Streaking (14 page)

“I don't think we need to go to that extreme,” she said, with a calculated coolness that must have been as false as his own laconism. “It's an experiment, not a love-match.”

For you, maybe
, he thought. “Were you thinking of a male or female child?” was what he said aloud, trying hard not to feel offended or hurt by her immediate rejection of the possibility of marriage. He was trying to maintain a flippant tone, but he knew that the artificiality of the flippancy must be obvious to her.

“It would be interesting to discover what chance would decide, wouldn't it?” Lissa said, her voice carefully neutral. “That's partly what the experiment would be about, after all.”

Just because we aren't both male
, Canny thought,
it doesn't mean we're not in competition
.

“One doesn't have to leave such matters to chance, nowadays,” he observed, aloud. “If it's just an experiment, pipettes and Petri dishes might be the way to go. Perhaps we ought to aim for one of each: non-identical twins.”

“It's not a joke, Canny,” she told him, unnecessarily. “I'm serious about this. I've thought about it a great deal.”

“Were you thinking of hopping into bed with me right now?” Canny said, with an edge in his voice that certainly wasn't humor. “If we hurry, you'll still have time to get to London by six?”

“Not right now,” Lissa said, defensively. She paused before adding: “I'll have to clear a space in my schedule to accommodate a pregnancy. I have obligations.”

The conversation didn't seem to be going quite as well as Canny had hoped when he first came into the library, in spite of the fact that she was offering him exactly what he'd thought he wanted, if not quite on the terms he'd wanted it.
Be careful what you wish for
, she had said,
you might get it
. She hadn't been trying to warn him against her—not consciously, at least—but it had been a warning nevertheless.

Lissa Lo's coolness and stylishness had seemed exciting before, but now the coolness seemed to be escalating into coldness and the stylishness was becoming rather mechanical. Canny knew that she wasn't really as unemotional as she was trying to seem—she was hiding her own uncertainty and trepidation—but that didn't make the awkwardness any easier to bear.

“So what kind of schedule did you have in mind?” he asked, quietly. “And what do you want from me in the meantime?”

Lissa stood up, not because she'd said what she'd come to say—although she had—but because she was as acutely conscious of the tension inherent in the moment as he was.

“Don't be in too much of a hurry to get engaged to be married, Canny, no matter what your family tradition dictates,” she said. “I'm not asking you to wait forever, but I'd like you to give the idea serious consideration. If you decide that it's an experiment worth trying, I'll need a few weeks, perhaps months, to...put my affairs in order. I can't give you a date right now. We both know that it would be a risk—but it seems to me that the potential rewards outweigh the danger. You don't have to give me an answer now. You can think it over, and do whatever you want in the meantime—but I'll come back when I can, to ask the question again. Think about it.”

Her stance left no further doubt as to the fact that she had said what she had come to say—and was sufficiently fearful of his reply to leave the matter undecided while she beat a hasty retreat.

Canny could understand well enough why Lissa might be afraid—but he wasn't certain which of the various possible reasons was the most powerful. Was she afraid that she'd simply gone too far—that the black lightning might have been hunting her down even she spoke? Or was she afraid of his response? Was she worried that he might turn her down, given that he had far more at stake than any other man she'd ever teased and tempted, and that the rejection might hurt?

She knew that the world was full of men who'd make or break a deal with the devil at her request—but she might not be sure, as yet, that he was one of them. And she had to know, given that she'd thought about it so intently, that he would be taking a greater risk than she in several different ways...and that he would be able to see those additional risks quite clearly, no matter how his desires might blind him.

Given that he wasn't sure himself whether he might be capable of rejecting her, if he persuaded himself that the risks were too great, her uncertainty was understandable.

“There might be a case for taking things more slowly,” he said, mildly. “there are other co-operative ventures that we might try, to begin with.”

“There might,” she answered, her tone making it perfectly clear that she didn't believe it, “but I'm not a dabbler by nature. When I make a decision, I don't like to procrastinate.”

“I can understand that,” Canny said, wondering—a trifle optimistically—whether he might be reading too much into the situation. She had known since their first conversation in the library—and must have assumed, even before then, that the rules pertaining to his gift were likely to be similar to those pertaining to hers—that his luck was supposed to run low when his father died, while hers would remain strong for as long as her mother lived. For the moment, her luck allegedly outweighed his, and in any competition he was likely to come off worse. If they were to have a child
now
, rather than waiting until he had renewed his own luck, and were content to leave such matters as its sex to the dictates of “chance”, it was far more likely to work out to her advantage than his...or so she must be calculating.

On the other hand, given that the only way to renew his own streak was to marry, and father a child, what was there for him to gain by procrastination but a tangled mess of complications? And given the nature of his desire, the pressure of his need....

Canny rose to his feet without saying another word. He went to open the door, and politely stood aside to let Lissa Lo precede him. Then he opened the two outer doors that let them out of the library.

It wasn't until Bentley had brought Lissa's coat and summoned her minders from the gate, while Canny escorted her to the door of her hire-car, that he gave her anything resembling an answer to the question she'd posed. “I'll think about it very seriously indeed,” he promised. “How shall I contact you when I have an answer?”

“Don't try,” she said. “I'll come to you, when I can.”

“Fine,” he said. “If I'm not here, I'll be at the flat in London. This is the address.” He handed her a business card as he pronounced the last sentence

She put it away without glancing at it. “I'll find you,” she said, with the total confidence of someone well used to finding her way wherever she wanted to go. “I know that I can count on you, Canny. I'm sorry for your loss, but I know that things will get better. There's a whole world of opportunity out there, waiting to be seen by the right observers.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I'm sure you're right.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Lissa had driven away into the gathering night, Canny decided to walk down to the village—to clear his head rather than to survey his domain. As he walked, he wondered what the consequences might be of accepting Lissa's offer. In the worst-case scenario, it seemed to him, she would walk away with the reward: a doubly-blessed child, available for her exploitation and hers alone. Was that possible, given that it contravened the rules by means of which her family streak had been cultivated? Was it what she intended, even if it were possible? Would it matter, even if it were to happen, even if the transgression were to cost him any chance of renewing his own streak? Hadn't he spoken the truth when he said that he had enough to get by, even if he never enjoyed another stroke of exceptional good luck as long as he lived? And what if her intentions were not entirely cynical—or, even if they were, that they might be modified by time and experience? What if they were to form a new collective, unlike any that their ancestors had ever known: an authentic triad, all equally able to share in the superabundant luck of their miracle child, whether it turned out to be a boy or a girl?

There might, as Lissa had said, be a world full of opportunities out there, waiting to be opened up. Perhaps she was sincere. Perhaps, after all, she might learn to love him.

Next time
, he thought,
I really must show her the rest of my little fiefdom, so that she can measure me for what I am, rather than what I seemed to be in Monte Carlo
.

It was easy enough to imagine that she was beside him as he walked beside the Crede, and what he might he have said to her as they approached and entered the village.

“The Industrialist earl wasn't the first, of course,” he might have said. “The situation of the mill having been dictated by the flow of the Crede, he needed to house his workers, so terraces of houses had to be built one way or another. Utopian fantasies were in vogue, and Titus Salt was already hard at work in Shipley, building Saltaire. The old Industrialist introduced a few wrinkles of his own, though. From the very beginning, he planned to keep much tighter control over his property and his people. He instituted—and all his successors retained—a policy of letting the accommodation at rates below the market price, and instituting a system of variable rebates that made the accommodation even cheaper to everyone who was seen to be making a positive contribution to the local economy or the provision of local amenities—which is why there's still a butcher's shop in Cockayne, and a baker's, and a carpenter's shop—not to mention a good primary school and an excellent library.”

How could she fail to be impressed?

“It hasn't been easy, of course,” he might have told her, proudly, if only she'd given him the time. “Salt's Mill is a museum now, and so is Saltaire. Shipley's other mill was demolished long since. Daddy used to tell me that when he was a boy he could sit on top of the Great Skull and see the tops of a hundred factory chimneys surrounding him, in the distance, all belching smoke into the air to create a haze that never really cleared, all the way from Bingley in the far east to Rotherham in the far south. They're all gone now, including ours—but when our chimney was toppled, the Mill kept going. It's always been busy, no matter how many economic metamorphoses it's had to undergo. It was a munitions factory during World War II, a plastics factory in the fifties and sixties, and then got broken up into smaller units specializing in various kinds of technological enterprise—plastic components for aircraft, cars and domestic machinery; switches for telephone systems; optical fibers...I haven't kept up, I'm afraid, although I'll have to start. I think we've even diversified into software and ceramics—individual projects have folded by the score, but we've always been lucky in cutting them off at the right moment and replacing them with something new, always maintaining our elasticity. We've never been conspicuously innovative, but we've never been far behind the times either. We've always valued long-term stability over the short-term escalation of profit, never sought outside finance...and it's paid off—not spectacularly, but inexorably.

“In the meantime, we've fostered the old Industrialist's quasi-Utopian ideals in the institution of a highly idiosyncratic form of local democracy. It conflicts to some extent with the demands made of us by local and national government, but we've always managed to compromise, thanks to good representation on the county council and family influence. The village elders have gladly collaborated with the family in conserving the valley, and they take great pride in what they've done now that their age-old habits have become fashionable. We don't have a supermarket, a cinema or a railway-station, but we do have a village green with a cricket square, a thriving marketplace, a local slaughterhouse and the Spread Eagle. The old ranks of outside toilets were converted into garages during the great renovation of the fifties, but private cars are still a relative rarity—the vehicles they house are mostly commercial.”

“And it's all yours, now,” she would surely have said.

He would have feigned pride, even though none of it had had attracted any significant fraction of his attention—but he was a changed man, now. He intended to make up for lost time as quickly as he could. so that he could take his father's place as the chief architect of Cockayne's future. It was all his now—not just the property and the income, but the responsibility to decide which aspects of its commerce and environment should hasten into the twenty-first century with all possible progressive determination, and which vestiges of the nineteenth century should be jealousy preserved and hoarded.

As if to endorse his flight of fancy, twenty-three people had offered respectful greetings to him by the time he reached the market square, and a further fifteen greeted him deferentially while he paused there, looking around at the darkened shops and imagining that Lissa Lo was by his side, hanging on his every word.

One shop, of course, was still blazing with light in spite of the fact that it was nearly eleven: the fish-and-chip shop. Customers were still trickling in, mostly one by one, and trickling out again—more than usual, thanks to the hangover from the funeral—but Canny could see through the window that there were four people who remained in the shop, not eating but chatting: Ellen Ormondroyd's sisters and their respective husbands. Ellen and her husband were behind the counter, as usual.

Eventually, Canny left the ghost of Lissa Lo behind and walked into the shop.

“Haddock and chips, please,” he said, as he approached the counter.

A slightly uncomfortable silence had fallen when he walked in, and he judged that it would not be easily broken, so he took the burden upon himself. “Nice to see you again,” he said to Alice and Martin Ellison. “Hello Lydia—you must be Ken. I hear you're in Manchester, now. Thanks for coming over. It's been a very long day. I had to get out of the house, away from the atmosphere. I didn't have time to eat at the reception, even if I'd been able to stomach it—my appetite's only just getting back into gear.”

That speech invoked several sympathetic nods, but even Alice was casting about for something to say that wouldn't seem rude or stupid.

“I used to come in here once a week when I was a kid, you know,” he went on, addressing himself to Alice's Martin and Lydia's Ken. It was before Jack's time, let alone Ellen's. Daddy used to give me money to pay for my supper, but what was more important was being allowed to walk down here on my own, even after dark. It wasn't like going to school—it was real life. Sometimes, it was the only part of life that did seem real—but that's not a complaint. I always knew how lucky I was. Always.”

“Are you all right, Canny?” Ellen finally plucked up the courage to ask, while Jack Ormondroyd sprinkled salt and vinegar on his fish and chips.

“I'm fine,” Canny said. “Sorry if I'm rambling. Long day.

“Open or closed?” Jack asked.

“Open,” Canny said.

“You can send Bentley down to collect now,” Jack observed, as he arranged the paper artfully into a basket. “That's what your Dad allus did, when the fancy took him, on cook's night off.”

“He would,” Canny said.

“Do you want to turn out for the team on Saturday, Lord Credesdale?” Jack asked. “I think we're one short.”

Canny remembered his casual offer to drop into the shop if he wanted a game; Jack had obviously mistaken his motive.

“You would be one short if I said yes,” Canny said, handing him a five pound note. “Thanks for asking, Jack, but I don't think so. Maybe I'll come down to watch the game, though—hang around the score box making a nuisance of myself, the way I used to.”

“You'd be very welcome,” Jack said, dutifully counting out his change.

Canny nodded, and nodded again to Martin Ellison as he turned away. “I'll ring you,” he promised. “Bye, Ellen, Lydia, Alice, Ken.”

By the time he'd reached the end of the catalogue of names Canny was already in the doorway. Their murmured answers combined into a ragged chorus as the door swung shut behind him.

Canny made his way slowly back through the village streets, eating as he went. His appetite had indeed got back into gear, and he realized that it really had been a long time since he'd last taken the opportunity to eat. A further dozen people greeted him politely; he didn't try to count the pairs of eyes that watched his progress from afar, or to estimate the thoughts that might be going through their minds as they contemplated their new landlord.

“This is what it's like, you see,” he said to the ghost of Lissa Lo. “This is the greater part of the Kilcannon luck. It hasn't just been a quantitative thing, reflected in shrewd gambles and good business. This is what we've made of ourselves. We're not glamorous, by any means, and we don't do a lot of smiling, but we're worth something. We're solid.”

By the time he finished that imaginary speech, however, he'd passed beyond the reach of the street lights into the gloom of the path that ran beside the stream to the bridge that carried the approach-road to the house over the beck. The night was fairly clear, but the moon wasn't full and stars seemed weak. He could find his way easily enough, but he still, seemed to be walking through a vast and ominous shadow. For the first time, it seemed to him that he could feel the absence of his luck, the failure of his early-warning systems.

He had no idea what Lissa Lo intended, in the longer run. He had no idea whether she would have any further interest in him, once he had given her the child she wanted.

He had no idea, either, how the outcome of that experiment might affect them, if they were indeed to be punished for their temerity in challenging the rules of fate.

But the haddock tasted wonderful, and the chips had exactly the right texture.

“We all live dangerously,” he said—aloud, since there was no one who could possibly overhear him—“who live at all. And we all die but once, no matter how good or bad our luck might be. How many men are lucky enough to get the chance of intimacy with one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, under any conditions?”

There was, of course, no answer—but none was needed.