Cuckoo Song

Chapter 27. THE TRUE COLOURS OF VIOLET

Mr Grace was right there in front of her, with his gentle smile and kind, earnest eyes.

At the sight of him, Not-Triss’s world turned white and terrible. The terror was pure and blinding, like staring into a camera flash. Her body seemed to act of its own accord, and she watched as it leaped from the chair, scrambled around the table to be away from Mr Grace and dived into the corner behind Violet. Not-Triss’s skin was tingling with the heat from remembered flames. She could barely recall how to breathe.

‘It’s him! It’s him!’ Pen was screaming. ‘He’s the one! He tried to burn Triss! He told Father to throw her in the fire!’ She too scampered to Violet’s side, so that now all three of them were facing Mr Grace over the table, with the wall at their backs.

‘Miss Parish!’ The tailor was trying to talk over Pen, in his calm and carrying tones. ‘Miss Parish, please listen—’

‘Will everybody shut up for a moment!’ Violet bellowed, jumping to her feet, and was rewarded by an unwilling hush.

During the pause the old woman who ran the tea shop opened the door from the kitchen and glanced around quizzically, apparently to investigate the source of the sound, then raised her eyebrows and withdrew.

‘That’s better,’ declared Violet, her voice somewhat uncertain, as if she had not quite expected to be obeyed. ‘Now – you seem to know my name, sir. And I am absolutely bloody sure that I do not know you from Adam. So who are you, and what the hell is going on?’

‘Perhaps you should read this.’ Mr Grace did not advance, remaining a pace away from the table, but pulled out a letter and carefully held it out towards Violet. With an air of reluctance and suspicion she took it, unfolded it and began to read.

Standing behind Violet, Not-Triss could see very little of her face, but just enough to observe that her frown was deepening. Parts of the letter were visible, however, and Not-Triss recognized the handwriting of Piers Crescent.

…are asked to assist the carrier of this letter, Mr Joseph Grace, in recovering my daughters Theresa and Penelope…

It was all happening again. Violet would listen to Mr Grace now. Everybody always listened to Mr Grace. All the adults did. Violet was louder than he was, but he was calmer, and his calmness would win out over her loudness in the end. It was all happening again.

Not-Triss had to run. Everything was an enemy. She was shaking like a flag in the wind. For the moment she pushed herself back into the corner, hard enough that the walls bruised her shoulders.

‘Miss Parish, you have done nothing wrong.’ The tailor continued to talk in a steady, measured voice, maintaining eye contact with Violet. He kept his hands slightly raised and spread, as if Violet’s temper was a gun. ‘I am sure the girls turned up on your doorstep in a state of distress. You have been looking after them and trying to calm them down, so that you can decide what to do next. Any reasonable and humane person would have done the same.

‘You have kept them both safe, and I am sure their parents will be very grateful. But as you can see from that letter, I have been sent as a representative of Mr and Mrs Crescent, who are desperate to recover their daughters. Miss, I am sorry to trouble you further, but I must ask for your help – we need to take Penny and Theresa home.’

‘Don’t listen to him, Violet!’ shouted Pen.

‘Pen, will you be quiet!’ snapped Violet, then turned her attention back to the tailor. ‘Mr… Grace, is it? This letter –’ she flicked at it with a forefinger – ‘says that you’ve been sent by Pen and Triss’s parents, right enough. But there are a lot of things it doesn’t tell me. I still don’t know who you are, or what happened to make both these girls run away.’

Mr Grace hesitated, pressing his lips together.

‘There are certain delicate family matters that I would be uncomfortable discussing without the permission of Mr and Mrs Crescent,’ he answered carefully.

‘Well, you’ll damn well have to if you want to get past me!’ Violet’s temper seemed to be slipping its reins, all attempts to moderate her language in front of the girls forgotten. ‘Triss is terrified by the mere sight of you, and I want to know why!’

Through the numbness of her terror, Not-Triss felt the wheels of disaster catch on an unexpected stone. Mr Grace had played a trump card, and his victory was inevitable. However, somehow the inevitable did not seem to have happened quite yet.

‘Very well.’ Mr Grace sighed. ‘So be it. The family does not want this widely known, but… there is a problem with young Theresa. You know she has been ill for some time?’

Violet nodded.

‘Perhaps,’ continued the tailor, ‘you are also aware that sometimes a severe brain fever has… lasting effects. Theresa was very ill recently, and since then she has been, well, unpredictable. Extremely unpredictable.’ His tone was delicate but meaningful. ‘She urgently needs the proper treatment – for her own sake, and the sake of everybody around her. Unfortunately it looks as if the first course of the treatment scared and confused her, so she ran away –’

‘VioletVioletViolet!’ Pen was dragging at Violet’s sleeve, almost on the verge of tears. ‘Don’t believe him, Violet! You can’t believe him! You can’t!’

But Not-Triss knew that Violet could believe him and would. On the one side there was Mr Grace, a respectable adult carrying the authority of the great Piers Crescent, and on the other a mad girl, whose words could no longer be trusted. There was still Pen, of course, but nobody would ever, ever listen to Pen.

With the odd lucidity of panic, Not-Triss’s gaze flitted round the room. Hot tea in the pot. I can throw that at somebody if I have to. Door to the kitchens. But there might not be a back way out. Front door…

There was something hanging from the ‘open/closed’ sign that had not been there when she entered. A small set of scissors. The tailor had blocked her retreat.

‘I need you to take Penny home,’ the tailor was continuing. ‘I will look after Theresa. I know I am a stranger to you, but you must trust me.’

‘This treatment,’ Violet said slowly, ‘did it involve… fire?’

Mr Grace hesitated a moment too long. ‘Fire?’

‘Yes, fire.’ Violet’s voice had an edge of steel. ‘Triss is terrified of it. I noticed that last night. And she’s scared witless of you. Why would that be?’

Mr Grace nodded slowly as if surveying a chess board and realizing the inevitability of checkmate. His look of sadness deepened.

‘Because of these,’ he answered, before pulling handfuls of small metal objects out of his pockets and casting them on to the table.

Some of the pairs of scissors fell open as they landed. Many were old and blackened, a few looking as if they had been hammered into shape by hand. All sent something singing in Not-Triss veins. They hated her. Their blades could sense her skin.

The wail that had been trapped inside her since the appearance of Mr Grace finally escaped. Wallpaper bulged, burst then peeled away. In a dresser by the door, crockery exploded like plates at a fairground rifle range.

Violet swore violently and spun to look at Not-Triss. The colour drained from her long face.

‘Look at her!’ called out Mr Grace. ‘Miss Parish – take a good look at her! I am sorry to have misled you before… but I wanted to avoid this scene, for your sake. Now, please, take Penny’s hand and lead her away from the creature in the corner. It is not Theresa. I think you can see that now. Quickly! You are both in danger!’

‘Triss!’ hissed Pen, urgently and vainly. ‘Don’t! Don’t! You need to stop it!’ The younger girl’s face was a picture of dread, but Not-Triss only made sense of her words when she looked down at her own hands and saw the long thorn-claws extending from her fingertips and the fine, deep grooves they had already etched in the wall. She knew that her mouth must be a horror of thorns, her countenance wild and unchildlike.

Violet’s eyes were fixed on Not-Triss’s face. They were a dark, wet-weather grey, and they had a question in them.

Not-Triss managed to find her own tongue again.

‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was still hoarse from the scream, and fluted strangely, like a breeze in a chimney flue. ‘I’m not Triss. I thought I was – I wanted to be – I tried to be – but it wasn’t good enough. I can’t be her. I’m something else, and I can’t help it. And when they found out I wasn’t their little girl, they tried to burn me. They thought it would bring their daughter back, but it won’t. It will only kill me.’

‘It is pitiable,’ murmured Mr Grace sadly, as if answering an unspoken thought. ‘Its instinct is to tug at the heart, even after the mask has slipped. Like a cuckoo trying to sing.’

Violet stared at Not-Triss, apparently hypnotized. The wet weather behind her eyes was on the move, clouds shifting formation. Then her scowl deepened again and she turned back to Mr Grace.

‘All right,’ she growled. ‘I’m convinced. She’s not Theresa.’

Mr Grace’s tension seemed to subside slightly into relief. ‘Thank you, Miss Parish—’

‘Which means,’ continued Violet with the steely relentlessness of a torpedo, ‘that she isn’t Mr Crescent’s daughter, and he has no rights over her. Which means you don’t either. So she’ll be coming with me.’

Suddenly Not-Triss’s lungs were full of too much air, and she did not know what to do with it all.

‘Please do not do this!’ exclaimed Mr Grace. ‘Think of Penny! At least let me take Penny back to her parents! Remember, that letter gives me authority—’

‘No, it doesn’t.’ Violet crumpled the letter and thrust it into her pocket. ‘Not any more.’ She leaned forward and jutted her long jaw. ‘So I don’t think you’ll be taking Pen either. Now get out of our way, or I will start screaming the place down. They know me in this tea shop… and they won’t know you from Jack Frost. Who do you think they’ll believe?’

Watching Violet and Mr Grace stare at each other across the table, Not-Triss realized that they were about the same height. It baffled her, for Mr Grace had quietly become a towering figure of fire in her imagination. Only now, when he no longer seemed unstoppable, could she see that he was not that tall for a man. Violet was tall for a woman, stubbornly lanky like a thistle.

‘Violet,’ piped up Pen, ‘he keeps looking at the clock.’

Belatedly, Not-Triss realized that Pen was right. Mr Grace had been glancing repeatedly at something on the wall behind them.

He was clock-watching. He was waiting for something to happen. Perhaps when he had seen the three of them walk into the tea shop he had not followed them in immediately. Perhaps he had sent off a hansom cab or message to somebody… maybe even Piers Crescent.

There was a frozen moment during which the truth sank in, and everyone realized that everyone else was about to do something. The next moment, of course, everything happened at once.

Mr Grace leaped sideways, arm outstretched to block any attempt at escape, just as Pen threw her cup of cold tea into his face. Violet brought her knee up hard against the underside of the tabletop, tipping it on to its side and sending crockery, scissors and everything else tumbling to the floor. The tailor leaped backwards reflexively, and Violet gave the table another kick, knocking it on to its back like a turtle.

‘Run!’ she shouted.

There was now a path across the overturned table. Pen and Not-Triss leaped for it without more prompting. Out of the corner of her eye Not-Triss thought she saw Mr Grace make a lunge for her, but suddenly Violet was there as well and crockery was breaking and his fingers did not reach her after all.

At the street door fear jerked her to a halt, and she stared paralysed at the hanging scissors. The next moment, however, Pen had flung open the door, and the scissors could only clatter at Not-Triss harmlessly from behind the glass. Both girls hurled themselves out on to the pavement and ran for Violet’s motorcycle.

‘Get into the sidecar!’ Violet burst from the tea shop and pelted after them, her face red and her hair awry. The girls obeyed, Pen scrambling in after Not-Triss with painful haste. Violet did not bother with her goggles or hat, but straddled the bike.

She brought down her heel on the kick-starter and the world filled with the triumphant roar of the motorcycle engine. The forward surge was so sudden it yanked back Not-Triss’s head, jarring her neck.

The roads were full of traffic and Violet did not seem to care about any of it. They weaved between two carts, dared a car head on, clipped over some tramlines and came perilously close to the broad, downy feet of a shire horse. At the end of the road Violet ignored the furious waves of a policeman and cut across the path of a large mint-green Sunbeam that Not-Triss recognized all too well. For a fleeting second Not-Triss thought she saw Piers Crescent in the driver’s seat, frozen behind glass like a photograph.

Then they were past, and through the next gap, and nothing that ought to stop them did. The traffic just seemed to part for them again and again, like cows for a terrier. There was dust in Not-Triss’s mouth, and her mind was spinning and singing like a gramophone record. The wheels of disaster had fallen foul of a rut. The unavoidable had been avoided.

At last Violet stopped the bike in a quiet dockland street. After the engine had faded away she did not dismount, but sat for a few minutes with her face in her hands, almost as if she was praying. If it was a prayer she was muttering, however, it was one full of all the swear words that Not-Triss had ever heard, and quite a few she had not.

‘What happened to Mr Grace?’ demanded Pen, breaking the silence.

‘He’ll be fine,’ muttered Violet, without looking up.

‘What did you do to him?’ asked Pen in hushed tones.

‘You’ll work it out some day,’ Violet growled. ‘But I’m not going to be the one to tell you.’ She glanced across at the two girls, her face grimy with dust, and gave a small grimace. ‘Hop out then.’

They ‘hopped out’, and Not-Triss’s legs promptly gave way. Her mind was still spinning and singing, not helped by the engine fumes, and her limbs were shaking uncontrollably. When she tried to speak, she found her mouth was still full of thorn-teeth. Without meaning to, she started to sob, her eyes filling with cobweb. The world misted from view.

Suddenly there were two strong arms around her, holding her tightly, more tightly than Triss’s parents had ever dared to hug Triss. Violet smelt of oil, cigarettes and some kind of perfume. Her coat was rough against Not-Triss’s face. Not-Triss could feel Pen there too, scrambling to be part of it, resting her head against Not-Triss’s back.

‘You’re all thorny,’ whispered Pen, shifting position.

‘I’ll hurt you both,’ whispered Not-Triss. ‘My thorns – they’ll hurt you.’

‘What, me?’ answered Violet. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m tough as nails. I’ve got a hide like a dreadnought.’

Violet did not feel cold or metallic like nails or a battleship. She felt warm. Her voice was a bit shaky, but her hug was as firm as the hills or the horizons.