The Distant Hours (40 page)

Tom tried to find some dignity, decided trousers would help and pulled them over his wet shorts. He aimed for authority, tried not to let nervousness tip him over into cockiness. He was a teacher, for God’s sake, he was a man about to become a soldier; it shouldn’t be so hard. Professionalism, though, wasn’t an easy thing to exude when one was standing bare-foot and semi-naked in someone else’s garden. All earlier epiphanies regarding the foolishness of property law were revealed now as crude, if not delusional, and he swallowed before saying as calmly as he could, ‘My name is Thomas Cavill. I’m a teacher. I’ve come here to check on a pupil of mine I believe has been evacuated here.’ He was dripping water, a rivulet ran warm down the centre of his stomach, and he winced when he added, ‘I’m her teacher.’ Which, of course, he’d already said.

She’d rolled over and was watching him now from the centre of the pool, studying him as if she might be making mental notes. She swam beneath the water, a silvery streak, and emerged at the edge, pressed her arms flat against the stones, one hand on top of the other, and rested her chin on them. ‘Meredith.’

‘Yes.’ A sigh of relief. At last. ‘Yes, Meredith Baker. I’m here to see how she’s doing. To check that she’s all right.’

Those wide-apart eyes were on him, her feelings impossible to read. Then she smiled and her face was transformed in some transcendent way and he drew breath as she said, ‘I suppose you’d better ask her that yourself. She’ll be along soon. My sister’s measuring her for dresses.’

‘Good then. That’s good.’ Purpose was his life raft and he clung to it with gratitude and a total lack of shame. He put his arms back through his shirtsleeves and sat down on the end of a nearby sun lounger; pulling the folder and its checklist from his satchel. With a pretence of composure he performed great interest in its information, never mind that he could have recited it if pressed. It was as well to read it through again: he wanted to be sure that when any of his pupils’ parents saw him back in London, he’d be able to answer their questions with honesty and certainty. Most of his kids had been accommodated in the village, two with the vicar at the vicarage, another at a farmhouse down the way; Meredith, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the army of chimney pots above the distant trees, had scattered the furthest. A castle, according to the address on his checklist. He’d hoped to see inside, not just to see but to explore a little; so far the local ladies had been very welcoming, asking him in for tea and cake, fussing over whether he’d had enough.

He risked another glance at the creature in the pool and figured that an invitation here was decidedly unlikely. Her attention was elsewhere, so he let his focus rest on her a while. This girl was perplexing: she seemed blind to him and blind to his charm. He felt ordinary next to her and that was something he wasn’t used to. From this distance, however, and with his pride somewhat smoothed, he was able to put his vanity aside long enough to wonder who she was. The officious lady from the local WVS had told him that the castle was owned by one Mr Raymond Blythe, a writer (‘
The True History of the Mud Man –
why, surely you’ve read it?’) who was old now and unwell, but that Meredith would be in good hands with his twin daughters, a pair of spinsters perfectly suited to the care of a poor, homeless child. No other occupant had been mentioned and he had assumed, if indeed he’d given it much thought at all, that Mr Blythe and the twin spinsters would be the full complement at Milderhurst Castle. He certainly hadn’t expected this girl, this woman, this young and ungraspable woman who was certainly no spinster. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt incredibly urgent all of a sudden that he know more about her.

She splashed and he looked away, shook his head and smiled at his own regrettable conceit; Tom knew enough of himself to realize that his interest in her was in direct proportion to her lack of interest in him. Even as a child he’d been driven by that most senseless of all motivators: the desire to possess precisely what he couldn’t. He needed to let it go. She was just a girl. An eccentric girl at that.

A rustle then and a bonny Labrador charged honey-blond through the foliage, chasing its wagging tongue; Meredith appeared on its heels, a smile on her face that told him all he needed to know about her condition. Tom was so pleased to see her, a little piece of normality in spectacles, that he grinned and stood, almost tripping over himself in his hurry to greet her. ‘Hey there, kiddo. How’s tricks?’

She stopped dead, blinked at him, confounded, he realized, to see him so decidedly out of context. As the dog ran circles around her and the blush in her cheeks spread to her neck, she shuffled her plimsolls and said, ‘Hello, Mr Cavill.’

‘I’ve come to see how things are going.’

‘Things are going well, Mr Cavill. I’m staying in a castle.’

He smiled. She was a sweet kid, timid but clever with it. A quick mind and excellent skills of observation, a habit of noticing hidden details that made for surprising and original descriptions. She had little to no belief in herself unfortunately, and it wasn’t hard to see why: her parents had looked at Tom as if he’d lost his mind when he suggested she might sit the grammar school entry a year or two back. Tom was working on it though. ‘A castle! That’s a piece of luck. I don’t think I’ve ever been inside a castle.’

‘It’s very large and very dark, with a funny smell of mud and lots and lots of staircases.’

‘Have you climbed them all yet?’

‘Some, but not the stairs that lead to the tower.’

‘No?’

‘I’m not allowed up there. That’s where Mr Blythe works. He’s a writer, a real one.’

‘A real writer. He might offer you some tips if you’re lucky.’ Tom reached to give the side of her shoulder a playful tap.

She smiled, shy but pleased. ‘Maybe.’

‘Are you still writing your journal?’

‘Every day. There’s a lot to write about.’ She sneaked a glance at the pool and Tom followed it. Long legs drifted out behind the girl as she held onto the edge. A quote came unexpectedly into his head: Dostoevsky, ‘Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible.’ Tom cleared his throat. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s good then. The more you practise, the better you’ll become. Don’t let yourself settle for less than your best.’

‘I won’t.’

He smiled at her and nodded at his clipboard. ‘I can mark down that you’re happy then? Everything’s all right?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘You’re not missing your mum and dad too much?’

‘I’m writing them letters,’ said Meredith. ‘I know where the post office is and I’ve already sent them the postcard with my new address. The nearest school is in Tenterden, but there’s a bus that goes.’

‘And your brother and sister, they’re near the village too, aren’t they?’

Meredith nodded.

He laid his palm on her head; the hair on top was hot from the sun. ‘You’re going to be all right, kiddo.’

‘Mr Cavill?’

‘Yes?’

‘You should see the books inside. There’s a room just filled, every wall lined with shelves, all the way to the ceiling.’

He smiled broadly. ‘Well, I feel a whole lot better knowing that.’

‘Me too.’ She nodded at the figure in the water. ‘Juniper said I could read any of them that I wanted.’

Juniper. Her name was Juniper.

‘I’m already three-quarters through
The Woman in White
and then I’m going to read
Wuthering Heights
.’

‘Are you coming in, Merry?’ Juniper had swum back to the side and was beckoning to the younger girl. ‘The water’s lovely. Warm. Perfect. Blue.’

Something about his words on her lips made Tom shiver. Beside him Meredith shook her head as if the question had caught her off guard. ‘I don’t know how to swim.’

Juniper climbed out, slipped her white dress over her head so that it stuck to her wet legs. ‘We’ll have to do something about that while you’re here.’ She pulled her wet hair into a messy ponytail and tossed it over her shoulder. ‘Is there anything else?’ she said to him.

‘Well, I thought I might . . .’ He exhaled, collected himself and started again. ‘Perhaps I ought to come up with you and meet the other members of your household?’

‘No,’ said Juniper without flinching. ‘That’s not a good idea.’

He felt unreasonably affronted.

‘My sister doesn’t like strangers, particularly male strangers.’

‘I’m not a stranger, am I, Merry?’

Meredith smiled. Juniper did not. She said, ‘It isn’t personal. She’s funny that way.’

‘I see.’

She was standing close to him, drips sliding into her lashes as her eyes met his; he read no interest in them yet his pulse quickened. ‘Well then,’ she said.

‘Well then.’

‘If that’s it?’

‘That’s it.’

She lifted her chin and considered him a moment longer before nodding. A short flick that ended their interaction absolutely.

‘Goodbye, Mr Cavill,’ said Meredith.

He smiled, reached out to shake her hand. ‘Goodbye, kiddo. You take care now. Keep up your writing.’

And he watched them go, the two of them disappearing into the greenery, heading towards the castle. Long blonde hair dripping down her back, shoulder blades that sat like hesitant wings on either side. She reached out an arm and put it lightly around Meredith’s shoulders and hugged her close and, although Tom lost sight of them then, he thought he heard a giggle as they continued up the hillside.

Over a year would pass before he saw her again, before they met again quite by chance on a London street. He would be a different person by then, inexorably altered, quieter, less cocksure, as damaged as the city around him. He would have survived France, dragged his injured leg to Bray Dune, been evacuated from Dunkirk; he would have watched friends die in his arms, survived a bout of dysentery, and he would know that while John Keats was correct, that experience was indeed truth, there were some things it was as well not to know first-hand.

And the new Thomas Cavill would fall in love with Juniper Blythe for precisely the same reasons he’d found her so odd in that clearing, in that pool. In a world that had been greyed by ash and sadness, she would now seem wonderful to him; those magical unmarked aspects that remained quite separate from reality would enchant him, and in one fell swoop she would save him. He would love her with a passion that both frightened and revived him, a desperation that made a mockery of his neat dreams for the future.

But he knew none of that then. He knew only that he could check the last of his students off his list, that Meredith Baker was in safe hands, that she was happy and well cared for, that he was free now to hitch a ride back to London and get on with his education, his life’s plan. And although he wasn’t yet dry he buttoned up his shirt, sat to tie his shoelaces, and whistled to himself as he left the pool behind him, lily pads still bobbing over the ripples she’d left in the surface, that strange girl with the unearthly eyes. He started back down the hill, walking along the shallow brook that would lead him towards the road, away from Juniper Blythe and Milderhurst Castle, never – or so he thought – to see either one of them again.

Oh – but things were never to be the same afterwards! How could they be? Nothing in the thousand books she’d read, nothing she’d imagined, or dreamed, or written, could have prepared Juniper Blythe for the meeting by the pool with Thomas Cavill. When first she’d come upon him in the clearing, glimpsed him floating on the water’s surface, she’d presumed she must have conjured him herself. It had been some time since her last ‘visitor’, and it was true there’d been no thrumming in her head, no strange, displaced ocean whooshing in her ears to warn her; but there was a familiar aspect to the sunshine, an artificial, glittering quality that made the scene less real than the one she’d just left. She’d stared up at the canopy of trees and when the uppermost leaves moved with the wind, it appeared that flakes of gold were falling down to earth.

She’d sat on the pool swing because it was the safest thing to do when a visit was upon her.
Sit somewhere quiet, hold something firmly, wait for it to pass
: the three golden rules that Saffy had devised when Juniper was small. She’d lifted Juniper onto the table in the kitchen to tend her latest bleeding knee, and said very softly that the visitors were indeed a gift, just as Daddy said, but nonetheless she must learn to be careful.

‘But I love to play with them,’ Juniper had said. ‘They’re my friends. And they tell me such interesting things.’

‘I know, darling, and that’s wonderful. All I ask is that you remember that you’re not one of them. You are a little girl with skin, and blood beneath it, and bones that could break, and two big sisters who very much want to see you reach adulthood!’

‘And a daddy.’

‘Of course. And a daddy.’

‘But not a mother.’

‘No.’

‘But a puppy.’

‘Emerson, yes.’

‘And a patch on my knee.’

Saffy had laughed then, and given her a hug that smelled like talcum and jasmine and ink, and set her back down on the kitchen tiles. And Juniper had been very careful not to make eye contact with the figment at the window that was beckoning her outside to play.

Juniper didn’t know where the visitors came from. All she knew was that her earliest memories were of figures in the streams of light around her crib. They’d been there before she’d understood that others couldn’t see them. She had been called fey and mad, wicked and gifted; she’d driven away countless nannies who wouldn’t abide imaginary friends. ‘They’re not imaginary,’ Juniper had explained, over and over again, with as reasonable a tone as she could muster; but it seemed there were no English nannies prepared to accept this assertion as truth. One by one they’d packed their bags and demanded an audience with Daddy; from her hiding spot in the castle’s veins, the little nook by the gap in the stones, Juniper had cloaked herself in a whole new set of descriptions: ‘She’s impertinent . . .’, ‘She’s obstinate . . .’, and even, once, ‘Possessed!’