The Distant Hours (60 page)

There came a noise then in the corridor, the deliberate gait, the unmistakable beating of Percy’s cane; as if she’d heard her name, intuited somehow that she was the subject of an illicit conversation.

Saffy used the arm of the sofa to push herself to standing. ‘Edith has just arrived,’ she said quickly, as Percy appeared at the door. She gestured towards me with the hand which held her handkerchief. ‘I was telling her about poor Bruno.’

Percy looked between us: from me, still seated on the sofa, to Saffy, standing right beside me.

‘Did you reach the young man?’ Saffy pressed on, her voice wavering a little.

A short nod. ‘He’s on his way. I’m going to meet him at the front door; give him some idea of where to look. ’

‘Yes,’ said Saffy, ‘good. Good.’

‘Then I’ll take Miss Burchill downstairs.’ She met my unspoken query. ‘The muniment room. As promised.’

I smiled, but instead of continuing the search for Bruno, as I’d expected, Percy walked into the parlour and went to stand by the window. She made a show of scrutinizing its wooden frame, scratching at a mark on the glass, leaning closer, but it was apparent that the impromptu inspection was a ruse so she might remain in the room with us. I realized then that Saffy had been right. For some reason Percy Blythe didn’t want me to be alone with her twin, and I returned to my suspicion of the day before – that Percy was worried Saffy might tell me something she shouldn’t. The control Percy wielded over her sisters was astonishing; it intrigued me, it caused a small voice inside my head to urge prudence, but more than anything it made me greedy to hear the conclusion of Saffy’s story.

The five or so minutes that followed, in which Saffy and I made small talk about the weather, and Percy continued to glare at the glass and prod at the dusty sill, were amongst the longest I’d experienced. At last, relief, as the sound of a car motor came closer. We all gave up our performances, falling instead into stillness and silence.

The motor grew very near and stopped. A heavy clunk as the car door closed. Percy exhaled. ‘That will be Nathan.’

‘Yes,’ said Saffy.

‘I’ll be back in five minutes.’

And then, finally, she left. Saffy waited, and only when the footsteps had receded completely did she sigh, once, shortly, and swivel in her seat to face me. She smiled, and in it I read apology and discomfort. When she picked up the thread of her story, there was a new determination to her voice. ‘Perhaps you can tell,’ she began, ‘Percy is the strongest of us. She’s always seen herself as a protector, even when we were girls. For the most part I’ve been glad. A champion can be a very fortunate thing to have.’

I couldn’t help but notice the way her fingers were moving against one another, the way she continued to glance towards the doorway. ‘Not always though,’ I said.

‘No. Not always. Not for me, and not for her either. The attribute has been a great burden in her life, not least after Juniper was . . . after it happened. We both took it hard, Juniper was our baby sister, is still our baby sister, and to see her like that,’ her head was shaking as she spoke, ‘it was unspeakably difficult. But Percy – ’ Saffy’s gaze picked at the space above my head, as if she might find there the words she sought to explain – ‘Percy was in such a black mood afterwards. She’d been crotchety in the lead up – my twin was one of those women who found purpose during the war and when the bombs stopped falling, when Hitler turned his sights on Russia, she was rather disappointed – but after that evening, it was different. She took the young man’s desertion of Juniper personally.’

This was a curious turn. ‘Why would that have been?’

‘It was strange, almost as if she felt responsible in some way. She wasn’t, of course, and there was nothing she could have done that would have made things turn out differently. But that’s Percy: she blamed herself because that’s what Percy does. One of us was hurt and there was nothing she could do to fix it.’ She sighed, folding her handkerchief over and over to form a small, neat triangle. ‘And I suppose that’s why I’m telling you all this, though I fear I’m doing it all wrong. I want you to understand that Percy’s a good person, that despite the way she is, the way she comes across, she has a good heart.’

It was important to Saffy, I could tell, that I should not think poorly of her twin, so I returned the smile she’d given me. But she was right – there was something about her story that didn’t make sense. ‘Why, though?’ I said. ‘Why would she have felt responsible? Did she know him? Had she met him before?’

‘No, never.’ She looked at me searchingly. ‘He lived in London; that’s where he and Juniper met. Percy hadn’t been to London since before the war.’

I was nodding, but I was thinking, too, about my mum’s journal, the entry she’d made in which she mentioned that her teacher, Thomas Cavill, had come to visit her at Milderhurst in September 1939. That was the first time Juniper Blythe had met the man she would one day fall in love with. Percy might not have been to London, but there was every possibility that she’d met Thomas Cavill while he was here, in Kent. Though Saffy, it was evident, had not.

A cool gust crept into the room and Saffy pulled her cardigan closer. I noticed that the skin across her collarbone had reddened, she was flushed; she regretted saying as much as she had, and she moved quickly now to sweep her indiscreet comments back beneath the rug. ‘My point is only that Percy took it very hard, that it changed her. I was glad when the Germans started with the doodlebugs and V2s because it gave her something new to worry about.’ Saffy laughed, but it had a hollow ring. ‘She’d have been happiest, I sometimes think, had the war continued indefinitely.’

She was uncomfortable and I felt bad for her; sorry, too, that it was my probing that had caused her this new worry. She’d only meant to assuage any bruised feelings I’d suffered the day before and it seemed cruel to saddle her with a new social anxiety. I smiled and tried to change the subject. ‘And what about you? Did you work during the war?’

She cheered up a little. ‘Oh, we all did our bit; I didn’t do anything as exciting as Percy, of course. She’s the better suited to heroics. I sewed and cooked and made do; knitted a thousands socks. Though not particularly well in some cases.’ She was poking fun at herself and I smiled with her, an image coming to mind of a young girl shivering in the castle’s attic, shrunken socks layering both ankles and the hand that didn’t hold her pen. ‘I almost spent it employed as a governess, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. A family of children who went to America for the duration. I received the offer of employment but had to turn it down.’

‘Because of the war?’

‘No. The letter arrived at the same time as Juniper’s great disappointment. Now, don’t you look like that. No need for a long face on my account. I don’t believe in regrets, not generally, there’s not much point, is there? I couldn’t have taken it, not then. Not when it took me so far away, not with Juniper. How could I have left her?’

I didn’t have siblings; I wasn’t sure how these things worked. ‘Percy couldn’t have—?’

‘Percy has many gifts, but caring for children and invalids has never been among them. It takes a certain – ’ her fingertips fussed, and she searched the antique firescreen as if the words she sought might be written there – ‘softness, I suppose. No. I couldn’t have left Juniper with only Percy to care for her. So I wrote a letter, turning the position down.’

‘It must have been very difficult.’

‘One doesn’t have a choice when it comes to family. Juniper was my baby sister. I wasn’t about to leave her, not like that. And besides, even if the fellow had come as he was supposed to, if they’d married and moved away, I probably wouldn’t have been able to leave anyway.’

‘Why not?’

She turned her elegant neck, didn’t meet my eye.

A noise in the corridor, just as before, a muffled cough and the sharp beat of a cane coming towards us.

‘Percy . . .’ And in the moment before she smiled I glimpsed the answer to my question. I saw in her pained expression a lifetime of entrapment. They were twins, two halves of a whole, but where one had longed for escape, to lead a single existence, the other had refused to be left alone. And Saffy, whose softness made her weak, whose compassion made her kind, had been unable ever to wrest herself free.

I followed Percy Blythe along corridors and down sets of stairs into the increasingly dim depths of the castle. Never chatty, that morning she was resolutely stony. Stony and coated with stale cigarette smoke; the smell was so strong I had to leave a pace between us as we walked. The silence suited me, at any rate; after my conversation with Saffy, I was in no mood for awkward chatter. Something in her story, or perhaps not in the story itself so much as the fact that she’d told it to me, was disquieting. She’d said it was an attempt to explain Percy’s manner, and I could well believe that both the twins had been shattered by Juniper’s abandonment and subsequent collapse, but why had Saffy been so adamant that it was harder for Percy? Especially when Saffy herself had taken on the maternal role with her wounded little sister. She’d been embarrassed by Percy’s discourtesy the day before, I knew, and she’d sought to show her twin’s human face; yet it was almost as if she protested too much, was
too
determined that I should see Percy Blythe in a saintly light.

Percy stopped at a juncture of corridors and took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. Gristly knuckles balled as she fidgeted with a match, finally bringing it to life; in the flame’s light I glimpsed her face and I saw there proof that she was shaken by the morning’s events. As the sweet, smoky smell of fresh tobacco mushroomed around us, and the silence deepened, I said, ‘I’m really sorry about Bruno. I’m sure Mrs Bird’s nephew will find him.’

‘Are you?’ Percy exhaled and her eyes scanned mine without kindness. A twitch on one side of her lip. ‘Animals know when their end is coming, Miss Burchill. They do not wish to be a burden. They are not like human beings, seeking always to be comforted.’ She inclined her head, indicating that I should follow her around the corner, and I felt foolish and small and resolved to offer no further words of sympathy.

We stopped again at the first door we came to. One of the many we’d passed during the tour all those months ago. Cigarette resting on her lip, she pulled from her pocket a large key and rattled it in the lock. After a moment’s difficulty, the old mechanism turned and the door creaked open. It was dark inside, there were no windows, and from what I could make out the walls were lined with heavy wooden filing cabinets, the sort you might find in very, very old legal firms in the City. A single light bulb hung from a fine, frail wire, drifting a little back and forth in the new breath of air from the open door.

I waited for Percy to lead the way, and when she didn’t I looked at her, uncertain. She drew on her cigarette and said only, ‘I don’t go in there.’

Perhaps my surprise showed for she added, with a tremor so slight I almost missed it, ‘I don’t enjoy small spaces. There’s a paraffin lamp around that corner. Pull it out and I’ll light it for you.’

I glanced back into the room’s black depths. ‘Does the light bulb not work?’

She regarded me a moment, then pulled a string and the bulb flared then dulled, settling at a low level, so that the shadows shifted. The light penetrated only far enough to illuminate a patch three feet in diameter. ‘I’d suggest you take the lamp too.’

I smiled grimly and found it easily enough, tucked around the corner just as she’d said it would be. There was a sloshing sound as I retrieved it, at which Percy Blythe said, ‘That’s promising. Not much good without paraffin inside.’ As I held the base, she removed the glass flue, fiddled with a coin-sized dial to lengthen the fabric wick before lighting it. ‘I’ve never enjoyed the smell,’ she said, restoring the flue. ‘It signals bomb shelters to me; ghastly places. Filled with fear and helplessness.’

‘And safety, I’d have thought. Comfort?’

‘Perhaps for some, Miss Burchill.’

She said no more, and I found occupation familiarizing myself with the thin metal handle at the top, testing it to make sure it would hold the lamp’s weight.

‘No one’s been inside for an age,’ said Percy Blythe. ‘There’s a desk at the back. You’ll find the notebooks in boxes beneath. I wouldn’t imagine that they’re in good order: Daddy died during the war; there were other things to contend with. No one had much time for filing.’ She said it defensively, as if I might be about to take her to task for slovenly housekeeping.

‘Of course.’

A flicker of doubt crossed her face, but dissolved when she coughed heavily into her hand. ‘Well then,’ she said, once recovered. ‘I’ll be back in an hour.’

I nodded, keen suddenly that she might stick around just a little longer. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I’m really very grateful for the opportunity—’

‘Be careful with the door. Don’t let it close behind you.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s self-locking. We lost a dog that way.’ Her lips distorted, a grimace that didn’t quite become a smile. ‘I’m an old lady, you know. I can’t be relied upon to remember where I left you.’

The room was long and thin, and low brick arches spanned the width, holding up the ceiling. I clutched the lamp tightly, lifting it out ahead of me so that light flickered against the walls as I took slow, cautious steps deeper inside. Percy had told the truth when she said that no one had been inside for a long time. The room bore an unmistakable signature of stillness. There was silence, too, church silence and I had the uncanny sense that something greater than me was watching.