Odette

by Jessica Duchen

  She stared miserably at the words. She needed to write three times as much, making it exciting. Adventurous. Sexy. She added quotes from Chris and the press officer, then waffled a bit about the Shakespeare Players’ recent tours and successes, Caroline’s great promise as an actress, the scarcity of the Bewick’s swan in Cygnford, and a quick mention, right at the end, of the incident with the dress and the chapel. She would send it to Joanna by email in the morning and not before. With luck, there’d be no time for anyone to expand the story, so, assuming nobody glanced at the paragraphs more than once, Odette should be safe.

  The daylight was fading. Mitzi automatically began to think ahead to supper for two. Rob was teaching a pottery class that evening; they’d agreed he would come round afterwards. She was grateful for his absence in the meantime. She could do her best to calm Odette and learn a little more about the truth. Then she must think of a way to persuade Rob to take her back to the cottage with him, instead of coming up into the flat. She longed for comfort food – perhaps a vegetable stew, which could simmer slowly if she started making it now.

  Chopping carrots with her largest kitchen knife, her hand slipped. Blood spouted across the gash in her left forefinger. She ran into the bathroom for a plaster and as she did so, it seemed to her that the darkened space filled with a strange luminescence, pale violet, a stirring of the air like the motion of many wings, as if space were rearranging itself around her to fill a vacuum. For a second the breath seemed to be sucked out of her. She felt for the edge of the bath, something solid – but a moment later the room was normal, the air still, and Odette was beside her, anxious, taking her arm to help her up.

  ‘You blooding!’ Odette cried.

  Lost for words, Mitzi switched on the cold tap, held her finger under the flow and let the chill of it calm her mind as well as her wound.

  ‘How is it,’ she said to Odette, hunting in the medicine cupboard for a plaster, ‘that you can be so sensible now and so totally insane earlier?’

  Odette sat down on the bathroom floor; she was all eyes and hair above the white shift. ‘Please, do not be angry.’

  Mitzi had meant to sound firm and authoritative, but she couldn’t. Instead she knelt down and hugged Odette, whose bony frame was cold, sinewy and shaking. ‘I’m not angry, really I’m not.’

  ‘I think I am free, but…’ Odette pressed her bare toes into the pink bathmat.

  ‘Then morning came.’

  ‘Yes, and I am swan again! Mitzi, I not understand, I cannot see why, because I expect I am now free, after this night… then I see Harry and he is with girl with hair that is colour of carrot, she tries to kiss him. Oh Mitzi, you know what happen before, you know Baron and his daughter he makes to look like me, and this so horrible…’

  ‘Shh… Caroline’s not a magician’s manifestation, she’s just a girl. She fancies Harry and he probably fancies her too. That’s all. Though the timing wasn’t too sensitive.’

  ‘For swan, there is no reason. And for swan, this action should be forever. You see?’

  Mitzi did. There’s no arguing with pure instinct, no hiding from an unspeaking creature behind a web of fabrication. Perhaps Odette as a swan had clearer vision than Mitzi, with her English degree and NUJ membership, could ever hope for.

  ‘Listen,’ she offered. ‘I do know what must have happened with Harry.’

  Odette reddened.

  ‘You really, honestly thought that sleeping with him would be the same as a vow of everlasting love?’

  Tears loomed in Odette’s eyes. ‘For me, is same thing. For swans, is same thing. And he says – before – that he will love me “forever and ever and ever”… He use these words!’

  ‘But for Harry, that probably doesn’t mean quite the same thing it means for you.’

  Odette was silent.

  ‘You’ve got to understand: he doesn’t know. He doesn’t realise you’re not like everyone else. He doesn’t know that swans mate for life, or if he does know, he’s not aware that that might affect how you behave, because – as far as he’s concerned – why would it? He has literally no idea what this means to you.’

  ‘You think,’ said Odette, after a long pause, ‘for everyone else, this means nothing?’

  Mitzi sensed her grip on the situation sliding away. ‘I’m not saying it means nothing to Harry. I’m sure it means a lot to him. But it’s not – necessarily – everlasting. It doesn’t affect the shape of a spell. It’s not a vow.’

  ‘I want to tell him about spell,’ Odette said flatly, ‘but you say I must not.’

  Even Rob had thought it was best not to tell Harry the truth. But supposing she had come clean with him from the beginning? Odette was suffering because of the deception; perhaps she, Mitzi, was to blame?

  No, she told herself. She was responsible for Odette only because the swan happened to have picked her window to crash through. She couldn’t take Odette’s choices on her own shoulders. She fought the lingering sense of guilt. ‘I think we’ll have to tell him. He may come round later this evening.’

  Odette wiped away a tear with one finger. ‘What will I say?’

  ‘You want me to do it?’

  ‘I hate him.’

  Odette trailed off to the study. Mitzi heard bumps and rattles as she unfolded the camp bed and set out the sheets.

  ‘I’m making food,’ Mitzi called. There was no response.

  She switched on the local radio station, her hurt finger still throbbing under the plaster.

  ‘… was said to be recovering, but suffering from shock. The swan has been identified as a Bewick’s, rare in Cygnford where mute swans inhabit the…’

  She turned it off again and picked up her knife to finish chopping the vegetables.

  A long hour went by while the stew cooked. Mitzi tinkered with her words in the article; Odette, confined to the study, must have been resting, or stewing in her own way. Later, the two women ate together in silence; Mitzi could scarcely swallow. When they’d finished, Odette retreated to the armchair and declared that War and Peace would take her mind off things. Mitzi moved the swan’s box to the study, hoovered up some stray feathers, then switched on the television and sat in front of it without watching or listening. She knew she needed to text Rob, to stop him coming over, or at least in. Whatever could she say? Her mind had frozen up with alarm and no excuse presented itself. The flat itself seemed to be waiting.

  At last the ringing phone jolted them both back into the present.

  ‘I hope you’ve got this business plastered on the front page.’ Harry sounded tired and irritated.

  ‘Is she OK?’

  ‘Yes, but the wretched thing knocked her over and she hit her head on the side of a step.’

  ‘Are you sure it was a Bewick’s swan?’

  ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘What colour was its beak? Hal, I’m serious, it’s important. If it was black and yellow, then it’s a Bewick’s swan.’

  Harry paused. ‘I remember seeing a bit of her hair in it – she’s got red hair, very long red hair… yes, I’m sure it was black with a bit of yellow… Mitzi? Are you there?’

  Mitzi’s heart was in her mouth. ‘Listen, Harry. Supposing I were to tell you that that swan is Odette?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And that’s why she keeps disappearing.’

  The line crackled. ‘Earth to Mitzi? Earth to Mitzi? Come in, number 105?’

  ‘Supposing I were to tell you that Odette is a swan by day and a woman by night.’

  ‘Mits – what are you on about?’ Harry groaned. ‘You’ve been watching Swan Lake and it’s turned your brain.’

  ‘Harry, I know you won’t believe it right away, but…’

  ‘I’m coming round. There in five.’

  He’d rung off. Mitzi poured herself a cognac. She reserved her VSOP for Very Special Occasional Panics.

  While the warmth of it spread through her stomach, she noticed that Odette had wandered to the
desk and picked up the sketchpad. As she leafed through the drawings, Mitzi saw her whole form cease natural movement, as if turned to stone.

  ‘No,’ Odette said. ‘Nyet…’

  ‘They’re that bad?’ Mitzi swallowed brandy. ‘I thought I’d improved recently.’

  ‘Who this is? Where you see this face?’

  ‘That’s Rob,’ Mitzi beamed. ‘It’s not very good, I know.’

  ‘Is it very like him?’

  ‘Not enough… it’s just a first try, from memory… Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Mitzi, it is so much like…’

  Odette’s words vanished into the ring of the doorbell: Harry was already there, fastening his bike to the railings beside the river, opposite the house. Mitzi pressed the buzzer to let him in. Odette waited with her by the door, slight in her jeans and white jersey, hair loose and wild around her.

  22

  Harry stopped dead in the doorway. He was clutching a bulging plastic carrier bag in one hand, with the red coat over the other arm. He and Odette stared at one another, motionless. ‘Spasiba bolshoy to you too,’ he grunted. ‘What the heck happened? Why did you run off?’

  Odette folded her arms in front of her heart. ‘I cannot explain.’

  ‘You’d better try. Cos people don’t just disappear without their clothes and shoes. I nearly called the police.’

  ‘Please forgive.’ Odette’s tone was businesslike. ‘I know you not love me. So I leave.’

  ‘Love you? But I hardly know you! It was our second date, for God’s sake – you can’t start talking about love!’

  ‘You lie to me. You say you love me, you say you are crazy about me, forever and ever and ever, you say. Then you go with carrot-hair girl!’

  ‘But Odette… look, if you hadn’t run off, we’d have had breakfast and talked some more, and arranged to meet again, and – why can’t you relax and let it happen, like a normal person?’

  ‘I am not normal person.’

  Harry dumped bag and coat on the floor. ‘Mits, you got a beer? I’m in need.’

  Mitzi glanced from the tearful Odette to the angry Harry. When her brother made no move other than towards the fridge, she crossed the room and embraced the swan girl. Odette hid her face on Mitzi’s shoulder and burst into tears.

  ‘All I want is for someone to please tell me what’s going on.’ Harry opened a can.

  ‘I told you, but you wouldn’t listen,’ Mitzi said.

  ‘You didn’t tell me anything.’

  ‘Harry! Sit down and listen to me. Put down that beer and don’t say a word until I’ve finished!’

  And Harry, who had never seen Mitzi white with fury before, sat and listened.

  As the story progressed and Mitzi forced him to stop laughing, Odette slipped across to him and took his hand, which was icy.

  ‘Prove it,’ he muttered at last.

  ‘It is proved,’ Odette said. ‘Twice we have been together at dawn. Twice I have gone away without clothes. Twice you could not understand. And once you saw it, yourself. You saw me change.’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘We go to ball, it is dawn, we go to garden, I disappear, you fall, you pick up my dress. And you see swan.’

  ‘Oh, fuck… You mean… you really think you did have piano lessons with Franz Liszt…?’

  ‘Of course. I do not think. It is true.’

  ‘But what do you mean, a spell? Like – like that ballet? Swan Lake? The one all the girls blub over for their birthday treats?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Mitzi.

  ‘So you have to break the spell and then you’re a normal person again?’

  ‘Harry, please help me.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Mitzi told you spell.’ Odette maintained her princess-like dignity. ‘When man swears to love me forever, and keeps his vow, I am free.’

  ‘But that’s crazy! I can’t do that.’

  ‘You say you cannot vow,’ Odette stated, ‘but there is no other way to break spell.’

  Harry stared from one to the other. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe in magic, I don’t believe in spells and I’m not going to play the game. This is Cygnford. This is the twenty-first century. So, Odi, I like you very, very much, I loved our night together and under normal circumstances I’d have liked to start having a relationship with you and see how we get along. Does that help, even a little bit?’

  At that moment there came the sound of the front door opening and footsteps on the stairs. It must be Rob, finished with his evening class and letting himself in with his landlord set of keys. Strange that he hadn’t even rung the bell. Mitzi just had time to mix her delight at seeing him with dismay that she had not managed to ward him off; Odette’s camp bed was still open in the study and she had told him nothing of the past weeks’ reality.

  ‘Rob!’ she said brightly as the door swung open.

  Odette let out a cry. Her hands lifted and pressed to her mouth.

  Rob seemed not to have seen Harry. He seemed not to have seen Mitzi. He took two steps towards Odette.

  ‘Rob,’ Mitzi improvised, ‘I was going to tell you – Odette’s been staying, just for a couple of days…’

  ‘I know,’ said Rob simply, without taking his eyes off the transfixed swan girl. ‘Our downstairs neighbour, Professor Maggie, called and told me there’s been someone else living up here. Mitzi, you’re in breach of contract.’

  Such calculation, such contempt, seemed to fill his face – was this a trick of the light? She found herself reaching for her brother’s arm and holding on.

  ‘Come, Odette.’ Rob’s tone was unlike any Mitzi had yet heard him use. ‘It’s over. Let’s go home.’

  Odette sank, silent, to her knees. Tears streamed from her eyes as she pressed her fists to her face, rocking herself back and forth. ‘Mitzi – I tried to tell you – face in sketch,’ she managed to say.

  Rob glanced towards Mitzi and the flummoxed Harry. Mitzi tried to smile, reaching out a hand to him; he did not take it. ‘Rob,’ she said, ‘what’s going on? Please tell me? I don’t understand. Something’s wrong, so let’s put it right? There must be some mistake, or misunderstanding… I promise you, Odette is only here very temporarily, I’ve been trying to help her find her feet and…’

  ‘Indeed, you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You haven’t even begun to get it, have you?’

  ‘The contract – I can explain everything…’

  ‘No need. I’m not here about that. Or not only that.’

  ‘Mitzi – this person – is not who – you think – he is,’ Odette said, struggling for breath between words.

  ‘Do you not see? Do you seriously still not see?’ Rob turned his gaze back towards her. Staring into its crimson depths, Mitzi, beginning to freeze on her feet, felt a dawning – or a setting – or a recognition – the cracking of a shell within her – and from inside that, a gradual seeping of all she had failed to grasp before, befuddled as she was by her cobweb of hopes and dreams. A web within a web.

  ‘Where’s Rob?’ She controlled the tremor in her voice as best she could. How far back did this go? How deep was her mistake?

  ‘Nowhere you need worry about him,’ said Rob, who was not Rob. ‘Reported in the papers, naturally, but your editor won’t call you. May I introduce myself? If you like, you may call me Baron von Rothbart. My specialities over the centuries have been mining, investment, herbalism, a little light murder, and, to use a common if vulgar term, shape-shifting, on behalf of myself and sometimes others. Harry, you’ll appreciate the skill involved in turning yourself into someone else, won’t you? In addition to being a fine actor, my friends, here in pretty little Cygnford I’ve been gaining some new skills: giving expert interviews to newspapers, making splendid pottery, teaching cute kiddies about fairy tales and enjoying fine vegetarian cuisine in a pathetic English backwater where people think themselves terrifically clever. Mitzi, my dear, why don’t you sit down? You’re ve
ry pale. You must have had a terrible shock.’

  Mitzi found herself slumping on the green leather chair. Rob’s green leather chair. That ability Rob had to snatch away her willpower – or was it ever Rob?… ‘Then… when did you come in?’ she asked. ‘Did I actually meet Rob?’

  She understood, even as she spoke, that she had not. What was in that ‘lime blossom’ tea? Whatever was the soothing substance she’d been feeding the policemen? No wonder they hadn’t looked around her living room. A vortex of darkness was spiralling through her mind, beneath an avalanche of confusion. The night of passion in the cottage. The lure of happiness, ‘real happiness’…

  The pain of recognition, when it arrived, was so intense it was almost physical, stabbing her through and through until she doubled over, fists pressed to her mouth to stop herself from screaming aloud. The shards of glass from her broken window seemed to be slicing through her just as they had sliced at the swan’s wing.

  ‘The storm,’ she gasped out. ‘Did you arrange that as well?’

  ‘I used that storm as I needed to,’ came the reply. ‘It was not ideal – but this is the art: to take nature and master it. When I knew the storm was coming and that my swan princess was likely to be blown far away from her winter hidey-hole, I decided to be the advance guard. The gale was already getting up, after all, and there’s nothing to beat a good tail wind in such circumstances.’

  ‘Mitzi.’ Harry was beside her, arm clamped to her shoulder. ‘It’s OK. Breathe. Keep breathing…’

  ‘And Rob – did I know the real Rob? I must have! I spoke to him before Odette came here.’

  ‘Indeed. A good likeness in the voice, don’t you think?’

  So she’d spoken to Rob – been invited to lunch – and by the time she’d gone to visit him he had been… replaced. ‘You knew I was going there. You knew why, and how, and what he was doing, and how to…’