Polystom Read Online Free PDF Page A

parties on the very best days, weather-wise. I don’t know how she does it.’
    ‘Is she your aunt as well?’ Stom asked.
    ‘As well?’
    ‘As mine.’
    ‘Why, yes. Are we related then?’
    ‘I suppose it’s no surprise,’ said Stom, pouring his own coffee. ‘Most of the great families are related to one another. If we traced it back far enough, I daresay we could prove everybody a cousin of everybody else.’
    ‘Aunt Elena has been very dear to me, ever since I was a child,’ said Erina.
    ‘And to me.’
    ‘Only lately,’ Erina went on, tossing a sly look at her companion, ‘she seems to have decided to matchmake. Ever since I reached twenty. Apparently’ – she drew this word out enormously on its second syllable – ‘I’m too old to be single.’
    ‘She invited me over to this party with the same intention, I do believe,’ said Stom, feeling a relaxation in the tension between them.
    ‘Oh of course. I suppose she sees the two of us together.’
    ‘I suppose she does. Do you think she’s right?’
    ‘About us?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Erina sipped slowly, drawing the moment out briefly, before saying, ‘I really don’t think so. Do you?’
    ‘Not at all,’ said Stom, with genuine relief in his belly. ‘I’m so glad we’re of one mind on that.’
    ‘Auntie doesn’t care, I think, whether I pair off with a love-husband, or just get together to have some children. But she’s said to me many times that an
official
pairing gives one’s twenties some sort of solidity.’
    ‘For me,’ said Stom, ‘I believe she has in mind a love-partnership. She thinks I need a companion.’
    Erina looked coolly at him. ‘Do you?’
    ‘Well,’ said Stom, a little flustered by the intimacy of the question, ‘perhaps I do. My estate is rather large. And I have been by myself since my father’s death.’
    ‘Is your mother dead too?’
    ‘Oh no, but I don’t see much of her. She came for the funeral, of course, which was very nice of her, and left me with an open invitation to visit. She lives on Kaspian. I had a co-father, but I’m afraid he died as well, not long after my father.’
    ‘Beastly,’ said Erina. ‘Were you close to them?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Stom, surprised again at the indelicacy of her questions.
    ‘Beastly,’ she repeated. ‘Well I’m sorry I won’t be able tobe the balm for your solitude. But perhaps there’s somebody else here?’ She put her cup down, and pointed with a little finger across the bright green grass. ‘There – Arassa.’ She was pointing to a sleek white-skinned woman deep in conversation with two elderly men. This woman was wearing a white cotton dress and black knee-boots that looked shiny as liquorice. ‘Dear Arassa,’ Erina said. ‘Perhaps she’s the one for you. She’s very . . .’ and she searched for the word, as if retrieving it from some distant and quite alien language – ‘very
loving
, I believe.’
    ‘I don’t think I’ve ever met her,’ mumbled Polystom.
    ‘No? She is charming. There was some story associated with her and her parents, I forget what exactly. Except that she lives with her grandmother now.’
    ‘She’s very – striking-looking,’ said Stom.
    Erina, catching his tone, looked quizzically at him. ‘It
is
a woman you’re thinking of?’ she asked. ‘Come, let’s not stand on stupid ceremony. You can tell me. I know boys as well.’
    ‘A woman is what I’m looking for,’ said Stom, blushing. ‘But that’s not to say that I’m going to be equally attracted to every single woman I see.’
    ‘Poor Arassa,’ said Erina, without feeling. ‘Too buxom? Her loss, I’m sure. Or there’s Thekla,’ pointing again. ‘I was at school with Thekla.’
    Stom squinted into the sun, and made out a thin body topped with massy scarlet hair wrapped about in gauze. Her face was freckled, her mouth open in the middle of telling some anecdote, her eyes wide. She was talking to an elderly woman, dressed in sober green trousers and