Personal Darkness

by Tanith Lee

  And I am wearing a Marks and Spencer's bra and matching briefs, and no tights or stockings. Satisfied?

  Althene did not help her don the white dress.

  It fitted untightly but rather well, except for being a fraction too close at the bust. Althene, although taller, must be more slender there. And it was, of course, a couple of inches too long. It met the floor.

  "Cheta will be here in a moment. She'll see to that. It can be let out an inch or so, and taken up. Then the dress will be yours.. You must keep it."

  "It's lovely, but it isn't my sort of dress."

  "What nonsense," said Althene.

  She turned Rachaela about by a slight pressure on her arm and back, and there was a mirror framed in gilt grapes and ferns.

  Two beautiful women looked out at them, one a little taller and of a slightly larger frame. Both with loosely curling, jet-black hair, eyes of night or dusk, faces from a dream. Royal. One the Red Queen, one the White Queen.

  "Snow White and Rose Red," said Althene. "Never say to me again it isn't your sort of dress. And you shall have a pearl necklet with a clasp of gray gold."

  "And do I keep that too?"

  "If you wish. My shoes will be too large for you. My big feet fill me with annoyance. Go barefoot."

  Rachaela turned in a type of fury, and Althene turned too and caught her face in two large slim hands. "My beauty," said Althene. "You must cease running away from yourself. One day you'll catch up. What will happen then?"

  Rachaela stepped back, and Cheta knocked on the door behind the curtain.

  There were two-foot candles of parchment white burning on the dining table in bronze sconces, and eight places laid.

  The table had a cloth of dark crimson, with a border of old scarred gold.

  From the table's center rose a confection of plants, and a palm tree with dates of polished wood.

  Miranda and Sasha wore black, heavily sequined, and Eric his black tuxedo. Camillo wore his black leathers, and a T-shirt with Harley-Davidson written over it, under an eagle, in white. Lou wore a black dress with a low neck, a steel necklace, a bridal veil dyed black which touched the ground. In her ears were tiny silver gas masks she had once found at Camden Lock. Tray had on a basque and miniskirt, black, with a narrow hot-pink stripe running through them. On her arms were black lace gloves reaching to the elbows.

  At the hollow of Althene's throat lay a large polished ruby on a platinum chain. Rachaela's white dress now fitted exactly. She had not worn the pearls. She did wear Anna's ring.

  The dinner came, borne in by Cheta, Michael, and Kei, who had fashioned it.

  There was steamed asparagus with butter and black pepper, served with a Riesling of the Napa Valley. Then came poached pike with a sauce of cumin, honey, oil, and white wine, served with a dark rose of Anjou. Lamb followed baked in pastry, having a filling of apple and dates, and matched to a red African wine from Mbanga. After this was bream flaked and baked with onions in sugar, and served with tall thimbles of vodka. Then strawberries in a brandy sauce, with champagne. Last arrived long plates of Camembert, white goat's cheese, and strong Cheddar, with slices of guava, raisins, and various nuts, and a French dessert wine.

  They ate, the voracious Scarabae, and old memories seemed to rise. Of Russian Jewry, of Caesar's Rome, and of some land that was not named but was the country of the mind.

  Lou and Tray did not eat. They pecked and pushed aside. Their lips, tongues, and intestinal tracts were locked into the here and now. Besides, their sutured waists gave them no room for expansion.

  Rachaela ate a little of everything. Inside her, too, strange nostalgias, perhaps prompted by the wealth of blending drinks, curiously surfaced.

  Sometimes she was happy. At others near to tears.

  Everything seemed cast away by the glory of the meal. It spoke of other days that had never been.

  "Kei is a genius," Althene said to her.

  Rachaela thought of Althene at such banquets. She was decorous. Inside the V of her red gown was a plaque of wine-red lace. Yet surely somewhere, once, she had let out poison from a ring at such a feast. The body had convulsed and been carried out. Another dead enemy.

  Camillo ate like a boy allowed to stay up. Before the next mouthful he might be sent away to bed.

  Sasha and Miranda and Eric ate hungrily, yet with a delicate reserve. Their hearts were broken, like sections of clockwork in their breasts. They must live with this. Did so.

  Sometimes Eric, or Sasha, would beckon Michael and Cheta to the table, and insist that they sample something on a little side plate.

  Michael wore also the dinner clothes of the 1950s, and Cheta a matte black dress with a golden brooch like a snake.

  There was hardly any conversation. And yet, the brain was full of unheard noises, sounds and sweet airs, elegies, faint cries. Beyond the house, the storm had long since died.

  Rachaela was amazed she had eaten so much, and thought her stomach would rebel. But it did not. She felt soothed and sad, easy, distant.

  The meal was like a symphony, with themes and developments.

  It too had an end.

  After the symphony of meal, came actual music. It was dance music. Tangos, a quick-step, a waltz.

  Eric partnered Miranda on the space of polished floor beyond the table, and then Sasha. They danced well, even glamorously, young slim beings with ancient faces and hands. Then Eric came to Cheta, and she shook her head, but as with the food he insisted. Then Cheta too danced like a young slim girl.

  Eventually Eric nodded to Michael, and he went out onto the floor alone. And there he danced alone, graceful as a ghost and with a ghost for a partner.

  When this was done, seen through a kind of mist—it was two in the morning, the candles had shed their leaves of light—the Scarabae went from the room, almost all of them. Sasha and Miranda, and Camillo, shepherding the two tiddly little girls, and Althene in her wine and ruby. Eric was left. And Rachaela.

  Have they drugged me? I can't move.

  It was only the drink. The wonderful food.

  She longed suddenly to sleep.

  But Eric stood in the dimness of the candles' dying. He said, "I must tell you now, Rachaela. Malach has found Ruth."

  Rachaela felt as if she had been brutally struck through layers of sponge.

  "I—Ruth. You're saying Ruth—"

  "Malach has her."

  "What does that mean?"

  Eric stood still. They all had this habit, this immobility. She too.

  "I mean, Eric, what will happen now?"

  "It will depend."

  "On what?"

  "The decision is Malach's."

  "It shouldn't be. What is he? Some hired assassin?"

  "Scarabae," said Eric.

  "But you want her dead, don't you? She's a child—" Rachaela thought, A child that kills.

  "She is ours."

  "But she killed your kind."

  My kind.

  "She isn't given to us," said Eric. "Malach has her."

  How did they know? Some messenger? Some telephone call while she was floundering in Althene's peacock room. How?

  It did not matter how.

  Rachaela was helpless. As before.

  And Ruth—was with Malach.

  CHAPTER 22

  AGAINST THE BODY OF HER LOVER, IN his bed in the furnished flat over the tobacconists on Park Road, Linda Reeves lay wakeful through the night. The room smelled faintly stale and socks lay on the floor, but these things, along with the flimsy chairs and creased bedclothes, were a comfort.

  She had left Richard. He did not know yet. But it was done.

  She had doctored her wrist with witch hazel and bandaged it. The bruises on her arms and across her rib cage would not show. He had not cracked a rib as she had at first feared. This had happened once before, and the pain had been much worse. The dark glasses hid the harshness of the old black eye, and the new one. There was not much she could do about the cut on her lip or the swelling.r />
  She was afraid Danny would send her straight out. She looked a sight, and the customers might be put off their ale. Then again, they had seen marks on her from time to time. Probably they guessed. They were nice to her and bought her or gave her money for drinks. They were down-to-earth at the Fox and Glass.

  Richard had disliked her working there. But he would have disliked her working anywhere. He wanted her to be at home, as his mother had been for his father, to "look after him."

  But when she had made efforts to please him, they were never a success. She had even tried baking bread. But she had not got "his mother's touch," apparently. He had thrown the bread out. She had never learned not to argue with him.

  In the beginning, the blows seemed to clear the air. He was so contrite afterward. He would bring her pot-plants which, in the strained atmosphere of their house, quickly died. She was blamed for this. His mother had been able to grow anything, including all the vegetables.

  Early on Linda had hated the dead Mrs. Reeves. Later she realized the dead Mrs. Reeves was like Daphne du Maurier's dead Rebecca: the fantasy of others.

  Richard had furnished the house as a "home" in what he thought to be womanly taste, the way he said his mother would have done it. Linda was not a proper woman. She could not be trusted to get it right. So there were flounces and lace curtains and antimacassars, horrible, graceless clutter. He collected Victoriana too, bulging candelabra roped with gross forget-me-nots, flowery chamber pots, fat huntsmen shooting at something.

  She had met Iain Morrison at the Fox. It was on a night when her face was clear of bruises. She had felt quite happy because Richard had gone overnight to Birmingham on business.

  She had drunk five gins that Iain had bought her, and when the pub closed, she went with him back to the ugly unpretentious flat, and in the unlaundered bed, for which he apologized, made love. She had experienced, in Iain's arms, an orgasm so volcanic, she screamed. And afterward she cried, told him she had been wrong, and went back to Richard's fudge house.

  Since then, they had made love, Iain and she, only three times. Snatched mornings, an afternoon, when sup-posedry she was shopping in her incompetent, unlike-Richard's-mother way.

  She had always been afraid Richard would hurt Iain.

  Iain, begging her to leave Richard, had said that he would like Richard to try. He would like to give Richard back some of what he had doled out to her.

  But she was so terrified of violence by then she could not face their confrontation. To her Richard was like some enormous overpowering force. Nothing could withstand it.

  Sadism had become a custom. It was not that she liked it. It was only that now it ran in her blood.

  Then came the evening that she had been arguing with Iain, in the room behind the bar, about how she could not leave Richard, must try to make a go of it. And she had thought, misinterpreting some gesture, Iain was about to hit her. And she had cowered.

  Iain had gone mad. He had yelled so loudly at her that Danny had come around and ordered him out.

  "If you think that's what I'm like, like him, that cretin—we're finished. That's it. So long, Linda. Thanks for all the rotten times."

  After that, although she had cried a great deal on her own, locked in the bathroom with the taps turned on to hide the sounds, Linda Reeves had tried extra hard to be for Richard what he seemed to need.

  But, of course, Richard only needed her mistakes, so he could punish her.

  Truly, she knew. And as they walked back from the cemetery together, she had been saying to herself, Oh God, what am I doing? Oh God, how can I get away?

  Then that strange little black-haired girl had knocked on the door, wanting—who was it?—a Mrs. Watkins?

  And Linda did not dare to ask her in, although really she would have liked to. Someone new, a cup of tea and a chat. She might have been able to help, they could have tried the directories, maybe found the right house. Such a pretty girl, in a wild, unusual way, like a young ballerina. She would have been interesting.

  But then the girl went and Linda swore at Richard. Swore at him—for God's sake, had she not remembered how he was about swearing, or "blasphemy"—and he had come down and he had laid into her.

  It was a terrible beating, but not the worst he had given her. She had been in hospital once.

  But somehow, it was the end. It was like a gateway, and she knew she had only to run through. Though, initially, she did not.

  She put herself together as best she could, quietly, while Richard stayed downstairs, drinking whisky he bought for himself and never offered her, because it was bad for a woman to drink alcohol.

  In the bathroom she fainted, but only for three or four seconds. She came to sitting on the floor, and something made her laugh at that.

  When she was tidied up, she went down. It was best to act as normally as she could after an attack. He would be morose, but no longer violent, and eventually this stage would pass into the next one, of concern and contrition.

  "Well, I'm just off," she said. "Don't forget the pie in the oven."

  "That will have to do, I suppose."

  "It's a nice pie. You'll like it."

  "At least you don't try to make your awful travesties of home cooking anymore."

  Her eyes were a little blurred, and her left ear kept on buzzing. But she would manage.

  She had taken the whole four hundred and fifty-six pounds from the concealed store in her underclothes. She had saved from her wages and her tips, but not often from Richard's housekeeping. It was what she called secretly her emergency fund. Why she took it now she could not have said. Perhaps in case he searched and found it.

  "I'll see you later," he said.

  When he did so, she felt a hot twisting in her heart.

  "Don't be late," he said. "And make sure you tell them this is your last week."

  "Yes, Richard."

  When she got outside, her legs almost gave way. Mrs. Carey from number seven was going by with some shopping and her nice big dog.

  Linda waved jauntily.

  She reached the Fox and Glass and Danny looked at her and said, "Christ, Linda." But when she shook her head, "I'm all right," he said only, "Go on, then. But if you want to come off and sit down, just let me know."

  She had a gin and pineapple that Mary gave her. Then a high came on her, so that she felt strong, and that nothing could harm her anymore. Nothing. Not even Richard. And in those moments she knew Iain would come in, and she would be able to make it up with him.

  Linda was adept and brilliant with the customers that night. She clowned and got them to laugh, so they overlooked her injured face. When they offered her drinks, she kept the money, to put with her four hundred and fifty-six pounds.

  By ten, Iain had not come in after all.

  Last orders went by, and then the pub started to clear. It drained like a glass of liquor. Only the wreathes of smoke, the empties, the flat packets of crisps. Let down.

  Danny bolted the doors and Mary said to her, "Come and have another gin. You've bloody earned it."

  But Danny gave her a brandy.

  Linda downed it. And then she found herself in a chair with Danny saying, "I've never moved so fast in me life." And she guessed he must have caught her as she went over.

  After that she thought of Iain and she began to cry.

  How the tears hurt, gushing past Richard's gift of bruises, and when they touched her lip, they stung. When she blew her nose, that hurt too. He must have hit her there as well. Her ear buzzed. Perhaps it would never get better.

  At midnight, when she was sitting with Mary, Iain appeared, hammering on the back door. Someone had told him about Linda's face.

  He stood over her, wet from rain—there had been a storm—white and scowling, his own eyes full of tears, and fire. It was Richard's face, but it was not Richard at all.

  "You're not going back to him. I won't let you."

  At the flat, he held her so gently, not to exacerbate her wounds, but pa
in and mad joy kept her awake.

  She lay and breathed the frowsty wonderful smell of love.

  She thought, / don't want anything of Richard's.

  There was nothing to take from the fudge house. Everything in it was his, or things he had bought her that he believed she should have, things she did not like. She loathed it all, even to the plain underclothes he made her buy and the flat, uncomfortable shoes, and the medicinal toilet waters, and set of brushes with fat Victorian maidens.

  But I do have to go back. Just once. Iain will go with me. And that bastard, that bloody stinker won't touch him.

  For Richard, confronted by Iain's male, six-foot, twenty-two-year-old fitness, would quail.

  I'm thirty-four. I'm too old for him.

  In his sleep, Iain turned a little and kissed her hair.

  I can make this flat smashing. Iain won't mind. He'll enjoy it.

  But I have to go to Richard, just once. To tell him I'm leaving him for good.

  Her ear had stopped buzzing.

  At one in the morning, Richard Reeves was sitting on the big sofa in the main room, finishing a whisky.

  Linda should have been home an hour and a half ago, and she was never later than midnight.

  Richard knew where she was. She had gone with a man. But the man would chuck her out presently, and then she would have to come back.

  He could not call the pub, the phone was broken. It had been knocked over last week. Her fault.

  He had been sorry after she left, sorry he had slapped her. She made him angry. She did it purposely. But he must try to control his irritation. He would say he was sorry, give her a cuddle when she came in.

  But she did not come in, and, justifiably, the anger began to build again.

  He went back to the whisky and soon after midnight he had drunk his fourteenth shot, counting the four he had taken earlier. He needed to calm his nerves. He needed to have it out with her. Who did she think she was? He worked and slaved to give her the best. But she was off with some man. He had suspected. He was never wrong.

  When the door knocker went so loudly, Richard was fuzzy, and he thought that maybe Linda had forgotten her key. So he stood up and girded himself in rage, and went to the front door to open it.