The Distant Hours (70 page)

She would go downstairs and she would write her novel, just as Percy had suggested. An hour or so in Adele’s lovely company was just the thing. Juniper was safe, Percy would find whatever there was to be found, and Saffy Would. Not. Panic.

She
must
not.

Resolved, she straightened the blanket and smoothed it gently across Juniper’s front. Her little sister didn’t flinch. She was sleeping so still: like a child, spent from a day beneath the sun; the clear, blue sky; a day beside the sea.

Such a special child she’d been. A memory came, instant and complete, a flash: Juniper as a girl, matchstick legs with white hairs shining in the sunlight. Crouching so her haunches supported her, knees with scabs, bare feet flat and dusty on the scorched summer earth. Perched above an old drain, scrabbling in the dirt with a stick, looking for the perfect stone to drop through the grille –

A sheet of rain slid across the window, and the girl, the sun, the smell of dry earth turned to smoke and blew away. Only the dim, musty attic remained. The attic where Saffy and Percy had been children together; within whose walls they’d grown from mewling babies into moody young ladies. Little evidence of their tenure remained, the sort that could be seen. Only the bed, the ink stain on the floor, the bookcase by the window that she’d –

No!

Stop!

Saffy clenched her fists. She noticed the bottle of Daddy’s pills. Considered a moment, then unscrewed the lid and shook one into her hand. It would take the edge off, help her to relax.

She left the door ajar and crept carefully down the narrow stairs.

Behind her in the attic room the curtains sighed.

Juniper flinched.

A long dress shimmered against the wardrobe like a pale, forgotten ghost.

It was moonless, it was wet, and despite her raincoat and boots, Percy was drenched. To make matters worse, the torch was being temperamental. She planted her feet on the muddied drive and gave the torch a whack against her palm; the battery rattled, light flickered and hope rose. Then it died. All of it.

Percy swore beneath her breath and swiped with her wrist at the hair that clung to her forehead. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to find, only that she’d hoped to have found it by now. The longer it took, the further from the castle she travelled, the less likely it was that the matter could be contained. And it must be contained.

She squinted through the rain, trying to make out what she could.

The brook was running high; she could hear it somersaulting, roaring on its way towards the wood. At this rate, the bridge would be out by morning.

She turned her head a little more to the left, sensed the glowering battalions of Cardarker Wood. Heard the wind skulking in the treetops.

Percy gave the torch another try. Damned thing ignored her still. She kept walking in the direction of the road, slowly, cautiously, scanning the way ahead as best she could.

A shard of lightning and the world was white; the sodden fields rolling away from her, the woods recoiling, the castle, its arms crossed in disappointment. A frozen moment in which Percy felt entirely alone, the cold, wet, white within as well as without.

She saw it as the light’s last echo died. A shape on the drive beyond. Something lying very still.

Dear God: the size, the shape, of a man.

Tom had brought flowers from London, a small bunch of orchids. They’d been hard to find, fiendishly expensive, and as day had dragged into night he’d come to regret the decision. They looked rather the worse for wear, and he’d started to wonder whether Juniper’s sisters would like shop-bought flowers any more than she did. He’d brought the birthday jam, too. Christ, he was nervous.

He checked his watch, then resolved not to do so again. He was beyond late. It couldn’t be helped: the train had been stopped, then he’d needed to find another bus and the only one heading east had gone from a nearby town so he’d had to run cross-country for miles only to find it was out of service that afternoon. This bus had come along three hours later to replace it, just as he was about to set out on foot and see if he could hitch himself a ride.

He’d worn his uniform; he was heading back to the Front in a few days and besides he was used to it now, but his nerves made him stiff and the jacket caught on his shoulders in a way that was unfamiliar. He’d worn his medal, too, the one they’d given him for the business on the Escaut Canal. Tom wasn’t sure how he felt about receiving it – he couldn’t feel it there against his chest without remembering the boys they’d lost as they scrambled madly out of hell, but it seemed to matter to others, his mother, for one, and seeing as it was his first time meeting Juniper’s family, he supposed it was best.

He wanted them to like him, for everything to go as well as possible. For her sake more than his; her ambivalence confused him. She’d spoken of her sisters and her childhood often, and always with affection. Listening to her, and recalling what he could of his own glimpse of the castle, Tom had begun to envisage an idyll, a rural fantasy; more than that, a fairy tale of sorts. And yet, for a long time she hadn’t wanted him to visit, had been almost wary if he so much as hinted at the possibility.

Then, not two weeks before – with characteristic suddenness – Juniper had changed her mind. While Tom was still reeling from the shock of her having accepted his proposal, she’d announced that they must visit her sisters and break the news together. Of course they must. So here he was. And he knew he must be getting close because they’d stopped a number of times already and he was one of the only passengers remaining. It had been overcast when he left London, a mask of white cloud covering the sky, gathering more darkly in the corners as he approached Kent, but now it was raining hard and the windscreen wipers were shushing in a way that would have made him sleepy if he wasn’t so nervous.

‘Going home then, are you?’

Tom searched the dark for the person attached to the voice, saw a woman sitting across the aisle. Fifty or so years old – it was difficult to know for sure – a kind enough face, the way his mother might have looked if her life had been an easier one. ‘Visiting a friend,’ he answered. ‘She lives on the Tenterden Road.’

‘She, eh?’ The woman wore a knowing smile. ‘A sweetheart, I think?’

He smiled because it was true, then let it drop again because it also wasn’t. He was going to marry Juniper Blythe, but she was not his sweetheart. ‘Sweetheart’ was the girl a fellow met when he was home between postings, the pretty girl with the pout and the legs and the empty promises of letters at the Front; the girl with a taste for gin and dancing and late-night groping.

Juniper Blythe was none of those things. She was going to be his wife, he would be her husband, but Tom knew, even as he clutched at absolutes, that she would never belong to him. Keats had known women like Juniper. When he wrote of his lady in the meads, the beautiful faery’s child with the long hair, the light foot, and the wild, wild eyes, he might have been describing Juniper Blythe.

The woman across the aisle was still awaiting confirmation, and Tom smiled. ‘Fiancé,’ he said, enjoying the word’s pregnant expectation of solidity, even as he cringed beneath its unsuitability.

‘Well now. Isn’t that lovely. So nice to hear happy stories at a time like this. Meet around here, did you?’

‘No – well, yes, but not properly. London, that’s where we met.’

‘London.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I go up to visit my friend sometimes, and when I last hopped off at Charing Cross . . .’ She shook her head. ‘Brave old London. Terrible, what’s happened. Any damage to you or yours?’

‘We’ve been lucky. So far.’

‘Taken you long to get here?’

‘I left on the nine twelve. It’s been a comedy of errors since.’

She was shaking her head. ‘The stopping and starting. The overcrowding. The identity checks – still, you’re here now. Almost at the end of your journey. Pity about the weather. Hope you’ve got an umbrella with you.’

He hadn’t, but he nodded and smiled and went back to thinking his own thoughts.

Saffy took her writing journal to the good parlour. Its fire was the only one they’d lit that evening and, despite everything, the room’s delicate arrangement still gave her some small pleasure. She didn’t like to feel enclosed, so she eschewed the armchairs in favour of the table. Cleared away one place setting. She did it neatly, careful not to disturb the other three – it was mad, she knew, but a tiny part of her still clung to the hope that they might yet dine, the four of them together.

She poured herself another whisky then sat and opened her notebook to the most recent page; read it through, reacquainting herself with Adele’s tragic love story. She sighed as the secret world of her book stretched out its arms to welcome her home.

A tremendous clap of thunder made Saffy jump and reminded her that she’d wanted to see about rewriting the scene in which William broke off his engagement to Adele.

Poor, dear Adele. Of course her world should be broken apart during a storm in which the heavens themselves seemed likely to be rent asunder! It was only right. All life’s tragic moments should be granted such elemental emphasis.

It ought to have stormed when Matthew broke off his engagement to Saffy, but it hadn’t. They’d been seated, side by side, in the loveseat by the library’s French doors, sunlight streaming across their laps. Twelve months since the ghastly trip to London, the play’s premiere, the dark theatre, the hideous creature emerging from the moat, climbing up the wall, bellowing with hideous pain . . . Saffy had just poured tea for two when Matthew spoke.

‘I believe the best thing now would be for us to release one another.’

‘To release . . . ? But I don’t . . . ?’ She blinked. ‘You no longer love me?’

‘I’ll always love you, Saffy.’

‘Then . . . why?’ She’d changed into the sapphire-blue dress when she knew that he was coming. It was her best: it was the one she’d worn to London; she’d wanted him to admire her, to covet her, to want her as he had that day by the lake. She felt foolish. ‘Why?’ she said again, despising the weakness in her voice.

‘We can’t marry; you know that as well as I. How can we live as man and wife when you refuse to leave the castle?’

‘Not refuse; I don’t refuse, I
long
to leave—’

‘Then come, come with me now—’

‘I can’t . . .’ She stood. ‘I’ve told you.’

A change came upon him then, a bitter knife twisting his features. ‘Of course you can. If you loved me, you would come. You’d climb into my motorcar and we’d drive away from this ghastly, mildewed place.’ He stood beside her, implored her. ‘Come on, Saffy,’ he said, all trace of resentment dropping away. He gestured with his hat to the top of the drive where his car was parked. ‘Let’s go. Let’s drive away this instant, the two of us together.’

She’d wanted to say again, ‘I can’t,’ to beg him to understand, to be patient, to wait for her; but she hadn’t. A moment of clarity, a struck match, and she’d known that there was nothing she could say or do to make him comprehend. The crippling panic that crept upon her if she tried to leave the castle; the black and groundless fear that dug its claws into her, wrapped her in its wings and made her lungs constrict, her vision blur that kept her prisoner in this cold, dark place, as weak and helpless as a child.

‘Come,’ he said again, reaching for her hand. ‘Come.’ He said it so tenderly that, sitting in the castle’s good parlour sixteen years later, Saffy would feel its echo trickling down her spine and settling warm beneath her skirt.

She’d smiled, she hadn’t been able to help it, even though she’d known herself to be standing at the top of a great cliff, dark water swirling beneath her, the man she loved urging her to let him save her, unaware that she couldn’t be saved, that his adversary was so much stronger than he was.

‘You were right,’ she’d said, leaping from the cliff, falling away from him. ‘The best thing for us both would be to release each other.’

She’d never seen Matthew again, nor her cousin Emily, who’d been lurking in the wings, waiting for her chance; always coveting that which Saffy wanted . . .

A log. Nothing but a piece of driftwood, washed downstream by the fast-rising current. Percy pulled it off the drive, cursing the weight, the branch that snagged her shoulder, and wondering whether she was relieved or dismayed that the search must now continue. She was about to press on down the drive when something stopped her. A strange sense, not a presentiment exactly, rather one of those odd, twin things. A swirl of misgiving. She wondered whether Saffy had taken her advice and found some occupation.

Percy stood in the rain, undecided, looked down the hill towards the road, then back at the blackened castle.

The not completely blackened castle.

There was a light, small but bright, shining from one of the windows. The good parlour.

The bloody shutter. If she’d only fixed it properly in the first place.

It was the shutter that decided her absolutely. The last thing they needed tonight was the attention of Mr Potts and his Home Guard platoon.

With a last backward look at the Tenterden Road, Percy turned and headed for the castle.