To Indigo by Tanith Lee (read along books txt) 📕

Between one and two I heard the strains of Bach sprinkle from the piano.

Upstairs, the broken door leaning on the uprights to give me partial ‘privacy’, I sat up on the bed in my clothes, my two bags, which he had brought in, lying by the wardrobe, the light off, unsleeping, going over everything, on and on.

Our conversations of the afternoon and evening I examined now more fully.

I found I was inclined to date them BB and AB – Before the Blow and After the Blow. In fact the blow, when he hit me across the face, was neither devastating nor intrinsically dividing. It was rather, instructive, a guide-line. I’d been, on some level, expecting his violence. Who would not? It was a benchmark, not an advent.

We had also talked, superficially at least, in that most spontaneous and episodic way persons use who know each other well. By superficial I mean, of course, if we had been observed by an outsider. And now I tried, upstairs, to put myself outside, to look and learn. Writers do attempt that, some of us, even when personally deeply involved. The ability is a gift, and a curse.

I re-ran the conversations methodically. To begin with, I had asked him again, why he did this to me. His reply was the recurrent one – out of interest; I was interesting. We had established that he – not the girl with the car presumably, as she really couldn’t have had time or access – had wiped some liquefied Rohypnol around the kitchen glass. I could have used the glass at any time during his absence.

Next we had returned to our guessing game as to whether he was or was not my son. He had said he was brought up in an orphanage, could not recall his mother’s name. I didn’t believe either of these confidings. Even BB I had become three-quarters convinced he wasn’t Maureen’s child. It might be plausible but somehow didn’t fit, and definitely AB I refused to entertain it. He was not hers. I wouldn’t allow him to be. Although naturally if he, AB, started to assure me he was, I would nod and agree. I would even call him my son, if that were required.

When he saw to the bedroom door he told me about the car-girl and her strong pianist’s hands with the bolts. And prior to that, when the mobile rang out on the path, he told me I couldn’t bring it in, nor would he. That was after the Indian meal. Even then, propped up on the bed, I could hear the rain falling quite heavily on everything, and on the mobile.

I’d seen too the tiny intense wound in the palm of his left hand. Was he prone to stigmata? I wouldn’t put anything past him, even something like that, although I would suspect it of being self-induced, either by extreme cerebral concentration or (more likely) a creative use of self-harm. (Not to build this aspect up unduly, he would reveal during the next week that he had driven a long needle into his hand. He’d needed to look white and sick when he brought the ‘dead dog’ back into my hotel, and this was how he’d managed that. He explained too that, had I followed him to the Gents, he would have put his fingers down his throat to induce the genuine sounds and act of retching. Told this, I’d made little comment. Perhaps the authorial mind was pleased to slide last pieces of that single puzzle into place. I didn’t then ask him if the dog had been real. It was AB. And also something more. I was certain by that first night the dog was not real, but suppose it had been? Suppose he had killed it, or she had, that other weeping woman and accomplice surely, suppose she had killed it for him? Aside from any urgent RSPCA issues, to kill an animal can, in certain cases, be the preliminary knack of those then able to slaughter their fellow men.

We had also discussed my work, of course.

Over subsequent days we would discuss it again and again. He would read my books, sitting before me either in the library or the kitchen, sometimes the front room. He read fast and with a look of total absorption that might have been gratifying, even with him, BB. But which, AB, was no longer so. Sometimes too he would send me off to my study. “Go and do some work, Roy.” And I would go, and hack that I am, manage even to turn out some soulless verbiage, five hundred, a thousand words. In case he checked on me. But he never intruded ‘uninvited’ into the study, would only come to the door, with a polite knock, to ask me how it went.

My demeanour throughout was always as normal as I could make it. When we discussed my published books we did so in a civilised manner. Even AB, his criticisms were, I must admit, often valid. His praise obviously revolted and offended, but I took it with a courteous calmness, thanking him, disagreeing now and then. I had ascertained for now those areas where resistance was allowed, even wanted, as proof of our quite spurious normalcy.

There were no more blows. He needed to offer me none.

I’d said to myself I was to be a model prisoner.

It’s the first thing the seasoned criminal tells you, at least those of the disempowered class of criminal. You must be obedient and respectful. Don’t aggravate the warders. Take any cruelty or injustice without undue flinching or any complaint. Don’t smarm, maybe flatter a bit, hide nothing but your true self, and keep your head down. As one I spoke to during my researches had once told me, “You gets a better chance to pull a fast one if you never done it before. And if you don’t neither, you still get less