Streaking

by Brian Stableford

  “I know you’ve probably got a waiting-list a mile long,” Alice said, apologetically, “and I haven’t exactly been a regular visitor since I moved down south, but I have missed the old place—more and more, actually, as time’s gone by. Martin and I are thinking about starting a family, and I’ve always told him that Cockayne is the perfect environment in which to bring up kids.”

  “As it happens,” Canny told her, “you might be in luck. I think I can probably manage to persuade the elders that Martin would be an asset, even though he’s not in an honest trade. There’s nothing vacant at the moment, and I doubt that I’d be able to move you to the very top of the queue, but I think I might be able to steer them in the right direction without seeming to be trying to throw my newly-acquired weight about. You’re a Proffitt, after all—your Mum and Dad are pillars of the community, and Jack and Ellen’s shop is the second most important gossip-well in town, after the Eagle.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Lord Credesdale,” Martin Ellison said.

  “Not at all,” Canny assured him. “I really am interested in your field of study, and I’d certainly like to talk to you about it some time. Are you working on a new book?”

  “Of course. It’s about popular superstition. Alice has....”

  “Do you really think you can swing it, Canny?” Alice put in. “can I still call you Canny, now you’re the earl?”

  “You might have to work locally to keep the elders sweet, at least for a while,” Canny said. “Would you mind that?”

  “Actually,” Alice said, “I was hoping to curry favor in a slightly different way. My degree’s in history, and I’ve been doing some post-grad work. How would the elders take it if I approached them with a proposal to write a book about the early history of Cockayne? How would you feel about it, given that I’d need access to your records?”

  “I think they’d like it,” Canny said, after a moment’s thought. “I think I could see my way clear to giving you access to some of the documents in the library—not the secret ones, of course, but the ones that relate to the village. Perhaps you could both come over for dinner in a fortnight or so, so that we could talk about it. Do you have a card with your telephone number, Dr Ellison?”

  “Martin, please,” Ellison said. He fished out his wallet and extracted a business-card from it. “Printed them out on my PC just the other day. We only moved up a few weeks ago—we’re hoping that our present accommodation will only be temporary. The university’s excellent, of course, but after Canterbury....”

  “The neighborhood’s a bit of a shock,” Canny finished for him. “A stroll along Woodhouse Lane isn’t quite the same as a morning constitutional in the Garden of England. I’ll do my best to make sure that it is temporary. I’m looking forward to talking to you about the Oedipus Effect.”

  “You really have read Martin’s book, haven’t you?” Alice said, in a slightly puzzled tone.

  “Of course,” Canny told her. “I suppose you’re surprised because Ellen’s told you that I’m a playboy—a wastrel with the brains of a flea and morals to match.”

  Alice blushed crimson. “Oh no,” she said swiftly. “Ellen’s always said that you were really nice—she wouldn’t ever say a word against you. She’s always spoken up for you when....” She stopped abruptly.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Canny said. “She and I have always had a certain rapport, ever since she showed me her knickers when we at primary together. Must have been the other gossips, then—I suppose the funeral set them all off. Pooer owld Lord Cre’esdale—real gemmun, not like that son of his, allus off down t’Riviera.”

  Alice burst out laughing at his preposterous parodic accent. “Even I can do a better one than that,” she said, “an’ ah bin ’obnobbin’ wi’ t’gentry in Canterburry these last se’n year’n’mooer.”

  “Obviously, you can’t,” Canny said. “But I appreciate the gesture. Actually, nobody in the village seems to be able to do it properly any more. Too much TV, I suppose. The BBC gets to us all in the end.”

  “Well,” said Martin Ellison, evidently deciding that it was time to move on before the tone of the conversation began to plumb unacceptable depths of irreverence, “I’m delighted to hear that you know my work, and I’ll be delighted to talk to you about it some time soon. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  As Martin watched them move away, his mother homed in on him again. “Who is that girl, Can?” she asked.

  “The youngest of the Proffitt sisters, Mummy,” Canny said. “Married, I’m afraid. Sorry to disappoint you. They all are—all the Proffitt sisters, that is. I dare say you’ve taken care to invite a few Tadcastrians who aren’t.”

  “Don’t be silly, Can.”

  “I’m sorry, Mummy. I thought you’d come over to interrogate me as to whether I’d interviewed any of Bentley’s suggested bridal candidates yet, and whether I thought any of them were up to the job.”

  “We can stop pretending now, Can,” she said, “Daddy’s gone. I don’t care what you do—it’s entirely your own business. Have you invited that Chinese girl to stay the night?”

  “I don’t think she’s Chinese, mother, although she can speak fluent Mandarin. No, I haven’t had a chance to invite her, yet. Will you mind terribly if I do?”

  “It’s your house now, Can. You can invite whomever you please.”

  “Oh, stop it Mummy. I’m sorry I made the joke about the Tadcastrian debs. Anyway, I’ll have to go to London in a few days, and I’ll probably be spending a lot more time there than Daddy did. You’ll be Lady of the Manor till the day you die, which won’t be for a long time yet, and you can run the place however you like. Unless, of course, you were thinking of remarrying?”

  “That’s cruel, Can,” she said—but there were no tears in the corners of her eyes.

  “Sorry, Mummy. A reaction against the strain of having to be so polite to everyone else, I guess. At least Ellen Proffitt was prepared to act naturally, although I don’t think her husband approved. Even Alice is a bit subdued, although that might be because she’s mellowed since she was thirteen. She wasn’t overawed, though, the way some of the others are pretending to be.”

  “You’ll never overawe the Proffitt girls,” Lady Credesdale observed. “They knew you when you were in short pants.”

  “So did practically everyone in the village over the age of thirty,” Canny pointed out. “And not one of them has forgotten. That’s why so many of them are pretending so hard to be humble forelock-tuggers, although they seem to have done their fair share of complaining about my wayward lifestyle while I was away. Too much imagination by half, I fear. The crowd’s thinning out quite nicely now, wouldn’t you say.”

  “Nicely enough,” she agreed, looking around the gardens with a sternly calculating eye. The result of her calculations obviously included a note of anxiety, but Canny guessed that she was merely wondering what Jebb would have to say in the morning about the tragic state of his lawns.

  “I’ll tell Bentley to make sure that the booze-supply dries up fairly soon, although there’s bound to be a handful who won’t take the hint. You’ll have to take care of your side of the family, though.”

  He was being slightly cruel again, but Lady Credesdale didn’t have an opportunity to complain because Stevie Larkin was coming over. He was unaccompanied now; Lissa was still in hiding inside the house.

  “I’ve got to get back to the folks on the other side of the moors, Lord C,” he said, apologetically. “It was nice to see you again—hope it’s in happier circumstances next time. I’m not expecting to be in Milan much longer—my agent reckons I’ve done my time in the sun and ought to head home again, and it’s easier to get picked for England if you’re actually in England. Liverpool or Blackburn would be nice, or even Man City.”

  Canny deduced from the slightly wistful tone of this list that Stevie’s real ambition was to play for Manchester United, but that he didn’t think it likely that they would be making him an offer. “Thanks for
coming, Stevie,” he said. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  “Well,” said Stevie, “it’s like Lissa says—fate threw us together that night. Did the cops ever find out who mugged you?”

  Canny raised an eyebrow at that, slightly surprised that Lissa had told him. “I didn’t have time to call the police,” he said. “It was no big deal. I think the casino’s security people managed to identify the inside man who tipped off the mugger. He won’t be operating out of their premises again.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Stevie said. “G’night, milord. Hope it all goes well for you. Never liked funerals myself, I’m afraid—way too much symbolism in the ashes-to-ashes stuff.”

  “What was he talking about?” Lady Credesdale demanded, as soon as the footballer had turned away.

  “Symbolism, Mother,” Canny retorted, deliberately misunderstanding. “Sportsman that is born of woman hath but a short career, and time’s winged chariot is always hovering on the touchline. The poor guy’s seven or eight years younger than me, and already he’s worrying about his legs letting him down. He’s no fool, though—he’s probably put away a very healthy nest-egg by now. He’ll be okay, even if he doesn’t collect many more England caps and ends up at Man City.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  Canny sighed. “I was mugged, the night I flew back home. As I said to Stevie, it’s no big deal. I just handed over the money, and that was that. End of story.”

  “Does—did—your father know?”

  “Yes he did—but he didn’t think it was a big deal either. I’m sorry Stevie let it slip.”

  His mother shook her head, but she made no further complaint about not having been told. “You have to be careful, Canny,” she said.

  “It won’t happen again, Mummy. I won’t be tempting fate like that in future. No more casinos at four in the morning for me. As I told Maurice Rawtenstall, I may have neglected my homework in the past but I’m determined t catch up as soon as I can—and from now on, I’ll keep my money in the bank, where it belongs.”

  “You don’t have to lie to me, Can,” she said. “I’m just your mother. You’re the earl now—you can be as reckless and secretive as your father was, and never confide in me at all. Just treat me like part of the furniture. I’m used to that.” This time, there were tears in the corners of her eyes. Canny would have hugged her, if he had thought that it would do any good.

  “Come on, Mummy,” he said, instead. “We’ve got a fair few goodbyes still to say. No rest for the wicked, eh?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It took Canny a further half-hour to escape from the garden, and even longer to escape the drawing-room, but in the end he was able to seize an opportunity to go to the library.

  Lissa was waiting for him in the outer room, sitting in an armchair reading The Personal and Historical Implications of the Oedipus Effect by Martin Ellison.

  “Quite a coincidence,” she observed, as she rose to her feet, “his turning up at the funeral like that.”

  “A coincidence is what it was,” he said. “I’d no idea he was married to a local girl.”

  “A pretty thing,” said Lissa, in a dismissively disdainful fashion. “She seems to like you.”

  “She wants something—access to the library, it seems. I’ll have to be careful about that one. Anyway, they all like me, even if they do make disapproving remarks about my imagined lifestyle. I’ve always been popular in the village, ever since I gave up playing for the cricket team. How was Venezuela?”

  “Replete with tar sands and illicit loggers, reportedly. A speculator’s dream and an environmentalist’s nightmare. From where I was standing, though, it was just one more unit in the global village. How does one address the Earl of Credesdale, by the way? Sire? My lord?”

  “As you’re obviously still convinced that it’s safe for us to be in the same room,” he said, as he unlocked the door to the inner sanctum, “you might as well stick to Canny—although I’m not at all sure that there’s anything canny about my letting you in. Are you staying over? I ought to tell Bentley to have a room made up if you are.”

  “I can’t. I have to be in London by six a.m. I shouldn’t really be here, but when I bumped into Stevie and he told me the news, it seemed only right.”

  “You brought Stevie along because you knew that it would give the paparazzi something to get their teeth into, didn’t you?” Canny said. “He’s a smokescreen.”

  “He was all in favor of putting in an appearance,” she said. “It has a certain symmetry, don’t you think? The three of us all bet on that zero, when you said goodbye to your old life. Fate bound us together that night, didn’t it?”

  “You seem to have persuaded Stevie of that, too,” Canny observed.

  “I was surprised to see everybody standing around a grave,” she said, blithely changing the subject. “I thought English lords were buried in crypts—in fact, after seeing your house the other day I was rather expecting a Gothic mausoleum.”

  “We Credesdales have always been buried in the churchyard, in graves marked with discreet stones, without so much as a cross or a stone angel. Tradition, you see.”

  “The church isn’t small, though. The bell-tower’s quite impressive.”

  “So’s the organ—but the choir isn’t what it used to be. There’s always a very good turn-out at mass, but the church isn’t the heart of the community any more. Changing times.”

  “But you don’t go to mass yourself,” she said, presumably implying that he didn’t take communion, or go to confession.

  “No,” he said. “Neither did Daddy—although Father Quimper came out on Daddy’s last day to administer extreme unction, apparently. Just in case, I guess—his motto, if not the family motto. Mummy let him in and out while I was in the library. I don’t know why they were so secretive about it; it’s not as if I’d have had any objection. You haven’t mentioned meeting a male streaker to your mother, I suppose?”

  “Do you think I’m mad?” she said. “She doesn’t suspect a thing. So far as she knows, I’m just attending a funeral, out of politeness. It’s my business, not hers.”

  “I told Daddy,” he confessed.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said. “Not any more. What did he tell you to do—never let me darken your doorstep again?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He closed both of the inner doors carefully behind them, making certain that they would be undisturbed. The chair she’d brought into the inner sanctum on her previous visit was still there; she sat down in it as if it were her own, and made herself comfortable. She still had Martin Ellison’s book in her hand, but she closed it now and set it down on his desk.

  “You’re not taking his advice,” she observed.

  “I haven’t quite decided,” he said. “You’re sure that it’s safe for you to be here, are you?”

  “Of course I’m not sure,” she told him. “I’ve decided that I’ll take the risk—just as you have. The fact that we haven’t a clue what the risk is, or how freakishly it might express itself if it ever does, makes it all the more piquant, don’t you think?”

  “Since Daddy died, my lucky streak is supposedly dormant,” Canny told her, knowing that he wasn’t giving anything away. “I’m normal now, almost. I thought when I saw you last that the loss of my luck might put me at a disadvantage, if it really does happen, and make me more vulnerable than I’d otherwise be, but it might have the opposite effect, mightn’t it? It might make it safe for us to meet.”

  “Perhaps it will,” she agreed. “Is that what you want to be—safe?”

  “I’m talking to you,” he pointed out. “I’m alone with you in the inner sanctum of Credesdale House. That’s not what Daddy would have considered safe. Your mother would presumably take the same view.”

  She didn’t smile at that. Her mood seemed to have became more serious, and he regretted making the reference to her mother. Outside, in the sunlit churchyard, she had seemed to be takin
g everything lightly, but now they were in the gloomiest part of the library she was becoming taut and stiff—which was the opposite of what he wanted, especially if they were going to talk about safety and risk.

  “I think we’re probably safe enough,” he reassured her, “unless and until I decide to renew the Kilcannon lucky streak.”

  “Unless?” she queried.

  “It has occurred to me,” he admitted, “that I don’t actually need any more unusual luck. I could live quite comfortably on my accumulated capital.”

  “Are you saying that you’d give it all up for me?” she said. Outside, she’d probably have said it with a broad smile, but there was a hesitation in her teasing now. “After thirty generations and more, you’d stop? Because of me?” She knew that the world was full of men who would make or break a deal with the devil at her request—but that wasn’t what she was getting at.

  “Maybe not,” Canny said, trying to sound casual. “After all, if I weren’t a streaker you’d never have glanced at me twice, would you? If I were the kind of person who could contemplate letting it go, I might not be interesting any longer.”

  The bantering tone didn’t evoke a response. Lissa had decided that it was time to approach the problem in earnest. Canny decided that he had better be earnest too.

  “It really might be safer if I didn’t try to renew the streak, at least for a while,” he said. “If you and I are going to put our heads together, and try to figure out how it really works, it might be best if one of us were...de-activated. And if you look at it from an objective point of view, I really do have enough.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, dismissively. “How could you ever have enough? Are you really saying that if your ability to deconstruct the moment were still active—as it might be, for all you know—you’d avoid me? Knowing what I am, could you simply turn your back on me and forget that I exist?”

  She was obviously asking him questions she’d already asked herself.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Probably not. How about you?”