Читать книгу Streaking - Brian Stableford - Страница 11

CHAPTER NINE

Canny was uncomfortably aware that the food was no better than moderate, but he took refuge in the thought that Lissa probably wasn’t going to eat much anyway. The mediocrity was only to be expected, given the short notice and the fact that the village shops managed their stocks much more economically than any town-based supermarket. On the other hand, the ’73 Pomerol was one of the best the cellar had to offer, and Canny took due note of the appreciative way that Lissa sipped it. After consuming two glasses she refused the sweet Bordeaux—and, of course, the dessert it was supposed to accompany. She also declined to partake of the brandy. Although she’d made her way through a perfectly adequate portion of the main course, Canny was glad to observe that she didn’t visit the bathroom in order to throw it up again.

Fortunately, Canny’s mother was perfectly well-behaved during dinner, and never once mentioned her gnawing fear that Canny might be gay—which she usually confided to all his female acquaintances, in the faint hope that one of them might have contradictory evidence and a willingness to share it. She called him “Canavan” once or twice, apparently spoiled for choice between her own preferred diminutive and his, but he didn’t mind that.

“You know that Daddy wants to give you the library keys tonight, don’t you, Can?” Lady Credesdale said to Canny, when he and Lissa Lo stood up together to go up to his father’s room. “He thinks it might be his last chance to do a formal handover, although Doctor Hale keeps telling him that he might live for another month.”

“He might, no matter how big a liar the old quack is,” Canny said. “He’s always been tough—too tough for his own good, perhaps. I’ll take the keys with all due solemnity, but I’ll let him take a look at Lissa first. He’ll enjoy that, and we might as well share what we can, while we can.”

Lissa Lo smiled at that too, but her motives were still profoundly unclear to Canny. Her body moved in interesting ways as she preceded Canny up the staircase, pausing more than once to study the portraits hung on the left-hand wall. He’d told the truth when he’d said that they were the best of the bunch, although that had more to do with the talents of the painters than the features of the sitters. The spectacular awfulness of the ones that had been retired to shadowed corridors on the third floor couldn’t possibly have been entirely due to the ugliness of the subjects.

“Did they ever smile, or did they simply feel an obligation to glower at their painters by way of intimidation?” Lissa asked.

“They certainly didn’t think of sitting for a portrait as any kind of fashion shoot,” Canny replied. “It was a matter of duty, to be faced in the same purposeful way as checking the accounts and sleeping with their wives. I’m different, of course—too much television, Mummy says.”

The model made no comment, but Canny could imagine what she was thinking as she scanned the faces of his ancestors. The Kilcannon luck had never extended far in the direction of good looks. Canny was, indeed, the cream of the crop in that regard. Not for the first time, Canny cursed the reflexive flicker of mad optimism which said that there might be something in this encounter for his long-suppressed hormones, as the hostile stares of his forefathers told himself to pull himself together. Wile he was in the presence so many ugly Kilcannons, he didn’t dare believe that someone as beautiful as Lissa Lo might be seriously interested in his body. It seemed far more likely that she was here on some kind of quasi-anthropological field-trip, like a Brave New Worlder visiting the Savage Reservation.

Lord Credesdale looked terrible, and he wasn’t entirely coherent at first, but Canny had been right about the sight of Lissa Lo giving him a lift. He rallied, in spite of the depressive effect of the morphine—and once his tongue was loose, he began to string sentences together with reasonable fluency. After half an hour of aesthetic appreciation and idle chitchat, though, the thirty-first Earl asked the model, very politely, whether he could have a few moments alone with his son and heir.

“I won’t keep him long,” the old man promised. “Family matter—might not have another chance.

“I can’t believe that,” Lissa said. “A mind as strong and capable as yours isn’t about to lose its grip just yet. But of course you must have a moment with Canny. I’ll wait downstairs for a while. I promised to be in my hotel in York by eleven, because I need to catch up with my sleep before taking the long haul out to Venezuela, but I won’t go without saying goodbye unless I have to.”

It was the first time that she had spoken Canny’s nickname; Canny was profoundly glad that she hadn’t called him “Can” or “Canavan” in spite of hearing both from his mother’s lips.

“Thanks, Lissa,” Canny said. In the circumstances, her promise to wait seemed to him an extraordinarily generous offer.

Lissa closed the door behind her, very neatly.

“You know what these are, don’t you?” said the dying man, drawing the keys out from beneath his pillow, where Bentley must have placed them.

Canny knew that it wasn’t a good time to say “Of course I do”, let alone “Get on with it”. It wasn’t as if he’d never been in the library before, although he’d never been in any hurry to take up the burden of scholarship on which his father had always urged him to make an early start. He could have picked up the keys from their resting-place any time he liked, rules or no rules. The formal passing was purely symbolic—just another little ceremony, insufficiently burdensome ever to have been put to the proof—but Canny made no objection. He said his lines dutifully, trying not to sound weary—although his lack of sleep the previous night would certainly have given him an excuse.

“That’s almost certainly part of the ninety-nine per cent of it that’s bullshit,” Lord Credesdale told him, forthrightly, when they finally returned to normality. “I wish I’d been able to figure out which is the odd one per cent, but I couldn’t. You might do better. I hope I didn’t use more than my fair share, if it turns out to be a wasting asset, but you know how it is—they don’t all win, and when the tide’s going out it’s sometimes hard enough to stay even. You haven’t been fucking that tinted Sindy doll, I hope?”

Canny shook his head and pursed his lips. “She’s not a doll, Dad,” he said, curtly. “She’s heard of the Land of Cockayne, she uses words like ‘crenellations’ in everyday conversation, and she’s prepared to compromise her diet for a ’73 Pomerol. She thinks the Restoration’s beautiful, in its own way, and rumor has it that she doesn’t go in for fucking at all—not even photographers or footballers. She’s got where she is on looks alone, without pimps or producers’ casting-couches. And of all the great Yorkshire traditions, the casual racism is the one least worth preserving—I’d really rather you didn’t die with a sin as stupid as that one staining your soul. Now you’ve seen her at close range you know how believable her reputation is.”

“So what does she want with you?” was the brutal counter to that.

“She’s certainly not after my money, Daddy—or the family secrets. She’s no more a Mata Hari than a Sindy doll. I doubt that she wants anything at all—but that’s not mutual. On the other hand, I’m not desperate. Even if I never get to kiss her, I like her a lot. Okay?”

“I’m sure she’s a lucky girl in every respect,” said the dying earl, with the faintest of sardonic smiles. “I’m sorry. Can’t help worrying. I suppose you’re free to make your own arrangements, while you’ve nothing to lose, but there are warnings in the journals against sirens.”

“She’s not a siren, Dad. She’s not a Mata Hari, or a Jezebel, or a Delilah, or any other kind of femme fatale—and the only reason the earls of old were so bitter about female beauty was that they couldn’t get any half-way good looking woman to give them a second glance in spite of their money and status. Lissa’s a woman like any other—except that she can have any man she wants, and has no reason at all to pick me. She’s just curious, bored with her usual entourage and her usual routine. Let it alone, will you? Can I go back to her now?”

Yet again, his father could only contrive a nod now that the reserves of bile had spilled out of him. He’d been able to talk to Lissa Lo with an approximation of charm and fluency, but he still hadn’t mastered the art of talking to Canny with the aid of any other motive force than resentful disapproval.

“Tomorrow,” Canny murmured, determined not to let it go just yet. Then he went to say goodbye to Lissa Lo, and to tell her that she was welcome to drop in any time she liked.

She had obviously been crossing words with his mother again; to judge by their respective expressions, Lissa had scored all the palpable hits.

“Thanks,” she said, when he had offered the invitation. “It’s a fascinating house, and I was interested to meet your family. Sometimes, I miss having a home—but my mother’s been a nomad for years now and I hardly remember what it was like to have a real home. She’s in England at present, but we might relocate to the USA next year. It’s so difficult to choose where to settle, given the rate at which the climate’s changing.”

“I really am very grateful for the lift from Monte Carlo,” he said, as he walked her to the stables, where her car was waiting. “The hours it saved me might turn out to be precious. No matter what Old Hale says, Daddy will be lucky to last the week, and there are things we need to settle.”

“I understand,” she assured him. “I don’t suppose we’ll be bumping into one another on the Riviera again, but while mother’s in England I’ll be popping back as often as I can. I’ll ring you, if there seems to be a chance we could get together.”

The last few words reverberated in his mind, and in his body too. If there seems to be a chance we could get together. It was explicit, then: there did seem to be a chance. Except that, given her reputation, he couldn’t be sure what “get together” was supposed to imply.

He opened the door of the hire-car for her, but he dared not make any further move. He waited for her to turn her face towards him, and to lean forward to kiss him lightly on the cheek.

There was no passion in it at all, but it thrilled him more than any other kiss he had ever received.

“I’d really like that,” he said. “Any time. Any time at all. Have a good time in York—and Venezuela. Drive carefully—the roads around here can be awkward after dark, at least until you get on to the A64.”

“I always do,” she assured him—although there was something in her tone that made him uncertain as to whether the assurance was believable.