Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘Just give me what’s mine,’ Violet continued, through her teeth, ‘and you never have to see me again. Only the things Sebastian’s letter said he wanted me to have if he died – the service watch, the cigarette case and his ring.’

‘So that you can sell them, the way you have sold your engagement ring, my son’s books and everything else of his you could lay your hands on?’ Triss’s father was now bitterly, quiveringly angry. It terrified Triss and sent her thoughts scattering like rabbits. ‘To us, all these things are precious beyond all measure, because they were his . To you, they are worth nothing more than their shop value. I gave you money at the end of the War, to help you find your feet, and since then all you have done is make demands. We owe you nothing.’

‘Who are you to tell me whether I can sell what is mine? Sebastian wanted me to have those things!’

‘Because he mistakenly thought you would value them. He had no idea what a cold-blooded vulture you could be.’

‘Do you think I care what you call me?’ shouted Violet. ‘Do you think I care what you think of me?’ She did not look as if she did not care. For the moment she was like the motorcycle, all her angry, grimy inner workings visible to the eye.

‘No, I think you are quite dead to the feelings of others. I must consider my son’s wishes, however, and I know he would have wanted his possessions to remain with those who would treasure them.’ Triss’s father stepped back with an air of finality.

‘Oh, that tune again!’ Violet snarled, and drew herself up as if preparing to trade punches. ‘Yes, I can see why you love him so much. He’s the perfect son now, isn’t he? He can’t argue with you any more. You can make him agree with whatever you say, for ever and ever—’

But this was too much for Triss’s father. He abruptly turned away from Violet Parish and strode back to the car, opening the rear door.

‘Come on, Triss,’ he said, his voice vivid with an anger that Triss knew was not meant for her, but which still made something in her stomach shrivel like a petal in a frost. She got out quickly. The atmosphere outside the car turned out to be frosty in more ways than one. There was an unseasonable chill, and a sharp minty bite to the air. Triss could see her breath.

‘Don’t walk away from me—’ Violet began, but broke off abruptly just as Triss’s father was slamming the car door. Glancing past her father, Triss realized that Violet was no longer looking at them. Instead her eyes were following something small, white and feathery that had floated down from above to land between the toes of her patent leather shoes. Violet hastily stepped back from it, as if it was a cinder that might burn her.

‘This conversation is at an end,’ Triss’s father announced to Violet as he guided Triss briskly to the front door. ‘If I ever find you here again, I will call the police.’

But Violet no longer appeared to be listening. Even before the last threat was uttered, she was pulling her goggles back down to cover her eyes and hastily buttoning her coat. As she followed her father indoors, Triss could see Violet hurriedly straddling her motorcycle. The door shut, and then there came the sound of an engine starting, somewhere between a roar and a loud, lazy rattle of gunfire.

Triss’s mother was waiting just inside, her hands clasped in a fretful knot.

‘That dreadful girl,’ she began immediately, her voice high with tension. ‘I told her you were out but she would not go – I do not think she believed me. Piers, I… I did not know what to do! But I did not think you would wish me to let her into the house. After all, it would set a precedent—’

‘You were quite right.’ Her husband patted her hand. ‘Unconscionable behaviour. We cannot let such things go.’

That dreadful girl. It was the only name Violet Parish was allowed nowadays in the Crescent household. The nature of her dreadfulness had never been openly discussed in front of Triss, but she had pieced together a little from her parents’ veiled remarks. The word they used a lot was ‘fast’, and Triss did not think they were talking just about the motorcycle. Violet did look fast, Triss reflected, lean like her motorcycle, pared to the sleek basics, with no softness to slow her down. Even her bobbed hair had sharp corners.

‘I can’t believe how cold she is,’ Triss’s mother said, peering fearfully out through the window. ‘Could you ever think that was the same girl?’

After Sebastian’s death the Crescent family had been braced to catch ‘poor Violet’ in its welcoming and supportive arms, but Violet had failed to reel or fall back into them. Instead of going into a proper, decent mourning, she had hacked off her hair, then started smoking and wearing dresses that let men see her calves. She had also started bothering Triss’s father for money, and Triss’s mother always shook her head and murmured about funds squandered on cocktails and ‘the high life’.

Triss let her hand rest against the inside of the front door, almost expecting it to be chilly to the touch. Violet had indeed seemed cold – cold, selfish and ugly. Her visit had ripped a hole in the fragile calm of the house, like the scratch of a careless nail over tissue paper. It had torn away the last remaining shreds of Triss’s brief sense of joy. She had seen herself through Violet’s eyes, a pallid, simpering accomplice of her father’s claims.

Perhaps if you’re cold enough, you make the world around you cold…

Triss’s father had shown no sign of noticing the tiny white something that had floated down to land at Violet’s feet. However, Triss was almost certain that the frail scrap of white that had fallen out of the cloudless September sky had been a solitary snowflake.

When Pen appeared at the head of the stairs, Triss could not prevent a small smile from creeping across her face. The younger girl looked thunderous and disappointed at seeing Triss standing there in the hall. Perhaps she had really thought that the doctor would instantly order Triss to be taken away in a straitjacket, leaving their father to return home alone.

Pen’s first words reflected nothing of this, however.

‘Where’s Violet?’ she demanded. ‘That was Violet outside, wasn’t it?’

‘Hush, Pen,’ her mother answered firmly. ‘It was, and she’s gone, I’m glad to say.’

‘Why didn’t she come in?’

Pen’s question was not dignified with a response, so the younger girl stamped off down the landing again. This was one of Pen’s many small acts of rebellion, an occasional perverse insistence that she liked Violet. Triss was fairly sure Pen only said it to shock, just as when she claimed to have drunk gin or seen a dead body.

‘Really,’ muttered their mother, ‘that child.’ She trailed her fingertips lightly over her temples. ‘Sometimes I just cannot…’ She did not say what she ‘could not’, but there was a tone of utter weariness in her voice.

Triss had hoped that her cake frenzy would dull the edge of her appetite, but as the smell of dinner reached her nose she was again swept up by dizzying waves of hunger. A pleasant surprise awaited her, however.

‘Dr Mellow says that you’ve lost some weight, so we should let you eat as much as you like for now,’ her mother told her, heaping Triss’s plate with steak-and-kidney pie. Pen glared poison over her more meagre serving, but Triss had no thought to spare for her. She wanted to weep with relief, and mentally sent a hundred thanks to Dr Mellow. For a while she was incapable of thought, so utterly submerged was she in the joyous, helpless, compulsive task of eating. Pie, potatoes, mashed parsnips, buttered peas, bread and butter, fruit, jam sponge, tinned pears, bananas, preserved cherries…