The House of Storms (8 page)

‘Do come in.’ Something went
thunk.
The big door drifted open. ‘Across the hall and you’ll see a lift. Take it to the top floor…’

A lift—in a private house? But this was the modern Age, and Bristol was awash with electricity from the big dam at Clifton. The hall was all stars and moons, with glimpses through doorways of blotchy red furniture, and more of that cake shop marble. Unless this was all some immense bluff, Celia really had done as well for herself as she liked to pretend. Unnervingly, the lift clattered up beyond the top of the house into greater light, and Alice stepped warily out on to what she supposed was the roof, and was hit by a tempest of colour.

‘There you are!’ Celia Raithby beckoned Alice from an armchair. ‘You’ve brought something for me!’

‘Just a few cakes.’ Alice laid the box on a glass table and shrugged off her coat and sat down and waited for her senses to finish reeling. The place was roofed with a tracery set with thousands of panes of multicoloured glass. Beyond, shifting with every slight movement of her head, lay a fragmented Bristol.

‘I’m so glad I bought this house,’ Celia sighed. ‘This rooftop’s such a comfort to me. The plantsmasters bring me their latest creations before they’re made available to the public at large.’

There were white, dew-brimming, bowl-shaped flowers big enough to wash your face in. Lanternflowers glowed like brands. ‘Doesn’t it get a little hot here in summer?’

‘Oh, no. All the glass is hydraulically removable. We’re not quite as backward here in the west as you easterners think …’

‘And that device on the door?’

‘Imagine, to be able to talk to someone at a distance, and then just to hear their voice and no need to worry about whether you’ve just done your face. I understand the principle could work at longer range as well.’ Celia chuckled. ‘Just think, the whole world could be chattering away to each other whenever it wanted, instead of us fortunate few with our mirrors and telephone booths. But that would never do, would it?’

Alice had to agree that it probably wouldn’t. She’d already gained a rough idea of the route Cheryl Kettlethorpe had taken to get to be Grandmistress Celia Raithby, and now she heard a lot more. Twice married and twice widowed, victor of several of expensive lawsuits against aggrieved relatives, Celia was certainly a fighter, although she hid that as well now as had the giggly young girl whom Alice had once encountered parading the streets of Lichfield in search of needy men. Sex had been the major currency then, and there had been far less flimflam about it, but Celia still seemed to see life in much the same way.

‘My husbands, poor things, frankly weren’t up to much in
that
department. And there was never the faintest chance of my staying as slim and petite as you still are, my darling. I can read my seamstress’s measuring tape as well as the next woman.’ She gave her motherly cleavage a pat. ‘Secretly, most men yearn for a little extra meat on the bone, even if they’re not always quite sure what to do with it. When I saw you, I thought—that’s my old friend Alice Bowdly! But then, it can’t be—because she hasn’t changed! How
do
you do it, darling?’

Alice opened her mouth to say something about a strict diet, exercise, discipline, but Celia was already jingling her bracelets.

‘Whatever it is, I couldn’t possibly manage it. I’m weak as water when it comes to anything
nice.
And are there or are there not cakes in that box?’

The box fanned out, exhaling scents of sweetness and things dairy.

‘We should have a drink as well.’ Celia waddled over to a large, softly humming cabinet. Inside were glasses, bottles, trays. Popped, glugged out and fizzing, the wine added its own sweetness to the already cloying air. The wine had the colour of urine, and somehow hinted at the same scent. Here in Bristol, you were never far away from the pissoir. The bottle, Alice noticed, bore no label. Neither had the wine at the dances, and even some she’d inspected in Invercombe’s own cellars. What, she decided to ask Celia, was the problem in the west? Was there a shortage of paper and glue because of all the stupid forms and receipts they so favoured? Were the Spaniards and the French ashamed of their produce?

‘Celia, who’d been avidly studying the cakes on the table, sat back with a look of near surprise dimpling her face. ‘You really haven’t heard of the small trade?’

‘No.’ Irritating though this woman was, this wasn’t the time to pretend to know things she didn’t. ‘What is that?’

‘Well,
there’s
a question and a half…’ Celia grew almost thoughtful for a few moments. Unspoken phrases played across her nimble red lips. ‘It’s a question of… As a matter of fact, it’s quite hard to say exactly… But there are
rules,
aren’t there? Silly rules—especially as regards the payment of revenue. Not that we shouldn’t all pay our taxes. But there are limits, aren’t there? After all, the rules wouldn’t be so ridiculous in the first place if they didn’t expect us to bend them…’

Slowly at first, then quickly, the fog was clearing. ‘You mean this wine is contraband?’

‘Alice!’ Celia looked as if she was about to lean across the table and slap her wrist. ‘You
do
have the
most
unfortunate way of putting things. Take a piece of advice from me and simply think of it as the small trade.’

Alice nodded. As was often the case, the euphemism told you far more about the subject than did any more direct phrase.

‘Where to begin?’ Celia’s fingers danced across the tartlets. She glanced back towards Alice. ‘But I think you should have first pick.’

Alice reached towards the vermicelli and angelica-flecked construction nearest to her, but a quick manoeuvre by Celia’s doll-like hands presented her with the one furthest away. ‘I’m sure this looks the nicest.’

Alice studied the baleful glare of the hellebore-cherry, then began, with cautious adjustments, and without the help of a spoon or a napkin, to consume it.

‘All that rubbish about self-denial, eh?’ Celia scooped up a tartlet from the middle row and ate it with licks and nibbles and small gasps of pleasure. ‘You’ve done so well,’ she murmured through a full mouth. ‘I mean, I’m just a twice-bereaved widow, a mere grandmistress. But you’re the greatgrandmistress of one of the major guilds. Yet you bear it all so lightly. And you have a family as well. Or at least a son, although I hear the poor lad’s not quite as well as he might be. But all those houses! All that wealth! And such influence! You really must—oh, and this is just
so delicious
—tell me everything about it.’

Between sticky bites, Alice did her best to keep up her side of the conversation, but the fact was that Celia wasn’t interested in any subject but herself, and then how she and Alice were so
alike,
and what great
friends
they might be, and how they might now
depend
on each other. It was true, Alice inwardly conceded, that the disclosure of their mutual origins might cause Celia some harm, but not that much. Not with her husbands both dead and her life established here in the west, where the only standards were double ones. Alice, on the other hand, was still building her life. It was a work in progress. Of course, she’d been lax in not recognising the grossly changed Cheryl Kettlethorpe in Celia sooner, but at the same time she could detect no obvious desire for straightforward blackmail in this woman’s florid manner. After all, she looked blissfully content here, surrounded by giant blooms and stuffing herself with tartlets. Did she really need any more money and status? More likely, she was somewhat lonely amid all the possessions she’d grasped from her dead husbands. Her desire for friendship, and with that extra
frisson
of a secret shared with a greatgrandmistress, was probably genuine. But Alice knew how these things went. Something always came up. Little favours. Even—for, on second thoughts, no one ever had quite enough of the stuff—straightforward requests for money. All of it couched in the usual this-is-what-friends-do-for-each-other banalities when underneath both sides knew that a knife was being held to your throat. She forced herself through a second tartlet in the certain knowledge that Celia would finish off the rest, pretended to take another sip of the dreadful wine, then asked if she might possibly be excused?

Alice extended the excursion by peering around doors and down stairwells, but it seemed as if Celia really had emptied the house of servants. Inside the palatial toilet, she vomited up the tartlets. The two hellebore berries, which she’d swallowed entire like fat pills, required several flushes and a wodge of toilet paper to sink. Heading back for the rooftop after rinsing her mouth and face, Alice really did feel cleansed. Her plans had assumed that she would consummate her spell several hours and many miles away, but now she was curious …

Celia was on her fourth and final tartlet, and the last red berry had already vanished into her cream-smeared mouth, when Alice sat down again.

‘So we really are totally alone here?’

Celia sucked a blob of cream from her index finger. ‘But there’s no need for all this
secrecy,
Alice. I’d never tell a soul. In a way, you know, you remind me of my Clive. Did I mention that he was my second husband … ?’

And off she went again. Me, me, me. That particular husband had acquired his wealth from what she termed a colonial estate, which Alice knew meant enslavement under the burning sun for thousands of Negroes just so there could be enough sugar to keep the likes of Celia fat. It was all so typical of this city which lay around her, fragmented beyond the glass like the tipped pieces of a jigsaw. The notices on walls advertising bear-baiting and gargoyle fights. The coffee-coloured complexions of so many of the servants, and even lesser guildsmen, which told their own story. The ostentatious piety. The rampant bureaucracy. The small trade. Of course, it was all part of the rich pageant of which this great nation was composed, but, as she sat listening to Celia, summoning the white anger for the spell she was about to cast required little effort. Yes, she would stay at Invercombe and put up with as much as was necessary until Ralph was finally better, but she decided that there was something essentially rotten about the west.

‘Sorry … ?’ Celia licked glittering crumbs from the edges of her lips. ‘Didn’t quite catch that.’

‘Just shut up and listen for a moment, will you, Celia? I want to make absolutely sure that I get this right.’

Celia perched her fingertips on her knees and leaned forward in her chair.

Alice took a breath. She cleared her throat. She felt almost self-conscious. The spell was guttural and arcane.

‘Well … ?’ Clearly puzzled, Celia sat back. ‘I don’t quite see … ?’

‘It really doesn’t matter now, Celia.’

‘Hmm …’ Celia tilted her ample neck as if considering whether she agreed. Then, almost imperceptibly at first, she started shaking. ‘Hmm …’ But now the sound was an animal one, wrenched from her throat.

Alice stood up. Celia was juddering, her hands clenching her chest and belly as if striving to rip out the source of whatever was happening to her. Her gaze, as her eyes bulged and her face paled beneath all the layers of make-up, roamed the flowers and the glass and the furniture. She let out a groan, and weird, luminously wyreglowing vomit pooled across her lap and bosom. She made to rise, but her legs weren’t up to it and she keeled through the glass table, which sprayed in shards around her. Alice took a step back as Celia lay juddering in the wreckage and the characteristic Bristol smell of piss and faeces began to flood the rooftop air. Celia half rolled over through the glass, and blood also bloomed as the convulsions began to subside.

Alice picked her way around the mess. Celia was almost still now. Only her lips were trembling. Although the garden remained sealed from the outside air, Alice felt a swift, clean breeze passing over her, tumbling the elegant paper cups which had held the tartlets; some side effect of the spell which the pages she’d studied hadn’t mentioned, but not unpleasant.

Half-kneeling, Alice studied Celia’s face. The focus of Celia’s gaze was inward, receding. She was nearing the final moment. But still her lips quivered. Was that not a word? Carefully, Alice parted her hair from around her left ear and leaned close to Celia’s mouth.

‘I thought we …’

Was
that
what she had said? And was
could befriends
the intended end of the sentence? Alice smiled warmly into the woman’s dying eyes. It would make a suitably mundane epitaph. She studied the irises as they widened. Then, in a final foul exhalation, Celia was gone. Had she been thinking of her lost husbands? Was there emptiness? For a moment, Alice surveyed the scene. The plump stems of Celia’s doll-like wrists were decorated with numerous bracelets. Breathing through her mouth, raising the left hand by its littlest finger, she eased one off. It was a thin hoop of silver set with tiny shards of beryl or ruby—expensive enough, but amid all this ostentation, no one would notice it. Putting on her coat, sliding the souvenir into her pocket, she crushed the second wineglass beneath her heel and left 28 Charlotte Street.

The morning’s sunlight had vanished and Bristol seemed a different city as she took a cab to the Telegraphers’ great guild-house and transmission works, which rose across the harbour at Redcliff in the shades of the riotous growths of stone which were the colours of bruises. Genuinely cold now after the heat of Celia’s rooftop, she stepped out in the eye-stinging grit outside the guildhall’s front entrance. She greeted a tiered succession of lower and higher and upper and lesser and ordinary and senior guildsmasters before being ushered through halls and up stairways filled with a comforting, everyday hum. Not even for the arrival of their own greatgrandmistress did work stop here, and Alice was glad of that, and glad for the brightening glow of the telephone lines which fanned out from the high tower which was always a feature of the major edifices of her guild, although this one, being in the west, was more like a jet of erupting masonry. From up here, standing beside the antique but potent haft through which telegraphers had once communed, the darkening layers of windy western landscape already looked ensnared, entwined, enmeshed. Hers…