Cruel Pink by Tanith Lee (uplifting book club books TXT) 📕

I wondered if he had collapsed in the street due to some Bacchic seizure and been carted off to hospital. But George, I knew for a fact, always carried some form of ID, not to mention a note of next of kin, (me), along with a stern, signed refusal of any of his organs for transplantation. I heard nothing from anyone.

On Friday night, I decided I had to take a detour and drop by his flat on my way home from work.

When I got there it was well after seven, and the High Street was bristling up with gangs and other evening revellers. But the flat was dark, and no one answered my rings on the bell. I peered through the letterbox and then called through it—“George! George?” But no one replied. There was a smell of dust and dried wine and emptiness. When I rang the bell of the next door flat, a child of about ten came to the door. It had a baseball cap on the wrong way round, and snot on its upper lip. It stared at me aggressively as I asked if its mother was there, before it abruptly slammed the door shut again in my face. I could tell I’d disappointed the awful little creature; it must have been expecting someone else.

Oh, I knew I should go to the police about George. But I felt dog-tired, and tomorrow, now, I had the trek to Brighton. I had a G and T at a pub, and then made one last effort, walking along to the Chinese Palace. “My friend—my uncle—” I described him to the beaming waiter. “Has he been in this week?”

“Yes, yes,” cried the waiter, trying to lead me to a table.

“No, no, I’m sorry—you see, I’m looking for my uncle.”

“Yes, yes,” cried the waiter, handing me a menu, “we do any what you want.”

“Yes, thank you. Another time.”

I extricated myself from his non-comprehending web and hurried back to the station.

27

I had to change trains for Brighton that Saturday.

To me this was annoying out of all proportion to the event.

Watch it, I thought. I was thirty-two and acting like a silly old codger thirty years older. Everything is always like this, I thought, attemptedly philosophically. Nothing works and nothing is ever as you expect.

Nor was it.

I arrived, the train having been delayed, nearly an hour late. Already I could audially conjure my aunt’s voice, “Well, Roderick. I’ve been hanging about here waiting…”

I had made quite a lot of notes during my journey, but also I had tried to call her, both from the train and Brighton Station. Her number was engaged.

Along with most of the rest of the enormous queue, I waited fifteen minutes for a cab.

It was a gusty cold day, that Saturday, and suddenly, under the white-blue sky, the ochre and amber leaves were shrivelling from the trees, the taller ones of which were often skeletally bare. The Pavilion looked over-emphatic and windswept, when the cab took some detour or other, as if expressly to show me the famous building. Or show me to it, perhaps, this visitor to its town. The wind howled.

At least Vanessa’s neighbours would have to forgo their garden parties.

The house seemed as always, though autumn had shed foliage on the front lawn and path. A plane was passing over, as they always do. That smell of fishy sea and compost.

28

While I waited at the door, helplessly I pictured—anticipated—another subnormal child in a cap and snot. But instead a tall lean man in his forties opened it, with a broad, willing smile. “Hi.”

“Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I was wondering if you knew where the woman from No 12 next door might be? Vanessa Taurus? I think you know her?”

His face fell slightly. He did know her, evidently.

“Mm,” he said.

“The point is,” I said, apologetic, “she was expecting me about an hour ago—train was late—but I thought she’d still be here…”

Firmly Vanessa’s party-minded neighbour said, “We don’t know her well.”

“No, of course not. I’m just a bit—surprised she isn’t in. She always is when I call, you see. She’s my aunt,” I tacked on, trying to impress him with the fact that I knew her well enough to conclude her unexplained absence now was entirely out of character. I implied concern, but not, obviously, alarm. Yet I was alarmed. After George, it went without saying I was.

“Sorry. Don’t know anything about it. We never know she’s there anyway. Unless,” he paused, frowning at the memory, “she comes round about something.”

“I see.”

“Yes. She complains a lot. To and about us.”

“Ah.”

He didn’t slam the door, just nodded and shut it, still in my face, and still without any offer of information, let alone empathy.

I had an abrupt Ag-Christie-ish idea that, sick of Vanessa’s displeasure, the man, and the wife Vanessa had described—“Skirts too short for her age. Streaked hair”—had turned on her and bumped her off. They would dump her body at some tidal cove later on, by night, or bury her under the decking.

Our family name isn’t Taurus, either, but that’s usually as near as anyone else ever gets. Taurus, or Terris—although George, I believe, used to give it, where he had to, as Terry.

And now what? No doubt the other neighbours, the other side, and across the road, would also refuse to take any interest in my disappearing aunt. Good riddance! they would say in their not-very-secret hearts.

In the end I went through the side gate, which wasn’t locked during the day, and into the back garden.

It was secluded enough in summer, but as I’d seen before, once the trees grew bare, and both next doors’ walls being low, their gardens were on full view, crammed with adult artefacts and leisure toys—barbecues and garden furniture, sunshades still in place, whirligigs for washing and even, on the other side, a large apple-gathering ladder propped at a tree.

Standing on Vanessa’s patio I looked