Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘I’m going to see Raymond Blythe’s work notebooks in the morning.’ I couldn’t help myself; the excitement just bubbled up and out of its own volition.

Mrs Bird was nonplussed, but in a kind sort of way. ‘Well, that’s nice, dear. You don’t mind if I…?’ She patted the chair across from me.

‘Of course not.’

She sat with a heavy lady’s huff, flattening a hand across her stomach as she righted herself against the table edge. ‘Well now, that feels a bit better. I’ve been run off my feet all day.’ She nodded at my notes. ‘But I see you’re working late, too.’

‘Trying. I’m a bit distracted though.’

‘Oh.’ Her eyebrows arrowed. ‘Handsome fellow, is it?’

‘Something like that. Mrs Bird, I don’t suppose there were any phone calls for me today?’

‘Phone calls? Nothing I can think of. Were you expecting one? The young fellow you’re mooning over?’ Her eyes brightened as she said, ‘Your publisher, perhaps?’

She looked so hopeful that it felt rather cruel to disappoint her. Nonetheless, for clarity’s sake: ‘My mum, actually. I had hoped she might make it down for a visit.’

A particularly large gust of wind rattled along the window locks and I shivered, from pleasure more than chill. There was something about the atmosphere that night, something enlivening. Mrs Bird and I were the only two remaining in the dining room, and the log in the fire had been honeycombed so that it glowed red, popping occasionally and spitting bits of gold against the bricks. I’m not sure whether it was the warm, smoky room itself, its contrast with the wet and the wind outside; or a reaction to the pervasive atmosphere of knots and secrets I’d encountered at the castle; or even just a sudden desire to have a normal conversation with another human being. Whatever the case, I felt expansive. I closed my notebook and pushed it aside. ‘My mother came here as an evacuee,’ I said. ‘During the war.’

‘To the village?’

‘To the castle.’

‘No! Really? Stayed there with the sisters?’

I nodded, pleased out of all proportion by her reaction. Wary, too, as a little voice inside my head whispered that my pleasure stemmed from the sense of possession Mum’s link with Milderhurst conferred onto me. A sense of possession that was most misplaced, and one that I’d thus far failed to mention to the Misses Blythe themselves.

‘Goodness!’ Mrs Bird was saying, clapping her fingertips together. ‘What a lot of stories she must have! The mind boggles.’

‘Actually, I have her war journal here with me-’

‘War journal?’

‘Her diary from the time. Bits and pieces about how she felt, the people she met, the place itself.’

‘Why then, there’s probably mention of my own mum in there,’ said Mrs Bird, straightening proudly.

It was my turn to be surprised. ‘Your mum?’

‘She worked at the castle. Started as a maid when she was sixteen; finished up as head housekeeper. Lucy Rogers, though it was Middleton back then.’

‘Lucy Middleton,’ I said slowly, trying to recall any mention in Mum’s journal. ‘I’m not sure; I’ll have to check.’ Mrs Bird’s shoulders had slumped a little under the weight of her disappointment and I felt personally responsible, clutching at ways to make it better. ‘She hasn’t told me much about it, you see; I only found out about her evacuation recently.’

I regretted saying it immediately. Hearing myself speak the words made me more acutely aware than ever how strange it was for a woman to have kept such a thing secret; and I felt implicated somehow, as if Mum’s silence might be due to a personal failing of mine. And I felt foolish, too, because if I’d been a little more circumspect, a little less eager to absorb Mrs Bird’s interest, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. I prepared myself for the worst, but Mrs Bird surprised me. With a knowing nod, she leaned a little closer and said, ‘Parents and their secrets, eh?’

‘Yes.’ A lump of charcoal popcorned in the hearth and Mrs Bird lifted a finger, signalling that she’d be back in just a minute; she squeezed herself out of her chair and disappeared through a concealed exit in the papered wall.

Rain blew softly against the wooden door, filling the pond outside, and I pressed my palms together, held them prayer-like against my lips, before tilting them to lean my cheek on the back of my fire-warmed hand.

When Mrs Bird returned with a bottle of whisky and two cut-glass tumblers, the suggestion so suited the moody, inclement evening that I smiled and accepted gladly.

We clinked glasses across the table.

‘My mother nearly didn’t marry,’ said Mrs Bird, pressing her lips and savouring the whisky warmth. ‘What do you think of that? I almost didn’t exist.’ She laid a hand against her brow in a performance of quelle horreur!

I smiled.

‘She had a brother, you see, an adored older brother. The way she tells it, he was responsible for making the sun rise each morning. Their father died young and Michael – that was his name – stepped in and took over. Real man about the house, he was; even as a boy he used to work after school and at weekends, cleaning windows for tuppence. Giving the coins to his mum so she could keep the house nice. Handsome, too – hang on! I’ve a photograph.’ She hurried to the hearth, wriggled her fingers above the host of frames cluttering the mantelpiece, before diving in and fishing out a small brass square. She used the plumped-out front of her tweed skirt to wipe dust from its face before handing it to me. Three figures caught in a long-ago instant: a young man whose destiny made him handsome, an older woman on one side, a pretty girl of about thirteen on the other.

‘Michael went with all the rest of them to fight in the Great War.’ Mrs Bird was standing behind me, peering heavily over my shoulder. ‘His last request, when my mum was seeing him off on the train, was that if anything happened to him she should stay at home with their mother.’ Mrs Bird took back the photo and sat down again, straightening her glasses on her nose to look at it further as she spoke. ‘What was she to say? She assured him she’d do as he asked. She was young – I don’t suppose she thought it would come to anything. People didn’t, not really. Not at the start of the Great War. They didn’t know then.’ She pulled out the frame’s cardboard stand and set it on the table by her glass.

I sipped my whisky and waited, and at length she sighed. She met my eyes; opened her hand upwards in a sudden motion, as if to toss invisible confetti. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘history happened. He was killed and poor old Mum resigned herself to doing as he’d asked. Can’t say I’d have been so obliging, but people were different back then. They stuck by their word. Grandmother was a right old harridan, to be honest, but Mum supported them both, gave up hopes of marriage and children, accepted her lot.’

A flurry of heavy rain drops spat against the nearby window and I shivered into my cardigan. ‘And yet. Here you are.’

‘Here I am.’

‘So what happened?’

‘Grandmother died,’ said Mrs Bird, with a matter-of-fact sort of nod, ‘very precipitously in June 1939. She’d been ill for a time, something to do with her liver, so it was no surprise. Rather a relief, I’ve always gathered, though Mum was far too kind to admit such a thing. By the time the war was nine months old, Mum was married and expecting me.’

‘A whirlwind romance.’

‘Whirlwind?’ Mrs Bird bunched her lips, considering. ‘I suppose so, by today’s standards. Not at the time, though, not in a war. I’m not so sure about the “romance” part, either, to be honest. I’ve always suspected it was a practical decision on Mum’s part. She never said as much, not in so many words, but children know such things, don’t they? No matter that we’d all prefer to believe we were the product of grand love affairs.’ She smiled at me, but in a tentative way, as if she were sizing me up, wondering whether she could trust me further.