Greyglass by Tanith Lee (story read aloud .TXT) 📕

since she was nine, sitting up one night from sleep, thinking, One day I’ll die. She never knew what prompted the revelation. She didn’t know really if it made her afraid or not. Sometimes, since, she had tried to imagine dying and stopping, or not dying and going on for ever. Both solutions seemed equally alarming and appalling. Gradually the problem faded back in her mind.

Now, she wondered where the old woman, her grandmother, was. If she was anywhere.

“I heard from the solicitors, yes,” Mrs Danvers was saying, sipping her magenta vermouth. “She’s been generous to me. I did my best, but that’s my calling. I certainly didn’t expect anything like that.”

“The cats’ charity will be pleased, too,” said Anne, acidly, drinking her second double gin and tonic. “And the other one. What was it? Some medical research or other.”

“I’m sure it was an oversight, Mrs Wilde.”

“Are you?”

Mrs Danvers seemed uneasy. “It must have been.”

“Well if it was, she made a damned good job of it, didn’t she. What’s the matter with you?” she added to Susan an hour later, as they rode home on the bus.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not upset, are you?”

“No. I didn’t like her. She was awful.”

“Yes, she was. I didn’t like her, but I’m upset.”

“Are you?” Susan stared.

“Because I’m not crying and tearing at my hair doesn’t mean I don’t feel anything.”

Years, twenty years after, Susan would think, That was her mother – was she upset? What did she feel?

Susan was depressed, and when they got to the flat, the grey wet warm light trapped inside, depressed her further.

She understood, from what her mother had told her, that the grandmother had left all her money, except for the mediocre funeral expenses, and several thousands of pounds for Mrs Danvers-known-as-Marks, to various charities. Even the house had been left to a charity devoted to the succour of cats. “I didn’t know she liked cats,” Mrs Danvers had remarked, defensively bemused. “She never had a cat. A shame really. I’m quite fond of them myself. I’d have had one, if I’d known.”

Anne had been left nothing. Not even a keepsake. Nor, as far as Susan knew, had Anne taken anything for herself from the house. But who would want any of those heavy and dismaying things, the non-edibly chipped pieces of china, the cumbersome Victorian furniture, none of it, even so, properly antique or of any beauty. Anything of value was itemised and to be sold. Had there been jewellery? Susan saw none.

“Did you ever live here when you were little?” Susan had once asked Anne, years before the disappearance, the park bench, and death. “No. I lived with my aunt in Lincoln. I’ve told you.” “Oh, yes.” Estranged, always separate. Strangers going by the misnomer of Relation.

“I don’t want to go to school tomorrow,” said Susan.

“You never want to.”

Susan hung her head.

“All right, all right. It’s Friday anyway. Have a long weekend.”

A weight hung about Susan’s neck through Friday, alone in the flat, while her mother worked. And also through Saturday. Like the Albatross, or one of the walnut mammoths of furniture from the vegetable house.

On Saturday night Anne went out with a man.

Susan mooched about the rooms, unable to sustain an interest in anything. She put all the lights on, too.

“Why are all the lights on?” said Anne when she came home at one a.m. “I’ve said, don’t do that, Susan. I have to spend enough on bills as it is.”

“A light bulb only costs a penny for three hours. I read it somewhere.”

“Rubbish.”

The next day was Sunday. Sunday, the day of visits to the old woman.

There had already been two Sundays after her death, of course. But they were taken up with seeing to things to do with the funeral, or the clearing of the house.

What had she died of, the grandmother?

“Old age.”

“It says heart failure on the form.”

“That’s what everyone dies of. It was old age.”

But Susan thought of the words heart failure. A lapse of the heart, not only unable anymore to beat, but to reason, to reply, to communicate – This heart was a failure.

Between Saturday night and Sunday, Susan dreamed of her grandmother, which surely she had never done before.

Somewhere she must have seen a photograph of her. Perhaps even somewhere in the vegetable house, though she couldn’t recall this, before or while it was eviscerated and cleared. This certainly was how Susan’s grandmother appeared in the dream, in a photographic sepia tone, and young.

What she was doing, under her light-coloured, piled-up hair, Susan never noticed. Maybe nothing. Maybe she just stood there, young and slender, half-smiling, wide-lambent-eyed.

“Who’s that? It’s Catherine.”

In the dream all the name took on meaning for Susan, for she had seen it on a marriage certificate among dusty black boxes of things, as her mother swore and wrestled with the eldritch furniture.

“Was this her?”

“What? Yes, yes, that was her. And that was my father. Richard Arlen John Wilde. They were married in 1907.”

“It says. But that’s her own name.”

“That was her maiden name. It’s an odd name, isn’t it? She used to be proud of it.”

So the old woman’s name was not Grandmother, or Susan’s Grandmother, or even Anne’s mother.

Catherine Greyglass, that had been her name. How strange indeed, for had that been what Susan had been seeing all the time in her eyes, only that, glass – grey glass?

II

The summer, four years later, was incredible. Glowing day followed day, under skies of thick stretched blue light. It felt like Italy, or, when the dusty-spicy sunsets came, the edge of Africa in a film.

In late August, one evening, walking home, and seeing the running honey sunshine reflected high up in the trees of the common, Susan felt that something, not just summer, was coming to an end. And it was.

“What’s for dinner, Anne?” (Mum and Mummy – both were gone more than a year. “I want to call you Anne.” And, to Anne’s flawless, raised eyebrows, “You’re a person, not just my mother.” Irrefutable