There was no answer.
‘I will do what I can,’ he said. ‘I will make inquiries. If matters are in motion, it may be that some word can be had. We may yet have some allies in this.’
Mr Crowe nodded slowly, his expression faintly comprehending.
‘You knew, then?’ Eustace said. ‘You already expect them?’
Still there was silence.
‘Christ.’
He walked to the windows, surveying the untended parterre, the lank and unpruned roses. He remembered a masquerade ball that had been held one midsummer night. A string quartet had played where he now stood, while outside Mr Crowe held court, presiding over a parade of masked guests, of gilded porcelain faces.
‘Not like this,’ he said quietly.
Mr Crowe looked up at last, perhaps only because he had not understood. ‘Not like what, Eustace?’
‘Magnificent,’ Eustace said. ‘It was magnificent, once. We will not have it seen like this.’
‘You propose to defend us with a spot of gardening?’
‘Not only the gardens, Mr Crowe. If guests are expected, then nothing in our preparations will be found wanting. We are not done here yet.’ He turned briskly from the window. ‘I shall be giving instructions,’ he said. ‘There will be some expense. You will not find it unconscionable, I trust.’
Mr Crowe half-raised his hand. ‘There is no great lack,’ he said. ‘Do as you see fit.’
‘Very good,’ said Eustace. He strode towards the door, but Mr Crowe called after him.
‘A moment, Eustace.’
He turned. ‘Sir?’
‘Last night, Eustace. I’m afraid that I—’ He slumped in his chair, scouring his cheeks with his fingertips. ‘I acted in considerable heat, you see. I regret nothing of what happened, do not mistake me, but certain other aspects of my conduct, well …’
Eustace waited.
‘I am immoderate, sometimes, in my behaviour. One is a prisoner of one’s own nature, you see, and you will admit that you yourself were exceedingly trying.’ Mr Crowe looked up, his expression strained and mournful. ‘Still, it may be that I was intemperate in certain of my remarks.’
‘I am sure,’ Eustace said, after a long pause, ‘that last night was very trying for us all. Now, I will speak first to Alice. We must see how things stand with the tradesmen.’
Mr Crowe looked away in weariness. ‘How things stand?’
‘Our accounts, sir, with those who have given us credit. Sooner or later, they must all be paid.’
Four
‘Of what does a rose consist?’
Clara is startled by the question. She stops, looking up and down the darkened landing. It was the voice of a young girl, she thinks, but she can see no one. She continues in the direction of the stairs, treading with wary deliberation. It is then that she notices the mirror at the far end of the passageway. It rarely attracts her notice, though it is large and ornate; nothing in the house is unfamiliar to her, and her own thoughts preoccupy her, usually, as she makes her way among its rooms.
But her reflection. Her reflection is not moving.
She stops in mid-stride, tottering slightly as she draws back her foot. Her reflection is completely still. When she peers at it, her head set on one side, her mirrored self shows no such curiosity. Only when Clara herself becomes still does her image make the slightest movement, and then there is no mistaking it. Her reflection walks towards her.
As it approaches, Clara sees that it – that she – wears a nightgown just like hers; that she is of exactly her height and resembles her perfectly. She walks calmly along the landing, this other girl, until she is hardly more than an arm’s length away, then she stops and repeats the question Clara heard. ‘Of what does a rose consist?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Clara says. ‘Were you addressing me?’
Or rather, Clara does not say this. That is, she does not say it aloud. She cannot speak in her dreams, any more than she can while she is awake. In her dreams, however, the words she wishes a person to hear are somehow immediately understood.
The girl, her likeness, considers this.
‘I suppose I was,’ she says, ‘though I hadn’t meant to exactly. I was thinking aloud, I suppose.’
‘I see.’ Clara finds herself straining to be polite, though the circumstances make politeness seem faintly absurd.
‘Still, here you are again,’ her likeness says, ‘though perhaps you are only a ghost. Is that what you are?’
The girl seems entirely at ease, if rather serious. If she truly suspects Clara of being a ghost, the prospect does not trouble her. Clara wonders whether she emerged, at the same moment she herself did, from a bedroom that is the mirror image of her own, whether she too was on her way to the kitchen to fetch barley water. It seems somehow unlikely, if only because she cannot quite imagine this girl wanting barley water.
Clara assures the girl that she is still living. ‘At least,’ she says, ‘I believe I am. I certainly don’t remember dying. Did you say again?’
‘Oh, you would remember dying, if you had. Take my word for it. Well, then. I suppose you ought to manage it.’
‘Ought I?’ Clara says. ‘To manage what?’
‘Why, to answer the question, of course,’ the girl says. ‘Goodness. Are you sure you are not dead?’
‘Quite sure, thank you. But I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the question.’
The girl sighs. ‘Of what,’ she repeats, ‘does a rose consist?’
‘Ah,’ says Clara. ‘Yes, of course. Well, let’s see. A rose consists of a stem, of petals …’ She trails off as she strains to remember her botany.
‘Anything else?’
‘A stigma,’ says Clara carefully, ‘and a pistol?’
‘A pistol?’ says the girl. ‘Is that quite what you meant to say?’
Clara is struggling to make some sensible reply when she realises that they are no longer on the landing. They are in Eustace’s room, standing on opposite sides of the bed where he lies asleep. The girl takes something from the nightstand and examines it idly. Only when she turns to face her again does Clara recognise it and draw back in alarm. It is a gun – one of the guns she noticed this morning.
‘This is a pistol,’ says the girl, gripping it with both hands. She raises it towards Eustace, tracing his sleeping form until it is pointed at his head. ‘What do you suppose it’s doing here?’
‘What are you doing?’ Clara hisses.
The girl brings the pistol to her own temple. Her expression is curious as she draws the hammer back. The sound it makes is dull and precise.
Clara lunges at her. For all her panic, she is horrified at the thought of how foolish she will appear when Eustace wakes to find her sprawled across his bedspread. Instead, she finds herself skidding on her chest across an expanse of polished marble. It is the floor of the ballroom, she realises, and it is strewn with a great quantity of white feathers.
Wincing a little, she pushes herself up, sitting with her back to a pillar as she catches her breath. The girl, her double, is sitting cross-legged in the centre of the enormous ballroom. Next to her is a great pile of feathers – it was these that Clara disturbed – and on her lap is what appears to be some elaborate piece of needlework. The girl looks at her in exasperation.
‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘You’ve ruined hours of work.’
Clara is still disoriented, and does not immediately reply. She looks guardedly at the pile of feathers, as if the pistol might be concealed in it, and hunches forward so as to peer into the girl’s sewing basket. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says at last. ‘I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see you.’
The girl glances at her. ‘You hardly ever do these days.’
Clara draws up her knees. The ballroom is cold at night. ‘I’m afraid I don’t follow.’
‘And you are quite wrong, you know, about roses.’
‘I’m not sure that I—’
‘Stigmas and so on,’ the girl reminds her
, pinching a thread between her wetted fingertips. She is left-handed, Clara notices, just as her mirror image ought to be. ‘I know that’s what the books say, but it’s not a question of anatomy. I’ve been trying to do roses, you see, so I’ve been studying them. You can’t understand things by dissecting them, by cutting them into their parts. When you’ve dissected it, it isn’t a rose any longer.’
To do roses. It is a strange thing to say, and Clara puzzles over it as she waits for the girl to continue. Her likeness, though, is intent on threading her needle and seems to have lost interest in the subject for now. Clara takes the opportunity of studying her more closely. She does not spend a great deal of time before the mirror, aside from washing in the morning and at bedtime, and gives no particular attention to her appearance. Still, the image of her own face is fixed somehow in her consciousness, as she supposes everyone’s must be. She could not draw it, perhaps, but she could point without hesitating to where someone else’s pencil had gone awry. This girl, though her manner is quite alien, is like her in every physical particular. If they were to stand silently one beside the other, she feels sure that even Eustace could not tell them apart.
‘I’m Clara,’ she says, extending her hand. ‘How do you do?’
The girl looks up in mild surprise. ‘Well, of course you are,’ she says.
Abruptly, the girl puts aside her needle and her feathers. Ignoring Clara’s outstretched right hand, she reaches instead for her left. She grasps it for a moment in both of hers, turning it over and stroking the palm with her thumb.
‘You do not remember?’ she says, releasing Clara’s hand. ‘No, I suppose not. You never do. I’m afraid I don’t have a name, but it’s very nice to meet you again.’
‘Oh.’ Clara is disappointed. ‘Well, perhaps you can tell me how long you’ve been here, then. And what you do. I can’t think why I’ve never seen you before.’
‘Always.’ The girl looks around the ballroom. ‘I’ve always been here, just like you. And I make things, since you ask again. Like swans. I’ve made other things, but I’m fondest of those.’
‘Gosh,’ says Clara, struggling to think of a polite response. ‘It must be terribly difficult.’
The girl smiles a little at this. She looks away, gazing absently at the frescoes on the ceiling. ‘What about you?’ she says, before yawning at some length. ‘I’m so sorry. What do you do?’
‘Do?’ Clara is about to answer, but finds that she hardly knows what to say.
‘You must do something, surely?’ The girl is suddenly impatient. ‘I should go mad if I didn’t, wandering about this place for all this time.’
Clara stares down at her lap. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I write things.’
‘Writing,’ the girl says. ‘Yes, of course. Letters and things. I’d forgotten. How nice for you.’
‘No, I—’ Clara presses her own thumb into her palm. It is warm still, the place where the girl touched her. ‘It isn’t just writing. I mean, they’re mine, the things I write. I see them first, or dream them. It is a little like making things, though I suppose it’s not quite the same.’
‘Mmm.’ The girl seems preoccupied, and says nothing for a few moments. She studies one of the fresco panels, a scene of clouds in which a man with the lower body of a goat is wresting a jug of wine from an angel. Something occurs to her. ‘I could show you.’
‘Show me?’
But the girl is already getting to her feet and smoothing down her nightgown. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Give me your hand.’
They are in the Windbones then, standing among the reeds at the edge of the mere. It is a still night, under an almost full moon. The inky water, where it is disturbed, is creased with sapphire. It is very beautiful, if a little chilly.
‘Do you like it here too?’ Clara says. ‘It’s so odd that we haven’t seen each other before.’
The girl studies her face for a moment, then glances in the direction of the house. ‘It’s such a pity. You could help them, you know, if only you remembered. You could help to put things right.’
Clara clasps her arms and shivers. ‘What do you mean? Help who?’
‘Never mind,’ says the girl. ‘Look.’
The swans are descending. As they near the water, each one arrests itself with a strenuous burst of wingbeats, pounding the dark surface and sending up bright detonations of spray. As they fold their wings and settle, this violence is effaced by a calm and noiseless grace. The lake beneath them is smoothed until each one tugs behind it only a gently rucked apron of silky water.
‘They’re magnificent,’ Clara whispers.
‘Yes. I suppose you’ll want to dissect one.’
‘What?’ Clara is horrified. ‘No, of course not. They’re so very beautiful.’
‘That’s just as bad, you know. Being in awe, I mean. You’ll never get anything done.’
‘Thank you for your advice,’ Clara says. She is beginning to find the girl rather rude. It occurs to her too that she has not yet seen her make anything. ‘Weren’t you going to show me how it is that you – how things are made?’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.’
‘But you said—’
‘I said that I would show you,’ says the girl, ‘not that I would show you how. I can’t do that. No one can. Now watch.’
Searching the lake, she finds where the swans have settled and selects a spot a little way apart from the flock. Once she has chosen the place, she becomes quiet, staring intently at what appears to be clear water. It isn’t, though, or it isn’t quite. Now, there is a smear at the centre of Clara’s vision, like ointment thumbed onto glass. It spreads as she strains to find some shape in it, an edgeless occlusion hardly more definite than the water itself.
Clara blinks, losing the place for a moment. When she finds it again, it has changed further. She can see fine details now, like the tissue of flaws at the core of an ice cube. For a while, it swells slowly, increasing itself in small surges. Then it branches and ramifies, taking on a spreading symmetry. And there is a pattern. It is becoming something.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh, my.’
She sees them now, held high and tautly apart over the water: the supple bows of muscle and, arrayed beneath them in intricate translucence, the lavish spread of feathers. The stem of the neck, tense and elegant, is suddenly obvious, as if it had been there all along. It collapses its wings with soft emphasis, and tucks itself contentedly onto the lake.
‘Oh, my,’ Clara says again. ‘Is that – is it real?’
The girl gives her an appraising look. ‘What do you think?’
‘It looks real,’ Clara says. ‘Will they notice, the others? That it’s different, I mean?’
‘I expect we’ll see.’
Clara stares at her. ‘Do you mean you don’t know?’
The girl ignores her for a moment, her attention focused on the lake. Then she says simply: ‘Watch.’
Clara follows her gaze. The flock is gathering, with unhurried grace, around the new arrival. A few individuals glide closer to it and begin to inspect it, arching their pliant necks as they peer at its plumage or sample the air around its tail feathers. The interloper is untroubled, puffing out its breast and regarding the others with preening serenity.
Clara watches anxiously. She has seen many such encounters among the swans and knows the signs to look for. The new bird, though, is unlike any she has seen. She cannot read the flock’s intentions. She turns to the girl, and finds that she is whispering. ‘Is this promising, do you think?’
But the girl’s attention has been drawn by something on the water, her expression suddenly grave. When Clara turns back to the swans, she sees that two or three of those closest to the newcomer have drawn back their wings. In their postures, there is an unequivocal menace. They begin to circle it closely, issuing harsh, rasping whoops of denunciation. She has heard these sounds before.
‘What is it?’ she says. ‘What’s wrong?’
The girl spea
ks softly, her voice regretful. ‘They are rejecting it, turning against it.’
‘I know that. But why?’
‘Of what does a rose consist?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Clara says. ‘Not that again.’
‘I’m trying to tell you what’s happening. It’s a question of species recognition.’
‘A question of what?’
‘They do not believe it. They know it is not truly of their kind.’
‘But it looks so perfect.’
‘It isn’t simply a matter of how it looks. It isn’t a painting.’
‘And what will they do?’
The girl stares at her for a moment. ‘They will destroy it, of course. What else?’
Sure enough, two or three of the more aggressive males are taking turns now in rearing back and lunging at the impostor. It seems pathetically confused by their attacks, jerking its head from side to side and paddling in small, panicked circles. Clara finds it unbearable to watch, yet she cannot look away.
‘But what is it that’s giving it away?’ she says. ‘Can’t you fix it?’
The girl shakes her head. ‘It’s a living thing now. It’s finished.’
They have begun to peck at its neck, crowding ever more closely around it.
‘It happens sometimes,’ says the girl, turning to leave the shore. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Wait,’ Clara says. ‘Can’t you just—’
‘Just what?’
‘Just …’ She is distracted by the increasing violence of the swans. ‘Just make it like the others.’
‘I’ve shown you,’ the girl says quietly. ‘There’s nothing more I can do.’
But it is almost too late, and Clara is no longer listening. The newly formed swan is struggling to keep itself upright. It will not survive much longer.
What must be done seems so clear to her that she doubts herself. What could she possibly know that this girl does not? Yet it is so clear, too, that she cannot ignore it. It occurs to her like a possibility, but it is more than that. It is radiantly urgent. She can see what it is that must happen.
She is doing things, in the moments that follow, that she cannot fully account for. There is more of herself, of her mind, than there ought to be. She is here and she is out over the water. She is on the far shore and she is plunged into the violent cold of the lake. What she is doing – what is being done – is arduous and dizzying. She is filled with sensation, a torrent of it that floods her throat, surges into her skin. It comes to her, all of it: every barb of every feather, every lobe and thread of flesh, unravelled and palpated. She smells and tastes every hot and foul ounce of what is in them.
The Maker of Swans Page 4
