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

“Well, yer see yer might,” he said, squinting at me as if the hall, or I, gave off a bright light. But the hall is dark, even with the morning sun on the front of the house. “He knew this road—we both done, when we was kids. Me bruvva.”

I smiled benignly.

He said, “An’ this house, back when things was all right.” We each then sadly looked down at the ground, politely mourning for Civilisation’s end.

“He wen’ off to the States,” said the man. “Then he come back.”

Oh, I’d already realised, by then, identified who this one wanted. The rather maleficent miserableness both he and the fishing man had in common. Or, I suppose, had had, before I killed the fishing man.

“He liked to go an’ see all the old haunts, even when they was rubbish now. He’d’ve come here.”

It was time to draw two lines through the conversation, and so cross it out.

“Well he didn’t come here, or if he did, I didn’t see him. No one’s been here.”

“Man up the park,” said the persistent brother, “he told us, me an’ her, he seen him go off with this woman, off up this way.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but he wasn’t with me, and he didn’t come here.”

I tried to shut the door then, and he put his foot in it, in the prescribed manner. I wondered briefly if I should ask him in and properly get rid of him. But you see, I don’t like to kill that way, not to order, as it were. It would spoil the act for me. Put me off. Inevitably, it has happened, though only once, long ago. But I learned my lesson. Unless it really is incriminatory life or death for me, I can’t and I won’t.

Therefore we stood there, him with his stupid big betrainered foot wedged against the door, and me looking at him with patient sternness.

12

Very occasionally I do go for a ramble through the empty and neglected house. The upper two floors are mostly bare of anything, although there is a bed in one of the rooms which, a couple of times, I’ve had a rest on through the afternoon, where the late sunlight comes in at the glass via the lacework of the garden trees. This glass too, of course, I haven’t boarded up.

In the attic, pigeons sometimes make their nests, flying in and out through a broken skylight.

For some reason, with this obstreperous bore wedging the front door open, my mind travelled briefly off and away, flying like a pigeon-spirit through the higher storeys, as if looking for something, some remedy.

I said, still patiently and kindly, “I really don’t see how I can help.”

“You’re ’ER,” he said. “He went off with you. You both come here. He’s in there now. I know he fuckin’ is.” And then he bellowed past me, up the stairs, “Oi, Sy, COME OUT!”

Naturally, now, there was nothing I could do to deter him, and in a minute he was probably going to stampede past me, and go tearing about. He might not find the fishing man (Sy?) because the cellar door isn’t easy to spot without a light. And it’s difficult to open. But it would be such an intrusion.

Damn him, I almost certainly would have to allow him entry, make it easy, then kill him. I glared at him with final unhidden loathing.

And then.

From somewhere over the street, a girl came running. She had long dark hair and big wounded eyes, and the moment I saw her I knew she was for me. She was mine. It couldn’t have been more evident if she had worn a big scarlet badge reading Kill me, please.

13

She rushed straight up to the leather jacket man and grabbed his arm.

“Stop it! Look what you’re doing! Leave her alone! How can you be such a bully?”

And, rather to my surprise, Big Bruvva sort of shrank down and squinted at her sidelong, with a childish guilty watery gaze.

She said to me, “I’m so sorry. He’s just upset. We’re so worried, you see.”

“Yes,” I said.

She said, “Simon went fishing in the canal. Yes, it’s crazy, but he was, a bit. We all are now, aren’t we, most of us. But this was days ago…” I thought, yes, I know exactly how many days ago. “…and then there’s this guy on the waste ground down there, and he told us there was a woman with Sy, and he went off with her, and well, the guy said he thought he’d seen her before, the woman, and she lived in a house here—this house, by the bungalow.”

I said, as if making the decision I had already made by the time she was across the street, “All right. You can come in. Not him. I don’t want him in my house. But you can come in. We’ll have a talk and see if we can work out what’s happened. I can see you’re upset…” At that she started to cry. Lovely, polished crystal tears out of her dark grey crystal eyes. Poor little thing.

Big Bruvva slunk back. He went to sit on a broken wall by a dead lawn with a rusted vandalised car on it.

She and I, once I’d shut the front door behind us, walked through into the downstairs portion of the house.

14

I made some tea. It had to be black obviously; even though the fridge works, you can never find proper milk now.

While I made the tea, I saw the damp patch on the kitchen wall had changed shape. It looked like a slim woman in a long robe, or shroud.

Sometimes, omens can be unsubtle. This one anyway was now redundant.

My prey was already here.

I didn’t put anything in the tea, except the sugar she asked for.

We went through to the main room and she sat on the sofa and I in one of the two armchairs. I didn’t light the overhead lights