‘Rotten luck, old girl,’ he says, helpless. Language fails him, and he turns away, leaving Odette and Cecilia on their own, hand in hand in the empty, lifeless shell of Herne House.
Odette still has not spoken.
Cecilia turns to her, to say something, God knows what – there is nothing she can possibly say – but Odette’s face stops her short. It is the perfect picture of misery, Cecilia’s own grief reflected back a thousandfold in her face: the world ending, the walls of the house crashing down, the earth rising up to bury them all.
Odette shakes her head. She cannot speak.
Cecilia trembles at the burden placed on her shoulders.
She cannot make this better.
She cannot make this right.
All she can do is bear witness and not look away.
They walk out of the house and across the meadows, over the wooden bridge that crosses the moat and past the sheep that like to die, past the orchard and down the track deep into the pastures with their boundaries of hazel and blackthorn, the leaning alder and ash trees. They sit together in the crook of an alder, and Cecilia holds Odette as the hurricane of her grief rips through her. There is nothing to be said. Cecilia only holds her, strokes her hair, offers a litany of soft noises, prayers, comforts.
When the evening turns frigid, she coaxes Odette back to the house, to suffer morsels from the cold tray of dinner that is brought up to her room. Cecilia reads to her until Odette falls asleep in her lap, and then she dozes upright, watching the thin summer night fall and lift too soon.
Odette wakes with the dawn, misery replaced by a sharpness behind her eyes. ‘I have an idea for a play.’
Cecilia stifles a yawn. ‘Are you sure? We could wait until later.’ Until she is not ripe with grief, Cecilia means, but she knows this cannot be said.
‘I want to do it now. Claudine prevented us from doing Godiva, but she will be occupied now. There is no one to spoil it.’
‘You want to do Godiva again?’
‘No, I have a better thought. Get up – come on.’
Cecilia follows her from the bed, drawing on her dressing gown and slippers, then down the hall and out of the house, along the path they took yesterday.
‘Do you see the bonfires set in the bottom field?’ asks Odette.
The dawn is fresh and new. A thin mist is cast over the ground that dissipates as they pass through. Flower heads droop under the weight of dew, and the birds announce the day to each other with urgency.
‘Yes.’
‘They will be perfect. They’ll be tinder-dry after the summer we’ve had.’
‘Perfect for what?’
Odette turns round, walking backwards. ‘The tableau vivant from my birthday. I want to burn Shelley’s pyre.’
When Cecilia hesitates, she continues.
‘Please, Ces. I need to do something big.’
There is an intensity to her that Cecilia cannot cross. ‘All right. I mean, I suppose it is going to burn anyway.’
‘Good.’ Odette squeezes her hand tighter and pulls her along.
In a divot in the landscape is the field where she found Odette yesterday; empty grazing land where a bonfire has been laid in a neat oblong, quite like a pyre. Cecilia did not look at it closely before, but now she can see why it took hold of Odette’s imagination. The scene is no desolate Italian beach, beset by storms; they have no bloated, rotting body, but all the same, the picture creates itself.
‘Damn,’ says Odette. ‘I should have brought a copy ofLamia. That was how Trelawny identified Shelley.’
‘It will look well all the same.’ There is a chill in the air, andCecilia tucks her hands under her arms. ‘How will we light it?’
Odette produces a book of matches from her pocket. ‘Always come prepared.’ She laughs, then moves round the bonfire, striking matches and tossing them in between the stacked branches.
