When the Lyrebird Calls

by Kim Kane

  The medium’s voice had become froggy. She held the crystal ball like a steering wheel and looked up at the chandelier. ‘Tessa, Tessa, he’s here and he hears you . . . Sir, she asks whether you love her still; whether you love the dear children.’

  ‘Tess, oh my darling Tess! Can she hear me?’ the man cried. He stood, clutching the ends of his grey waistcoat.

  Madame du Boisier stopped still, her nose pointed towards the ceiling again. ‘She has left, she has left, but now there is another – another spirit. A young spirit.’

  ‘A baby? Is it Reggie? Reggie, is it you, darling boy?’

  Madeleine peeped out at Mrs Williamson. Her arms were outstretched, reaching, her soft face desperate. But Madame du Boisier ignored her, concentrating. Her brow pleated, as if the thin skin had been stitched.

  ‘No, no, it is not Reggie.’

  Mrs Williamson sagged in her seat.

  Madame du Boisier gripped the tablecloth. The little table beneath her hands quivered.

  ‘Maths in the nursery,’ she piped. Her voice was higher now, and her accent had changed; she sounded like a singsong child.

  ‘Maths in the nursery.

  ‘Simple sums, simple sums.

  ‘They lost three boys, but gained a girl.’

  Madeleine stopped breathing. Lost three boys – Baby Reggie, Baby Robert and Baby Sebastian. Gained a girl. Was it Madeleine? Was Madeleine the girl? What did it mean?

  Madame du Boisier’s chin sank down against her chest and her voice deepened.

  ‘The lyrebird calls.

  ‘The lyrebird calls.

  ‘Calls by troubled waters.’

  Madeleine leant right forward, poised to net every word.

  Madame du Boisier paused, and the room filled with a saturated silence that stretched on for minutes. Then her voice started again, even deeper than before, gravelly now.

  ‘Eine Cousine heißt ihn in ihrem Haus willkommen. Sie kokettiert. Sie kokettiert und er lächelt.’

  ‘She spoke Dutch. Dutch, was it?’ whispered one of the men.

  ‘No, it was German,’ said Mrs Williamson in a voice as thin as apple juice.

  ‘Nobody has done that before,’ said a woman with high hair. ‘We had Latin once, but never German.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ asked a woman wearing a black ruffled skirt.

  ‘We need Charlie,’ Gert whispered to Madeleine.

  But Mrs Williamson turned to look at Elfriede. She looked hard at her cousin, and then she spoke.

  ‘A cousin welcomed into their home. She cocked her hat at him. She cocked her hat and he smiled.’

  The audience murmured. Hen shook her head slowly, looking from Mrs Williamson to Elfriede. She patted the part of her gown where her key hung around her neck, a pat slack with sorrow.

  ‘Er hilft eine Nation aufzubauen, während seine Familie zerbricht,’ intoned the medium.

  ‘What was that? What was that?’

  ‘He helps build a nation while his own family crumbles,’ said Mrs Williamson, more quietly still.

  Madeleine’s eyes darted to Elfriede. Her face was pulled. She looked angry.

  The medium rustled her skirts beneath the card table. ‘Shhh, shhh, do not interrupt the spirits, please.’

  Elfriede stood. Her back was straight, her face pink.

  ‘I am not sure of the purpose of this, but I seem to fall on the side of Mr Sludge and Mr Browning,’ she said curtly. ‘Excuse me.’

  The girls heard the strong beat of her boots as she crossed the drawing room towards the door. Mrs Williamson watched her go. Her mouth was calm, but the wrinkles around her eyes were deep. The room was full of whispers, buoyant with scandal.

  ‘Serves her right,’ hissed Gert bitterly. ‘I hope she’s never invited anywhere ever again.’

  Madeleine studied Madame du Boisier, who was now sitting still in her chair, her stockinged feet on the floor, her gaze on the candle.

  Eventually, the tall woman who had introduced the medium stood up, clearing her throat. ‘Hmph, hmph. Well, may I suggest that we all convene to the morning room for a small break to allow Madame du Boisier to recuperate before we recommence?’

  Anna slipped in and began stacking the tea things onto a small wooden cart to move them into the morning room. One of the guests swung the door behind her wide open, but nobody else moved from their chair. A cold breeze ripped through the room, and the candle was extinguished. Blanche du Boisier was still.

  For a long moment, the girls didn’t move either. And then Gert reached up to the underbelly of the window seat.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  The knocking echoed eerily through the seat.

  ‘Oooooh!’ The room took a collective breath.

  ‘Tessa? Tessa, is that you?’ Madame du Boisier spoke sharply. ‘Answer me with a knock, Tessa, dear Tessa. Is that you?’

  Gert knocked again. Knock.

  Madeleine looked at Gert and laughed. She smashed her hands against her mouth. She couldn’t believe Gert had the gall to carry this out.

  ‘Tessa, was that a cry? Are you wounded?’ The medium put her fingers to her turban as if tuning a radio. Under the window seat, Madeleine was shaking her own head violently at Gert.

  The room was library silent.

  ‘Quick, quick, the candle, the candle.’ Madame du Boisier re-lit the candle with one short, sharp strike of a match. The wick flared and hissed, and the flame fell soft and waxy-yellow.

  ‘Do you hear us?’ asked Madame du Boisier, wistful now. ‘I am no longer sensing anything.’ She put her head in her hands.

  The tall woman with the bun leapt to her feet yet again and rushed to the front. ‘We shall adjourn to the morning room now. The tea is being served. Just let me know when you are ready to reconvene, Madame du Boisier.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but I don’t think we will be. I think it would be best if we retired for the evening. I am terribly tired. There were so many spirits this evening, and so much anger. It was worrisome.’

  Blanche du Boisier stood to pack her instruments of telling back into her bag. The tall woman stood by helplessly.

  ‘Go! Go!’ Blanche du Boisier shooed the woman away. ‘I am sorry. I have failed you. Another time, another time.’

  Mrs Williamson was the first to move, dragging herself to the doorway, smiling a smile that was turned off on the inside, only her manners and her corset holding her together now. ‘Thank you so much for coming. We must have another soon. Goodnight, goodnight.’

  Poor Bella, the faces of the guests said. How frightful. What a dreadful woman to come between her and her family! To think! Foreigners!

  The room, with its equal parts vitriol and pity, emptied more quickly than water at the end of a bath – slurp – as the guests and their birthday-cake hats fled.

  Gert could no longer contain herself. ‘Poor, poor darling Mummy.’ She lifted the window-seat skirt and rolled out into the room. Madeleine was right behind her.

  Blanche du Boisier whirled around. ‘What were you doing there? Were you interfering?’

  For a woman in fancy dress, holding a crystal in one hand and a copy of the Bible without a spine in the other, she was pretty snappy.

  ‘Something was interfering – and in front of such a gathering! Perhaps it was you?’ Madame Blanche du Boisier pointed straight at Madeleine, with her quartz crystal.

  Madeleine stood forward. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps you are correct; perhaps I was interfering.’

  Blanche du Boisier stood still. ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but that’s why we tapped on the window seat – to give you credibility.’

  ‘Are you querying my gift?’

  ‘No, no, I’m terribly sorry,’ said Madeleine.

  Blanche du Boisier looked like she might explode. And then she did. ‘Get out of here instantly, before I call your mother. Out of here now.’

  She fixed both Madeleine and Gert with a stare as tight as the jaws of a pit bull terrier.

  The gi
rls turned heel and ran.

  The next morning, Gert was particularly ratty. ‘Put that down,’ she shouted when Madeleine picked up her hairbrush. Gert went to breakfast alone, which was held in the room off the kitchen since none of the grown-ups had risen yet. She then glowered into her porridge and barely ate a thing, ignoring Madeleine and her questions – simple queries about what they might do that day.

  ‘Miss Gertrude, Miss Madeleine is your guest. Please be polite,’ Nanny reprimanded her.

  ‘Both guests and fish go off in three days,’ said Gert under her breath.

  ‘Now, Miss Gertrude, it’s not like you to be so beastly. What is the matter?’ Nanny put down her spoonful of porridge. ‘Are you feeling unwell? I have a tonic upstairs that I can fetch.’

  Gert shook her head.

  Madeleine couldn’t really be angry with Gert, though. She had to concede that she felt much the same way herself – tired and angry and sad. Nothing had happened to her after last night. Nothing. All that drama, and she was still very much here. As was Elfriede.

  She decided to give Gert a little space, following Charlie rather than Gert out of the room once the children were excused, leaving Gert angrily kicking at the leg of the table.

  ‘Let’s fetch Millie,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m teaching her to be a gun dog.’

  ‘What’s a gun dog?’ asked Madeleine, wondering if she’d ever get used to hearing words she couldn’t even begin to work out the meaning for.

  ‘A hunting dog. Daddy says we have left our run rather late with the training, but Millie’s as smart as paint, so it’s my great hope she can still be trained to be a pointer.’

  An hour later, Gert had thawed. She came to find Madeleine in the drawing room.

  ‘Charlie, do take Millie outside. There are pheasants in the garden!’ Once Charlie had left to find her slingshot, she turned to Madeleine. ‘I’ve decided to have a tea party. You can come if you’d like to. Cook has made cake, and she said that we may have some.’

  ‘How exciting,’ said Madeleine, relieved that Gert’s anger towards her had abated, although secretly wondering whether a tea party wasn’t something even Charlie was a bit old for. In some ways it seemed the kids had longer childhoods here. It was like developing physically earlier made you grow up earlier, too, even if you didn’t in fact want to. It was weird to think that back home Madeleine had friends the same age as Gert who wore short, tight skirts and high heels and kissed boys. At home, Madeleine had always felt quite young for her age; here, sometimes she felt old.

  Madeleine followed Gert upstairs to the nursery regardless. ‘Who will you invite?’ she asked as Gert pulled a tiny rose tea set from a cupboard.

  ‘Mummy and Daddy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Madeleine stopped. ‘Is that a good idea?’

  ‘Yes. You’ll see,’ said Gert. ‘They’ll love it. Besides, I’ve already delivered the invitations.’

  Gert covered a small table in the nursery with a white cloth that had deft cross-stitches in different colours all around the hem, and organised the tea set prettily. The girls rushed down to the garden to pick a few sprigs of daphne, which Gert put in one of the rose teacups in the centre of the table. And then they waited. The petals were already starting to brown.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come?’ Madeleine straightened a teacup so that it sat in the centre of its saucer, its little rose facing the nursery door.

  ‘I’m sure they will,’ said Gert. ‘My invitations were on gold embossed card, in my very neatest letters. It’s hard to ignore preparation as thoughtful as that.’

  ‘I’ll just nip out to the toilet,’ said Madeleine.

  ‘It’s perfectly adequate to excuse yourself. How many times do I need to remind you?’ hissed Gert.

  Madeleine returned upstairs to find that Mrs Williamson had arrived. She was lumped on a small stool, her bottom spread over the edges like a toadstool. Madeleine took the seat opposite her, and she smiled at Madeleine vaguely but barely had the strength, it seemed, to lift the corners of her mouth. She was still in her nightgown.

  ‘Mummy, your wrapper’s dangling.’ Gert pointed at a fold of Mrs Williamson’s embroidered bathrobe, which had slumped onto the floor. Mrs Williamson looked at the ivory silk without reacting.

  Mr Williamson walked through the door not long after. He looked at Mrs Williamson, blinked, pulled out his fob watch, clicked his tongue and started to turn around.

  ‘Daddy!’ Gert leapt up. ‘Do come in and sit down.’ And she ushered him firmly to a little chair, making it clear that there was not going to be a quick getaway – not without a massive scene, which would mean the getaway would be neither quick nor comfortable.

  Gert sat her father down next to her mother in front of the little pink tea set and passed him a teacup with real tea in it. That, thought Madeleine, is the advantage of playing with tea sets well into your double digits. Gert was old enough to be trusted to use real tea in the cups, not plain water.

  ‘Good morning, dear,’ Mr Williamson muttered into the milk jug. His forehead was so shiny it looked like it would squeak if someone bumped it. He didn’t greet Madeleine at all, as usual, and for once she was relieved.

  Mrs Williamson was still. Her body barely registered Mr Williamson’s presence.

  ‘Do have a piece of mandarin cake, Mummy.’ Gert handed her mother a tiny pink plate with a large segment of cake on it.

  The plate seemed dwarfed by Mrs Williamson’s dough-nutty hands. Her eyes were red and sparkly with tears. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘isn’t this jolly?’ But there was nothing behind her smile; nothing but hurt.

  Madeleine stared at the family clustered around the tiny tea set, and as she stared, the spaces between them seemed to expand. In the whole time she had been here, she had not once witnessed Mr and Mrs Williamson be anything other than courteous towards each other – it was always Would you care for a devilled-egg sandwich this, and May I pass you the raspberry jam that, regardless of what was going on. Even now, when things had reached crisis point. The polite pretence was exhausting.

  Madeleine thought of her own parents’ toxic fights before her mum had left her dad. Her mum spitting each syllable at her father; picking up the whole pot of meatballs and pausing, looking straight at Dad before the she dropped it. The crack as it hit the floor, the spray of the tomato juice on the wall and the meatballs banked up like road kill on the lino. Dad’s caveman shouts, and the Robinsons leaving before dessert. Madeleine never wanted to go through that again, but at least in its own ugly way it had been honest. And it had had an end.

  ‘Here’s one for you too, Daddy,’ said Gert as she handed her father a slice of cake. ‘It’s delicious, isn’t it? Don’t you think we should have parties together like this more often?’

  Mr Williamson flipped Gert a quick, taut smile and popped the entire piece into his mouth. He swallowed without chewing or looking up from his plate, even though he must have known it was rude.

  ‘Right then, I’d best be getting back to the study – I have some very important guests coming tomorrow, and we do have a Commonwealth to create! Thank you, Gertrude.’ And he stood, bobbed his head and walked out of the nursery.

  Mrs Williamson’s cheeks had turned as pink as the saucers. Her slice of mandarin cake was hardening on its plate. Gert’s attempt at matchmaking had been too awkward, too crude – and Madeleine didn’t have a better idea. There was simply nothing the kids could do to fix this.

  Mrs Williamson lifted herself up as if to rise and then slumped back onto her tiny seat. Madeleine stood and helped her to her feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Williamson, her voice chalky. She walked out of the room, wobbly on her feet. The seam along the back of her robe was visible, stretched white and exposed like ribs.

  Madeleine started to stack the cups and saucers, but Gert just picked up a piece of cake and crammed it into her mouth. She picked up another, butter grease on her fingers. Madeleine stopped decanting the untouched tea back into the pot. ‘C
ome on, Gert. Let’s leave this behind. Let’s go outside.’

  Gert followed Madeleine wordlessly. It wasn’t until they were almost at the door of the nursery that she asked, in a small voice, ‘What will we play?’

  ‘How about quoits?’ said Madeleine.

  ‘Quoits? Ooh, may I join in?’ Elfriede had climbed the stairs like a cat, and was now fixing them both with a silky smile.

  ‘No thank you, actually, Madeleine,’ Gert said tightly. ‘I have far too much tidying-up to do. Elfriede, we – that’s Mummy, Daddy, Madeleine and I – just had a splendid tea party. It was so much fun. Mummy and Daddy laughed so hard that Mummy spurted water out of her mouth onto the tabletop, just like Imo.’

  ‘Well,’ said Elfriede, standing a little taller.

  ‘Ooh, but elegantly, and how,’ said Gert, looking up at her cousin. ‘So elegantly. That’s the thing about Mummy – at least, that’s what Daddy says; she’s even elegant when she’s spurting water out of her mouth. Elegant, with a chiming laugh. Well, at least according to Daddy.’

  Madeleine looked at Gert sadly.

  ‘Well,’ said Elfriede again, and tucked a curl behind her ear with a finger as long and slender as one of her cigarettes. ‘Well, that does sound lovely. I shall try to find Bea, then, and see if she’ll keep me company.’

  ‘Oh, Bea’s far too grown-up for quoits,’ said Gert quickly. ‘She won’t even play croquet anymore.’

  ‘I was going to ask her to accompany me on a walk.’ Elfriede turned and left. Her scent hung hot on the air behind her, like a calling card.

  Gert heaped the plates onto a tray while Madeleine swept up the crumbs on the tablecloth with her hand.

  ‘Do you know what, Madeleine?’ she said. ‘Aunt Hen is about the only adult in this family who I like at all at the moment. I actually think she might be the only dependable one of the lot.’

  ‘Stay away from your father. He has a number of gentlemen arriving for luncheon,’ were the first words Nanny said to the children the next morning.

  ‘And Mummy?’ asked Gert sleepily.

  Nanny’s voice softened. ‘She’s taken another spell and she’s resting.’