Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [261]
‘Any pellamountain, Metty?’ he asked.
‘It’s on the boil,’ she said in a whisper. Since he had known her, Metty always drank pellamountain tea in the early morning.
He sat on the edge of her bed, peering through the thick twilight at her. He covered himself. Now that desire had gone, he was not proud of his thickening body.
He followed her into the little kitchen-cum-washroom which adjoined her cabin. A basin of charcoal had been blown into life with bellows; a kettle sang on it. The glowing charcoal gave the only light in the room, apart from the tatters of dawn filtering through a broken shutter. By this bad light, he observed Metty as she went about the business of making tea as if she were his wife. Yes, she was getting old, he thought, observing her thin, lined face – probably twenty-nine, maybe even thirty. Only five years his junior. No longer pretty, but good in bed. Not a whore any longer. A retired whore. He sighed. She only took old friends nowadays, and then as a favour.
Metty was dressed, neat and conservative, intending to go to church.
‘What did you say?’
‘I didn’t want to wake you, Krillio.’
‘It’s all right.’ Affection rising in him, he said reluctantly, ‘I wouldn’t want to leave without saying my thanks and farewells.’
‘You’ll be making back to your wife and family now.’
She nodded without looking at him, concentrating on arranging a few leaves of the herb in two cups. Her mouth pursed. Her movements were businesslike – like all her movements, he thought.
The ice trader’s boat had docked late the previous day. He had come from Lordryardry with his usual cargo, all the way across the Sea of Eagles, to Ottassol, and then up the stubborn Takissa to Matrassyl. On this trip, besides ice, he had brought his son, Div, to acquaint him with the traders on the route. And to introduce Div to Metty’s house, to which he had been coming for as long as he had been trading with the royal palace. His lad was backward in all things.
Old Metty had a girl waiting for Div, an orphan of the Western Wars, slender and fair, with an attractive mouth and clean hair. Almost as inexperienced as Div, you’d say, at first glance. He had looked her over, trying with a coin in her kooni to see if she was free of disease. The copper coin had not turned green, and he had been satisfied. Or almost. He wanted the best for his son, fool though the boy was.
‘Metty, I thought you had a daughter about Div’s age?’
She was not a communicative woman. ‘Doesn’t this girl suit?’
She flashed him a look as if to say, You mind your business and I’ll mind mine. Then perhaps relenting because he was always generous with his money and would never come again, she said, ‘My daughter Abathy, she wants to better herself, wants to move down to Ottassol. I tell her, there’s nothing in Ottassol you won’t find here, I said. But she wants to see the sea. All you’ll see is sailors, I told her.’
‘So where is Abathy now?’
‘Oh, she’s doing well for herself. Got a room, curtains, clothes … Earns a little money, she’ll be off south. She soon found herself a rich patron, her being so young and pretty.’
The ice trader saw the suppressed jealousy in Metty’s eye and nodded to himself. Ever curious, he couldn’t resist asking who the patron was.
She shot one of her sharp glances at gawky young Div and the girl, both standing by the bunk impatient for their elders to go. Pulling a face – mistrusting what she was doing – she whispered a name into the trader’s mottled ear.
The trader sighed dramatically. ‘Well!’
But both he and Metty were too old and wicked to be shocked at anything.
‘You going, Da?’ Div asked his father.
So then he had left, to let Div get on with it as best he could. What fools men were when young, what clapped-out wrecks when old!
Now, as morning crept in, Div would be sleeping, his head against the girl’s, in some lower cabin. But all the pleasure the trader had experienced the night before, performing a fatherly duty, had gone. He felt hungry, but knew better than to ask Metty for food. His legs were stiff