The House of Storms (42 page)

Ralph took breakfast next morning with Helen after the children had been whisked away.

‘Did it go well?’ he asked.

‘What?’ She put down her lemon juice.

‘Your do—the thing you went to last night.’

‘Oh … It was nothing. And you look
so
tired, darling. You know, the world can get on without you. What time did you get in?’

‘I’m not sure. I thought I might catch some sleep on the run back to the front this afternoon.’

is
that
when you’re going? This afternoon?’

‘Didn’t I say?’

Taking an uncharacteristically large mouthful of toast, Helen waved the question away.

‘I really think we’re near the end of it,’ he said to her a few minutes later as they stood in the hallway.

‘Of
what
?’ Her voice was edgy.

‘Of this war. All the signs are there.’

Helen studied him, beautiful as ever even with her hair still sleep-untidy and her face unmade.
More
beautiful, indeed. Did women ever imagine that by all that painting and decorating they made themselves more attractive to men? She was only wearing a light morning gown, with seemingly little underneath. Oddly, she gave off a slight smell of cigarettes, although neither of them smoked, but he longed to bury himself against her, part that silky material and rid himself of everything but the simple fact of being as near as physically possible to another human being. But her lips felt cold when she kissed his cheek, and she tightened the gown’s sash and drew quickly away.

Now that the big townhouse had gone back into the possession of their guild, his mother lived in an elegant terrace set in a discreet cul-de-sac within convenient reach of the main thoroughfares of Hyde. She’d always promised Ralph that she’d retire to such a place, although of course she hadn’t actually retired from anything.

As she greeted him in the tiled hallway and let him through a series of rooms, Ralph noted the sparse but intricate furniture, the contrasts of colour and the sense of purpose and control. As well as the very latest model of telephone booth, she had her own reckoning engine outlet as well; a model so new that Ralph would have had no idea how to use it.

‘I’m surprised you ever need to leave here to get work done…’

She smiled. ‘I have to set an example. We might as well sit outside…’

‘It’s hydraulic,’ she explained as they settled in peacock-backed rattan chairs. Looking up, he saw that the entire space was enclosed in glass. ‘I have the roof fanned back in the summer, but it’s been so much chillier these last few days and none of these flowers would withstand the frost. After all, this isn’t Great Westminster Park.’

‘Helen and I went there yesterday. With the chil—with Flora and Gussie.’

She leaned across the glass-topped table and raised a silver pot. ‘Coffee?’

‘Only if it’s not got bittersweet in it.’

‘Darling, you are such an old stick-in-the-mud! How else do you think we should make the ersatz stuff palatable?’

She poured a cup and slid it towards him, although he noticed she didn’t take one herself. He dutifully sipped, and felt the sour heat spread into the aches of his bones. He noticed she had on the fine silk gloves she often wore these days, and there was a smoothness of her face, a near-sculpted perfection of her hair. That polished edge was so much part of what she was that she could never let down her guard. Not even here, and for her own son. For a moment, he felt sorry for her.

‘So how did your meeting with High Command go yesterday?’

‘Why don’t
you
tell me?’ He put down his cup. ‘After all, I’m sure you’ve heard far more than I have.’

‘Oh …’ Almost, although for barely a moment, she looked surprised. ‘Well, I suppose I
have
had my ear to the ground. Basically, darling, there are the go-aheads and the waverers. Half of High Command’s coming to the view that the war’s ending so swiftly that there’s little need for more effort or investment—and, by the way, that Hereford’s a sideshow and doesn’t matter. The other half, although quite frankly many of them are that way out of dumb inertia, favour plodding on.’

‘You’ll be telling me next that they might give up just when we’ve got our best chance of outright victory … ?’

‘But things
have
dissipated since all the flag-waving of a couple of years ago. After you did so well at Droitwich, this summer campaign’s ended up as a bit of a disappointment.’ She gazed at him for a moment with what Ralph couldn’t help reeling was a look of mild reproach. He felt a ridiculous flush of guilt: not for the conduct of the war, but that he wasn’t more than merely competent and hard-working—something large and legendary; the figure which the West had and the East so conspicuously lacked. ‘Then there’s the hike in taxes, the loss of vital staff, the grade shift, the guild intermingling—it’s all cost a lot more than the poor dears really expected.’

‘So it’s about money?’

‘You know,’ she sighed, ‘how the Great Guilds always vacillate.’

He felt uncomfortably hot. He suppressed a cough. ‘It’s simply a matter of what’s necessary to bring the war to a swift conclusion.’

‘Of course … But you look so drawn, so tired, darling. I’m worried—’

‘I went out to see Owen Price yesterday evening. He’s still helmsman in the North Sea.’

‘Well, I’m glad that
someone
in that family is still making a decent effort to liberate the slaves—’

‘That really isn’t the point. But you’re right that he’s a decent sort—not that he thinks the same of me.’

‘Well…’ He watched her study her fingers, smoothing their spotless silk, before she cast her eyes back towards him. ‘This is an odd time to start raking over such old coals again, darling. Although I’m of course not surprised that they still retain some heat for you. Does he have any idea of where she might be now, the shoregirl, this brother of hers?’

Ralph shook his head. ‘If there are any letters or attempts at communication, the censors get at them long before he does. And I wish you wouldn’t keep calling her that. She’s part of our lives. That can’t be ignored.’

‘She could be dead, you know. That would explain the …’ She sought the word. ‘Diffuse nature of the current reports. And then all these ridiculous rumours that she’s been captured! But my feeling is that her death—and, of course, it would become a martyrdom—would be much more to the West’s advantage than it would be to ours. So I think that it’s better for the conduct of our war that she stays alive and makes whatever feeble difference she probably really makes in the Eastern hospitals.’

‘Why are you steering the conversation back towards the war?’

‘Isn’t the war what counts?’ ‘Not at this moment, no.’

‘What do you want me to say?’ She sat there as if frozen. So still, in fact, that he assumed for a moment that it was some glitch in the telephone link before he remembered that he really was here with her.

‘I want you to tell me again what you knew.’ ‘I
did
know,’ she sighed finally, ‘that Marion had become pregnant. In fact, I helped place her in a hostel for such girls. As best I could, in fact, I tried to help her entire family. The father never was arrested. The fact that he died was as a result of the aether ship’s wilful destruction by Weatherman Ayres—well, we can hardly blame ourselves for
that.
But I’ve told you all this before.’

‘But not until I found out.’ Because, Ralph now understood, he’d spent half his life fleeing the truth about Marion and Invercombe as if his mother had put him under some kind of spell.

‘And you never
would
have known even now, Ralph, if you hadn’t met that damnable brother of hers. And do you think you’re the better for it now? Do you think I’d have been doing you some great favour if I’d have given you that extra burden to carry with you through Highclare and all the rest of your young adult life. And you weren’t
well,
Ralph, you forget that. Or at least never as well as I wished you might be. I was trying to protect you.’

He nodded. ‘And what happened to that money?’

‘I have no better idea than you do. And how would you have preferred matters to have been dealt with? A criminal investigation, perhaps? Your father was in a strange state before he died. Who knows why he gave that money to you, or just how badly botched was the giving. And glitches, losses and corruptions of data do happen—you of all people scarcely need me to remind you of that.’

‘And that hotel—how did you find me there?’

‘Ralph, Ralph, how many times do I have to explain? You were missing, and I went searching for you. With the s—with Marion missing as well, it seemed likely that you’d fled somewhere, and Bristol was the obvious choice. Then Doctress Foot—remember
her?
—well, she told me that she’d met you both in the city. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ralph, but finding you wasn’t so very hard. I tried the guildhouse libraries—the ones with all those insects where you’d used that false name, and they told me where you were staying, and that you were planning to leave for the Fortunate Isles. People
noticed
you. Ralph. Whatever else you were, you and Marion Price made a striking, handsome couple …’

He could have asked more, but his mother was right; they’d been over all of this before, and he didn’t doubt that she would have reasoned explanations which would bring the unstitched elements of his past back together into some seamless whole. She always did. And it
was
a long time ago, just as she said, the entire truth was probably past resurrecting. But the fact was, he no longer trusted her word.

‘All of that sad affair is far better left behind, darling. I can see that it hurt you. I can understand that. But that’s why you need to let it go. Imagine, if it came out now that someone in your position had been in a relationship with Marion Price, no matter how young you were, and no matter how long it was ago. And then there’s poor Helen to consider, and then the children. Imagine how
they
would feel…’

Was this some kind of hint or threat, or merely a sensible warning? As with so many other things to do with his mother—odd events and deaths and coincidences—Ralph didn’t know.

‘You look quite ill,’ she said eventually, in the face of his continued silence. ‘I’m not at all happy to think of you going back to the front like this, especially with all the new work that’s going to be involved.’

Blood. Something about blood. Cutting himself shaving yesterday. Blood on the pillow, and in that beer glass last night. And this war. Blood everywhere.

‘Ralph? Are you hearing me? I really can’t let you go like this, darling. You should see a doctor. You’re truly not well.’

A
UTUMN WAS TUMBLING IN NOW,
swirling the trees, scurrying the slates on the houses. Klade was trying to flee the war, but the respite of previous years when the urgency of the summer campaigns subsided into the longer nights was hard to find. Once, he and Ida had been allowed time off, were scarcely chained as their minders went off picking things in the abandoned fields or drinking, but now she was dead and he was running and this year was different in every kind of way.
Boom boom boom,
Ma-ri-on, went the guns and the tramp of armies is they chased him through his dreams and on into the days beyond as he stumbled in the face of the wind in what he hoped was a south and a westerly direction.

He’d learned long before to keep his head down, his face away. to avoid the shouts and nudges of curious Outsiders, but this was a lesson he had to relearn again and again. The farmers, those who still tended their crops and beasts but never sang to them as the real Farmers had once done, had guns just like the soldiers, and so did many of the people in the houses you were drawn to by the smells wafting from their windows when you were desperate and hungry. That, or they threw stones like the little Outsiders, who ran wild as rabbits. Klade picked the stones up after they’d bounced off him, then crammed them in his mouth to suck off the raw taste of the earth. Somehow, that seemed to send the little Outsiders away far better than throwing their stones back at them.

The berries, this being autumn, were the best thing. They hung from the bushes bright as the drops of blood he’d often seen beading their charred cousins on the battlefield. He fought with the birds for them. He squeezed out the maggots and ate them as a second course, although he knew that strictly that was the wrong way around and that meat came before sweetness. But it didn’t do to think of Sweetness, although nevertheless he thought of it often. Sweetness was like Home. Sweetness was the lights of the windows in the houses he now always avoided. It was pure and yellow and unwavering. Sweetness was Einfell and Inver-something.

Back when he’d been with the followers, Home had been a place that many of them had often talked about—or cried or moaned over, which was almost the same. If they’d ever bothered to ask, he would have told them that he didn’t have a Home himself, and that he couldn’t really see the point of having one either, seeing as all it seemed to do to you was to make you upset. It was the same with having Loved Ones, although that was a phrase which still left Klade puzzled. But he understood about Home now. He even understood what made Outsiders so sad about the place—or places, seeing that there was plainly more than one—because he felt sad himself when he thought about it, although sad wasn’t quite the word, because there was happiness wrapped up inside it like water in a frozen river or a secret in a box, just waiting to be let out. His Home, of course, was Einfell, which was obvious now he knew it, and there were so many reasons for him to head back towards it and Inver-something that he grew lost in their counting as he slept in abandoned barns and avoided towns and followed what he hoped were the right roads on the far sides of hedgerows in a direction that was south and west.

Home was the place, after all, of the thing known as childhood, and all the unfrozen, unboxed happiness which that mostly meant. Home was where Ida was still alive, and where he could be with the Farmers again, and the Ironmasters, and Silus and even Fay. The logical part of Klade’s brain knew that they were still likely to be working just as he’d worked as part of the War Effort if they were alive at all, but the rest of him, the part which grew larger with weariness and starvation, wasn’t so sure. Klade discovered that memories weren’t just memories when you were in this kind of state. He could talk to Ida almost as often as he liked, and the lightness of her presence and the loss of her pains made her companionship all the easier for him, especially now she didn’t have to be carried.