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

in a mote or two of fresh air from the autumn-winter street, I nearly choked on the effluvia.

What more would they need? This in itself was proof enough that I was culpable, but the pair of them stood there in the room, with its boarded or walled-off windows and only a drizzle of illumination spilled in from the outer hall. And they weren’t gagging. Not even turning anything over, or examining all the bits of furniture for clues.

I said firmly, “Look, I don’t like this. I’ve only just got back myself from my sister’s, just about ten minutes before you turned up. I’ve been away over a week. Are you saying your brother’s girlfriend has got into my flat while I wasn’t here? Is that it?”

They went on staying crowded together in front of the fireplace with the electric fire that ‘sometimes’ works. The place reeked and they didn’t even cough. They looked now, both of them, like uneasy guests at some uptight stranger’s tea party, all big feet and thumbs and not knowing how to behave.

But Bruvva said, “What’s in there?” And pointed at the closed bedroom door.

“My bedroom. Where I sleep. I haven’t been in there yet.”

“Is it locked?” asked Uniform, in a puzzled way. But another flea intervened, this one in his short thick hair. Scritch-scratch. Same reaction, wall-eyed.

“No,” I said. “You realise this is an assault, and invasion of privacy?”

Neither of them moved. Either towards the bedroom with dead Micki sitting and rotting in the chair, or to leave the house. It seemed to me they might just stay there, planted by the fire that wasn’t on, and waiting for the vicar’s cucumber sandwiches so they could drop them on the Aubussin carpet from sheer awkward loutishness.

But then Bruvva went rolling off and clouted at the bedroom door, so it simply sprang inwards.

The bedroom was pitch black. That sheen I had seen on it which came from her, either putrescence or phosphorous, had gone out. No light at all. And the stink…

I felt myself shrivel in it, as if never before in my life had I ever encountered such an aroma, as in fact I had not; it had never stayed that immediate when matured.

What I must do, plainly, was wait for Bruvva’s outcry, and then I too must rush forward, and shriek and say who had done that—who—who—when I had been away—done it in my innocent absence, to wicked Micki who must have broken in with a wickeder third person, who then killed her.

Bruvva went forward into the room. Inside, he got out an old petrol lighter from far-gone days, and flicked it, and it lit. A tiny lemon flame.

From out in the other room I, and presumably Uniform, watched through the doorway as the flame skittered over the fetid bedroom darkness like an evil butterfly.

Eventually, “Anything?” Uniform called.

At which the butterfly was flicked back into its own dimension and Bruvva slunk out, wearing a worse-than-ever gloomy and aggrieved look.

At me he glowered. Yes, it was all my fault; Wales, life, what was in the bedroom, the history of the downfall of the world. And so to me he angrily announced, “Fuckin’ shit. Nuffin in there. Nofuckinfing at all.”

Rod:

60

“Pink for a girl,” he used to say. My father. “And blue for a boy.” That was his several dark blue suits then, and the ice-blue or turquoise ties—coloured like certain modern bottles of liqueur or Tequila. But I never saw my mother wear pink; or Isabel, my sister. At least, since I don’t remember them at all well, I don’t believe I did.

But Uncle George was wearing his usual tired if not graceless or unhygienic garments, and Vanessa too, her general attire and polished-pewter bob of hair.

Need I relate, I was lost for words. George filled the gap.

“Come in, Roderick. Have some wine. I have a very drinkable Pinot Noire 2001. She, of course,” he indicated the glowering Vanessa, “has just destroyed my last bottle of Glen Fayle. Can you smell the fair spilled Usquebaugh, dear boy? Delicious even in demise.”

“You drink far too much, George,” said Vanessa, in just the tone she employed to tell me that sort of thing. “Alcohol…”

“Alcohol, you silly old bat, is the solace of my days. Get back to your salad-making, you whore of Babylon, and shake your silver hair on it. Best part of the meal. You can kill a man by feeding him hair,” he added mildly to me. “Did you know, dear chap?”

I shook my head. Vanessa had spun on her heel and gone into the kitchen.

“Yes. Cut lots up and stuff it in the stuffing. Either he’ll choke on it or, if it gets down, it blocks up the lower intestine. Dead in agony inside the month. In India, I believe they used to use chopped up tiger whiskers. More painful and far quicker. Perhaps less fun.”

I had pulled myself partly together.

“George,” I said, “what in God’s name are you doing here?”

“Oh that.” He drew me into a space not unlike, although not completely, a replica of my own flat across the landing. There were two largish rooms, and one of these seemed to be his. I saw the wine-red curtains, and the narrow bed, and all around the music-centres and vinyl-record-players, piles of books and CDs, if only one drinks-cabinet, crowded by a battalion of red wines, bottles of gin and whisky. I couldn’t smell the spilled smashed bottle, but I had heard it destroyed, had I not; it had been one of my reasons for venturing across. A tall narrow fridge freezer lurked in one corner. “Can’t leave it in the kitchen, you see,” said George. “I and she share the kitchen. Please note, the fridge is padlocked. As is the cabinet when I hit the hay.” They were. “I miss the Chinese Palace,” he added. “Anywhere decent around here?”

“George, listen. Why are you here and not in Lewisham? Why is she here?”

“Ah, well,” he said. He sank into