Tanith Lee - Crying in The Rain

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CRYING IN THE RAIN

By Tanith Lee

[19 jan 2001 - scanned for #bookz, proofread and released - v1]

A moving story of a life in a world half-destroyed by military folly and the nuclear Sword of

Damocles. The soaring talent of the author of The Birthgrave and the Flat Earth novels is at its

best in this short but very disturbing tale.

There was a weather Warning that day, so to start with we were all indoors. The children were

watching the pay-TV and I was feeding the hens on the shutyard. It was about 9 a.m. Suddenly my

mother came out and stood at the edge of the yard. I remember how she looked at me: I had seen the

look before, and although it was never explained, I knew what it meant. In the same way she

appraised the hens, or checked the vegetables and salad in their grow-trays. Today there was a

subtle difference, and I recognized the difference too. It seemed I was ready.

"Greena," she said. She strode across to the hen-run, glanced at the disappointing hens. There had

only been three eggs all week, and one of those had registered too high. But in any case, she

wasn't concerned with her poultry just now. "Greena, this morning we're going into the Center."

"What about the Warning, Mum?"

"Oh, that. Those idiots, they're often wrong. Anyway, nothing until noon, they said. All Clear

till then. And we'll be in by then."

"But, Mum," I said, "there won't be any buses. There never are when there's a Warning. We'll have

to walk."

Her face, all hard and eaten back to the bone with life and living, snapped at me like a rat-trap:

"So we'll walk. Don't go on and on, Greena. What do you think your legs are for?"

I tipped the last of the feed from the pan and started toward the stair door.

"And talking of legs," said my mother, "put on your stockings. And the things we bought last

time."

There was always this palaver. It was normally because of the cameras, particularly those in the

Entry washrooms. After you strip, all your clothes go through the cleaning machine, and out to

meet you on the other end. But there are security staff on the cameras, and the doctors, and they

might see, take an interest. You had to wear your smartest stuff in order not to be ashamed of it,

things even a Center doctor could glimpse without repulsion. A stickler, my mother. I went into

the shower and took one and shampooed my hair, and used powder bought in the Center with the smell

of roses, so all of me would be gleaming clean when I went through the shower and shampooing at

the Entry. Then I dressed in my special underclothes, and my white frock, put on my stockings and

shoes, and remembered to drop the carton of rose powder in my bag.

My mother was ready and waiting by the time I came down to the street doors, but she didn't

upbraid me. She had meant me to be thorough.

The children were yelling round the TV, all but Daisy, who was seven and had been left in charge.

She watched us go with envious fear. My mother shouted her away inside before we opened up.

When we'd unsealed the doors and got out, a blast of heat scalded us. It was a very hot day, the

sky so far clear as the finest blue perspex. But of course, as there had been a weather Warning,

there were no buses, and next to no one on the streets. On Warning days, there was anyway really

nowhere to go. All the shops were sealed fast, even our three area pubs. The local train station

ceased operating when I was four, eleven years ago. Even the endless jumble of squats had their

boards in place and their tarpaulins over.

The only people we passed on the burning dusty pavements were a couple of fatalistic tramps, in

from the green belt, with bottles of cider or petromix; these they jauntily raised to us. (My

mother tugged me on.) And once a police car appeared which naturally hove to at our side and

activated its speaker.

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