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

brought in. If we shared anything at some point plates and glasses were exchanged.

Sometimes he brought me morning tea, sometimes not. He never asked me to do or make anything for him. Either he attended on me, as one might with someone ailing or very young or old, or he left to my own devices. Sometimes he would inquire if I had a preference for a type of food or drink. But that was within the limits of what he chose. After all, he was paying. I tried to figure out, in the second week, exactly how much he had spent. At a conservative estimate, well over fifteen hundred pounds.

The other elements of our relationship, if such it must be termed, went on and around about the day to day minutiae of ordinary life, however odd or opulent.

At first, what went on was, shall I say, external.

That is, it affected the house, its objects.

The inaugural act happened on the fourth day of his occupancy and my imprisonment. Or, more correctly, it had gone on during the previous night.

I woke at seven-thirty after a restless three hours’ sleep and smelled the acid tang of fresh paint,

I got up, used the bathroom, and went downstairs. The smell of paint intensified. The morning before I had seen some quite large boxes delivered, all taken in as usual by Sej. Although I was regularly told to make various telephone orders, Sej sometimes ordered stuff of which I had no knowledge until later. This was the case here, for he had got in the paint and brushes etc. without my knowing anything about it.

The door of the front room stood half open.

He had covered the piano over with a large dust-sheet, but not bothered with anything else.

As I stood there he turned from his position on the kitchen ladder. “Hi, Roy. What do you think?”

The walls of the room, almost finished now, were a deep scarlet. It hit my morning eyes like too bright light. I said nothing.

Not only were the walls red, but most of the sofa and other furniture, and the carpet, where paint had dripped or, more likely, been idly splashed.

“Don’t worry about the mess,” he said. “Come on, don’t sulk. You can always get some other chairs.”

The don’t sulk, though playful, as if only trying to dispel some unreasonable churlishness on my part, was a warning I must heed.

“Why red?” I asked.

“Enlivening. We can rip that bloody awful electric fire out next and get the chimney opened up. Picture this on a winter evening, firelit and glowing.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You don’t sound enthusiastic, Roy. Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“You paint very well,” I said. This was true. It looked a professional job, aside from the ruin of almost everything else.

“Thanks. I’m not bad, am I, for an amateur?”

He flaunted himself. There was a small red mark on his forehead but his hands were enclosed in protective gloves. His hands, the piano, must come to no harm.

“Do you want tea?” I asked.

“That’s all right. Had some. Want to get on. Should have it done in another hour.”

I made coffee for myself in the kitchen, which also reeked of paint. The coffee tasted of paint. Even the toothpaste upstairs had done so. Through the window I watched a blackbird picking through the dead sides of my paved-over garden, and thought of breaking the glass. But I didn’t trust myself to get it right, and I judged what would happen if I didn’t.

He had completed the painting of the room by 9 a.m.

During that and the next day, the paint smell gave me a sinus headache.

On the carpet, curtains, and the chairs and sofa the splashed paint dried. Over the face of the old clock had run a single red drip like blood. I attempted to rectify nothing. Nor did he. I sensed, accurately, that the furniture couldn’t be renovated, and it was not. I got used to the new look of the room, no longer anything to do with me, an abattoir in hell where offal and gore stayed always fresh and cheerful.

Two days on from the red paint, Sej threw out most of my crockery, literally threw, smashing it in the back garden.

I watched, as I had the blackbird, safely shut in like a wayward child who, if let go free, may rush off straight under a speeding car.

At one juncture, George emerged from 72 on to his neat back lawn, with the cherry tree and bird table.

I had a moment’s hope. The activity of wreckage looked unusual. How would George react?

He and Sej chatted in an easy way over the lowest part of the fence, where the other hydrangea was spreading the green cups of delayed flowers.

I couldn’t make out what was said, my ears like my sinus had been clogged up by the paint. But both men were very relaxed.

When Sej came in, having swept the shards of crockery into two dustbin bags and dropped them in the black dustbin he’d earlier provided, he said, “I told old George you were going to make a new start. George said he was so pleased I was here. Between himself and me, he and his wife had been a bit nervous about you, here on your own in your present state of mind. They hoped I’d stay as long as I could.”

“And will you?” It was out before I could contain it.

But Sej smiled. “I can stay forever, Roy, if I want.”

To replace the china, some of which had gone back to my grandparents’ time, Sej had ordered some thick square plates and square saucers, with large if unmatchingly round cups. All of it was pale yellow, starred with lurid marigolds. I’d never seen anything quite like it. They were less ugly and unwieldy than preposterous. I hadn’t ever cared about the original china however. My only concern was that the awkwardness of the new crockery might make me drop some of it, and would this be taken as a declaration