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

was waiting for her outside the wine-bar, greeted her with a grave, absorbed face, and opened the glass door for her to go through.

They sat in a window, looking out over the river and its lights. It was spring, the dark still came early.

“That was nice, that you agreed to meet me. I like your dress very much.”

“Thank you.”

“But then, I like everything about you, Susan. Look, I’m not going to muck around. I’ll just say it straight, and then if you’re not interested, we’ll finish our drinks and part friends. Okay?”

Stunned, mesmerised, Susan nodded.

“I’m married. I think you saw my wife. She’s a lovely and intelligent woman. I won’t say I’ve never had any relationships outside our marriage before. But it’s only happened twice in twenty years. Frankly, they didn’t mean that much, and both were some time ago. Then, I met you. I’d like to know you, Susan. And I’d like to make love with you more than I can say. I felt there was something between us – or was I just being presumptuous?”

“No.”

“Good. Oh good, thank God.” The smile broke through his face, relieved and flame-like, dazzling her. “But is the fact of my marriage a problem for you? I know it should be. It should be for me, and in a way it is, but – well. I realise this isn’t a very salubrious offer.”

“I don’t care,” Susan said.

She didn’t, not then.

The wine-bar was lit by an intense bright lambency, which increased and increased, because she could plainly see it shone also for him, he felt it too.

And when he took her hand, her blood filled with a tingling sexuality that travelled through her whole body in an instant, waking every inch of her skin, outside and in, undeniable and irresistible, making age, marriage, even life, irrelevant.

It was one of those part-time days when she still put in at Paragon. When Susan got home, in the black December evening, there was the package for Crissie Fielding sitting where she had left it, on the table in the kitchen.

Susan looked at it. Then she poured herself a glass of white wine from the fridge. Taking the glass and the package through into the main room, she sat down there.

The main room of this flat was large and very beautiful from its proportions, its faultless ivory walls, and the high, high, ceiling, which was painted a translucent lavender. None of the floor-length windows were square, but Gothically arched at their tops. In here, one of these had an opaque, smooth white pane, set about with round jewels of purple and topaz stained glass. This window would have looked out on the entry and a wall, a dark space the architect obviously thought was better obscured. But Susan didn’t mind the white window; she found its nacre opacity mysterious. The other windows in the room were on the opposite side, French ones stretching from floor almost to ceiling. These gave onto the gardens, her semi-private area. Three steps led down to where, against the evergreen mass of two flourishing firs, a small ivied stone Pan stood on goat legs, playing a syrinx. Beyond the curve of the trees, a green lawn, regularly mown, tumbled to a lily pond and stands of birch, after which bay trees filled the view. The gardens were magnificent, as the agent had proclaimed when showing her round. And though communal to all the flats, Susan had seldom met anyone in them, except the old man with the little dog from Flat 14G. Maybe moving in halfway through October accounted for this. On the other side of the trio of steps down to the garden, was an ironwork bench, coloured deep peacock blue. Sometimes, on an unseasonably sunny morning, Susan had sat there with her coffee. The master bedroom, which opened straight off the main room, also had French windows to the garden, these not needing steps.

Susan tapped her fingers on the package for 6C.

She had come to terms with this flat. In fact, she hadn’t had to. Not really. Everything was so changed. And after the succession of rooms and poky ‘self-containeds’ she had had before, this was a palace. Too enjoyable not to enjoy.

So. The next step was simply to deliver a small light box to a neighbour. To ring her bell, and say, “This came for you.”

It was nothing.

Nothing.

Susan put down her wine, got up and carried the package to her front door.

When she opened it, looking across the waxed wood floor of the well-maintained outer hall, she studied the exterior of 6C. Indeed, it was identical to her own door, and painted indigo, like all the doors in this section of Tower Gardens.

(“There are, in all, thirty-five flats, of one, two, three or four bedrooms,” the agent had announced, grandly. “They seldom come on the market.”)

6C was silent, as ever. Was Ms Crissie Fielding even in? Perhaps she wasn’t.

Susan took a step across the hall, and a sudden coldness enveloped her, despite the radiator which warmed the corridor.

6C was part of the sunken rooms. Yes, it was. Just as her own flat was, but you would never know, everything had been altered, partitioned, opened out, even the landscape of the garden.

Then she was at the door and she had rung the bell.

And again she thought, Perhaps she’s not in.

The first time, they went to a hotel he had found, quite pleasant. They had lunch, which she couldn’t eat, and then went up to a comfortable, clean room. The story was they had a plane to catch that evening, and needed to sleep, any luggage having gone on ahead. They acted up to this pretence, but whether anyone believed it, or cared, who knew.

Susan was frightened and nervous when she was alone in the room with R.J. But the moment he touched her, began to kiss her and hold her, and explore her with his hands, the most violent desire flooded her body. She had never felt anything exactly like this.