Cuckoo Song (11 page)

There were dead leaves on her pillow, several of them. Slowly she raked her fingers through her hair, and her hand came away with a fistful more brown, broken leaves. Her eye crept to the chair
she had propped against her door, and her heart sank. Only then did she realize how much she had been hoping that the ever-malicious Pen had been responsible for the mysteriously appearing
leaves.

Triss sat up, carefully, and pulled back the covers. There were more leaves on the sheet around her, some inside her nightdress, and a few tiny twigs and wisps of hay.

Mouth dry, she cleaned away the debris once again, then moved to the dresser for her hairbrush. To her surprise, she found tiny flakes of dead leaf clinging to the bristles, despite the fact she
was certain she had removed from it everything but a few strands of her own hair. As she stared at it, however, a horrible suspicion crept spider-like into her mind.

No. It can’t be.

She had to know. After shaking off all the leaf fragments, Triss plucked a few hairs from her own head and trailed them over the brush. Then she forced herself to look away for a time, counting
to three hundred under her breath. When she looked back, her spirits plummeted like a stone. There were no hairs draped across the brush’s bristles. Instead there was a piece of a skeleton
leaf, moth-wing dry and more frail than any lace.

The leaves in my hair, the dirt on my floor – I didn’t bring them in from outside. And Pen didn’t scatter them over my room.

They’re me.

‘Triss looks pale. Doesn’t Triss look pale?’ Pen’s voice rang out again and again at the breakfast table. ‘Is Triss all right? What did the doctor
say? Does she need to see him again?’

Triss sat carefully dissecting her egg and found herself almost hating Pen. It was all too close to the dream from which she had struggled. At least she was not ravenously hungry, but it was
hard to feel relieved about that when she remembered eating the half-doll. She wanted to cry, but her tears seemed to be trapped in a gluey mass behind her eyes. Her mind was haunted by the leaves
on her hairbrush, and the thought of Sebastian’s letter, now hidden beneath her mattress.

Hazily she managed to follow some of her parents’ conversation. Her father had to work that day after all, and was going into Ellchester. The new station he had designed was nearly
finished. It was shaped like a pyramid, following the craze for all things Egyptian that had followed the discovery of the Tutankhamen tomb the year before. Somehow ten years ago was dead history,
but anything Ancient Egyptian was now the most modern thing imaginable.

‘Holiday over, I’m afraid,’ Triss’s father sighed. ‘They want me at the building site to approve everything, which means that if anything goes wrong afterwards they
can blame their handiwork on me. And of course once the main structure is complete, they want me to be present for the Capping Ceremony so that the press can take pictures.’ The
‘Capping Ceremony’ involved using a crane to lower the pointed tip into place at the top of the pyramid, symbolizing the building’s completion.

‘More hullabaloo,’ murmured Triss’s mother, in a tone that combined martyrdom and pride.

‘I know, I know.’ Triss’s father gave her a quick smile. ‘But it is only four days more. Then it will all be over.’

Triss flinched violently, and started shaking. The words recalled too vividly those from her nightmare, and for some reason they filled her with an uncontrollable terror.

‘Triss! What’s wrong?’ Her mother started to reach out a hand towards her, but Triss recoiled from her.

‘Headache!’ she managed to squeak out, and fled from the room.

The medical cabinet was raided for all its emergency troops. Now there were rows of bottles lined up on Triss’s bedside. Lying muffled to the chin in her bedclothes,
Triss surveyed their ranks, without feeling much reassurance. Would any of those bottles prevent her falling into leaves? Would syrup of figs rescue Sebastian? She didn’t think so. Nor did
she hold out much hope for the effectiveness of the camphor in the bowl of hot water by her bed, or the moistened flannel across her forehead.

She was to spend the day in bed. She knew that once she would have accepted this. Now watching the hours roll by was torture. What was she doing – waiting to fall apart or go mad?
Four
days, four days, four days
. . . Why did those words keep going through her head? She could not understand how she had ever been able to bear just
lying there
in bed, getting paler
and frailer while the world went on without her.

Triss heard the clocks strike two, and kicked off the covers, feeling too hot to stand them. When she pressed her face against the window, the coolness gave her some relief. Her room smelt
stale, and the grey, impatient energy of the wind outside drew her, making her want to fling open her window.

Triss heard a car door slam. There was a small, blue Morris parked on the other side of the square, she realized, and somebody had just got out, his figure somewhat obscured by the trees on the
central green.

As he drew closer, Triss recognized him. It was Mr Grace, the tailor who had played her jazz and told her to eat cake the day before. As she watched, he walked up to the Crescents’ front
door, and a moment later she heard the bell sound.

Triss’s initial fizz of joyful recognition turned a moment later to confusion. Why was he here? What if her parents met him, and found out that he was a jazz sort of a person? Perhaps she
would not be allowed to go back to his shop.

What
was
he doing here?

With a stealth that was becoming second nature, Triss slipped out of her room and to the head of the stairs. Since Margaret had departed for the day, it was her mother who had answered the door.
Cook was notoriously deaf and claimed that she could never hear the bell. Triss did not dare peer around the corner for fear of being seen, but remained where she was, listening.

‘. . . so sorry to disturb you.’ The tailor’s voice was just audible. ‘Mrs Piers Crescent? My name is Jacob Grace of Grace & Scarp – your husband and daughter
visited our establishment yesterday.’

‘Oh – you’re from the dressmakers’?’ Triss’s mother sounded perplexed and a bit flustered. ‘But . . . I understood the first fitting appointment was set
for next week . . .’

‘Yes, indeed. But it seems your daughter left her gloves in our VIP room, and since I was passing by I thought I would drop them off.’

‘Oh, I see! How very kind.’ Pause. ‘Er . . . I am sorry, Mr Grace, but these do not actually belong to Triss.’

‘Really?’ The tailor sounded taken aback. ‘Oh. Well, how very stupid of me! They were so small I thought they must be hers. In that case, my sincere apologies for bothering
you.’

‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey.’ Her mother’s tone had thawed a little.

‘Oh, not at all, I was glad of a chance to ask how the young lady was faring today in any case.’

‘Theresa is . . . well, I think that she has recovered from the shock she received in your shop, if that is what you are asking.’

‘Actually, that was not what I was asking.’ For the first time Mr Grace sounded serious and somewhat hesitant. ‘Mrs Crescent, I had the good fortune to spend some time with
your daughter while she was visiting our shop, and I noticed certain . . . symptoms. Symptoms that concerned me because they . . . reminded me of another case. But if your daughter is doing well
today and is quite herself again, then that is a weight off my mind.’

‘Mr Grace,’ asked Triss’s mother with a nervous sharpness, ‘what do you mean?’

There was a long pause.

‘Please accept my apologies,’ came the response, so softly that Triss had difficulty making out the words. ‘I am so very sorry, Mrs Crescent. I had no place offering comments
on your daughter’s health. You are obviously both loving parents and no doubt are arranging the best of medical help for her. I am not a doctor, nor even a friend of the family. Please excuse
me, and pass on my good wishes to young Theresa.’

‘Stop! Wait!’ Her mother’s voice became slightly more distant and less echoing, as if she had followed the departing tailor a step or two out through the front door. ‘My
daughter . . . is not completely well yet. If you recognize her symptoms, and have any idea what might be causing them . . .’

‘You would not thank me, Mrs Crescent.’ A sigh, and then another pause, during which Triss thought she heard the faint scritch of pen on paper. ‘Here. The shop has a telephone
– if you or your husband need me, call this number and ask for me by name. But, Mrs Crescent? Contact me only when you are desperate. Not before.’

Clipped steps receded, and a few moments later Triss heard the front door close. She crept back to her room, her mind in a helpless tumult.

What did any of this mean? What was Mr Grace
doing
here? He must have seen her put on her own gloves when she left. Had he pretended to think the stray gloves were hers so he had an
excuse to drop by?

He wanted to talk to Mother about me.
Her first feeling was a sense of betrayal. She had been so sure that she and Mr Grace had a bond of secrecy, and that he would not say anything
about the six plates of cakes. What other symptom could he be talking about? But sometimes adults were like that. They decided that promises to a child didn’t matter, as long as they thought
they were doing something for the child’s own good.

Triss’s second feeling was a small, tremulous snowdrop of hope. What if Mr Grace really
did
know what was wrong with her? What if he could do something to make it better?

Chapter 10

Hearing footsteps creak up the stairs and along the landing, Triss leaped back under the covers, hastily arranging her damp cloth across her forehead, and a drowsy look over
her face.

When the door opened and her mother peered around it, Triss made sleepy, mumbling noises as if she had just been woken.

‘Sorry, darling. I won’t bother you for long. I . . . just wanted to ask you something. You talked to one of the gentlemen at the dressmakers’. A Mr Grace?’

Triss blinked a few times, and nodded.

‘What did you talk about?’ Her mother hesitated, wetting her upper lip with the tip of her tongue. ‘That is, did he seem . . . ?’ She hesitated, as if uncertain what she
wanted to ask.

‘He was nice,’ Triss answered, hoping she did not sound too keen. ‘We talked about dresses and things. I said I’d been ill and was getting better. He seemed concerned. He
seemed . . .’

What do I have to say to make you call him?

‘All very peculiar,’ muttered Triss’s mother, and Triss’s heart sank.

Triss immediately realized that she had played her cards wrong. She should have said that Mr Grace was clever and sensible. She should not have admitted that she
liked
him. It was, a
clammy uncomfortable voice in head told her, the same as it had been with the governesses. She was not supposed to
like
them. Showing that she liked a governess or any other servant
guaranteed their dismissal.

Her mother sighed and gently rubbed at her own temple. ‘Froglet, Mummy is coming down with a bit of a headache too, so I will be taking my restorative, then having a little sleep. But if
you need me, I shall be in my room.’

Triss knew what this meant. The family medicine cabinet was almost entirely dedicated to the war against Triss’s own ailments, but there were always a few bottles of her mother’s
‘restorative’ in there as well. They had ‘Wincarnis’ written on the label, and a picture of a hearty-looking woman in a red hat raising a glass. It had been explained to
Triss that ‘wine tonic’ was completely different from ordinary wine, even if it smelt the same. A doctor had once prescribed it for her mother’s nerves after Pen was born. Ever
since, her mother had resorted to it when feeling particularly agitated.

‘I’ll be quite all right,’ Triss said, and managed to keep her tone soft, sleepy and unconcerned. An idea had pushed its way into her head, setting her heart thundering.

After her mother had withdrawn and closed the door, Triss lay listening intently. Even after she heard her mother return to her own room she waited for a while, to give her mother time to drink
her tonic and settle down in bed. Only when all was reassuringly silent did she scramble out of bed.

Triss yanked open the chest of drawers, piling their contents on her bed. She arranged the blankets over the top so that the whole looked a bit like a sleeping shape.

She would probably have a few hours before her mother woke. If she was lucky, this might give her enough time to head into the centre of Ellchester. She would find the dressmakers’, and
invent some excuse to talk to Mr Grace.

I have to know what’s wrong with me. He
must
tell me – he
liked
me.

Triss dressed quickly, donning her outdoor coat, hat and gloves. She dared not risk the front door, for fear that the neighbours might notice the Crescents’ sickly daughter slipping out on
her own and ask questions about it. There was a back door, however, which opened out on to the small strip of garden, and the alley beyond. The only challenge would be dodging past Cook without
being seen.

As she crept downstairs, Triss was almost stopped in her tracks by the thought of her father’s quiet, reproachful words.
My Triss is a sweet, quiet, well-behaved girl.
What would
he think if he saw her slipping out of the house without permission?

‘Sorry, Daddy,’ she whispered under her breath.

She tiptoed through the dining room, and peered into the kitchen. She could see nothing of Cook, but there were reassuring sounds of splashing and scrubbing from the little scullery. Evidently
Cook was busy washing up after lunch in the big cement sink.

A rattle and bang made Triss jump. Startled, she looked across at the house’s back door, which was usually kept locked, the key hanging from a nail on the inside wall. The key was now in
the lock and the door slightly open, so that it rattled against the jamb in the impatient wind. Triss stared, then tiptoed across the kitchen and peered out into the garden.