Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘But… But I didn’t go out last night!’ she exclaimed helplessly. ‘Not this time! I didn’t! I didn’t! That’s… that’s… not fair !’ Her gaze misted and her eyes stung, but tears would not come. Blinking was difficult and painful.

I can’t have gone out last night without remembering . . . Can I?

There were no grass stains on her discarded nightshirt, but when Triss examined the floor she found wisps of straw and little crumbs of what looked like dried mud. Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps she had brought them in on her shoes the day before. When she dragged open her sash window it was reassuringly stiff and yielded only with a grating of paint, suggesting that it had not been opened in a long time.

In the square below, she watched the leaves of the park trees bouncing under the onslaught of the rain. Down on the slick, dark pavement she could see tiny, pale flickers as each unseen raindrop struck home.

It was raining all night. I could hear the pattering whenever I couldn’t sleep. So if I had gone out, my hair and nightshirt would be wet. And that would be wet mud on the floor, not dry. I can’t have gone out.

Her mind had been fighting off the image of herself leaping out of the window like a mad thing and rampaging through garden after garden, guzzling marrows and going through dustbins like a starved cat. Now another image sprang to mind, that of Pen sneaking into her room with fistfuls of grit and dead leaves, in order to sprinkle them on the floor and in Triss’s hair.

Would she really do that?

Pen hates me. She’d love it if I ran down the stairs right now in tears, sobbing about dead leaves in my hair. She wants me to look mad, so I’ll get sent away and locked up. Then she’d have all the attention she ever wanted. She’d do anything to make that happen.

But I’m not going to let her get rid of me. I’m not going to let her win. I’ll go to this doctor, and I’ll do what he says, and then I’ll show them all that he’s made me better. And I won’t let her see that I’m scared.

Triss brushed her hair with great care, cleaned the grit off the floor, and walked down the stairs with all the calm she could feign. She had a battle to fight.

In the late afternoon Triss’s father drove her into town, the rain thudding against the canvas roof of the car. Every time they stopped at a junction, awaiting the wave of the white-gloved policeman ordering the traffic, a small gaggle of boys and girls in hand-me-down clothes would gather by the road to gawp at the Sunbeam.

Each time Triss stayed quite still as if she had not seen them, gazing into the distance while rain pearled the windscreen. It was something she remembered enjoying, the sense that other children were wondering who could be riding in such a grand car. The steamed glass between them was a magic window on another world, like a cinema screen. For all they knew, she might be a princess or a movie star.

But today she could not feel glamorous and did not want to be special or mysterious. She felt small and miserable, and this morning the world outside seemed large, alarming and dreamlike. The road was chaos. Bikes rattled and weaved through the surge of larger traffic, their tyres drawing brief lines along the wet road. Carts lurched, and horse flanks gleamed like varnish. Trams clanged and shuddered along their shining tracks, the faces clustered inside them as unsmiling as soapsuds.

Ellchester was a city of bridges, and had been even before the Three Maidens were built. Her crooked hills demanded it, so that the biggest roads did not need to dip, climb or buck, but could sail serenely from summit to summit. The nethermost streets weaved through old arched bridges in ancient walls that bulged like dough, while above them stretched bold Victorian bridges with the city’s crest carved in the sides. One always found oneself looking up or down at other roads, as they criss-crossed over and under one another. Today every arch had a silver curtain of falling drips.

Doctor Mellows’s surgery was on a steep street to the north of town, full of tall houses of murky brown brick with long, gawping windows. Triss’s father parked carefully, turning the large wheels so that they lodged against the kerb, and hauling hard on the brake so the car would not roll downhill.

The hall and reception were pill-pink and pill-green, and smelt of clean. The receptionist with the bobbing curls over one eye remembered Triss, and gave her a big scarlet-painted smile.

‘Yes, Dr Mellows is expecting you. Do you want to go through now?’

‘I’d like to talk to Dr Mellows first, if you don’t mind,’ Triss’s father said quickly.

Triss was left in the waiting room, where she sat feeling sick.

Five minutes later her father came out, gave her his special smile and stroked back her hair.

‘Dr Mellows is ready for you now. I’ll be right here.’

Triss was shown into the doctor’s surgery and found Dr Mellows sitting at his desk. He was a tall, grizzled man in his early fifties, with a comforting rumble of a voice that seemed to come from somewhere deep under his ribcage. She had seen him so often over the years that he was almost like an extra uncle who was brought out for special occasions.

‘So. How’s my little hero? How’s my smallest soldier?’ It was his usual greeting. His eyes were alive with the usual mixture of twinkle and appraisal. The only thing that was different was that there were three large books on his desk, one of which was open. ‘Oh, now, don’t look so frightened! No pills or needles today – nothing to scare you. We’re just going to have a little talk. Sit down.’

Triss sat in a comfortable chair on the other side of the desk, her gaze dropping briefly to the books in front of the doctor. The title along the spine of one of the closed books read Studies in Hysteria . The open book had the words ‘The Ego and the Id’ across the top of each page.

‘Now, I hear that you’ve had a nasty fever. How are you feeling now?’

‘Oh, much better.’ Triss made her voice bubble-bright.

‘But… not all better? Some things still don’t feel quite right, do they?’ Dr Mellows watched her with that same steady, unblinking twinkle, the pad of his thumb teasing at a corner of a page. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

So Triss told him. She told him that she was feeling fine, but a bit hungrier than usual. She told him that she thought she might have walked in her sleep back at the holiday cottage, and it scared her a bit. When he asked her if there was anything else that worried her, she spent a few moments with her head on one side, as if racking her brains, then blithely shook her head.

When Dr Mellows asked her about her claim to have heard Pen talking on the telephone the day before, Triss crumpled her brow, looking rueful and reluctant to speak.

‘You… You won’t make everybody angry with Pen, will you? Only… I think it might have been a sort of a… a joke. I think maybe she pretended she was talking on the phone, so I’d tell people and then look stupid. She… does things like that sometimes. But you won’t say anything, will you? You won’t get her into trouble?’

She bit her lip and looked across at the doctor, and could see from his face how he saw her. Brave but beleaguered, the long-suffering victim of a more spiteful sibling.

‘And you’re afraid that if she gets in trouble she’ll take it out on you, I’ll warrant.’ He sighed. ‘Yes, I see. Don’t worry, you leave that with me.’

Triss let out her breath slowly, trying not to show how her pulse was racing. Two can play at your game, Pen.

‘Well, good, good.’ Dr Mellows smiled at Triss, and despite his words she wondered if there was the tiniest hint of disappointment in his gaze.