Odette

by Jessica Duchen

  ‘Do you know, I nearly phoned you today and then didn’t?’

  ‘And I tried to phone you, but you were permanently engaged. How is everything?’

  ‘Oh, fine. Never better.’ Mitzi looked at the floor.

  ‘How about a coffee, now that we’ve bumped into each other?’

  Mitzi and Rob wandered down Duke’s Parade and turned into the passage towards the health food café. Mitzi was beginning to feel that the white walls and paving stones were spinning around her. ‘Come on, Mitzi,’ Rob said. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘This is going to sound idiotic.’ She couldn’t look him in the eye; instead, she busied herself with choosing a table well away from the other customers. ‘But I’m so glad you’re not a figment of my imagination.’

  Rob’s eyes sparkled.

  ‘Please don’t laugh. The trouble is, if you’re not, that means a lot of other stuff isn’t either.’

  ‘Hang on. One thing at a time.’ Rob, sitting down opposite, pressed her hand. The sensation, so warm and welcome, sent ocean waves up her arm. ‘I’ll get the coffee.’ He went to the counter and she, alone for a moment, gathered up what shreds remained of any courage she’d once had. Perhaps she could explain the matter of lack of passport without the entire story?

  When he was back with two steaming mugs, he took a breath and turned that now familiar hypnotising gaze towards her: ‘Is it this strange Russian girl again?’

  Mitzi sipped. This was the best coffee she had ever tasted. ‘Kind of. The thing is, you’re not going to believe it.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘No matter how crazy it sounds? Because it is very, very crazy.’ She bit her lip. Do not get into trouble here. Do not make things worse.

  ‘I’ll believe you. I promise,’ said Rob.

  Mitzi swallowed more coffee, then began to talk; now she could not stop herself. As the story progressed – carefully edited to avoid mentions of a broken window and someone else staying in the flat with her – she watched his expression evolve from amusement through dismay to speechlessness.

  ‘You see? Who’s going to believe that?’ she finished. She felt swamped with relief at having unburdened herself. ‘This girl really does turn into a swan at dawn every day. I promise I’m not making it up.’

  ‘That is so bizarre that I shouldn’t think anybody could make it up.’

  ‘I swear it’s true. And I don’t know what to do, because now Uma is in trouble with the police, and Odette’s having this thing with Harry and he doesn’t know – and I just have no idea how to handle it.’

  ‘Jeepers,’ said Rob. ‘I imagine you need sensible words, Mitzi, but I’m not sure I’ve got any. I’m doing my best to believe it, honestly, but…’

  ‘I know,’ Mitzi sighed.

  ‘Look.’ Rob seemed to be trying to turn practical. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of it. First of all, how come you’re so involved?’

  ‘I guess I didn’t have any choice.’

  ‘You always have a choice, though. There’s a basic right to refuse to get involved with other people’s problems, especially ones that put you out of your depth. She’s evidently some kind of illegal migrant, whatever the truth about the swan business, and that’s very dangerous. There can be gangs involved, international mafia, all sorts – not that it’s my field, but we both see the news, we both know the score. What made you want to help her?’

  ‘Well – she’s not like anyone else. She’s so alive that it’s inspiring. She’s so thrilled to be human that she does everything with three times anyone else’s intensity. But she hasn’t got the first clue about how we live or how people behave. It’s like… an excess of innocence. And yet she’s right. In some funny, nonsensical way, she’s right and I’m wrong, Harry’s wrong, we’re all wrong. I can’t explain it.’

  ‘That’s assuming there has to be a right and a wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. This whole thing is actually impossible! And yet, I promise, it is happening, and it’s happening to me.’

  ‘You didn’t have to take her on, yet you did.’

  Mitzi considered her response. ‘She needed help. So I helped her.’

  ‘Where’s she staying? When she’s human?’

  ‘With a friend of mine,’ Mitzi said, hoping her ears would not turn red with the lie.

  Rob was silent for a minute, inscrutable, thinking. ‘Impossible or not, if you want me to believe you, then I will,’ he said finally. ‘So here’s what I think. First, the police. Two options: either you need to buy her some fake documents – yes, really – or you must lie low until the trouble passes. Chances are the police will be too overstretched to pursue it anyway, especially around Christmas. But also, you have to decide what to tell Harry. She’s expecting something from him that, frankly, is going to scare him shitless.’

  ‘How can she have given so much power to my dopey brother? He’ll never believe it.’

  ‘Exactly. Maybe it’s best to keep it as quiet as humanly possible, for as long as you can…’

  Mitzi nodded, in some surprise. ‘I thought you’d say I should tell him everything,’ she admitted.

  ‘Er, maybe not yet.’ He smiled. She pondered in silence, finishing the coffee, letting its warmth and strength revive her.

  Outside, she tucked her arm around Rob’s elbow. She could breathe again and the sight of the delicate stonework of Duke’s Chapel and the cobbles underfoot struck chords of pleasure in her. She didn’t feel alone. She felt safe, secure.

  ‘How would you like, this Saturday,’ Rob said, ‘to come up to Branswell with me for the festival procession? It’s going to be fun.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Mitzi said without hesitation.

  Next to his waiting bike, he bent to kiss her cheek. Mitzi tipped back her head and let him kiss her lips instead.

  ‘I can go there alone.’ Odette was determined.

  ‘You’ll get lost.’

  ‘I will not. I can feel piano there, I will find my way to it. You tell me, I go.’

  ‘OK, if you’re sure. It’s not far…’ Odette had never been out alone in Cygnford in human form before. Mitzi pulled a blank page from her sketchpad and drew her a rough map. Odette glimpsed the dark pencil drawings on the pages flipping by and itched to look at them, but Mitzi, as usual, refused to show off her work.

  The chilly air besieged Odette’s ears as she walked. Not that it was bad compared to her Siberian forest, where she spent cold nights huddling under the bearskin in her log hut, her hands raw and blistered. At worst, she would have had to beg food from the nearest tavern – ten miles away – or from the Buryat Mongols, who might welcome her with warm fires and an occasional hot meal, but would never understand why she could not stay with them. Now she imagined she heard again the sound of Monsieur Liszt’s voice encouraging her as she tackled her favourite of his latest pieces, ‘Un Sospiro’. Over an accompaniment of rippling arpeggios, this ‘sigh’ was a melody that soared like a swan, its notes played alternately by each hand, crossing and uncrossing wave by wave.

  ‘This is a good trick,’ she twinkled at Liszt. A Russian and a Hungarian, they spoke French together.

  ‘Perhaps.’ The great pianist was nonchalant, gazing down into her face with heavy-lidded, sea-green eyes. He was six foot tall and thirty-six years old. The teenaged princess’s innards turned cartwheels when she saw the light in those irises.

  The harmonies chorused under her hands and her spirit flew with them, like a wild bird. When she had mastered a piece like this, playing it was like speaking with her body – the piano was just a tool to amplify all the poetry and vibrant life that filled her fourteen-year-old form.

  She finished and turned to look for his approval, twisting her hands together. ‘Odette, my little princess,’ he mused, his smile always enigmatic. ‘There is poetry in the core of your being. You must let it out – don’t hide such beauty from the world. But you must not stop working. Yes, you are exquisitely beautiful. Yes, y
ou can play your instrument.’ He grasped her palms between his own, his huge green eyes almost too beautiful for her to look at. ‘But don’t think for a moment that this means you are entitled to anything. You have to work and you must not become swollen-headed. As beauty fades with age, so talent fades for lack of hard work. Don’t let me down.’ He stroked her cheek, and Odette closed her eyes, trying to preserve the sensation, like strawberries in sugar. ‘Don’t let me down,’ Liszt repeated.

  Wandering along the dark road, past little grey houses and traffic that threw spray at her legs from the puddle-ridden tarmac, Odette thought with longing of Liszt’s voice, echoing around the music room in the Kiev mansion that belonged to her father’s business contact; here Liszt had agreed to visit them. She had forgotten the brush of his index finger against her cheek. Yet now it came back to her, like a loyal homing pigeon. Liszt had had a great heart, generous enough to feed the entire world with his music.

  ‘My dear maestro!’ cried Odette aloud in Russian, stretching out her arms. A passing cyclist turned to stare at her and nearly collided with the kerb.

  ‘Odette! Great to see you. Come on in.’ Chris was in the doorway, nervous yet very pleased behind his red-framed glasses. She wondered why anyone would wear spectacles that colour. His face was everything she thought of as ‘English’: a thin-lipped mouth, small blue eyes, raw pink skin, fair hair and the reserved affability and awkwardness that went with it all. He reminded her of the English academics who had visited the castle to consult her father’s famous library, the finest in the Irkutsk region.

  He ushered her inside, away from the cold. ‘Something to drink?’

  ‘Oh no, Chris, please, I would like just to play piano. Is all right?’

  ‘Are you sure? You must have been missing it. All right, this way.’ He led her into a narrow corridor lined with thin brown carpet, then into the living room at the front of the house, where an upright piano stood in a corner against the wall. Odette went to it without looking left or right.

  ‘Just yell if you need anything.’ He must have sensed she wanted to be left alone. ‘And when you’d like to start singing, yell again. I’ll be upstairs, OK?’

  ‘Thank you. Is strange, Chris, you know I never see piano this shape before.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Chris winked at her. ‘It works the same way as the others.’

  Odette pulled up the chair by the piano, then grabbed two cushions from the sofa and sat on them. Now her hands were at a comfortable angle. She lifted them in readiness; then lowered them.

  She had managed a slow Chopin prelude at the ball – she could hardly have played scales and exercises in public – but she knew that if now she tried to play the more demanding Liszt pieces straight away, she’d be so shocked by her diminished technique that she might never try again. She had to be sensible and start with the warm-up exercises she used to practise without fail. She began to play scales, instructing herself not to go too fast. She played B major, the scale always taught, she’d been told, by Monsieur Chopin as the easiest because it lay most naturally under the hands. Her fingers were working better than she had expected; she could play without breaking the flow. Encouraged, she speeded up.

  Chris, marking an undergraduate’s harmony exercises at his desk upstairs, supposed that he should not have been so astonished to hear classic Russian scales emanating from the living room. He’d imagined that Odette’s impulsive personality would have had her playing straight away through Chopin and Liszt – of course – with wrong notes all over the place. Not so. He was impressed.

  Odette worked her way through each key, remembering note combinations that were etched on her consciousness long ago. Movements of the wrist were coming back to her despite the intervening years, the right way to use the weight of the shoulder and lower back to produce a rich sound, working the sustaining pedal – not that this one worked very well, but what did that matter? All right. She took a deep breath, folded her hands in her lap, heard in her head the opening of ‘Un Sospiro’ – and sought out the first notes.

  Chris dropped his pencil. Next he took off his glasses and sat with head in hands. Then he surrendered and slumped flat onto his bed. The sound of his beat-up little piano was unrecognisable – it was singing as it had never sung before. If Odette could play Liszt like that, he was never going to joke about anything she said, ever again.

  She finished ‘Un Sospiro’ and he was about to clump downstairs to tell her how marvellous it was when she started on one of the Petrarch Sonnets, a piece he’d tussled with for two years. In her hands it sounded effortless – more than that, it sounded fun.

  She carried on. She was playing, of all things, some of the Transcendental Études, ‘Harmonies du Soir’, then ‘Chasse-neige’ – admittedly with more wrong notes, but he had never before met anyone who could play ‘Chasse-neige’. Finally the Liebestraum No.3. ‘O lieb’, o lieb’, so lang du lieben kannst, so lang du lieben magst…’ it sang.

  Oh love, oh love, love as long as you can, love as long as you may. Then: silence.

  Chris tiptoed downstairs and peered in. She was sitting with arms folded on the keyboard, her head down, sobbing.

  ‘Odette,’ he soothed, ‘don’t cry. That sounded incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it. Please don’t cry.’

  Odette lifted her face, tears streaming from eyes that shone like a hundred candles.

  ‘I cry for joy,’ she said.

  Chris hesitated, then sidled across and patted her shoulder. He was not good at expressing himself in anything but music, especially where girls were concerned, but there seemed little alternative. She turned and flung her arms round him. He had never seen anyone so consumed by emotion before.

  ‘All right, all right.’ He untwined her. ‘It’s OK. Do you want to try a bit of singing once you’ve mopped up? Here, have a tissue and I’ll get you a glass of water.’

  ‘I love to sing!’ Odette patted the tears from her face and took a drink with gratitude when he brought it from the kitchen.

  ‘Good. Shove over, then.’ Chris took the chair at the piano and rummaged through the pile of music on top of the instrument. ‘Cole Porter. How about it?’

  ‘Cole Porter?’ Odette sounded blank.

  ‘You’ll like him. Try this one – it’s called “Night and Day”. What key do you prefer?’

  Odette tested her voice’s range by humming up and down, looking at Chris for approval, much as she had looked at Monsieur Liszt all those years ago.

  ‘Right. D flat.’ Chris passed her the music. Odette began to sight-sing, discovering the chromatic side-steps and not just getting them right first time, but so obviously loving every moment that the song took on a new life even for Chris, who had played it more times than he cared to remember.

  They read through all the songs in the book. Then they started on Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Hours flew by; it was only when distant chapel bells began to strike that they noticed it was midnight.

  ‘Shit,’ said Chris. ‘We’ll have to stop or the neighbours will go nuts. If a mouse ran through the room, they’d hear it. Cup of tea?’

  Odette followed him into the kitchen, or what passed for one beneath precarious piles of crockery waiting to be washed and sundry heaps of discarded torn envelopes and adverts waiting for the recycling collection. Her arms, hands and throat were aching deliciously. ‘Harry is not here?’ she asked.

  Chris cast her a shrewd look. ‘He went to London – he had an audition for a show in the West End today and I think there’s another one tomorrow, so he’ll have stayed over somewhere.’

  ‘Ah.’ She did not ask anything else, and Chris, stirring sugar into black tea for her, said nothing. He hadn’t told Harry that Odette was coming round – he’d hoped to have her to himself. Besides, Harry had been in too much of a tizz, gathering scripts, suitable clothing and a hat, to take much notice of anything beyond the task in hand. Clearly, Chris reflected, the girl was too far gone on Harry to look at an oaf like hi
m, even though he understood the music that ran in her veins like blood, while Harry would scarcely notice it. Why did girls always make an unerring beeline for the biggest bastards in town?

  Later, he walked Odette back to Mitzi’s, pushing his bike. Most people he knew kept their heads down, especially in the cold, but Odette’s was held high, her eyes were as bright as ever and she sang softly to herself as they went.

  ‘Chris,’ she said, by Mitzi’s gate, ‘you know why I love to play music and to sing? It is like flying. I am human being – yet there I can fly. You understand?’

  Chris longed to stroke the soft hair that trailed over her shoulders. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand perfectly.’

  15

  Mitzi, cycling through the first snowflakes of the winter, arrived at the Cygnford Daily’s front desk at 11am. She had sent John Wilkins her interview with Rob and the article about the local writer whose first Young Adult novel – a fairy tale updated for the present day – had just come out. John called her in by return email.

  Upstairs, she found him perching on his threadbare black swivel chair at his computer, typing with his two forefingers.

  ‘How are things?’ Mitzi asked politely, pulling in a chair beside him.

  The phone rang; John answered, uttered ‘Yes,’ followed by ‘No,’ then thumped down the receiver. ‘Fairy tales… So, Mitzi. You’ll have to be appointed folklore editor, I suppose. For a local newspaper, that’s unusual. Did you spend time studying the occult at your nice college?’

  Town and gown had never seen eye to eye and John liked to lend his weight to the former’s war on the latter. Mitzi – though she had studied Beowulf, Shakespeare and Samuel Beckett, without a Blue Fairy Book in sight – had little recourse to self-defence.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, Mitzi. You were such a stalwart. Now you’re on your little fairy tale ego trip, you miss the point of the big stories and you can’t even get writers to talk about writing? What’s going on?’