The Distant Hours (19 page)

Satisfied that the stockings were in good order, Saffy hung them on the bedrail and prepared to take on the wardrobe. Good Lord! She stopped still, turned her underwear-clad self this way and that, glancing back over her shoulder to get a rear view. Either the mirror had developed some sort of reflection disorder or she’d gained a few more pounds. Really, she ought to donate herself to science: to gain weight despite the grave state of England’s pantries? Saffy couldn’t decide whether it was downright un-British or a clever victory against Hitler’s U-boats. Not worthy perhaps of the Churchill Medal for the Maintenance of Beauty in England, but a triumph nonetheless. Saffy pulled a face at herself, cinched in her stomach, and opened the wardrobe door.

Behind the selection of dull pinafores and cardigans hanging at the front was a wonderland of vibrant neglected silks. Saffy clapped her hands to her cheeks; it was like revisiting old friends. Her wardrobe was her pride and joy, each dress a member of an esteemed club. It was a catalogue of her past, too, as she’d once thought during a fit of maudlin self-pity: the dresses she’d worn as a debutante, the silk gown she’d worn to the Milderhurst Midsummer Ball of 1923, even the blue frock she’d made to attend Daddy’s play’s premiere the following year. Daddy had maintained that daughters should be beautiful and they’d all continued to dress for dinner as long as he was alive; even when he was confined to his chair in the tower they’d made the effort to please him. After his death, however, there hadn’t seemed much point, not with the war. Saffy had kept it up for a time, but once Percy joined the ambulance service and started spending nights on duty they’d agreed, wordlessly, to let the custom slip away.

One by one, Saffy swept the gowns aside, until finally she glimpsed the peppermint silk. She held the others clear a moment, taking stock of its lustrous green front: the beading on the décolletage, the ribbon sash, the bias-cut skirt. She hadn’t worn it in years, could barely recall the previous occasion, but she could remember Lucy helping to mend it. It had been Percy’s fault; with those cigarettes and her careless manner of smoking them she was a menace to fine fabrics everywhere. Lucy had done a neat repair job though; Saffy had to hunt along the bodice to find the singe mark. Yes, it would do nicely; it would have to. Saffy drew it from the wardrobe, draped it across the bedspread, and took up her stockings.

The biggest mystery, she thought, spidering her fingers down the sides of the first stocking and easing her toes in, was how someone like Lucy could possibly have fallen in love with Harry the clock man in the first place. Such a plain little man, not at all a romantic hero, scuttering about the passages with his shoulders hunched and his hair always a little longer, a little thinner, a little less kempt than it should be—

‘Oh Lord; no!’ Saffy’s big toe caught and she began to topple sideways. There was a split second in which she might have righted herself, but her toenail had snagged in the fibre and to plant her foot would have risked a new ladder. Thus, she took the fall bravely, whacking her thigh painfully on the dressing-table corner. ‘Oh dear,’ she gasped. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ She slid onto the upholstered stool and scrambled to inspect the precious stocking: why, oh why, hadn’t she concentrated better on the task at hand? There would be no new stockings when these ones tore beyond repair. Fingers trembling she turned them over and over, running her finger-tips lightly across the surface.

All seemed in order; it had been a narrow escape. Saffy let out the sigh she’d been holding, and yet she wasn’t wholly relieved. She met her pink-cheeked reflection in the mirror and held it: there was more at stake here than the last remaining pair of stockings. When she and Percy were girls they’d had plenty of opportunity to observe adults up close and what they saw had mystified them. The ancient grotesques behaved, for the most part, as if they’d no inkling at all that they were old. This perplexed the twins, who agreed that there was nothing so unseemly as an old person who refused to acknowledge his or her limitations, and they’d made a pact never to let it happen to them. When they were old, they swore, they would jolly well act the part. ‘But how will we know?’ Saffy had said, dazzled by the existential knot at the question’s core. ‘Perhaps it’s one of those things, like sunburn, that can’t be felt until it’s too late to do anything about it.’ Percy had agreed on the problem’s tricksy nature, sitting quietly with her arms wrapped around her knees as she gave herself over to its consideration. Ever the pragmatist, she’d reached a solution first, saying slowly, ‘I suppose we must make a list of things that old people do – three ought to be enough. And when we find ourselves doing them, then we’ll know.’

Gathering the candidate habits had been simple – there was a lifetime’s observation of Daddy and Nanny to consult; more difficult was limiting their number to three. After much deliberation they’d settled on those leaving least room for equivocation: first, professing strong and repeated preference for England when Queen Victoria was on the throne; second, mentioning one’s health in any company other than that which included a medical professional; and third, failure to put on one’s undergarments whilst standing.

Saffy groaned, remembering that very morning when she’d been making up the bed in the guest chamber and caught herself detailing her lower-back pain to Lucy. The conversation’s topic had warranted the description and she’d been prepared to let it slide, but now this: felled by a pair of stockings? The prognosis was dismal indeed.

Percy had almost made it safely to the back door when Saffy finally appeared, gliding down the stairs as if she had nothing in the world to answer for. ‘Hello there, sister mine,’ she said. ‘Save any lives today?’

Percy inhaled. She needed time, space and a sharp swinging implement in order to clear her head and exorcise her anger. Otherwise, she was as likely as not to hurl it. ‘Four kittens from a drain and a clump of Edinburgh rock.’

‘Oh, well! Victory all round. Marvellous work indeed! – Shall we have a cup of tea?’

‘I’m going to chop some wood.’

‘Darling – ’ Saffy came a step closer – ‘I think that’s rather unnecessary.’

‘Better sooner than later. It’s about to pour with rain.’

‘I understand that,’ said Saffy, with exaggerated calm, ‘but I’m quite sure we’ve sufficient in the pile. Indeed, after your efforts this month, I estimate we’re set until approximately 1960. Why don’t you take yourself upstairs instead, get dressed for dinner – ’ Saffy paused as a loud noise sheeted from one side of the castle’s roof to the other – ‘there now, saved by the rain!’

Some days even the weather could be counted on to take the other side. Percy pulled out her tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. Without looking up she said, ‘Why did you ask her here?’

‘Who?’

A hard stare.

‘Oh that.’ Saffy waved her hand vaguely. ‘Clara’s mother was taken ill, Millie’s as daft as ever and you’re always so jolly busy: it was simply too much for me on my own. Besides, there’s no one who can sweet-talk Agatha quite like Lucy.’

‘You’ve done all right in the past.’

‘Darling of you to say so, Percy dear, but you know Aggie. I wouldn’t put it past her to cut out tonight, just to spite me. Ever since I let the milk boil over she’s held a mighty grudge.’

‘She’s –
it’s
– an oven, Seraphina.’

‘My point exactly! Who’d have thought her capable of such a ghastly temperament?’

Percy was being managed; she could feel it. The affected lightness in her sister’s voice, being cut off at the pass on her way to the back door, then shooed upstairs where she was willing to bet a dress – something wretchedly fancy – had already been laid out for her: it was as if Saffy feared she couldn’t be trusted to maintain civility in company. The suggestion made Percy want to roar, but such a reaction would only confirm her sister’s concerns, so she didn’t. Swallowing the urge, she dampened her paper and sealed the cigarette.

‘Anyway,’ Saffy continued, ‘Lucy’s been a darling, and with nothing decent to roast I decided we needed whatever help we could get.’

‘Nothing to roast?’ said Percy breezily. ‘Last I looked there were eight contenders fattening up nicely in the bird-house.’

Saffy drew breath. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I
dream
of drumsticks.’

A gratifying tremor had insinuated itself into Saffy’s voice, travelling all the way down to the tip of her pointed finger: ‘My girls are good little providers; they are not dinner. I will not have you looking at them and thinking of gravy. Why, it’s . . . it’s barbarous.’

There were a great many things Percy wanted to say, but as she stood there in the dank corridor, rain pounding the earth on the other side of the stone wall, her twin sister standing before her, shifting uncomfortably on the stair – hips and stomach stretching her old green dress in all the wrong places – Percy glimpsed the thread of time and all their various disappointments along it. It formed a block against which her present frustration slammed, concertinaing behind. She was the dominant twin, she always had been, and no matter how angry Saffy made her, fighting subverted some basic principle of the universe.

‘Perce?’ Saffy’s voice still trembled. ‘Do I need to put my girls under guard?’

‘You should have told me,’ Percy said with a short sigh, snatching the matches from her pocket. ‘That’s all. You should have told me about Lucy.’

‘I wish you’d just put the whole thing behind you, Perce. For your own sake. Servants have done worse to their employers than leave them. It’s not as if we found her with her fingers in the silver drawer.’

‘You should have told me.’ Percy’s throat ached as she spoke. She fumbled a single match from the deck.

‘If it matters so much, I won’t ask her back. For what it’s worth, I can’t imagine she’ll put up much argument; she struck me as rather keen to avoid your society. I think you frighten her.’

A snap as the matchstick broke between Percy’s fingers.

‘Oh, Perce – now look, you’re bleeding.’

‘It’s nothing.’ She wiped it on her trousers.

‘Not on your clothing, not blood, it’s impossible to clean.’ Saffy held up a crumpled item of clothing she’d brought with her from upstairs. ‘In case you failed to notice, the laundry staff left us some time ago. I’m all that’s left, boiling and stirring and scouring.’

Percy rubbed at the bloodstain on her leg, smudging it further.

Saffy sighed. ‘Leave your trousers for now; I’ll see to them. Go on upstairs, darling, and make yourself tidy.’

‘Yes.’ Percy was looking at her finger in mild surprise.

‘You put on a nice party frock and I’ll put on the kettle. Make us a pot of tea. Better yet, I’ll fix us a cocktail, shall I? It is a celebration, after all.’

Celebration was taking it a bit far, but Percy’s fight had left her. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Good idea.’

‘Bring your trousers down to the kitchen when you’re done; I’ll put them in to soak right away.’

Percy clenched and unclenched her hand as she started slowly up the stairs, and then she stopped and turned. ‘I almost forgot,’ she said, taking the typed envelope from her bag. ‘A letter for you in today’s post.’

Saffy hid inside the butler’s pantry to read the letter. She’d known immediately what it would be and it had taken all her efforts to conceal her excitement from Percy. She’d snatched at the envelope, then stood watch at the bottom of the stairs, making sure her sister didn’t suffer a last-minute change of heart and head for the woodpile instead. Only when she’d heard Percy’s bedroom door close behind her had she finally allowed herself to relax. She’d all but lost hope that a reply would ever come and, now that it had, she almost wished it hadn’t. The anticipation, the tyranny of the unknown, was nearly too much to bear.

Downstairs in the kitchen, she hurried into the windowless butler’s pantry, which had once swollen with the indomitable presence of Mr Broad but now contained little more to evidence his reign of terror than the desk and a wooden cabinet of old, impossibly tedious daily records. Saffy pulled the string that fired the light bulb and leaned against the desk. Her fingers turned to thumbs as she fumbled with the envelope.

Without her letter opener, which was sitting in its cradle on her writing desk upstairs, Saffy had to resort to tearing the envelope open. Which she didn’t like doing and therefore did as neatly as possible, almost enjoying the prolonged agony such extreme caution brought. She slipped the folded paper from within – very fine paper, she noted; cotton fibre, embossed, warm white – and, with a deep breath, opened it out flat. Eyes scanning quickly, she drank in the letter’s meaning, then went back to the beginning again, forcing herself to read more slowly, to believe what she was seeing, as incredible joyous lightness of being spread from deep within her body, turning even the outermost tips of her fingers to stardust.

She’d first glimpsed the advertisement in
The Times
when she was leafing through the lettings.
Female companion and governess sought to accompany Lady Dartington and her three children to America for the duration of the war
, it had read.
Educated, unmarried, cultured, experienced with children
. The advertisement might have been written with Saffy in mind. Though she had no children of her own, it was certainly not for lack of desire. There had been a time when her future thoughts had been filled – surely like most women’s? – with babies. It seemed they were not to be had, however, without a husband, and therein lay the sticking point. As to the other criteria, Saffy was quite confident she could claim without immodesty to possess both education and culture. So, she’d set out immediately to win the position, composing a letter of introduction, including a pair of splendid references, and putting together an application demonstrating Seraphina Blythe to be the ideal candidate. And then she’d waited, trying as best she could to keep her dreams of New York City to herself. Having long ago learned that there was no point ruffling Percy’s feathers unnecessarily, she hadn’t mentioned the position to her twin, allowing her mind to fill privately, and vividly, with possibilities. She’d imagined the journey in rather embarrassing detail, casting herself as a sort of latter-day Molly Brown, keeping the Dartington children’s spirits buoyed as they braved the U-boats en route for the great American port . . .