Fic: The Cuckoo's Lullaby (14/17)
Aug. 18th, 2014 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swissmargTitle: The Cuckoo's Lullaby
Author:
swissmarg
Beta readers:ruth0007, 
dioscureantwins
Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Other characters: Irene Adler, OCs
Word count: ca. 85K when complete
Summary: Sequel to 'Cracks in the In-Between Places'. A Swiss holiday seems to be the perfect way for the Holmeses and the Watsons to recover from their recent troubles and deepen their attachments to each other, but when Tristram's mother and the bogeyman both turn up, loyalties are put to the ultimate test.
See Chapter One for additional notes
Read Chapter 14 on AO3
Tristram cannot let himself think about them: Father and John and Emily. Emily especially, because Father's been in sticky situations before and he's always got out of them, and John used to be in the army - and he seems like the kind of person who can take care of himself, especially the way he had Irene up against the wall, ready to crush her trachea before anyone had so much as blinked - but Tristram can't help remembering Emily being dragged away, kicking and screaming, by her Aunt Claire Friday Afternoon at the warehouse. And Aunt Claire wasn't even that big.
Irene said there were bad guys on the train, the same ones they were trying to get away from in the first place, and Tristram cannot let himself think about one of them getting his hands on Emily. The only thing that stops the awful, awful image from overtaking Tristram is the knowledge that John wouldn't let them. John would not let anyone touch Emily. 'Over my dead body', he said to Irene when she talked about taking Tristram back to England, and Tristram's not even his son. He's just a friend. That was a bad thing for Tristram to remember, he realises too late. The line about John's dead body. This is why he cannot let himself think about it.
There's a crushing guilt on top of everything else too, because he didn't actually go with Irene in order to get away from the bad guys. He went with her because he thought she was going to take him to his father. Even though he knew that meant leaving John and Emily behind on the train with the bad guys. He was selfish. Not that he could have done anything about it if he'd stayed, but now he doesn't know where any of them are.
Except for Irene: she's sitting at the desk on the other side of the low-ceilinged living room in the cramped little cottage she brought him to. The armchair he's curled up in smells like the stuff Mrs Hudson sprays around their flat when she gets in one of her tidying moods. Irene's writing and writing, something in longhand. She told him there are certain things you don't want to leave an electronic trace of.
'We have to move fast now, Tristram,' she'd said, wrapping her fingers around his arm the second John and Emily went through the hissing door at the end of the carriage, heading for the loo. Irene's eyes were big and intent. He'd thought they were earnest too, but now he thinks he was wrong. 'Someone has followed us onto this train, and I don't intend to let them catch us. Do you trust me?' she asked him.
Tristram couldn't even respond to that last bit - couldn't think about what it meant - because he was stuck on the first part. If they needed to get away, why had she waited until John and Emily left to say something? They should all go together, surely.
And so he asked, 'What about John and Emily?'
But Irene said, 'They don't want John and Emily, Tristram. They want you.'
Tristram's heart froze at that, only to be unfrozen by his confusion a moment later. John was the one they'd wanted, not Tristram. Even back at the warehouse, they hadn't really wanted him; he'd just been a way to get to Father, and they'd never actually hurt him. They could have done, but they hadn't. None of that mattered though, because whether Tristram was the one they were after now or John, that didn't explain why they had to leave right away, before John and Emily got back.
He didn't get any further than saying, 'Why can't we-' before Irene's hand tightened on his arm. It didn't quite hurt, but there was an unpleasant pinch.
'Because the four of us together are -' she started to answer his unasked question, but fell silent as someone passed by their seats. It was a woman with long, black hair and dark rings drawn around her eyes and very tight clothes. Was that one of the bad guys? She didn't look at them, but Irene waited until she disappeared into a seat several rows back before continuing, this time in a sharp hiss: 'Because Emily is a liability and John won't take directions from me. What do you think your father would do? Take you alone to safety, or sit here and wait for all of us to be caught?'
There was a time when Tristram wouldn't have hesitated with his answer, but at that moment he wasn't so sure. Father had wanted all of them to come to Switzerland, even though Emily didn't know how to escape a pair of handcuffs and John didn't seem to take directions from Father all that well either. Would Father have left John and Emily behind? Although it's true that he sort of did already. But Irene didn't give Tristram a chance to answer. She clamped her hand around his good wrist and stood up. Tristram reached automatically for his backpack, but Irene murmured, 'No, it has to look like we're coming back,' and stepped out into the aisle.
That was Tristram's first mistake. His phone was in that backpack. He couldn't use it in Switzerland, of course, but he'd taken it along anyway because John had told him always, always to keep his phone with him. John had also said never to leave it in his school bag or jacket because then he might not have it on him when he needed it, and so perhaps that was actually Tristram's first mistake: not carrying the phone in his trousers. At any rate, it got left behind, so he's not able to try and contact Uncle Mycroft (or his father or John) now. He's not sure he'd be able to use his phone from here anyway, so perhaps it's a moot point. It still nags at him.
Tristram's second mistake - and this is where the regrets really begin - is that he went with Irene at all. Because surely he could have done something else. Maybe he could have yanked his hand away - although she had a pretty good grip, but he might have caught her off-guard - and run to where John and Emily were. Or he could have sat back down and refused to move, or simply shouted out for John. But he had that tantalising thought in the back of his mind - maybe even a little further forward - that Irene knew where Father was; that Irene didn't like John and maybe wanted Father back, and was trying to give John the slip so that she and Father and Tristram could be together. That maybe there weren't any bad guys at all.
It was completely stupid; Tristram sees that now. It's not even as if Tristram wants that. Irene doesn't fit into their life, and he doesn't think she wants to, either. Not like that, anyway; not living in a tiny flat with mismatched furniture and diseased kidneys in the fridge and the police - and the not-so-occasional homeless person - knocking on their door at all hours of the day and night. Knocking, of course, because Father got annoyed at the bell when it kept going off while he was trying to work out a song on his violin, and unscrewed it from the wall and put it in the freezer. Tristram thinks it's actually still there, even though that was months ago. No, Tristram can't visualise Irene in the midst of all of that.
Quite aside from the fact that Irene and Father, for all that they were civil to each other the two times Tristram saw them together, don't make each other laugh the way John and Father do. They don't look at each other and seem to say lots more with their eyes and their hands and their shoulders and knees than comes out of their mouths. It doesn't make Tristram happy to think about Father and Irene together the way it does thinking about Father and John together. And it doesn't wrench at Tristram to think that Irene and Father might not actually like each other all that much the way it does when he thinks about the argument two nights ago, when John said he was going to take Emily and leave Tristram and Father behind.
But Tristram didn't think of all those things right there on the train, with Irene's hand around his wrist. All he had in mind was the vague hope of seeing his father again, and the convenient excuse of having to get away from the bad guys - even if Tristram never saw any evidence of them himself. And so rather than doing any of the things he could have - should have - done, Tristram followed Irene obediently through the carriage in the opposite direction from where John and Emily had gone. He is deeply ashamed to admit that he was even looking forward to a bit of an adventure with Father again, like the time they escaped from the hospital.
They walked through three more carriages to the snack bar, where Irene told the lady behind the counter that if a man came asking after them, she should say they'd been in and already gone back to their seats. Instead of actually going back, though, Irene led Tristram onward to the first class carriage and found them two seats. As soon as she sat down, she took out her phone and sent a text.
Tristram was convinced, right then, that she was texting his father. That perhaps his father was disguised as one of the other first-class passengers and was going to turn around and pull off his moustache or stand up and unhunch his back. But he wasn't, and he didn't. Tristram knows that Irene texted John at some point to let him know they hadn't been kidnapped, but this seems too soon. He doesn't think she could have risked informing John until they were off the train. Maybe she was contacting some other accomplice of hers - or maybe it had nothing at all to do with Tristram.
At any rate, as soon as she'd finished, she stood up again and the train began to slow. Irene led Tristram to the exit at the very front of the carriage, and as soon as the train stopped, she reached up over the door on the wrong side, unlocked it with the square-headed spanner she all of a sudden had in her hand, and opened it onto the track. Tristram has to admit he was a little bit excited at this point. The action smacked of something his father would do.
After checking quickly for any approaching trains, she bustled Tristram down onto the track, helped him up onto the opposite platform under the shocked stares of the tourists and commuters, and that was pretty much that.
Tristram can only assume that the bad guys lost their trail and left John and Emily alone, because he hasn't heard anything more about John and Emily since, and he won't let himself think about it beyond that. They should be back in London by now, at their house, with Emily's aunts. That is all Tristram allows himself to think. Another thought sneaks in anyway: maybe they are at Tristram's flat, with his father. But if that's the case, then Tristram was woefully, horribly wrong, and it's entirely his fault that he's here and not with them.
Because Irene didn't end up bringing him to his father; they've been in this creaky old cottage for two days now and it hasn't stopped raining the whole time. He thinks they're in Ireland. They flew from Mulhouse to Dublin anyway, but despite his best efforts, he fell asleep in the car that Irene hired at the airport and didn't wake up until they were pulling off the main road. It was dark by then, and all he could tell was that they weren't in a city. The low light of the headlamps didn't reveal much more than trees and fields and low stone walls on either side of the road.
Even though it all seemed like the whole thing was a spur-of-the-moment, mad dash trying to keep them one step ahead of their alleged pursuers, Tristram sees now that she must have planned it all meticulously. His passport, the flight from Mulhouse, the car waiting for them in Dublin. To say nothing of the house. It's not her house; Tristram knew that right away from the furniture and his deduction was confirmed by the fact that she had to rummage around in cupboards and drawers looking for things the first night. Tristram knows it's technically possible that she went online and set up the rental sometime during their flight, but there were clothes more or less in his size in one of the dressers. Irene called it a stroke of luck. Tristram didn't say anything, but that was his first clue that things might not have been as they appeared.
He actually asked her about the passport when she showed it at the airport, crossing over into France. It was kind of cool: half the airport was in Switzerland and half was in France. They were flying out of the French side, so they had to cross the border inside the airport.
Tristram had stared at the maroon booklet as she slipped it back into her purse once they were past the border checkpoint.
'Did John give you my passport?' he asked. After all the fuss John made about not wanting Irene to take him - and going to the extra trouble of having another passport sent - Tristram found it odd that John would have voluntarily surrendered it to Irene.
'No, I found it lying around in your hotel room,' Irene had said casually. 'Terribly careless of your father and John. Anyone could have picked it up. I thought it best that I hold on to it. And look how lucky it was that I did!' She beamed at him and reached down to take his hand, swinging it casually as they walked toward their gate.
'John was looking for it,' Tristram told her, becoming slightly cross because John and Uncle Mycroft both went to extra trouble over the missing passport. He didn't pull his hand away from Irene's, though. 'He thought my father had it.'
Irene got a little line between her eyes as her face adopted a look of concern. 'Oh, dear. I hope he wasn't too terribly worried. If only he'd asked me.' Then her expression cleared, and she said in a way that was certainly meant to be reassuring, 'But we were going to travel together anyway, so it didn't matter who held onto it.'
Tristram supposes, thinking back on it now, that that's true, but wouldn't it have behooved Irene to mention she'd picked up the passport when John came back? On the other hand, maybe she was so startled by the way John burst into the room and then put his elbow into her throat that she forgot. Or, like she said, didn't think it was important because they were going to be together anyway.
But they weren't together, and didn't it turn out to be terribly convenient that she happened to be the one with his passport? So convenient that she must have known she was going to need it, and that she and Tristram wouldn't be with John when they crossed the border. Tristram didn't question the fact that there were tickets waiting for them at the check-in counter at the time, either; he was too busy trying very hard to concentrate on his breathing. There was no open gallery in Mulhouse like there had been at the London airport, but there were the same kind of luggage trolleys and the same smell of aircraft exhaust and too many people for Tristram to keep his eye on all of them. He managed, but he wasn't able to ungrit his teeth until they were seated on the plane and he got a headache almost immediately after takeoff.
So he didn't think about the tickets then. But now he's had two days to go over and over those hours in his mind, and he's realised that she must have ordered those tickets earlier, just like she must have set things up here with the house. Maybe, in fact, John was right when he accused Irene of just waiting until Father was gone so she could take Tristram.
He is thus not entirely sure whether he's been kidnapped or not. It's not tense and scary like the time Emily's Aunt Claire took them to the warehouse in the car, and certainly no one's tried to do anything like tie him up or threaten him. But Irene won't let him call Uncle Mycroft even though she has a working phone (he got his hands on it once when she went to the loo, but it was locked).
Tristram also hasn't been allowed to go out of the house... although 'allowed' is perhaps the wrong word to use. Irene hasn't gone out either, and maybe that's only to do with the miserable weather. There was food in the kitchen when they got here, and other supplies, but if they stay much longer they'll eventually need to go out. There are no other houses visible from any of the windows. Just moors and, in the distance to the north, what looks like a forest. The road that brought them here must lead somewhere, though. All Tristram would need to do is keep walking. He'd come across someone who might help him eventually. If he didn't get shot first. So he hasn't tried yet.
He's still holding out hope that his father's going to come to them, as soon as he's finished with the men he was meeting in Switzerland. The more time passes, though, the more that hope dwindles. But if they're not waiting for Father, what then?
Irene is no help, of course. When he asks why they came here and when they can leave, all she does is say things like 'Isn't it fun to have a bit of time to get to know each other better?' and 'It doesn't make it happen any quicker if you keep asking,' and gets this kind of brittle smile that tells him to back off. Tristram is too acquainted with adult methods of obfuscation not to recognise that he's being given the runaround. In Tristram's opinion, it hasn't actually been much fun, perhaps because Irene is generally busy with her own secretive tasks.
Tristram looks down at the big, full-colour book on the Birds of Ireland in his lap that he found on one of the bookshelves. Most of the other books are the kind of thing Mrs Hudson likes but his father would use - and has done - only for kindling, but there's a small selection of books on travel and nature that have been keeping Tristram occupied. He skims the text in front of him briefly with one eye on Irene when something makes him do a double take. There: it's his name! Harbinger. His middle name, anyway. He forgets about Irene for the moment and reads more carefully:
Named after its distinctive call, the cuckoo is renowned as a harbinger of springtime.
Tristram knows - because Uncle Mycroft told him once - that his mother named him Harbinger as a way of getting back at his father because Father had said a baby was a harbinger of all the things he didn't want. Like being part of the rat race and picket fences and minivans. Tristram's not sure about the fences and minivans, but the rat race sounds kind of interesting. Still, Father apparently has negative associations with all of them, and that made Tristram think that a harbinger was always something bad. But here it says that the cuckoo is a harbinger of something good. At least he thinks so. People like springtime, don't they? Tristram likes the thought that he might also have brought good things to his father's life. He's pretty sure they've avoided the rats and pickets so far. He reads on:
The song is probably one of the most recognisable and well-known of all bird species. Despite its obvious song, it is relatively infrequently seen. In flight, it can be mistaken for a bird of prey such as a sparrowhawk. Adult females can appear in one of two forms. One is similar to the male but the breast is buff coloured with dark barring; the other form is reddish brown. It is a brood parasite, which means it lays eggs in the nests of other bird species. The common cuckoo has also occurred as a vagrant in countries including Barbados, the United States, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Indonesia, Palau, Seychelles, Taiwan, and China.
Tristram wonders whether Irene has been to all those places. It doesn't say Singapore, he notes.
Chapter notes: The text on the cuckoo is a combination of quotes from the following sites:
http://www.birdwatchireland.ie/IrelandsBirds/Cuckoos/Cuckoo/tabid/1096/Default.aspx
http://www.habitas.org.uk/priority/species.asp?item=47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cuckoo
http://www.arkive.org/cuckoo/cuculus-canorus/image-A23152.html
It really does say the line about the cuckoo being a harbinger of springtime. I couldn't believe I was lucky enough to stumble on that little gem.
Author:
swissmargBeta readers:
ruth0007, Rating: R
Pairing: Sherlock/John
Other characters: Irene Adler, OCs
Word count: ca. 85K when complete
Summary: Sequel to 'Cracks in the In-Between Places'. A Swiss holiday seems to be the perfect way for the Holmeses and the Watsons to recover from their recent troubles and deepen their attachments to each other, but when Tristram's mother and the bogeyman both turn up, loyalties are put to the ultimate test.
See Chapter One for additional notes
Read Chapter 14 on AO3
Chapter Fourteen
Tristram cannot let himself think about them: Father and John and Emily. Emily especially, because Father's been in sticky situations before and he's always got out of them, and John used to be in the army - and he seems like the kind of person who can take care of himself, especially the way he had Irene up against the wall, ready to crush her trachea before anyone had so much as blinked - but Tristram can't help remembering Emily being dragged away, kicking and screaming, by her Aunt Claire Friday Afternoon at the warehouse. And Aunt Claire wasn't even that big.
Irene said there were bad guys on the train, the same ones they were trying to get away from in the first place, and Tristram cannot let himself think about one of them getting his hands on Emily. The only thing that stops the awful, awful image from overtaking Tristram is the knowledge that John wouldn't let them. John would not let anyone touch Emily. 'Over my dead body', he said to Irene when she talked about taking Tristram back to England, and Tristram's not even his son. He's just a friend. That was a bad thing for Tristram to remember, he realises too late. The line about John's dead body. This is why he cannot let himself think about it.
There's a crushing guilt on top of everything else too, because he didn't actually go with Irene in order to get away from the bad guys. He went with her because he thought she was going to take him to his father. Even though he knew that meant leaving John and Emily behind on the train with the bad guys. He was selfish. Not that he could have done anything about it if he'd stayed, but now he doesn't know where any of them are.
Except for Irene: she's sitting at the desk on the other side of the low-ceilinged living room in the cramped little cottage she brought him to. The armchair he's curled up in smells like the stuff Mrs Hudson sprays around their flat when she gets in one of her tidying moods. Irene's writing and writing, something in longhand. She told him there are certain things you don't want to leave an electronic trace of.
'We have to move fast now, Tristram,' she'd said, wrapping her fingers around his arm the second John and Emily went through the hissing door at the end of the carriage, heading for the loo. Irene's eyes were big and intent. He'd thought they were earnest too, but now he thinks he was wrong. 'Someone has followed us onto this train, and I don't intend to let them catch us. Do you trust me?' she asked him.
Tristram couldn't even respond to that last bit - couldn't think about what it meant - because he was stuck on the first part. If they needed to get away, why had she waited until John and Emily left to say something? They should all go together, surely.
And so he asked, 'What about John and Emily?'
But Irene said, 'They don't want John and Emily, Tristram. They want you.'
Tristram's heart froze at that, only to be unfrozen by his confusion a moment later. John was the one they'd wanted, not Tristram. Even back at the warehouse, they hadn't really wanted him; he'd just been a way to get to Father, and they'd never actually hurt him. They could have done, but they hadn't. None of that mattered though, because whether Tristram was the one they were after now or John, that didn't explain why they had to leave right away, before John and Emily got back.
He didn't get any further than saying, 'Why can't we-' before Irene's hand tightened on his arm. It didn't quite hurt, but there was an unpleasant pinch.
'Because the four of us together are -' she started to answer his unasked question, but fell silent as someone passed by their seats. It was a woman with long, black hair and dark rings drawn around her eyes and very tight clothes. Was that one of the bad guys? She didn't look at them, but Irene waited until she disappeared into a seat several rows back before continuing, this time in a sharp hiss: 'Because Emily is a liability and John won't take directions from me. What do you think your father would do? Take you alone to safety, or sit here and wait for all of us to be caught?'
There was a time when Tristram wouldn't have hesitated with his answer, but at that moment he wasn't so sure. Father had wanted all of them to come to Switzerland, even though Emily didn't know how to escape a pair of handcuffs and John didn't seem to take directions from Father all that well either. Would Father have left John and Emily behind? Although it's true that he sort of did already. But Irene didn't give Tristram a chance to answer. She clamped her hand around his good wrist and stood up. Tristram reached automatically for his backpack, but Irene murmured, 'No, it has to look like we're coming back,' and stepped out into the aisle.
That was Tristram's first mistake. His phone was in that backpack. He couldn't use it in Switzerland, of course, but he'd taken it along anyway because John had told him always, always to keep his phone with him. John had also said never to leave it in his school bag or jacket because then he might not have it on him when he needed it, and so perhaps that was actually Tristram's first mistake: not carrying the phone in his trousers. At any rate, it got left behind, so he's not able to try and contact Uncle Mycroft (or his father or John) now. He's not sure he'd be able to use his phone from here anyway, so perhaps it's a moot point. It still nags at him.
Tristram's second mistake - and this is where the regrets really begin - is that he went with Irene at all. Because surely he could have done something else. Maybe he could have yanked his hand away - although she had a pretty good grip, but he might have caught her off-guard - and run to where John and Emily were. Or he could have sat back down and refused to move, or simply shouted out for John. But he had that tantalising thought in the back of his mind - maybe even a little further forward - that Irene knew where Father was; that Irene didn't like John and maybe wanted Father back, and was trying to give John the slip so that she and Father and Tristram could be together. That maybe there weren't any bad guys at all.
It was completely stupid; Tristram sees that now. It's not even as if Tristram wants that. Irene doesn't fit into their life, and he doesn't think she wants to, either. Not like that, anyway; not living in a tiny flat with mismatched furniture and diseased kidneys in the fridge and the police - and the not-so-occasional homeless person - knocking on their door at all hours of the day and night. Knocking, of course, because Father got annoyed at the bell when it kept going off while he was trying to work out a song on his violin, and unscrewed it from the wall and put it in the freezer. Tristram thinks it's actually still there, even though that was months ago. No, Tristram can't visualise Irene in the midst of all of that.
Quite aside from the fact that Irene and Father, for all that they were civil to each other the two times Tristram saw them together, don't make each other laugh the way John and Father do. They don't look at each other and seem to say lots more with their eyes and their hands and their shoulders and knees than comes out of their mouths. It doesn't make Tristram happy to think about Father and Irene together the way it does thinking about Father and John together. And it doesn't wrench at Tristram to think that Irene and Father might not actually like each other all that much the way it does when he thinks about the argument two nights ago, when John said he was going to take Emily and leave Tristram and Father behind.
But Tristram didn't think of all those things right there on the train, with Irene's hand around his wrist. All he had in mind was the vague hope of seeing his father again, and the convenient excuse of having to get away from the bad guys - even if Tristram never saw any evidence of them himself. And so rather than doing any of the things he could have - should have - done, Tristram followed Irene obediently through the carriage in the opposite direction from where John and Emily had gone. He is deeply ashamed to admit that he was even looking forward to a bit of an adventure with Father again, like the time they escaped from the hospital.
They walked through three more carriages to the snack bar, where Irene told the lady behind the counter that if a man came asking after them, she should say they'd been in and already gone back to their seats. Instead of actually going back, though, Irene led Tristram onward to the first class carriage and found them two seats. As soon as she sat down, she took out her phone and sent a text.
Tristram was convinced, right then, that she was texting his father. That perhaps his father was disguised as one of the other first-class passengers and was going to turn around and pull off his moustache or stand up and unhunch his back. But he wasn't, and he didn't. Tristram knows that Irene texted John at some point to let him know they hadn't been kidnapped, but this seems too soon. He doesn't think she could have risked informing John until they were off the train. Maybe she was contacting some other accomplice of hers - or maybe it had nothing at all to do with Tristram.
At any rate, as soon as she'd finished, she stood up again and the train began to slow. Irene led Tristram to the exit at the very front of the carriage, and as soon as the train stopped, she reached up over the door on the wrong side, unlocked it with the square-headed spanner she all of a sudden had in her hand, and opened it onto the track. Tristram has to admit he was a little bit excited at this point. The action smacked of something his father would do.
After checking quickly for any approaching trains, she bustled Tristram down onto the track, helped him up onto the opposite platform under the shocked stares of the tourists and commuters, and that was pretty much that.
Tristram can only assume that the bad guys lost their trail and left John and Emily alone, because he hasn't heard anything more about John and Emily since, and he won't let himself think about it beyond that. They should be back in London by now, at their house, with Emily's aunts. That is all Tristram allows himself to think. Another thought sneaks in anyway: maybe they are at Tristram's flat, with his father. But if that's the case, then Tristram was woefully, horribly wrong, and it's entirely his fault that he's here and not with them.
Because Irene didn't end up bringing him to his father; they've been in this creaky old cottage for two days now and it hasn't stopped raining the whole time. He thinks they're in Ireland. They flew from Mulhouse to Dublin anyway, but despite his best efforts, he fell asleep in the car that Irene hired at the airport and didn't wake up until they were pulling off the main road. It was dark by then, and all he could tell was that they weren't in a city. The low light of the headlamps didn't reveal much more than trees and fields and low stone walls on either side of the road.
Even though it all seemed like the whole thing was a spur-of-the-moment, mad dash trying to keep them one step ahead of their alleged pursuers, Tristram sees now that she must have planned it all meticulously. His passport, the flight from Mulhouse, the car waiting for them in Dublin. To say nothing of the house. It's not her house; Tristram knew that right away from the furniture and his deduction was confirmed by the fact that she had to rummage around in cupboards and drawers looking for things the first night. Tristram knows it's technically possible that she went online and set up the rental sometime during their flight, but there were clothes more or less in his size in one of the dressers. Irene called it a stroke of luck. Tristram didn't say anything, but that was his first clue that things might not have been as they appeared.
He actually asked her about the passport when she showed it at the airport, crossing over into France. It was kind of cool: half the airport was in Switzerland and half was in France. They were flying out of the French side, so they had to cross the border inside the airport.
Tristram had stared at the maroon booklet as she slipped it back into her purse once they were past the border checkpoint.
'Did John give you my passport?' he asked. After all the fuss John made about not wanting Irene to take him - and going to the extra trouble of having another passport sent - Tristram found it odd that John would have voluntarily surrendered it to Irene.
'No, I found it lying around in your hotel room,' Irene had said casually. 'Terribly careless of your father and John. Anyone could have picked it up. I thought it best that I hold on to it. And look how lucky it was that I did!' She beamed at him and reached down to take his hand, swinging it casually as they walked toward their gate.
'John was looking for it,' Tristram told her, becoming slightly cross because John and Uncle Mycroft both went to extra trouble over the missing passport. He didn't pull his hand away from Irene's, though. 'He thought my father had it.'
Irene got a little line between her eyes as her face adopted a look of concern. 'Oh, dear. I hope he wasn't too terribly worried. If only he'd asked me.' Then her expression cleared, and she said in a way that was certainly meant to be reassuring, 'But we were going to travel together anyway, so it didn't matter who held onto it.'
Tristram supposes, thinking back on it now, that that's true, but wouldn't it have behooved Irene to mention she'd picked up the passport when John came back? On the other hand, maybe she was so startled by the way John burst into the room and then put his elbow into her throat that she forgot. Or, like she said, didn't think it was important because they were going to be together anyway.
But they weren't together, and didn't it turn out to be terribly convenient that she happened to be the one with his passport? So convenient that she must have known she was going to need it, and that she and Tristram wouldn't be with John when they crossed the border. Tristram didn't question the fact that there were tickets waiting for them at the check-in counter at the time, either; he was too busy trying very hard to concentrate on his breathing. There was no open gallery in Mulhouse like there had been at the London airport, but there were the same kind of luggage trolleys and the same smell of aircraft exhaust and too many people for Tristram to keep his eye on all of them. He managed, but he wasn't able to ungrit his teeth until they were seated on the plane and he got a headache almost immediately after takeoff.
So he didn't think about the tickets then. But now he's had two days to go over and over those hours in his mind, and he's realised that she must have ordered those tickets earlier, just like she must have set things up here with the house. Maybe, in fact, John was right when he accused Irene of just waiting until Father was gone so she could take Tristram.
He is thus not entirely sure whether he's been kidnapped or not. It's not tense and scary like the time Emily's Aunt Claire took them to the warehouse in the car, and certainly no one's tried to do anything like tie him up or threaten him. But Irene won't let him call Uncle Mycroft even though she has a working phone (he got his hands on it once when she went to the loo, but it was locked).
Tristram also hasn't been allowed to go out of the house... although 'allowed' is perhaps the wrong word to use. Irene hasn't gone out either, and maybe that's only to do with the miserable weather. There was food in the kitchen when they got here, and other supplies, but if they stay much longer they'll eventually need to go out. There are no other houses visible from any of the windows. Just moors and, in the distance to the north, what looks like a forest. The road that brought them here must lead somewhere, though. All Tristram would need to do is keep walking. He'd come across someone who might help him eventually. If he didn't get shot first. So he hasn't tried yet.
He's still holding out hope that his father's going to come to them, as soon as he's finished with the men he was meeting in Switzerland. The more time passes, though, the more that hope dwindles. But if they're not waiting for Father, what then?
Irene is no help, of course. When he asks why they came here and when they can leave, all she does is say things like 'Isn't it fun to have a bit of time to get to know each other better?' and 'It doesn't make it happen any quicker if you keep asking,' and gets this kind of brittle smile that tells him to back off. Tristram is too acquainted with adult methods of obfuscation not to recognise that he's being given the runaround. In Tristram's opinion, it hasn't actually been much fun, perhaps because Irene is generally busy with her own secretive tasks.
Tristram looks down at the big, full-colour book on the Birds of Ireland in his lap that he found on one of the bookshelves. Most of the other books are the kind of thing Mrs Hudson likes but his father would use - and has done - only for kindling, but there's a small selection of books on travel and nature that have been keeping Tristram occupied. He skims the text in front of him briefly with one eye on Irene when something makes him do a double take. There: it's his name! Harbinger. His middle name, anyway. He forgets about Irene for the moment and reads more carefully:
Named after its distinctive call, the cuckoo is renowned as a harbinger of springtime.
Tristram knows - because Uncle Mycroft told him once - that his mother named him Harbinger as a way of getting back at his father because Father had said a baby was a harbinger of all the things he didn't want. Like being part of the rat race and picket fences and minivans. Tristram's not sure about the fences and minivans, but the rat race sounds kind of interesting. Still, Father apparently has negative associations with all of them, and that made Tristram think that a harbinger was always something bad. But here it says that the cuckoo is a harbinger of something good. At least he thinks so. People like springtime, don't they? Tristram likes the thought that he might also have brought good things to his father's life. He's pretty sure they've avoided the rats and pickets so far. He reads on:
The song is probably one of the most recognisable and well-known of all bird species. Despite its obvious song, it is relatively infrequently seen. In flight, it can be mistaken for a bird of prey such as a sparrowhawk. Adult females can appear in one of two forms. One is similar to the male but the breast is buff coloured with dark barring; the other form is reddish brown. It is a brood parasite, which means it lays eggs in the nests of other bird species. The common cuckoo has also occurred as a vagrant in countries including Barbados, the United States, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Indonesia, Palau, Seychelles, Taiwan, and China.
Tristram wonders whether Irene has been to all those places. It doesn't say Singapore, he notes.
&&&&&&
Chapter notes: The text on the cuckoo is a combination of quotes from the following sites:
http://www.birdwatchireland.ie/IrelandsBirds/Cuckoos/Cuckoo/tabid/1096/Default.aspx
http://www.habitas.org.uk/priority/species.asp?item=47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cuckoo
http://www.arkive.org/cuckoo/cuculus-canorus/image-A23152.html
It really does say the line about the cuckoo being a harbinger of springtime. I couldn't believe I was lucky enough to stumble on that little gem.
&&&&&&
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no subject
Date: 2014-08-21 08:35 pm (UTC)*grin* It's lovely how children take things literally sometimes.
I really don't like it when they split up; I can see it's for safety, but Tristan without a 'phone is a bit not good and I really don't like it when they can't all be together.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-22 05:32 am (UTC)But I agree with you, splitting up is never a good idea.
Thank you for the comment!