The Distant Hours (59 page)

It would certainly explain a lot of things. Percy Blythe might not have minded that her father carried on a relationship with his housekeeper, but for him to have fathered another child? A younger daughter, another half-sister for his girls? There would be implications if that was so, implications that had nothing to do with prudery or morality, implications that Percy Blythe, defender of the castle, protector of her family legacy, would do anything to avoid.

And yet, even as I thought such things, acknowledged the possibilities and drew quite tangible connections, there was something in Mrs Bird’s suggestion that I just could not accept. My resistance wasn’t rational and I would have struggled to explain it if asked; nonetheless, it was fierce. Loyalty, however misguided, to Percy Blythe, to the three old ladies on the hill who were such a closed coterie that it was impossible for me to imagine there might be any addition to their number.

The clock above the fireplace chose that moment to announce our arrival at the hour, and it was as if an enchantment had been broken. Mrs Bird, her burden lightened for having been shared, began to clear the salt and pepper shakers from the tables. ‘The room isn’t going to do itself, I expect,’ she said. ‘I keep hoping, but I’ve been disappointed thus far.’

I stood, too, gathering our empty tumblers.

Mrs Bird smiled at me as I arrived at her side. ‘They can surprise us, can’t they, our parents? The things they got up to before we were born.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Almost like they were real people once.’

On my first day of official interviews, I started early for the castle. It was cold and grey and although the previous night’s drizzle had lifted, it had taken much of the world’s vitality with it and the landscape looked to have been bleached. There was something new in the air, too, a bitter chill that made me drive my hands deep into my pockets as I walked, cursing myself because I’d forgotten to bring gloves.

The Sisters Blythe had told me not to knock, but to come in directly when I arrived and make my way to the yellow parlour. ‘It’s on Juniper’s account,’ Saffy had explained discreetly as I left the day before: ‘a knock at the door and she thinks it’s
him
, arrived at last.’ She didn’t explain further the identity of
him
; she didn’t have to.

The last thing I wanted to do was upset Juniper so I was on guard, particularly after my faux pas the day before. I did as I’d been told, pushed open the front door, stepped into the stone entrance hall and followed the dark corridor. Holding my breath, for some reason, as I went.

When I reached the parlour, no one was there. Even Juniper’s green velvet chair was empty. I stood for a moment, wondering what to do next, whether I’d somehow got the timing wrong. Then I heard footsteps and turned to see Saffy at the door, dressed in her usual pretty fashion, but with an air of fuss about her, as if I’d caught her unawares.

‘Oh!’ She stopped abruptly at the edge of the rug. ‘Edith, you’re here. But of course you are,’ a glance at the mantel clock, ‘it’s almost ten o’clock.’ She brushed a fine hand against her forehead and attempted a smile. It refused to form easily or fully and she dropped it. ‘I’m so sorry if I’ve kept you waiting. Only, we’ve had rather an eventful morning and time quite slipped away.’

A creeping sense of dread had followed her into the room and it settled now around me. ‘Is everything all right?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said, and she wore a pallor of such utter bereavement on her face that my first shocking thought, given the empty chair, was that something had happened to Juniper. It was almost a relief when she said, ‘It’s Bruno. He’s disappeared. He’d gone from Juniper’s room when I went to help her dress this morning and we’ve seen neither hide nor hair since.’

‘Perhaps he’s playing somewhere,’ I suggested. ‘In the woods or the gardens?’ Even as I said it, I remembered the way he’d looked the day before, the shortness of breath, the sagging shoulders, the ridge of grey along his spine, and I knew it wasn’t so.

Sure enough, Saffy shook her head: ‘No. No, he wouldn’t, you see. He rarely strays from Juniper, and then only ever to sit by the front stairs, watching for visitors. Not that we ever have any. Present company excepted.’ She smiled slightly, almost apologetically, as if she feared I might have taken offence. ‘This is different, though. We’re all terribly worried. He hasn’t been well and he’s not been acting himself. Percy had to go looking for him yesterday, and now this.’ Her fingers knotted together at her belt, and I wished there was something I could do to help. There are certain people who exude vulnerability, whose pain and discomfort are particularly difficult to witness, and for whom you would endure almost any inconvenience if it promised to ease their suffering. Saffy Blythe was one of them.

‘Why don’t I go and have a look at the spot where I saw him yesterday?’ I said, starting for the door. ‘Perhaps he’s gone back there for some reason.’

‘No – ’

She said it so sharply that I turned immediately; one of her hands reached out to me, the other worried the neckline of her knitted cardigan against her fragile skin.

‘What I mean is – ’ her outstretched arm dropped to her side – ‘how kind it is of you to offer, but that it’s unnecessary. Percy’s on the telephone right now, calling Mrs Bird’s nephew so that he might come around and help us search . . . I’m sorry. I’m not being very clear. Forgive me, but I’m rather flummoxed, only – ’ she glanced beyond me, at the door – ‘I had hoped that I might catch you like this.’

‘You had?’

She pressed her lips together, and I saw that she wasn’t merely worried for Bruno’s safety, she was nervous about something else. ‘Percy will be along in a minute,’ she said softly. ‘She’s going to take you to see the notebooks, just as she promised – but before she comes, before you go with her, there’s something I need to explain.’

Saffy looked so serious then, so vexed, that I went to her, placed a hand on the side of her birdlike shoulder. ‘Here,’ I said, leading her to the sofa, ‘come and sit down. Is there something I can get for you? A cup of tea while we wait?’

Her smile was lit with the gratitude of a person unused to being the recipient of kindness. ‘Bless you, but no. There isn’t time. Sit with me, please.’

A shadow shifted by the doorway and she stiffened slightly, listening. There was nothing but silence. Silence and the odd corporeal noises to which I was growing accustomed: the gurgle of something behind the pretty ceiling cornice, the gentle breathing of the shutters against the window pane, the grinding of the house’s bones.

‘I feel I must explain,’ she said in an undertone, ‘about Percy, about yesterday. When you asked about Juniper, when you mentioned
him
, and Percy was such a tyrant.’

‘You really don’t need to explain.’

‘But I do, I must, only it isn’t easy to find a private moment – ’ a grim smile – ‘such an enormous house and yet one is never really alone.’

Her nervousness was contagious and although I was doing nothing wrong a strange feeling came over me. My heart had started to race and I matched her subdued voice. ‘Is there somewhere else we could meet? The village perhaps?’

‘No.’ She said it quickly, shook her head. ‘No. I couldn’t do that. It isn’t possible.’ Another glance at the empty doorway and she said, ‘It’s best if we speak here.’

I nodded agreement and waited as she gathered her thoughts carefully, like a person collecting scattered pins. When she had them together, she told her story quickly, in a low, determined voice. ‘It was a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘A terrible, terrible thing. Over fifty years ago now, yet I remember the evening as if it were yesterday. Juniper’s face as she came through the door that night. She was late, she’d lost her key, so she knocked and we answered and in she came, dancing across the threshold – she never walked, not like an ordinary person – and her face – I’ll never stop seeing it when I close my eyes at night. That instant. It was such a relief to see her. A terrible storm had blown up during the afternoon, you see. It was raining and the wind was howling, the buses were running late . . . We’d been so worried.

‘We thought it was him when we heard the knock. I was nervous about that, too; worried about Juniper, nervous about meeting him. I’d guessed, you see, that they were in love, that they planned to marry. She hadn’t told Percy – Percy, like Daddy, had rather fixed opinions about such things – but Juniper and I were always very close. And I desperately wanted to like him; I wanted him to be worthy of her love. I was curious, too, on that count: Juniper’s love was not easily won.

‘We sat together for a time in the good parlour. We talked at first, of trivial things, Juniper’s life in London, and we told each other that he’d been held up on the bus, that transport was the culprit, the war was to blame, but at some point we stopped.’ She glanced sideways at me and memory shadowed her eyes. ‘The wind was blowing, the rain was hammering against the shutters, and the dinner was spoiling in the oven . . . the smell of rabbit – ’ her face turned at the thought – ‘it was everywhere. I’ve never been able to stomach it since. It tastes like fear to me. Lumps of horrid, charred, fear . . . I was so frightened, seeing Juniper like that. It was all we could do to stop her from running out into the storm, searching for him. Even when midnight passed and it was clear he wasn’t coming, she wouldn’t give up. She became hysterical, we had to use Daddy’s old sleeping pills to calm her – ’

Saffy broke off; she’d been speaking very quickly, trying to get her story told before Percy arrived, and her voice had dwindled. She coughed against a delicate lace handkerchief she’d pulled from her sleeve. There was a jug of water on the table near Juniper’s chair and I poured her some. ‘It must have been awful,’ I said, handing her the glass.

She sipped gratefully, then cradled the glass in both hands on her lap. Her nerves were stretched taut it seemed, the skin around her jaw appeared to have contracted during the telling and I could see the blue veins beneath.

‘And he never came?’ I prompted.

‘No.’

‘And you never knew why? There was no letter? No telephone call?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And Juniper?’

‘She waited and waited. She waits still. Days went by, then weeks. She never gave up hope. It was dreadful. Dreadful.’ The last word Saffy allowed to hang between us. She was lost in that time, all those years ago, and I didn’t probe further.

‘Madness isn’t sudden,’ she said eventually. ‘It sounds so simple – “she fell into madness” – but it isn’t like that. It was gradual. First she withdrew. She showed signs of recovery, she talked about going back to London, but only vaguely, and she never went. She stopped writing, too; that’s when I knew that something fragile, something precious, had been broken. Then one day she threw everything out of the attic window. All of it: books, papers, a desk, even the mattress . . .’ She tailed off and her lips moved silently around things she thought better of adding. With a sigh, she said, ‘The papers blew far and wide, down the hillsides, into the lake, like discarded leaves, their season ended. Where did they all go, I wonder?’

I shook my head: she was asking the whereabouts of more than papers, I knew, and there was nothing I could think to say. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been to see a beloved sibling regress in such a way; to watch countless layers of potential and personality, talent and possibility, disintegrate, one by one. How hard it must have been to witness, especially for someone like Saffy, who, according to Marilyn Bird, had been more like a mother to Juniper than a sister.

‘The furniture remained in a broken heap on the lawn. We none of us had the heart to carry it back upstairs, and Juniper didn’t want it. She took to sitting by the cupboard in the attic, the one with the hidden doorway, convinced that she could hear things on the other side. Voices calling to her, though of course they were in her head. The poor love. The doctor wanted to send her away when he heard that, to an
asylum
. . .’ Her voice caught on the ghastly word, her eyes implored me to find in it the same horror she did. She’d started kneading the white handkerchief with a balled hand, and I reached out to touch her forearm very gently.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

She was trembling with anger, with distress. ‘We wouldn’t hear a word of it;
I
wouldn’t hear a word of it. There was no way I was letting him take her from me. Percy spoke to the doctor, explained that such things were not done at Milderhurst Castle, that the Blythe family looked after its own. Eventually he agreed – Percy can be very persuasive – but he insisted on leaving stronger medicine for Juniper.’ She pressed the painted fingernails of her hand against her legs, like a cat, releasing tension, and I saw in the set of her features something I hadn’t noticed before. She was the softer twin, the submissive twin, but there was strength there, too. When it came to Juniper, when it came to fighting for the little sister whom she loved, Saffy Blythe was rock hard. Her next words shot like steam from a kettle, so hot they scalded: ‘Would that she’d never gone to London, never met that fellow. The greatest regret of my life is that she went away. Everything was ruined afterwards. Nothing was ever the same; not for any of us.’

And that’s when I began to glimpse her purpose in telling me this story, why she thought it might help to explain Percy’s brusqueness; the night Thomas Cavill failed to arrive had been life-altering for all of them. ‘Percy,’ I said, and Saffy gave a slight nod. ‘Percy was different afterwards?’