The House of Storms (26 page)

Marion gazed at him from her own scarcely touched plate in that odd way she’d been doing increasingly lately. ‘Perhaps things haven’t finished ending yet.’

‘We’ll probably look back on this in ten years when we’re in London and—’

‘London? What do you mean?’

‘It’s not as if we’re going to spend the rest of our lives in the Fortunate Isles, is it? We have a theory to prove, and we must return here to do that.’

‘What happens to Eliza and John Turner?’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps we’ll have finished with them.’

There was still plenty of time before boarding—whole hours of it—and they decided to go back to the public reading rooms of the Arthropod Branch of the Beastmasters’ Guild. It was a relief, in any case, to return to Bristol’s bigger byways, with their swept streets and milling hats and carriages, and newsboys shouting something about
Arrests.
As before, they were admitted beneath the hall’s insect-winged pillars as Master and Mistress Turner, who happened to know the Beetle Lady.

Their wait for the clerk’s return after they had presented the requisition forms for the dozen books Ralph imagined they might have time to look at was longer than he had expected—perhaps poor service was something else you needed to get used to when you belonged to some lesser guild. Marion sat down on a bench and began kneading her ankles. This was taking far too long, and he was just starting to worry when a more senior-looking figure emerged.

‘Master, Mistress Turner? Would you mind coming this way?’

Passing the glass cases of giant insects which might have been enlarged models, or real examples of the more extravagant work of the craft of this guild, they were shown into a small office, and the guildsman who introduced himself as Highermaster Squires asked if they’d been long away from Kent.

Ralph, unwilling to break whatever remained of the credibility of their identity, assured him that they hadn’t.

‘And you know the Beetle Lady? A fine student is Doctress Foot—especially for someone who isn’t a member of our guild.’

Highermaster Squires, grey-haired, podgy around the cheeks and belly and thin elsewhere, seemed an amiable enough sort. His desk, Ralph noticed, had six legs. As did their chairs, the arms of which were carved into the shapes of maggots. Guilds, in their inner intricacies, really were the most extraordinary organisations.

‘Would you like tea?’

‘To be honest,’ Marion said, ‘we’re pushed for time. We’re taking a ship on the high tide.’

‘Leaving, eh? And our humble halls are the place you choose to visit. I’m flattered, I must say. Especially as you both know as much about natural science as you plainly do, judging by the books you’ve requisitioned. Both this and last time, although I can’t say I don’t think you’re wasted in the Guild of Ringwrights, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘It’s easier than you think, you know, to tell what people are researching. You’ll be surprised at what you can pick up by looking through requisitions, and the Beetle Lady also mentioned something. Although she seems, dear soul, a bit confused about your names and rank.’

‘I can assure you,’ Ralph said, ‘that it’s us she means.’

‘Oh, good. Or
mostly
good anyway. But the thing is, this idea of yours, this supposition, this theory—what is it that you call it?’

‘Habitual Adaptation.’

‘I’ve heard worse.’ Standing up and jingling a key, Higher-master Squires unlocked a cabinet. Inside were books, notepads, rolls and sheaves of paper. ‘This, for example.’

Humouring the man, Ralph took the offered book. It was small, cheaply printed. Dimly embossed on the card of its spine was the title
On the Force of Natural Development
.

‘Or this …’

A dry ribbon-bound curl of loose pages, hand-written, illustrated with fine drawings of the eyes of insects in all their varieties.
An Argument Towards a Better Understanding of the Processes of Life on This Earth
.

‘Beautiful hand, don’t you think?’

Another volume was merely a compendium of the varieties of bee, but someone had flagged an appendix, and then drawn a black line through each of the seemingly offending pages. And
The Principle of Selection
. And
Life: A Query
. And
The Origin
of the Variety of Species
.

Ah! You’re beginning to understand?’

Ralph’s head was spinning. His chest hurt. He felt empty and weak.

‘In a way, I’m not so surprised that you don’t belong to one of the guilds which actually deal with the processes of life. Although I must say it’s an achievement to have got as far as you have, and yet so young. If you were to attend one of our academies, and no doubt a plantsmaster would tell you the same, the first glimmering of any thoughts in
this
direction would be laughed at and crossed out before they could lead anywhere. It’s a kindness, really. Although some things seep through. Hence my little collection.’

‘You’re saying it’s not true?’

‘Not sure that that really enters into it. But, since you ask, I imagine it’s probably correct that hereditary characteristics are governed by a mixture of random change and natural competitive forces, although I must admit I still have some quibbles with such matters as the appearance of chicks’ beaks at the same time as the evolution of shells, or the question of which came first, the bee or the flower.’ He shrugged. ‘That sort of thing.’

‘You’re telling me it’s suppressed?’

‘What I’m telling you, Master Turner, is that our study of how the natural world functions must reflect the real needs of human society. A hothead, for example, might use your theory to argue that we humans are descended from apes. And where would that leave the unique concept of the sacred human soul, and our beloved church, and people’s dearly held beliefs? Then again, if life is always in this state of change and flux governed by little more than who lives the longest and has the most babies, should that not also apply to human society? Where would that leave the guilds, all the succour and certainty and stability which they provide? I appreciate your disappointment. But things are as they are. I understand, for example—and if this is any comfort to you—that there are similar necessary constraints in other fields of study …’

They left the halls. So much for Habitual Adaptation being Ralph’s unique insight, although it did at least reaffirm his conviction that he was right. Neither was he alone any more. He owed it to these others—the authors of those lost books—to do something. Back in room 12A, Ralph paced the floor and ground his fist into his palm. He remained determined.

‘We can’t give up now, Marion. This is all the more reason not to.’

‘Who said anything about giving up, apart from Higher-master Squires?’ She was sitting on the bed. The tip of her nose seemed pale, and part of him longed to touch it; to change things—magic them away.

‘In a way, everything makes even better sense. Yes, we can be Master and Mistress Turner, but we will also need all the power and might of my guild to force this business through when we return.’

‘When
we return. You keep saying that today. I mean, if you want so much to be Ralph Meynell, why bother to leave England in the first place?’

‘We need
evidence,
Marion. We need to collect and collate—’

‘Is that all this is about?’

He realised she was near to crying, which was hardly like the Marion he knew. It was disappointing, really, that she was reacting like this, at the time when he most needed her strength.

‘Listen, Marion. You’re a shoregirl—you don’t understand how these things work.’

‘I thought you were leaving England because you wanted to be with me.’

‘That as well. But what’s important at the moment is—’

Standing up, she pushed past him so quickly that the bed was still sighing and rocking after she’d slammed room 12A’s door. Ralph shook his head at the dimming of her footsteps and the bang of Sunshine Lodge’s front door; women really were quite different creatures. He didn’t do her the favour of going to the window to see her standing out in the street. Leaving rooms, the dramas of arguments in general, had always struck him as empty gestures. She’d be back soon. Was bound—would have—to be.

He lay down on the bed. He gazed at the ceiling. Stains and blotches. Not a landscape of any kind. Perhaps there were two room 12As, and perhaps he and Marion were in the other one at that moment, joyously making love before embarking on their sunlit journey towards a chain of beautiful islands where all the workings of the world would make sense. He stared at the door, willing her to come through it. He checked his watch. Less than an hour left. The loading gates would be open already, the third-class families teeming through to get the best berths. And she had the tickets, he remembered. Perhaps she was down there already. He decided to go outside and check.

The crowds were already gone, and the ship he imagined to be the
Verticordia
was in plain view across the sprawling yards. The smoke from her tall, rusted funnel fluttered and blurred. Her topsails sank and filled as if they were breathing. But there was no sign of Marion. He hurried to the ticket office.

‘Turner? Turner?’ A clerk ran his fingers down the boarding list. ‘Not Turton? Tyler?’

‘But can’t you check the issue of the tickets? They were purchased through your agents in Luttrell.’

‘No, no—if you had tickets, you’d be on this list. Everything’s telephoned through to us, see.’

‘But we
have
the tickets. I’ve …’
Had
he ever seen them?

‘Our rules are very strict. If you had tickets, then you’d be on this list. We do have a few left—second class, not third.’

Ralph stormed out of the office. Marion would surely be back in room 12A by now. His breath ragged with the taste of the sugar factories, he ran up the streets. He ascended the stairs, then had to go down again to ask the woman with the hairnet for the key, although he realised by now that that meant Marion couldn’t be there. Grabbing his bag, he stumbled back outside into the brightening street. He still had twenty minutes. Perhaps half an hour. There was this annoying sensation that Marion was either a few steps behind or ahead of him. But he couldn’t stand here, waiting for her to backtrack or catch up. He needed to buy fresh tickets to replace those which had seemingly vanished into thin air.

He limped quickly towards Martins Bank, the loosening contents of the bag swinging and dragging against his leg. The bank’s halls were quieter today, but he recognised the palely fringed face of the clerk who’d served them before, and headed up to his window.

‘You have an identity chit? A guild badge. Addressed service bills? A chequebook?
Any
form of identity?’

‘Surely you remember. Myself and my wife—John and Eliza—Master and Mistress Turner. We’re ringwrights. My wife—she’s dark-haired, attractive …’ Ralph licked the sweat from his lips. ‘We had more than four thousand pounds in our account when we came here last.’

Now, the clerk was nodding. ‘Of course.’ His fingers played over the keys of his device. It gave a cheery
ping.

‘I’d like to make a withdrawal.’

‘Not possible, I’m afraid.’

‘But you just said—’

‘There’s no money left in the account.’ There was a look of pity on the clerk’s face. ‘It’s all been withdrawn. I can give you the printout…’

Ralph hobbled back across the shining floor and out through the early afternoon crowds towards Sunshine Lodge. For Marion might still be there. It was all quite ridiculous and amazing. How they’d laugh about it, once the real explanation—which was surely so simple, so obvious, but taxed his intellect far more than it had ever been by Habitual Adaptation—became clear.

The sky turned and hazed. How he hated the west and the dragging of this canvas bag as he stumbled up the cobbles towards Sunshine Lodge and looked at its grimy windows. A ship’s horn sounded. Perhaps it was the
Verticordia.

He climbed the steps and shouldered the front door until it gave into the soupy gloom of Sunshine Lodge’s hallway. The woman in the hairnet was sitting in her customary seat. She shook her head when he asked for the key to 12A. It wasn’t on the hook. Look—she pointed.

Ralph pushed by her. He scrambled up the stairs. Room 12A; the number was on the door. He pushed it open. And she was there—sitting on the weary bed, but somehow different, and dressed in darker clothes than he remembered.

‘Ralph …’

He felt a surge of joy, then of puzzlement, then of falling relief, as his mother, her face beautifully framed by hair the colour of winter sunlight, turned towards him.

T
HE LAND HAD LONG POSSESSED
much of whatever consciousness eventually became focused in the spillage of stone which became known as Invercombe. It had lived to many rhythms. To the passage of the tides. To the slow comet of the sun. In flurries of sunlight and in falls of dark, it had taken and retaken the sea, and basked in the change of the seasons. Small movements of life had flickered lighter than the shadows of clouds, but some had dug tendrils into its earth, and some, quicker yet, had come and gone to their own inexplicable purposes. It had been dim witness to the growth and sculpting of trees, then to their death and the white coming of near-endless winter. In its own slow way, it was part of the earth’s rising and giving beneath the grinding outreaches of ice as the estuary reshaped itself.

As the deeper colds departed and meltwaters churned the estuary and the far hills lost their endless caps of white, the quick shapes of living things returned. Trees grew and billowed and fell and were renewed in their tangling decay. Quicker yet, more beasts came and went. Some of these beasts did odd things. They felled the trees. They dug stones and fired them in cairns which, much later when their heat-crackled remains were found, would be puzzled over by historians and termed
burnt mounds.
From these, and for the first time, a little of the land’s consciousness was released. It was used blindly at first by these odd beasts, in that it was used at all. Later, when a crown of larger stones was hauled up the cliffs of what became known as Clarence Cove and embedded in its headland, their ceremonies grew more elaborate, were associated with gods and magic and the pulls of the moon. Still, though, the land did not understand, and when that crown and the people who had built it fell and were long-buried and lost, it remained uncomprehending.