The Dissonant came after the interval. As the almost inaudible opening bars struck up she found herself weeping soundlessly. The elderly lady passed her a handkerchief (clean and pressed, thank goodness) to staunch her tears. Sylvie mouthed a thank-you to her. This mute exchange lifted her spirits a little. At the end of the concert the woman insisted that she keep the handkerchief. The shabby young man offered to escort her to a cab. How kind strangers were, she thought. She politely declined her would-be escort, a refusal she later regretted because in her disturbed state she took a wrong turn on Wigmore Street and then another and found herself in a far from salubrious area, armed with only a hat pin with which to defend herself.
She had once been at home in London, yet now it was a foreign city to her. A dirty, lurid nightmare of a place and yet she had willingly descended into this circle of hell. She must have been mad. All she wanted to do was to get home, yet here she was wandering the streets like a mad woman. When she eventually found her way back to a gleamingly busy Oxford Street she cried out in relief. A cab ride later and she was sitting demurely on a bench on the station platform as if she were returning from a day of shopping and lunch with friends.
Goodness,” Hugh said. “I thought you must be a burglar. You said you were staying up in town.”
“Oh, it was all deathly tedious,” Sylvie said. “I decided I would rather come straight back. Mr. Wilson, the stationmaster, gave me a lift in his pony and trap.”
Hugh regarded his wife’s high complexion, the slightly wild look in her eye of an overused racehorse. Mrs. Shawcross, in contrast, was less of a thoroughbred and more of a good-natured Dobbin. Which, in Hugh’s opinion, could be preferable sometimes. He kissed Sylvie lightly on the cheek and said, “I’m sorry that your plans for the evening didn’t work out, but it’s very nice to have you home.”
Sitting in front of her mirror, unpinning her mound of hair, a fresh despair fell on Sylvie. She had been a coward and now she was chained to this life for ever. Hugh came up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “Beautiful,” he murmured, running his hands through her hair. She had to suppress the desire to flinch away from him. “Bed?” he said, looking hopeful.
“Bed,” she agreed brightly.
But it wasn’t just the bird, was it, Teddy thought as he lay in bed waiting for sleep to find him, the nightly oblivion kept at bay by meandering thought. It wasn’t just the one lark that had been silenced by Izzie. (A mouthful.) It was the generations of birds that would have come after it and now would never be born. All those beautiful songs that would never be sung. Later in his life he learned the word “exponential,” and later still the word “fractal,” but for now it was a flock that grew larger and larger as it disappeared into a future that would never be.
Ursula, looking in on him on her way to bed, found him awake and reading Scouting for Boys. “Can’t sleep?” she said with the offhand sympathy of a fellow insomniac. Teddy’s feelings for his sister were almost as straightforward and uncomplicated as those he had for Trixie, who was lying at the foot of the bed, whining softly in her sleep. “Rabbits, I suppose,” Ursula said.
Ursula sighed. She was fifteen and prone to pessimism. Although their mother would have vigorously denied it, this was her character too. His sister perched on his bed and read out loud, “ ‘Be always ready with your armour on, except when you are taking your rest at night.’ ” (Perhaps this was his mother’s “armour of good manners,” Teddy thought.) “A metaphor, I expect,” Ursula said. “Knights can hardly have been expected to clank around all day long in a suit of armour. I’m always reminded of the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz when I think of knights.” It was a book they were all fond of but Teddy wished that she hadn’t put that image in his mind, the Idylls of the King and Morte d’Arthur dissolving into thin air in an instant.
An owl hooted, a loud, almost aggressive sound. “On the roof, by the sound of it,” Teddy said. They listened together for a while.
“Well, night-night,” Ursula said eventually. She kissed him on the forehead.
“Night-night,” he said, stowing Scouting for Boys beneath his pillow. Despite the owl, which continued to hoot its unholy lullaby, he fell almost immediately into the deep and innocent sleep of the hopeful.
The Adventures of Augustus
—The Awful Consequences—
IT BEGAN innocently enough, in Augustus’s opinion anyway. “It always begins innocently,” Mr. Swift sighed, although he doubted that Augustus’s definition of innocence was the same as that of other people.
“But it wasn’t my fault!” Augustus protested furiously.
“That will be written on your headstone, dear,” Mrs. Swift said, looking up from the sock she was darning. One of Augustus’s, needless to say. (“What does he do to them?” she frequently puzzled.)
“And anyway, how could I have known what would happen?” Augustus said.
“There is no action that doesn’t bring with it a consequence,” Augustus’s father said. “Only the short-sighted don’t consider the consequences.” Mr. Swift was a barrister and in court he spent his day prosecuting the guilty, relishing the to-and-fro of the courtroom battle. Some of this necessarily spilled over into his home life, which his son thought put his father at an unfair advantage.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” Augustus muttered.