Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

  Saturday morning had been all right, though he had made the normal cracks about her shopping trip, as if he would not be the first to complain if she failed to appear groomed. She had warned him not to have the roast beef at lunch. Red meat was venomous and at his age he should watch what he ate.

  He was grumpy all afternoon, reminiscing constantly about his days as a young man, before he met her, as if that was the golden part of his life, now over.

  Amanda Mills had been looking forward to dinner. The hotel provided lots of health-conscious proteins and local salads made into patterns almost as attractive as those she herself constructed when at home—naturally, her gifts were not properly appreciated.

  Clive Mills chose veal in batter. She did not say a word. She had brought an indigestion remedy with them.

  When the veal came, Clive began on it, then laid down his knife and fork with a clatter. With an imperious wave he summoned the waiter. "This veal's rubbery." The waiter expressed surprise, which was a mistake. Other diners glanced about at them, amused, as Clive Mills raised his voice and trumpeted so that the candle flattened on its wick.

  The veal was removed and Clive waited, rumbling.

  Amanda Mills sat staring at her exquisite salad, no longer able to eat.

  When the waiter returned, there was no improvement. It was the same rubbery veal, now cold.

  As Clive Mills stormed, his wife stood up and vacated the restaurant.

  Half an hour later, when he came up to their room, they argued. What had she thought he should do? Meekly eat the inedible veal? He should not have chosen veal in the first place. It would have disagreed with him. Just because she only fed him muck at home did not mean he could not eat decently when away. She was sure he ate "decently" every lunchtime then, at Masons, judging by his waistline.

  Eventually they packed, Clive Mills paid the hotel bill, loudly proclaiming that at such prices one anticipated proper food, and they left.

  The drive was long, and accomplished in silence, save when Clive swore at other motorists.

  As they came up the steps of the house, Amanda had seen the glow of light in the living room through a crack in the dralon curtains. Timothy was in. Thank God. She could tell him about dive's awful behavior. Although Timothy would pretend not to listen, she knew that it was her side he would take. When he had been a little boy, how he had loved her. Sometimes he had got on her nerves, she had to admit, but children were like that. When he had been dressed in his good clothes, how gorgeous he had looked. And he had held her hand so tightly.

  The instant after she called his name, he sprang out into the hall. She had just noticed the flowers she-had left dying by the mirror, but Timothy's face made her forget the flowers.

  "Here we are," said Amanda. "Your father made a scene at the hotel. There was no point in staying. So much for the weekend."

  "Ah—right," said Timothy.

  "What's the matter?" said Clive.

  "Matter?" asked Timothy.

  He seemed to want to demonstrate, by the angle of his body, that the living room did not exist.

  "You've got some of your mates around," deduced Clive.

  Amanda knew a surge of fear, beer cans on the carpet, perhaps cigarettes.

  "That's all right," said Clive. "I'm going up to my den. Your mother probably wants to sulk."

  Amanda moved past Timothy. He did not try to stop her but fell away like a spent petal.

  "And who is this?" said Amanda.

  The girl was sitting on the couch, barefoot with bright red nails. She looked about twenty, the way they all did from thirteen upward. Her face was expressionless, like a bad painting. She was ugly, amid a tidal wave of blue-black hair.

  "Oh, this is—this is Ruth, Mom." Timothy smiled.

  His eyes were set like jelly. "You remember? I met her months ago at Jake's party. She comes up to visit—to visit her—grandmother." He did a sort of pirouette. "We met in Marks and Sparks. So we had—dinner."

  "I'm glad someone did," said Clive.

  "Ruth," said Amanda.

  The girl did not really respond. She did not speak. Her black slow gaze had roamed from Timothy to Amanda to Clive, as they talked. But when Amanda said her name, Ruth looked back at her. The look was closed as the eye of a camera. Was she on drugs?

  "Well, Ruth," coldly said Amanda, "how do you do?"

  "Now come on, Tim," said Clive Mills, "this is a bit much. We come back and find you parked in here with some girl we've never seen or heard of."

  "But I told you about Ruth months ago," protested Timothy. He looked very sincere and slightly outraged as always when he was lying.

  "Give me a bit of credit, Tim."

  Amanda turned to the doorway. She felt a kind of hormonal boiling. "I'm going upstairs for a minute," she said. "Clive?"

  But Clive did not join her. He had planted himself like a tank in a suit on the rug before the fireplace, the teasels in their vase outlining him oddly.

  Amanda went out and up the stairs, to see what had happened, and if they had used her bed.

  When she came out of Timothy's room, her husband was standing in the passage outside. He regarded her, sneering slightly. "Snooping? Well, has he?"

  "Don't be crude," she said. She shut the door.

  "What do you mean, crude? What have I said? I asked you—"

  "I don't think so."

  "No, he didn't have time. We messed that up for him good and proper."

  "How can you be so flippant. Do you want him bringing sluts in off the street to sleep with?"

  "Now who's being crude." Clive Mills waited for her returning blow, which did not come. He sighed. He wondered if the girl was a slut, or just impressed by Tim, his big mouth and his car and the Italian dinner they had apparently had while he, Clive, was driving back din-nerless.

  Clive sensed himself vaguely, tallish and heavy, in his expensive lounge suit with a spirit of mauve, the lilac tie —but not the matching handkerchief which his wife had told him was vulgar. He doubted this. He had seen TV news presenters in just such ensembles. She was always getting at him. She drove him mad, with her "Living Room" and "Loo," her white meat and fish, her nouvelle cuisine salads, her endless tirades on social propriety and constipation. Amanda. She had been easy on the eye once. Now the rigid diet had made her face a skull, and had left the skin of her arms rather too loose, but he was too tactful to tell her. Not like her. She was quick enough to criticize.

  That bloody veal. He wished he had never ordered it. Had the sodding diet plate. Then there would never have been all this.

  Old Tim, eh. What could you say? He must have had girls before, not still a virgin for Christ's sake.

  This girl was a bit bizarre though. Clive had told them both off fairly soundly. And Tim had gone red. But she. She was cool as a cucumber. No, not a cucumber, a smooth, white grape.

  Below there was a sort of crash. Probably Tim dropping something in his scurry to clear up.

  Amanda bounded down the corridor. She half screamed from the bannisters into the well of the house: "I don't like this!"

  Stupid bitch.

  "She'll have to stay the night, you know," said Clive. "That girl." Amanda stared back at him as if he had announced their divorce. "It's after eleven. Apparently her gran's had to go into hospital. She's nowhere to go."

  "You don't believe that?"

  "Well. Maybe not. But you can't put a teenage girl out on the street at midnight."

  Amanda was rigid. She charged to.the bedroom, and from a closet began to tear out a duvet for the operational spare room.

  Mothers got jealous when their sons showed interest in other women.

  Perhaps if she paid Clive more attention, she would be less sensitive.

  In bed, Amanda sat up, her face like half an egg spread with oil, reading an article on fiber.

  Clive lay with his hands behind his head watching the papered ceiling.

  "Let's make up, shall we?"

  Amanda did not reply. />
  Clive thought of the girl with black hair, over in the spare bedroom under the duvet. She had no pajamas. Would probably sleep in the T-shirt. Or in nothing. Bet Tim wished—

  Clive turned his mind to tomorrow's dinner. Amanda would have to make it now, and he had already seen the selected fish emerge from the freezer, and the mushrooms and carrots put out to soak. Tomorrow there she would be with her flashing knives, slicing up salads wafer thin. The fish would be full of bloody bones, it always was. Bony, like Amanda.

  The girl was slim. But a large firm bosom.

  Think about something else.

  "You know, Mandy, never go to sleep on a quarrel."

  Amanda rustled her magazine. He had betrayed her.

  He had spoiled their weekend. He had let the girl stay the night.

  The girl…

  "Ah. Call of nature," said Clive guiltily. "Must be your magazine."

  He went to the bathroom and shut the door. He turned on the taps in the autumn leaf washbasin that changed water into blood. He stood over it, and thought about the girl sleeping naked, and opening the door, going in softly. And she was awake, smiling up at him in some dim half-light of the imagination. "Shh," she said playfully, and she put his hand over one of her Big young breasts. He masturbated roughly, hard on himself, and came with a lunge, noiseless and hygenic, into the running water. Then he dried himself, flushed the toilet-loo, splashed around the taps, turned them off.

  The bedroom was in darkness. He stubbed his toe on the side of the bed. His own bedroom, and he did not know it yet. Amanda lay like a stone, pretending to sleep. But he knew she was awake, for always she snored when she slept.

  CHAPTER 4

  SHE WOKE AT SEVEN, AND IN THE chintzy window was a thick summer mist. When she stood there, she could just see to the edge of the pub wall, and over to the road beyond. And as she watched, two lighted eyes, strange as a dragon's, stared through the mist, and a dark shape glided out of it. Then another. Two black Rolls-Royces slid down the road and melted to a stop below the wall.

  Twenty minutes later, Cheta came with breakfast from the bar kitchen.

  The Scarabae were moving on.

  At half-past eight, Cheta and Michael got into the second Rolls. Eric, Sasha, Miranda, and Rachaela entered the first car. The windows were polarized.

  The nice young man came rushing to the car door. He had brought them a hamper, and more champagne, unsuitable for a journey. He fawned on them so desperately, Rachaela wished she might throw a stick for him to run and retrieve.

  The Scarabae were not very interested. They were polite, and absent.

  He gave up, and closed them in their polarized cabin.

  The driver of the car was a shadow behind a dark partition, who did not disturb them with communication.

  The Rolls was like a luxurious hearse.

  Rachaela wondered if they would speak to each other, Eric and Sasha, Miranda and herself. But then she fell asleep.

  It was a long journey. They stopped in the middle of the day, and once in the afternoon. On each occasion a different gray-suited man came decorously and ushered them into a different small, clean room of some hotel or public house, and here they were offered lunch, and later tea.

  The Scarabae picked at these meals. The healthy gusto of appetite Rachaela had always associated with them was not there. Perhaps this was due to sorrow, or only the discomposure of travel.

  Rachaela also picked at the food.

  She too was Scarabae.

  At the second halt, she said generally, "Where are we going?"

  "Everything is taken care of," said Eric.

  "To a hotel," said Sasha, "for a while."

  "It will be all right," said Miranda.

  They had all been talkative, too. But now they had lost their entity. They were soul fragments flung out into space.

  No one said anything else.

  After the tea, as after the lunch, they got back into the car. The champagne had not been touched, nor the hamper.

  Beyond the greenish blackness of the windows, the alien brightness of the day went by. The long winding of roads up and down, once a motorway, but only briefly. The other car kept behind them, separate yet unified. Presumably Michael and Cheta had left it at the halts, but Rachaela had not seen them do so.

  Hills were on the polarized skyline. Trees massed over walls. The sun began to set, a brown roar in the window.

  The Scarabae looked sad and small and isolated.

  They had never upbraided Rachaela for letting Ruth escape the attic in which they had shut her. They had not said to Rachaela that it was her fault, the burning of the house, the deaths by fire. They had recognized Ruth, it seemed, as a demon.

  They had not mentioned Adamus.

  As the night came black on the black windows, Rachaela was wide awake, and so they reached their destination.

  The hotel had been built as an eighteenth-century mansion. It still stood in its towering grounds, cloaked by chestnuts, blue larches, spread yews. A thirty-foot monkey puzzle raised its tarantula crown above the lawn.

  There was the impression, probably untrue, that no one existed in the hotel save themselves, and the mysterious unseen staff.

  The Scarabae occupied a vast meandering suite, perhaps half a floor. The rooms were designed to the eighteenth-century formula, almost, but not quite, exact. There were shades of azure and bronze, sugar almond and eau-de-Nil. The heavy curtains were kept drawn but here and there a piercing needle of the sun would fall through at some time of the day. Around these gold razors the Scarabae pecked with a kind of morbid ritual care. They had braved sunlight. Now they could move back from it. But like all dangers, though faced, it must not go unsaluted.

  There were clocks in the rooms which kept actual time.

  Cheta and Michael waited on them, as they had done in the house. The hotel staff were merely responsible for sending up to them the stacks of clean bed linen, towels and soaps, the dishes under silver, silver teapots, the bottles and decanters, and goblets of cut glass.

  Fresh flowers came every day. They had been carefully chosen to echo the colors of the rooms. Blue African iris, blushing lilies, yellow roses, and extraterrestrial flowers, never seen before, without a name.

  In Rachaela's bathroom were shampoos and conditioners, waxes for the hair and skin, emollients, astringents, perfumes, essences, creams, and gels.

  In her room the walnut bureau was supplied with what seemed to be a ream of pale honey paper, accessory envelopes, and two sheets of first-class stamps. There were Biros in a plastic tube, and a fountain pen in a slender box. In one bookcase, rose gilded encyclopedias, dictionaries, sets of Shakespeare, Trollope, Dickens, Jane Austen, George Elliot. And in the other, pristine hardback editions of contemporary novels and short stories.

  There was a well-tuned machine which comprised a radio and cassette player, and tapes of classical music in a case.

  A booklet in a calfskin cover referred to the hotel library, and what tapes and books were also available.

  Eric, Sasha, and Miranda perhaps discovered television at the hotel. Certainly they would turn on the big perfect screens in their rooms, and sit watching them, usually alone.

  Rachaela played music. She walked in the grounds. She met no one at all in the rose garden or among the topiary snipped to resemble peacocks and pyramids. No one out among the trees.

  On some fine mornings, from an upland path among rhododendrons, she found she could see away across miles of country, distantly yellow with crops, turquoise with farness, otherwise featureless, flowing into a dream.

  She did not know where they were. They were not near the sea.

  Rachaela did not ask the Scarabae any more questions. She was not even restless. She read the books and sent for others. She slept later, and sometimes again after lunch. At night she might sit by her window, watching the moon ride over the park.

  At dawn, pigeons cooed in the monkey puzzle. Once a fox ran through the chestnuts. Then she
thought of Ruth. But it was better not to think of Ruth. Rachaela pushed the thought away.

  / am a Scarabae.

  She did not truly believe it. Yet she could not wholly reject it, either.

  Summer deepened into autumn.

  Rachaela wondered if the Scarabae were now settled. She considered her departure, but to what? What had happened to her flat in London… ? It was too complicated. Days like falling leaves. The leaves began to parch and fall.

  Being at the hotel was almost being out of time. And yet the mansion was subtly modern. There were radiators in the rooms against the coming of the frost.

  Frost came.

  Then came driving winds and the trees lost their leaves. The monkey puzzle now was more than ever like a spider, its legs wrapped tight. Grass blue with cold, matching the azure sitting room. Rachaela said to Sasha: "You'll spend the winter here."

  "Oh, yes." Sasha added, "The house isn't ready yet."

  The house. Had they rebuilt it? Rachaela could not bring herself to ask anything else.

  Every Scarabae in a solitary room, TV and music and books. Rachaela felt like a child. There was no other way she could explain it to herself. Melancholy, and safe. Held fast in nostalgia.

  At Christmas, literally, Michael and Cheta decked the walls with boughs of holly. There was even a tree the management must have sent, tall and resinous, hung with golden filigree balls and tied by scarlet ribbon.

  The dinner was served in the evening. The main course was not a turkey but a huge roast joint presented with hot fruit and creamy, spicy side dishes, cabbage with raisins, whipped potato, and a type of black sausage. Afterward there was a pudding, sweet as an ache. They drank a somber wine that came in two bottles with dust upon them and two matted seals.

  When the meal was over, Eric led them in a prayer. At least Rachaela thought it must be a prayer. It was in another language—Russian, Romanian, God knew. Michael and Cheta stood by. They too murmured the responses. Rachaela sat in silence.