Polystom (11 page)

Another indrawn breath. ‘Don’t lock me up.’

‘It was a simple misunderstanding,’ said Stom. ‘You didn’t need to act the way you did! That wasn’t normal.’

Beeswing’s expression was enough, without words, to convey her contempt.

‘Don’t look at me that way!’ Stom barked. ‘You’re the mad thing. Bashing your head half in – it’s crazy.’

The serving girl was looking extremely uncomfortable, blushing. She couldn’t leave because Stom hadn’t dismissed her. He stood up, ready to go himself. ‘I’m going away for a few days,’ he said, pulling down the front of his waistcoat with dignity. ‘Think about what you did,’ he said to her, as to a child. The words sounded hollow and bizarre in his voice, but they were the right sort of thing to say, surely. That
was
the point, wasn’t it? He almost added
and I hope you’re sorry for everything
, but decided against it.

He paused. Beeswing was looking straight ahead, looking now at the level of his midriff. She didn’t say anything else.

He flew to the moon, arriving at Cleonicles’ in time for supper, and greeted his uncle heartily. It felt so good to feel the wind over his face, to cruise the enormity of space, to be able to reach his arm out of the cockpit and feel the interplanetary ether slipping through his fingers. For an hour or so this mood buoyed him up, and he joined his
uncle for wine and metaphysical discussion. Then he found himself crying. It was the sort of thing that, had anybody else seen his weakness, would have been unbearable; but his uncle had seen him cry before, and wasn’t fazed by it. He didn’t rush to offer pointless condolence, but sat and allowed his nephew to cry out the worst of it. Once the initial pressure was voided, and Stom could speak, only then did Cleonicles offer tactful questions, as another man might offer a handkerchief. Under this loving application of wine and sympathy, Polystom unspooled the whole story. Beeswing’s flight, her recapture, his decision to lock her up until she saw sense. Her running headlong at the closed door, not once but several times, until she had all but brained herself.

‘What shall I do, Uncle?’ Stom asked. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Cleonicles didn’t hurry his advice. He sat and swilled the last mouthful of wine around the bottom of his wineglass. The sky outside was purple-black now, stained by the blue and green earthlight; the night calls of the stork-boars made mournful glupping whistles in the darkness.

‘You are Steward,’ he said eventually. ‘There’s no point in disputing the fact, it’s a feature of the natural world, as solid as a mountain. If an underling disputes it we think that disgraceful. But just because a person is married to a Steward – that doesn’t give them the right to dispute that fact either. All are bound by the great structure, high and low. Or else,’ he said, with an almost tripping gloominess in his voice, ‘or else everything crumbles.’ He downed his wine. ‘Being of a proper family, being close to the power, makes insurrection worse, not more creditable. At least some pitiable servant may excuse himself on the grounds of ignorance. A Steward’s wife has no such defence.’

Stom had never seen his uncle like this before. ‘Insurrection, uncle?’ he said. ‘That’s a strong word.’

‘Oh I dare say, I dare say. Yes, it overstates it a little to call
it insurrection. But, then again, what
else
can you call a struggle against proper authority?’

He refilled his glass.

‘You’re at a crucial point, my boy,’ he said, his lips glistening in the lamplight as he took a long draught. ‘She’s struggling against authority, which is as stupid as banging her head against a wall, if you see what I mean. She’ll either learn this, and her life will settle into a better course; or else she’ll deny herself the chance to grow up.’

Stom nodded. ‘You’re saying,’ he said, ‘that I should stand firm with her.’

‘Yes,’ said Cleonicles. ‘Yes! You
must
stand firm. This womanly trick of knocking her head against a wooden panel and falling down, this is calculated to prey on a man’s sense of pity and wife-protection. But don’t be taken in! She’s trying to manipulate you, and you – a Steward – must not be manipulated! If I were you, boy, I’d fly home tomorrow. Not that I’m trying to get rid of you; it’s delightful to see you, as ever. But it’s more important that you establish the proper authority at home.’

His uncle’s words sounded very wise to Polystom. They struck a chord of rightness inside him. He flew back the next day, his head muggy with old booze and his headache worse than it might otherwise have been.

He arrived late in the afternoon, with the shadows of the mountains starting to lay great wedges of dark over the forest. As the engine cooled, and he unbuckled his helmet, a servant appeared with a wooden ladder to help him from the cockpit. ‘How is she?’ Polystom asked the man, who blushed and stuttered, lowering his eyes and muttering that he believed the Lady to be taking some supper.

Stom walked round to the conservatory at the back of the south wing, and saw a table laid out in the lawn, just past the shadow cast by the house. There, Beeswing, her head still bandaged, was sitting, attended by a servant. He made
his way over, trying consciously to put command and authority into his stride.

‘Hello my dear,’ he said, or announced rather, sitting himself and reaching for one of the little roast zulu-birds. ‘I’m back from Uncle’s. How are you feeling?’

There was no answer to this question, and there seemed to be a certain hardness in her eyes as she looked at him. But at least she was feeding herself, at least she was eating something. The servant hovered uneasily behind.

‘You look better,’ he offered.

‘My head hurts,’ she said, in a quiet voice, with that infuriating way she had of suggesting a metaphorical as well as a literal freight for her words – your hurt, Stom wanted to say, is the result of your own ridiculous attitudes. Your problems inside your head are the result of your own wilfulness. But he held his tongue.

Instead he stood up. ‘I’d like a chat,’ he said. ‘I want the two of us to talk. Later. In the Library if you like. You do like the Library, don’t you?’ He left a pause, in case she wanted to drop in a meek ‘yes’, but she said nothing. ‘After you’ve finished eating, of course.’ He was still holding the little spitted zulu-bird, and he took a bite out of its flank, before dropping the remains to the lawn and going inside.

He had a bath, and took some food. He had a fire made up in the library; although it was late in the Spring Year, with Summer Year only months away, nevertheless the nights were surprisingly chilly. He had a bottle of black wine carried in to him, and then he gave instructions that Beeswing’s nurse was to bring her into the Library. He expected her to be wheeled through in a bath-chair, but when she did come she was walking, supported by an arm from her servant. Stom stood up until Beeswing had been settled into one of the mauve chairs.

Stom waved away the nurse-servant. There were several minutes of silence, during which Polystom put his head a little to one side and listened to the snapping noises of the
contorting flames in the grate. Like limbs being broken and ligaments twisted out of hard joints, he thought to himself; the crackling and popping of a young fire.

‘You could have done yourself a serious injury,’ he said, without preliminary. ‘How could you be so foolish?’

‘You locked me into that room,’ she replied.

The boldness of her direct statement shocked him, a little. ‘Whether I did or not has nothing to do with it!’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have . . . hurt yourself, and . . .’

‘You hurt
me
,’ she said, interrupting him with her deceptively soft voice. ‘By locking me away.’

He stopped. Flustered. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. He tried to remember what his uncle had said, what his exact words had been. ‘It’s about growing up, you know,’ he said. ‘It’s about necessity. It’s for your own good. You need to learn, you see. Necessity and authority. The point is,’ he said, warming up a little, ‘that you don’t seem to understand what a wife should be. How a
wife
should act. You are a wife, you know. You don’t seem to have the . . . proper attitude, the appropriate attitude. You see.’

There was another silence, with the only noises the hum of the flames and the intermittent gunshot bangs of sticks splitting as they burnt in the fire. Then Beeswing did something she had never done before in all the time that Polystom had known her: she asked a question.

She said, ‘What have I done wrong, as a wife?’

The fire bickered at its log.

Polystom leaned back. He was tempted to snap at her,
what did you say?
but he knew that she would not retract the question, not even repeat it, and would merely look at him with her infuriating eyes. Perhaps it was a breakthrough, the first step on the road to true sorrowfulness and associated repentance. He refilled his glass and sipped at the dark wine once, twice, three times, trying to compose an answer that would make it plain to her that he had seen through her,
that her subtle routines of insurrection were obvious to him, that the game was up. But now that he came to think of it, it was very difficult to put into words exactly what the issue was. It was in the slippery nature of her transgression that words failed to encapsulate the nature of her wrongness. And even if he could express precisely how
this
and precisely
that
needed to change, he would somehow be serving her lack of respect, he would somehow be lowering himself in front of her.

‘I think,’ he said, slowly, sipping again at the wine, ‘that you know very well what the problem is. I think you know just as well as I, what the problem between us is.’

He expected a denial, but instead of saying
no I don’t know what the problem is
she said nothing. Her attention appeared to have wandered.

‘I don’t deny,’ he said, filling the uneasy silence, ‘that it may have been difficult for you, adjusting. Adjusting to your new life, you know. But the sooner you make that adjustment!’ He beamed at her, his false smile ghastly in the flickering light. ‘Do you see what I’m saying? The sooner you do adjust, the better for you – never mind the better for me, although that is also true. But the better for you!’

She was on her feet now, a little unsteadily, and with her left hand touching the side of her bandaged head as if supporting it. He stood up too.

‘Tired,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed.’ And she turned round, and half glided, half staggered out of the library. She disappeared so quickly that Stom did not have time to say anything.

In the morning, he sought her out after breakfast. It was past eleven, and after the chills of the night the sun was hot and bright. Beeswing had eaten outdoors again, and was being helped inside, into the shade, now that the sunlight was too hot. Stom waited until she had been settled into a settee, and then waved away her servant.

‘I wasn’t satisfied,’ he told her, having prepared this opening sentence, ‘with last night’s conversation.’ He sat down opposite her, and folded his arms. He expected her to respond, but there was nothing there. Her expression was as distant and vacant as if her whole mind were a space of interplanetary ether.

‘Look,’ he said, meaning to say something decisive. But he couldn’t think of a suitably decisive statement. ‘This won’t do,’ he said, eventually. ‘This is mad. Insane! We can’t go on like this. Look – let me ask you a question.’ He felt a bubbling excitement inside him as if the two of them were about to breakthrough, and everything was going to be all right. ‘Let me ask you a question.’ Leaning forward, fixing her languid eyes and her perfect, faery face. ‘Are you happy? Answer that question. Are you happy?’

She looked at him with one long unbroken stare, as if trying to answer the question with her eyes alone. Then she moved her head, slowly, sweeping her glance away from him, moving across the far wall like a searchlight, and finally to the window. The grass gleamed bright green in the sunshine. The funnels of a petrol-delivery ship poked above the curve of the hill, outlined against the grey-blue of the Middenstead behind. They slid, disembodied pillars, across the garden landscape and went behind the trees.

A minute stretched to two. Two stretched to five. This was absurd. Was she going to answer him? He stirred uneasily. Clearly she was not happy. That was evident! Does a happy person dash themselves head-first against a heavy wooden door? She didn’t
need
to answer him – all he had to do, to reach her, was make her see that the thing standing between her and her own happiness was herself. Once she grasped that idea, things would start to go well between them.

‘I want,’ he said, gruffly, and cleared his throat. ‘I want,’ he continued more smoothly, ‘you to be happy. I want us
both
to be happy. This insurrection of yours,’ he said,
finding his uncle’s word on his tongue, ‘only adds to the sum of unhappiness. Believe me; people have married and settled for a thousand generations. There’s a profound truth in it, you see.’ He knew a poem about it, a trio of lines that expressed the inherent rightness of what he was trying to say, but maddeningly he couldn’t recall them.
Come
, no,
You forget so easily, come
, no that wasn’t it. Never mind. It wouldn’t be quite right to borrow the eloquence of a poet; he had to make her see for himself. ‘Ownership and being owned,’ he said. ‘It can only make us happy – we can only be happy – if we allow ourselves to be. These structures, they surround us, they surround us completely, supporting us, lifting us and not letting us to fall.’ He wasn’t capturing his mind’s gleam in words. He reached out and touched her knee. ‘Do you see?’

She shifted a little, her gaze still through the window on the range of the shifting sea. ‘Man,’ she said. Her word hung, peculiarly, in the air. Stom didn’t take the sense of why she used the word. Was she addressing him? ‘You own a world, and the people who live in it,’ she said softly. ‘But you’ll not own me.’

It took a moment for this rebuke to sink in. Stom’s hand was still on her knee, but when the sting of her words pricked home his body stiffened. He pulled away, sat back, and then almost at once he got to his feet.