Polystom Read online

  ‘My dear,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘What are you looking at?’

  ‘The sea,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The sea.’

  There was a pause, and then she said: ‘I’ll go there.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a good idea for us to take the boat out in this weather,’ said Stom. ‘It looks bright, I know, but the spring winds are surprisingly vigorous, and sudden rain makes sailing treacherous, even for an experienced sailor like me.’

  ‘I didn’t mean,’ she said, dreamily, as if not addressing him, ‘with you.’

  It took a moment for this to sink in. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  But she didn’t reply to this. He stood up. ‘Now look here,’ he said. ‘This won’t do, you know. It really won’t. What do you mean by that, by saying you’ll go away?’

  ‘I don’t belong here,’ she said, in the same dreamy voice.

  ‘Of course you belong here. You’re my wife. I married you, and you belong here. You can’t go. I don’t give you permission.’

  At this she turned her head and looked at him, her eyes moist but hard, bright as aluminium. There was the slightest question in her look; or, at least, he interpreted it as such. ‘I won’t be interrogated. I won’t be questioned,’ he blustered. ‘You’ll stay here. We need to do some work, you and I, at being husband and wife. It evidently won’t come naturally, and we need to work at it.’

  He marched out, then, because he had run out of things to say. Downstairs, through the main hall. His mind rifled through possibilities. Something was needed, some public affirmation of their marriage, something to encourage Beeswing to settle down. Sitting in an over-large padded seat, staring at the portraiture on the wall, he tried to be decisive. A newsbook, this week’s, was sitting unread on the low table. He flicked through its pages, not taking in the words.

  He shut his eyes.

  Out of nothing, a decision came to him. A party. He would host a party, something the house hadn’t seen since his father’s and co-father’s death. The actual wedding ceremony had not, he thought, functioned properly as the public endorsement of their union. No wedding can, he thought to himself, because at that stage the parties are relatively unknown to one another. But a party thrown by host and hostess, months into their lives together, would be altogether more effective at publicly acknowledging and therefore cementing their partnership.

  He called Nestor, and explained his plan; and then hurried upstairs to tell Beeswing personally. She wasn’t in the Print Room. It took a fifteen-minute search, in which more and more servants became caught up, before it could be confirmed that she wasn’t anywhere in the house.

  Polystom kept thinking of his Aunt Elena’s words when she had first learnt that he had fallen in love with Beeswing. She ran away. Several times. Ungovernable, she’s simply ungovernable. So now she had run away from her husband, as she had once done from her parents, and from her guardian. Stom thundered at his servants, for allowing it to happen, but inwardly he blamed himself. He should have foreseen this, should have taken steps to prevent it. It seemed ridiculous, but evidently his wife needed to be watched, perhaps even locked up, at least until they could work out a way of purging her of this ungovernable nature.

  He sent out as many men as were to hand to search the grounds; but it quickly became apparent that she had taken one of the boats from the pier at the bottom of the garden. A servant, who had been cleaning the glasshouse windows, had seen her pass. ‘My lady asked me to unhook the boat-rope,’ this man said. He was old, his face creased and collapsed like a crumpled old pillow, and he was crying now, streaky tears falling as his master raged at him. ‘I’m sorry sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t think any harm. She is the lady of the house, since your marriage, sir.’

  This seemed to Stom a kind of hidden rebuke to him. ‘You idiot!’ he yelled, slapping the old man so hard that he fell to the ground. ‘What reason would my wife have to go off in a boat by herself in this weather? You should have thought. You should have thought, and stopped her.’

  The man sobbed further apologies from the ground, but Stom didn’t wait. ‘Take the twin-engine,’ he told Nestor, ‘and take a man with you. I’m going up in the plane. She will have gone east or west along the coast. I don’t believe she has any experience of the sea, and she’s surely not crazy enough to have gone out into open water.’ He scanned the horizon. The clouds further out were grey and lowering. ‘It’s not good flying weather, but we need to catch up with her sooner, not later.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘The twin-engine is in the boathouse, I think.’

  ‘It is, sir.’

  ‘Get it on the water and start west. You’ll see me flying soon enough. If I come back and then fly east again, you’re to turn the boat and come back in that direction. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  He sprinted to the front of the house, and across to the end of the runway. The planes had been stowed in the shed since the weather threatened spring storms, but servants were now hauling one of the craft out. In ten minutes Stom was airborne, spits of rain in the air blotting his goggles so that he had to wipe them repeatedly. The ground shrank beneath him, and he pulled over the sea.

  She had only had a half-hour start on them, if that, and Stom set in a course following the coast. He passed over Nestor in the twin-engine boat, drawing a great triangular wash behind it, both engines clearly at full throttle. He flew on, and almost at once saw another, smaller boat. Flying low over this he could see one small figure at the wheel. It had to be her.

  Climbing again, Stom now wished he had some way of communicating with his butler in the boat. He wanted to tell him to hurry, that she was easily catchable. He flew east, and circled the twin-engine, flying low over it and drawing it further on by flying away to the west again, this time so low that his propeller cut a shallow wave out of the water.

  He wished he were in the boat. He could not catch her directly with his plane. There was nowhere to land west of the house; it was too wooded, and the coastline was too craggy.

  Furious he cut inland, and flew over the treetops until he caught sight of his house again. He landed, and clambered out. ‘The yacht,’ he told servants. It had not been on the water since the previous Autumn Year, but it had three large engines. ‘Make it ready. I need to get on the water.’

  Men hurried to comply, and Stom dashed down towards the boathouse. But then he saw, with a spurt of rage in his breast, the twin-engine chugging into the cove. As soon as Nestor was close enough he yelled at him. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Come east,’ said the butler, waving his arms. ‘You flew over us again. We turned back – to go east.’

  ‘Idiots!’ Stom yelled. ‘Come here – come here – at least I can be on the water now. She’s gone west, I saw her. I flew over you again to indicate that fact to you!’

  He told one of the servants in the boat to go over and stop them putting the yacht on the water. Then he jumped from pierside into the twin-engine, and took the wheel, throttling as hard as he could, kicking up a standing wave and spray. The boat surged through the water and out on to open sea.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ shouted Nestor, over the noise of engine and spray. ‘I misunderstood.’

  ‘Never mind now,’ said Stom, the thrill of the chase upon him. ‘We know which direction she’s heading, and this boat is faster than hers.’

  For half an hour things went well. They made excellent passage over a clear sea. But then the storm that had been threatening from the south broke upon them. The change in weather came with a ferocious suddenness. The rain was merely spitty, drops in the air like a swarm of icy insects, and then, abruptly, the climate changed completely. A violent wind started bashing huge dents out of the surface of the water. Rain filled the sky all around them, heavy as shot and thick as glue. Visibility disappeared. Everything instantly soaked to grey. Being so close to the rocks of the coast was very dangerous in this sort of weather, but Sto
m was worried less for himself – he was an experienced boatsman after all – and more for his impetuous wife.

  There was nothing for it: he had to kill most of his speed. The boat was bucking underneath him like a child’s swing. It was only a pleasure craft, not designed for these more violent conditions. Compelled by a great swell of water and wind they were thrown forward alarmingly. A black rock, fringed at its base with a doily of cold white froth, appeared suddenly out of the gloom before them. Stom fought the steering to the left, swerved through the bucking water, only just missing the obstacle. Then, throttling up, he jockeyed over a number of tumbling swells. Better to ride it out in the open sea than be dashed against the rocks, he knew, although the open sea might easily capsize his boat. He had just made the decision to take that risk when the squalls of rain lifted curtain-like to show a sloping black beach to his right. At once, Stom turned the wheel and gunned the engine, driving the boat hard up against the sand.

  He didn’t need to order the men. They hopped out as waves crashed against the back of the boat, and hauled it up the sand. Further up, the mealy beach gave way to tufts of grass, and then to turf. Black sentinels, trees, vaguely visible through the fierce weather, loomed on the edge of sight. The boat was far enough away from the waves now, and the men could take shelter. ‘There’s a boathouse somewhere along here,’ yelled Nestor. But Stom had noticed an overhang, and the four of them clambered between the rocks to the east of the little beach, and round a bend to relative quiet.

  They were all completely wet, their clothes and hair, through to their skin. They were all panting too, their breath coming out like steam. Above them the rain sounded appallingly fierce, and the angles of rock blew weird, inhuman whistles from the wind.

  None of them said anything. All were thinking, Stom was sure, of Beeswing out on the water in this weather. But there was nothing to do but wait.

  The rain died, drum-rolled up to a squall again, and then died once more, dropping away completely. Through it all Polystom was in a heightened imaginative state. He saw, in his mind’s eye, his wife’s boat ground to splinters between sea and storm, saw her body tugged down to the bottom, her face blank.

  As soon as the rain had fallen to a drizzle he clambered along and out, and hurried over the sodden ground to the boat. ‘Put your shoulders into it,’ he shouted at his men – redundantly, as it turned out, because they were all there, frantically pushing the boat into the water. Through ridges of splash and spray, hopping into the craft and gunning the engine, and then they were away from the beach and pulling out to sea.

  The air felt damp, ionised, but then, with the sort of breathtaking change of weather typical of the late Spring Year on Enting, everything was instantly transformed from grey to summer. A line of sharp sunshine rushed over the waves dragging behind it brightness and blue. As the storm clouds ran away through the sky it became so bright that Polystom had to shield his eyes with his hand. Now the swarming drops of spray thrown up by the nodding onward crash of the boat were diamonds, jewels, tiny mirrored pearls, and the tang of salt tasted clean and sunny. The scene cleared all around them, bright greens returning to the land, bright purples to the sky. The sea quieted, unbuckling, spreading its surface with sun-glitter.

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Stom shouted over the noise of the engine, the wind, the splashing. ‘For wreckage.’

  But there was nothing to be seen. They moved swiftly over now-calm waters, blue as Beeswing’s eyes.

  Eventually they came in view of a little fishing settlement, on the western coast of the Middenstead, perhaps forty miles from Polystom’s house. Two dozen small stone houses, stacked up the slant of the coastline, arranged around a harbour made by a wooden pier-stockade in which a dozen tub-like fishing boats jostled one another. This was Yenia-port, one of the little communities of Stom’s servants who lived off the water rather than the land. They fished, supplying the house with their best catches, eating for their needs and selling the surplus. Technically everything they fished belonged to Stom, as did they, but he continued his father’s benign policy of granting them a degree of freedom. There was an overseer’s house, on the highest ridge of the village, and the overseer’s job was to keep an eye on comings and goings; he reported (Stom had no idea of his name; too lowly a figure) to the underbutler at the house, who in turn reported to Nestor, who could inform Stom if anything happened to be amiss.

  Spring Year was the year for the biggest catches of fish, and normally Stom would have expected his fishermen to have been out on the waves, but the storm had corralled them in the harbour. Indeed, the harbour space was so packed with fishing boats that there wasn’t room for Stom’s twin-engine to squeeze in, and he guided it to the far, seaward side of the pier-stockade.

  There was the other boat, the one Beeswing had taken.

  One of his men tied the boat up, and Stom and Nestor clambered up and hurried along the wooden pier. Birdsong was audible; and the endless buzz of insects. From harsh winter storm, the weather had swung about almost to a summer scene.

  The streets of Yenia were narrow and steeply inclined, ridged with logs inset into the compacted dirt to aid feet. They were slippy, after the rain, and Stom’s white Stapia closeweave trousers were spattered with brown at their ankle cuffs.

  He had come to Yenia several times before, years ago, when his fathers were still alive and he had indulged an adolescent passion for boating. Then his wanderings had taken him up and down the coastline of his sea, and he had come here. The dark little houses, fish-smelling. The one tavern, where the ale was stored in barrels on the roof and fed through a flexible tube into glasses below, where even that yeasty brew had a fish-like flavour to it. The boat repair yard in the lower village. The sequence of low-ceilinged plaster rooms abutting the harbour where the catch was cleaned, filleted, and then refrigerated (if it was for the House), or packed in salt (if it was for home consumption). The stone of the houses was whitewashed, and shone like glass in the new sunshine.

  The tavern had no name, but Stom knew where it was, and inside he found his wife, sitting laughing in the midst of a crowd of fishermen and fisherwives. She was laughing at something an old man, amazingly creased and wrinkled, was saying to her. Even with bright sunshine outside the tavern was so murky that it was lit with two oil lamps, and in this red-orange light Stom took in the whole scene. The old fisherman was telling some anecdote, perhaps an old fishing story, to Beeswing, and she was laughing. There was something wrong with the old man’s face, more than just its wrinkles and great age; it was queerly distorted, as if it had been torn into half a dozen pieces by fate and reassembled indifferently. The right eye was a wide slit, pulling down into the cheek. The ear seemed to be missing; the nose was of unusual bulk and shaped like a piece of coral. Yet his wife, his beautiful wife, seemed to be enjoying herself more than Stom had ever seen her.

  He ducked his head to step inside the tavern, and of course all eyes turned to him. The chattering faded to silence; Beeswing’s smile slipped, settled into her more usual enigmatic expression.

  ‘My dear,’ he said, his voice unexpectedly booming in the enclosed space. ‘We were worried about you. The storm . . .’

  He trailed off. Silence.

  The gnarled-faced old man shifted his seat back, away from the Lady. She stood up. She did not need to hunch over, despite the low ceilings. With graceful step, she came over to her husband, and took his hand.

  ‘They were telling me,’ she announced, as much, it seemed, for the benefit of the whole room as for Polystom, ‘of the life they live; following the shoals through the Summer Year up and down the Middenstead. Of the amazing plenitude of fish in the Spring Year. It’s all so captivating. Captivating!’

  The crowd, uneasy in the presence of their master, shuffled, smiled, settled. ‘Come along, dear,’ said Stom, his relief at finding her alive sliding into anger that they must act out this scene in front of nobodies, servants.

  ‘I’ll become a fisherwoman,’ she said.
‘I like the oceans. They are free and wide and open.’

  ‘And dangerous,’ chipped in the gnarled-faced old man from the back of the room. Day-jrus.

  ‘And in the danger,’ Beeswing continued blithely, ‘is the truest freedom. I told them that you’ll surely build me a little house here, in this village, so I can follow this life.’

  But this, to Stom, was too absurd even for joking. ‘Come away,’ he said, more pressingly, taking her arm and tugging it. ‘Let’s not do this thing here.’

  He led her down the slippery alleyway, and out to the twin-engine. One of his men would bring the other boat back; Nestor piloted the twin-engine, and Stom sat in the back, his grip on his wife’s arm so fierce that she told him to lessen it several times.

  [sixth leaf]

  After this Polystom made a decision. He called his chief butler to attend on him in his snug. His mind was made up. He informed Nestor that his wife must be restrained – ‘you understand, Nestor? This running around of hers is simply unacceptable. Think of it,’ Stom went on, leaning back in his chair expansively (although his palms were sticky with nervous sweat), ‘think of it as a kind of disease, I would like you to think of it as a sort of disease. Fever-germs agitate the body, making it shake and jerk; she has some subtle fever-germ in the mind that makes her run away. Do you see this?’