Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘Did something happen?’ I asked, edging closer. ‘Something to make you feel like that?’

Mrs Bird drained the rest of her whisky and twisted the glass back and forth, making rings on the table top. She frowned then at the bottle, seemed to be engaged in some deep and silent debate; I can’t say whether she won or lost, but she took the top off and poured us each another.

‘I found something,’ she said. ‘A few years back. After Mum passed away and I was taking care of her affairs.’

Whisky hummed warm in my throat. ‘What was it?’

‘Love letters.’

‘Oh.’

‘Not from my father.’

‘Oh!’

‘Hidden in a tin at the back of her dressing-table drawer. I almost didn’t find them, you know. It wasn’t until an antiques dealer came to see about buying some of the furniture. I was showing him the pieces and I thought the drawer was stuck, so I pulled it, rather harder than I needed to, and the tin came scuttling to the front.’

‘Did you read them?’

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘I opened the tin later. Terrible, I know.’ She flushed and began smoothing the hair by her temples, hiding, it seemed, behind her curled hands. ‘I just couldn’t help it. By the time I realized what I was reading, well, I had to keep on with it, didn’t I? They were lovely, you see. Heartfelt. To the point, but almost the more meaningful for their brevity. And there was something else, an air of sadness in those letters. They were all written before she married my dad – Mum wasn’t the type to play up once she was wed. No, this was a love affair from back when her own mother was still alive, when there was no chance that she might marry or move away.’

‘Who was it, do you know? Who wrote the letters?’

She left her hair alone then, flattened her hands on the table. The stillness was arresting, and when she leaned towards me, I felt myself incline to meet her. ‘I really shouldn’t say,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like to gossip.’

‘Of course not.’

She paused and a thread of excitement plucked at her lip; she shot a surreptitious glance over each shoulder in turn. ‘I’m not one hundred per cent certain; they weren’t signed with a full name, just a single initial.’ She met my eyes, blinked, then smiled, almost slyly. ‘It was an R .’

‘An R.’ I echoed her accentuated pronunciation of the letter, thought about it a moment, chewed the inside of my cheek and then I gasped. ‘Why, you don’t think…?’ But why not? She meant R for Raymond Blythe. The King of the Castle and his long-time housekeeper: it was almost a cliché, and clichés only got that way because they happened all the time. ‘That would explain the secrecy in the letters, the impossibility of being open about their relationship.’

‘It would explain something else, too.’

I looked at her, still dazed by the whole proposition.

‘There’s a coldness in the eldest sister, Persephone; a coldness towards me . It’s nothing I’ve done, certainly, and yet I’ve always felt it. Once, when I was a girl, she caught me playing by the pool, the circular one with the swing. Well – the look in her eyes; it was as if she’d seen a ghost. I half believed she might be going to throttle me, then and there. Since I found out about my mum’s affair, though, the likelihood that it was with Mr Blythe, well, I’ve wondered whether Percy might not have known; whether she might not have found out somehow and taken umbrage. Things were different back then, between the classes. And Percy Blythe is a rigid sort of person, one for rules and traditions.’

I was nodding, but slowly; it certainly didn’t sound implausible. Percy Blythe didn’t strike me as the type ever to be warm and fuzzy, but I’d noticed on my first visit to the castle that she was particularly short with Mrs Bird. And there was definitely some sort of secret being kept at the castle. Was it possible that this love affair was the very thing Saffy had wanted to tell me about; the detail she hadn’t felt comfortable discussing with Adam Gilbert? And was that why Percy was so adamant that Saffy should not be interviewed further? Because she sought to stop her twin from giving up their father’s secret, from telling me about Raymond Blythe’s longstanding relationship with his housekeeper?

But why would Percy care so much? Not from loyalty to her own mother, surely: Raymond Blythe had married more than once, so presumably Percy had come to terms with the realities of the human heart. And even if it were as Mrs Bird proposed, that Percy was old-fashioned and didn’t approve of the classes mingling romantically, I was doubtful as to whether she would care so deeply after all these decades, especially when so much else had happened to bring perspective to their lives. Could she really consider it such a travesty that her father had once been in love with his long-term housekeeper that she would fight to keep the fact forever hidden from public record? I just couldn’t see it. Whether Percy Blythe was old-fashioned or not was neither here nor there: she was a pragmatist; I had seen enough of her to realize that a flint of steely realism lay within Percy’s heart. If she was keeping secrets, it wasn’t for reasons of prudery or social morality.

‘Even more than that,’ said Mrs Bird, sensing perhaps my wavering opinion, ‘I’ve sometimes wondered whether – I mean, Mum never so much as hinted at it, but – ’ She shook her head and flapped her fingers forward, ‘No – no, it’s silly.’

She was now holding her hands clutched against her chest almost coyly, and it took me a confused moment to make out why; what it was she wanted me to think. I picked my way slowly along the prickly notion and said, ‘You believe he might have been your father?’

Her eyes met mine and I knew I’d guessed correctly. ‘Mum loved that house, the castle, all of the Blythe family. She talked about old Mr Blythe sometimes, about how clever he was, how proud she was to have worked for such a famous writer. But she was funny about it, too. Didn’t like to drive past if we could help it. Clammed up right in the middle of a story and refused to go any further, got this sad, wistful look in her eyes.’

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.’