Cuckoo Song

Chapter 10. ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVE

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After her mother had withdrawn and closed the door, Triss lay listening intently.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.

A familiar figure was hurrying between the cucumber frames and nasturtium beds, padded out like a very short Eskimo in her pale cream fleece-trimmed coat. It was Pen. As the younger girl unfastened the gate at the back of the garden, she flashed a fierce and furtive grin towards the upper storeys of the house. Then the gate closed, concealing her from sight.

Clearly Triss was not the only person who had decided to take advantage of their mother’s nap. Triss slipped out through the back door, taking care to close it more carefully than Pen had done.

What is she doing? Where is she going?

Pen’s eyes had been watchful, but alive with anger and a hint of triumph. It reminded Triss of her sister’s face when she had forced Triss to show her grass-stained nightdress.

Whatever she’s planning, it’s something to do with me.

Triss scampered across the garden to the gate, opened it a crack and peered through into the alley beyond, just in time to see Pen’s familiar form disappearing around a corner. Triss made haste to the same turning, thankful her steps were drowned by the bluster of the wind. And there was Pen, strutting down Lime Street with her hands in her pockets, as if she had every right to do so.

At a distance, keeping Pen just within sight all the way, Triss followed.

How strange it was, to be outside alone, without permission! Triss was sure that at any moment she would bump into some friend of the family. Thankfully the wind gave her an excuse to keep her collar turned up, her hat pulled down and her scarf wrapped around her face. Again her father’s words haunted her.

My Triss is a sweet, quiet, well-behaved girl.

But, she promised herself, she would be his Triss again soon, once she found out what was wrong with her and made it better.

Wherever Pen was going, the route was clearly not new to her. She knew which railings were loose and could be pulled out so that you could sneak into the park and take a short cut. She slipped down little behind-house alleys, where you could fight your way through the hanging washing and come out in main streets. She was familiar with the little zigzag lanes that crept up the sides of the hills and spat you out on to footbridges with a view across the city, then swallowed you up in alleys again.

Eventually Pen came to a junction that Triss recognized. To the right lay the broad street that ran up the hill towards the better shopping districts, including Marley Street and the dressmaker where Mr Grace worked. The left-hand road ran downhill towards the Puttens, the area of Ellchester which the younger people of the city had claimed for their own. There the lines of shops were interspersed with dance halls, bars and cinemas.

Pen turned left.

Triss felt a knot of conflict in her stomach. Mr Grace’s shop was so close now, a mere handful of turnings away, but if she lost sight of Pen she would never know what the younger girl was up to. Again, Triss remembered the look of guilty terror on her sister’s face when she had been overheard using the phone. Had Pen just been pretending, to trap her? Or… did Pen have a part in the strangeness that had consumed everything?

I hate you, Pen, Triss murmured silently, as she turned left, down the hill, keeping the smaller girl’s figure in sight. I hate you.

At last Pen halted before a curious building which had been built on a hairpin bend and was therefore wedge-shaped. High above, under a row of light bulbs, was a sign painted with the words ‘The Slice of Life’. The walls were cream-coloured, increasing the resemblance to a piece of cake. They were covered with posters, on which Theda Bara offered a sultry glare, John Barrymore showed off his famous nose, and Rudolph Valentino fiercely clutched a young woman who did not seem to mind too much.

It was a cinema, a strange little cinema that Triss could not remember ever having seen or heard mentioned. As she was wondering at this, Pen walked up the front steps and in through the glass swing-door.

Triss halted in the street, irresolute. Could this be the answer? Had Pen really fled the house on an illicit film-going trip? Now that she thought about it, Saturday afternoon was the time that most cinemas held their ‘tuppenny rush’ showing, with cheap tickets for children.

Her eye slid to a board near the door. Sure enough, it advertised a Children’s Matinee. The main picture was Murder at the Midnight Casino, and the serial was something called The Unseen Blade. Both sounded exactly to Pen’s taste. Pen was addicted to gangster films, and any other picture that involved people shooting each other or falling off cliffs.

With severe misgivings, Triss walked up the steps and into the cinema.

The Crescent family’s cinema trips had always been to the Rhapsody, on the edge of town. It was large and grand like an Egyptian palace, full of reds and golds, with a piano that rose up on a special platform just before the film began. Mother had always insisted that the other cinemas were ‘bug huts’, where one ‘was jostled by all sorts and came home with fleas’.

The entrance was close to the ‘point’ of the cinema’s wedge, so Triss was unsurprised to find that the foyer was very small.

It was a strange mixture of old and new, grand and dingy. The carpet was bright red and had the raspy, exciting feeling of nylon, but the dark paint of the walls was peeling. Behind a battered desk sat a pretty young woman with a mouth painted like a cherry and white-gold hair that looked like whipped cream.

There was no sign of Pen. Behind the women was a doorway with a velvet rope across it, from beyond which Triss could hear a cacophony of voices.

Triss’s mouth dried as the woman gave her a special warm ‘for children’ smile.

‘Don’t look so worried!’ she said in a confidential tone. ‘It’s just beginning. If you sneak in now, you’ll catch the start of the serial.’ She said the word ‘sneak’ with a small, charming wrinkle of her nose. ‘That’s three ha’pennies for the stalls, thruppence for the gallery.’ She paused and seemed to take stock of Triss’s clothes. ‘You’ll be for the gallery, won’t you?’

Triss floundered for an instant, before remembering that she had a purse with a little of her pocket money in her coat pocket. She hesitated, then fished out three pennies, received a metal token in return and headed through the door behind the desk. From the gallery she would have a much better view of the auditorium, and a good chance of spotting Pen.

She passed through a door labelled ‘To the Gallery’, pausing to hand her token to a silent, sallow-faced attendant, then climbed a set of stairs, the sound of ruckus ahead growing ever louder.

She emerged on to the gallery, which appeared to be empty. The auditorium below, however, was seething. The hard wooden benches were crammed with children of every age, from heartily screaming infants to teenage girls who sat gossiping and peeling potatoes at the back. Children threw nutshells, or stood on benches to yell across to each other. Others stamped their feet and whistled, calling for the film to start. Peering down, Triss tried to make out Pen’s diminutive shape among them, but in vain.

As Triss watched, a woman with her hair in a stern bun walked down the aisles, spraying something into the air above the children’s heads. All of them seemed to accept this as a matter of course. A chemical scent of lavender drifted up to Triss and she wondered if the woman was spraying for fleas.

When a solitary man sat down at the piano and began to thump out a tune, the audience erupted with excitement. The room darkened, and the silvery screen began to move in its magical way, showing the latest news events. Mr Baldwin, the prime minister, was talking silently in a big coat, the silver sunlight making him blink.

Then the serial episode began, showing a young woman trapped in a cellar rapidly filling with water. Most of the audience had clearly been following this story avidly and were soon shouting warnings to her by name, or calling out the titles on the screen for friends hard of reading. As the heroine made her unlikely and ingenious escape, there were cheers, gasps, laughter and catcalls.

On another day, Triss would have been drawn in as well, the shimmer of the great screen filling her with an almost unbearable excitement. Today, however, she was too busy scanning the figures below bathed in the screen’s flickering light, searching in vain for Pen.

Could Pen have paid thruppence for a seat upstairs? There was a large central pillar blocking Triss’s view of the other half of the gallery. She sidled along the row of seats, and gingerly peered round the pillar.

In a seat at the far end of the gallery sat Pen.

The smaller girl was fidgeting and seemed to be paying no attention to the screen at all. Over and over again she glanced to her left, towards the wall directly opposite Triss. There was nothing there though, only a darkened wall painted a rich, deep red.

And then, quite suddenly, there was.

A small, open door had appeared in the wall, offering a rectangle of faint illumination. As Triss watched, Pen saw it and stiffened, then rose stealthily, made her way down the row of seats and vanished through it.

There was something about that dimly lit doorway that sent Triss’s instincts twitching. She could smell something. No, taste something. No, neither of those, but there was something in the air that furred her tongue and made her teeth tingle. It was strange. It was familiar. It made her think of the Grimmer. She did not want to follow Pen into that mysterious half-light.

But she knew she would.

The serial had yielded to a cartoon. Boggle-eyed, Felix the Cat crept past a sleeping dog, his shoulders hunched, each step an exaggerated lurch. As his adventures bathed the auditorium in a storm-flicker light, Triss crept on silent feet towards the waiting door.