Watson, Ian - Black Current 03 (30 page)

 
          
The truth came out over dinner.

 
          
Dad had just dished out an extra
dollop of nutmeggy apple sauce on to Yaleen's plate, and he was quizzing her as
to whether those Sons used spices much at Manhome South; and if so, what kinds,
and how (which in itself was odd, since Dad had never been one to bring work
home with him, save for the tang of it on his clothes); when Mum remarked
casually, "By the way, your father's having a love affair."

 
          
"What?"
Yaleen was flabbergasted.
First a baby; now an affair?
Had she heard aright? Had Mum really meant what she seemed to mean?

 
          
"We're also having a baby, your
mother and I," said Dad. He didn't sound too discomposed, though perhaps
he laid undue stress on the "we".

 
          
"I know you are. Mum said."

 
          
Mum smiled. "Quite ingenious of
your dad, I'd say. He can have an affair
and
a baby.
An affair with one woman, a baby with another."
She didn't sound sarcastic; but maybe she was playing a deeper game than simple
sarcasm, "Usually it's the other way about, isn't it? You should know
that, Yaleen. A riverwoman has her affairs —and her husband stays home with
baby. How the world's changing since the war! All that marching by, and the
distant clash of weapons, must have fired ambitions in your dad/'

           
"Oh."
Yaleen examined the grain of the wood in the kitchen table —a black knot seemed
to be coming loose.

 
          
"How was she this evening,
then?" enquired Mum.

 
          
"Fine, thanks.
Fine," said Dad.

 
          
"I'm glad to hear it. I'd say we
owe her a debt of gratitude. Perhaps we should even ask her to be guidemother
to our baby when it's bom! You'd imagine that a love affair would, well, dilute
the passion of the loins. Divert the seed; water it down.
But
no.
Provenly not."
Mum patted her tummy.
"A lover has to make bigger, fiercer efforts; and this spills over,
doesn't it? The lover has to prove how he's big enough for two women. And prove
it he does."

 
          
Dad grinned lopsidedly. "I
certainly seem to have done."

 
          
They didn't
seem
to mind discussing this business; though for sure a strand of tension
twanged beneath the amiable veneer.

 
          
"Do describe your friend, hmm?
Tell Yaleen what she looks like."

 
          
"Oh, who cares what she looks
like?" said Dad, sounding ever so reasonable.
"Looks,
indeed!
It's her person that's important. It's what she is, that
counts."

 
          
"To be sure!
And she's strong.
Independent.
Assertive.
And subtle; but then all women are subtle."

 
          
"Er, what's her name?"
Yaleen asked cautiously.

 
          
"Her name's Chanoose,"
replied Mum. "She's the quaynustress."

 
          
"Her!"

 
          
"Oh yes, I was forgetting you
must know her."

 
          
"Well, not intimately."

 
          
"Unlike your
father.
And despite her strength and independence, this same Chanoose
has fallen under your father's spell—as if enchanted. It quite makes me
proud."

 
          
Yaleen turned to her dad. "Was
that why you were asking me about the spice-trading prospects over in the
west?"

 
          
"I don't follow."

 
          
"Has your Chanoose set her eye
on exporting best Pecawar spices to the west bank? Those Sons don't need
hotting up, you know. They need cooling down. They need blanding, not
peppering."

 
          
"No, no, I just asked out of
curiosity."

 
          
And so the meal continued, in amiable
enough vein, with bluepears in syrup for afters followed by cups of cinnamon
coffee.

 
          
Later on, when she was in her room,
Yaleen tried to assess more calmly her mother's attitude to the recently
conceived foetus. Of whose love was it really the product? Why, of Mum's and
Dad's, obviously! But wasn't the enigmatic Chanoose in a sense the mother too,
even though she didn't bear the child? Didn't Chanoose provide the
catalyst,
as they said of chemicals in
Guineamoy? Barren herself, presumably "safe" from conception, hadn't
she nevertheless caused the event to occur? So had Dad given Mum the baby to
prove his continuing fidelity, despite the affair? Had Mum insisted upon this,
as her price for condoning it? Or had the affair itself transformed Dad in his
middle years, compelling him to create new life like a fountain bursting forth
in a desert?

 
          
And how had he captivated and
besotted Chanoose, who had always seemed—from a distance—so aloof and powerful?
How had the '
mistress become
a mistress, in this
strange triple relationship?

 
          
Yaleen found
herself
feeling deeply glad and thankful on her dad's behalf. But what preoccupied her
most was the queer way that this affair of her dad's, coupled with his role as
sire of a new baby, seemed to reflect her own love-dilemma. What a peculiar
model of her own experience! Might she also manage to maintain a similar
balance—between herself and Hasso and Tam? Could she? Ought she to try?

 
          
Somehow she suspected that the
situation involving Mum and Dad and Chanoose was inherently unstable. It was
indeed unlike the rompings of a riverwoman in a distant port, reaping wild oats
far from her shore-husband's ken. Yet with taboos perhaps about to fray under
the pressure of a certain fungus-drug and cross-river intercourse—and with
balloons in the offing—might not everyone's current way of life become unstable
presently? Might not drug chemistry and balloon technology cause changes which
the war itself had failed to cause (though the war might have been the initial
catalyst)?

 
          
Maybe, maybe not.
The river guild and river temples were subtle, old, and unlikely to spring
leaks too large to caulk.

 
          
She considered recent events again:
the mooting of the desert expedition, preparations for this, Chanoose's affair
with her father, the pregnancy, her own mission ex Pecawar to Guineamoy thence
to Manhome South culminating in her official secondment as guild representative
aboard the
Rose.

 
          
Wasn't there something odd about the
sequence?
Something more than coincidental?
Chanoose
must have become intimate with her dad at about the time the guild must have
seriously started to consider the advantages, and the possible threat, posed by
the expedition. . . .

           
No, no,
this was nonsense. The day had been long. Yaleen was tired out—by delight at
the balloon; by the energy she had poured into her love for
Tam,
and into the
decision
to prefer him;
and finally by her astonishment at her parents' capers.

 
          
Chanoose had fallen in love
irrationally. "Enchanted" had been the word Mum used. Even if
Chanoose was also "subtle", she surely hadn't
chosen
to fall in love—or pretend she was in love. What possible
advantage could she gain? Some form of leverage over Yaleen, through her
father? Hardly!—unless Chanoose was thinking in terms of when the balloon
returned; and even so, she carried more clout in her official capacity than she
could bring to bear as a sort of erotic "stepmother". . . .

 
          
There remained the possibility that
Chanoose was deliberately presenting a pattern—an unstable one—which she knew
would find an echo in Yaleen's behaviour. . .

 
          
No. Chanoose must have been
emotionally snared at about the time that Yaleen landed on the west bank; when
the world shook slightly and all hearts paused, as though in tribute to the
peace mission.

 
          
Yaleen climbed into bed; and slept
too deep for dreams, or for dreams to survive the dawn undrowned.

 
          
Just three weeks later, of a Tauday morning,
a crowd gathered out at the big workyard at the eastern end of
Capiz
Street
.

           
The
majority of people present were sightseers pure and simple, for the
Pecawar Publicizer
had done as its name
implied in honour of the launch. Others were more directly involved, including
men of the aquaguild. One of the duties of the aquaguild was, of course, to
douse any serious fires which accident might spark off in Pecawar, fires too
fierce for neighbours to quench; and the aquaguild boss— having done some homework—was
dubious of the wisdom of lighting a hot-air breeder anywhere near three bags
full of watergas.

 
          
"If your
Rose
does
conflagrate on take-off,"
the aquaboss was saying to Hasso, "it'll drag a torch right across those
houses there."

 
          
The trio of gasbags already bobbed
slackly overhead, straining slightly southward in a gentle breeze. The day was
sunny, almost cloudless.
The
Gavotte
rose which Tam had painted on the first stage —the hot-air
globe—was the height of a tall man.
Gavotte
was a high-centred bloom of warm pink, renowned for keeping its shape for ages.
Might the balloon likewise keep in
shape.

 
          
'Mistress Chanoose intervened.
"Don't worry about it, Aquaboss. I doubt if these adventurers would
intentionally fly a bonfire through the sky! And if that happens—which it
won't—I'm sure your fellows are up to soaking any wreckage; even out here where
your 'ducts drip the last drops of river-juice."

 
          
A sly put-down, this, implying a
contrast between the authentic river, plied by women, and this model river
running tamely around town in brick courses. The aquaboss shrugged and turned
away.

 
          
Yes, Chanoose was present. How could
she fail to be, when Yaleen represented her guild? This was the first occasion
since Yaleen's return to Pecawar that she had been in close proximity to her
dad's mistress; and Yaleen really scrutinized the woman, limning her in her
mind.

 
          
Undoubtedly Chanoose was a handsome
woman. She was tall, with short curly flaxen hair, an oval face of clear skin,
and sapphire eyes of the first water. Her nose was slender, though her lips
were large and fleshy in sensual counterpoint. Her fingernails were long and
well-manicured, as if to emphasize that whenever
she
worked at something physical, she never worked clumsily; nor
need anyone else. Yaleen tried to imagine those nails teasing her father's
buttocks, urging him; but she couldn't quite succeed.

 
          
Chanoose stared clear over other
heads, to where Mum and Dad were lurking near the back of the crowd. Mum,
hiding in her belly the jewel of a new life, wouldn't stray any closer to the
Rose,
whose dangerous gasbags even now
towered high as a hoganny.

 
          
"Excuse me," Chanoose said,
"I should pay my respects to friends." She departed, Dad-wards.

 
          
"And excuse
me!"
said a gnome of a man. "I'm from the
Publicizer
. "

 
          
Yaleen wasn't inclined to give any
more dumb interviews; and besides—"All aboard!" shouted Tam from the
gondola door—the balloon was about to depart.

 
          
The hot-air breeder was lit; which
made the crew swelter somewhat and long for the cool of the sky-heights. The
gasbags were swollen full of watergas, straining erect. Tethers were cast
off—and the
Rose
climbed swiftly away
from the eastern suburb.

 
          
Since the south-by-south-east drift
was gradual by comparison, the crew had many minutes to admire the spread of
the whole town.

 
          
"Oh this is the way to make
maps!" crowed Hasso. "If only there was some means of fixing quickly
what we're seeing." But there wasn't any such way. He dug Tam in the ribs.
"If only you could glaze this spectacle on to the window-glass."

 
          
"Then we shouldn't be able to
see where we're going, the rest of the time," Tam pointed out.

 
          
Yaleen mainly had eyes for the thin
red veins of the aqueduct system. These seemed to print upon the town a single
complicated, curlicued letter from some unknown alphabet of signs. Or maybe it
was a whole word in such a sign system.
A name.
A signature, which she wasn't able to decipher.
The higher
they ascended, the less visible this word became. It soon disappeared into the
shrinking tapestry of the town, one set of threads lost in a bigger pattern
which diminished quickly. Spice farms below were tiny patchworks. Away to the
west, the river was but a glossy road.