Weyward(3)

He lumbered forward, nostrils flaring. Before he could make it within five paces of her, she flung the book at him – a little harder than she intended – and swung herself into the tree.

Graham swore and turned back towards the Hall, muttering.

She felt a pang of guilt as she watched the angry retreat of his back. Things hadn’t always been like this between them. Once, Graham had been her constant shadow. She remembered the way he used to crawl into her bed in the nursery to hide from a nightmare or a thunderstorm, burrowing against her until his breath was loud in her ears. They’d had all sorts of japes – ripping across the grounds until their knees were black with mud, marvelling at the tiny silver fish in the beck, the red-breasted flutter of a robin.

Until that awful summer’s day – a day not unlike this one, in fact, with the same honey-coloured light on the hills and the trees. She remembered the two of them lying on the grass behind the beech tree, breathing in meadow thistle and dandelions. She had been eight, Graham only seven. There were bees somewhere – calling out to her, beckoning. She had wandered over to the tree and found the hive, hanging from a branch like a nugget of gold. The bees glimmering, circling. She drew closer, stretched out her arms and grinned as she felt them land, the tickle of their tiny legs against her skin.

She had turned to Graham, laughing at the wonder that shone from his face.

‘Can I’ve a go?’ he’d said, eyes wide.

She hadn’t known what would happen, she’d sobbed to her father later, as his cane flashed through the air towards her. She didn’t hear what he said, didn’t see the dark fury of his face. She saw only Graham, screaming as Nanny Metcalfe rushed him inside, the stings on his arm glowing pink. Father’s cane split her palm open, and Violet felt it was less than she deserved.

After that, Father sent Graham to boarding school. Now, he only came home for holidays, and grew more and more unfamiliar. She knew, deep down, that she shouldn’t taunt him so. She was only doing it because as much as she couldn’t forgive herself for the day of the bees, she couldn’t forgive Graham, either.

He’d made her different.

Violet shook the memory away and looked at her wristwatch. It was only 3 p.m. She had finished her lessons for the day – or rather, her governess, Miss Poole, had admitted defeat. Hoping she wouldn’t be missed for at least another hour, Violet climbed higher, enjoying the rough warmth of bark under her palms.

In the hollow between two branches, she found the hairy seed of a beech nut. It would be perfect for her collection – the windowsill of her bedroom was lined with such treasures: the gold spiral of a snail’s shell, the silken remains of a butterfly’s cocoon. Grinning, she stowed the beech nut in the pocket of her skirt and kept climbing.

Soon she was high enough to see the whole of Orton Hall, which with its sprawling stone buildings rather reminded her of a majestic spider, lurking on the hillside. Higher still, and she could see the village, Crows Beck, on the other side of the fells. It was beautiful. But something about it made her feel sad. It was like looking out over a prison. A green, beautiful prison, with birdsong and damselflies and the glowing, amber waters of the beck, but a prison nonetheless.

For Violet had never left Orton Hall. She’d never even been to Crows Beck.

‘But why can’t I go?’ She used to ask Nanny Metcalfe when she was younger, as the nurse set off for her Sunday walks with Mrs Kirkby.

‘You know the rule,’ Nanny Metcalfe would murmur, a glint of pity in her eyes. ‘Your father’s orders.’

But, as Violet reflected, knowing a rule was not the same as understanding it. For years, she assumed the village was rife with danger – she imagined pick-pockets and cut-throats lurking behind thatched cottages. (This only enhanced its allure.)

Last year, she’d badgered Graham into giving her details. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting so worked up about,’ he’d grimaced. ‘The village is dull as anything – there isn’t even a pub!’ Sometimes, Violet wondered whether Father wasn’t trying to protect her from the village. Whether it was, in fact, the other way around.

In any case, her seclusion would soon come to an end – of sorts. In two years, when she turned eighteen, Father planned to throw a big party for her ‘coming out’. Then – he hoped – she would catch the eye of some eligible young man, a lord-to-be, perhaps, and swap this prison for another one.

‘You’ll soon meet some dashing gentleman who’ll whisk you off your feet,’ Nanny Metcalfe was always saying.

Violet didn’t want to be whisked. What she actually wanted was to see the world, the way Father had when he was a young man. She had found all sorts of geography books and atlases in the library – books about the Orient, full of steaming rainforests and moths the size of dinner plates (‘ghastly things’, according to Father), and about Africa, where scorpions glittered like jewels in the sand.

Yes, one day she would leave Orton Hall and travel the world – as a scientist.

A biologist, she hoped, or maybe an entomologist? Something to do with animals, anyway, which in her experience were far preferable to humans. Nanny Metcalfe often spoke of the terrible fright Violet had given her when she was little: she had walked into the nursery one night to find a weasel, of all things, in Violet’s cot.

‘I screamed blue murder,’ Nanny Metcalfe would say, ‘but there you were, right as rain, and that weasel curled up next to you, purring like a kitten.’