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

thirteen, when things were so harshly spelled out to me, desired to dress as a female. To be honest, I’d never that much wanted, or consciously enjoyed, dressing as a girl in my youth. It was just what, as a girl, I did. What girls did. And being a little girl, and then an adolescent girl, naturally, I did it.

Once I had been shunted over onto the other track, aside from some initial difficulties with what can be imagined in the way of dressing, and generally preparing myself, I had no problems with it. In fact, for fairly obvious reasons, I found some articles of dress and hygiene a great deal more comfortable. I cite Y-fronts, and later, boxers, as the very obvious example.

But the pink and gold dress, to me, is a magical thing. Yes, magical. I have no solution as to why, if I don’t yearn for my female alter-ego, it should be. Maybe it represents some gorgeous and loving woman I might, had I been myself more exotic, aspired to attract. But as I’ve said, though I like to look at pretty and well-dressed women, though I like them, I have never felt, or feel, any actual physical desire.

Nor have I, beyond that seemingly spontaneous and private ability to grow erect and effortlessly come with a complete and non-complex enjoyment, been aroused—so far as I can tell—by anyone or thing. I have never experienced an erotic dream, either, concerning anyone—or thing. Now and then, particularly since in a way self-examination had been rigorously instilled in me by my post-thirteen ‘helpers’, I have pondered my self-sufficient, and inevitably suspect and dubiously limited repertoire. My lack of lust. Anyone else would assure me I am lacking, I am deprived, I must be miserable and forlorn. Therefore no one has ever been told. Nor will be, I should guess.

I had just finished smoothing off the dress and drawing the curtains over and locking the wardrobe once more, when the flat doorbell went. George had arrived. George and the money and the plan of future escape.

As I went to open the door to all this, the strangest frisson passed over me. I don’t consider myself highly superstitious. I’m not prone to sensing atmospheres, or having premonitions which turn out to be correct. I just get on with things. Yet, between one step and the next, one moment and another, I felt a deep and sourceless anxiety. Like a miniature gale it blew between my bones, coming from nowhere, going back to nothing, in a space no longer than it would have taken me to exclaim “Oh—but…” And as it passed it stirred up something which, if it had itself been given words, would have said to me: How is it feasible you can ever leave here? Of course it is impossible. Of course you never can, or will.

85

Two weeks later, and when the snow George predicted was well and truly down, private contracts had been exchanged; I had packed up anything I wanted from the flat, (it was little enough), and either put it into storage, or two negotiable suitcases.

We did, then, have a bizarre little party, George, Vanessa and I. Not Forrel, for despite Vanessa’s constant demands, I did not invite him. “Oh,” she had disapprovingly told me, “then you two have quarrelled. Well, you must sort things out yourselves.” Quite so. In fact I hadn’t seen Forrel since his visit. Nor, for that matter, my spare coat. I had given in my notice to the firm, but had not worked out the time, thus incurring some loss of pay and, as they put it ‘precarious pension difficulties’, about none of which I gave a damn.

At least for the time being, George had made me very well off. I intended to go westward, back to the rural landscape of my past. I could stay in some modest pub or B and B, look around, make my decision. Providing every bank in Europe didn’t crash to earth during the next few months, I could secure myself somewhere or other. And if they did, well we were all done for. It was like the initial atomic era, post the Cuba Crisis. In the end you just gave up on it. Astonishing, really, the genius of government and big business to turn pure terror into sheer boredom.

At the party we drank, even Vanessa had a sherry, and ate the salad and cold meats Vanessa had prepared. There was another of the curious cakes, too, with the thinnest chocolate ever able to be recognized by name skimmed over the top.

Neither of them seemed very regretful to see me go. Vanessa, however, eventually informed me that she agreed with my choosing to part from Forrel, (presumably evidenced by my departure.) She trusted I’d meet someone more suitable, and closer to my own age, in ‘pastures new’.

Age. How old both of them looked that night. How old, too, did I. What age were we all then? George ninety, Vanessa eighty. And Rod sixty-five going on seventy-four.

For some reason, raising my glass to them, as they to me, I thought of my last tipple at The Red Stag in London. Once gone I’d probably never go there again. The Stag, and London, both. And come to that, despite my avowal to ‘keep in touch’, I’d probably never see Vanessa, or George, again either. At least, alive.

86

At 11a.m. next morning I, with my suitcases, left the flat, and the house. Max, polite and cheery, stowed the bags in the cab.

The schedule had been we would drive straight out and on to the motorway, heading for London, and Euston Station. To take a cab into the metropolis was, inevitably, a last luxury before I undertook the rest of the journey by various trains. I had hoped to find the cab-start relaxing. The rush hour was over, and I had three hours to make it, with ease, to my embarkation point. I’d have some