Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

But this was not proper music! All the instruments plunged in at once, as if they had been holding a party and somebody had opened a door on them. Where was the tune? It was in there somewhere, but the instruments fought over it, tossed it between them, dropped it and trod on it, did something else, then picked it up again and flung it in the air just when you were least expecting it.

There were trumpets and horns, but they didn’t sound solemn in the way they did when they boomed out against a background of silence to remind everyone of the dead. Instead they were noisy and irrepressible as a farmyard – they whinnied and squawked and mooed and didn’t care what anyone thought. Sometimes they made harsh, cheeky noises like a blown raspberry, or high, giddy squiggles of sound for the sheer joy of it.

And nothing stopped and nobody breathed and there was no to-and-fro pat-a-cake pattern and instead it was a tangle of noise with threads winding through and over each other and it was exhausting to listen to and it made her feel she could never be exhausted again.

And Triss knew what it was. She had heard the wireless spit out the starting chords of such wild, blaring music, only to have her father tut and turn it off.

This was jazz.

‘Do you like it?’ asked Mr Grace.

Triss could barely answer, and became aware that her heels were drumming against the chair legs, in an excitable, seated dance. She wondered if this was what drunk felt like. Perhaps she was drunk. Cake-drunk.

She was having fun . When had she last had fun? Treats, pampering, protection, oh yes, she had all these things in abundance. But fun?

Jazz was not respectable. She was not supposed to hear it, and nobody was meant to play it to her. She was sure that Mr Grace knew that, and she gave him a look of glee. His feet were not tapping, she noticed. He simply stood by the gramophone, watching her and smiling.

One of the shop women put her head round the door, and Mr Grace quickly lifted the needle from the record.

‘The young lady’s father is ready to take her home,’ she said.

Triss felt a throb of disappointment. Mr Grace grabbed a clothes brush and helped her dust off the cake crumbs, even taking a moment to pluck a loose hair from her sleeve.

When Triss was taken back to her father, she knew that her eyes must still be shining and her face pink from icing and jazz. Her father looked her over, frowned very slightly and touched his fingers briefly to her forehead to check for fever. Despite herself, Triss felt a tiny pang of resentment. Couldn’t she be happy without it being a sign of a temperature?

‘If you would like to bring Theresa back in a week for a first fitting…’ Hearing these words, Triss’s mouth twitched. She was coming back here. Instantly she was filled with a rush of guilty glee.

Only as she was leaving did her spirits cool a little. Over on the reception desk she could see the scissors that had nearly fallen on her. A bright cloth had been thrown over them, but the tips of the blades still pointed out. The weather-worn iron was blackened and unforgiving, and the points looked sharp.

Triss rode home with jazz in her blood. More than once she caught herself trying to hum one of the strange leaping melodies under her breath, but it came out as a tuneless murmur. She was filled with a wild sense that everything was possible.

As she neared home, however, this strange new confidence peeled away. Her Trissness closed in around her again, like cold, damp swaddling clothes. As she saw her house hove into view, the last fizz of enthusiasm left her.

Her mind was so crowded with thoughts that for a moment she could not quite work out why the house looked different from usual. Then she realized that there was a dark angular blot in front of the garage door. A motorcycle had been parked there with an insolent obstructiveness, blocking the Sunbeam’s easy cruise into the garage itself.

‘Of all the nerve!’ exclaimed her father, bringing the car to a sharp stop at the kerb.

The motorbike was a lean black creature with a tan body and sidecar. It was mud-spattered, and looked as out of place in the prim, trimmed square as a footprint on an embroidered tablecloth. There was something bold and ugly about the way it let you see right into its metal works. It had the rough cockiness of a stray dog one hair’s breadth away from snarling.

At the sight of it, Triss felt her spirits sink further, though it took her a moment or two to remember why. She had seen the motorbike before, and its presence meant trouble. It meant scenes; it meant both her parents being angry and upset.

As Triss’s father made a great show of laboriously parking on the pavement, Triss caught sight of the motorcycle’s owner, standing with hands on hips and an air of impatience. The tall, slender figure was dressed in a long, earth-brown overcoat with a high collar, thick leather gloves and a tight black leather driving cap trimmed with fleece. Beneath the coat, however, divided skirts were just visible, and jaw-length dark hair peeped out from under the cap. Legs were visible almost up to the knee, and were shiny with nylon. It was unmistakably a woman, a woman with a long pale face and forward-jutting chin. As the intruder shielded her eyes to peer past the Sunbeam’s headlights Triss recognized her.

It was Violet Parish. Violet Parish who had been Sebastian’s fiancée when he went off to war. Once she had been ‘Violet’. After Sebastian’s departure she had been ‘poor Violet’. And then somehow, in the years since his death, her name had blackened and speckled in Triss’s family home, like a fruit left to rot, until it was thrown out and no longer allowed in the house.

‘Stay in the car,’ Triss’s father murmured, then opened his car door and climbed out. Triss peered out through the windscreen, her stomach tensing as if for impact.

‘Mr Crescent!’ called Violet as he approached. Her voice had a studied, London-ish drawl to it, but with an underlying bite of anger. ‘Do you know that your wife has left me on your doorstep for over an hour?’

‘Miss Parish, what are you doing here?’ Triss’s father was clearly trying to moderate his tone so that Triss would not hear, but he was not doing it very well. ‘I told you to visit my office next week to discuss your so-called grievance. How dare you come here and bother my family!’

‘Yes, you did tell me you couldn’t meet me until next week – something about the whole family being on holiday, wasn’t it?’ Violet’s London drawl was rubbing off like old paint, showing the rough metal of an Ellchester accent underneath. ‘And then today I saw your car in town. I know when I’m being sold a line, Mr Crescent.’

‘If you must know, Theresa was taken ill, so we came home early.’

Violet’s dark gaze flicked to the car, and Triss sitting muffled on the back seat. Out of instinctive loyalty to her father, Triss wrinkled her brow and thought sickly, woebegone thoughts. A look of impatient contempt flashed across Violet’s face; Triss could not tell if it was contempt for her or for her father’s words.

‘Really? And what would the excuse be next week? For years you refused even to talk to me about my request, or admit that all of Sebastian’s belongings were brought home to you. And now that you can’t deny it any more, you’re finding every way to avoid talking to me about it. I turned up here because then you can’t ignore me.’

‘Oh, I rather think I can,’ snapped Triss’s father. ‘What made you believe that you could turn up at this time in the evening, on that , and be allowed inside my house? Perhaps this passes for a reasonable visiting hour among your crowd, but nobody with a ounce of consideration would dream of calling by this late, without warning or invitation, and expect to be let in.’