‘Do you think she’s going to be OK?’ Mitzi asked.
‘Amazingly, there’s less serious damage than I’d have expected. But if we’re not going to need the RSPB, it’s a question of what to do now. Sometimes parks tag swans for identification, but we’re a wild girl. We must have been blown off course in the storm.’
‘I certainly hope my front window wasn’t on her scheduled flight path.’
‘Unusual.’ Matthew sized up the bird. ‘You don’t often see Bewick’s swans in Cygnford – though they do sometimes make their way to this neck of the woods. They live north – Russia, even Siberia, northern Scandinavia – and migrate round about October, after the breeding season. Could be that we’ve come south for the winter and somehow been separated from our friends. So, what to do… we’ve been concussed, but we’re quite conscious now and remarkably compliant.’
‘I do get the feeling she knows exactly what’s going on,’ Mitzi remarked, smiling – if more at Matthew’s way of speaking about his avian client than at the swan herself.
‘Now, I can call the RSPB.’
Mitzi pictured for a moment the swan being boxed into a wooden crate and carted off. ‘Supposing I take her home with me?’ she said. ‘I live right by the river, so I could keep her overnight, make sure she’s safe until she’s over the shock, then pop her over the road to the water in the morning.’
‘I take your point,’ Matthew said, ‘but don’t feel you have to. It’s a wild swan, not a human being in bird form. And just because we crashed through your window, that doesn’t mean we’re your problem.’
‘But I’ll happily look after her. I’d prefer that – I’d lie awake worrying otherwise.’
‘Well – if you’re sure, then I’ll run you home with her if you like. There’s time before surgery proper begins. Take the box and the blanket, and I’ll give you some birdfeed that should sort out breakfast.’ He filled a syringe and injected the swan. ‘This is a tranquilliser, so hopefully we’ll sleep it off…’
As the drug kicked in, the swan tucked its head under its wing to go to sleep. Mitzi followed Matthew out to his car; loading the box into the back, she glimpsed the scared eyes of the receptionist peering from the doorway after them.
4
When Mitzi had deposited the sleeping swan in its box in a warm corner of the living room, thanked Matthew and waved goodbye from what remained of her window, she busied herself with hunting online for a glazier and booking in her repair.
Matthew had said the tranquilliser would last well into the night. Mitzi felt a bolt of wonder strike her at the sight of the sedated creature beneath a shaft of lamplight, its neck curving backwards, the yellow and black beak resting beneath the feathers. An unusual variety of swan? An extra awareness and intelligence? Perhaps she could write an article about it, once her unexpected guest was back in the wild.
She fetched a dustpan and brush to clear up the larger pieces of glass, wrapping the shards in old copies of the Cygnford Daily – it had to be good for something – then vacuumed the floor. Robert Winter’s precious mahogany table had to be checked for scratches; after a good polishing, a few tiny marks made by sharp edges were scarcely visible. As she could do nothing more for either swan or window, life had to go on; she retreated to her computer to attempt some work. Her phone call to Pete seemed months ago.
And now, of all things, she had to ring Robert Winter. That was her own fault for being so determined to cover his school’s festival. At least she could organise the interview – as long as she took care to disguise her distress and pretend that all was well in his flat.
She listened, pleasantly surprised, to his welcoming voice – ‘Hello there, Mitzi, it’s Rob speaking’ – which put her at ease straight away. ‘How are you enjoying the river views?’ he wanted to know.
‘It’s lovely,’ said Mitzi, staring at the black plastic over the broken window. Breathe. In and out. By the time she saw him she’d have got her story straight. ‘I’m really, really happy here. So, when would you have time to talk?’
‘Hate to ask you to work on a Sunday, but why don’t you come over for a spot of lunch, if you don’t mind it being veggie? You could see the pictures of the kids’ projects – and I’d rather like to meet the person who’s taking care of my flat! What do you think?’
‘Great. I’m veggie too.’ Mitzi liked his tone – the enthusiasm, the willingness to give up his Sunday lunchtime to talk to someone who was only going to write a short piece for a local rag. Besides, it would be good to get out of town. Robert had switched the flat for a small house in the area’s sole hilly patch of countryside, south of Cygnford, close to the Iron Age fort. And she couldn’t help being curious about her landlord and his books.
‘About twelve thirty? I’ll look forward to it. Thanks so much.’
Mitzi pulled herself back to the computer, pushing panic aside. Sunday was Sunday and by then everything would be fine, absolutely fine. The glazier would have finished, she’d find some way to pay him, the swan would be gone and surely there’d be no need to tell anybody about any of it?
She forced her brain to ‘automatic’ to start transcribing her interview with her former lover, listening back to his recorded voice, hearing the plastic sheet grunting in the wind and a rustle from the sleepy swan rearranging itself on the blanket. She thought about phoning her mother – ‘Mum, you wouldn’t believe how surreal today has been’ – but Mum’s first reaction would be excessive concern. Why inflict that on her? And then she’d want to know when Mitzi and Harry could come home for Christmas…
It was hopeless: she was wrung out with exhaustion. The wind had dropped and the steel-coloured sky was darkening to iron. Soon it would be dusk. She fought back; she had too much to do, she shouldn’t stop now, but her eyes were closing of their own accord. She could have a nap and finish her work later.
She filled a large bowl with water and another with the vet’s birdfeed, then put them close to the drugged swan. Minutes later she was under the duvet in the big wooden bedstead, falling through a kaleidoscope where she watched waterbirds hand in hand with somebody who had Pete’s voice and someone else’s strong, level brows, surrounded by splinters of shattered glass.
Mitzi awoke with a start.
Her heart thudded in her eardrums while she strained to catch another sound of the sort that had jolted her. The bedroom was dark; she’d been asleep for almost an hour. She’d locked the intact windows, bolted the door. Surely if someone had broken in, they’d have made more noise? Surely the jagged glass hole was too dangerous to climb through? Was it the swan moving about? But those sounds would have been different – rustles, maybe thumps of things falling over as it stretched its wings. What she had heard was a footstep: a person inside her flat.
She must have been dreaming. She exhaled deeply and closed her eyes – and the noise was there again, unmistakeable: in the next room, the creak of a floorboard beneath a foot.
Mitzi grabbed her sweater; her chilly hands fumbled with fright, trying to pull it over her head. What were you supposed to do when confronting an intruder? She had no alarm, no panic button, no object with which to defend herself, and she’d left her phone on the other side of the living room.
‘Hello?’ she ventured.
The footsteps ceased. Silence.
Mitzi swiped at where she thought the bedroom light switch was – it took several goes for her unsteady hand to find it – then pushed herself onward, round the corner, the light sliding out across the hall. Trying to steady her breath, she peered around the edge of the door, an image of a masked man with a gun hovering in her mind.
In a glint of streetlight through the evening gloom, she could make out a figure at the side of the room. Not the figure she’d expected. It was pressing against the wall as if trying to vanish into it. Not a man. A woman. Diminutive, bone-thin, in a pale garment, trembling from head to foot. There was no sign of a break-in; the window’s black-bag patching was rustling in the gap, just as
she’d left it.
‘Nyet – nyet—’ came a voice from the darkness.
‘Who are you?’
‘Non – non—’ High-pitched. Scared witless.
‘Do you speak English?’
‘English?’
Her courage restored, now she knew the intruder was smaller than she was, Mitzi switched on the light. She blinked in the electric glare. As her eyes adjusted, the image came into focus.
The stranger was shielding her face with her bare arms, fists pressed to the sides of her head. Her black hair cascaded around her bony shoulders to her waist. Her skin was as pallid as starlight. She was wearing something that resembled a silky shift, perhaps rather an old one. Her feet, to Mitzi’s astonishment, were bare.
‘It’s all right.’ Mitzi controlled the tremor in her voice. ‘What is your language? Do you understand?’
‘I – speak,’ the girl mumbled, behind her arms. ‘I – Russian.’
Mitzi hunted for a vestige of tourist language. ‘Privyet. It’s OK, I’m not going to hurt you – but who are you, and what are you doing in my flat?’
‘I sorry. I sorry.’ The girl’s voice caught in a guttural accent, rolling the rs and rattling an involuntary ‘ch’ in her throat. Mitzi took a step towards her – and now she noticed with horror that her arms, all sinew and muscle, were covered in scratches and bruises, and her shift, torn in several places, was stained with fresh blood. Surely she hadn’t tried to come in, or get out, through the broken window?
Mitzi glanced towards the swan’s box. It was empty.
‘Who are you?’ Mitzi repeated. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘I sorry, I not wish harm.’ The girl was sobbing, perhaps with fear; in a rush of pity, Mitzi stepped towards her and gently took hold of one hand and then the other – tiny hands, which Mitzi’s large palms swamped. She drew the injured arms away from the girl’s face. A pair of deep eyes stared out at her. On her forehead under the wild black hair a red gash was oozing blood.
‘Oh, my God,’ Mitzi said, ‘you’re badly hurt. I’ll call an ambulance. You must go to hospital.’
‘No, no, no, I so sorry.’ The pale hands clutched Mitzi’s, the temperature freezing, the fingernails sharp as talons. ‘Please, no hospital.’
Why such terror? Because a hospital would want details of who she was, where she lived, what she was doing? Whatever could have happened to her? Mitzi remembered newspaper stories she had written about Eastern European women escaping situations in this part of England far worse than those of her Romanian food-packers. ‘Is someone chasing you? Do they want to hurt you?’
The girl stayed mute. Had she even understood? Or was she too scared to answer? She hadn’t said yes. She hadn’t said no, either. Why the hesitation?
She tried another angle. ‘How did you get in?’ How, for that matter, could the swan have escaped when the black sack was still exactly where she’d taped it? ‘That glass is dangerous. A swan crashed through it this afternoon.’
‘Yes. Is – me.’
Now Mitzi knew she was dreaming. ‘What?’
‘I – am – your – swan,’ said the girl. When Mitzi stared, speechless, she added, ‘Please, you must believe, real truth. I not pretend.’
‘I’m calling the police.’ Mitzi pulled away, fast. This was not only an intruder, but a deranged and psychotic one. What was she? A traumatised refugee? An abused migrant? What had she been through? Or perhaps this was to do with the house Mitzi had written about? Maybe the criminal ringmasters had heard that the paper was exposing them and had sent the girl to threaten the reporter…
‘No police! Please! Listen, you are kind to me as swan,’ cried the girl. ‘I am same being. You carry me in your arms to animal doctor, you give me food and water while I cannot talk. Now I talk, but you do not believe me.’
Mitzi flopped onto the sofa, her heart choking her. If this was the revenge of organised criminals, they’d chosen a bizarre way to go about it.
The girl surged forward and sank onto her knees. The gash in her forehead was just below Mitzi’s gaze.
‘You need a bandage,’ Mitzi mumbled. ‘Why are you kneeling?’
‘I beg. I beg you listen to me.’
‘Please, just get up.’ She couldn’t bear the sight of the seeping blood. Even if she were dealing with the Russian mafia, she couldn’t be harsh when faced with this wound. However bizarre the situation, what was certain was that the girl needed her First Aid box, and fast. ‘Come into the bathroom. I’ll clean that wound for you and we’ll put some bandaging on it. And you’re shivering. I’ll find you a jersey.’
The stranger walked after Mitzi into the bathroom, light on her bare feet; she sat meek and motionless on the side of the bath, letting Mitzi swab her wound with cotton wool and witch-hazel, and place a large strip of dressing over it; then wash her sinewy arms and put plasters on the worst cuts. Her odd, pale shift dress, Mitzi noticed, was made of fine silk. But it couldn’t be. None of this added up…
The girl reached out, bypassing Mitzi, towards the taps on the basin. She turned each one on, then off, and Mitzi registered, with disbelief akin to shock, the astonishment in her eyes.
‘This miracle,’ the girl said. ‘This magic…’
Had she not seen hot water – running water – before? How was that even possible, whoever she was, wherever she came from? She must be pretending, but if so, she was a fine actress.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Mitzi.
‘Odette,’ came the reply.
‘I’m Mitzi.’
‘Thank you, Mitzi,’ Odette said. ‘You are very kind.’
Mitzi settled her warmest purple fleece around Odette’s shoulders; the girl pulled it on and flashed a sudden smile at her. It took her breath away for an instant. The smile was impossibly brilliant, the dark eyes as serene and grateful as they had been petrified a minute before.
‘Would you like a hot drink?’ Mitzi asked, not sure what to do next.
Odette nodded, her eyes as trusting as a tame animal’s.
In the kitchen, Mitzi poured milk into a saucepan, mentally pinching herself to see whether she really was about to make a cup of cocoa for a young woman who claimed to be a swan, appeared never to have used a tap before, and was intruding in her flat, covered in blood. If the gangster theory did not add up, what other possibilities were there? If Odette were an escaped mental patient, or driven mad by exploitation in the vegetable fields, or worse, perhaps she should deal with her by playing along.
Carrying the two steaming mugs back through the arch, she scanned the living room for any trace of the swan. All that remained were a few stray feathers in the box. She could see nothing physical to disprove Odette’s words – and Sherlock Holmes’ maxim came into her mind: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ But what exactly did ‘impossible’ mean?
‘Now, sit down and tell me everything,’ she encouraged, handing the girl a cup.
Odette, perching on the edge of the sofa as if ready to jump up and flee again, sipped her chocolate. A look of pure ecstasy suffused her face. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘You have no idea how wonderful this is…’
‘I’d like to understand, if you’ll explain?’ Mitzi, in the green leather chair, smiled as hard as she could to encourage some progress.
‘Chocolate! I drink chocolate!’ Odette’s smile was so blissful that it spilled into laughter, an unearthly sound like a glockenspiel or – just how crazy was she?
‘Odette, apart from the chocolate,’ Mitzi prompted. ‘I need to know who you are and what you’re doing here, because otherwise I won’t know what I can do to help you.’
‘I tell you from beginning.’ Odette sat back against the sofa’s cushions, as if daring to let herself relax. She took a long draught and a deep breath. ‘I am princess in Siberia. My father had terrible fight with family – you know – next estate.’
‘His neighbour?’
&
nbsp; ‘Yes, his neighbour, in English he is nobleman, Baron, I remember. This man, nobody talked to him, everyone was scared because he knew – you see – bad things, spells, evil, terrible things. My father argued with him over land that Baron said is his, but is ours; it had, you see, mine for precious stones, very rare type, which belong to us. Baron wanted this for himself. My father refused to sell it or to discuss it, so Baron cast a spell on me, my father’s only child.’
Mitzi said nothing. What on earth? Oligarchs? Surely not. They’d sue each other, preferably in London, or employ assassins. They wouldn’t cast occult spells over each other’s children in deepest rural Siberia… would they? ‘Tell me, how do you feel, generally? Do you have headaches? Do you hear voices – you know, telling you to do things?’
Odette shook her head. ‘No voices. But at dawn I become swan, at dusk I become human again.’
Another test? ‘What sort of precious stones? Diamonds? Or…?’
‘Not diamonds. I do not remember English – I think…’ Odette closed her eyes, concentrating. When she opened them again, their dark depths were filled with tears. ‘I remember governess telling me,’ she said. ‘I think she said “charoite”.’
‘I’ve never heard of it,’ said Mitzi.
‘Very rare. Is purple stone, very beautiful… but so long ago…’
Mitzi could taste cocoa sweet and sticky on her lips, chocolate reality that could not be dreamed. She could see every crease and hear every rustle of the window’s patching; in a dream, you wouldn’t. She could hear traffic passing and identify the different engine tones of a car and a lorry. In a dream, you didn’t. Though at such a moment you could wonder who was the madder: your intruder or yourself.
‘Is complicated, because in winter we go,’ Odette continued, as if encouraged by Mitzi’s silence. ‘We swans cannot survive Siberia winter, so we must go west and south. I go to island near Denmark – this is far west, and long journey, but every winter I go, and in spring return home.’
Odette Page 4