Weyward(33)

‘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.