Cuckoo Song

Chapter 7. A LATE CALLER

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.’

‘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.