by Tanith Lee
Eric nodded, just as Anna had done.
He said, ‘I’m afraid Miranda isn’t here. She’s always out now. She loves the city. But Sasha will come down. You must pardon Sasha,’ he said, ‘if she seems a little strained.’
Do you mean if she acknowledges who Anna really is?
‘Why would Sasha be strained?’ said Rachaela, flirtatiously.
‘At our age,’ Eric said, ‘one must condone some eccentricity.’
Rachaela laughed. He was quite serious. He meant, when one is two hundred or five hundred years old...
They talked about films then, Eric and Anna. Their tastes were diametrically opposed. The house Scarabae liked violence, vivid action, and adventure, brutal killings and ruthless justice, adrenaline and startlement. Anna spoke of Vivien Leigh in Caesar and Cleopatra and A Streetcar Named Desire, Bogart’s Casablanca, Olivier’s Hamlet, Alec Guinness and The Man in the White Suit.
They found common ground with Claudette Colbert’s Cleopatra. ‘Inaccuracies don’t always matter,’ Eric said. ‘It is the soul that counts. A delicious film.’
But Rachaela, her eyes irresistibly caught by the video covers on the carpet, thought, How odd. Anna prefers black and white.
Cheta and Michael brought tea in a blue porcelain pot and a service of blue and white china. There were plates of little cakes and candied fruit, and a small decanter of some colourless liqueur.
It was like the refreshment that had been served when Malach first brought Ruth to the house.
Where was Sasha? Would she refuse to come down?
Anna took one of the cakes, and a single piece of orange. She drank her tea black. Had she always?
From the stairs outside piped a young girlish, childish voice with a faint yet erroneous accent.
‘I like strawberry best, Nan-Nan.’
Yes, that would be Tray, the daughter of the man, Nobbi, Ruth had fatally sliced in the neck. The adopted Scarabae daughter now, presumably. Her voice had altered. Less cockney and far less adult. She had been about twenty, and now would be twenty-two or twenty-three. But she had become, of course, nine or ten, maybe even younger, in those past moments of blood and screaming.
Would Tray—or Terentia, the Roman name they had given her—would she acknowledge who sat here now, in white, the demon-murderess? Or would that be out of the question?
Sasha and Terentia came into the doorway together, slender forms sliding through.
Sasha wore a contemporary damson dress suitable for a smart woman of eighty years, which is what she appeared to be. Her hair was no longer piled up, but becomingly cut and shaped, just touching her shoulders, a style too immature, that suited her.
Terentia-Tray wore sequined black, a yard of black hair coiling down, blue eyes wide and guileless. She carried her toy lion, the one they had bought her after Nobbi’s death. It looked battered, like any loved toy, both of its ears resewn.
Sasha did not seem stressed. Unlike Terentia, her face was full of knowledge.
‘Oh, look, Nan-Nan,’ said Terentia, ‘Cheta did me some strawberry ones.’
‘Of course she did, dear,’ said Sasha.
Miranda had been Nan-Nan, three years ago. But perhaps Miranda was now too youthful for the role. Sasha had replaced her.
The two women moved forward over the clean milky carpet. Anna had stood up, like a well-mannered young gallant.
Terentia looked at her, with childish interest, as if at another little girl, probably come to play with her.
Sasha raised a strange quiet scowl.
Then she fell on the carpet.
She was so light, so apparently fragile, there was scarcely any noise, but Terentia bent over her in panic—‘Nan-Nan! What is it?’
Eric rose and went to Sasha. Cheta kneeled beside the fallen woman. Then Michael came and carried her to one of the white sofas.
Sasha was laid down. She turned her head and looked at Eric with tired ancient eyes.
Eric held her hand.
The Scarabae could be unbearably touching. But they were not. They were old and strong and regenerative and deadly.
Rachaela glanced at Anna, who seemed grave but composed. Rachaela did not say anything.
Now Sasha was sitting up, and Terentia was sitting by her, holding her other hand.
‘It’s all right, dear,’ said Sasha. ‘Sasha’s well again now.’
Terentia let her go and picked up again the plate of solace, the candied fruit. ‘Have some, Nan-Nan.’
‘Not for a moment. But you eat one for me.’
Terentia began to eat the candied strawberries, un-greedily, almost dutifully.
The two black and white cats, Juliet’s children, had emerged through the door. They too sensed importance.
Anna called to them, and they came. She picked them up and sat down with them, beside Rachaela.
Cheta brought Sasha a glass of brandy from the cabinet.
Sasha said, ‘You must excuse me, Rachaela. I’m a little frail today.’
And you’ve just seen Ruth again. Ruth who killed the original Anna by hammering a knitting needle through her heart.
‘Yes. I understand, Sasha. And this is Anna.’
Sasha looked at Anna again.
Sasha said, ‘Anna, how glad I am you came to see us.
I hope I didn’t frighten you.’
‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I’m sorry you were ill.’
‘Only for a second. I’m restored now.’
The conversation was not correct. It was not even stilted, save by the Scarabae way of talking, the foreign accent that was always inaudibly yet intrinsically there, the phonetics of steppes and cold mountains.
‘Thank you,’ Anna said, ‘for my name.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Sasha, ‘my dear—’
Eric said, ‘It is a family name. Yours by right.’
Acidly, Rachaela said, ‘Biblical names are always so apposite.’
Terentia said, quaintly, ‘Do have a sweetie, Anna.’
Anna said, ‘I’ve had some. They’re nice, aren’t they.’
‘I like the strawberries best.’
Rachaela beheld them, the twenty-three-year-old with the toy lion on her lap, aged nine. And the two-year-old who was sixteen, holding two cats.
The key to the mystery came to Rachaela. Tray had become amnesiac to blot out the ghastly butchery of her father. And Ruth, reborn as Anna, had also become amnesiac, to blot out the very same thing and its consequences.
And the Scarabae? For them Anna was not Ruth. Or if she was, they could forgive if not forget.
After the tea, Eric showed Anna over the house. The green and white bathrooms, the ornate bedrooms with coloured windows. In his own chamber with the orange and chartreuse casements, he had carved a mask, as in the old days. It lay beside a half-formed head which now he was working on. It seemed the face was being assembled by consulting the contours of the mask.
Terentia followed Anna, obviously interested in her.
Sometimes Terentia would point something out. Anna was even allowed to cradle and admire the lion, which she did. But then, Anna too had her toys.
At some juncture Sasha disappeared. She returned when they were, about an hour later, at the brink of leaving.
She carried in her antique ringed hands a curious web. Threadbare, clustered with brittle husks that might have been dead petals or moths...
‘It’s very old. Anna. It’s a shawl that Alice made. I would like you to have it.’
She put the relic into Anna’s white hands, and Anna raised the shawl. Through its vortices of emptiness, fragments of idyllic crochet or unworldly knitting were revealed.
Carefully, Anna drew the shawl about her.
She became ancient, elemental.
Then she held out her arms and Sasha went into them. They held each other, Sasha and Anna. Then let go.
Eric kissed Anna’s hand and bowed to Rachaela. Michael opened the door, and they passed out, into the folding wings of day.
&n
bsp; ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘It used to drive me mad,’ Rachaela said, ‘the way I couldn’t get coffee in the Scarabae house. But then they let me have it.’
They went into the café, where early escapees from various jobs had gathered for omelettes and exotic toasts, wine and Perrier, before the public transport fight homeward.
Anna had coffee with cream and Rachaela a glass of white wine.
Near the bar, two ugly young-middle-aged men began noisily to ‘display’, shouting witticisms at the patient waitresses. Rachaela realized they were trying to attract Anna’s attention.
They would, naturally. Anna shone with beauty.
And the shawl now safely in a green Harrods’ bag Cheta had supplied. Anna only looked cunningly young.
Rachaela said, gently, ‘Anna, how old are you? I mean, how old would you say you were?’
Anna frowned. (Was this awful surrogate un-mother going to start on her again.) But, graciously, Anna said, ‘I’m quite old inside.’ She smiled. ‘But then, you are, Rachaela.’
‘I’m forty-five... Am I? I can’t remember.’
‘I don’t mean like that.’
The younger ugly man shouted jollily, ‘Did you put the salad in the microwave?’
‘Yes,’ said the waitress, ‘makes ‘em nice and crisp.’
Anna grinned.
A true grin. She appeared like a handsome wicked boy when she did it.
‘They want you to look at them,’ said Rachaela.
Anna laughed now, and drank her coffee, not shy, flattered or contemptuous.
Why did I bring her here? Am I trying to get closer to her? Her beauty is daunting. Was Ruth as beautiful?
Rachaela thought, Am I falling in love with my daughter?
She said, ‘Althene rang last night.’
‘I know. I heard the phone.’
‘I’m sorry, I thought you were asleep. I meant to say earlier... She’ll be home tomorrow.’
Anna looked pleased, the way a child does. ‘I hope it was okay.’
‘I expect so.’
‘Will you come to meet her?’ said Anna.
‘If you want.’
And now Anna was removed. She lowered her glowing platinum eyes, and her dark lashes—impossible for the albino that clearly she was—swept her cheek as in a romantic novel.
Anna wore no make-up. But her lips were drawn in tawny pink. A violet hinting accented her upper lids, and the thick dark charcoal lashes drew a line, too, round the exact shape of her iridescent eyes. The eyebrows were white, long and sleek, and never needing to be plucked. There was, Rachaela now knew, no hair on Anna’s body save at the groin, where it bloomed like rich feathers of virgin snow. And yes, with Anna, one sank into these poetic descriptions.
I am in love with her.
She’s mine, after all.
‘We could go to the pictures tonight,’ Rachaela said, rashly, an adolescent after a first date.
‘What film is it?’ sensibly, innocently inquired Anna.
‘Something that would bore Eric. It’s the specialist cinema. The silent A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Anna, eager and sweet.
The sun was dropping on the lurid, declining city, over its soot and slime and wreckage, and the gilded heights that still protruded, like the funnels of a sinking ship. Red sun fire filled the café, and as the two women rose, the aging men peered after Anna with unconscious yearning masked as lust. What a looker, and the older bit was in no need of dusting, either. But, busy men, preoccupied, they had not moved fast enough. And besides there were the regular wives at home, waiting with cooked dinners and reminders of worries, the mortgage, the broken washing machine, the loss of hair and joy.
Chapter Seven
Faran stood on the expensive blue chair.
He was looking out, across the road, at the echoing autumnal park.
Behind him, the expensive blue flat lay still before the coming of the man and the woman.
In the burnished window glass, Faran could also glimpse, like a shadow, his own slim black seven-year-old self. He wore expensive blue jeans, and a black T-shirt with an elephant, which read, in red, Ivory is not white.
He liked the elephant. He had pictures of elephants which his mother had let him put up in his room. But the logo troubled him. He knew it meant that white-skinned villains had robbed elephants of their tusks. But then black men had done it too, his father had sorrowfully told him.
The world was being destroyed, said Faran’s mother, by unscrupulous and stupid people. Soon nothing would be left. Faran would inherit a ruined earth.
He had had nightmares about it.
When he told them, they agreed. He had been sensible to have nightmares. Well done.
Both Cimmie and Wellington Objegbo, Faran’s parents, spoke with extreme upper-class English accents. Sometimes, it was true, Cimmie would come out with a phrase of what she said was an African language. She designed ethnic prints, using old methods of batik—which she said, although Javanese, had links to her genetic culture.
Cimmie was a pretty, slender woman, the colour of cocoa. Her hair was in short tight curls, despite the fact she could have grown it longer. She wore Western clothes and things she said were African as jewellery. She had earrings, for example, of buffalo horn. Apparently it did not matter if buffaloes were killed for this.
Wellington had a job with the government. He did not say much about it. Out of the flat he wore Savile Row suits and silk ties with the insignia of his school, and in winter, although Wellington was now over forty, and had some grey in his black hair, the old school scarf. Indoors, more often than not, Wellington wore jeans and went otherwise bare-chested. He had a marvellous body, and his dark muscular chest was his show-piece.
If Wellington went bare, especially when snow was on the park across the road, Cimmie could not leave him alone. They would disappear into the first bedroom for half an hour, several times a day, and soon Faran would hear his mother screaming. He had never been afraid. Somehow he knew that her screams had to do with pleasure, not pain.
They had told him early about sex. He had understood. Only when Cimmie added that he must marry a white girl had Faran been rather puzzled.
It turned out Cimmie and Wellington were racists. They did not like blacks. While being, conversely, fiercely fascist about their heritage, which they blamed previous whites for damaging, they had exclusively white friends. And when these white friends came to dinner, Cimmie cooked French dishes, with which they drank Italian and German wines and Swedish liqueurs.
The white friends, oddly, were also just as racist about their white colleagues, and sometimes it would almost develop into a row, once the four or six people were on to the tenth bottle of Hock: the whites shouting all whites should be shot, and the Objegbos howling that the blacks had rejected their honour and were worth nothing. On these nights, Faran, allowed to dine and sample the drink with the guests, went away to bed as soon as danger signals came visible. (His mother laughing too much, his father not enough.)
Faran, called for an African hero, was aware he did not know his parents.
He seemed to recognize a great deal in life, but he had never found them familiar.
In babyhood he was fond of Cimmie but he had not trusted her. From the age of two she left him regularly with (white) babysitters.
Over the past four years, Faran had also had tutors. There was the white Ms Baldwin, and the black Mr Thorpe. Why black Mr Thorpe had such a name Faran did not know. Cimmie said that doubtless he had changed his name. She treated Mr Thorpe with a studied swimming vagueness, while sitting over tea or wine with Ms Baldwin.
Faran found Ms Baldwin held his attention in arithmetic and geography, but Mr Thorpe, who taught history and English, filled Faran with happiness. Mr Thorpe was in his late fifties, very overweight, and of a beauty such as stars possess. He was blackly dark, as Faran was, and his eyes were like black
lights. Others did not see Mr Thorpe as beautiful, but then, maybe they had not been able to look into his eyes.
Along with his subjects Mr Thorpe imparted myth and legend. He seemed cognizant of all cultures, impartially. His tales lifted the short fleece of Faran’s head.
Once Mr Thorpe had been hungry, and Cimmie was out. Faran went into the white, white kitchen which the (black) cleaning lady made into a sort of Arctic heaven. Here Faran made Mr Thorpe a sandwich on wholemeal bread, of endive and cold chicken, pickle, beef tomato and mayonnaise. He added a large glass of chilled Gewürztraminer.
Mr Thorpe said, ‘Oh, Faran. No, Faran.’
‘My father’s in Paris,’ said Faran.
‘All the more reason,’ said Mr Thorpe, ‘to desist.’
Faran sat and deliberately looked sad, until Mr Thorpe ate the sandwich, and drank half the wine.
Faran then drank the other half.
This seemed like a bonding. They were now wine brothers.
The gap in their ages did not deter Faran. He preferred the company of adults—in any case had been permitted to meet very few children. However, Faran did not count Cimmie and Wellington, their friends, or Ms Baldwin as adults. Mr Thorpe was, and some of the people he saw on TV, and some of the people he read about. Faran grasped that he, too, was older than he was.
And Mr Thorpe seemed to have done this as well.
Then came a phase when Mr Thorpe attempted to take Faran to museums, galleries, and even to see films. Cimmie had grudgingly allowed this. But when Wellington returned from Kuwait, he put a stop to it.
The implication, which Faran instantly deduced, was that Mr Thorpe might have a sexual interest in Faran.
Faran knew this was not so. But demonstrably he was a child. He did not get a vote.
Mr Thorpe vanished from Faran’s clean, liberated, comfortable, arid life.
Now, at the window, Faran studied the park.
Cimmie sometimes took him for walks there, if they did not go shopping. Usually it was the latter. Designer coats with ragged images of black men wielding weapons, spiked jewellery, art materials, coffee-table books with wondrous photographs of velds, lions, and firelit Masai. T-shirts for Faran costing forty-two pounds each, displaying glorious-looking animals that were being destroyed in the rain-forests—so that every time he put them on Faran’s heart cracked and his blood ran cold.
