Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

Saffy broke off; she’d been speaking very quickly, trying to get her story told before Percy arrived, and her voice had dwindled. She coughed against a delicate lace handkerchief she’d pulled from her sleeve. There was a jug of water on the table near Juniper’s chair and I poured her some. ‘It must have been awful,’ I said, handing her the glass.

She sipped gratefully, then cradled the glass in both hands on her lap. Her nerves were stretched taut it seemed, the skin around her jaw appeared to have contracted during the telling and I could see the blue veins beneath.

‘And he never came?’ I prompted.

‘No.’

‘And you never knew why? There was no letter? No telephone call?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And Juniper?’

‘She waited and waited. She waits still. Days went by, then weeks. She never gave up hope. It was dreadful. Dreadful.’ The last word Saffy allowed to hang between us. She was lost in that time, all those years ago, and I didn’t probe further.

‘Madness isn’t sudden,’ she said eventually. ‘It sounds so simple – “she fell into madness” – but it isn’t like that. It was gradual. First she withdrew. She showed signs of recovery, she talked about going back to London, but only vaguely, and she never went. She stopped writing, too; that’s when I knew that something fragile, something precious, had been broken. Then one day she threw everything out of the attic window. All of it: books, papers, a desk, even the mattress…’ She tailed off and her lips moved silently around things she thought better of adding. With a sigh, she said, ‘The papers blew far and wide, down the hillsides, into the lake, like discarded leaves, their season ended. Where did they all go, I wonder?’

I shook my head: she was asking the whereabouts of more than papers, I knew, and there was nothing I could think to say. I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must have been to see a beloved sibling regress in such a way; to watch countless layers of potential and personality, talent and possibility, disintegrate, one by one. How hard it must have been to witness, especially for someone like Saffy, who, according to Marilyn Bird, had been more like a mother to Juniper than a sister.

‘The furniture remained in a broken heap on the lawn. We none of us had the heart to carry it back upstairs, and Juniper didn’t want it. She took to sitting by the cupboard in the attic, the one with the hidden doorway, convinced that she could hear things on the other side. Voices calling to her, though of course they were in her head. The poor love. The doctor wanted to send her away when he heard that, to an asylum …’ Her voice caught on the ghastly word, her eyes implored me to find in it the same horror she did. She’d started kneading the white handkerchief with a balled hand, and I reached out to touch her forearm very gently.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

She was trembling with anger, with distress. ‘We wouldn’t hear a word of it; I wouldn’t hear a word of it. There was no way I was letting him take her from me. Percy spoke to the doctor, explained that such things were not done at Milderhurst Castle, that the Blythe family looked after its own. Eventually he agreed – Percy can be very persuasive – but he insisted on leaving stronger medicine for Juniper.’ She pressed the painted fingernails of her hand against her legs, like a cat, releasing tension, and I saw in the set of her features something I hadn’t noticed before. She was the softer twin, the submissive twin, but there was strength there, too. When it came to Juniper, when it came to fighting for the little sister whom she loved, Saffy Blythe was rock hard. Her next words shot like steam from a kettle, so hot they scalded: ‘Would that she’d never gone to London, never met that fellow. The greatest regret of my life is that she went away. Everything was ruined afterwards. Nothing was ever the same; not for any of us.’

And that’s when I began to glimpse her purpose in telling me this story, why she thought it might help to explain Percy’s brusqueness; the night Thomas Cavill failed to arrive had been life-altering for all of them. ‘Percy,’ I said, and Saffy gave a slight nod. ‘Percy was different afterwards?’

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.’