The House of Storms (16 page)

A ram was slaughtered, a fire was lit, and savoury smoke drifted with the deepening evening. An old sail was stretched between the spars of two beached boats, and shapes began to flow across it. By the third reel, it became apparent that the cinematograph involved pirates, and laughably unlikely looking ships, and some kind of quest for treasure, and the occasional sword-fight. The flickering captions were haltingly echoed by the audience, either reading for the benefit of themselves or those around them. After much confusion about the order of the reels, the tale reached some kind of ending, and it was time for the main business of any Midsummer night, which was dancing, to begin.

The band was a liveried mixture of the various local guild academies. Sashes and uniforms were much in evidence, and Owen Price soon discovered that his new mariner’s outfit made him a much greater prize amongst the girls than he’d been in previous Midsummers, whilst, and just as every year, every boy wanted to dance with Denise. But even the Reverend-Highermaster Brown wasn’t short of partners tonight, for many of the women reckoned he was worth a quick spin for the good of their souls, although his roving hands were a blessed nuisance. Cissy Dunning, dazzlingly dressed in a swirling skirt of greens and oranges, coaxed Weatherman Ayres to join her. It would have been observed by anyone who was sober enough to notice that she was the only Negro amid the main throng, although there was a small gathering of darker-skinned local servants and employees who danced and drank together further down towards the beach.

Faces gleamed with mutton fat and excitement as an avenue of flaming willow branches was formed, and laughing couples ducked its blazing tunnel. There was a special cheer for Owen, who emerged with two girls. Another for Denise, who’d told all her evening’s many suitors that she was saving herself for Bristol, and went triumphantly alone. There were other odd pairings that night. The maid Phyllis and Stablemaster Wilkins from Invercombe, although, after all their dancing, Weatherman Ayres and Steward Dunning came by now as less of a surprise. But Gardenmaster and Mistress Wyatt ducked the flames for the first time in twenty years, as did Bill and Mam Price. Then came the greatgrandmaster himself with his lovely greatgrandmistress, whilst their son, to no one’s particular surprise but his own, went under arm-in-arm with the younger Price girl with whom he was so often seen.

It was approaching midnight, and parties were deputised to light the bonfires. You could watch the progress of their torches as they headed off along the shore and up the hillsides under the rising moon. Durnock Head in the north. The cliffs at Yaverland and High Reston to the south. This ceremony was being enacted by many communities, and the first fires came from across the estuary along the hills of Wales. Then the headlands of Hockton flickered, and their own furze fires caught. Soon the entire coastline was braceleted with stars, and those who stood on Luttrell shore on that night felt for once as if they were at the very centre of something, here the midnight of Midsummer in the ninety-ninth year of this Age of Light.

The seapool gleamed. The full moon was still up, but here in the lee of Durnock Head the night had a surprising, inky density. Nothing moved. Then came voices, footsteps.

‘I’m sure those cinematograph reels were the wrong way around. The sword-fight at the end definitely belonged somewhere in the middle. Otherwise, how could that big pirate with the striped jersey still be alive?’ Ralph laughed. His voice felt almost used-up, but pleasantly so. ‘He’d already been made to walk the plank.’

‘Perhaps he swam under the ship and climbed up the other side and back on to the deck,’ said Marion, who’d seen such things happen before. Her dress was loosely hitched above her knees. She was carrying her shoes. ‘Did you see that pirate who looked like Weatherman Ayres?’

‘Perhaps he really
is
a pirate.’ Ralph shook his head. It didn’t seem so unlikely, and he wanted to say more. About how the shorepeople cheered the Spanish pirates and booed the English Enforcers when it was supposed to be the other way round. And how the jumbling of the reels had allowed the cinematograph to end with the definite impression that the pirates had won. Then he rounded the path and saw the dulled shine of the seapool, and his head span. Even with the tolerance he’d acquired from spirit-rich medicines, he was more than slightly drunk. Or he had been until they entered the shadow of this valley, where the air was cooler and no longer tinged with smoke. He was conscious of the scuff of Marion’s footsteps. The whole day, in a stream of flags and flames and buntings, seemed to have dropped behind them on the path.

He climbed to the edge of the seapool and walked, swaying, balancing, along its stone lip. Marion watched him, and he tried to laugh, but this really was much more difficult than he’d imagined. He made a final dash to the steps at the far side.

‘It’s deep. Good job you didn’t fall.’

‘Yes…’

‘You really should know how to swim.’ Marion climbed to the edge of the pool. ‘I’ll teach you.’ When she was beside him, she did the most extraordinary thing Ralph had ever witnessed. Loosening the tails of her blouse, she unbuttoned it. Then, her shoulders and bosom barely covered by her chemise, she began to loosen her skirt. ‘Just do what I do.’

Ralph, too surprised to do anything else, followed suit. Until that moment, the night air had felt warm. Now, he was conscious that he was shivering.

‘This is how shorefolk swim,’ she said as she stood in her white underthings. ‘Enough for modesty, but not enough to slow you down. I’d take off that vest as well if I were you,’ she added matter-of-factly as she laid her things on the pool’s dry edge. ‘It’s not as if it’s covering anything in a man.’

Ralph did so, although this felt nothing like stripping before the gaze of nurses and physicians.

‘This is an ideal place to get you started. The currents out in the channel can be strong.’

Ralph had never seen anything more beautiful than Marion as she pushed back her hair and slipped one foot and then the other into the pool’s surface. There were submarine steps, which she slowly descended, meeting more and more of her reflection, knees, then thighs, then back, until the water covered to her shoulders and she merged, arms wavering outstretched, into the flickering moon.

‘Is it cold?’

She laughed, turned. ‘You’ll have to find out… ’

Soft weeds nudged his toes. It
was
cold, but at least it gave an excuse for his shivering. He descended until he felt a wintry compression against his ribs. ‘What do I do now?’

She swam towards him, hovered tantalisingly beyond the steps.

‘Just push out as hard as you can. I’ll catch you.’

Ralph barely hesitated—she made it look and sound so perfectly easy—but water instantly boomed into his ears and rushed into his nose and mouth. Then he felt her hands on his arms, and stars and the indigo night burst around him.

Marion nudged him back. He scrabbled back to the steps and gulped and coughed.

She floated away. ‘That was good.’

‘Good
… ?’

‘Now. Let’s try again. Try kicking harder with your legs and feet.’

This time, she was further away. He was certain he’d drown long before he reached her, but she looked so impossibly lovely, her hair wet and the water lapping her shoulders, that Ralph wondered briefly if mankind didn’t have an aquatic origin. But the thought was too complex for him to deal with. He kicked out instead.

Once more, the surface closed over him. Once more, and just as he was certain that he would never breathe again, Marion’s hands drew him back to the surface.

‘Better still.’

His coughing subsided.

‘And again.’

Marion, this beautiful sea-creature, this siren, this lovely mermaid, was taunting him. But he was determined not to give in. Time and again he pushed towards her. Time and again he sank. But the process got no worse and she, after a while, stopped retreating and hovered near the middle of the pool. After pushing off, he sometimes began to get glimpses of her from above the surface as his arms and feet crashed around him, and even a vague sense of movement. He was making progress, he was sure of it, and the more he believed, the longer he seemed to be able to keep his hands doing something which approximated to swimming. It was as if he was being borne up in this element more by the power of thought than anything he was actually doing. There was, Ralph decided, a spiritual element to the art of swimming. But a more straightforward problem was starting to worry him.

He didn’t know about Marion’s underwear, but the Jermyn Street outfitters who’d made his had clearly never envisaged that he would wear it whilst attempting to swim. The cotton flapped and chafed. More alarming still, and midway out on a journey towards Marion, the rubber waistband slid abruptly from his buttocks. Reaching to grab it, he instantly sank.

‘What happened?’ Marion asked when she’d finally hauled him to the surface. ‘You were doing so much better.’

‘It’s these underpants.’ Even as he gasped, they were making further progress down his thighs.

She smiled. The moon smiled with her. ‘I rather lied to you, Ralph, about shorepeople wearing underwear to go swimming. Most of the time, we don’t wear anything.’

‘But… ?’

In truth, Marion could have informed Ralph that adults and older children rarely swam at all unless it was necessary to prevent themselves from drowning, but instead, she slipped the translucent straps of her chemise from her shoulders and gave a downward wiggle. Ralph’s underpants, which were already at half-mast, descended in sympathy and he liberated them with a final kick. He gave a laugh. He hadn’t even realised until that moment that he was floating unaided.
This really is a matter of belief,
he thought as his underpants went wavering and darkening towards submarine caverns. Marion, more prudent than he was with valuable clothing, swam to the edge of the pool and slapped a wet heap of cotton on its edge. Ralph, by raising his chin and kicking hard, found that he was still afloat.
People could fly like this as well
, he thought, glimpsing her breasts as she turned and swam back towards him.

The underpants had obviously been the problem. Now, by aiming at a particular part of the seapool’s stone lip and pushing out hard from the steps, Ralph found that he really could swim. Relishing his new freedom, he crashed to and fro for a while, but he was conscious that the night had thinned overhead and that the moon was dimming; conscious, too, how noisy and clumsy his efforts still were. Paddling back to the steps, he crouched half-submerged and caught his breath and watched Marion swimming.

Almost dawn now. As on the days of his earliest risings, he noticed how the world seemed to hang there half-formed, greyed and misted as if it were being rethreaded by swirling invisible hands. The light grew milky soft. The stars hazed and retreated. Water sluiced Marion’s shoulders and feathered her fingers. The surface twisted and rippled about her, but scarcely ever broke. Ralph was reminded of steel, then of mercury. And she was all of these things. Liquid and solid. Real and unreal. As she dived down with a mere flicker of her feet and the elements joined, it seemed likely that she would never return. When, a long time later, she did, her eyes grazed him, the rocks, the dim shapes around him, all in calm and equal measure.
I’m part of this as well,
Ralph thought, as she shook back her hair in a burst of droplets, and the thought was a joy to him.

He heard a sound. It was watery and clattery, and he imagined at first that it was the day’s first bird. But it was no song he recognised, and it seemed to come from the pool itself. His eyes were drawn to its source just as Marion swam to it. One of Gardenmaster Wyatt’s buzzbugs, it must have alighted here under the impression that the seapool was as solid as it had briefly seemed. Marion cupped the creature in her hands and bore it towards the steps. Limb by limb, she emerged. Ralph, when he thought back at this moment, could honestly say that he’d somehow managed not to consider how the difficult business of their both getting out of the pool naked might be achieved. But as he climbed from the shallows and crouched down beside her as she laid the half-drowned creature on the grass, it turned out to be this simple.

‘You sometimes find them on the shore. The children like to collect their wings.’

This one’s were yellow, flecked with brilliant greens towards the apex and spur. Its compound eyes were lapis. Its antennae were hanks of ostrich feather. Large and intricate as a tin toy car, all it needed was a windup key, but it was bedraggled. For a while, Ralph regarded the buzzbug with fellow-feeling. Then he looked at Marion. Her right knee was raised, and the other pressed into the grass as she supported herself against her heels and on the bend of her toes. Everywhere, she was beaded with streaming droplets of water. He studied the changing textures of her skin. Olive-coloured and dotted with small hard-to-see freckles across her arms and neck from all these sunlit days. The rest of her body was far paler, almost translucent, as if she was also being formed out of the same tremulous grey stuff as the morning. Water broke from her hair. Pausing to join with other droplets, it traced the shape of her back, or trickled forward more quickly down the incline of her right breast towards where the skin of her nipple darkened and puckered to fall in small, precise drips. Ralph’s view of Marion as the pinnacle of creation was entirely reaffirmed as he gazed at her and she gazed at the buzzbug. Nature, science, survival—whatever it was that governed this world—had invested so much in the shape of the human female.

Ralph kept his thoughts on these somewhat abstract planes partly because it was the way his mind usually worked, and partly because he was uncomfortably conscious that his penis was exerting a strong upwards pressure as it tried to escape from beneath his left thigh. Concentrating on willing the thing down didn’t help. Neither, after a while, did science.

Marion gave a shiver, and a droplet of water scurried down her forehead and broke from the tip of her nose. Soon, another would break from her right nipple, then shudder and regather according to the laws of surface tension, friction and gravity. The drips were a little slower now, and the widening spaces on her skin between the droplets had the look of being almost dry. Marion sniffed. She turned to him and smiled, and Ralph knew from that smile that she’d known, had always known, that he was watching.