Killing Violets by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee [LEE, TANITH]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781473206205
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-30T16:00:00+00:00

Anna remembered the great kitchen from her compulsory Sunday visit, brought by the woman, Raoul’s Mother. It had been so clean, immaculate. The linoleum still damp, windows bright, the bowl of fruit and the flowers. Everyone had lined up, women and men, as if to be chastised.

What time of day was it now? The universal rain-twilight had made it difficult to tell. Also afternoon, perhaps.

The three long tables were not scrubbed, nor bare. Pots and bowls lay over them, and pans of copper and iron. These were dirty, and a smell rose from them of boiled vegetable matter, fish and cheese. The ovens too were crowded by debris. The floor was splashed, and greasy.

Two gaunt cruel-looking cats were lapping from a big dish of gravy. A large, freshly-dead rat lay stiffening nearby. Presumably they had killed it and been rewarded.

A fire burned, and a maid was toasting at it platefuls of buns, piling them high so that sometimes some fell off on to the floor. At last one of the cats took note. It rushed and seized half a bun and bounded away. From somewhere in the kitchen an arm was raised. An item of crockery, thrown at the cat, missed it, and smashed to pieces.

At this, the collective coarse wild laughter rose again. Anna looked at them, for they had not turned to look at her. Like the tables, the kitchen was crowded. It was hot and ill-smelling, and lightnings went over it from disturbed cutlery and plates. Women sat, as Anna had seen them in the summer doorways of houses elsewhere, their legs spread wide, hands busy with darning and sewing.

No bonnets were worn. The thick rich filthy-looking hair spilled from its knots and pins. Their aprons, if on, were patterned with stains. Some were barefoot on the greasy linoleum.

One fed a baby from her breast, there in the middle of the frowsy blowsy scene. Among the farms or slums of Europe this would not seem amiss, but here it was a dissolute image, augmented soon, for the girl – she was about fourteen – took from the table a bottle of some dark alcohol, and put it first to her mouth, next tipped it over her nipple. It would keep the child quiet.

Anna felt a disturbed flash of pity. But it wasn’t wise to pity these people. She must only respect them, and be wary.

“Whussat?” a voice shouted.

Anna knew this alarm heralded her entry.

She saw the cook called Ox propped in a gargantuan chair. Her stockinged feet, misshaped by bunions, were on a footstool. Her hair too was half unpinned, and her face incredibly like red cabbage. There was a tankard in her hand, which a boy now hurried to fill up, aslosh, with beer.

“Here’s our Unny,” said the cook.

What world had she come to? Downwards – it must be the Inferno.

Anna confronted the cook, and all the faces turning now to her, even the fur-sketched face of the cat with its beard of gravy.

And Anna bowed, as she had seen them do, to the ones who were, just, their superiors.

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