Greyglass by Tanith Lee (story read aloud .TXT) 📕

frightened. She could always get frightened of things, but especially now she was frightened of Wizz, of being alone with Wizz. She didn’t know why. It was like that other time in England, in the kitchen.

She was scared too in case he took off his jacket and shirt. That had happened already, one morning, seeing him roll from the bathroom in just pyjama bottoms. His body was good, muscular and brown, except at the waist, where it bulged a little… He was also very hairy, his back was hairy. His back scared her most of all.

But now Wizz only walked about. Then suddenly, he turned, and came towards her. He sat down opposite her on the blue couch, which faced the white one.

Susan felt her heart hammering in her dry throat.

She could smell the faint bad smell she always associated with Wizz and knew couldn’t be there.

“Look, Sue, let’s have a talk, shall we?”

She stared. He was waiting. She managed to say, “Oh, yes, if you like.”

“Well, you know, Sue, it’s not really what I like. I just think we oughta. Okay?”

Now Susan was the one to wait.

She could see him, studying the floor rug, thinking, mulling it over. Then he looked up, and his pale eyes settled on her face and she couldn’t glance away from them.

“There ain’t no nice way I can put this, Sue. You’ve been a right little fucking arse-wipe, ent ya?”

The elevator, which so far had never fallen, now plummeted through Susan’s ribcage into her intestines.

Even if she had wanted to speak, it wouldn’t have been an alternative.

He wasn’t talking loudly. He was quiet and level. So she had missed a bit, too, from the shock.

“… you here and tried to give you a real good time, but you won’t have it, will ya? You just can’t handle it, can ya? But you see, Sue, your mother means a lot to me. And I want her to have a good time even if you fucking poker-arsed bloody won’t. So let’s make a deal, okay? Let’s just say it was your time of the month –” (even in the abysm of terror she writhed with embarrassment) “and now you’re gonna be like a normal fucking girl. Okay? Like any other girl with a great mother and a guy like me trying to make it special for her. Not like some fucking little constipated tart. Is that it, eh Sue? You’re constipated? That can turn a girl into a bitch. Take something for it. I’ve had enough of you. You were like a fucking wet weekend from the word go. Little bitch. Jealous maybe. Well, I can see that would happen. You’re no oil painting, eh, Sue? With those big spots all over your face and that fat body like a bloody porpoise. Christ, I look at her and I think to myself, Where’d she get this kid? Your dad must’ve been – he must’ve been a real prince. But you can’t help the way you look, I guess. They might even get you ironed out over here. They can do that, you know. Get girls like you looking halfway human.”

All this venom, squeezed out, bit by bit. So level and controlled. Not raising his voice. This hatred. As if he held her there and vomited, slowly and methodically and over and over and over her.

She thought, in a giddy whirl of horror, I must get away. But her legs were leaden. She couldn’t move. The ton weight of his vomiting malice held her there in place.

“…see what I want now, Sue, is you act like a proper girl. You act like you appreciate what I done. What she done for you. She deserves a life, Sue, don’t you think, after mollycoddling you for the past sixteen fucking years. So pull yourself together, girl. I want to see a change in you, I really want that, Sue. No. I expect that. Okay.”

Then he stood up. She had thought he would never ever stop. But he moved off, and as he crossed the loft, through its strips of red westering sun, he began to whistle softly. And then he was gone along the corridor to the bedroom he used with Anne.

After a while, Susan too got up, very slowly. She found she could walk. So she walked into the bedroom he had said she could have. She shut the door, and sat on the bed. Then she shut her eyes.

Susan visualised Anne coming home. Trying to get Anne alone. Telling Anne what Wizz had said. Susan knew she would not be able to. It could never happen. She knew she could never speak of it, to anyone.

And he too must know this. That she could and would never speak of it, that she would, from now on, try very hard to appear as he wished her to, and that she must fail. But still, she would try.

He had split her apart from Anne as even the act of birth had not done, and Susan understood that exactly, even if the thought did not enter her stunned, reeling mind.

Alone? She was. She thought anyway she might be afraid now of Anne, too. Since Anne belonged to Wizz, was a part of Wizz, like that thing in Hamlet about husband and wife being one flesh – therefore my mother.

By the time Anne got back, triumphant with Macey’s bags, Susan was all ready for the show. She had put on the ghastly white dress, which rode up over her fat hips. She had painted out the large round stones of her spots, two more of which had come up since her talk with Wizz.

“All set?” cried Wizz. He was buoyant as a balloon, lightened of his load.

Whenever he was ‘nice’ to her through the evening, Susan thanked him. She tried to smile and the smile cut her face like a knife.

In the interval of the show she went, (alone) to a cubicle of the ladies room, and retched and retched, embarrassed