by Lee, Tanith
No one – but for him, presumably – noticed I didn’t come back. The monkey was extricated and taken at once away. Glasses had been smashed. The party also broke up in confusion, and my mother drank herself into stupor, and, late the next day, took me out to lose me somewhere.
It was Chushi who found me in the bazaar, with the lights strung up on wires, and naphtha torches. She’d been looking for me. It was I who’d dawdled.
Although I never saw him again, for years I would lie in bed, and think of the cistern and the man’s hand on me, riven with glorious swirling excitements, tingles and surges that seemed to have no beginning and could bring no end, but which at last drew the snake upright on its rosy stem. I must have been seven by then, and reaching out to hold the snake, knew in stages that he too took me somewhere, and went with him, and arrived, and was lost.
But you still come back, that’s the problem with it.
Death and the Maiden
Esther Garber
One
St John Blaze was famous as a skilled, romantic painter, somewhat affiliated to the Pre-Raphaelite school – and also for many rumored exploits. One of these being that he tended to mix up his more complex colors on the back – and backside – of the latest nude model, using her as a palette.
Ruth met Blaze’s wife by chance at a charity event in London.
“Oh! There’s Lady Vera Blaze.”
“Vera?” asked Ruth.
“It’s a Russian name. She has Russian blood, I believe. Isn’t that superb? And so suitable, as she’s married to St John Blaze.”
Ruth had been press-ganged into assisting at a stall that sold beads and ribbons. She wondered how this had happened – some stillborn promise to a friend who hadn’t understood how to take yes as the true answer of no. After the first twenty minutes of playing with the colors of the ribbons, Ruth had grown leaden and bored. She was also growing into the floor of the large room with its fake palms and slow-moving crowds, dying of yawning.
But now here was Melisande Crabtree, chattering as usual in her cage-bird way. (Melisande. Anything less like…poor thing, with her long red nose and frantic crooked hat. But these archaic names were all the fashion now. Lord Tennyson’s poetry, and the sumptuous work of the Pre-Raphaelites, had seen to that.)
“Look!” cried Melisande, her nose blushing more deeply, “she’s coming this way.”
Ruth raised her heavy head and boredom and ennui fell from her with a resounding crash.
Vera Blaze was a tall, broad-shouldered, elegant woman. She wore a costume of midnight blue, simple as only wealth allowed. Her dark hair, piled up in coils under her wide hat, framed a strong face of high Slavic cheekbones and slanting golden cat-like eyes.
She moved in on their stall with the striding walk of a woman more used to horse-riding and, you suspected, trousers, in the freedom of her own home.
“Oh, good morning, Lady Vera,” stammeringly twittered Melisande.
“Hello, Melly. How are you? Good,” said Vera Blaze, dismissing Melisande with absolute politeness.
Look at me, thought Ruth. No, you won’t.
New-made aristocrats were always the worst, and after all Blaze had only been knighted last year.
Vera leaned forward a little and ran some of the ribbons through her fingers, dismissed them also, picked up a long strand of sea-green beads.
“Remind me,” she said, to Melisande, “what this is all about.”
“The charity we’re supporting? Oh, it’s Northern Orphans, Lady Vera.”
“Indeed. Is it? Are there many?”
“Oh, yes, Lady Vera. The mining disaster at—”
“Yes. I remember. You’ll think me callous,” she added, turning abruptly her amazing tiger’s eyes full blast on Ruth, who felt herself inwardly sway at the impact, “but I attend such quantities of these things.” She held out her hand, immaculately gloved, and Ruth shook it. Even the glove was electric, of course. “Blaze,” said the tiger. “Vera. And you?”
“Ruth Isles.”
“Miss Isles, I believe I’ll take some of these beads. My daughter will like them. At least, I hope so.”
“You have a daughter, Lady Vera?” Ruth asked, bemused. For how could this creature reproduce anything but lynxes?
“Yes. A young girl. About your age, I suppose. But then not so young that it means I am young anymore.”
“Oh, Lady Vera!” cried poor Melisande flirtatiously, but excluded to the outer reaches of the stall that were now about a hundred miles away.
Ruth said, “I’m not so young either, Lady Vera.”
“Do drop the lady. It’s tiresome. He dislikes it too,” she added with an unmistakable, offhand contempt. “He wanted it so much, that rap on the shoulder by a sword – but Sir St John sounds quite stupid, don’t you think.” Melisande bubbled with shock. Ruth grinned. “Melly,” said Vera, turning back to her, gracious and certain, a fine commander giving perfectly reasonable orders, “you take over this stall, will you?”
“Oh – but Lady Ver—”
“Parcel up all those beads for me, there’s a dear. Here. A pair of guineas.”
“But Lady Ver – that’s far too mu—”
“For those orphans of yours. And I’ll just borrow Miss Isles a moment. I really must have someone show me where the tearoom is.”
Ruth found herself plucked instantly away, swimming strongly through the currents of meandering ladies, side by side with Vera Blaze. Melisande was left behind, an astounded shipwreck among the guineas and the beads.
They drank tea at a table under a tall window, with a view of the self-absorbed city rushing by below, carriages, horses, and people.
“Northern Orphans,” mused Vera Blaze. “That, if abbreviated to its first letters, unfortunately spells NO. Not an augur, I trust.” She had removed her gloves to reveal wonderful practical hands, scarred across the fingers and palms by either hard gardening or horse-pursuits – or both. Ruth noted the golden wedding-ring, broad, and engraved by some classical design. Also a tawny polished stone worn on the right hand.
They had not talked about art. Ruth, who had no interest at all in St John Blaze, or his paintings, had sensed she was not now alone in that. Vera’s conversation concerned the state of London architecture, politics – briefly – and a ‘ludicrous’ soirée she had been to the night before. She made Ruth laugh at every juncture. Vera’s awareness of the absurd seemed finely tuned.
Then: “How I long to get home,” she announced. “London is always itself. But the countryside, even my countryside so close to the city, is never the same two days running. Also I can smoke at home after my cup of tea. I have a brand of cigars made especially for me in the South Americas. Delicious. I wonder if you’d like them.”
Ruth said, “If you did, I’m sure I should.”
“What an obedient girl you are.”
“I only follow those worth following,” said Ruth, recklessly perhaps.
But Vera Blaze merely said, “One prays your judgment, then, is never faulty.”
“Often,” said Ruth. “But sometimes true excellence is so overwhelming, even I can’t miss it.”
Vera turned and again looked straight into Ruth’s eyes, dazzling her. “The young go so fast,” she said.
“Like a runaway train,” said Ruth, her self-control changing to butter; malleable, salty, tasty.
“Well,” said Vera, “perhaps I should take you home with me.” Ruth’s heart bounded to a stop and fell over, panting, on the floor of her ribs. “How pale you’ve gone, Miss Isles – or shall I call you Ruth? Now is that surprise or pure horror?” Ruth shook her head. She felt foolish and gulped the last of her tea. The pleasant high of the leaves revived her enough to hear Vera Blaze amend, “No, I don’t mean the town house. Park Row is such a bore. I was thinking of the country place, Blaze House, at Steepacre. It’s not twelve miles from St Paul’s, so I think somebody once estimated. He’s off, by the way. Off in Italy with one or two of his more recent mistresses
. How lovely. Why don’t you pop back to your rooms and pick up what you want for a week or so – I suppose you’re free for a week or so? Splendid. Give me your address and I’ll send round the carriage in about two hours.”
Ruth realized that, having given the address, her lips remained parted. Probably to speak thanks or utter a scream of bewildered joy. Instead she must have, she later thought, sat there like a fish in water as Vera Blaze rose to her impressive height, and stalked, smilingly, away.
Well, she’s nearly killed me all right. Now I’ll just creep off to my thicket, until she sends her carriage for me and carries me to her lair.
Ruth entertained a vision of a slow devouring by a gold-eyed lioness.
Rather than creep back to her room, she sprang through the streets, as fast as her corset and the omnibus would allow.
Steepacre, when Ruth reached it in the yellow late afternoon light, was steep. Everything flowed up or down hill: fields in the first process of producing some sort of grain (corn? wheat?), hedgerows growing in some places to great heights against the thickets of oak trees and coppices of beech. A large village straddled the road with a hump-backed bridge that looked too elderly to be English and was probably Roman. Then the lane showed, through a froth of browning May blossom, the gateposts and the drive. Blaze House rose from its park with an oddly suburban, mock-Eastern look, doorway pillared rather like that of a Hawksmoor church, a little dome balanced above the central roof. For the first time in half an hour, Ruth recalled the city lay, its most bricked and depressing outskirts, just over a rise.
Laurels flanked the door. A huge brown dog with the head of the Anubis jackal-god of Egypt emerged from nowhere and stood staring as the coachman unloaded Ruth’s bag. Vera herself had not accompanied Ruth to the house. Apparently she had been delayed and would arrive later and by other means. Nervous already, Ruth had been made less – and more – nervous by Vera’s non-appearance. Now the dog compounded her unease.
“He’s all right, miss,” said a footman in rather slovenly clothing, emerging also from the front door. “He won’t do you no harm.”
“Really.”
“No. Soppy as a duck, he is.”
Ruth believed that ducks could be quite dangerous, if roused. But she walked behind the footman and the bag into the house, and when the dog padded in after them, asked, “What’s his name?”
“Bacchus,” said the footman. After a pause he added, “They all get daft names here.”
“All?” Ruth had been pondering who else was present in Blaze’s absence.
The footman though only replied that someone would come presently, and then carried off the bag in the upsetting way of such things. The dog meanwhile stood staring again at Ruth.
“Bacchus, here, Bacchus,” said Ruth in a firmly courteous voice.
Bacchus turned instantly and trotted away.
The hallway was now what took all Ruth’s attention. It was coolly tiled throughout in an Eastern manner, green lotuses and blue and turquoise images of peacocks with gilded tails. A circle of thin pillars needled up to support the roof of the dome two stories above, in which slits of colored glass stained slivers of light like lemons, jade, and raspberry jam. A fountain trickled into a square pool of goldfish.
Of course, it was St John Blaze who had designed the house. Like one of his most luxurious paintings, some Eastern domicile of odalisques... And he called his dog ‘Bacchus’ and chose his wife for her Russian blood and Russian name. (He had never, Ruth thought, painted her. Or Ruth might never have seen if he had, having never much noticed his paintings even when they were photographed for periodicals.)
A housekeeper came and conducted Ruth upstairs. Curved stairs these were, with gilt handrails that showed spread fans or gazelle hunts, and led to white-washed corridors, and pointed windows covered by lattices of wood that let through only countless diamonds of light.
The room Ruth had been given was also whitewashed, but with a huge plum velvet bed and scarlet settee flung with sequined cushions. An oriental lamp hung down from the ceiling, with a geranium boldly growing in it.
What on earth am I to do here? Ruth thought. But there was also a bathroom, and hot water available. She took a bath and dressed herself in her white evening frock. Outside by then the long yellow afternoon had burned into dark gold. The sun set in a field beyond the tumbling park, catching several woods alight as it fell.
When Ruth exited from her bedroom doorway, she found herself reflected in a mirror. But the wrong way round. She saw herself from the back. A startling view. The long white gown, bare shoulders, fair hair scooped up and some left drifting over the neck -
No, it wasn’t a mirror, but one more tiled annex, and there inside another girl, in a white frock, standing gazing out of one of the diamond-holes of a lattice.
Who was she?
Ruth hesitated, but then from below she heard the unmistakable voice of Vera Blaze, calling in amused exasperation, “Bacchus! Here, you beast! Good boy! There, your best muddy paws on my skirt. What a good fellow you are.”
Ruth hurried along the passage.
Like her dog, Ruth thought, now hurrying down the staircase. Just like her dog.
Desire, let alone sexual love, disorientates. You might be in the most familiar spot in the world, and if the object of fascination also happens to be there, everything else becomes – not only unfamiliar – but intangible, oblique. For this reason, not that of clumsiness or nerves, you drop the well-known cup on the carpet or stub your toe on the door-frame you have successfully negotiated nine thousand and twenty-two times previously. Love is a reinventor.
So now it didn’t matter, did it, being in this strange rich man’s house, all set about by Moorish tiles and feverish trees, with jackal dogs and backwards-seen mirrored girls. All that mattered was:
“Have a glass of this fruit brandy, Ruth. What a journey. You’d think it would be quite easy, but no. What a fuss they make, men. On and on. Poor chap, he’s only twenty-three and acts like some granny in Kiev. Oh we must do this as this. Oh we must never allow that and that—”
It seemed a local neighbor had wanted her to ride down with him in his carriage. Vera had obliged.
“He hopes one day he’ll manage an affair with me,” she added. “My God, the self-delusion. And I’m old enough besides to be his sister.”
Vera was resplendent, having changed into a white silk blouse and burgundy waistcoat over – almost as predicted – loose Turkish trousers. She had also taken down her hair, which ran in dark waters along her back. She smoked one of the cigars, perfuming the (Chinese) drawing room, while Bacchus of the Latin name lay like a sphinx at her feet.
No one else seemed likely ever to come in. Ruth didn’t quite dare to say, Are we alone here?
As well. Next moment an intruder entered. That was, not a servant, who might be expected to come and go.
Worse, Vera greeted the intruder with a warmed and softened expression, and holding out her hand.
The girl – she was the white-dressed one from the upstairs annex – moved forward slowly.
Ruth felt a flash of deep dismay.
Then Vera said, “Darling, here is a young lady I made friends with in London. Ruth, let me introduce to you my daughter, Emerald.”
“Emerald,” said Ruth. She heard the disapproval in her own voice. And quickly getting up, nodded to Vera’s daughter. “Miss Blaze.”
The girl, who Vera was now encircling with an arm, so delicately you could see it was a very cautious embrace, turned and looked at Ruth.
No, they were not, Ruth thought, at all alike. Neither she and the girl she had taken for a reflection – nor Vera and the girl who was her child.
It wasn’t fair hair she had. Noted in full light, it was like rusty gold. She had a pale exquisite face, modeled maybe from clearest marble. Only her blue-green eyes at all resembled her mother’s, in their long, oval, upward slanting. And yet – Emerald.
He must have named her, like the dog.
Even so, she was well-named. For her eyes were exactly like that – two beautiful, fabulous stones.
“Good evening,” said Emerald. She sounded like a mechanical doll. Someone – Vera, by some lightest touch – had turned the little key in her back, and now the girl came to ‘life,’ and spoke.
Ruth felt horribly compelled, more by curiosity and actual aversion than anything else. She crossed the room and held out her hand for Emerald to take and shake a little, in the fashion among worldly women.
But Emerald didn’t take Ruth’s hand.
“My name is Ruth,” repeated Ruth. “I hope I find you well?”
“No,” Emerald said at once. “I’m never well. Am I, Mother? Father knows I never am.”
“Nonsense,” said Vera. But she said it quietly, with a studied playful caution, just like the embrace that anyway, now, she had allowed to drop away. (Ruth let her hand drop too, unshaken.) Then Vera said, “Emily, won’t you go into the next room and play us a little music? We’d like that. Play what you want.”
“I’ll play Papa’s favorite.”
Emerald moved like an automaton, something graceful on wheels, gliding off into the next section of a room, where a large piano lurked like some black animal.
“Emerald,” said Vera, as unearthly strains of Chopin began, “the name’s his choice, obviously. I call her Emily, once the formalities are out of the way. I ask you. Emerald Blaze. It sounds like a race-horse.”
Ruth said, “She’s very beautiful.”
“Beautiful? Yes. If you like something that has no fire in it.”
Ruth was herself now quite shocked. She stared at Vera.
“Is she your daughter?”
“Mine. She looks more like him. She was conceived in a pine forest in Italy, when I allowed him, the first and final time, to have me. It was, our marriage, a mutually beneficial arrangement, as you may have guessed. My money, and his – how shall I put this – the disguise of being his wife. To begin with he was almost penniless, but already his reputation as a painter grew. My father was on his last legs, poor old fellow. He let me do what I wanted. Blaze and I – it was supposedly a whirlwind courtship. That St John got me with child at once only added to the romantic frisson. I thought of killing it. Something prevented me. When she was born, I knew why I hadn’t been able to. I’d never felt love like that. Hadn’t been able to imagine it. Emily was my one chance at the normal rights of womanhood. My child? My God, my child. And look – look at the state of her.”
