Weyward — Chapter 11: Violet

11

VIOLET

Violet woke the next day exhausted from lack of sleep. But she got straight out of bed, even though it was a Saturday, and she had no lessons.

She couldn’t get her discovery out of her head. That strange word, scratched into the wainscoting behind her bedside cabinet. Weyward.

She touched the gold pendant that hung from her neck, tracing her fingers over the W. What if the initial didn’t stand for her mother’s first name, as she’d thought for all these years? What if it stood for her last name, before she married Father and became Lady Ayres?

Longing swelled in Violet’s ribcage. She was struck with a sudden desire to push the cabinet aside again and run her fingers over the etchings, to feel something her mother might have touched. But why would her mother have put her own name there? Had she meant for Violet to discover it one day?

She threw back the covers, but quickly drew them up again when Mrs Kirkby knocked on her door with a tray of tea and porridge.

The housekeeper had a distracted look clouding her broad features, and a faint, meaty aroma. Her knuckles were dusted white with flour, and there was a dark smear of what looked to be gravy across her apron.

Violet supposed she was busy preparing for the impending arrival of this mysterious cousin Frederick. Violet imagined Mrs Kirkby rather had her work cut out for her, given that they never had guests at Orton Hall. Perhaps she could catch her off guard. ‘Mrs Kirkby,’ she said in between sips of tea, taking care to keep her tone indifferent. ‘What was my mother’s last name?’ ‘Big questions for so early in the morning, pet,’ said Mrs Kirkby, stooping to inspect a stain on the coverlet. ‘Is this chocolate? I’ll have to get

Penny to put it in to soak.’ Violet frowned. She had the distinct impression that Mrs Kirkby was

reluctant to look her in the eye. ‘Was it Weyward?’ Mrs Kirkby stiffened. She was still for a moment, then hurriedly removed the tray from Violet’s lap, even though she’d yet to finish her porridge. ‘Can’t recall,’ she huffed. ‘But it doesn’t do to go ferreting around in the past, Violet. Plenty of children don’t have mothers. Still more don’t have mothers or fathers. You should count yourself lucky and leave it at that.’ ‘Of course, Mrs Kirkby,’ Violet said, quickly formulating a plan. ‘I say – speaking of fathers, do you know what mine has planned for the day?’ ‘He left early this morning’, she said, ‘to meet your young cousin off his train at Lancaster.’ This was excellent news. But she had to hurry, or she would miss her chance.

Violet dressed quickly. She was quite sure that Mrs Kirkby had been lying when she said she couldn’t recall if Weyward had been her mother’s last name. What was less certain was how it had come to be scratched onto the wainscoting of Violet’s bedroom.

She crept down the main staircase to the second floor. It was a brilliant day outside, and the multicoloured light flooding in through the stained- glass window made the Hall look ethereal.

As she turned down the corridor, she passed Graham, carrying an algebra textbook with a look of despair. She remembered the gift he had left for her. ‘Um – thank you for the present,’ she said quietly. It occurred to her that it must have been quite an ordeal for him to coax the damselfly into a jar, given his fear of insects. The bees shimmered in her mind. ‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Do you feel better now? You look a bit more –

normal. Well – normal for you, anyway.’

He pulled a face and she laughed. ‘Yes, thanks.’ ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Well, ah – better get on with this.’ He motioned to the textbook and sighed. ‘Graham, wait,’ she said. ‘Um – you wouldn’t be a brick and do me a favour, would you?’ She saw him hesitate. It had been a long time since she’d asked him for a favour.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Father’s gone to get cousin whatshisname from Lancaster,’ she said. ‘Ah,’ said Graham, rolling his eyes. ‘The feted Frederick.’ ‘Anyway, I’ve got to look for something in Father’s study,’ she said, hoping she could trust him. ‘Could you tell me if he comes back?’ Graham’s ginger eyebrows shot up. ‘Father’s study? Why on earth would you go in there? He’ll skin you alive if he finds out,’ he said. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Which is why I need you to be my lookout. You can have my share of pudding for a week if you say yes.’ Violet watched Graham mull it over, hoping that the lure of extra custard would be too great for him to resist. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll knock on the door three times, as a signal. But if you renege on the pudding promise, I’ll tell Father.’

‘Deal,’ she said.

She turned towards the study. ‘Are you going to tell me what it is you’re looking for?’ ‘The fewer people know,’ said Violet, adopting a low voice, ‘the better.’ Graham rolled his eyes again and kept walking.

Violet felt a rush of nerves as she came upon the study. Normally, Cecil could be found growling at the threshold, as if he were Cerberus guarding the entrance to the underworld. Thank heavens he had gone with Father to Lancaster.

She pushed open the heavy door. Violet tended to avoid the study – and not just because of Cecil. This was where Father had caned her after the incident with the bees.

The room was no less unsettling now that she was older. It looked as if it belonged to a different era. A different season, even – Father had the curtains pulled, and the air felt chilly and stale. She turned on the light, flinching as she made eye contact with the painting that hung behind the desk. It was yet another portrait of Father, and so realistically done – even down to the gleam of his bald pate – that for a moment she thought that he had been there all along, waiting to catch her out.

Pulse thudding, she crept inside, inhaling the scent of pipe tobacco. There had to be some record of her mother in here. How could a person have lived and died in a house yet leave only a necklace and a scratch of letters behind? It was as if Father had scrubbed her from the face of the earth.

She scanned the shelves, with their ancient spines labelled in faded blue ink. Ledgers. Dozens of them. She pulled out one marked 1925 and flipped through it. Could there be something in here about the May Day Festival where her parents had met? But no – it was just pages and pages of numbers, transcribed in Father’s cramped, terse hand (it took skill, Violet thought, to make even your handwriting look angry). She slammed the ledger shut in frustration.

She looked around the room. Father’s mahogany desk hulked beneath his portrait. Strange objects littered the surface. Some of them were interesting – like the faded globe that showed the countries of the British Empire in delicate pink – but others gave her the willies. Especially the yellowed ivory tusk mounted in brass, which spanned almost the entire length of the desk. It conjured images of Babar and Celeste, heroes of her favourite childhood books (which, like all the other nursery volumes, had originally been given to Graham) tuskless and bleeding.

It made her feel sad for another reason. As a child, Violet had assumed that Father’s ‘curios’ (as he called them) were signs that he shared her love of the natural world. But it was when Father was telling her and Graham the story of how he came to possess the tusk – on the same hunting trip to Southern Rhodesia that he’d acquired Cecil, skinny and cowering as a puppy – that she realised how wrong she was. Father didn’t care that elephants formed close-knit, matriarchal groups; that they mourned their dead like humans. Nor did he consider that the elephant he had killed – for the mere sake of an ornament on his desk – would have been bewildered by fear and pain at the moment of its death.

For Father, the tusk – and everything else in the Hall like it – was just a trophy. These noble creatures weren’t to be studied or venerated, but

conquered.

They would never understand each other.

But there wasn’t time to dwell on such things now, she told herself. After all, she had a mission to accomplish.

She was sure that the desk drawer would be locked but – to her delight – it slid open easily.

Violet rifled through the contents quickly. Father’s leather writing-case, with the Ayres insignia (an osprey, picked out in gold); an old pocket watch with a broken face; letters from the bank, his pipe … she was just beginning

to think that Father hadn’t bothered locking his desk because it held nothing important when she saw the feather.

It was large enough to have come from a crow, Violet thought. Or perhaps a jackdaw?

Carefully, she took it from the drawer. It was black as obsidian, shimmering blue where it caught the light. She saw that it was streaked with white – or rather with queer absences of colour, like an unfinished painting.

The feather appeared to have come loose from a soft wad of material. On closer inspection, Violet saw that it was a handkerchief, fashioned from a delicate linen that had been eaten away by moths. There was a monogram in the corner of the handkerchief, the letters E.W. picked out in bottle-green silk.

Violet’s heart fluttered in her chest. E.W.

W for Weyward?

Underneath the layer of dust, Violet detected the faintest whiff of something light and floral coming from the handkerchief. Lavender. It was barely there, the ghost of a scent, but it was enough. The memories instantly flooded her brain, as if she had tapped into a hidden spring. The feeling of warm arms around her, a thick, fragrant curtain of hair tickling her face.

The low melody of a lullaby, the sound of a heart beating next to her ear.

The feather, the handkerchief.

They were her mother’s.

And Father had been keeping them in his desk drawer, as if they were something important. Special.

The old fantasy of her parents’ wedding day hovered before her. Father looking almost handsome, in a morning suit of soft grey. Her mother – Violet imagined a woman with a heart-shaped face and a dark river of hair – smiling as she took his hand. Their faces golden with sunshine; petals swirling overhead.

Violet sometimes wondered if Father was capable of loving anything – apart from hunting, and the Empire – but she also knew that he had defied tradition and his dead parents’ wishes to marry her mother. And he had held on to these keepsakes, things that reminded him of her, for all these years.

She imagined him sitting at his desk, pressing the handkerchief to his nose the way Violet was doing now.

Could she have misunderstood, that night in the study? Perhaps they can stop you from turning out like her. The very words had seemed to drip with

hatred.

But perhaps she’d been wrong, confused somehow? Her heart leaped at the thought. Perhaps he had loved her mother, very much. And then she had died.

Violet began to feel almost sorry for him.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there with the little bundle in her hand, but after a while she became aware of something strange.

She could hear. Properly, this time. It was as if the heavy curtains, the thick glass of the window and the ancient stone walls had fallen away. She could hear the beat of a sparrow’s wings as it took flight from a sycamore.

The throaty yell of a buzzard, calling to its mate as it circled in the sky. A field mouse, chittering as it foraged in the bushes beneath the window.

Violet stared at the items in her hand in wonder. Then, there were three knocks: Graham’s signal. How could Father be back already? Violet looked at her watch: it had just gone ten o’clock. He must have set off earlier than she’d realised.

She wanted to take the feather and the handkerchief with her, but what if Father noticed they were missing? Then he would know she had been inside his study. Perhaps – her heart thudded with the thought, with what she was about to do – he wouldn’t miss the feather. She could just keep it, for a little while, and put it back later. After all, Father had had it all to himself for years and years … ‘Violet?’ Graham hissed through the door. ‘Are you in there? He’s back!

Hurry!’ Her blood humming with excitement, Violet put the handkerchief back in the drawer, then shoved the feather into the pocket of her dress. She shut the door of Father’s study quietly and crept back up the stairs.

As a test, Violet crouched on the floor and pulled the hatbox out from underneath her bed.

The inside of the box was filmy with spider silk. Goldie was alive and well, and judging from the dead flies and ants that speckled his lair, possessed of his usual appetite. He reared up on his legs and blinked his eight beady eyes at her, before leaping into the air in a tawny flash. He came to rest on Violet’s shoulder, and she smiled as he nestled against her.

Warmth unfurled in her chest, fizzing through her veins.

It was like taking off a blindfold. She hadn’t realised how deadened to the world she had become – now, her nerves seemed to bristle with electricity. Colours looked brighter than they had before – through her window, the outside world flared with sunshine – and the click of Goldie’s

pincers was miraculous to her ears.

She was herself again.

Violet smoothed her hair and clothes, checking in the looking glass that she was presentable before going downstairs. She remembered what Father had said after supper the other night. He expected her to be a cheerful, gracious presence around her cousin Frederick. Eugh.

As she walked down the stairs, she heard Father talking loudly in the entrance hall. A boorish laugh echoed through the house. It was so loud that Violet heard the family of blue tits that lived in the roof chirrup in fright.

She disliked cousin Frederick already.

When she reached the hall, she saw that the owner of the boorish laugh was a straight-backed young man in a sand-coloured uniform. He smiled when she drew near, revealing white, even teeth. Below his officer’s cap, his eyes were green. Her favourite colour. Father, who had just finished telling some dull story, clapped him on the back. Graham stood awkwardly off to one side, looking as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands. ‘Frederick,’ said Father, ‘I’d like to introduce you to my daughter, your cousin. Miss Violet Elizabeth Ayres.’ ‘Hello,’ said Frederick, extending his hand towards her. ‘How do you do?’ ‘Hello,’ said Violet. His hand felt warm and callused. Close up, he smelled of a spicy sort of cologne. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt suddenly light-headed. Was this, she wondered, a normal response to the young adult male? She had never known any apart from Graham, and the second under-gardener, Neil – a buck-toothed, wan-faced lad who had perished at the Battle of Boulogne. ‘Violet,’ said Father. ‘Have you forgotten your manners?’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘How do you do?’ Frederick grinned.

Father rang for Penny, who flushed and almost forgot to curtsey when she saw Frederick. Father asked Penny to show Frederick to his room.

Dinner would be at eight, he said.

‘Don’t be late,’ said Father, looking at Violet.

Violet wore her favourite dress to dinner – green serge with a full skirt and a Peter Pan collar. It had no pockets, so she had stowed the feather safely between the yellowed pages of the Brothers Grimm. She sat across from Frederick and stole glances at him. She was heady with looking – at the sharp line of his jaw; the square, golden hands with their dark smattering of hair across the knuckles. He was so unlike Father – whose own hands recalled joints of gammon – that he might have been a different species. He repelled and fascinated her in equal measure.

She was trying to work out the exact shade of his eyes – the same colour as the enchanter’s nightshade that grew beneath the beech tree, she decided – when he turned his gaze to her. She flinched. ‘How are your parents, Frederick?’ Father was asking. Apparently, Frederick’s father was Father’s younger brother Charles – whom Violet and Graham had never met. It seemed, from the familiarity with which they spoke to each other, that Father and Frederick had kept up a rather involved written correspondence for many years. Knowing this made Violet feel a little smaller in her chair. Why hadn’t Father wanted her to meet her only cousin until now? She thought again of the lack of callers, the prohibition on leaving the estate. ‘As well as can be expected, I suppose,’ said Frederick. ‘Mother’s nerves are still a bit frayed, after the Blitz. I keep telling them to leave London – too many reminders – but they won’t hear of it. I’ll go down and see them, before I head back. But I wanted to get some country air first.’ ‘Did you grow up in London?’ Violet asked, finding her voice. The prospect horrified her. Everything she knew of London came from newspaper articles and Dickens. In her mind, it was soot-choked and sunless, with no animals except mangy foxes foraging in alleyways. ‘What was it like?’ ‘Well, I spent most of the year at school,’ said Frederick. ‘Eton, of course.’ Graham stiffened and looked at his plate. ‘But it’s a wonderful city.

Full of life and colour. Or, it was, before the war.’ ‘But … are there any trees?’ Violet asked. ‘I couldn’t imagine living without trees.’ Frederick laughed and took a sip of wine. The bright green flash of his gaze landed on her again, like sunlight in a forest.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, my parents live in Richmond, just next to the

park. Have you heard of it?’ ‘No,’ said Violet. ‘It’s beautiful. Over two thousand acres of woodland, just on the outskirts of London. You even see deer there, sometimes.’ ‘Have you thought about what you’d like to do once the war ends, Frederick?’ Father interrupted. ‘Well, I was planning to move back to London, and rent somewhere for a while; maybe in Kensington – if it’s still standing, that is … my allowance would cover it. I thought I might write a book, about the war. But now …’ ‘Yes! Didn’t you have a title? Torment in Tobruk? You mentioned it in your last letter. Sounded like stirring stuff. You’ve changed your mind?’ ‘Well. I’m not sure yet,’ Frederick began. ‘I thought of going to medical school, perhaps. One sees things, in a war … so much death.’ He is watching Violet. ‘But miracles, too. Chaps brought back from the brink. In a field hospital, doctors are like … God.’ There was an awkward pause. Father cleared his throat. ‘I think what I am trying to say’, Frederick added quickly, ‘is that I just would like to contribute somehow, when all this is over, to making people’s lives better.’ ‘A noble aspiration,’ said Father, nodding his approval. ‘So, would you get to see inside a body?’ Violet asked. ‘Learn how it works? If you went to medical school, I mean.’ ‘Violet,’ Father frowned. ‘Hardly appropriate table conversation from a

young lady.’ Frederick laughed. ‘I don’t mind, Uncle,’ he said. ‘The young lady is right, anyway. To become a doctor, I’d first need to be acquainted with how the human body

works. Intimately acquainted.’ He was still watching her.

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