Streaking (18 page)

Alice smiled, dutifully. “Do you want to go for a walk on the ridge?” she asked. “I'm getting restless legs just sitting here. With a mouth like mine, I shouldn't be suffering pent-up anguish, but I guess the well's too powerful to cap.”

Canny felt guilty, although he wasn't sure why.

“Yes, if you like,” he said, coming to his feet. “It's Sunday, after all. There'll be time for you to get back for mass, if you want to.”

“I already told you that I don't,” she said, as she preceded him towards the door. “I haven't been for years, Martin was an atheist—not even a Catholic atheist.”

“Even so...” Canny said.

“People will expect me. It'll give them a chance to let me know they're on my side, and it'll give me an opportunity to make my peace with God. I've heard it all, Canny—don't you join in as well. You're on the other side, remember?”

“No, I'm not,” Canny said, quietly. He paused in the hallway to tell the expectant Bentley where he was going, and that he would be back in an hour.

The butler nodded, without the least hint of disapproval, and promised to inform Lady Credesdale.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

As Canny and Alice made their way through the grounds at the back of the house, heading for the path up to the ridge, the Great Skull loomed over them with a recently-reinforced symbolism that Stevie Larkin would have been only too eager to point out.

“A couple of well-placed sticks of dynamite would do wonders for that thing, Canny,” Alice told him.

“It's not so bad, if you look at it in the right ironic light,” Canny said, insincerely. His ancestors had always tolerated the baleful visage because the family rules included stern warnings about the extreme unwisdom of any interference with its grim aspect, but he had always harbored a faint hope that one of the Langsgill boys, armed with a can of white aerosol paint, might pluck up the courage to modify it with a few deftly-placed graffiti.

“Well, September sunshine doesn't work. I suppose you could hire an ambitious local artist to turn it into Yorkshire's answer to Mount Rushmore.”

“Whose face did you have in mind?” Canny asked. “Geoff Boycott? Richard the Third? Arthur Scargill?”

“You're right,” she agreed. “It's probably friendlier the way it is. Are you going to tell me what went on between you and the supermodel now?”

“I thought we'd exhausted that topic of conversation,” Canny said, frostily.

“Really? I thought you were just playing for time in case the butler was eavesdropping. If it's too painful to talk about, that's okay. I've been dumped in my time, difficult though it is to believe—and rejected too.”

“She didn't reject me, let alone dump me,” Canny said, defensively. “We were just having a conversation. We have...interests in common.”

“She's a probability freak too, then?”

For a moment, Canny almost panicked. His stomach lurched, much as it did after a particularly jagged streak, and he wondered momentarily whether there had actually been a rift in the pattern of causality. Then he realized that it was just another joke—a reflexive witticism as utterly innocent as all the rest, offered in the spirit of an amateur court jester. Even so, he paused on the slope, breathing deeply, and looked back down at the house. The Great Skull looked sideways at him, as if it were leering contemptuously. The dynamite, he thought, might not be such a bad idea after all—and now that he was the earl, there was no reason why he had to tolerate its rudeness if he didn't want to.

“More than you know,” he said, eventually. He said it soberly, not simply out of habit. “Are you fishing for gossip, Alice, or is this strictly between the two of us?”

“I won't tell a soul,” she said. “Not even Ellen. Especially not Ellen.”

“Okay,” Canny said, carefully assuming the lightest tone he could contrive, so that she wouldn't be able to believe a word of what he said even if she suspected that he might be serious. “She wants to have my love-child, in order to cut her slice of the Kilcannon luck, but she won't marry me. She doesn't want to get too involved; she reckons that the pregnancy will take enough time out of her busy schedule without any further complications. I'm feeling a trifle insulted by the prospect of being so casually and callously used—but she is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and I have the same hormones as the next man.”

Alice looked at him in a mock-admiring fashion. He assumed—but couldn't be absolutely sure—that what she was pretending so conspicuously to admire was his skill as a liar.

“Don't take this the wrong way, Canny,” she said, “but if I looked like Lissa Lo and wanted a stud to father the perfect baby, I'd want a slightly better-looking peer of the realm. I don't think luck's hereditary, although superstition might be.”

“There aren't that many of us peers around,” Canny told her. “We're all lucky of course, but very few of us are even as good-looking as me. Once you'd set your heart on a genuine English earl, you wouldn't settle for a common-or-garden French Comte or American billionaire, would you? If you were Lissa Lo, that is.”

Alice had to think about that for a minute or so. When she'd finally formulated her answer she tried to garnish it with a broad grin—but she couldn't quite do it justice. “I think I can figure out the full story now,” she said. “The pride of
Vanity Fair
plans to use all the benefits of modern biotechnology to fabricate the perfect child. She's shopping around for the perfect sperm, and she thinks she might get it if she can only splice the genes for Stevie Larkin's looks and athletic ability into your blue-blooded base. And the reason you're so pissed off, being a Yorkshireman, is that she wants to splice you with a footballer instead of a cricketer.”

“That's about the size of it,” Canny agreed, readily.

“Bit of a sickener if the biotech wizards cocked it up, though,” Alice went on. “Although I suppose a sperm with your lack of grace and athletic ability would never...oh shit, I said I wouldn't do that any more, didn't I? I'm sorry, Canny. I didn't....”

“It's okay,” Canny assured her. “I said you didn't have to stop. Call me all the names under the sun. Insult me. Hate me. Pretend I'm the universe. I honestly don't mind—and you're quite right about nobody else understanding. I'll take it as a compliment that you came to me.”

She shook her head slowly. “I'd just feel guilty about it later.” she said. “That would give me a excuse to come back and apologize again, of course, so that I could have another go...but you're right. This isn't the sort of thing I should be doing on a Sunday morning, stone cold sober. I'm sorry I asked about Lissa Lo. We'd be better off discussing Stevie's transfer prospects. How much is he worth now, do you think? Five million? Ten?”

“He would be, if his contract with Milan had longer to run,” Canny said. “He seems to be close to his peak, so he's probably got five or six more years at the top if he can stay injury-free, and a few years after that while he'll still be an asset in the premiership. Given that he'll be a free agent next season, though, I figure that he's affordable—his agent's probably trying to involve half a dozen clubs in the auction.”

“Shit,” she said. “I didn't
really
mean that we should talk about football—and cricket's out too. What about Cockayne? Any new broom-type plans for the village? The Mill? Strictly between us, honest.”

“Afraid not,” he said. “It doesn't seem to be broke so I ain't planning to fix it. Maurice Rawtenstall and the unit managers are doing a first rate job, so far as I can tell, and the village elders are doing their best.” They had reached the top of the ridge by now and were heading northwards. The Roman Ridge was visible in the west, on the far side of the Crede, while the terrain to the east undulated gently in the direction of Cock Beck.

“Does that mean you can go right back to being a playboy as soon as the traditional decent interval has elapsed?” Alice asked.

“I'm afraid not. Just because everything's running smoothly doesn't mean that I can duck out of it. I have a part to play, even if I don't intend to rewrite it. I'm a cog in the big wheel now—no more early morning roulette for me.”

“And no more girls laid end-to-end all the way from Nice to Monte Carlo?”

“No,” Canny said, shortly.

“Laying them all the way from Tadcaster to Garforth doesn't have quite the same ring to it, I suppose. Less comfortable too, given all the bumps and hollows—and the ground's not very even either.”

“Mummy wants me to settle down,” Canny said. “It was Daddy's dying wish, too. I guess it goes with all the other estate duties. You do know that it's all nonsense, don't you? I'm a gambler, not a womanizer. If they really say that about me in the village, it's just fevered imagination.”

“You don't have to make excuses to me. Has your mother got a likely gel lined up for you? She seemed to have a fair crop of cousins and nieces at the funeral—quite a contrast with the Kilcannon side of the family.”

“She made an effort, but I don't think her heart's in it. She's probably delegated the job to Bentley, who'll probably put his plans into action as soon as Bob Stanley's completed background checks on all the likely candidates.”

“Who's Bob Stanley?”

“An inquiry agent in Leeds. Daddy used him all the time.”

The Kilcannons have their own
private detective
?”

“Of course. No one in business can do without one nowadays. I blame the Internet myself. He's not just ours, though—he's Robert Stanley and Associates nowadays. I could put in a word if you need a job. It's perfect for a historian—all trawling through archives, except for the occasional stake-out.”

“Is he looking into your mugging?”

“No, that's over and done with. Storm in a teacup. Case closed.”

“Come on, Canny—you're not trying. If things are really that boring, make something up. How much did the mugger get?”

“About thirty grand. It wasn't really my money, though—I'd just won it at the casino. I hadn't got used to thinking of it as mine, so it didn't seem like a terrible loss. Anyway, I think the inside man at the casino who tipped the gunman off is dead now. The local heavy mob are very careful of their house percentage—they don't like foreigners operating scams on their turf.”

“Foreigners?”

“Eastern Europeans, or so it's rumored.”

“So you hired a French hit man instead of getting your friendly neighborhood inquiry agent to investigate?”

“I didn't hire anybody. I really wasn't that bothered—but I thought I ought to tell the casino manager that he had a rotten apple in his barrel. He didn't hire anybody either. He didn't have to. Nobody likes the Russian mafia—and if it was the Uzbekistani mafia, that would be adding insult to injury.”

“No,” Alice retorted, abruptly losing the mood she was trying so hard to sustain. “Two teenagers from Chapeltown with a fucking crowbar is adding insult to injury. Compared with that, the humblest tea-boy in the Uzbekistani mafia is Professor fucking Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime.”

“Sorry,” Canny said. “I talked my way round in a circle.”

“No you didn't—I did. If you're lying. by the way, and you've got the hit man's number, let me know...and don't tell me I can't afford him. Martin was insured, and we never got around to producing the dependants it was supposed to be protecting. Sorry.”

“It's okay,” Canny said. “But a hit man isn't the answer. I don't know what is, but it's not that. I don't think there is an answer, except to keep going through until you come out the other side. And cursing, of course.”

“You don't seem to be doing any cursing. I've never heard you say anything worse than
shit
.”

“Well, as you pointed out yesterday, I only lost an aged father, as expected. What happened to you is intrinsically more curseworthy. Will you still move back to Cockayne, do you think?”

“There's no point in staying in Leeds, is there? I hadn't even got round to finding a job, or even thinking about one. Staying home to write a history of Cockayne took it for granted that Martin would be bringing in a salary. On the other hand, I'm hardly going to qualify for a place of my own, am I? The thought of moving back in with Mum and Dad on a permanent basis...I thought I was past that. I thought I'd moved on, spread my wings, become the owner of my own destiny. Silly me.”

“The elders are breaking some of the bigger houses into flats when they fall vacant,” Canny told her. “Cockayne may be stuck in the nineteenth century, but it has twenty-first century demographics. A place of your own wouldn't be out of the question, by any means—and a job shouldn't be too had to find either. The Mill always needs new blood.”

“Not the blood of historians. I guess I could answer to
haddock and chips twice
, but Ellen wouldn't want her smart-mouthed little sister in the shop, showing her up. My Mum's idea of seeing me settled, of course, would be the same as your Mum's. If Lissa Lo hadn't broken your heart we could probably kill two birds with one ring, but I can't live with competition like that. Not without plastic surgery and a personality transplant.”

“Don't go fishing for compliments, Alice,” Canny said. “They're far nicer when they're spontaneous. Besides which, given my extreme ugliness and lack of athleticism, you're probably much more comfortable with my studied indifference.”

“That's true,” she countered, calmly. “We ought to be turning round, I suppose, or we'll be bumping into the A64—the ridge runs out in a couple of hundred yards. Do you know, I haven't been up here for years. Were there more sheep around when I was a kid, or have I just sugar-coated the memory?”

They both stopped as she spoke, and turned back in their tracks. “No,” Canny said. “There really were more sheep. We ran down the flocks in the nineties—not commercially viable in the modern meat trade. We were lucky in the foot-and-mouth epidemic, though. It passed us by, and the stud-value of our rams rocketed afterwards. The farm-manager reckons that we ought to re-think the whole operation. Import some rare breeds, start a proper conservation program. Mind you, it's only five years ago that he wanted us to get into transgenics and cloning.”

“It all seems quite serene now we're looking at it backwards,” she said—meaning the Great Skull. “When we get back to the brow, it'll be just a few black rocks jutting through the turf, with no shape at all. Pity about the house, though—doesn't matter what angle you look at it from, it's gargoyles all around.”

“It may be mock-Gothic,” Canny said, “but it's mock-
Yorkshire
Gothic. In a thousand years time it'll be one of the seven wonders of the county, along with the Grand Hotel in Scarborough and our half of the Humber Bridge.”