Weyward(95)

In the days after the letter, sadness stole like a shadow into the cottage. But Violet wasn’t mourning Father – how could she, after what he had done? It was her mother and grandmother that she longed for. She hadn’t known either of them, not really, and yet she felt their loss as keenly as a missing limb. For she had managed to confirm her suspicion: Elinor had died. Cancer, the villagers said. Only four years ago. She had lain alone on her deathbed, the grandchildren she’d never met just a few miles away.

Graham visited at Christmas, and they said goodbye to their mother and grandmother together. Back in the summer, Violet had dried a bouquet of lavender, and it was this that they placed on the Ayres family mausoleum, a spot of brightness in the snow. Violet hated to think of her mother encased in that cold stone. Even worse was the thought of her grandmother, buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave.

She preferred to think of Lizzie and Elinor in the garden that they had loved. In the fells, the beck.

She preferred not to think of Father at all.

‘Frederick has offered me an allowance until I finish university,’ Graham said later. ‘I’m not going to take it, though. My form master thinks I could get a scholarship. Law at Oxford or Cambridge. Durham, maybe. It’d be nice to stay up north. Besides, I don’t want his money.’

‘It’s not really Frederick’s money though, is it?’ said Violet. ‘It’s—’ She couldn’t bring herself to say her father’s name. ‘It should be yours.’

‘All the same.’ There was a crackling sound as Graham put another log on the fire. It was snowing outside. In the moonlight, the drifting flakes looked like falling stars. The garden was still and muffled; the insects quiet. Violet knew that some insects hibernated in winter – diapause, it was called.

Last week, she had crouched next to the wooden cross and looked at the beck, which glittered with a thin layer of ice. Underneath the surface, she knew, thousands of tiny, glowing spheres clung to twigs and pebbles. Mayfly eggs. Frozen until the warmer months, when they would continue to grow, cells splitting and changing into nymphs and then, when they were ready, rising up into an undulating, breeding swarm.

It had given her an idea.

The next night had been a full moon. She’d climbed the sycamore tree in the garden, the moonlight silver on the branches, until she could see for miles all around. In the distance, she could just make out the fells, crouched below the star-studded sky. Beyond, she knew, was Orton Hall. Frederick. She closed her eyes and pictured him sleeping in Father’s bedchamber. Then, she focused as hard as she could, until her whole body pulsed with energy. There it was again, that gold glint. It had always been there, she now realised, shimmering under her skin, brightening every cell of her body. She just hadn’t known how to use it.

In the summer, it would begin. She pictured the Hall, her father’s things – his precious furniture, scarred and black with rot, the globe on his desk eaten away. The air shimmering with insects, in a swarm that grew and grew each year, until there was no escaping it.

And Frederick. Trapped there alone.

He would never forget what he had done.

‘Oh! Almost forgot. Presents,’ Graham was saying, unbuckling his school rucksack. ‘All the way from Harrow library.’

‘Did you steal these?’ she asked, as he handed her two heavy books: a great tome on insects, and another on botany.

‘They haven’t been borrowed since before the war,’ he said. ‘No one is going to miss them. Trust me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the logs spitting on the fire.

‘Have you thought any more about what you might do?’ Graham asked. A couple of the villagers had paid her to help with their farm animals. One of them kept bees, and was aghast when she insisted on tending to the hive without a beekeeping suit. So far, she’d been able to make enough to keep herself in bread and milk. Winter would be difficult, though. The greengrocer was looking for a shop girl. She’d thought about applying. Her dreams of becoming an entomologist seemed very distant indeed.

‘A little,’ she said, fingering the cover of the book on insects. From Arthropods to Arachnids, it was called.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Graham. ‘Once I’m a rich lawyer, I’ll pay for you to learn all about your blasted bugs. Promise.’

Violet laughed.

‘In the meantime, I’ll put the kettle on,’ she said. She went over to light the stove, pausing to look out of the small window. A crow was watching her from the sycamore, the moon lighting on the white feathers in its coat. It made her think of Morg.

She smiled.

Somehow, she felt certain that everything would be all right.





53


KATE


Kate looks out at the garden while she waits for her mother to arrive.

The winter sun gilds the branches of the sycamore tree. The tree is like its own village, Kate is learning. Home to robins, finches, blackbirds and redwings.

And, of course, the crows – a comforting presence, with their familiar dark capes. The one with the speckled feathers often comes to the window to accept some titbit from the kitchen. At those moments, when she feels the glossy beak nudge against her palm, Kate has the overwhelming feeling that she is exactly where she is supposed to be.