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

went up by train, but it was a surprisingly quick journey, less than two hours. Marvellous weather, not a cloud in the sky. Vanessa had packed cheddar and pickle sandwiches; George must be a good influence on her after all. Had half a bottle of wine on the train. My watch, by the way, kept perfect time.

It is as I remember it, the house. Though the land round it is, if anything, more lush. Beautiful autumnal shades of ginger and russet and honey-green. The fields golden, and in one a red tractor. There’s a new bridge out towards the west end of the town, glowing like copper in the afternoon light; I can see it from the upper windows here.

First class dinner served by the live-in cook.

I suppose I’ll have to ask them down, George I mean, and Van. Not yet, though.

I can remember playing in all these rooms, with my dolls, in my pink dresses.

I’ve hung the pink and gold dress up in full view on the back of the bedroom door. Yes, you can take things with you. The past is exactly the same country it always was, when you re-enter it willingly.

I look younger, and feel younger. That is a definite bonus. But I don’t want to be ten or thirteen again. And I don’t want to dress as a woman any more than I ever did.

Needless to relate, I don’t miss work. I’ve taken it on myself to reorganise the library, and I have a feeling I might keep a horse in the old stable here. The exercise appeals to me. And now it’s all possible. I don’t miss London either. Though I may, eventually, go to have a look at the town here. Have a look at that coppery bridge. I wonder where it leads to, apart from over the river?

Klova:

105

After I woke up I got ready, put on best totter-heels, and then I put on the lipstick which I call after my mother, C.P.—Clover Pearl.

At Zone 48 I took the Sprint to The Leaning Tower, and in the room with the chrysanthemums, they had lots of Lantern Fruits, which are Chinese Gooseberries, flying round on their paper-lantern wings. Lovely little gold fruits with wings, playing round the lights, and never getting burned. I met a beautiful male, and we had carnal. Like it was, as is brilliant beyond brilliancy.

Saw Coal, too, and we waved to each other, but that was all. I don’t feel any much for him now. But he’s all right.

Later I had a moonshake at the Firewhirl, under the glittering sky poles, and watched the dawn coming up over the new bridge far off down the river. I love night there, and sunrise, when the bridge changes from opal to ruby to diamond.

The bank-nanny told me, soon as I was home, there were twenty thousand shots in my account.

But anyway I think I’ll steal a dress sometime today.

Just like I can.

And then I’ll go and love.

Irvin:

106

After my final success at The Obelisk, Merscilla Peck both rejoiced in me and grew jealous, which she demonstrated most ably by her antics in the tavern bed, with loving moans and exquisite connivances, and lastly by biting me, sufficiently to draw blood, in the flank. Altogether not sorry to leave the Capital and its environs, not least the wretched hole I had occupied in the hovel of the brown landlady. (The dog had taken himself back there too, on one last visit prior to his sojourn in the country with my erstwhile doctor. Horatius, as now I must call him, had found my second shirt, and eaten a great deal of it. Whether this was a token of esteem on his part, or scorn for my new life, I shall never know.)

However, my own journey took me three days, after which I find myself where I have bound and sworn myself to be, since my miraculous recovery from Sophia’s poison. It is a grim, grey stack, not quite unlike some ornamental jail, with its huge bell-tower thrusting upward into sky, and its narrow cloisters nailing down a tiny courtyard with a well.

And where and what then is this dismaying place? It is the Abbey of Fouldes Water. And here, through a tortuous and torturing process of denial and many redemptive silences, I shall freeze out from myself the glorious sins of my flesh, until I too am stone, both cold and grey, my own fine tower clamped in chastity, and my own bold heart clock-timed to a sedentary tick. Starved, flailed and chained. I am to be a priest.

I gaze on the Christ in his little niche, and through the open stonery behold that curious ancient bridge from Roman times, black as iron, and tending to the west. The sky shines Heavenly beyond, although the world is swanned with snow.

But they have promised me, I shall often read aloud the lessons, for my actor’s voice.

Dawn:

107

I saw the dog again today. We sat together by the little river. I understand, of course, that when I am ready, he will go with me over the shining bridge, and there we will be with Ben, and I will be as Ben is, and as the dog is, too. But for now I must finish all my five lives, for the sake of myself, and of the others.

While I am myself I can still recall, at last, very clearly, that I am also a young murderess, and a man who has retired early to his childhood home to keep a horse and read books, and a young girl who dances and makes love in a world of futuristic dreams, and a proud male actor who will now become a proud and sombre priest. One by one, as each, I and they, become ready, we will walk up on to the bridge of steel, or of copper, or of diamond, opal and ruby, or iron-black,