Cruel Pink Read online

  At least Vanessa’s neighbours would have to forgo their garden parties.

  The house seemed as always, though autumn had shed foliage on the front lawn and path. A plane was passing over, as they always do. That smell of fishy sea and compost.

  28

  While I waited at the door, helplessly I pictured—anticipated—another subnormal child in a cap and snot. But instead a tall lean man in his forties opened it, with a broad, willing smile. “Hi.”

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m sorry to trouble you, but I was wondering if you knew where the woman from No 12 next door might be? Vanessa Taurus? I think you know her?”

  His face fell slightly. He did know her, evidently.

  “Mm,” he said.

  “The point is,” I said, apologetic, “she was expecting me about an hour ago—train was late—but I thought she’d still be here…”

  Firmly Vanessa’s party-minded neighbour said, “We don’t know her well.”

  “No, of course not. I’m just a bit—surprised she isn’t in. She always is when I call, you see. She’s my aunt,” I tacked on, trying to impress him with the fact that I knew her well enough to conclude her unexplained absence now was entirely out of character. I implied concern, but not, obviously, alarm. Yet I was alarmed. After George, it went without saying I was.

  “Sorry. Don’t know anything about it. We never know she’s there anyway. Unless,” he paused, frowning at the memory, “she comes round about something.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes. She complains a lot. To and about us.”

  “Ah.”

  He didn’t slam the door, just nodded and shut it, still in my face, and still without any offer of information, let alone empathy.

  I had an abrupt Ag-Christie-ish idea that, sick of Vanessa’s displeasure, the man, and the wife Vanessa had described—“Skirts too short for her age. Streaked hair”—had turned on her and bumped her off. They would dump her body at some tidal cove later on, by night, or bury her under the decking.

  Our family name isn’t Taurus, either, but that’s usually as near as anyone else ever gets. Taurus, or Terris—although George, I believe, used to give it, where he had to, as Terry.

  And now what? No doubt the other neighbours, the other side, and across the road, would also refuse to take any interest in my disappearing aunt. Good riddance! they would say in their not-very-secret hearts.

  In the end I went through the side gate, which wasn’t locked during the day, and into the back garden.

  It was secluded enough in summer, but as I’d seen before, once the trees grew bare, and both next doors’ walls being low, their gardens were on full view, crammed with adult artefacts and leisure toys—barbecues and garden furniture, sunshades still in place, whirligigs for washing and even, on the other side, a large apple-gathering ladder propped at a tree.

  Standing on Vanessa’s patio I looked through her French doors. They were very clean and clear and gave on her sitting room, which was also clean, and scrupulously, nearly soullessly, tidy. Just as with George’s flat, there was too an air of the Mary Celeste, for I could see through into the adjoining dining room, where the table had been laid with cutlery, water glasses and a large cut-glass bowl loaded with lime-green salad and cherry-red tomatoes.

  Without thinking, some instinct, I tried one of the glass doors. Which opened.

  29

  “Vanessa? Auntie Vanessa?”

  It sounded infantile, that ‘Auntie’ now, made infinitely more inappropriate, such a teddy-bear word, called in the rough voice of a mature man.

  And needless to say, no one answered.

  Why do I put it like that? Because I had known, I had known even before I got on the second train, that something had again gone out of kilter. Like George, and his vanishment.

  I went methodically through the house. I looked in the five upstairs rooms and the bathroom, and downstairs in the living rooms, the kitchen and cloakroom. I even looked in the oven—cold and void, and in the fridge—stocked with marg and wholemeal, sugar-free jams, and milk and mince and free-range eggs, and with a solitary bottle of wine, not uncorked. The slices of cold meat were out already and arranged on plates. The kettle had been filled from the filter jug, with the decaff standing by in its big chocolaty jar.

  Everything in the way of furnishing or convenience was dusted, hoovered, bleached, scoured, polished and aired. The blue suite in the bathroom and grey suite in the cloakroom sang with hygiene and mint flavours. In the bedroom a book, closed solidly on its leather bookmark, was a nonfiction study of the English coast. Vanessa was about halfway through. Her nightdress lay invisible in its case. Her mules nested just under the bed.

  As with George, I looked in cupboards, under the beds of main and guestroom. I even steeled myself to look in her formal and unstimulating wardrobe. I let down the ladder to the attic and clambered up, and gaped out of a tiny diamond-shaped window. One could see the sea from the attic. I’d never known. But otherwise it only contained water tanks and wiring, these also in significantly good condition.

  I pulled out drawers and saw boring dossiers to do with house maintenance, bills and garden and shopping accounts, and similar stuff.

  In the end I ran a glass of water from the tap and drank it, sitting at the dining-room table. To take the unopened wine seemed inappropriate. Even to munch a slice of meat or lettuce, or bite into a tomato, was certainly forbidden by some oblique code.

  For about two hours I lingered. I didn’t, at any moment, imagine she would come back. Not after George.

  I didn’t bother to try the phone. I had a feeling it would give me the engaged signal, or that bossy voice that tells one to call later, like an insolent butler from the 1920’s.

  I had one strange and unworthy thought. I wondered if I should steal anything from her. Not money or jewellery, not that I noticed any, but a book, say, or a plate… something. I wasn’t sure if this impulse was from a desire for some memento, or only a wish to rescue an object randomly from the deserted property.

  She would never come back. Just as George would not.

  When I left, not having, or not having seen the key, I was unable to lock the French doors. As with the side gate, it couldn’t be helped.

  Was I depressed? Frightened? No, nothing much. It was only rather melancholy.

  As I walked back along her road I told myself she would come in soon, and make a fuss that I hadn’t turned up, and hadn’t rung her to apologise. But I knew perfectly well she wouldn’t. I’d never hear from Aunt Vanessa again. And never again from Uncle George.

  Back on the Brighton esplanade I had fish and chips and a couple of beers. All around people were eating and drinking, and gazing at the churning white and turquoise-green sea. The chalk makes it green, I think somebody once said. The sky was going to a grumpy purple. It would rain soon. Or pour. Pour like silver milk on the just and the unjust together.

  Irvin:

  30

  I have seldom seen a worse or more worthless attendance than there was tonight at the theatre. Is it for this we trod the boards in our finery, with reddened lips and darkened eyes, and sang out the words of the poet? Is it for this I stabbed to the heart with the trick dagger the delicious Mis’us Merscilla Peck, an actress of some quality, and the blood-sac disgorged, and I at last fell dead from the villain’s poison, so realistically and disgustingly? For twenty-three persons and some irritated dog, (this beast not worth one flea upon the back of my own pernicious and unfaithful hound)?

  Well, so it goes. But our wages will reflect this wretched meagreness of a crowd, as does a polished spoon the dirty dish.

  So then, home, and not even a dawdle with Mis’us Peck to console me.

  The house as ever damp and drear, and the benighted roughness of the land outside, among the coppices and mournful as a painting I once saw of a nocturnal Ophelia, drowning herself in a leaf-falling autumn, under a flux-brown river. This penance of a view runs all the way west of north, to the
Ravensburn marshes.

  The dog was out and off about his business, as ever, ravishing some neighbourhood canis femina.

  In my turn out I went again to the Black Sheep Inn, and had there some strands of meat in a levy of boiled water.

  I must find another leman, it seems, until the fair Merscilla, who shows no mercy, (indeed her husband is the kinder to me), until, I say, she forgives me for the sparagal of tonight’s congregation. Why I am to blame, who knows? But then, he who can wholly fathom the mind of a woman no doubt is a very great master of wisdom, which I, alas, am not.

  No fire on the hearth on returning, though I had paid for such. I will speak to the landlady, if ever I am able to catch her. She is elusive as the unicorn. Though less lovely.

  Blow out the candle then, Irvin, and lie down in the icy bed. May God forgive London. I do not.

  Klova:

  31

  He didn’t come back. Coal, I mean.

  Who else would I mean?

  Like truly I hadn’t expected him to. And I would get used to it, that he never would.

  But I didn’t.

  There were also no new shots, and now the bank-nanny had paid the quarter for the flat and the gadgets that heat and light and clean it—including the extra polish to the tiles—I was down to one hundred and twenty. I messaged the nanny and asked if I could have a loan of three hundred, and later it messaged me and said No. Instead I could have an overdebt of one hundred and fifty, at an interest rate of like something I might not be able to repay unless someone wired in three thousand shots pretty fast, and then even a thousand shots might end up paying off the debt-interest. So I said No as well. Then I went to bed at Zone 20, like some kiddy.

  I can remember that at the Child Centre. How they shoved you off to the dormitory so early. And I used to cry, but silent, so the bullies didn’t hear.

  I never knew my parents, not even my mother.

  On my birth-registration she is called CP.

  That’s like the letters on the lipstick, now I remem it.

  C.P.

  Only there are like as the other smaller letters too. On the lipstick.

  32

  Next morning I got up and I had an idea.

  I’d dreamed of Coal, and he said in the dream, “Where are you?” And I thought then he meant he would like to see me, but he wouldn’t be the first one to move. After all, I’d told him to go. I still didn’t know really why I had. It was because of him going on about the rat smell. Stupid.

  But I didn’t of course have his Mee number. I decided though if I went to the Leaning Tower that night he would be there again, and perhaps it would be fine.

  I put on the black and gold and red and all of that, even though I’d worn it there before. It wasn’t anyway worn when I saw him first. I put sparkles in my hair, which is black at that time.

  When I left the flat-house I for some reason rem’d the peculio male and the girl who asked me about their lost male called Sigh. No one was in the street. No visible home lights anywhere. And the lights weren’t on in the Forest and the float-lamps had gone all bunched up about five buildings along and were useless, and blinding when you got under them.

  I caught the sprint.

  It was only when I was on it I thought; there was no bad smell in the hall tonight. I was really sure this time there hadn’t been. Perhaps I could ask him back.

  When I got into the Tower I went along through all the rooms, slowly, each by each. I only bought one liquid-silver. It would have to last. I couldn’t afford another. I couldn’t really afford one.

  I didn’t see him, though. I didn’t, anywhere…

  And then I went up on the roof-walk under the spire with the blue-mauve-rose-jade pulse beam. And I tried not to cry. I was early at the Tower, it wasn’t yet 48. So maybe he came later, the way generally I did.

  I went down and into the loud room and danced with myself a while. There were lots of girls and some males, all dancing with themselves, but none of the males was Coal.

  I had the lipstick on.

  I wondered, as he said his name was Coal, if his registered name began with P.

  At Zone 48 he came into the room, and tonight his hair flamed dark red like the chrysanthemums, and his eyes were red too, like garnets in his dark beautiful face.

  He was with a girl.

  They danced together.

  I went to the side and sat on one of the thin stools, and finally his eyes passed over me. I thought he would just cut me out. But he stopped dancing and spoke to the girl. Her face was blank but it went blanker, and he crossed the floor and stood beside me.

  “How are you, Klova?”

  “I’m OK. How are you, Coal?”

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “So am I,” I said.

  He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. I was so moved I couldn’t do anything. He said, “What do you want to do?”

  “Whatever you do,” I said but he couldn’t hear me.

  I said, “What about her?”

  He heard that.

  “She’s fine,” he said. And I looked and she was already dancing with two other males.

  “She’s just a friend. She’s meeting someone. I knew you’d be here,” he said softly, and his voice played under the music and I heard every word. “I knew you’d come here. I sent you a message.”

  “To my Mee?”

  “No. Just to your mind. Your heart. And I knew you would hear it and you would be here.”

  He put his arms round me and slid me off the stool and we went into a bar and he bought me another liquid-silver, but he drank fire-cracker.

  Then he said how about going to a room. And I said, “Let’s go back to my flat.”

  And he just nodded. No mention of anything not good. He smiled at me. He said, “Shall we have another drink?” And I saw I’d drunk all my second drink in about five minutes, but I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I can’t afford to stay in the Tower much longer. I only paid up to Zone 50.” And showed him the little mark on my thumb. If you outstay, an alarm goes off below, and a couple of people come in to remove you. It’s very discreetist, but you have to get out. Under Civ Law, if you don’t they can do things.

  He was staring at me.

  He said very softly, but now I heard him very clearly, for we weren’t in the loud room, “You can’t afford to stay.”

  “No. Oh, Coal,” I said, brightly, chattering from nervy happiness, “I’ve got hardly any currency left. No shots and I can’t get a loan…” I hadn’t meant to blurt it, and now, finding him and that the message-dream had been real, I didn’t care. It was nearly funny being without funds. It would change—didn’t matter.

  But he stood back, and looked down at me, with his garnet eyes. And something struck me then, that only the very well-off can use inner-eye cosmetics like that.

  “So this,” said Coal precisely, “is why you’ve come after me? You want pay off me, do you, Klova-flower? Yeah? Well, girl, you ain’t go’ have it. Right? Yeah? You can take your girlness out of here and out of my life. You can go and swim in blood and fire in hell you ice-cold cuntess.”

  And then he turned round and walked away over the room, silent and straight as a walking spear, and his cruel brain and tongue were the two sides of its blade.

  Then I got up and I was dead all over and inside, as if he had hacked me open wide and killed me.

  I could barely see or hear, and on the slide I dropped my empty glass and a machine sprang out of the silvery snake-skin of the stair and gobbled the obstacle away.

  In the street I leaned on the Tower’s glowing wall, under the staggerish sky poles. All people took me for a drunky, but I was dead. Only dead.

  Emenie:

  33

  The foxes were out that night a long while, sexually screaming for mates, seemingly insatiable once they joined one. Joined being the significant word. They stay caught up, as it were, for an hour, I believe. Who told me this I have no notion. Either its fun or it’s p
urgatory. From the cries you can’t tell either what it is, but presumably it’s all right: lots of cubs appear in the next relay of months. Foxes are hunted for their fur, of course, as in the past, but in London mostly people are hopeless even about killing a fox, luckily. Most animals get away unharmed from the improvised unworking traps and damfool mobs with sticks and stones. The ones with guns can’t shoot, as a rule, and ammo is scarce. Also there’s less or no traffic on the ruinous and multi-potholed roads. And the men in scarlet on horses, and with trained-to-be-evil hounds, are no more. At least I imagine they’re not. Let them rot.

  I dozed through the fox-night, aware—like the princess with the hard green bean—or pea?—under all her mattresses and sticking up into her like a spike—of Micki sleeping in the next room.

  Once I thought I heard her stir, and wondered if she would start wandering about. I was ready to forestall her, and if necessary I would have sedated her with some mild opiate or strong pain-killer, of which I had a store. Something in a hot drink. Not to murder, obviously, just to keep everything safe and sound. But I didn’t hear anything much else, and there was a tiny space when, very delicately and softly, she snored. It was more like a cat’s purr, and only lasted three or four minutes by my reckoning.

  I wondered what we would do in the morning. Go and look for the Park Man, probably, and/or my invented guys by the canal.

  We could visit the wreck of the Co-op, as well. And the High Street. I needed a few things, and she could help me carry them back.

  Never look a gift-horse in the mouth, and so on.

  34

  I didn’t risk the oven. We had rather old bread and a butter and peanut spread I’ve found recently in little individual tubs.

  I did put on the electric kettle, and we had black coffee and Sweet-Tooth, this also in individual sachets. She marvelled at the working kettle. I told her the legend of the guy who had wired things up so they worked for a couple of hours a day, if randomly. We had been ‘lucky’ this morning.