The Taxidermist's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

weeping.
    She was worried for him. About him too, she realised.
    A sudden glint from the middle of the channel caught Connie’s eye. A bright flash, like a ship’s warning lamp. Had it come from the Old Salt Mill? She shielded her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything. Just the few small houses dotted on the Apuldram side of the water.
    Trying to quell her anxious thoughts, Connie opened her journal at the entry for the twenty-fifth of April and flattened the pages. She had recorded her impressions immediately after the visit to the church – as she did with all her private reflections – trying to make sense of what had happened. She’d set down the names of those she recognised, done pen portraits of those she had not. The woman in the blue coat too, though Connie had soon realised that although she could describe her clothes and hat, she had no idea at all what she actually looked like.
    She drained the last of her coffee, then began to read.
    A Fishbourne village tradition or not, Connie hadn’t accepted then – and still did not – that so many people would have made their way to the church on the Eve of St Mark without some kind of prior arrangement. And she was certain her father would not normally have been among them. She had never known him attend a service – not at Whitsun, not Christmas, not even on Easter Sunday.
    And that strange whispered question, overheard as the bell began to toll again. ‘Is she here ?’ An educated voice, not a man from the village. ‘ Is she here?’ The meaning was quite altered with each different intonation.
     
    Who’ll be the parson?
    I, said the Rook
    With my little book,
    I’ll be the parson.
    Mary’s song continued to swoop and soar around the corners of the house, the notes floating in the sweet afternoon air.
     
    *
     
    Connie heard them before she saw them.
    She looked up as a pair of mute swans flew low overhead. Their long necks stretched, the orange flash of their beaks, the steady beating of their wings against the air. She turned to follow their flight.
    A swan. White feathers.
    She was pricked by a sudden, vivid memory from the vanished days. Herself at nine or ten, long brown hair twisted through with yellow ribbon. Sitting on a high wooden stool at the ticket counter at the museum.
    She frowned. No, not yellow ribbon. Red.
    The painted wooden sign above the door – GIFFORD’S WORLD-FAMOUS HOUSE OF AVIAN CURIOSITIES – and her palms hot and sticky from the farthings, halfpennies, and the occasional sixpence. Issuing printed entrance tickets – billets – on a grainy and coarse blue card.
    Another shift of memory. The swan once more. With its grief-clouded eyes.
    Of all the taxidermy exhibits in the collection, she had only hated the swan. Standing inside the main entrance, its wings spread wide as if to welcome visitors in, she was terrified of it. Something about its size and its breadth, the breast feathers moulting in the sun through the glass. The moths and the beads of fat, like blisters on the surface of its skin. Another memory. When she had been told that swans paired for life – who might have told her that? – Connie remembered how she had wept and become quite ill with the idea that the mate of the preserved cob might be searching in vain for her lost love.
    She waited, willing more to come back to her, but already the memory was fading. She did not think the swan had made the journey here to Blackthorn House, as a few of the museum exhibits had. The image of her young self slipped away, unseen again, back into the shadows.
    The vanished days.
    Her life was divided into two parts. Before and after the accident. Connie had dreamlike memories of long and blurred weeks, drifting in and out of sleep, a gentle hand stroking her forehead. Hot air and all the windows open. Her dark hair shorn and rough on her scalp. A scar on the right side of her head.
    When she did recover, her past was lost to her. The first twelve years of her life almost