by Tanith Lee
Anna took a room in a small musty hotel. They gave you breakfast, unappealing English fare, burnt meats and fish and broken eggs, fried, and great slabs of bread with yellow grease spread on them. And stodgy dark brown tea.
For a couple of days Anna bought fruit in a market, and ate it at night in her room, which was, according to a notice on the wall, forbidden.
There were men, too. You found them mostly in the pubs. They bought you a drink or two, and then came a stumbling up dim stairs or even into a hotel room just like Anna’s own. They would say, “Five shillings all right?” Or even take her for a meagre supper, and that was it.
She kept thinking she must not stay in London. It was in fact a fearful place. And although she had found the river, with rusty ships rubbing their sides on its banks, it did not seem to her to be the river she had heard and read of. But there was a huge clock. It presided over the mud-flats and the warehouses. Along the concrete shore shone street-lamps. The buses were papered over with advertisements and injunctions. So many things, showing you, telling you, what to do, what not to do.
Anna knew she must find a way to leave. It had always been like this, the compulsion, the impetus, to volition, progressing or escaping.
Somehow she had saved the ring. And then she went to a shop, which was pointed out to her, and inside, in the same sort of fudge-dark she recalled when Raoul had bought it, she offered the ring up.
She felt no wrench, in doing this. She had only to wrench a little in getting it off. But she had lost weight, or attachment, it had not been impossible to slough the ring, as in the house it had.
There was an old man behind the grill. “Let me see.”
The ring was pushed under the grill. The old man abruptly malignantly laughed. “This? What do you take me for? It’s glass.”
The lizard woman in the village pub had said exactly this.
Anna was prepared.
“Can you give me anything?”
“The time of day, my dear.”
He was a Jew. She recollected how Jews were hated. She noted, conceivably, why.
He passed her back the glass diamond, chuckling, and she foresaw he would tell everyone he had contact with his colossal joke, the young slut who had come in and tried to get money on such rubbish.
After this episode, she sat on a seat under a dispirited tree. She sat there most of the day.
Three days ago she had no longer had any money to pay for the room. So she had left the hotel without settling her bill.
Now all the money was gone. And she was so hungry. Ridiculously hungry, for even this morning she had bought herself some toast and a pot of tea at a café.
Through the late afternoon she walked about. Sometimes men looked at her, and once one looked right at her, and she smiled, but then he seemed afraid and hurried on.
She went through an arid park, where the trees had metal leaves, and flowers bloomed with a parched red scent.
Children were feeding the blue pigeons.
Anna stared at this. She could taste the chunks of stale bread in her mouth. The pond gleamed, making her thirsty for gin and bitters. But also she had a curious notion, picking up a child, and licking its face, delicately. What would it taste of? It would laugh, and so would she.
There was a boat-train from some station she had heard of, (with Raoul?), and this would take her over to France. France would be better.
She needed to meet a man who was going to France.
Why was it a strange day, really? It wasn’t so strange. Even the sunset, pomegranates and peaches, and all these people staring at it. Forbidden fruit.
At last, the dark closed the sky, and lamps were lighting up as if at the touch of phantoms.
The big clock boomed. How many strokes? Was it seven?
Anna gazed down on to the iron surface of the river. She had returned to it, vainly searching for something. Items were thrown into canals and rivers.
But the hot evening made her slow. She leaned on the wall above the water, and she could smell food from some restaurant, and all at once she didn’t want it so much. It wasn’t really so important, to eat. Or to do anything.
Could it be, she wondered, if London was after all the last of the cities, her destination, its parched vistas so redolent of terminus, like a station itself, where trains would enter, but from which no passengers went away.
The man stood under the lamp, lighting a cigarette.
He was tall, slimly built, well-dressed. His hat was tilted a little, and his hair was very fair. He was not like Raoul.
She knew he had been looking at her, almost intently, and now, seeing her look up in turn, he walked without haste across the pavement.
“Good evening. Did you see the sunset?”
“Oh… yes.”
“It was very beautiful.”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “I think you’re a foreigner, like myself.” Had he said this? Raoul had once said this, but the man was not like Raoul.
“Are you?” she asked.
“A foreigner? To London, yes.” He took out a packet of cigarettes and offered them to her. When she accepted one, he lit it for her. And as he leaned closer, she saw, under his right eye, a small birthmark, only the faintest of colours, only the size of an English farthing.
Her heart beat once, shaking her. For a moment the city pulsed out, but then came back, complete and steady, as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you’ll let me take you somewhere.”
Anna said, “Yes, of course. But I’m afraid I need money rather badly.”
“I thought that you might. Let’s go somewhere for a quiet drink. That’s what they say here, you know. A quiet drink. Not a noisy one. I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”
A weight lifted away from Anna. This man would be her salvation. But as the weight dispersed, she sensed how it had held her to the earth. Now she was in the air, with nothing to hold on to.
He offered his arm, then. When he did this, deep pain stirred inside her. But it was only memory. What she was accustomed to. It was of no importance, the slight mark on his face beneath the dark blue eye. It had not marred him or driven him into the wilderness.
She took his arm, and he was real and ordinary. They walked at an even pace over the burned cracked paving, and up a hill, and there was a public house with a curious sign, not a dragon, but a headless woman, holding her head up in one hand.
He glanced at this. His mouth was wry. “They have an odd way of looking at things, the English.”
Inside, the smoke had made a mist. There was the odour of beer and spirits, sawdust, and a tinge of vomit and disinfectant.
She went into a booth, a high fence of wood, and sat at a wooden table almost black, scarred with cigarettes and ringed by past glasses.
He brought her a present glass of gin, very strong, three or four measures, and also with something sweet in it she didn’t really like. And some sandwiches, coarsely cut, on a plate.
“Their beef is good,” he said. “Eat something.”
She ate a mouthful or two. But her hunger had gone. It had no longer seemed necessary to be hungry.
She drank about half the gin, and parts of her rose and left her. She felt relaxed now, and sad without urgence.
“My name is Virág,” he said. “May I call you Anna?”
She must have told him her name, she always did. They tended to ask, liking to have a label for you. And sometimes you got one back, “Call me George, Arthur, Bertie.” Or it was, “I won’t give my name. Don’t mind, do you?”
Virág. Oh, not an English name. She would have liked better a French name.
They smoked two more cigarettes.
“You see,” she said, “I find I need to cross the Channel.”
“I understand. Don’t, worry, Anna. Maybe we’ll go together. Would you object to that?”
Her heart tried to fly up with relief, but could not summon the energy. And she was already ad
rift in the air.
“No. Not at all.”
“We may need to go somewhere first. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”
She smiled. Her smile felt tired and stiff. She must be cautious. Not put him off. This was so lucky.
“Let’s talk a while,” he said. “The streets are so crowded now. In an hour or so it will be easy to find a taxi.”
(He was not like Raoul.) He was not like Árpád. She had been terrified that he was, and longed for that, and now her disappointment engulfed her.
She had not said good-bye to him. She hadn’t looked for him. She had left him lying on the floor of the room, untidily, with the ripped curtain blowing. It seemed like yesterday.
This man – Virág – had asked her something.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“Have you been in London long?”
“Oh. No. Only a few days.”
“It’s a bad city. Unfriendly.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“But you were somewhere else before?”
He was offering her another cigarette. She took it. “In the countryside.”
“How interesting,” he said. “But it’s been wet.”
“Yes, it rained.”
“They don’t like foreigners here,” he said, “especially in the country. Don’t you find?”
She said nothing.
The man – Virág – said, “Were you working somewhere?”
“I was in a house. A friend’s house.”
“That must have been interesting,” he said.
“Not really. He wasn’t truly a friend to me.”
Virág’s lips curled into his smile. “The villain. Did you run away?”
“Yes. I ran away.”
“I’m surprised he let you go.”
“Oh – he didn’t stop me.”
“Didn’t he?”
“No.”
“I’d have thought,” said Virág, “he’d have tried to make you stay. Just for another night. What a wretch. An Englishman, of course.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps you had some difficulty with his family. They’re prudish, here. Don’t you find that?”
“I didn’t find that, no.”
“And they treat their servants badly.” Anna had finished her drink. He took the glass. “We’ll have another. The streets will be less crowded soon.”
He went with their glasses back towards the bar.
The room had filled up inside its fulvous haze of smokes and fumes. In the corner, some old men were playing a game of some sort on the table. And a crone was going about with a basket of mauve flowers.
Anna had an urge to get up and walk out of the pub that was a headless woman, while Virág was busy buying her another drink. It would be straightforward, surely.
But she couldn’t be bothered really. It was all right. So she sat where she was, and the cigarette burned down in her fingers.
When he returned, he put the full glass before her, and pushed the plate of uneaten sandwiches aside.
She saw he was quite handsome. His eyes were clear and intense. His mouth was classically shaped, and his hands. As a lover, he might be exciting. His smile was kind, yes, kind, and thoughtful. When his fingers brushed hers, she sensed that he took great care with her.
All this augured well. But she was tired now. The drink made her tired.
The old woman with the flowers came up to their table.
“Violets for your young lady?”
There was a tired face. To be so old. All those years of living, on and on, without remit. One could never grow old. The old were another species.
“Here,” he said. He gave the woman – Anna saw – a note of money. “Would you like some violets? Forced, I’d imagine.”
She thought of Árpád, the flowers in the bowls, the dorisa. Did they force violets here?
Her eyes filled with tears. They were tears of tiredness.
Then he had leant across, was pinning the violets on the mackintosh collar, for she had worn the mackintosh even in the summer evening.
She smelled the perfume of the violets, like confectionery almost, mixed with the aroma of moist earth and shadows. But then they had no scent after all. She had only somehow conjured it.
The woman was saying God would bless the man, Virág. Something like that.
She went straight to the bar and regally ordered stout.
Anna saw the flower-basket put on the floor, knocked against, of less importance now. One tear ran down her face. How tired she must be. Yes, she was, she was.
“Gin,” she said, “makes a woman cry, doesn’t it.”
“Does it?”
“They say so, here. Lilian said so. Or Lilith said so.”
“Lilian,” he said, consideringly, “Lilith. Are they the same?”
(She wondered when he would take her away, to his room. Soon, she hoped. She wanted to sleep.)
“They were women at the house of your friend?” he added.
“…Yes.”
“Perhaps they came up to London with you.”
“No. Why would they?”
“Oh, everyone in the country wants to come to the city. The people in the cities want to get out into the country.”
Anna’s head drooped. For a second she was asleep. Then the jerk of her neck brought her awake again, violently almost, and she was alert.
“You’ve dropped your cigarette.” He offered her the packet.
“No, thank you. I wonder…” she hesitated, placatory, “is there somewhere we could go? I haven’t been sleeping well, you see. If I could just sleep for an hour.”
“Men always like to look after you, don’t they, Anna,” he said. “Or use you. I knew a girl like that. She had this quality. You had to stop yourself putting your arm around her, protecting her. You wanted to take her to bed. It was difficult to resist, because she didn’t resist. Probably someone – your friend – brought you to England. What were the terms?”
“Terms…” she said.
“He wanted to go on sleeping with you, but you were to have a job in the house. Learn a maid’s work, something like that. And then he’d give you a magnificent reference, and you could find a good job in London.”
“No, it wasn’t that,” said Anna vaguely. “He wanted to marry me.”
“Did he? Are you sure, Anna? Perhaps you’re confused. Or I must have heard the story wrongly. He just wanted the use of you, I thought, and his payment was pretty mean. This false reference, and some clothes, some costume jewellery. But then. You were safer out of Europe.”
Anna leaned back and her head rested on the smooth wood of the booth. She saw the man – Virág – from a considerable distance. She reached down the miles for her glass, and drank the gin with the sweet thing in it.
“The girl I knew,” said the man, “something like that happened to her.” He nodded, attentively. His eyes were quite pure, not cruel or deadly at all. He had sorrowful eyes, like a saint in an icon. He put his hand over her hand, and his clasp was warm, it was a reassurance. He said, “Have you seen the papers?”
“What papers – do you mean my passport?”
He said, in French, “I mean the journals. The news.”
She shook her head, the smooth back of the booth helping her.
Virág – the man – said, “They found a young girl in a car in a side street. She was naked but for some underclothes. She’d been given poison, a strychnine derivative, probably. An odd thing. She’d come from a house in the country, a country family, and they too, Anna, were found dead, sitting round their teapot.”
Anna sighed. She withdrew her hand and put it to the forced violets on her collar, stroking them softly. Someone had told her, they only lasted a day. She should have taken them somewhere happy, to a theatre, in her hair, then set them in a glass which had held Champagne, to dream away the night into death.
“It began in Preguna,” he said. “Are you familiar with Preguna? A quaint plac
e. They have a carnival.” He was a policeman. She had seemed to know it for some while. “There was a woman who lied for you, Anna, but no one was entirely satisfied. You killed him although you loved him, didn’t you, since you were in fear of your life. They might have saved you, Anna, then. But now look what you’ve done. Do you say you went mad in Preguna, Anna? Is that it?”
She looked away from him. His face was cool with sorrow, and he had told her, he wanted to hold her, shield her from it all.
“Poor little Anna. I don’t think you’re quite mad. Perhaps they will think so. Let’s hope they will.”
“Thank you for the drink,” she said. “And the violets. When we get there, will they let me put them in water? They’re thirsty, I can tell.”
“Yes, Anna. It will be all right.”
“I’m ready now,” she said.
He frowned. “Are you? You’re stronger stuff than I am. I kept hoping you wouldn’t look up, by the river. And then I thought you might give me the slip.”
She smiled, a little. “I’m too tired.”
She thought that was it, the answer. She was so tired by now. She had done enough. She was prepared to reach the end, and lie down, and sleep for ever.
Anna rose first, and then Virág got up. He offered her his arm, and she was still glad of it, to keep her attached to the world just a minute longer, to what was left of the world.
As they walked from the pub, the old flower-seller had begun to sing. She had a hard confidant voice, cracked like pavement. The stout slopped in her hand, spoiling the forgotten violets in the basket by her feet. But they were already dying. Uprooted, adrift, trapped, pinned, at the mercy of everything, it almost seemed that was what they had come to life for, to die. Since killing them was so easy.
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