Greyglass

by Tanith Lee

  Sunday, if there had been Friday and Saturday, was always the day for parting from R.J., the day he went – home.

  She began to dislike Sundays. There was something unwanted that must be done on them, and the next day was… school.

  Susan did think about Maria, of course, inevitably, now and then. She didn’t dislike Maria, was not even envious of her. She felt sorry for Maria, in case she was being deceived, and could be made horribly distressed by finding out. And, naturally, she feared Maria, for Maria could perhaps, at a stroke, end the flimsy yet imperishable bond which tied R.J. and Susan together.

  Otherwise Susan did not believe their communion would end. It was only a matter of sticking to the rules. Of keeping it quiet, and keeping quiet about certain things to each other, and hoping, without ever voicing it to each other, but hoping for what? Maybe Maria would fall in love with someone else. Or she would die, (she was older than R.J. but not by very much.) Then again Susan steered well clear of the banal viciousness of wishing death to Maria. Besides, R.J. seemed, in his way, to love Maria. On the rare occasions when he mentioned her, (then never intimately) it was gently, fondly, and with respect. And, obviously, accustomedness.

  The year passed.

  Nothing altered.

  They met in London – went to one of the two or three hotels which seemed welcoming, and where falsehoods were no longer offered or expected. Or R.J. came to Brashspeare Road and the kitchen, bathroom and ‘studio’ room woke up and grew bright.

  One evening, near Christmas – a solitary strange time always for Susan, led up to by insane parties, socialising, drinking, unreal sentiment, ending in her own Christmas days alone – Susan was making R.J. a private pre-Christmas Christmas Dinner. The turkey was a chicken, but free-range, with stuffing, sprouts, roast potatoes – all tasty things she had learned to cook in the past eleven years, astonished at how easy it was to prepare food simply and well, if not inventively. There were even crackers, in shiny red jackets, and a bottle of Champagne in the fridge.

  R.J. said, “I love this, with you.”

  Susan said, “Do you?”

  “You make it fun,” he said. “New. But you’re young.”

  “I’ll be thirty-one next year.”

  “As I said, young.”

  There in the candlelight, and the smoking scents of cookery, he looked, with his hawk’s eyes, older, so she abruptly saw. His hair had more grey now than dark. His body seemed unchanged, tawny and muscular still from playing football and running in his youth. Yet, didn’t he stoop now, a little?

  A shadow of sorrow moved across Susan, as if the bright-lit light had dulled, or the candles, half of them, gone out. He was older than she was. He was the one who might die. One day, not now, but there, there ahead of them.

  Susan said, “I wish we could be together. I mean I wish we could live together. Is it ever going to be possible?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  They had never had such an exchange before. And yet each of them slipped into it as if practiced – could it be he was?

  Susan said, “I mean – wouldn’t you rather be with me? I mean, would you rather? Or does Maria always come first?”

  “No one comes first.”

  “Which means I don’t.”

  “You can’t, Susan. I’m sorry.”

  “Does she know about us?” said Susan, drinking the red wine they had already opened to give each other presents by. And by which they now gave each other this.

  “Yes,” he said. He was looking away from her. At the small tree she had dressed only last night, for tonight.

  “She knows?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does she know who I am?”

  “Yes. She said you looked pretty and smart. She likes your book jackets.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake –” Susan’s voice had become high and loud, not pretty or smart, or artistic at all.

  “You asked me,” he said, flatly.

  “Yes, all right. I asked you. Why does she put up with it?”

  “She loves me,” he said.

  “And I love you, so I put up with it. That’s very convenient, isn’t it, for you.”

  He got up and walked round the small enclosure of the room restlessly.

  She heard the chicken spitting in the oven. She ought to go and baste the bloody thing. Let it wait. Let it blacken.

  “Susan, I’ve never made this a secret, to either of you.”

  “Very noble.”

  She thought, I sound like Anne.

  She thought, was this how Anne went on to Wizz that time, over that girl – God what was her stupid name – Madison? Anne wouldn’t have behaved like Maria. She’d have got hold of me and shaken me to bits…

  “I explained. You knew the situation.”

  “That makes it all right.”

  “No. But I didn’t lie. You could have told me to fuck off.”

  They stood in silence, R.J. looking at the tree, Susan looking away into the kitchen, hearing the chicken spitting and spitting like a deranged feral cat.

  The bell sounded tinny, as if its battery was going.

  Susan stood there, holding the package for Crissie Fielding.

  Now the hall seemed too hot, though beyond the main front door, only about ten feet away, the December wind was rising, howling in the empty garden trees.

  She was not at home.

  Susan considered leaving the package by the door of 6C, because otherwise this might become a nuisance, trotting back and forth and never finding the woman in.

  The door opened.

  Her hallway, similar in size to Susan’s, was illuminated by one soft rosy lamp on a side table. Its floor had stayed bare; the same waxed wood as in the outer hall. This, and the pale walls, totally unadorned, bloomed in the rose glow, floating, somehow unusual.

  The girl too was limned by the light. It made her a veil around her fair, long hair. But her face, as she leaned closer, caught the low outer light in the main hall. She was beautiful, and like many beautiful things, even people, seemed familiar.

  “Hello,” she said. She smiled. Her smile was one of familiarity, as if they had already met several times, always happily.

  “Hi. I’m from 6E. The postman brought this, this morning.”

  “How kind of you. Thanks.” She was Susan’s height. Her slim young hands slid out and took the package. She turned it over. She said lightly, “A gift from an admirer, I fear.”

  She must have lots of those. She was very slender, wound like a delicious pen in a silvery-white wrap. No rings, no jewellery. No make-up even on that white and unmarked skin. She seemed, from the sophisticated way she was, at least twenty-two or – three. The flat was hers, too. Susan knew very well, no one not well-off or in a lucrative job, could handle these mortgages.

  It was an old-fashioned turn of phrase, and an odd thing to say: An admirer, I fear.

  Susan moved, about to go.

  “We’ve never met before,” said the girl. “I’m Crissie.”

  “Yes, I know from the parcel. I’m Susan Wilde.”

  “Yes, I know too.” How did she know? Oh, no doubt more wrong deliveries – which she must have refused to accept for Susan, since she, Crissie, was so often away. “It was kind of you to bring it across. Would you like to come in and have a coffee?”

  An appetising coffee smell had come stealing out of Crissie Fielding’s flat, along with another scent, equally appealing, fresh but faintly floral.

  “I’d like to, but I have to take a call in a minute, from the States. My mother. Thanks anyway.”

  “Okay. Hope to see you,” said Crissie.

  Her smile was so carelessly inviting, it made Susan smile back.

  She thought, Maybe she is a lesbian, and I’m giving her the wrong impression.

  Then Crissie, stepping aside, shook the parcel and said, “I bet this is my Gerry. He will overdo the generosity.”

  Susan didn’t know if she was expected to comment. Then Crissie
said, “So long,” and the door of 6C glided shut.

  She was extremely familiar looking. Who is she like?

  Someone in the movies, conceivably. But then, not really anyone now. More like Vivien Leigh, or the most youthful Jean Simmons – someone like that. A bit.

  As she closed her own front door, Susan heard something fall brutally in her kitchen. Going to see, she found a plate had slipped from the rack into the stainless-steel sink. It was in three pieces.

  The wind hit the arched windows.

  Once there had come the first lesion, others followed. Soon it became a habit with them to row. To begin with he was reluctant, trying to stay calm, non-committal, decent even. He tried to make it up to her, in all the wrong ways – through sex, excursions, even buying her a new TV and video she didn’t want. Vulgar and useless things.

  They tried too, to be as they were. But that was now too difficult.

  Susan became petulant. She whined and could not stop herself. R.J. grew taciturn. Then he stopped meeting her.

  Their meetings had always depended on his phoning. He simply did not.

  She thought of getting his and Maria’s ex-directory number from someone at Paragon, for whom he was again writing a novel.

  But what would she do with it? For all her ghastly whining, she did not have the crassness to call up their home in Hampshire. This was partly her fear of Maria and partly her pity, her sympathy, for Maria.

  Susan felt sick, from the moment she woke to the moment she managed to fall asleep each night about three or four a.m. She couldn’t really eat, lost half a stone in a month, which weight loss by now had no attributes of anything.

  Only when she worked on a cover did she lose track of the rift with R.J. – but then only momentarily. And her work was not very good. Like a disobedient child, she was sent back by the editor to re-work the canvas massively, made a hash of it, and had to start again.

  “Is something wrong, Susan?”

  “No – I’m just a bit upset. My – grandmother’s not well.”

  “Oh, lord. I’m sorry. Yes, you look worn out. Is she dangerously ill?”

  “Oh no, no, she’ll be all right. She’s very strong. But – well. She’s the only family I’ve got in England.”

  Why such a ridiculous lying lie? Never mind, it got her off the hook, though someone else took over the cover job. Too many more of those and Paragon wouldn’t want her. Her fame from the Cameron was fading fast. As had the ten thousand pounds.

  One night he called her. She thought it was Anne, who promised in a letter to call at ten o’clock. But Anne seldom now kept any promises to Susan, including the ones of sending her more money orders, coming to England again, or of making it financially possible for Susan to visit New Jersey, where Anne and Wizz now lived. The last, of course, was a relief.

  Instead of the by now slightly Americanised, at last slightly aging, voice of her mother, Susan heard R.J.

  “Are you free to talk a moment?”

  “Yes,” she said, and fell back into the chair.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  She started to cry.

  Standing above herself she thought, Shut up, for Christ’s sake, just as she had when they rowed and she sniped and whinged.

  He said gently, “Don’t cry, Susan. Let’s – look, I have to come up to meet Hammond next Tuesday. Shall we have dinner? Maybe we could. I’d like to see you.

  They met on Tuesday. She wore a new black dress, and earrings he said were like stars. He was supposed to get back to Hampshire, but in the end he rang Maria from a callbox. Susan stood there and heard him say he had missed the train and would stay over at a hotel.

  She wondered, even as they travelled to Brashspeare Road, if later he would tell Maria the truth.

  This time their lovemaking was hesitant, and in the end, for Susan, disappointing. There was no longer an electric current between them. It was only sex. Had she stopped loving him, being obsessed by him? Or was she only afraid to be?

  She didn’t care. She had to see him, have him, even if only now and then, if only for the most methodical sex.

  He looked older. But so did she, she thought.

  That night, lying in bed with him while he slept, she wished Maria would die, couldn’t hold the wish away, like a cruel and unavoidable sneeze. The next day it haunted her.

  Sorry, Maria, she thought, after he was gone, at eight a.m. But she cried again.

  She cried off and on all through the next months. So that by the night they stopped seeing each other once more, this time for good, she was practice perfect in the abysm of tears.

  Susan had made a second bedroom, which opened independently from the corridor of her flat, into her workroom. It too had a large window which looked out over the lawns, to a winter-bare apple tree and the edge of the pond. Some days after she had delivered the package, from this window Susan saw the girl walking across the grass.

  Viewed in cold morning sunlight, she was arresting. The long skeins of fair hair incandescent in the sun, her slender equilibrium, and the choice look of her pale clothes. Later, Susan left her flat to go to the supermarket, and saw a white cat running along the corridor towards Flats A, B and D.

  She had never seen this cat before, but now and then a few cats appeared in the gardens, pets of other residents, or even visitors from over the walls.

  The cat reminded her oddly of Crissie Fielding. She didn’t know why. Perhaps it belonged to her?

  Susan had asked the estate agent about cats the first time, when he brought her to see the flat last spring.

  “A feral colony in the gardens? Not any more. I’ve never heard of it, I must say. Probably some cat place caught and re-homed them.”

  He had vouchsafed nothing about Olivia and Jeremy, either, let alone about Catherine. But he was very keen on the virtues of the flat, showing it off to Susan like an impresario with shares.

  “Oh. There’s no window in the bathroom.”

  “No, ’fraid not, but there is the latest in extractor fans. And look at this – ” he pressed a switch, and a false window lit up, with a stained glass picture of Rousseau-esque leaves and flowers, reflecting in the midnight blue suite, with its gold sea-shell taps.

  When he showed her round the gardens, which were now like a well-stocked park, with pools, roses, terraces, trimmed hedges and trees, statues and vistas, Susan had been perplexed by the exterior of the house. Naturally it had undergone endless internal rearrangements and additions, and had gained about seven main entrances to give access to all the flats, plus all the arched windows, French doors, and balconies. But certain parts of the masonry had also been, she thought, cut into and excised, other portions extended outwards. But she had never been sure of its contours. Even the house had not, constantly changing its shape. Now it had been made also strong and youthful, with a succulent, painted skin. “Mediterranean Gold,” described the agent. “But they repaint, when they do the other major maintenance, every five years.”

  With all the cover charges for the upkeep of garden and house, the general price, and the vagaries of her semi-self-employed status, getting her mortgage had been quite an endurance test.

  Soon after Susan returned from the shop and was unpacking her groceries, her doorbell sounded.

  She knew before she opened it – knew also the next scene would contain the white cat.

  Sure enough, Crissie Fielding stood there, holding the cat in her arms. Both of them were so relaxed. Not a care in the world or a hair out of place.

  “Is he yours?” said Crissie.

  “No, no he’s not.”

  The cat purred, and looked at Susan from half-closed bluish eyes. She reached out and stroked his forehead with one finger, but quickly.

  “He’s gorgeous,” said Crissie. “Is he a stray? He looks too sleek. I’d have him, but I’m out half the time. It wouldn’t be fair.

  “He belongs to 6A or B, I think, hazarded Susan. “I saw him going that way earlier.”

  “Oh,
what a con-artist. And I gave him a piece of ham.”

  Crissie leaned fluidly down, with a dancer’s grace, and set the white cat on the wooden floor.

  Instantly he shot past Susan into her flat.

  “Oh,” said Crissie, “I’m sorry.”

  “It isn’t your fault.”

  The cat flew along the flat corridor, and bolted straight into the main room.

  “Well, it is my fault, really. Shall I catch him?” asked Crissie.

  That was all. It seemed quite uncomplicated. She too entered Susan’s flat, and as she went by, looked into Susan’s face with a quiet, “May I?” They were the same height.

  They walked into the main room together.

  “Ah, I do like your ceiling,” said Crissie, “mine’s a sort of puce. I keep meaning to repaint it, but I just haven’t got round to it.”

  The cat stood in the middle of the floor, looking at them idly. He chirped a comment and leapt on to the round table, knocking two books off to the carpet.

  “They say,” said Crissie, “a cat never knocks anything over unless it means to. Come here, Catty. You must return to your rightful owners.”

  Susan was taken with the undeniable beauty of these two creatures. It occurred to her Crissie had precisely the cat’s quality, an animal quality, the good looks of an animal, which even clothing, and today’s cosmetics, did not lessen.

  The cat let Crissie reach him, then sprang away and trotted to the floor-length window, which he stared at meaningfully. His meow was now very loud, masculine. “Is that what he wants?”

  Susan crossed over and undid the French door.

  The white cat flipped himself out and down the three stairs like spilled milk, then vanished through a gap in the fir trees.

  “Not even a goodbye. That’s a cat for you. By the way, thanks again for bringing the parcel across the other night. It wasn’t from Gerry, it was poor old Ed. I’ll have to ring the agency.”