CHAPTER NINETEEN

When Lissa had driven away into the gathering night, Canny decided to walk down to the village—to clear his head rather than to survey his domain. As he walked, he wondered what the consequences might be of accepting Lissa’s offer. In the worst-case scenario, it seemed to him, she would walk away with the reward: a doubly-blessed child, available for her exploitation and hers alone. Was that possible, given that it contravened the rules by means of which her family streak had been cultivated? Was it what she intended, even if it were possible? Would it matter, even if it were to happen, even if the transgression were to cost him any chance of renewing his own streak? Hadn’t he spoken the truth when he said that he had enough to get by, even if he never enjoyed another stroke of exceptional good luck as long as he lived? And what if her intentions were not entirely cynical—or, even if they were, that they might be modified by time and experience? What if they were to form a new collective, unlike any that their ancestors had ever known: an authentic triad, all equally able to share in the superabundant luck of their miracle child, whether it turned out to be a boy or a girl?

There might, as Lissa had said, be a world full of opportunities out there, waiting to be opened up. Perhaps she was sincere. Perhaps, after all, she might learn to love him.

Next time, he thought, I really must show her the rest of my little fiefdom, so that she can measure me for what I am, rather than what I seemed to be in Monte Carlo.

It was easy enough to imagine that she was beside him as he walked beside the Crede, and what he might he have said to her as they approached and entered the village.

“The Industrialist earl wasn’t the first, of course,” he might have said. “The situation of the mill having been dictated by the flow of the Crede, he needed to house his workers, so terraces of houses had to be built one way or another. Utopian fantasies were in vogue, and Titus Salt was already hard at work in Shipley, building Saltaire. The old Industrialist introduced a few wrinkles of his own, though. From the very beginning, he planned to keep much tighter control over his property and his people. He instituted—and all his successors retained—a policy of letting the accommodation at rates below the market price, and instituting a system of variable rebates that made the accommodation even cheaper to everyone who was seen to be making a positive contribution to the local economy or the provision of local amenities—which is why there’s still a butcher’s shop in Cockayne, and a baker’s, and a carpenter’s shop—not to mention a good primary school and an excellent library.”

How could she fail to be impressed?

“It hasn’t been easy, of course,” he might have told her, proudly, if only she’d given him the time. “Salt’s Mill is a museum now, and so is Saltaire. Shipley’s other mill was demolished long since. Daddy used to tell me that when he was a boy he could sit on top of the Great Skull and see the tops of a hundred factory chimneys surrounding him, in the distance, all belching smoke into the air to create a haze that never really cleared, all the way from Bingley in the far east to Rotherham in the far south. They’re all gone now, including ours—but when our chimney was toppled, the Mill kept going. It’s always been busy, no matter how many economic metamorphoses it’s had to undergo. It was a munitions factory during World War II, a plastics factory in the fifties and sixties, and then got broken up into smaller units specializing in various kinds of technological enterprise—plastic components for aircraft, cars and domestic machinery; switches for telephone systems; optical fibers...I haven’t kept up, I’m afraid, although I’ll have to start. I think we’ve even diversified into software and ceramics—individual projects have folded by the score, but we’ve always been lucky in cutting them off at the right moment and replacing them with something new, always maintaining our elasticity. We’ve never been conspicuously innovative, but we’ve never been far behind the times either. We’ve always valued long-term stability over the short-term escalation of profit, never sought outside finance...and it’s paid off—not spectacularly, but inexorably.

“In the meantime, we’ve fostered the old Industrialist’s quasi-Utopian ideals in the institution of a highly idiosyncratic form of local democracy. It conflicts to some extent with the demands made of us by local and national government, but we’ve always managed to compromise, thanks to good representation on the county council and family influence. The village elders have gladly collaborated with the family in conserving the valley, and they take great pride in what they’ve done now that their age-old habits have become fashionable. We don’t have a supermarket, a cinema or a railway-station, but we do have a village green with a cricket square, a thriving marketplace, a local slaughterhouse and the Spread Eagle. The old ranks of outside toilets were converted into garages during the great renovation of the fifties, but private cars are still a relative rarity—the vehicles they house are mostly commercial.”

“And it’s all yours, now,” she would surely have said.

He would have feigned pride, even though none of it had had attracted any significant fraction of his attention—but he was a changed man, now. He intended to make up for lost time as quickly as he could. so that he could take his father’s place as the chief architect of Cockayne’s future. It was all his now—not just the property and the income, but the responsibility to decide which aspects of its commerce and environment should hasten into the twenty-first century with all possible progressive determination, and which vestiges of the nineteenth century should be jealousy preserved and hoarded.

As if to endorse his flight of fancy, twenty-three people had offered respectful greetings to him by the time he reached the market square, and a further fifteen greeted him deferentially while he paused there, looking around at the darkened shops and imagining that Lissa Lo was by his side, hanging on his every word.

One shop, of course, was still blazing with light in spite of the fact that it was nearly eleven: the fish-and-chip shop. Customers were still trickling in, mostly one by one, and trickling out again—more than usual, thanks to the hangover from the funeral—but Canny could see through the window that there were four people who remained in the shop, not eating but chatting: Ellen Ormondroyd’s sisters and their respective husbands. Ellen and her husband were behind the counter, as usual.

Eventually, Canny left the ghost of Lissa Lo behind and walked into the shop.

“Haddock and chips, please,” he said, as he approached the counter.

A slightly uncomfortable silence had fallen when he walked in, and he judged that it would not be easily broken, so he took the burden upon himself. “Nice to see you again,” he said to Alice and Martin Ellison. “Hello Lydia—you must be Ken. I hear you’re in Manchester, now. Thanks for coming over. It’s been a very long day. I had to get out of the house, away from the atmosphere. I didn’t have time to eat at the reception, even if I’d been able to stomach it—my appetite’s only just getting back into gear.”

That speech invoked several sympathetic nods, but even Alice was casting about for something to say that wouldn’t seem rude or stupid.

“I used to come in here once a week when I was a kid, you know,” he went on, addressing himself to Alice’s Martin and Lydia’s Ken. It was before Jack’s time, let alone Ellen’s. Daddy used to give me money to pay for my supper, but what was more important was being allowed to walk down here on my own, even after dark. It wasn’t like going to school—it was real life. Sometimes, it was the only part of life that did seem real—but that’s not a complaint. I always knew how lucky I was. Always.”

“Are you all right, Canny?” Ellen finally plucked up the courage to ask, while Jack Ormondroyd sprinkled salt and vinegar on his fish and chips.

“I’m fine,” Canny said. “Sorry if I’m rambling. Long day.

“Open or closed?” Jack asked.

“Open,” Canny said.

“You can send Bentley down to collect now,” Jack observed, as he arranged the paper artfully into a basket. “That’s what your Dad allus did, when the fancy took him, on cook’s night off.”

“He would,” Canny said.

“Do you want to turn out for the team on Saturday, Lord Credesdale?” Jack asked. “I think we’re one short.”

Canny remembered his casual offer to drop into the shop if he wanted a game; Jack had obviously mistaken his motive.

“You would be one short if I said yes,” Canny said, handing him a five pound note. “Thanks for asking, Jack, but I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll come down to watch the game, though—hang around the score box making a nuisance of myself, the way I used to.”

“You’d be very welcome,” Jack said, dutifully counting out his change.

Canny nodded, and nodded again to Martin Ellison as he turned away. “I’ll ring you,” he promised. “Bye, Ellen, Lydia, Alice, Ken.”

By the time he’d reached the end of the catalogue of names Canny was already in the doorway. Their murmured answers combined into a ragged chorus as the door swung shut behind him.

Canny made his way slowly back through the village streets, eating as he went. His appetite had indeed got back into gear, and he realized that it really had been a long time since he’d last taken the opportunity to eat. A further dozen people greeted him politely; he didn’t try to count the pairs of eyes that watched his progress from afar, or to estimate the thoughts that might be going through their minds as they contemplated their new landlord.

“This is what it’s like, you see,” he said to the ghost of Lissa Lo. “This is the greater part of the Kilcannon luck. It hasn’t just been a quantitative thing, reflected in shrewd gambles and good business. This is what we’ve made of ourselves. We’re not glamorous, by any means, and we don’t do a lot of smiling, but we’re worth something. We’re solid.”

By the time he finished that imaginary speech, however, he’d passed beyond the reach of the street lights into the gloom of the path that ran beside the stream to the bridge that carried the approach-road to the house over the beck. The night was fairly clear, but the moon wasn’t full and stars seemed weak. He could find his way easily enough, but he still, seemed to be walking through a vast and ominous shadow. For the first time, it seemed to him that he could feel the absence of his luck, the failure of his early-warning systems.

He had no idea what Lissa Lo intended, in the longer run. He had no idea whether she would have any further interest in him, once he had given her the child she wanted.

He had no idea, either, how the outcome of that experiment might affect them, if they were indeed to be punished for their temerity in challenging the rules of fate.

But the haddock tasted wonderful, and the chips had exactly the right texture.

“We all live dangerously,” he said—aloud, since there was no one who could possibly overhear him—“who live at all. And we all die but once, no matter how good or bad our luck might be. How many men are lucky enough to get the chance of intimacy with one of the ten most beautiful women in the world, under any conditions?”

There was, of course, no answer—but none was needed.