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

here and there in the college building, next in the pub. Although she was casually friendly enough with members of her class, she had made no personal friends, no one to nudge about Patrick, “Look at him,” as other girls did. Then Patrick was moved into Susan’s class, and at the second coffee break, he came over to her table and stood next to her, only one inch taller since she was wearing her boots with heels. “Can I sit here?” She said he could. Other tables were quite full. She thought it was that. Then he said, “I want to talk to you. I’ve been looking at you. You’ve got this wonderful face. You’re like a Mediaeval painting – do you know the ones I mean? Only you’re prettier. I’m just so drawn to your face. I’d like to paint you. Could we do that?” The combination of politeness and calm effusion was arresting. And exhilarating. All the times after that when they met, had a drink, and then went to Patrick’s flat where he sketched her, Susan thought the end of the painting would be the end of their connection. But by the time he had primed the canvas, he had also kissed her, standing barefoot on the earthing utility carpet of his room, holding her in a circle of his arms.

Presently, “I’m sorry, I’d better say now, I’m not on the Pill.”

Patrick had been unfazed, indeed munificent and gentle. Susan had been nearly businesslike. Anne had seen to it her daughter knew exactly what she must do, and which, therefore undone, had resulted in Susan.

“I can wait,” he said.

Susan visited the Family Planning centre the next day. She took no chances, and observed the full four weeks, while the Pill became effective, before allowing herself to make love with Patrick. Armed with knowledge, Susan was not shy or disillusioned by the pain of her first times, or the seeming unpreparedness of her body. She thought Patrick’s body very beautiful, with its lightly muscled spare maleness.

She was also no longer ashamed of herself physically. The shame had gone with an alteration in her shape, both physique and face, that had somehow happened during her foundation year. Though her body was heavier than those of many of the girls she saw, her form had acquired contours, an indented waist and smooth belly, and breasts which, she had suspected, and which Patrick soon showed her, were lovely. The acne had also perished, due perhaps to her total avoidance of cheese, which she had one day read, in a dentist’s waiting-room magazine, might trigger spots. Her clear skin was very white, luminous. Better even than Anne’s.

Even so, sexually, Susan felt herself awkward, and eventually inadequate. As pleasure began regularly to overwhelm her on Patrick’s bed, she noted a curious limitation in herself. She was so completely and utterly satisfied always. Surely there was more to the act of sex than this? What she was looking for she didn’t know. Love? Perhaps. But then it would have to be the great hopeless yearning love of obsession or fantasy, which she had felt brush her in earliest youth when only unattainable beings off a screen were the fodder of her desires.

Sex, as she had it, was like eating. You were hungry, you ate, enjoyed the food very much, felt good, went on to do something else.

For Patrick it seemed to be the same.

They were not, perhaps, very experimental – but why did they need to be when fairly straightforward caresses and positions brought such exquisite paroxysms? Nor was it some sort of sexual acrobatics which Susan craved. As with everything to do with Patrick, she did not ultimately evolve a theory, or dwell on any of this very much.

At the station, as on the bus, they bought their own tickets. The train seemed exciting, as if they were going away together on holiday to some new place – instead of back into a disintegrated past.

Susan stared at the railway banks of grass, the purple and lemon weeds and white butterflies.

Patrick sat reading a set book from the college. He was conscientious, in an off-hand way.

Then the light became a blond strobe between rows of poplars, and Patrick burned golden, dark, golden, dark…

Why don’t I want to go back? I don’t want to have to explain to those women about us painting. Ask them if we can. But why does it matter? And they’ll like Patrick. They won’t mind.

Do I remember her, Catherine?

The image of an old woman, like a hard grey cobweb, superimposed upon the gold-dark-gold of sunlit Patrick.

Perhaps the house isn’t there anymore. Like the flats when I lived with Anne.

Susan thought of Anne, doing something with Wizz in the U.S.A. What time was it there? About eight a.m. Probably having breakfast then, in a coffee shop, or at the bar in the loft. Coffee and bagels, or donuts or English muffins. Or Eggs Benedict.

The last letter had contained a postcard view of Central Park, some news, (like what they ate for breakfast this spring) and some money. Quite a lot of it, in the form of an International Money Order.

Susan thought of the first money order Anne had sent, and how she had decided to break away at once from Jo, though she had only been sharing the room at Number 17 with her for three months. How Jo’s face had disapprovingly fallen. How Jo had said, doggedly, “You won’t manage on your own, you know. You make a mess. The washing up will be up to the ceiling and you’ll get mice.” Whatever happened to Jo? She sent Susan a Christmas card, also doggedly, every year, a conservative card with a slightly religious theme, inside which Jo had always written, Hope to see you in the New Year, Best Wishes, Josie D. Cartwright.

The train stopped and shadow came, and it was their station.

In fact, the only way to go that Susan could remember was the old one, along Constance Street,