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

high’ on the watered drinks, “Like they’re jugs of wine, or ale.” Ale was what Mrs Jones, in the person of Mr Shakespeare-Pepys, called the beer. But it wasn’t in fact the real ale the pub also serves.

After the pub, I tried the Co-op in Wellington Road. I tried other shops before and got varied answers, though more of the gossip-speculation type I’ve mentioned. But in the Co-op I met Nancy Carrington, who said she has no objection to my citing her by name.

“I’ve often seen her, poor old thing. I had a granny like that, a bit ga-ga. Not so cracked though as—Mrs Jones did you say? As Mrs Jones.”

Nancy is a nice-looking fifties-ish. (She doesn’t mind my saying that either.) A calm person.

“She never caused any trouble. But she really did act in the weirdest way. For a start, she was often dressed like a girl in her teens or twenties, jeans, T-shirts, and her hair all down. Mind you, she was thin enough to wear that sort of thing. And she had really good hair, or it would have been if she’d had it decently shaped and cut. Yes, very long hair. Mostly grey, but with some brown tones still left in it. And she must have been at least seventy. Again, like my gran—she still had colour in her hair till she died. She was eighty-six. I’m sorry poor old Mrs Jones died so young—well, it is, isn’t it, nowadays, seventy-four. She looked, well, too strong. The way she used to slink around the aisles sometimes. Sometimes she was crouching, and hiding—or thinking she was—behind the shelving. That showed she was pretty agile. Now and then she’d sort of teeter along parts of the floor as though half of it wasn’t there and there was a great big chasm either side. But she managed it all right. Most of us, except a kid, couldn’t, we’d probably have fallen over. Keeley was scared of her. Keeley always wanted to call the police. I said, ‘they’ve got better things to do, Keeley. Leave her alone, she won’t hurt you.’ Everyone to start with thought she’d steal. I’m afraid that includes me. Shop-lift, you know. But she never did. She always paid cash. And that was odd too. I mean, when she paid you, she kind of wasn’t there. She never said a word—it wasn’t she was being rude. It was as if… her mind was wandering and she didn’t see you, or know what she was doing. It’s a good thing we’re on the level here. We don’t cheat customers. Other places—well.”

Nancy confirmed that Mrs Jones also appeared at the shop as Herself. She wore then one of two or three knee-length straight skirts and flat shoes, a jumper or blouse and coat. On warmer days sometimes the coat was replaced by a cardigan. Her hair was up in what Nancy, unlike Josh, termed a French Roll. At these times Mrs Jones saw you. She said Please and Thank you, and sometimes asked where something or other was.

The other visitation was the man with short hair, dressed casual-smart, if rather outdatedly. He always spoke too, would even have a brief chat with you about the weather, if you mentioned it, or the latest media-reported crisis. “She used to drop her voice right down for him. But it never works, does it, I mean unless someone really trains their voice. Men don’t sound like women, women don’t, like men. They just sound wrong. Poor old thing,” she added sadly. Nancy looked sad too. Thinking of her grandmother once more, perhaps, and what age and life, (never forget life’s part in the destruction), do to us all.

Later on, there, I received a real eye-opener too, from the stroppily timorous Keeley, a nasty little fat-mouthed Bitch2 who sprang out on me as I was, subsequent to interviewing Nancy, rooting in the freezer for some ice cream.

“‘Ere,” quoth Keeley, “Yor the one wot’s asking all them questions about that old bag, ent yer?”

I confessed I was.

“Well I seen her on the train up London—more’n once.”

“What happened?” I legitimately asked.

“Nuffin happened!” she squawked, as if I’d suggested either she had molested Mrs Jones or vice versa. “She gives me the squeams.” (Did she mean qualms? Screams? Squeamishness?) “Moment she gets in I move up the carriage. But I gets a look at her. Jeez what a dringe.” (I think she said ‘dringe’, whatever that is.) “Like she’s done up like a right slag, about fourteen. Shorty skirt right up here…” Keeley erroneously indicated her waist, “and hold-ups—stockings, you know, and it’s all reds and goldy bits and all this long black ’air wiv beads in it, and high heels—and all this eye-stuff—thick as a—what are them bear things?”

“…Pandas?” I guessed.

“Panters, yeah,” agreed Keeley, with hatred. “And this lip gloss. Pink. Errr,” breathed Keeley, allowing me to see the grey chewed chewing-gum in her mouth. “Oughter be in jail, them like her. Or in the loony bin.”

“Why?” I asked her, quite reasonably.

“Yor weird you are,” said Keeley.

I suppose she’s right. But aren’t we all.

“Just tell me,” I said, “before you go, how did she act, I mean what did she do, when you saw her on the train?”

“Nuffin. Just sit there, with her legs crossed an’ you could see her black panties. She had black fingernails anall. Everyone was, like, killing theirselves.”

“What a shame they never managed it.” But no. I didn’t say that.

OK

Nancy however later on added two extra incidents. It—they—had, she said, happened only about a month—was it?—before Mrs Jones had been found, dead of natural causes and old age, in her house behind the canal.

“Those times, you see, she didn’t come in alone. First she was being the young woman in the T-shirt and jeans, with her hair down. And she had someone with her, a younger woman I’d say it was.”

“Do you mean there was someone actually with her?”

“Oh no. Only in her mind. This person was