The Distant Hours (74 page)

Thomas Cavill didn’t go with his regiment when they headed into the slaughter of North Africa. He was already dead by then. Dead and buried, cold beneath the ground of Milderhurst Castle. He died because the night was wet. Because a shutter was loose. Because he wanted to make a good impression. He died because many years before a jealous husband had found his wife with another man.

For a long time, though, nobody knew. The storm cleared, the floodwater receded, and the protective wings of Cardarker Wood spread out around Milderhurst Castle. The world forgot about Thomas Cavill, and any questions of his fate were lost beneath the destruction and debris of war.

Percy sent her letter, the final, rotten untruth that would plague her all her life; Saffy wrote to decline the governess position – Juniper needed her, what else could she have done? Planes flew overhead, war ended, the sky peeled back to reveal one new year after another. The Sisters Blythe grew old; they became objects of quaint curiosity in the village, the subjects of myth. Until one day, a young woman came to visit. She had ties to another who had come before and the castle stones began to whisper with recognition. Percy Blythe saw that it was time. That after fifty years of carrying her burden, she could finally take it from her shoulders and return to Thomas Cavill his closing date. The story could come to an end.

So she did, and she charged the girl to do the right thing with it.

Which left only one remaining task.

She gathered her sisters, her beloved sisters, and made sure they were fast asleep and dreaming. And then she struck a match, in the library where it had all begun.

For decades the attic has been used as storage. Nothing but boxes and old chairs and superseded printing materials. The building itself is home to a publishing house, and the faint smell of paper and ink has impregnated the walls and floors. It is rather pleasant, if you like that sort of thing.

It is 1993; the renovation has taken months but it is finally complete. The clutter has been cleared, the wall that someone, sometime, erected so that one draughty attic might become two, is gone, and for the first time in fifty years, the attic at the top of Herbert Billing’s Victorian house in Notting Hill has a new tenant.

A knock at the door and a young woman skips across the floor from the windowsill. It’s a particularly wide sill, perfect for perching, which is just what she’s been doing. The girl is drawn to the window. The flat faces south so there is always sun, particularly in July. She likes to look out across the garden, along the street, and to feed the sparrows who have started to visit her for breadcrumbs. She wonders too at the strange dark patches on the sill, almost like cherry stains, that refuse to remain hidden beneath the coat of fresh white paint.

Edie Burchill opens the door and is surprised and pleased to see her mother standing there. Meredith hands her a sprig of honeysuckle and says, ‘I saw it growing on a fence and couldn’t resist bringing you some. Nothing brightens a room quite like honeysuckle, don’t you think? Have you a vase?’

Edie hasn’t, not yet, but she does have an idea. A glass jar, the sort that might once have been used to hold jam, was turned up during the renovation and is sitting now by the basin. Edie fills it with water and puts the sprig inside, pops it on the windowsill where it will catch some sun. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she says. ‘He didn’t come with you today?’

‘He’s discovered Dickens.
Bleak House
.’

‘Ah, well then,’ says Edie. ‘I’m afraid you’ve really lost him now.’

Meredith reaches inside her bag and pulls a pile of paper from within, shakes it above her head.

‘You’ve finished it!’ says Edie, clapping her hands.

‘I have.’

‘And this is my copy?’

‘I’ve had it bound especially.’

Edie grins and takes the manuscript from her mother. ‘Congratulations – what a feat!’

‘I was going to wait until we saw you tomorrow,’ Meredith says, flushing, ‘but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted you to be the first to read it.’

‘I should think so! What time’s your class?’

‘Three.’

‘I’ll walk with you,’ says Edie. ‘I’m on my way to visit Theo.’

Edie opens the door and holds it for her mother. She’s about to follow when she remembers something. She’s meeting Adam Gilbert later for a drink to celebrate the publication of Pippin Books’
Mud Man
, and has promised to show him her first edition
Jane Eyre
, a gift from Herbert when she agreed to take over at Billing & Brown.

She turns quickly, and for a split second sees two figures on the sill. A man and a woman, close enough that their foreheads might be touching. She blinks and they’re gone. Nothing left to see but the spill of sunlight across the sill.

It is not the first time. It happens occasionally, the shift on her peripheral vision. She knows it’s just the play of sunshine on the whitewashed walls but Edie is fanciful and lets herself imagine that it’s something more. That once upon a time, a happy couple lived together in the flat that is now hers. That they were the ones who left the cherry stains on her sill. That it was their happiness that soaked into the walls of the flat.

For everyone who visits says the same thing, that the room has a good feeling about it. And it’s true. Edie can’t explain it, but there is a good feeling in the attic; it is a happy place.

‘Are you coming, Edie?’

It’s Meredith, poking her head around the door, anxious not to be late for the writing class she loves so much.

‘Coming.’ Edie snatches up
Jane Eyre
, checks her reflection in the little mirror propped above the porcelain sink, and runs after her mother.

The door closes behind her, leaving the ghostly lovers alone once more in the quiet and the warm.

My sincere thanks to everyone who read and commented on early drafts of
The Distant Hours
, particularly Davin Patterson, Kim Wilkins, and Julia Kretschmer; to my friend and agent, Selwa Anthony, for taking such great care of me; to Diane Morton for speed-reading the final pages; and to all my family – Mortons, Pattersons, and especially Oliver and Louis – and friends, for allowing me to abscond so often to Milderhurst Castle, and for putting up with me when I stumbled back down the hill, dazed, distracted and sometimes even a tad displaced.

I am fortunate to work with a brilliant continent-spanning editorial team, and for their tireless work and unending support in getting
The Distant Hours
to the printer on time, I’d like to offer heartfelt thanks to Annette Barlow and Clara Finlay at Allen & Unwin, Australia; Maria Rejt, Eli Dryden and Sophie Orme at Mantle, UK; and Liz Cowen, whose knowledge of all things continues to amaze me. Great thanks, too, is due to Lisa Keim, Judith Curr and staff at Atria Books, US, as it is to all my publishers, for their continued dedication to me and my books.

Thank you also to Robert Gorman at Allen & Unwin for his commitment; to Sammy and Simon from Bookhouse, who were incredibly patient with me and meticulous when it came to typesetting my words; to Clive Harris, who showed me that the Blitz can still be found in London if you know where to look; to the artists and designers who worked on creating such beautiful jackets for
The Distant Hours
; to booksellers and librarians everywhere for understanding that stories are special things; and in memory of Herbert and Rita Davies.

Finally, a big thank you to my readers. Without you, it would only be half the pleasure.

The Distant Hours
started as a single idea about a set of sisters in a castle on a hill. I drew further inspiration from a great many sources, including illustrations, photographs, maps, poems, diaries, Mass Observation journals, online accounts of the Second World War, the Imperial War Museum’s
Children’s War
exhibition, my own visits to castles and country houses, novels and films from the 1930s and 1940s, ghost stories, and gothic novels of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While it’s impossible to list all of the non-fiction consulted, the following are some of my favourites: Nicola Beauman,
A Very Great Profession
(1995); Katherine Bradley-Hole,
Lost Gardens of England
(2008); Ann De Courcy,
Debs at War
(2005); Mark Girouard,
Life in the English Country House
(1979); Susan Goodman,
Children of War
(2005); Juliet Gardiner,
Wartime Britain 1939–1945
(2004); Juliet Gardiner,
The Children’s War
(2005); Vere Hodgson,
Few Eggs and No Oranges: The Diaries of Vere Hodgson 1940–45
(1998); Gina Hughes,
A Harvest of Memories: A Wartime Evacuee in Kent
(2005); Richard Broad and Suzie Fleming (ed.)
Nella Last’s War: The Second World War Diaries of ‘Housewife, 49’
(1981); Norman Longmate,
How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life in the Second World War
(1971); Raynes Minns,
Bombers & Mash: The Domestic Front 1939– 45
(1988); Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg,
On the Other Side: Letters to My Children from Germany 1940–1946
(1979); Jeffrey Musson,
The English Manor House
(1999); Adam Nicolson,
Sissinghurst
(2008); Virginia Nicolson,
Singled Out
(2007); Miranda Seymour,
In My Father’s House
(2007); Christopher Simon Sykes,
Country House Camera
(1980); Ben Wicks,
No Time to Wave Goodbye
(1989); Sandra Koa Wing,
Our Longest Days
(2007); Philip Ziegler,
London at War 1939–1945
(1995).

Also by Kate Morton

THE HOUSE AT RIVERTON

THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN

For Kim Wilkins,

who encouraged me to start;

and

Davin Patterson,

who was with me to the last full stop

First published in Australia 2010 by Allen & Unwin

First published in Great Britain 2010 by Mantle

This electronic edition published 2010 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
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www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-75591-8 PDF
ISBN 978-0-230-75589-5 EPUB

Copyright © Kate Morton 2010

The right of Kate Morton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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