Weyward — Chapter 17: Violet

17

VIOLET

Violet fancied that she could still smell Frederick’s cologne in her hair from when he had caught her in his arms.

Father had given them an odd look, as if he had come upon Frederick borrowing something of his without permission. Then the look passed, like a cloud going over the sun, and he had merely nodded at them. The shooting had wrapped up fairly quickly after that, with Frederick declaring that his shoulder ached (‘thanks to Jerry’) and suggesting an afternoon nap before a walk through the grounds.

Violet decided she would walk next to Frederick. She would show him all of her favourite spots in the grounds, including the beech tree. Perhaps he’d like to climb it with her? She caught herself. She was being ridiculous.

She must be ladylike. Father would have a fit if she climbed a tree in front of a guest. Anyway, she didn’t want Frederick to think she was … well, a child.

In the afternoon, when the sun had dipped in the sky to cast long shadows over the valley, she made her way downstairs to meet the others. Father and Graham hadn’t come down yet, but Frederick was waiting in the entrance hall. He looked up as she walked down the stairs, and the feel of his eyes on her body made her giddy. A wave of heat rose up her neck. He extended a hand as she approached the bottom step, as if he were helping her down from a horse-drawn carriage in a romance novel. ‘M’lady,’ he said, kissing her hand. The brush of his lips against her skin was like an electric shock. She couldn’t tell if she liked it or not. ‘Aha,’ Father’s voice boomed down the stairs. Violet looked up to see a reluctant Graham trailing him. ‘Raring to go, I see.’

Outside, the valley was hazy with the afternoon sun. Midges shimmered in the sweet-smelling air. ‘Ugh,’ said Frederick, swatting at his face. ‘Don’t care much for midges, I must say. Not quite sure there’s any point to them, the blasted things.’ ‘Oh, but there is,’ Violet said, excitedly. ‘A point to them, I mean.

They’re a very important food source for toads and swallows, actually. You could say the whole valley depends on them, in the summer. And I think they’re rather pretty – they look a bit like fairy dust, in this light, don’t you think?’ Fairy dust? She chided herself. She was trying to seem grown up in front of Frederick. She hadn’t got off to a very good start. ‘Hmm. I’m not sure I’d go that far,’ he said, frowning. ‘Though they’re a damn sight better than Libyan mosquitoes. If I have to be bitten to death by insects, I’d rather they were bloody English ones.’ Violet flushed at the swear word. Father hadn’t heard: he was walking ahead with Graham, Cecil loping alongside. The occasional burst of their conversation floated back to them and it sounded to Violet as though Graham was getting a lecture about his shooting. ‘Terribly sorry,’ said Frederick. ‘Not used to keeping fine company these

days.’ ‘Are there no girls in Libya?’ ‘None such as yourself,’ Frederick said. Violet flushed again. They walked in silence for a while. They were approaching the beech tree now. It looked rather majestic, Violet thought, with the sun dappling the green leaves and painting the branches gold. She waited for Frederick to comment on it, but he didn’t. They walked on. ‘I say,’ she began, ‘how is it that we’re cousins, and yet we have never met before?’ ‘Oh, but we have,’ said Frederick. ‘I came to visit with my parents when I was a child. Though I expect you won’t remember – you couldn’t have been more than a toddler, then.’ ‘Well, why did you come only the once?’ Violet asked. ‘I’d have loved to have a cousin around, growing up. It’s just me and Graham, and we … aren’t close, not anymore. Then, when he goes to school, I’m all alone.’ ‘It’s all a bit fuzzy, to be honest,’ said Frederick. ‘But – and I don’t want to offend you – I think it was something to do with your mother.’ ‘My mother? I barely remember her.’

‘You look like her,’ said Frederick. ‘She had the same dark hair. She was sort of – curious. Spoke like the servants. Mummy told me she was a local girl, from the village. Daddy was a bit put out by the whole thing, I think.

Kept saying his parents would never have allowed it, if they’d been alive.

Anyway. Sorry, I don’t want to offend you any more than I have already today.’ ‘No – please,’ said Violet, grasping at his words. ‘Please, tell me more about her. Father never tells us anything. You said she was curious? What did you mean?’ ‘Well, she … wasn’t quite well, I don’t think. For one, she was always going around with this ratty old bird on her shoulder. Some sort of raven – or maybe it was a crow, I don’t remember, but it was obviously diseased: there were these ghastly white streaks on its feathers. Anyway, she called it … what was it? Oh yes – Morg. Odd name. Mummy was rather scandalised.’ Here, Frederick paused and looked over at Violet. She kept her face neutral – afraid that if he could see the effect his words were having on her, he would stop.

A crow with white streaks. Could the feather she found have belonged to Morg? Violet’s heart sang. Her mother. So she had loved animals too – just as Violet had suspected. ‘She couldn’t take meals with us,’ Frederick continued. ‘She’d start off but then she’d begin to make strange comments, out of nowhere … “I’ll tell them,” she’d say, as if it were a threat. None of us had the faintest idea what she was on about, though perhaps she didn’t either, the poor thing. Anyway, your father would have to take her back to her room. Then she’d be ranting and raving, shouting … often, he had no choice but to lock her in.’ Violet started. ‘Lock her in?’ ‘It was for her own safety, you see,’ said Frederick. ‘Just until the doctor came. She was – a danger to herself. And the baby.’ Violet shivered.

She had never met a mad person. She had an image of a waifish figure draped in white, speaking gibberish, like Ophelia from Hamlet.

Perhaps this was why Father never spoke of her mother? Because he didn’t want Violet to know that she had been mad. Perhaps he was trying to protect her memory. She frowned, then turned to Frederick again.

‘Well – can you tell me anything else about her? Was she … was she

kind?’ Frederick snorted. ‘Not to me. Though she didn’t like me much – that was evident. I used to catch her staring at me and muttering to herself. And – well, the visit ended

rather abruptly.’ ‘What happened?’ ‘One night, I found a toad in my bed. A live one. I remember touching it with my foot. It was cold and slimy. Horrible,’ he shuddered at the memory. ‘They probably heard me scream back in London. Anyway, then Mummy came, and saw the toad … and she got it into her head that your mother had put it there. She was hysterical. Your father kept telling her to calm down, that it had to be one of the servants – that your mother had been in her room the whole evening, with the door bolted, but both my parents got quite worked up really. They packed the car – we had a little green Bentley, I remember, new that year – and we left in the middle of the night.’ ‘Oh,’ said Violet. ‘On the way home, my mother kept saying your father hadn’t been right in the head since the Great War … then our grandparents and Uncle Edward dying in that horrible accident … And then my father said …’ He paused to flick a midge from his shoulder. ‘What did your father say?’ Violet asked, scarcely breathing. ‘That Uncle Rupert had been bewitched.’

She didn’t know whether or not to believe Frederick’s story. She couldn’t imagine why he would lie. And yet … it was hard to believe the horrible things he had said about her mother. It was awful to think of her mother ranting and raving, needing to be locked in a room – and, worst of all, being unkind to Frederick. Perhaps she hadn’t meant to scare him with the toad?

Violet wouldn’t particularly mind finding a toad in her bed. In fact, she was

rather fond of them.

But then she remembered Father’s words.

Perhaps they can stop you from turning out like her.

Was that why she had this sick, wrong feeling in her stomach?

The air was growing colder now. Violet could hear crickets, calling for their mates. She looked at Frederick, walking next to her. In the dim light, his dark features and long strides made her think of a panther.

They hadn’t spoken for a few minutes. Violet wondered if he thought she was ‘curious’ too, like her mother. She would need to take care that he didn’t catch her staring at him. She wished he would say something. He hadn’t commented on the beauty of the sun setting slowly over the valley at all, even though it had put more colours in the sky than she knew the names for. ‘Do you hear that?’ she asked. ‘It’s such a lovely sound.’

‘What is?’ ‘The crickets.’ ‘Oh. Yes, I suppose it is.’ She heard his laugh, rich and deep. ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked. ‘You’re an unusual girl. First the midges, now the crickets … never known a girl – or a chap, for that matter – to be so fond of insects.’ ‘I just find them so very interesting,’ she said. ‘Beautiful, too. It’s sad, though – they have such short lives. For instance, did you know that the mayfly only lives for one day?’ She had seen a swarm of mayflies, once, down at the beck. A great, glittering cloud of them, pulsing above the surface of the water. They looked to Violet as if they were dancing – she had been quite disturbed when she learned from Dinsdale, the gardener, that they had in fact been mating. Now, her cheeks flushed at the image. Would Frederick be able to tell she was having such unseemly thoughts? She wished she hadn’t brought them up. ‘Imagine’, she continued, anxious to change the subject, ‘having only one day left on Earth. I don’t think I’d be able to decide between catching a train to London to see the Natural History Museum, or … lounging by the beck all day. One last afternoon with the birds, the insects and the flowers …’ ‘I know what I would do,’ said Frederick. They were passing by a briar bush now. Violet realised that she didn’t know where Father and Graham had got to: perhaps they were already back at the house. The sound of Father lecturing Graham (‘You must aim the rifle, boy’) had long since faded. ‘And what would that be, Frederick?’ she asked, blushing at the sound of his name on her lips. A strange, quivery feeling bubbled inside her.

He laughed and moved closer: his arm brushed hers and her heart juddered.

‘I’ll show you, but only if you close your eyes.’ Violet did as she was told. Suddenly, there was a hand on her waist, large and rough through the fabric of her skirt. Opening her eyes a fraction, she saw that the pink glimmer of dusk was blocked out by Frederick’s face in front of hers. She could feel his breath tickling her nose. It felt hot and smelled of coffee and something else, a sour note that made Violet think – oddly, unseasonably – of Christmas pudding. Violet tried to remember the word for the thing that Mrs Kirkby soaked the pudding in before setting it alight, but then— He was kissing her. Or, Violet supposed that was what he was doing. She knew that people kissed, from reading books (‘to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss’ – that was Shakespeare, wasn’t it?) and because she had once seen Penny kissing Neil, the ill-fated under-gardener. They had been pressed up against the stable, clinging onto each other as if they were drowning. It had looked rather unpleasant.

Violet was surprised that she was still thinking so much, even though her lips had been completely enveloped in his – rather wet – ones. She was finding it quite difficult to breathe. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to breathe, with her mouth covered by his (the taste of his mouth was very adult, as though he had seen things, been to places she couldn’t comprehend … again she was reminded of Christmas pudding, why was that?).

She was breathing through her nose now, Violet wondered if he could hear it, if she sounded like a cow … Her brain was a whirlpool. She thought of drowning, again. He was kissing her more fiercely now, pressing her against the briar bush; she felt twigs poking into her back and her hair – she would have to get them out before Father saw … Then he did something that made her almost stop thinking. He pushed something wet and slimy into her mouth – Violet thought of the toad – and she realised it was his tongue. She spluttered, and he pulled away. She took a deep breath, gulping at the clean evening air. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Got rather carried away there.’ He reached out a hand and traced the chain of her necklace with one finger.

She shivered. It was almost nicer than the kiss. ‘Best be getting back for dinner,’ he said. ‘We should do this again, though – same time tomorrow evening?’ She nodded, struck dumb. He turned to go, heading towards the Hall, which, with its yellow windows and high turrets looked to Violet like a

scene from a book – a ship on a stormy sea, perhaps. She stayed for a while, waiting for her breathing to slow and picking out the twigs from her hair.

As she walked back to the Hall (she tripped a couple of times, still reeling from the feel of his mouth on hers) she wondered if she looked changed, if anyone would be able to tell what had happened just by glancing at her. She certainly felt different. Her heart was beating as hard in her chest as if she had been running.

It wasn’t until she shut her bedroom door and her racing mind had settled that something Frederick had said, before he had kissed her so suddenly, returned to her.

She was a danger to herself. And the baby.

Violet had always believed that her mother died giving birth to Graham.

But Frederick had made it sound as though he had already been born.

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