Killing Violets Read online

  Someone was saying something incomprehensible to her. “No,” said Anna. “I can’t. No.”

  The voice spoke again. It was soft and female. Anna looked under her lids.

  A sly, slim fox’s face, with a bonnet of horrible starched linen. A maid. “What is it?”

  The maid said something Anna couldn’t properly understand. But it was about getting up, and someone coming – the housekeeper? – or a dress…

  “Oh, thank you. Yes. Thank you.”

  Anna realised she had slept as usual naked, and the maid was here, waiting for her to get up, or so it seemed. Yes, the maid was waiting. Her slim hands were folded on her apron. Pale reddish hair slid back under the nasty bonnet. Her eyes were tawny under half-lowered lids.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry. I’d like you to wait outside.”

  The fox maid bobbed. She said, “Missus sayum to lug artor you. Till as missus picks aton other.” This was what it sounded like, anyway.

  “Oh, I see. But I’d like you to go out for a moment.”

  The maid looked up, at her. Eyes not tawny, yellow as the tester and counterpane. What awful eyes. Like a cat’s – or a goat’s.

  “What’s your name?” said Anna, almost in a panic.

  “Sister,” said the maid. Perhaps.

  “Very well – Sister,” Anna was firm. “Please go out and shut the door.”

  “Ysm.”

  Anna felt close to trembling. This was all so silly. She did not know what to do here, had never lived in a house with any servants beyond a slovenly cook here and there, or some skivvy who did everything. But the fox maid called sister was going at last. The door shut.

  At a scramble Anna left the bed. She ran across the room to the bathroom where she recalled her robe had been left lying.

  The bath stood on iron legs, paws. The water was still in it and the room felt steamy though chill. When she let the water out, the bath made evil noises.

  There was this housekeeper coming. And then dressing for dinner, one of the glaucous dresses Raoul had bought her.

  Anna tied the robe. She wiped the mirror. She cleaned her teeth at the inset basin, white and shell-shaped. The taps were brass, polished like gold, and in the form of gryphons’ heads. Like those things on the roof – gargoyles.

  She was smoking a cigarette and brushing her hair with the tortoiseshell brush, when the housekeeper brought the fox maid back into the room.

  The housekeeper had no accent at all.

  “I regret,” said the housekeeper, “Mr Raoul’s telegram arrived very late. Things aren’t as ready as I’d have wished.” She wore a burgundy red dress and a little watch pinned on her right breast. Her hair was like lacquered ebony, probably dyed. She had the face of a chorus girl playing a housekeeper. She smiled. Her false teeth were very good, but somewhat discoloured. “Sister will do her best for you.”

  “Sister? Is that really her name?” Anna blurted. “Sister” merely stood there, goat eyes down.

  “Lily Sister,” elaborated the housekeeper.

  Anna felt dispirited. “What happens next?”

  The housekeeper laughed in a tight small way. “Sister will help you dress. Dinner is normally at eight-thirty.”

  “I prefer to dress myself,” said Anna. “I don’t need anything, thank you.”

  When they were gone, Anna dressed. She powdered her face and touched her lips with red. Raoul did not like her to use mascara; he had compared her long pale lashes with moths’ wings.

  She anticipated all the time that he would come in. But he didn’t.

  From the windows of this room in the back of the house, the lawns swept to a beech coppice, and then away up to the sides of the mountain-hills, now patched with mist or fog. Rain dripped, and the light was going.

  There were some cows in a pasture over a sort of narrow river. They moved about sullenly. They seemed undecided.

  What was she doing here?

  Raoul had once or twice referred to his family, and then just as ordinary people did: “My Family.” But they had a title. Then again, it wasn’t used. The family name was Basulte.

  Raoul had told her so little. But he had promised to tell her nothing, and to ask nothing. And he never had asked Anna anything fundamental or finite. His questions had been limited to such things as “Where shall we go for breakfast? Do you like this wine? Will you put on that necklace for me? Are you comfortable? Do you enjoy it when I kiss you here?”

  She knew nothing about him, or about the house and the Family. Only names like England, and Basulte.

  Anna was terribly nervous, and yet, adrift in the unreality, she didn’t care. Did not care what she felt or what anyone felt. Did not mean to impress. Her impulse was only not to cause a dramatic scene. That had always been one of her goals, for a long time. Scenes were dangerous.

  She came down three long corridors, and through the gallery with suits of armour and oil paintings of costumed persons, men with swords, women with little dogs. The electricity had been switched on, and the hanging lamps were alight, making the gallery stark and its strip of red carpet jump at her eyes. Beyond the gallery was a sort of annexe with doors opening off, and then the top of a curving stair, marble and wood and gilding, just like a European hotel.

  The stair ended below in a glass room. It was called an orangery – oranges had been grown in it once, in the 17th century, apparently. It looked now fabulously cold, and the harsh light made tall plants and wicker tables resemble cut-outs of thin card.

  Beyond was the room Raoul had mentioned to her earlier. The salon. He had drawn her a map of the route. It was perhaps a test of her skill, to see if she could find her way.

  The salon was all dull dark green, with flares of blood-scarlet – roses, and some other flower, that looked African, glassware, wines in decanters.

  A fire was burning in the ample fireplace, on this filthy English summer evening.

  And about the fire they sat. The Family. Had they been waiting for her? Or were they utterly indifferent? Had they been told she had dismissed the maid: how eccentric and lower-class – the English were reportedly obsessed by class, like Hindus.

  They were like a pride of animals up on their home rock.

  No. Not animals. They were not, at all, like that.

  Nor like a family. Yet they were – a group, a band – and they were very alike, you saw this at once. They were all – like Raoul.

  That was natural, wasn’t it? A familial similarity. His father, his mother, a sister, a brother. But then, there was one who was the sister’s husband, surely, or had Anna misremembered? And he too was indistinguishable.

  The table-lamps glowed on their black, smooth hair, in their black clear eyes. They were all impeccably dressed, black and white for the men, shades of jade and rose for the women. A few precious stones, gold.

  Only Raoul was not there.

  Raoul, who had brought her here, given her a ring and a map, as if in a fairy story.

  At her entrance, no one had altered. The three men had already been standing, smoking at the fireplace. The two women remained seated.

  Their heads had turned. Their faces were arrested. Two of the men had been smiling, and smiled still. The others were expressionless.

  Anna poised before them. She felt naked in her expensive underclothes, dress, shoes, her diamond.

  “Oh,” said the woman in the rose-red, “Raoul is too bad. He was to have brought you down.”

  Anna realized, she should have waited, to be brought.

  “I’m sorry, I…” She closed her lips hurriedly.

  One of them – Raoul’s father? – said, “It’s so nice you didn’t wait. Anna, if I may call you that.”

  “Of course,” she said. She did not know how to address him, since Raoul had not explained.

  Across the room, the butler stood, and a maid, and a young boy in black, a footman, by a sideboard that was laid with bright bottles and decanters. When Anna glanced at them, the butler nodded his head, the footman
bowed, the maid bobbed, and the bottles flashed.

  The man who had spoken to Anna walked over to the sideboard and inspected it, as if he had forgotten it was there. When he did this, the maid cowered away into the wall. That was no exaggeration. She cowered. But it wasn’t fear. It was some excessive show of respect. The footman stood, head bowed now, as if in church.

  Raoul’s relation made a pass over the array of drinks.

  “We have everything, Anna. What would you like?”

  She wanted absinthe, she thought. That wouldn’t do. And despite the foolish boast, they wouldn’t have it. These English were supposed to drink sherry, were they not? She asked for sherry.

  Something in the way she pronounced the word must have made the woman in jade-green laugh sharply. Or it was a coincidence?

  Startled, Anna stared a second at her.

  Which of the women was Raoul’s mother? They looked virtually the same age. And the men were equals, but for the one who had spoken to her, and had a grey line in his hair. This was too fanciful. The light was dazzling and deceptive.

  The fatter woman was probably the elder one, the mother, Raoul’s mother.

  The maid came with a sherry on a tray and bobbed, her head held down. Anna took the drink, which was small, in a thimble, a shard of crystal.

  They – the Family – had already had their drinks.

  The sherry was dry, almost salty. Two sips and it was gone.

  “I wonder,” said Anna; they looked at her. “I wonder… where Raoul is?”

  “He went out riding,” said the woman in green. “In this rain.” She sounded for a second nearly normal.

  “As a boy, horses were his passion,” said the other woman. “But he can’t be long, tonight.”

  Anna disconcertingly recalled those moments proceeding orgasm on the train, the horse galloping between her thighs. Did Raoul once have such a fantasy?

  One of the other men came up to her and offered her a cigarette. She took it and the butler was there at once, lighting it for her, stepping between them like an invisible air. Anna thanked the butler, and the woman in green laughed again. But again, that might be nothing.

  On the mantelpiece an ormolu clock, with nymphs and a rayed sun, chimed the half hour. Anna had been shown a clock rather like that, in Prague. Figures had danced slowly round it. But she had been crying, and not seen it clearly.

  “Shall we go in?” said the man with the line of grey in his black hair. He nodded to one of the other men – Raoul’s brother, his sister’s husband. “Since Raoul is so late, take Anna in, won’t you?”

  “My great pleasure,” said this other Raoul, stepping up to her.

  My God, on his arm, half impossible to tell the difference.

  But the fat woman was the Mother. She was stiff when she got up, and the maid assisted her. And the woman allowed herself to be assisted, as if by a mechanical thing, and the maid fell away from her, when no longer needed, like a discarded shawl.

  The dining-room – the small dining-room – was red, with flutes of green, plants, candles, glass. There were green vegetables on the plates, and bloody meats.

  Raoul did not arrive. No one mentioned his absence again. They spoke of him, however.

  “I suppose Raoul took you to Versailles. Oh, what you missed, Anna. A heavenly place.”

  “When Raoul was travelling with you, you’ll have noticed, he gets tetchy if kept waiting. Tetchy – oh, that means bad-tempered. You didn’t notice? Ah, well, Anna. Your charms doubtless softened his rage.”

  They did not refer to her engagement, or impending marriage. They asked her nothing about herself.

  Later they opened the curtains. That is, the servants opened them. Outside was the terrace, lit by electric lamps held up by statues, and rain glittering and prancing on the stones. The women did not separate from the men.

  Then they migrated jointly back to the salon. One of the men put records on a gramophone. He danced with the woman in jade-green, the cosy, liquidly-shuffling dance from America that was only intimate, asking no footwork. Her husband? There was a little scar through his left eyebrow. Anna could memorize him from that.

  They never told her their names. She didn’t ask.

  Raoul did not come in.

  Should she pretend to be worried, make a slight gentle feminine fuss?

  At ten they began to go to bed, or off about their own pursuits. They said to her, “Good-night, Anna. Do sleep well.”

  She sat alone in the salon, got up and walked into the dining-room. Rain glittered and pranced.

  The butler, the maids, the footmen, (there had been two at hand for dinner) stood at their stations.

  Hotly embarrassed, she suddenly stupidly grasped she was imprisoning them, they were having to wait, to wait on her.

  She left the rooms and went through the dismal black-windowed orangery of cut-outs, upstairs, along the gallery, through corridors to her bedroom.

  The fox maid was standing by the bed like some awful useable machine, a trouser-press or mangle.

  “It’s all right, Sister. Thank you.”

  “Sull I undo yemiss?”

  “No. Thank you. Goodnight.”

  When Sister – Sister! – sibling, nurse – had gone, Anna threw off her clothes and left them on the carpet. She knew from novels this room was hers, not theirs. Her betrothed had an apartment elsewhere.

  Anna woke, swimming. She was lying on her side, and an anemone had fastened on her breast, and was drawing her up by silver strings through the nipple. On the other breast, feathers tickled irresistibly.

  Anna unsealed her eyes.

  “No… stop… where were you?”

  “I’ve been away from the house so long. I wanted to see it so much. Sorry about that. And I was so tired then, I went to sleep. Rotten of me. Your first night. Forgive me?”

  His other hand strummed sweetly the instrument of delight between her legs.

  She fell back and he mounted her, firming into her, filling her full. Ripples of swirling ecstasy. Unbearably she came, arching her throat and back, as he rode on the crest of her, slapping her hips and choking her name.

  At the house in Preguna, Anna had typed the old professor’s manuscript. The manuscript was very long, about one thousand pages, in long hand. It was a study of certain, to Anna, obscure schools of thought, starting in third century Greece, encompassing Renascence Rome and Coptic Egypt, ending up in Paris and Alsace. Apparently. Sometimes the professor would wander in and hand her a new sheaf of papers, which were to be inserted, say, after page five hundred, paragraph six. So the manuscript was not complete, was growing, and might never be finished with.

  Some afternoons, when the warm dusty sun shone through the windows, whose shutters had been thrown back, Anna typed in paroxysms of yawning, voluptuous and nearly painful, her eyes streaming with water. And twice, when the professor entered, he saw this, and asked if she were crying.

  “No, no. I have a little cold.”

  The house was tall and crooked, packed between other tall, crooked houses, all the colour of old brown bread. The road outside was cobbled, and at the end of the vista was an ancient horse trough and a clock-tower with a narrow blue dome.

  If the professor asked her to stay for supper, they ate in a brown back room, waited on by a big woman with a bun. There were cats who lived in her kitchen, but only for the mice. The professor allowed the cats to come up and sun themselves at the window on a chair’s back, but if Anna tried to stroke them they ran away, or scratched her.

  Usually, after the supper, they had strudel, which the woman had made. It was wonderful strudel, but Anna always suspected the woman put things into Anna’s piece. Once there was a hard grain, which might have been glass, and once a bitter taste, and later Anna’s stomach had hurt. But she ate the strudel nevertheless.

  When the sun went and the rooms darkened, the professor would give Anna a liqueur.

  All evening, he would have talked about poetry or philosophy, ideas and pe
ople she had never heard of, but she knew herself to be quite ignorant. Then again, he might be making it all up.

  In the darkness, he would sit down in the big armchair, and ask her to sit on his knee. He liked her to sing a little song he had taught her, about woolly lambs, gazing away from him but at the same time fiddling gently with his organ.

  After about a minute, though now and then it was longer, he would come, with a slight jolt, like a hiccup. There was very little moisture, and this he quickly wiped away with a handkerchief.

  Then they would have coffee, and she would go out on to the street, to catch the tram.

  Those warm evenings, the dust settling on a nine o’clock breeze, the smell of flowers from the public gardens thick as honey. She was never nervous, even passing through clouds of drunken sailors from the dock, who whistled and called out to her. She didn’t mind them. If they had caught her, she would simply have given in. There was only trouble if you resisted, so she had heard. She even smiled, if they did.

  Out of the dimness of evening, the tram would come rattling; chrysanthemum yellow with lights.

  Once a young man on the tram had picked her up. They went to a café and drank a schnapps. He had a birthmark over his forehead and one cheek, and sat with his hand covering it, as he had tilted his hat to try to hide it on the tram.

  At last he said, “Are you always so easy? Don’t I disgust you?”

  Anna shook her head. He had an attractive face, and the mark was a clear sumptuous red. It reminded her of warrior’s paint before a battle.

  “Oh, you liar,” he said. He tossed back the schnapps – for a second she had thought he would toss it in her face. “You whores will take on anyone. Dirty bitch.”

  She saw he hated his body so much that he had come to hate proportionately anyone who would tolerate it. To tolerate him must be the sign of a deviant.

  Anna realised she should have left well alone, but this was something that she never seemed to do.

  After he left her, Anna walked the rest of the way to her lodging. Above her twisted street, the stars were burning bright and coldly blue.

  When she thought of Preguna, she usually remembered first the stars, and the trams, and often the professor, and then the man with the birthmark.