Cold Blood by James Fleming

doubt. General skin colour: milk and vanilla. There was nothing buxom about her, nothing remotely whorish that I could discern. No jewellery, no make-up, no pretensions towards elegance.
    Her spectacles had wire frames. She regarded me over the top of them—they’d slipped a little down her nose. For the first time I saw her eyes. They were lovely and large, atropine green, not deadly at all.
    So this was she, the librarian who rode the trams and took risks with men.
    Chance, it has a sweetness and purity all of its own.

Seventeen

    O UR BOOTS were muffled on the stone stair treads. She led the way, two steps in front. I watched the sway of her skirt. Underneath she was wearing woollen stockings. The seams at the heel of her ankle boots were as polished as the rest of them. A meticulous miss, my librarian.
    An argument between two men was taking place in the rooms on our left. Above and on the right someone was practising a violin to a woman’s piano accompaniment. “Cock your wrist more,
malenkiy.
Remember what your teacher said.”
    Upwards we went, to the fourth floor. Neither of us spoke.
    She had two rooms: a bedroom and a tiny scullery. The latter was painted light green. The bedroom, however, had a warm, good-quality wallpaper—pink bushy objects like huge roses on a cream background. The bed was a small double with a clean white counterpane. Along one wall was a curtain of a floral pattern similar to the wallpaper. Behind it were a squat and a water tap, also her toiletries on a scrubbed wooden shelf under a mirror. In a recess beside the door was a rail for her clothes. At the foot of her bed stood a chest of drawers. On it was a framed photograph of a girl aged about six. Huge eyes, like moons.
    She went into the scullery and set her bag down.
    â€œA good cabbage. A turnip—they’re much tastier now that the frosts have started. Bread.” She aligned them on a narrow fold-down table. “Lastly”—the blood on the brown-paper wrapping was still damp. She slapped the parcel down beside the turnip—“horse. My ration card for a fortnight.”
    â€œYou were lucky.”
    â€œI know the man.”
    â€œEven so...”
    â€œDo you want to share it with me?”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œIt was killed four days ago. The man told me before I bought it.”
    â€œFour days is fresh in these times.”
    Without spectacles, her face was elfin, small-boned and even fragile. But it was shrewd. When people took books from her section she’d make sure they registered them with her, and when they returned them, she’d check that the maps hadn’t been cut out. She’d be diligent, I knew it. Russians are always ripping maps out of books. They manufacture travelogue dreams from them.
    She said, “I’m famished. Let’s eat first. We both know how things stand between us. You wouldn’t have followed me otherwise.”
    There was nothing coquettish about the way she said this, nor in the way she unwrapped the meat and began to trim it.
    I said, “How do I help?”
    She went into the bedroom and took a metal token from a painted wooden box on the chest of drawers. “Hand this to the porter and he’ll give you a bucket of coals. It has to last me a week. We have to be careful about when we light the fire, when we eat and when we get into bed. I’ve learned how to do all three things in comfort. If I use more than eight coals a night, there’s one night I have to do without. Make sure he doesn’t put too much slack in the bucket.”
    We ate on upright wooden chairs on either side of the fire. Hanging over the fireguard was her nightdress—pink with blue piping.
    She said, “I’m no beauty, you can see that for yourself.”
    â€œSome women don’t need to be.”
    â€œI was sixteen before I discovered that.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œFor exactly one year I’d been working