To Indigo by Tanith Lee (read along books txt) 📕

old to involve with a stalker, he might still make an impression on the Bill.

As I undid the door I heard him reassuringly murmur something outside to Vita, saying it was all right, no need to be upset.

And I felt very sorry to have worried them both, these sprightly fragile pensioners. Then I opened the door and there they stood. George, and behind him Vita, with both her hands clasped round the right hand of the man beside her, who was a strained, almost tearful Joseph Traskul.

“Oh thank God, Dad,” he exclaimed. “I really thought this time you were dead!”

SIX

Having raised the blind, he stood in the kitchen, looking at the pans and bottles erected in the sink to bar his entry.

He seemed to take my precautions quite seriously. He appeared to be considering their value, giving them marks out of ten. As if I’d asked his opinion.

Naturally too he had seen the knives. Not the smallest one, however. I’d slipped this some while ago in my trouser pocket. It had a leather cover on it. God knows what it was for or if my parents had ever used it.

Finally he said, “Should I be flattered?”

“You should be somewhere else.”

He smiled. He was, is, always smiling. Yet these smiles do not seem to be gratuitous ever. If I were writing this as an invented manuscript, stylistically I would need to edit some of them out. But then I’m not, this isn’t a book.

At the front door he had leapt forward and grabbed my shoulders in a sort of abortive hug.

I tried to say to George round the lean, tall back of him, “Call the police, please, George. This man is insane.” But George and Vita were beaming and George now had his arm about his wife. Relief, actual joy at our refinding of each other, his and mine, son and father, had made them both take on that look of sheer youth of which only the ageing or the old are ever capable.

They also looked incredibly and alarmingly frail. One swipe from Joseph’s arm might snap all their brittle bones in two.

Besides he was already pushing me, friendly and determined, back into my hall, coming in after me. He called over one shoulder as he went, “Thanks so much. Thank you both. It’s OK now. Don’t worry, I’ve known about these moods of Dad’s since I was fifteen. We’ll be fine now.”

And George gave me a little kind, rather cautious wave, and Joseph shut the door.

I wanted to punch out his lights, as used to be said.

But I’m no fighter in any area, let alone a physical one. He’d only floor me, and any puny blow of mine might make him worse.

He wasn’t holding on to me now. I turned and walked briskly on into the kitchen.

He walked behind me, amiably saying, “It’s dark down here.”

And then there we were, him letting up the blind, calculating the barricade of the kitchen table and my mother’s stainless steel pans in the sink.

“I don’t think that would keep anyone out for long.”

The verdict. He sounded quite regretful.

“No.”

“But then why would they break in?”

I just looked at him.

He turned and sat on the kitchen table. “You haven’t got a drink, have you?”

My mind raced. I thought, Yes, ply him with beer from the fridge and then some whisky, get him pissed. It might work. I could powder some aspirin or paracetamol, the ones with codeine, in his later drinks. This might be an answer.

“All right.” I said, careful not to seem too eager. “What did you have in mind?”

“Cup of tea?” he winningly asked me.

I saw, or thought I did, he was well aware of any other plans I might have. If he had done all this before, presumably things had been attempted.

I filled the kettle from the tap and switched it on. As I was setting out a mug and so on, he said, “You ought to use a filter.”

Try to be normal, if reserved. Treat him like a minor annoyance, nothing too much.

“The water here is all right. They replaced the pipes last year.”

“Well, I wouldn’t trust it, but there.”

I wondered if he would have some problem with the tea bags or milk – but he didn’t. He didn’t want sugar.

When I handed him the mug he gazed at it, examining it scrupulously. I didn’t think he was already checking for attempted drugging. He seemed curious, as one is sometimes about another person’s things. This was confirmed.

“I thought you might still use a cup and saucer.”

“How do you know I don’t?”

“Well I don’t know. Maybe you keep mugs for visitors only.” He tried the tea. “That’s good.”

My mother had always stuck to the cup-and-saucer method. After her death my father did too. One of my last most tragic memories of them, before she died, was of her lying in her hospital bed and saying to him sadly, “I do miss my china. Isn’t that silly?” A nurse had brought them both a cup of hospital tea. Me too, only I couldn’t swallow it.

I wanted only to escape. But I could do nothing to help her except remain at my post, with him. We used to go to the pub when visiting hours ended, or later in an interval when they had extended the visiting hours indefinitely. This is a strange and awful thing. He was with her when she died. Not me. I had had to go to the lavatory. When I came back he said, “Look, she’s sleeping really peacefully now,” and I thought he knew, but he believed she was asleep. I went and got a nurse, let her tell him. She held his hand while he cried, but he was very quiet, didn’t want to distress this kind nurse holding his hand when she was so busy.

That came back to me with a terrible immediacy as I stood there and Joseph Traskul sat on the table and drank the undrugged tea.

I wanted to kill him