Cuckoo Song

Chapter 6. SCISSORS

Marley Street was one of the highest thoroughfares in Ellchester, and was now lit by electricity instead of gas. Steel brackets had been clamped to the tops of the poles that held up the running wires for the trams, and from these seared a light of almost unearthly brightness and whiteness, like distilled moonlight. It transformed the street and made everything larger, louder, more vivid and exciting, as if all the shopping throngs were onstage and knew it. In comparison, the mellow light from the post-top gas lanterns down the side streets left everything there looking melancholy and a bit dingy.

‘Lambent’s as usual?’ her father asked. It was Triss’s favourite dress shop, she recalled after a moment’s confusion. All her best-loved dresses had been bought there, after fits of illness. Her whooping-cough blue chiffon. Her three-day-fever cotton with the primrose print.

They halted before Lambent’s, the golden letters reading ‘Lambent & Daughters’ gleaming above the window in the light from the street lamps. As her father turned away to close his umbrella, Triss pressed herself close to the great, brightly lit window, avoiding the trickle of water from the narrow awning above. Beyond the glass posed five sleek plaster mannequins with pale silver skin. They were languorous and inhumanly slender, in the very latest style, and had utterly featureless faces.

Triss was just admiring their pastel-coloured tasselled dresses when all five of the figures stirred. Very slowly they turned their eyeless heads to stare at her, and then hunched their shoulders slightly and leaned forward, with an attitude of intense interest.

‘No!’ Triss leaped backwards into the rain. Her father turned to her in surprise. She swallowed hard and forced her gaze away from the shop window. If her father saw her staring, he might look over his shoulder to investigate. What if he saw them move? Or what if he saw nothing strange at all? ‘Can’t we go somewhere else this time? I heard there was a better shop, down… that way.’ She pointed blindly along the street, hoping that she could find some dressmaker in that direction to lend her story credence.

‘Really? Yes, if you like.’ Her father opened his umbrella again. ‘What was this other dressmaker called?’

‘I… I can’t quite remember,’ said Triss, just relieved to find herself walking away from the ominous, watching mannequins. She strode on without looking back, her heart bouncing in her chest. ‘The name was something like… like… it was this one!’ To her delight and relief she realized that they were passing a shop with a big metal pair of scissors suspended above the door by a slender chain, a sure sign of a tailor or dressmaker. Most of the clothes on the wire-frame dummies in the window seemed to be for men, but there were some female clothes too. Triss’s eyes flitted quickly to the twirly sky-blue letters over the door. ‘Grace & Scarp – yes, that was it!’

‘All right.’ Her father smoothed back her damp hair. ‘Let’s see what they have, shall we?’

Only as she was mounting the steps to the shop door did Triss felt a tickle of disquiet. It was not exactly fear, just a tug of unease as if she had forgotten something important. A thought flashed into her mind, but it was not a terrible one, just odd. It was the memory of wrestling with her mother’s scissors the morning after her fever, the tool sullenly uncooperative in her hands.

As Triss pushed the shop door open there was a loud and sudden bang. Something clattered to the ground at her feet. She found herself staring down at the enormous pair of iron scissors that had been hanging over the door.

Her father had been holding his umbrella over her, and only this had prevented the blades falling on to her head. The world around Triss seemed to bleach, and for a few moments she lost the ability to understand it. The great scissors at her feet were the only real thing. There was a lot of fuss all around her, and it sounded as if her father was making most of it. Everybody else seemed to be doing a lot of apologizing.

‘No idea how the chain snapped… it was brand new just a year ago…’

Triss and her father were hurried into the gleaming shop, and somebody made a great business of dabbing the raindrops off Triss’s shoulders with a handkerchief, as if that would undo the scissor-attack.

‘My daughter,’ her father was declaring in tones of incandescent rage, ‘is in a state of delicate health. Her nerves cannot stand this sort of shock!’

One portly man managed to raise his voice above the chorus of apology. ‘Sir, we are most heartily and profoundly sorry. No excuse can be made for such an accident, but perhaps you will let us make some small amends. Perhaps a dress for your daughter with our compliments… and maybe a suit for yourself at a discount?’

Triss’s father hesitated, the lid tottering on the boiling pot of his temper. Then he knelt down beside her.

‘Triss – how are you? What do you want to do? Do you want to stay here and see what their dresses are like, or shall we go somewhere else?’

‘It’s all right,’ piped up Triss. ‘I don’t mind if we stay here.’ It was true, she realized. She was shaken, but did not feel bodily affected by the shock the way her father seemed to expect. Triss even felt slightly guilty about it, as if after his speech she had a duty to be more stricken.

‘If you are sure.’ Her father briefly glanced across at the stout man who had offered the dress and discounted suit. ‘Triss, I need to talk to the manager about a few things. If I leave you to be measured, will you be all right?’

‘But we know my measurements,’ Triss exclaimed, surprised.

‘I think you should be measured again, love,’ her father said quietly but firmly, and again Triss saw the ghost of anxiety stalk past behind his smile. ‘Dr Mellow says… that you may have lost a little weight.’

Lost weight? Lost weight? With incredulity Triss recalled all the food she had devoured over the last three days. How could she have lost weight? Now she thought about it, though, the doctor had looked rather taken aback when she climbed on the scales.

Still turning this revelation over in her head, Triss was led through a door marked ‘Reserved for Special Guests of Grace & Scarp’. The room on the other side was small, but much grander than the main shop floor and startlingly empty of people. The walls were patterned in serious-looking dark blue and silver-grey, and the furniture was mostly chrome and glossy leather. From racks along one wall hung folded bolts of black, brown and navy-blue cloth. It was all very sensible and gentlemanly, and made Triss feel silly and out of place, like a dollop of jam on a newspaper.

‘Please, do take a seat.’ The man who had shown her into this grand room pulled forward a large leather chair for her. ‘This is our VIP room – reserved for royalty, the extravagant and those we attack with scissors.’

At first glance Triss had thought that the man was quite young. His hair was oiled to a fashionable treacly gleam. His smile was youthful as well, quick and humorous. Now that she took the time to look at him, however, she noticed horizontal lines creasing his forehead and a touch of greyness in his cheeks. His motions had a slight stiffness as well, and she realized that he must be older than her father. His manner was playful, but it was the careful playfulness of an old dog who no longer chases every ball. When he crossed the room, he walked with a shadow of a limp, though it was almost hidden by the neatness of his step.

‘My name is Joseph Grace,’ he continued, ‘and since my partner is arranging your father’s fitting, I shall be looking after you.’

Triss seated herself on the throne-like chair. Now that the door had been closed behind her, cutting out the babble of voices in the main shop, she found she could hear music. It was a lilting violin piece, so clear that Triss cast a glance around, just in case there were live musicians like in the Lyons tea shops, but instead her eye fell on a gramophone in the corner, its turntable spinning, the mouth of its curved horn pointing into the room.

‘Now,’ continued Mr Grace, ‘what will you have? Tea and cake? Lemonade? Cocktails and oysters?’

Triss gave a little surprised squeak of laughter. ‘Tea – just tea, please. And… cake.’

‘Of course.’ Mr Grace called through a door, and a little later a short young woman in a trim blue dress suit tripped in with a plate heaped with angel cakes, and tea in a bone-china cup.

Triss grinned, forgetting her duty to look woebegone. Perhaps the room seemed surprised to find a frilly eleven-year-old in it, but Mr Grace was not treating her with pained, nervous courtesy, as if she was some brittle brat who might fall into convulsions or tantrums at any moment. He was smiling at her gently and easily, as though they were old friends who had unexpectedly run into each other. He put a style-book in Triss’s hands, filled with fashion plates and pinned fabric swatches. He flicked past countless pages of elegant men-about-town and oblongs of dull suit fabric until he reached the brightly coloured ladies’ pages at the back. Triss turned the pages, feeling a fizz of power as she made her choices.

A smart young woman with stiffly curled golden hair led Triss to a changing room and took her measurements. After this, Triss was escorted back to the VIP room, where rolls of fabric were brought for her to feel. All of this made her feel quite queenly.

She did not notice how quickly the cakes beside her were vanishing until her groping hand found an empty plate.

‘Oh! I… I’m sorry.’ Triss realized how rude she must seem.

‘Please do not trouble yourself.’ The tailor waved away her apology. ‘VIPs are allowed infinite cake. Would you… care for more?’

Triss nodded, and watched hypnotized as two further platters arrived, stacked with fruit cake lined with royal icing. When she managed to unglue her eyes from the sight, she found that the tailor was studying her, a look of wry speculation in his large, serious brown eyes.

‘Recovering your strength after an illness, isn’t that right?’ he asked quietly.

‘Yes…’ Triss became aware that her massacre of the cake plate was not really in keeping with the picture of delicacy her father had painted. ‘I’ve lost weight,’ she declared, defensively.

‘Cake is the very best medicine.’ He gave Triss a small, confidential smile. ‘I’m sure a doctor told me that once. Personally I always take cake for my leg.’ He glanced ruefully at his slightly lame left leg. ‘And if one of our VIP guests decided to eat six plates’ worth or more, nobody will hear of it from me.’

Triss stripped the newly arrived plates of their cargo in minutes, and another three plates were brought in almost immediately, loaded with muffins. Triss attacked them without hesitation. It was such a relief not to have to hold back that she could have cried. If I can eat enough here, without my family knowing, then perhaps I won’t need more than an ordinary dinner tonight. I can seem normal.

‘Your leg – was that from the War?’ Triss did not exactly mean to ask the question, but it slipped out.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Grace calmly. ‘A little souvenir from France.’

Triss thought of Sebastian. She wondered how life would have been if he had come home from the War, saddened and limping but still kind and clever. The thought gave her a surprising hollow pain in her middle. She liked Mr Grace, she decided.

As she was thinking this, she noticed for the first time that the tailor was wearing a black silk armband, almost camouflaged against his dark sleeve. It looked like a mourning band. Mr Grace noticed the direction of her gaze.

‘Ah.’ He touched the silk with a fingertip. ‘Another old wound. Older than the War, in fact.’

‘That’s a long time.’ Triss had never heard of anybody wearing a mourning band for years.

‘Somebody I loved passed on because I put my faith in a doctor who told me not to worry,’ Mr Grace said quietly. ‘I wear it to remind myself that blind trust has consequences.’ He stared through Triss for a second or two, then gave her a rueful smile. ‘Forgive me – and let me find an antidote to such a melancholy subject.’

The tailor walked over to the gramophone and delicately lifted the needle so that the violins stopped mid-warble. He lifted out the record and tucked it back into its waiting sleeve, then pulled out another disc and placed it on the turntable. When the needle was lowered on to the record it gave a short cough of static, as if clearing its throat, and then music began to play.

But this was not proper music! All the instruments plunged in at once, as if they had been holding a party and somebody had opened a door on them. Where was the tune? It was in there somewhere, but the instruments fought over it, tossed it between them, dropped it and trod on it, did something else, then picked it up again and flung it in the air just when you were least expecting it.

There were trumpets and horns, but they didn’t sound solemn in the way they did when they boomed out against a background of silence to remind everyone of the dead. Instead they were noisy and irrepressible as a farmyard – they whinnied and squawked and mooed and didn’t care what anyone thought. Sometimes they made harsh, cheeky noises like a blown raspberry, or high, giddy squiggles of sound for the sheer joy of it.

And nothing stopped and nobody breathed and there was no to-and-fro pat-a-cake pattern and instead it was a tangle of noise with threads winding through and over each other and it was exhausting to listen to and it made her feel she could never be exhausted again.

And Triss knew what it was. She had heard the wireless spit out the starting chords of such wild, blaring music, only to have her father tut and turn it off.

This was jazz.

‘Do you like it?’ asked Mr Grace.

Triss could barely answer, and became aware that her heels were drumming against the chair legs, in an excitable, seated dance. She wondered if this was what drunk felt like. Perhaps she was drunk. Cake-drunk.

She was having fun. When had she last had fun? Treats, pampering, protection, oh yes, she had all these things in abundance. But fun?

Jazz was not respectable. She was not supposed to hear it, and nobody was meant to play it to her. She was sure that Mr Grace knew that, and she gave him a look of glee. His feet were not tapping, she noticed. He simply stood by the gramophone, watching her and smiling.

One of the shop women put her head round the door, and Mr Grace quickly lifted the needle from the record.

‘The young lady’s father is ready to take her home,’ she said.

Triss felt a throb of disappointment. Mr Grace grabbed a clothes brush and helped her dust off the cake crumbs, even taking a moment to pluck a loose hair from her sleeve.

When Triss was taken back to her father, she knew that her eyes must still be shining and her face pink from icing and jazz. Her father looked her over, frowned very slightly and touched his fingers briefly to her forehead to check for fever. Despite herself, Triss felt a tiny pang of resentment. Couldn’t she be happy without it being a sign of a temperature?

‘If you would like to bring Theresa back in a week for a first fitting…’ Hearing these words, Triss’s mouth twitched. She was coming back here. Instantly she was filled with a rush of guilty glee.

Only as she was leaving did her spirits cool a little. Over on the reception desk she could see the scissors that had nearly fallen on her. A bright cloth had been thrown over them, but the tips of the blades still pointed out. The weather-worn iron was blackened and unforgiving, and the points looked sharp.