directly to her.
You mustn’t argue.
“Yes, Mrs Ox.”
She recalled the butler stationed in the salon, the maid and footman. She supposed she could serve drinks.
What was this? One of the girls was tying a new apron round her, and handing her, Oh God, the appalling Puritan bonnet.
Anna put the bonnet on. No one mocked her. Now they were pushing her out of the kitchen, and here was the stair, and then the footman was in front of her, opening the door into the Smoking Room.
“Don’t fret. I’ll tell you what to do.”
The door was wide, and there was the room, and so the Basulte house, the part of it which belonged to the Family.
Anna was stunned, almost breathless. She was about to see them. To see Raoul, and Lilian and Tommy, and William. The Father, the Mother. These… gods.
They passed along a corridor. A maid trotted by, going elsewhere. Five days ago Anna had watched her sneezing in a pudding. She was different now.
Now they were going into the salon, its damp greenness, the blood-blotches of roses. The butler loomed at the sideboard, a bald ocean liner. All those bottles and glasses and none of it for them. Save what they stole.
They were lined up now, three correct dolls.
Anna felt a wave of vertigo. The Family was thrusting in, in a band again, a tribe. The Mother swept through first. She wore black, an awful gown with large black bows, and then came the Lilian-daughter, in a dress the colour of fresh gutted salmon, which was nauseous among the green, and would be unbelievable in the red dining-room.
The men followed. The too-young Father, with his greyed hair, and next the three younger males. But – they were so unalike, after all. Comparable only in the black hair and eyes. How stupid she had been to confuse them. And not handsome. Quite ugly. Particularly that one, who was, decidedly, Raoul.
Was she seeing them now as the servants always had, as servants always must? Hideous, and mindlessly obdurate in their power?
They had consigned her to this, because she would not be subservient and malleable in the first role they allowed her. She had let them down and tried to run away.
The footman nudged her sharply.
Anna recollected. For a moment she was resistant, and then she took a piercing lost delight in bobbing to the Basultes. She did it perfectly. She might have been trained, a cringing abasement faultlessly delivered. How simple it always was, to give in.
But as she hung her head before their might, Anna felt the breath on her neck of some mysterious and terrible fiend.
She only played a part, she acted to survive, and all the while, planned her second escape. Her father had loved such games and would have been peerless in this one. Yet she was not her father. And playing so well, taking pleasure in it all, a shadow was reaching for her out of some other dimension.
Oh, she must get free. For her time was running out. Could it be, her time as Anna, as her self?
The Basultes were talking. Their voices were a blur, and their educated English dialect as uncouth, and now nearly as indecipherable, as the vernacular of their slaves had been,
The footman kept whispering, helping her translate their wishes.
Drinks were manufactured. They seemed to make no sense at all, whisky with a spoonful apparently of hot sauce, and these ghastly green liquids, like squeezed alligators, which the women had ordered – what was in them? Only bottles were pointed out.
However, now she stood in front of Raoul, who she had met in a European city, when she was starving by its river. She offered up to him the tray with the very large whisky.
Anna the maid, her hair imprisoned under her cap, tied up tight in her starched apron.
“And how are you liking it, Ann?” She understood him. She stared, remembered, bobbed. And Raoul gave a ripe muscular laugh. “You learn quickly. Very nice, Ann. I’m proud of you.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Anna.
“We’ll have you waiting in the Palace yet.”
Lilian threw back her head and roared with amusement. Was it at his words? She had seemed to pay no attention.
And William was quarrelling with too-quick Derby Tommy by the fire, which tonight, despite the rain, was unkindled.
Anna kept her head dipped at the majesty of Raoul. She thought, I spat on you.
The shadow breathed on her neck. It was like a memory she had forced herself to forget, and had forgo
tten, and which now threatened to emerge and fill her skull with images of torn and bloody things. But it was not that. Memory she had never escaped.
“Thank you, Ann,” said Raoul. Ah, she was to go. Dismissed. As she turned, he patted her bottom.
When the Family left the room, the butler also told Anna she might go. More experienced staff were required, it seemed, to attend the feeding of the gods.
All the stairs up to the attics were like a mountain. Anna climbed slowly, indifferently. She should return below. She would have to say she had felt ill. Which wouldn’t do, would it?
When Anna woke, Lilith the Lizard’s Daughter, was sitting on the foot of Anna’s bed. Lilith wore her maid’s black, but her hair was loose.
What now? A reprimand for retreating here and not going back to the kitchen.
“He says you’re to come out, tonight.”
“Who? Come where?” Anna had journeyed too far, asleep, to hope.
“In the park. Tonight.”
“Why? Who?”
“Him. Master. That Raoul Basulte.”
Anna lay bemused. The window was black, but pinned with a scatter of stars.
“Rain’s stopped,” said Lilith. “It’ll be warm. The moon’s up.”
Anna sat. She smiled.
“You look lovely, even in that dress.”
“Oh, I’m to be a film star, aren’t I? When we two get to London.”
“…That’s just a dream, London.”
Lilith winked. “Wait and see.”
Anna lurched back. She shut her eyes and her heart drummed so loudly it broke the stars.
“He says, put on a dress. That grey one, maybe.”
Who? Oh, Raoul, presumably. He wanted her out in the park in the grey dress, in the moonlight. But that was irrelevant. What was relevant were the words Lily had said. Wait and see.
Lilith was taking off her maid’s uniform and pulling the beaded gown from under the bed, shaking it, putting in on.
“Come on, you,” said Lilith, brisk and commanding. “Stur yer stumps.”
Just like the poem, the white moon had climbed the summit of the sky. To the height it had had to go, the stairs of a tall house were nothing. And life was nothing. Fifty years, eighty years. The moon had done all of it, over and over.
Above the Basulte grounds, their park, (all muffled as if in black furs), the stars were big, and many had colours, yellow, sallow, or boiling white-blue.