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

“I was following this old woman all through the house,” he said to Susan.

“What old woman?”

“Well, I thought it was probably your grandmother.”

“You don’t know what she looked like. What did she look like in the dream?”

“Well,” he said, “really more like that one we met in the street – Mildred.”

“She wasn’t like that.”

They ate the now-stale buttered rolls Susan had also carted back from Chiporama, and drank some coke he had brought. Susan offered him the money for her coke, and he accepted it, even though she had paid for the previous night’s meal.

None of the taps worked in the upstairs bathrooms, but downstairs, he said, was an old cloakroom, where the cold tap was still on for some reason.

Susan did not use this cloakroom. She had squatted outside in the rhododendrons to pee, and would attempt nothing else until they went to the nearest pub at lunchtime.

During the morning, Patrick worked again outside, somewhere in the garden, and Susan sat again on the path by the house wall, in the sun, reading a novel. She was bored and uncomfortable, unwashed and indigestive. She kept thinking about Anne, and her own childhood. Not Catherine though. She did not think about Catherine.

Then there was a noise behind her, above her, up in the house. It sounded like someone easing up a window. Susan stayed where she was. Then she rose and walked out, and down as far as the apple tree, and stared back and up through the towering evergreens, to the upper storeys. But nothing seemed to have happened.

They took their bags to the pub; they had both said it would be unwise to leave them behind. Besides, Susan needed her sponge-bag.

Patrick put down his beer glass. “Do you want another?”

“Yes, please. No, not wine – here’s the money. Could you get me a gin and tonic?”

When he came back, he said, “I think there’s someone in the house, Susan. Apart from us, I mean. You know I saw there’d been a fire lit. I could hear someone walking about this morning, before you woke up. Very soft. And then when I was painting, I saw someone at one of the windows.”

Susan drank her gin. “Who?”

“Couldn’t see. Just someone looking out.”

She thought of Anne, and the other flat, with the balcony and the ashes of the day and the first time the name Wizz had been spoken. What was Wizz meant to mean? A whiz-kid. A Wizard?

Patrick said, “I think I’ll call it a day. And you don’t want to paint anyway, do you. And maybe it’s not that safe hanging about there.”

“I thought you loved it,” she said, “and didn’t care.”

“Why are you narrowing your eyes like that?”

“Am I?”

“I’ve just done enough,” he said, dismissive. “It’s all the same, isn’t it? All the views are alike. Let’s go back. We could go into college. Or just stay at my place.” Surprising herself, she felt rebellious. She wanted to say, No, now I want to go to the house. I want to make love in the garden, and rush indoors and scare the squatters and light a fire and dance on the bare floorboards.

“All right,” she said.

He’s boring me, she thought, as they sat in the train. Is he? Not how he looks, he looks amazing. And his painting is great. But – this not talking about anything. Not doing anything.

He isn’t interested in me. I’m not, in him. I want to be, would be. But he never lets me see. I don’t know –

Even so, they gravitated back to Belmont Court, and had a bath, and then had vibrant sex. That evening there was a party, and they went to it, Patrick incredibly handsome in his white shirt with the straps. And she thought, This is all right. It doesn’t matter. Yes.

IV

Next summer, about two months after Patrick had gone, Anne called Susan at five to midnight.

The moment she heard the phone rattling down in the house, Susan knew it was Anne. Perhaps because it was one of Anne’s times – her times of return in the past.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“No. I think you woke a couple of people though.”

“Too bad – or are they giving you grief? Tell them it’s your mother.”

“It’s all right, really. How are you?”

“Wonderful. I’m wonderful. Or Wizz says so. It’s evening, about seven here, and ninety in the shade. We’re going to dinner with the Sepplevines – I only have a moment. But I just wanted to let you know. I’m coming over next Monday.”

“Over…”

“To London. What do you think?”

“That’s – are you? Is Wizz coming too?”

“No, can’t. We’re having the apartment done up, he has to be around to monitor the builders, and anyhow he’s up to his eyes at work. But he said I should have a break, come and see you. It’s just a trip, about five days, I think. But we can meet and do things. English things. I bought you the most sensational dress this afternoon. I won’t say what it cost. Wizz said you ought to have some New York clothes.”

Susan’s voice, which had sounded only mildly affable and concerned when she spoke of Wizz, now sounded mildly enthused. “I can’t wait to see. But Anne – you do know I’m generally a size sixteen.”

“Oh, these are fine, baby, don’t fuss,” said Anne. She had never lost her English accent – which was apparently very popular with and intriguing to all their U.S. friends, even to taxi-drivers and waiters in bars. Only her syntax had sometimes altered. “Look, honey, I’ll call you Sunday night – a bit earlier – when I confirm my flight. Okay?”

“Yes. I can’t believe –” Susan heard herself saying, her voice now suddenly puzzled and unsure, “that I’ll see you. You really are coming?”

“Still Susan,” said Anne. “Why else am I phoning you up at the dead of night?” She seemed tickled, herself excited, in all her whirl of active and opulent life, that she was