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

away into the side of the wall, the way mine does on the floor below.

Coal had already seen me following. Obviously he would. Now, not looking back, he raised his hand for silence and care. Then he moved in through the doorway.

Again, no lights. It was pitch black now. It was like stepping through into nothingness.

I didn’t want to be there.

I wanted to be in the Tower, and dancing, and Coal dancing with me, and then we’d go to a Singles Room and it would be brilliant. And then I would go home, by myself, and I’d be the way I was when I was myself and I’d put on my lipstick that is dark sweet hot-flower pink. And in the mirror I’d be sixteen, though I am twenty-nine going on forty-nine. And I’d curl up in the bed. And in the morning the bank-nanny would message me about some more thousands of shots from the kind benefactors that look after all of us since they are so well-off and that is their duty and joy and…

…and Coal said, in a hushed flat snarl, “Look, Klova.”

He had a torch-thing, some gadget I’d never seen before. It shone all over without light. Everywhere was still pitch black but you could see every detail, even the bright eyes of a rat peeking out from an old, old cupboard in one corner.

The room was old.

Older than the planet.

The masonry was lopsided, and great warty beams held up the low and listing ceiling. On the floor was a worn rug, heavily coloured and stained and dirty, and with holes. And there was a plate made of some grey metal stuff on the floor, with a yellow bone lying across it. And there was a table with a wood top and some papers, and a glass with a thin pillar that was greenish and very chipped, with black sediment in the bottom. I could smell bad water and damp, as sometimes you smell it walking by The Nile, which used to be a canal. And the remains of food, and human body smells, particularly piss and sweat, But also cold winter-tree smell. And I saw a window, very, very small, with dark glass, but it had a long silvery crack through it.

Then the torch-thing failed. The images all went. And right then somebody moved past me. Not Coal.

A male, though? I’m sure a male, and young. Twenty, like that. Dirty too—sweat and piss and spunk—but good too, new-baked bread, like that. And alcohol, some sort. And human hair, unwashed, but too—good, like the bark of a tree smell. And… lavender.

But he was invisible. Not physical.

Really he wasn’t there.

Nothing was.

The upstairs space was only a neglected flat, with whitish walls that shone even in the darkness, and carpet across all the floor. And the back window was broken, and suddenly a bird flew out of somewhere and in through the window and then straight up through a gap in the ceiling.

Coal said in my ear, “Let’s get out.”

We turned, and the door was another sort of door, like as from a Time-Tourist game-stat at the Child Centre. You had to turn a handle on the door, a knob, like that. Coal did, and we walked on to the landing.

We went down again to my flat, hurried in, and secured my door. Above, in that place upstairs, was total quiet, now, and nobody but Coal and me were in my flat.

“It was a ghost,” said Coal. “I’ve seen them before.”

In the automatic soft lamp shine of my rooms he glared at me, blaming me once more for something I hadn’t done.

Irvin:

53

Tomorrow I must fight a duel. A great nuisance. It is a severe interruption, as I had meant to go to visit Mis’us Peck. Such things are sent to try us, and so they do. I shall probably kill the fellow. He is an almighty imbecile. Pretty enough, with his blond locks and silk coat, but entirely lacking in wits. It seems he has found out I merry-digged his wife, (who is sixteen years and flower-of-face, with bosoms white as milk and very full). I am quite certain I am not the first, though she did tell me that I was. But all women lie. It is indigenous to them, as scales to a salmon.

Well, there is no way round it. I have opted for swords, knowing him a fair shot and not, myself, a great liker of guns. A sword or a knife is silent. One does not always wish all London to know when one has dealt the blow of death.

I have left the meat bone for the dog. There was little enough meat upon it at the first.

But he is besides a faithless hound and may not come back till I have gone out. It is always possible too, I must surmise, that I will perish in the morning, on Hyde Hill, when Mr Cuckold comes for me with his polished blade. Now there’s a thought. I must puff out the candle. It is half done, and until my next payment day I can afford no other. Thus, goodnight.

Up with the cock, as they say, and to The Black Sheep Inn up the track, for a bowl of burnt coffee and a scrag of bread.

“Ah, Mr Thessaris,” say they, “up and early to your business.”

Told none where I was to go nor what to be about there.

A blood-red sunrise, and thereafter snow coming down. Winter has no consideration for a poor actor shoved out to kill some noodle. No doubt I shall die of the winter chills rather than the fool’s prick-blade.

(I write this in the back of the carter’s cart, as he trundles me to my appointment.)

Damnation take all husbands.

Picture then the day. And by the time we were at the outskirt of the city, under the wild ground of the hill, everything was already frosted thick white as the Earl of Scarrow’s face in powder.