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

invisible to any of the rest of us. What did she call her? Nicky, I think it was. Mrs Jones was telling this woman how to get through the store, which was apparently—as I’d always seen she found it—very structurally dangerous. And where this Nicky could find things. Except the cigarettes, for example, which of course are kept up by the lottery and the magazines. But Mrs Jones actually directed Nicky somewhere over by the paper goods. But it seemed to work all right. I suppose it would, wouldn’t it? And this is the other thing I forgot to mention. Around the same time—or I think it was—was the snow down? I can’t quite… never mind. The—man-with-short-hair version came in, I mean Mrs Jones as this man, yes? And that one time he—I find I have to say he—talked to us, but also he was talking to three other—well—non-existent people, two men and a woman. I can remember he called her Auntie Vanessa. And that time, very unusually for him, I mean Mrs Jones, the man took a trolley, and he put in a big bottle of vodka and four bottles of wine and some mixers—oh and some salad, which as a rule neither he nor Mrs Jones—if you get me—seemed very keen on. And Liz was on the checkout and she said to him, ‘Are you having a party?’ And Mrs Jones said, in this different voice—I mean not her own or the silly deep voice for the man, but a sort of older, more playful sort of a voice, ‘Oh, that’s for the dog’. And Liz and I laughed. And that,” she added, and suddenly her nice brown eyes filled with tears, “was the last time I ever saw her—or any of her—well, her other selves. I am sorry,” Nancy said. “Poor thing. Did she die alone?”

“I heard so,” I said. But I thought, God knows. Who else was in there with her? Mickie—Nicky? Some other old friends? Auntie Vanessa? The dog?

OK OK

After the local ones, and because I hadn’t yet been able to meet up with Dimble3, (Dimble being the charity worker who helped clear the house, and who was willing to talk to me providing everything to do with him is kept private, and also on the agreement that I make a charitable donation of three hundred GBP), I decided to pick up on the London sites.

There are far less clues to these, of course. Only The Red Stag—or The Stag and Star, its real name—seems to exist in fully concrete form.

But when I got there, quite a lot of the regulars recollected Mr Shakespeare-Pepys, as the reader among them called him.

Reg, (who doesn’t mind my referring to him as Reg, “Only no second name, please. The wifelet wouldn’t stand for it”), was or had been, ‘quite fascinated’ by the contemporary old woman, who had clearly been possessed by a virile, youngish chap from the Seventeenth or Eighteenth Century.

“An actor, one gathered. Once or twice at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Currently strutting the boards at The Obelisk in—where was it, Sandy? Yes, that’s it. Stampwell Street, off Cartwheel Lane. I don’t think you’ll find that, young sir,” Reg added to me. “Some of us have gone and looked, you see. Neither the various Geographias nor word of mouth seem to offer up proof of its existence.”

“Invented, then?”

“Product of an insane but eloquent mind,” pronounced Reg. “I said, didn’t I, he called this pub The Red Stag?”

Reg told me that Thessris—he thought this was what the actor’s name was supposed to be—seemed to see all of them in The Stag, though Reg doubted Mr T saw them as they were. “He’d have a joke with us, and with me often, as I rather liked it. I mean, I valued the way he—yes, of course, she spoke. Liked the twists he-she put on the English language. No doubt not at all authentic for the scholars, but balls to them. It had a ring to it. Some of the words and phrases—God knows if anyone ever spoke like that back then—but, yes, a ring. What was that one we liked, Sandy? Oh, yes. Merry-dig. Fuck, you see? And I must say, young sir, he seemed to be having a merry-dig with plenty, and of both genders. Young men, lovely women. He was in love with an actress. Priscilla, I think it was. No, that’s not it. Near enough. Priscilla Peck. Oh, yes, he had it bad for her. But lots of others, he didn’t go short. No, no idea if your Mrs Jones was a les. After all, Mr T had men too. Three of them at least I heard him talking to in here. No, obviously not, no one else could see them. I wouldn’t have minded seeing a couple of the girls. His Priscilla. And that other one—Mistress Temple? Something like that.”

‘Sandy’—not his name, nor to be quoted—didn’t give me any information, Only nodded, or occasionally confirmed something, and smiled over the drinks I bought them both.

Reg though said he could only say he thought he’d seen the other incarnation, the bloke in the suit. Kept himself to himself, if it was the right one, had a quick single drink, or brooded over a sandwich, then left.

“She was limber for an old bird, wasn’t she?” Reg added, with approval. “What was she? Sixties? But neither of the alter-egos was her age. Certainly not Mr T. She moved like a young man. Yes, and like a male too. Shame her voice let her down. And the clothes, of course. Looked, shall I say, merry-digging bloody silly in them. But. You say she died? That’s a shame. We’ll miss her. She ought to get a proper mention somewhere. Entertaining the masses, eh, Sandy?”

I told them that was the idea, when I wrote the article. We all shook hands as I left.

After The Stag, though, as they had forewarned me, I mostly drew a blank.

What anyway