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

“Let go my hand,” I said. “I want the lipstick.”

“What?”

“The lipstick. Just there by me. Give it me. I want to hold it.”

So he found the lipstick and put it carefully into my hand.

It has these two big letters on it, my lipstick. I love my lipstick. That was my mother’s name. C.P.

Nearly there now.

It’s like falling down and down through black feathers. Soft. Nobody loves me, all alone.

But I hold the lipstick close, and kiss the pink bud of its mouth that so often, like as it has, kissed me. Darling lipstick. Darling love.

I always liked its name, from the very first. What made me buy it. Then we kissed, the lipstick and I.

People leave bruises on you. The lipstick just leaves pink. It’s kind and sweet, even though its name is Cruel. C.P. Cruel Pink.

Let go.

Gone.

Dawn:

76

I think I’ve been away. You know how it is. At my age, you don’t always remember. But I was always like that. When I was thirty I was like that. I’d go into a room or along a corridor and think, what was I after? Or I’d forget where a shop was in relation to the other shops. And as for names, I couldn’t remember them. It’s just that I’m worse now. It’s funny really. I’ve grown into being old.

I wonder where I’ve been, though, if I was away somewhere? Years ago I’d sometimes stay with Susie, after she lost David, and I’d lost Ben. And sometimes I went to France, to see Jean. Did I fly? I think I did.

Anyway, I can see the cupboards and the fridge need replenishing. I’d better get my skates on and nip out to the Co-op.

I get tired doing that walk now, though it isn’t far.

Also I had a bit of a funny experience the last time I was down that way.

You have to go by Rothall Street and Sundridge Drive, and then to the canal and walk along. Takes me about twenty-five minutes, and then a half hour back. When I was younger I could’ve done it all in half that. But the Co-op wasn’t built then. And the canal was really a canal. Now they’ve drained and roofed it over, and underneath you can hear skateboarders screeching, and anybody that walks down there does so at their peril.

There used to be a sort of park or common beyond, but they’ve built on it since. Flats. When was that? About 1984, I think it was. The previous century. What a thought.

To get back to what happened to me last week. Or the week before that, I’m not certain.

I went out, as I always do, checked a couple of times I’d locked the front door, to be sure, to be sure, as Ben used to say, and up the road and down into Rothall Street.

The trees were losing all their leaves so fast. Time flies, doesn’t it. It was only August a minute ago, or so it seems. And tomorrow it’ll probably be Christmas Eve! I’m joking. But it seems that way, to me.

In Sundridge Drive there were a lot of extra cars, and Number 15—or 25, was it?—had scaffolding up. It’s silly, but house repairs always remind me of the war. I mean the Second World War, 1939 to 1954—no, no, 1945, of course, I mean. But the war wasn’t like that. I was only little, about four, five, six. But I remember those awful sirens. And the red in the sky, even out here. And the noise. Things falling. I wasn’t evacuated, you see. I can’t remember why not. Horrible times.

Then I got out of Sundridge Drive, and walked along the old tow-path by the roofed-over canal underpass, and there was this gang of four boys. They looked about fourteen or fifteen to me. They could have been older.

Usually, if I see something like that, I’d cross the street, but there isn’t anywhere, you see, there, until you come to the old bridge.

So, I kept going. They didn’t seem to notice me at first. Just lounging there against the wall. And I don’t look rich. I’m not interesting to them. Or, I thought I wasn’t.

77

I shan’t try to duplicate how they speak. I’ll simply translate it into ordinary English, so far as I understood them.

1st Boy: Here she comes, look, do you see?

2nd Boy: That her, is it?

1st Boy: Yes, like a scarecrow. But she’s just an old bag today.

3rd Boy (lighting a cigarette): You said she dresses up funny.

1st Boy: Yes, she does. Couldn’t believe my eyes first time I saw it. You should have seen.

3rd Boy: Well I didn’t. I don’t believe you. You’ve been smoking too much f***ing skunk, you a***hole.

4th Boy: I seen her. I seen her down the station. Thought it was a loony.

1st Boy: She is a loony, you t**t.

4th Boy (taking a drink from a bottle of lager): She had a real short dress on. And a wig. F***ing gross-out.

2nd Boy: I see that too. From the back thought it was a bint. (Did he mean Girl?) F***ing weird one. Then I see her front ways. And she’s ninety, like she is now.

(I am seventy-four, or seventy-three. I am not ninety.)

By then I was just about level with the gang, and I was afraid, rather, to go on.

And then:

3rd Boy: Yes, I seen her and all. Thought it was an old geezer. In a suit. That was up the High Street. Talks to himself. Herself.

They were all staring straight at me. So I had to go right by. And the oddest thing, they all pressed right back hard to the wall, to let me pass. Not as if to be polite, you see, but as if I was contagious, had some modern illness that can’t be cured, or I was radioactive, maybe. I think they held their collective breath.

It was only when I was about ten yards on up the path that