White Goddess

Fantasy & Science Fiction – July 1956

(1956) *

Margaret St. Clair (as Idris Seabright)

Idris Seabright is, as you know, often gentle and even tender in her imaginings: but she can also be, when the occasion demands it, uncompromisingly cruel—as in this brief tale of crime and unexpected punishment.

-

“I don’t for an instant suppose you really want my wretched teaspoons,” Miss Smith said sharply.

Sharply, yes, but her voice held the rich, throaty, fruity tremulousness of a BBC actress playing an old woman, a young BBC actress; and Carson perceived, alongside of his indignation at being cheated out of his small booty —she must have eyes in the back of her head —the hope that she really was a young woman who for some personally cogent reason had elected to dress and act like a woman advanced in age. It was somehow less nerve-racking to think of her as a young woman in disguise than as an old woman who moved and spoke like somebody in her twenties.

Whoever she was, she was certainly not the gentle, woolly-headed, lovable victim he had intended. Mauve shoulderette and blue-veined hands to the contrary. He had met her on the boardwalk, which had always been one of his best hunting grounds for nice old ladies. He hadn’t had to fish any more than usual for the invitation to tea. Now he saw that she was neither old nor a lady. And the name she had adopted was an insult. Miss Mary Smith —anonymity could go no further.

“What are you smirking about?” she demanded. “I want my spoons.”

Silently he reached in his overcoat pocket and pulled out five teaspoons. She was right, he didn’t need the money. He almost never could sell any of the things he took from people her age, and when he did the money was paid into a separate account and was never touched. It was a neurosis, less creditable than moral masochism, better than a lot of things he could think of. He enjoyed it a little too much to want to be rid of it.

He put the spoons down on the tea table in front of her, and sank back into his chair. She counted. Her foot —bunionless , but in a wide black oxford —began to tap. “That’s only five. There were six. I mean to have the other one.”

Reluctantly he gave her the last spoo n. It was the best of the six, ste rling and old, but so meager in a ll its proportions that it would never be worth much more than it had been at the time it was made. The bowl was full of fine, small dents, as if some infant, contemporary with Washington and Jefferson, had teethed on it. Wretched infant —the sharp, penurious edges must have finely lacerated his gums.

She snatched the spoon up and gave it a fierce rub on the folds of t he teacloth . She handed it back to him. “Look in the bowl.”

Carson did as he was bidden. Miss … Smith obviously wasn’t going t o call the police, and while he was un comfortable he wasn’t exactly a fraid. “Well?” he said, putting the spoon down on the table again.

“Didn’t you see anything?”

“Only myself, upside-down. The usual thing.”

“Is that all!” She sounded jarred. “Give me back my watercolor, while I’m thinking. It’s worth even less t han the spoons.”

She couldn’t have seen him pick up the watercolor. She had been making the tea, with her back to him, and there were no mirrors or shiny surfaces. She couldn’t even have noticed the gap the watercolor had left, for it had been sitting behind three or four other tasteless pieces of bric-a-brac.

“We might as well have some lea,” she said, pulling the restored watercolor over to her side of the table. Even framed, the picture was no bigger than a European postcard. It showed a palm tree, an island, water, all very runny and imitation-Winslow—Homery . No wonder Carson had thought it would be a good thing to steal. “Should you like a little gin in your tea? I find it helps.”

“Yes, please.”

She poured from the square bottle into the teapot and left the bottle sitting on the table. They drank. The tea was scalding hot, and Carson could only make its burden of spirits tolerable by loading his cup with sugar.

Miss Smith put her own cup down in the saucer. She coughed and then blew her nose into a man’s cotton handkerchief. “You’d better get in,” she said, tapping the surface of the watercolor with her middle finger, “and see how it fits.”

-

Whooosh , whosh , thud. Carson was inside the watercolor, sitting on the island with the Winslow—Homery palms.

The grass was infernally stickery and the place was as noisy as pandemonium. The waves, blocks of granular blue frozen custard, landed against the beach with the rocky crash of pottery plates, the sea gulls skirled like bagpipes, the serrated palm fronds gave out the cry of sheets of tin.

Yet Carson was not too distracted to perceive that in the Smithian sense of the word the island did fit him rather well. The noise was an insulation ; he didn’t care whether any old lady’s mantelpiece anywhere held bric-a-brac the right size to go into his pocket. He was as muzzy and comfortable as if Miss Smith had cuddled him up nicely in folds of her woolly shoulderette .

Heigh -ho. Must be the gin. He slept.

When he woke up everything was still going on. Gulls, waves and palms contributed their respective noises. Out beyond where the rigid blue freezer-product waves were forming there was a dark blue turbulence in the water. Had it been there before? Must have. He wasn’t sure.

Could be caused by lots of things —a surfaced shark, a giant turtle, a Vernean octopus. Could be. Wasn’t. Wasn’t. Carson gave a feeble, frightened yip.

Pop. He was sitting opposite Miss Smith at the tea table again. She had put a cozy over the teapot, but it seemed to be still the same pot of tea.

She buttered a crumpet and put the whole thing in her mouth. “Did you like it on the island?” she asked, chewing, “It was all right at first,” he replied unwillingly. “Later there was something swimming around under the water I didn’t like.”

“Interesting.” She grinned. “You didn’t mind the noise, you didn’t mind the isolation. It was something swimming around under the water you couldn’t see that you … didn’t like.”

What was she up to? Was she trying to perform some sort of divine lay analysis on him? Trying, in ap proved psychiatric fashion, to find out what he was afraid of so she could rid him of the fear? Nah. More likely, she was mapping out the contours of his fear so she could embed him, fixate him, in it.

“Why are you so interested?” he asked. He tried to butter himself a crumpet, but his hands shook so he had to lay down the knife.

“It isn’t often people try to steal things from me.”

No. They wouldn’t. It took Carson, with all the old ladies in the world to choose from, to get tangled up with somebody who was Isis, Rhea, Cybele —there were lots and lots of divine identities to pick from —Anatha , Dindymene , Astarte. Or Neith.

Carson licked his lips. “How about a little more tea?” he suggested. “And a little more gin in it? It makes a refreshing drink.”

“There’s plenty of gin in it already.”

None the less, she did not protest when he took off the cozy and picked up the square bottle. She didn’t seem to be looking. He’d been fooled that way before, and she probably was watching. Yet it might be possible to get even a goddess drunk.

He set the bot tl e down with the label toward her, so she couldn’t see how much was gone. “You pour.”

Did the hand that held the teapot over his cup waver? He couldn’t be sure. “Goodness, but you’ve made it strong,” she said.

“Refreshing!” He managed a smile. “Do have a crumpet. Vitality is low, this time in the afternoon.”

“Yes.” She was shaken by a spell of coughing. A crumb seemed to have caught in her windpipe. He hoped she would choke to death.

She washed the crumpet down with the last of her cup of tea. “And now I’ll have my paperweight.”

It was the last of his booty. He had liked it the best of anything. Sadly he took the globe from his pocket and gave it to her.

She tapped it. Flakes of mimic snow floated up to the zenith of the sphere and then began to settle down on the snow scene at the bottom again.

“Pretty,” she said admiringly. “Pretty snow.”

“Yes. I admired it.”

“… getting late to try you on anything more. B’sides , I know pretty well what you’re like. You ‘re the kind can’t stand waiting for anything unpleasant.” She upended the teapot over her cup.

Her voice was getting fuzzy. She had spilled a trail of drops over the tea cloth before she set the teapot down. Now was the moment, if t here was to be a moment.

“Thank you for a pleasant afternoon,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising. “Perhaps we can repeat the occasion at a later date.”

Her mouth opened. A film of saliva glinted iridescently between her parted lips and then broke. “What rot. In with you, you stupid fool.”

The paperweight received him. It was a little like pushing against a stiff wind, a little like swimming, but he could breathe well enough. He worked his way through the fluid —glycerine ?—to the glass wall and peered out.

Miss Smith was snapping her fingers. Her lips moved. She started to get up. She collapsed on the floor. The teacup fell from her limp fingers and settled down beside her cozily.

Miss Smith had drunk herself out. As the moments passed, he began to wonder. He would have expected her to twitch. At last it was borne in on him that she wasn’t out. She was dead.

-

About 8 o’clock somebody came in an d found her. There was a lot of rushing to and fro before the men with the stretcher came. The teacup stayed on the floor.

They hadn’t thought to draw the blinds, either. Moonlight shone in on his glass prison and lit up the snow at the bottom brilliantly. If only it were real snow! He thought longingly of the exquisite little hole he could have scooped for himself in a snowdrift, the warm Steffanson -style slumber he could have enjoyed in his fluffy burrow. As it was, he floated vertically all night, aching with insomnia, as comfortless as an asparagus stalk in a sauce pan.

Day came at last. He didn’t know whether he regretted Miss Smith’s death or not. Did an irrational belief in-her potential benevolence still linger in him? After the island and this?

The morning was well advanced when a cleaning woman came in. She was young, her mouth was red, she had flamboyant yellow hair.

She plugged in the vacuum and went over the floor. Tardily she undressed the tea table and washed the tea things. She picked up his paperweight.

She shook it roughly. Snow began to fall around him. She pressed her nose up against the glass in a prodigy of short-focus accommodation. Her eyes were enormous. It seemed impossible that she should not see him.

She grinned. He recognized her. Miss Smith.

He might have known that Nei th wouldn’t stay dead.

She shook the glass once more. She set it down sharply on the mantel.

For a moment he had thought she was going to throw it against the tiles of the fireplace. But that would come later.

She might let him live on for days. She could set the globe in the sun, freeze it in the frig , buffet it back and forth until he got as seasick as a resented fetus … the possibilities were many. In the end there would be the crash.

She drew her finger across her throat playfully. She unplugged the vacuum and went out.

The End

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