Weyward(53)

‘There’s the wood, down by the old railway line,’ she said, pointing to a dark seam of trees running through the fields. Technically that was public land, not part of the grounds, and she didn’t think Father would like it if she went there. But he couldn’t really object if she were chaperoned, she reasoned. Especially not if she were chaperoned by Frederick. Freddie.

The lemonade suddenly seemed like a long time ago.

‘I’m parched,’ she said. She shut her eyes. Frederick was half carrying her to the woods now, her arm draped over his shoulders. Her body felt very heavy but Frederick walked on steadily, as if she weighed nothing. She felt the cool metal of the flask at her lips and gulped down more brandy, even though it was really water that she craved. Aside from her thirst, she felt quite pleasant. Was this what it was to be drunk?

She could smell the rich, damp scent of the wood. She opened her eyes. The sun was dappled by the trees, which were ancient and packed closely together. Frederick reached down and plucked a primrose flower, before putting it behind her ear. She didn’t know how to tell him that she didn’t believe in picking flowers. A butterfly took flight from a branch, orange circles on its wings like eyes.

‘Scotch argus,’ she murmured.

‘What?’

‘The butterfly. That’s what it’s called.’

Everything was growing dimmer. Violet opened her eyes and saw that they had come to a clearing in the woods, thickly carpeted by foxglove and dog’s mercury. Through the trees, Violet saw blue irises and thought of Miss Poole. She wondered how long they had been away from the Hall. Perhaps someone would come and look for them.

Frederick was laying her down on the ground. She must be very drunk, she thought. Perhaps she had become too heavy for him to carry, and he was going to go back to the Hall for help. Father would be furious. Perhaps they could just leave her out here. She wouldn’t mind. It was so pretty. She could hear a bird singing – a redstart.

Frederick was still there. She wondered why he hadn’t set off for the Hall yet. He was getting down on the ground next to her – maybe he didn’t feel well either? She could smell him – rich cologne, mingled with an animal scent of sweat. It was overpowering. The bite on her cheek was stinging rather painfully.

He was on top of her. She wanted to ask him what he was doing but her tongue was too clumsy to form the words, and then he was covering her mouth with his. He was very heavy; her lungs burned from lack of air. She tried to put her hands on his shoulders, to push him off, but they were pinned by her sides.

Violet felt his hand on her thigh, under her skirt, and then he was forcing her tights down. She heard them tear. They were silk; the only pair she had. He moved her legs apart and for a moment she was freed from his weight as he unbuckled his belt and undid his trousers. She gulped at the air, tried to speak, but then he was upon her again, his hand on her mouth, and there was a bright, searing pain between her legs. She felt the ground dig into her back harder as he moved, again and again. Still the pain continued, as if he were opening a wound inside her.

She could taste sweat and dirt on his hand. Her eyes watered. She looked up and tried to count the green leaves that filtered the sunlight but there were too many and she lost track of them. After a while – it felt like an entire lifespan, the years stretching on and mercilessly on, but afterwards she realised it couldn’t have been more than five minutes – he cried out and grew still. It – whatever horrible thing it was – had ended.

Frederick rolled over onto his back, panting.

She could feel something wet trickling out of her. She put her hand between her legs and when she looked at it, it was sticky with blood and something else – something white, like the mucus from a snail.

The redstart was singing again, as if nothing had happened.

‘We’d better get back,’ he said. ‘I say, you do look a bit of a fright. We’ll tell your father that you had a tumble, shall we? Good thing your cousin was there to help you up.’

She lay for a moment, winded, watching him push through the trees. Slowly, she pulled up her tights – she could hardly bear to touch her own skin – and crawled to her feet. Something glimmered in the greenery: looking down, she saw that her pendant appeared to be cracked into two halves, like rusted wings. It was this, rather than anything else, that brought the first hot pricks of tears to her eyes.

Her mother’s necklace. He had broken it.

It looked like a smaller piece of the pendant had snapped off and fallen onto the ground. Picking it up, she realised it was a tiny key with jagged edges. It dawned on her that her mother’s necklace wasn’t a pendant at all, but a locket; with a hinge so small that she had never noticed it. The key shone brighter than the battered locket, as if it had not seen daylight for many years.

As Violet made her way through the woods, listening to the strange sound of her own breathing, she gripped the key tightly in her palm. Distantly, she wondered if her mother had been the last person to touch it. Even that thought gave her no comfort.

The deckchairs had been put away and Father and Graham had gone inside by the time they got back. The entrance hall was filled with the smell of whatever Mrs Kirkby was cooking for supper – some kind of roast meat. It turned Violet’s stomach.

‘I think I’ll go and lie down before dinner,’ she said. Her brain felt like it was swimming, and her speech sounded slurred and thick.