Cruel Pink Read online

  To be honest, I hadn’t indulged in the wardrobe since I’d felt I must peer into Vanessa’s grimly orderly and staid version in Brighton. I’d been put off, it seems.

  By now it was almost 3 a.m., and I was due to rise at six-thirty in order to be on time for work. However it wouldn’t be the only time I’d made do with less than three hours’ sleep.

  I swiftly got ready in the bathroom, and then went into the bedroom. The wardrobe here is small, of course. None of the rooms are large enough to fit big pieces of furniture.

  The wardrobe door is always kept locked. And the key is not on my key-ring, where it would definitely look incongruous. I store it elsewhere.

  On undoing the wardrobe, everything at first, to an alien eye, is average and of slight, if any, interest. Perhaps one becomes aware of a dark curtain that seems to hang at the far end, closing that area off. But it may just be a shadow, an optical illusion.

  I drew the curtain, which is black, and shoved it back along the rail with my everyday clothes, none of these of too bad a make or condition, and neither of any particular elegance, let alone merit. They serve. Beyond the black curtain is a softer grey curtain. Drawn back also it will reveal a sudden glitter and gleam, a sudden wakening to light and colour, reminiscent of dawn and sunrise. Another world, as in some famous children’s book, I believe, though I’ve never read it. Another world.

  41

  In colour it is rich wild gold, but augmented by a thousand glass beads, which are pink, a deep luxurious edible pink. The gold shines upward through the pinkness, and the pink reflects inward on the gold. Like a sunrise, as I said. The fringes that ornament the line of it are also pink and gold, but this gold far paler, with a silvery tone. And the second pink is hectic, like that of certain roses, geraniums, orchids even.

  Below, the accessories, also in matched shades. And above, on the little shelf—put in the wardrobe maybe to facilitate hats and gloves, in the days of such things—the hair. Blonde, the hair. Shoulder-length. Very realistic. It was very costly, even back then, when even luxuries were cheaper. The dress cost a very great deal. From a theatrical shop in Covent Garden. I remember how thrilled they all seemed to be at this staid, youngish man buying such a gem for his girlfriend, Sophie. And I said she had a thing about pink. It was her ‘favourite’ colour. The woman directly serving me came out with that old saying, “Blue for a boy, pink for a girl.” She and I laughed. I could recall my father quoting this saying, too, but I didn’t tell the woman that. I said Sophie would love the dress. And when I bought the cosmetics later, and the shoes, and expensive costume jewellery, all for Sophie, I also said how she would love those particular things. And some of the people who served me were enthusiastic at my perceived generosity, and others—very clearly—took me for a sucker, in thrall to some young demanding slut with a too extreme taste in fashion.

  I used Sophie’s name on the wig form; that transaction was managed by post. Sophie Thorney—another version, in fact, of our outlandish family name. (It truly is a family name, by the way. My mother and father had been cousins. Terris, Taurus, Terry, Thorney, etc. were general to them, and to all the kin I knew. Or, had known.)

  To answer a question that might be floating in the air, no, I never myself put on these garments, though they may well fit me; nor the wig, nor the make-up or the jewels. I only ever look at them, and that—just now and then, And touch them, sometimes. That’s all I’ve ever needed.

  Nor is the pleasure erotic. Though pleasure it is. I have no full idea why I am thrilled by these specific and idiosyncratically glamorous things. Although I do have several theories which, very likely, it’s pointless to set out here.

  After about twenty minutes I drew back the curtains and shut and locked the wardrobe door, and put away the key. It was getting on for three thirty-five, I must lie down and snatch what sleep I could before the alarm, faithful and infuriating as a watchdog, eviscerated me out of slumber. I considered inconsequently if Forrel would himself make it in to work. Poor devil. Half his Lottery money must be gone, and his girlfriend gone, and nobody but bloody old Rod to go to a sex club with. Poor sod.

  Klova:

  42

  No memory of coming back to the flat-house.

  I woke up there. It was like as morning, or I thought so.

  When I woke up again it was dark again. Night again.

  All the while I knew what had happened. How he misunderstood me. And what he said. Coal.

  What he said.

  Over and over.

  In my mind.

  Bank-nanny woke me next time.

  Four thousand shots.

  Didn’t care.

  Then I couldn’t sleep again. I walked about the rooms, even round and round the bathdome. I couldn’t get away from me, or from him, or from what he said, and thought.

  I thought, should I message him? But I didn’t have the number of his Mee. He’d never given it over. I couldn’t go back to the Tower. If he saw me he would say it all again, think it all again.

  There was a day and another night. No sleep. Just walking.

  Then I dressed and went out. No cosmetics. Like no eyes, no mouth. I walked along by The Nile, by the Forest. I passed the streets that lead away, all planted by their tall trees that never lose their leaves, and the tall shops that sparkle. The sun shone.

  I looked down in the water, and I thought about being under it.

  But then that seemed wrong, because someone here who was happy might find me and be upset. I never before thought like that. How I might hurt someone else.

  And I rem that girl and that male quack, those people about that other male called Sigh. And how I was with them, with her. Can’t help you. Don’t know. Don’t care. Live and let go.

  Couldn’t let go.

  Thought about the river in the centre of the city. Under there. Never found. Thought about that.

  43

  Somebody had written on a wall Five London Lives. I stared at this. What did it mean? Somehow it made me uncomfortable, but that can’t be, because I was dead.

  The river was still beautiful because darkness was coming. It was livid black-green and rippled with the gilded-oil snakes.

  I didn’t try to jump in.

  Didn’t want to spoil it.

  No. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t think the surface would break and let me through. Like as I’d lie on top and it would drag me away, and everyone staring, girls and males. And Coal would lean down and spit on me.

  44

  By the time I reached the flat-house again it was Zone 42 and one half. The Forest had no fire-flies, and all the float-lamps were out. And I could only see because the sky was very bright with lots of stars sewn on there, most of them manmade, they say, don’t they. And the moon was standing high up, and it was white, dead white.

  I didn’t want to be there, but where else? I didn’t want to be anywhere. Not even under the river in case, then, all I could be would be memory, remembering.

  But I looked up at the flat-house, and even the old man’s lights were shielded fully. You never see the old woman’s lights.

  Then I saw there was a light. In my social room.

  I stood there, looking over, staring. I was amazed, and my true misery I forgot. Because why was there a light showing from my window when you never could see my lights from the street.

  After this, another thing happened.

  Up to the inside of my window came this old, old man. And he stood quite still, and as I stood looking up at him, he looked down at me. He held a funny glass in his hand, like glasses were centuries ago that you see in museums on quick-view. And in the glass was a red drink he was drinking very fast. But he paused a moment, and waved at me.

  He waved.

  The old, old man.

  At me.

  From inside my flat.

  Emenie:

  45

  Despite getting sausages and cigarettes for Sy’s return, little Micki showed no wish to leave my house. No
t illogically, perhaps. Something in her brain had figured out that, while she was away and couldn’t know, she could believe he might meanwhile have returned there.

  I understood though the Bruvva figure could again turn up for real. So I had asked her if this would occur. She had assured me he’d gone off to Wales. Wales! How—? She said he knew a man with a van that worked, and they had been hoarding petrol for the holiday. And there were still boats, didn’t I know? She had told him to leave me alone, as well, she said. Inevitably, however, I knew too that if she vanished, just as Sy already had, Bruvva was likely to reappear in my life. I’d tackle that when it happened. He had struck me as fairly moronic. Though sometimes extra dangerous, morons are easier to remove. By which I don’t necessarily mean through murdering them—as I never want to, when they’re not labelled in the right way, the way that links them to me. As was Micki.

  Really I must admit, I just needed to settle with her. Concentrate solely on her.

  My reflections as we returned from the shopping spree were strong and lasting. I had to put her out of awareness before her optimism failed her. Before the night fell, darkness, disquiet.

  I used the oven, saying it sometimes worked at midday—and see!—it did. And we had hot lamb chops and tinned carrots, and for dessert dried morello cherries and long-life tinned cream. Then coffee with Vodka. She even smoked one of the cigarettes she had got for Sy.

  The sky turned gradually greyer and more grey. Then a pigeon landed on the sill of the kitchen, where you could still see out.

  The shadow patterns on the pigeon’s back were clearly legible to me.

  Each of them confirmed the stages of what I must do.

  We moved into the main room. It was a nice indoor afternoon. Cosy. I turned on the electric fire and by now she merely accepted I could run it for a while. I too was much more at ease, cheerful and relaxed. Now I had a firm grip of the plan.

  46

  At what I took to be four o’clock, and before the true full dark began to gather, I turned off the fire by the hidden switch. Micki was dozing and didn’t see.

  Making out I too had taken a nap in the armchair, I woke her by a prolonged, rather vigorous yawn.

  “Sorry. We both probably needed a sleep.”

  “I shouldn’t. I slept so well last night on your couch.”

  “Well, you’re welcome to stay tonight as well, if you like. Only tomorrow my bloke’s coming over, so…”

  “Oh! Of course.”

  I had introduced the falsehood of a masculine partner to reassure her I had no Lesbian designs on her, but she seemed rather deflated. So I added, thoughtfully, “Though, if you won’t mind him, I’m sure he won’t mind you—he’s a nice guy. We usually go to that house over the park. They have bands sometimes and sort-of wine—rather like that beer you talked about, maybe. But it’s not too bad. If you’d like to come along with us.”

  She smiled. “I’d like that. Thank you. If you’re sure he’ll be OK.”

  “He’s easy-going, my feller,” I said.

  Then I had a ‘brainwave’. “I’ve just thought, if the fire came on for a bit, we’ve probably got hot water. Would you like a bath?”

  She was the child again, and it was a Charles Dickens Christmas.

  “Oh—yes—in the caravan—well we never get water, let alone hot water—but what about you?”

  “I get to have lots of baths. It’s your turn.”

  She hadn’t seen the bathroom till then, only the cloakroom with the lav that flushed and the cold tap that dribbled cold.

  We stood together as the old cracked white bath filled itself with steaming water, and I added a few lavender drops from a container.

  “Let’s have some wine, too,” I said. “Oh, let’s enjoy ourselves! And tomorrow we’ll have a good night out.”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes.”

  Christmas comes but once a year.

  Treat the time with dread and fear.

  47

  Poor little girl.

  There was quite a strong dose in the wine, sleeping pills, but I’d mulled the wine on the oven hob and put in sugar and ginger.

  “It’s a bit bitter,” I precautionarily remarked.

  A bit bitter. The biter bit. The bitten bite. The bittern has bitten.

  I was fairly sure she wouldn’t drown. The bath is rather slim and short. I’ve fallen asleep in it more than once and still been breathing above the surface when I came to.

  When I went in, after about twenty minutes, she was well away.

  I stroked back her black hair from her steamy brow. She was breathing deeply, and smiling, in her sleep.

  Straightening, I saw myself in the piece of mirror that had stayed attached to the wall. It too was filmed by steam, but I made her out, the slim brown woman with her acorn hair and eyes. Older today, about twenty-nine, thirty. If I chameleoned into forty, I’d certainly be old enough to have had this little girl as a daughter.

  How sweet she was. I didn’t want her hurt any more.

  Leaning down I gently lifted her pale soft hand, with the faint tracery of its sea-blue veins at the wrist, and carefully and quickly cut across them three times.

  The razor was well-honed, the old kind. In the heat I didn’t think she’d feel it. And the pills—they’re good ones, I’ve used them myself once or twice. They’d have a thorough, syrupy effect.

  I guided her hand and arm back down to rest on the bottom of the bath.

  Just there, instantly, the water was changing, clear into pink and crimson. Into scarlet.

  That’s what they used to call it, those bastards who hunted foxes—not for food or clothing, but for sport. The hunting coats. Hunting Pink. Only they were red. Blood red.

  Her face hadn’t changed. Her hair drifted in the water. I looked at her body, now I had done what had to be done. She had that ethereal underwater paleness of skin I can remember seeing in reproductions of the work of Leonardo da Vinci, or Boticelli. Black hair at her groin, thick but not in excess. And lovely full little breasts, with small pink bonbons of nipples. But the rose water of her blood was already spreading over her, recolouring…

  Sweet child. Poor little girl. Go, as they had once said, with God. God bless you, darling dear. And walk in Paradise.

  I left her alone to die. She should have her privacy.

  48

  Next morning I let all the water and blood out of the bath. Then rinsed Micki off, and picked her up in my arms—she was light as a feather or a moth—and carried her through into my bedroom. I dried her and dressed her in a fleecy blue dressing gown I had, as if to keep her warm, which was irrelevant, but there. Then I sat her in the chair in the corner, with a cushion behind her head.

  Dead faces, even those of the young, fall in a strange way. I’ve noted that before. But she was still pretty. And she had that look, too, that I’ve also seen, though less I must admit on the faces of the ones I’ve killed. It’s a sort of secretive knowledge. But of what?

  Having settled her, anyway, I went and cleaned the bath thoroughly.

  This method had not, for Micki, I’m afraid, been entirely original to me. (I’d have liked it to be.) But not overused, shall I say. I knew however it leaves not much mess.

  As for her body, I didn’t want to chuck it in the cellar, down with the others, and her faithless, stupid twat of a lover, Simon. I wished, I confess, I could have found somebody to embalm her. She could have looked really beautiful mummified, even, like an Egyptian princess. But the means of her death at least were classic Ancient Roman. In those days they committed suicide like that, especially the females, a hot bath and a razor or knife and lots of wine, no doubt. And then the right hand, which had wounded the left hand and caused death and so was blasphemous, a criminal against the laws of men and gods, was cut off and buried separately. At least she didn’t need that. I was the killer. She was pure and free of blame.

  For now, she could stay where she was. The cold preservative season was getting under way
. In a while I’d find a means of disposing of her. For now, let her rest a little longer. She was safe, with me.

  Rod:

  49

  Most of the trees were empty of leaves. The shops were full of the compulsory pre-figurations of Christmas. I recalled the lament of my guardian. “It drives me Christmas crackers.” The cold was gathering in too, like the dark evenings.

  It was about this time I noticed that the bad smell had come back to the downstairs hall. It was, in fact, dramatically worse. Not drains now, I concluded, but a selection of rats dead in the walls. Oddly, these stinks had never seemed to reach up into the rest of the house. Nor had I ever heard rats, let alone seen any, about or in my flat, or anywhere on any floor. I wondered if the occupant of the other flat, the southside flat facing mine across the landing, had detected anything. But really nobody ever seemed to live there. I had always reckoned they were generally away, and at those times of their leaving or returning, I deduced I must have been absent myself. Certainly there was never any noise or disturbance from the other flat, as there never had been from the floor above mine, which also seemed unlet and vacant. Yet—how to explain this? I had, now and then, felt an awareness of another person—or people—evinced by nothing I could call up as proof—but nevertheless inhabiting both the opposite flat and the rooms above. It—they—scentless, noiseless, unlit, and having no visible form, yet I had a vague awareness of having—glimpsed them—without seeing. But no doubt that was just the foible of a tired man home from a boring job, and having no true imaginative life.

  That evening Forrel called me on the landline. He frequently had, and did, after our night out in Soho. Though as to how and where he got hold of the number, I have no idea. Some illegal foray through the firm’s security, perhaps.