Odette

by Jessica Duchen

  ‘Odette!’

  Where she had stood a fraction of a second before, there was nothing. All he could see was a small footprint in the ice-dusted grass next to where he’d fallen. Beside it, he noticed the mark of a large, webbed foot of a waterbird. Harry stared upwards and saw, wheeling higher and higher into the morning sky, a white swan with a black and yellow bill. Its trumpeting call reached his ears, as if in farewell. They must have disturbed its rest on the Bardingley lake. He hauled himself upright, gazing after it as it made one last circle and vanished beyond the treetops.

  ‘Odette?’ he called. And then he saw her white cocktail dress, lying in a small heap a few feet away, together with her discarded shoes. Slowly, he bent to lift them out of the frost.

  13

  Mitzi was loading up her cafetière, barely awake, when she heard the soft tapping of feathers against the living room window. Soon Odette swung through the space and landed in her box, folding back the great arcs of her wings. Fresh morning sunlight streamed onto her. She turned herself round a couple of times, clattered her beak softly at Mitzi, then tucked her head beneath her feathers. In seconds she was asleep. This swan had had a heavy night out on the tiles. Mitzi wondered how long it would take Harry to arrive, and what frame of mind he’d be in when he did.

  Sitting at her computer, drinking cup after cup of black coffee, her head was too full of Rob’s amiable face and his warm hand around hers. He was natural, genuine, his own person. Mitzi considered, almost perplexed, the ambitious corporate men she used to date. If she were to see Pete for the first time now, would she give him a second glance? Something had shifted in her responses – perhaps something that involved the rustle of snowy plumage and the spreading of a wide wingspan.

  A long ring at the doorbell – Harry – at noon. Early for a man who had been up all night dancing with a Russian princess, especially if that man was Mitzi’s brother. He climbed the stairs two at a time, but beneath his cap indigo shadows were sketching themselves under his eyes. Over one arm he carried Mitzi’s old red coat and in his other hand a Sainsbury’s bag containing something white and beaded plus a pair of small white shoes.

  ‘Is there coffee?’ he grunted.

  Mitzi fetched him some, then waited for him to start talking.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Harry, pulling off his cap and slamming it onto the table. ‘Fucking hell! People just don’t – they don’t just… Mits, I’ll tell you what happened as it happened, or as I think it did. So, we go to the fucking ball. We dance all fucking night. It’s fucking incredible. And then, just as they’re saying it’s breakfast time, she runs out into the garden, I run after her and something happens to me – I dunno, maybe I blacked out. And no, I wasn’t drunk. Not very. And when I come round, or whatever, she’s fucking gone. There’s only this. Her dress. Mits, she vanished into thin air without her dress. And her shoes. And I looked for her for two hours and then got her coat, or rather yours, from the cloakroom and left a message with the porter in case she turned up. Isn’t she here? Is she outside, walking around without anything on?’

  Before Mitzi could answer, Harry noticed, for the first time, the swan sleeping in the box. Mitzi had had no time to move her.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘My pet kangaroo.’

  ‘Mitzi, what the fuck is going on?’ He threw the carrier bag into a corner and grabbed the mug of coffee. ‘First you let in some illegal sofa-surfing refugee you’ve taken your usual pity upon, and you pretend she’s your lodger, and I bet your contract doesn’t allow it, and then she disappears without her dress. Now you’re keeping a swan. Are you mad, or am I?’

  Mitzi tried to stay cool. ‘Hal, can you just accept it if I say don’t worry…’

  At that moment, the swan peered out from under her wing. Her eye caught Harry’s. Youth and swan stared at one another.

  ‘That bird is freaking me out,’ said Harry. ‘What’s it doing here?’

  ‘It’s the one that came through my window.’

  ‘I thought you said—’

  ‘It was hurt and I wanted to look after it. And, um, it keeps coming back.’

  ‘Of course you did. You want to look after everyone and everything. I reckon it’s a child substitute. Does that also account for Mademoiselle Dressless? Big sis getting broody?’

  ‘I am not broody,’ declared Mitzi through clenched teeth.

  ‘Seriously, though, Mits, shouldn’t we go to the police? I mean, I’m worried. Anything could have happened to Odette. And I’ve got auditions in London tomorrow and the next day – I have to go, I can’t just drop everything and stay here hunting for her.’

  ‘It’s OK, Hal,’ Mitzi said. ‘Don’t let’s panic. If she hasn’t shown up by this evening, then perhaps we could call the police, but I can promise you they wouldn’t even think of doing anything about it before then. Let’s give her a chance. There’s probably a very simple explanation.’

  Harry poured his coffee down the sink and walked out.

  ‘Simple explanation means what?’ Odette asked, through showers of laughter. She was wearing one of the t-shirts and the jeans that Mitzi had bought her, twirling a white feather between her fingers.

  ‘It means,’ said Mitzi, who had a splitting headache, ‘just what it sounds like.’

  ‘Is funny, no? I think is so funny.’

  ‘I’m surprised he wasn’t more worried. I mean, how weird is it when someone vanishes and leaves her clothes behind?’

  ‘He cannot believe. He has not taken in that this is real. Simple explanation!’

  Mitzi glanced at the phone. She’d been itching to pick it up and call Rob. She’d forcibly restrained herself.

  ‘Mitzi! I telephone Harry? I never use telephone before.’

  Mitzi guided the delighted girl through every step, hoping only that her brother might see fit to speak to her.

  ‘It rings.’ Odette pressed the phone to one ear, her eyes brilliant with delight.

  ‘When someone answers, you say hello.’

  ‘Hello? Hello, Harry! Oh – not Harry? Chris?’

  ‘Tell him who you are,’ Mitzi hissed. ‘Say “It’s Odette”.’

  The girl’s smile widened. ‘A wonderful night! Thank you for invitation. Yes, I love to sing, was very nice… Yes, I love to sing again.’

  This was the first Mitzi had heard of it.

  ‘I tell you later.’ Odette said to her. She was listening intently. ‘Please say to Harry I – I telephone!’ And she dissolved into a gale of laughter, handing the phone back. ‘Mitzi, I go to ball, I find piano! Harry has wonderful friend, Chris, who play piano and he lets me play and asks me to sing. I love so to sing, I love so to play music. Is so long… but I can still play – this I never dreamed! Soon I sing again.’

  Mitzi gazed in some wonder at the light that seemed to suffuse her friend’s face when she talked about music. Imagine having that gift – then being forced to turn into a bird for half of every day…

  Meanwhile, she had a phone message for Odette from another source: ‘Uma called from the shop and she says if you’re free tonight you could go in for a few hours and help her. She’ll pay you cash.’

  Odette shook herself, bird-like, and clasped her hands together. ‘I help Uma? I have work to help pay for things?’

  ‘You’re sure you want to try?’

  ‘But of course.’ Odette seemed never to have considered any alternative.

  If this was the sole chance to help her guest achieve some measure of independence, Mitzi decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  Uma welcomed the worried journalist and the eager, bright-eyed Russian girl with a big smile.

  ‘We’ll try it for a couple of hours, shall we?’ she said to Odette. ‘Then we’ll see. Now, this is the till. You’ve used one before – no? I expect the system is rather different in Russia.’

  Odette nodded, jumping slightly as the cash register rattled at her, and concentrating hard while Uma explained that they could take cas
h, debit cards, contactless payment and some credit cards, but not others because the charges were too high. Mitzi hovered, anxious, wondering how much Odette could really understand. ‘Everything will be under control,’ Uma assured her, ‘and I’ll send her home at closing time, OK?’

  ‘Call me, I’ll come and fetch her.’ Mitzi couldn’t decide which was worse: to leave, or to stay and watch.

  At home, the time dragged. This must be how a parent feels when a child begins her first job, she reflected. Though she couldn’t help hoping that, should she ever have a daughter who reached the age of nineteen and tried to find work, that daughter would know something about how shops functioned. Mitzi made some soothing herbal tea – ordinary compared to Rob’s. The TV news flung images at her of migrants in dinghies, braving the wintery sea.

  At ten thirty, her phone buzzed. ‘Er, Mitzi,’ came Uma’s guarded tone, ‘Please would you come over?’

  Her usual Odette-related chill crossing her neck, Mitzi scrambled to her feet and into her coat.

  At the store, the bell jangled as she pushed open the door. Everything looked much the same. The shelves were still standing, the freezer motor was humming and Uma was standing behind the till. Odette, though, was nowhere to be seen. Something moving on the floor in the breeze caught her eye: glancing down, she saw it was a ten-pound note. She picked it up and carried it to Uma, her heart sinking into the lino underfoot. ‘What happened? Where is she?’

  ‘In the back, having a nice cup of tea, Russian style.’ Uma was smiling, her teeth set just a little too deliberately.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mitzi floundered. ‘What happened…?’

  ‘It’s fine. Absolutely fine.’ Presumably Uma wanted to keep her regular customer satisfied. ‘I am sorry, I would like to help you and she is so nice, she’s a sweet girl. But you see, she doesn’t understand… well, anything. It has not been an easy evening.’

  Mitzi’s eye strayed to the till, which sported a new notice: OUT OF ORDER. A faint whiff of tomato sauce lingered in the air and now she noticed the light was catching on traces of red staining and a splinter of glass on the lino. There were no customers.

  ‘I never knew things were so different in Russia.’ Uma’s bright expression did not change. ‘You know, one of my customers who’s a taxi driver was telling me the other day that he gave a ride to a Russian visitor who was completely lashed and said she’d never even been in a car…’

  ‘Odette?’ called Mitzi. ‘Are you OK?’

  There was a scuffling sound from the office and Odette emerged, head bowed. Her new t-shirt was splattered with red and the skin around her eyes had turned pink and puffy.

  ‘Oh, God,’ said Mitzi. ‘Is that blood?’

  ‘Tomato sauce,’ Uma mouthed at her.

  ‘I am sorry, Mitzi. I try, really I try. But I not know how this works—’ Odette indicated the till – ‘and I press wrong thing, so it break, and I not know which coin means what, so I give someone wrong coin, they shout at me and is not kind because I am new, I do not know things, so I shout too and this is wrong, I think – though it feel right to me – because people are angry and somebody throw something and it break and this is not good for Uma, who is so kind. It is all strange, strange, strange…’

  Mitzi gave the tearful Odette a handkerchief and offered to pay Uma for the broken jar of tomato sauce. Uma refused, but said quietly, ‘I think she must find something else to do, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mitzi. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Oh, Mitzi,’ snuffled Odette, ‘I want so much to find piano again.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Uma added, hesitating, ‘that… then the police arrived.’

  Mitzi turned cold. ‘What happened?’

  ‘It wasn’t Odette who was responsible – they just gave the guy who threw the jar a warning and made him pay for it. But he blamed her for being foreign and clueless and then they started asking questions. They wanted to see ID, and of course she hasn’t brought any…’

  ‘Brought any? She hasn’t got any.’

  ‘She’d better get some, then,’ said Uma. ‘Because now my neck’s on the line too.’

  In the flat, Odette picked up her white dress, which was lying in its bag in the corner where Harry had dumped it. She stroked the beading with her fingertips.

  ‘Is so difficult, seeing him,’ she told Mitzi, who was making tea, ‘and I can say nothing. And he not understand.’

  ‘Call him again.’ Mitzi dialled the number for Odette.

  ‘I like telephone,’ Odette beamed – and Mitzi, despite herself, realised she could, and would, probably forgive her anything and everything. ‘Harry? It’s Odette…’

  Mitzi retreated to her computer to look up the Russian Embassy. She clicked on ‘Russian Passport’ – to find a sea of Cyrillic, and Cyrillic only, spreading over the screen. Across the room she could hear her brother letting out a distant diatribe, but Odette held the phone as if more interested in the phenomenon of listening than in what he was saying. Tussling with copying, pasting and Google Translate, reading with one eye, listening with one ear, she managed to discover that Odette would need not only an international passport, but an ‘internal’ one as well – and that of course, to collect your passport, an identity document, you’d need… identity documents.

  ‘Thank you for bringing my dress,’ Odette was saying politely, in her best English. ‘I know is strange. I know Franz Liszt sounds strange. I will explain – but please, for now, accept that it is strange, yes?’

  Mitzi, despairing at the realisation Odette must have let slip her coaching sessions with Liszt, heard protests and swear words.

  ‘But we meet very soon, da?’ Odette maintained her steady voice. ‘Sunday? Where is audition? For which role?… Yes, then Sunday.’ She glanced at Mitzi and shrugged her shoulders.

  Then Odette’s eyes lit up. ‘Chris! Is Odette! May I use piano? Please? I long so much for piano… no, day is bad. May I use in evening? Tomorrow?… Oh Chris, you are wonderful friend! Wonderful!! And I sing for you too? Wonderful!’

  Mitzi looked on, bemused. Could it be that she had on her hands not just an illegal immigrant in search of work and legitimacy, not only a fairy tale character from some other dimension, but a full-blown and very frustrated musical artist? Watching Odette’s face transforming from uncertainty and fear to joy and inspiration, she knew nothing she could say would change who Odette was or what she could do. If she were a musician, fine. As long as she did not tell too many people who her teacher had been.

  14

  The night was long; Odette needed to calm down, so excited was she at the idea of playing Chris’s piano. After scant sleep, Mitzi felt drained – terrified by the labyrinthine processes of the Russian website, and all too aware that even if Odette had had a birth certificate, it would have carried the date 1833. If only she could talk to Rob and tell him everything, from the beginning – which under the circumstances was the very last thing she should do.

  Once a phone interview with a local author was out of the way, she threw on a jacket and marched out into the morning, where a fierce north wind was making the prospect of walking a little more bearable than cycling. Book-buying would be her best cure for feeling supernaturally overwrought.

  Plodding over Solstice Common, her head bowed against the onslaught, she began to feel dizzy. Was she going mad? Swans did not turn into girls, nor girls into swans, let alone spellbound girls who could be nineteen forever. Perhaps everything that had happened to her in the past week – from Odette to Rob himself – was a hallucination, induced by an otherwise undetectable tumour?

  The gusting winds had scattered twigs across the grass and the tarmac paths. She picked one up and ran her fingers along the bark, felt the gumminess around where the bud should have been forming to produce an embryonic leaf. She could not be dreaming this wild winter – or the returning spring that must, somehow, follow it. The seasons would dance and the planets spin, whether or not Odette was a swan, whether or n
ot she, Mitzi, was sane. As for her own future – there would have to be an alternative. Sometimes she was tempted by a vision of herself, cool and communicative outside the European parliament, declaring to the cameras, ‘This is Mitzi Fairweather for BBC News, Brussels.’ But Mitzi Fairweather, with her current attitude, delivering half-baked copy about front-page swan material, was unlikely to make it to the BBC even in Salford. Beside the universe turning and turning and beside the problem of Odette, and the chance that the police could turn up on her front step at any moment, it didn’t seem to matter.

  She made her way along Marian Lane, towards the town centre. There, beyond the marketplace, she made for the glinting windows of Cygnford’s best bookshop, which was advertising its Christmas wares – cookery and craft books, plus a pile of volumes about how to create a cosy Nordic atmosphere in your home. Inside, she could find some escape in the smell of new paper and the sheen of the covers among dark shelves and quietness. She passed fiction and biography and headed towards a small section marked Folklore.

  Moving round a bookcase, she glimpsed a familiar back ahead of her – a man wearing brown corduroy trousers and a familiar chunky sweater in earth tones. She stepped aside so that the Mindfulness shelves obscured her. It would be easiest to sneak out unseen. She had so wanted to talk to him – and there he was, as if on unspoken demand.

  She forced herself into performance mode, sailed up and coughed.

  ‘Mitzi! What are you doing here?’

  ‘I could ask you the same thing.’ At least if Rob were in a bookshop at half past eleven in the morning, talking to her, he had to be real.

  ‘So, you haunt bookshops too? You’re meant to be ferreting out stories and producing copious words per hour. I’m just meant to be bumming around.’