Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

This was a curious turn. ‘Why would that have been?’

‘It was strange, almost as if she felt responsible in some way. She wasn’t, of course, and there was nothing she could have done that would have made things turn out differently. But that’s Percy: she blamed herself because that’s what Percy does. One of us was hurt and there was nothing she could do to fix it.’ She sighed, folding her handkerchief over and over to form a small, neat triangle. ‘And I suppose that’s why I’m telling you all this, though I fear I’m doing it all wrong. I want you to understand that Percy’s a good person, that despite the way she is, the way she comes across, she has a good heart.’

It was important to Saffy, I could tell, that I should not think poorly of her twin, so I returned the smile she’d given me. But she was right – there was something about her story that didn’t make sense. ‘Why, though?’ I said. ‘Why would she have felt responsible? Did she know him? Had she met him before?’

‘No, never.’ She looked at me searchingly. ‘He lived in London; that’s where he and Juniper met. Percy hadn’t been to London since before the war.’

I was nodding, but I was thinking, too, about my mum’s journal, the entry she’d made in which she mentioned that her teacher, Thomas Cavill, had come to visit her at Milderhurst in September 1939. That was the first time Juniper Blythe had met the man she would one day fall in love with. Percy might not have been to London, but there was every possibility that she’d met Thomas Cavill while he was here, in Kent. Though Saffy, it was evident, had not.

A cool gust crept into the room and Saffy pulled her cardigan closer. I noticed that the skin across her collarbone had reddened, she was flushed; she regretted saying as much as she had, and she moved quickly now to sweep her indiscreet comments back beneath the rug. ‘My point is only that Percy took it very hard, that it changed her. I was glad when the Germans started with the doodlebugs and V2s because it gave her something new to worry about.’ Saffy laughed, but it had a hollow ring. ‘She’d have been happiest, I sometimes think, had the war continued indefinitely.’

She was uncomfortable and I felt bad for her; sorry, too, that it was my probing that had caused her this new worry. She’d only meant to assuage any bruised feelings I’d suffered the day before and it seemed cruel to saddle her with a new social anxiety. I smiled and tried to change the subject. ‘And what about you? Did you work during the war?’

She cheered up a little. ‘Oh, we all did our bit; I didn’t do anything as exciting as Percy, of course. She’s the better suited to heroics. I sewed and cooked and made do; knitted a thousands socks. Though not particularly well in some cases.’ She was poking fun at herself and I smiled with her, an image coming to mind of a young girl shivering in the castle’s attic, shrunken socks layering both ankles and the hand that didn’t hold her pen. ‘I almost spent it employed as a governess, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. A family of children who went to America for the duration. I received the offer of employment but had to turn it down.’

‘Because of the war?’

‘No. The letter arrived at the same time as Juniper’s great disappointment. Now, don’t you look like that. No need for a long face on my account. I don’t believe in regrets, not generally, there’s not much point, is there? I couldn’t have taken it, not then. Not when it took me so far away, not with Juniper. How could I have left her?’

I didn’t have siblings; I wasn’t sure how these things worked. ‘Percy couldn’t have-?’

‘Percy has many gifts, but caring for children and invalids has never been among them. It takes a certain – ’ her fingertips fussed, and she searched the antique firescreen as if the words she sought might be written there – ‘softness, I suppose. No. I couldn’t have left Juniper with only Percy to care for her. So I wrote a letter, turning the position down.’

‘It must have been very difficult.’

‘One doesn’t have a choice when it comes to family. Juniper was my baby sister. I wasn’t about to leave her, not like that. And besides, even if the fellow had come as he was supposed to, if they’d married and moved away, I probably wouldn’t have been able to leave anyway.’

‘Why not?’

She turned her elegant neck, didn’t meet my eye.

A noise in the corridor, just as before, a muffled cough and the sharp beat of a cane coming towards us.

‘Percy…’ And in the moment before she smiled I glimpsed the answer to my question. I saw in her pained expression a lifetime of entrapment. They were twins, two halves of a whole, but where one had longed for escape, to lead a single existence, the other had refused to be left alone. And Saffy, whose softness made her weak, whose compassion made her kind, had been unable ever to wrest herself free.

The Muniment Room and a Discovery

I followed Percy Blythe along corridors and down sets of stairs into the increasingly dim depths of the castle. Never chatty, that morning she was resolutely stony. Stony and coated with stale cigarette smoke; the smell was so strong I had to leave a pace between us as we walked. The silence suited me, at any rate; after my conversation with Saffy, I was in no mood for awkward chatter. Something in her story, or perhaps not in the story itself so much as the fact that she’d told it to me, was disquieting. She’d said it was an attempt to explain Percy’s manner, and I could well believe that both the twins had been shattered by Juniper’s abandonment and subsequent collapse, but why had Saffy been so adamant that it was harder for Percy? Especially when Saffy herself had taken on the maternal role with her wounded little sister. She’d been embarrassed by Percy’s discourtesy the day before, I knew, and she’d sought to show her twin’s human face; yet it was almost as if she protested too much, was too determined that I should see Percy Blythe in a saintly light.

Percy stopped at a juncture of corridors and took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket. Gristly knuckles balled as she fidgeted with a match, finally bringing it to life; in the flame’s light I glimpsed her face and I saw there proof that she was shaken by the morning’s events. As the sweet, smoky smell of fresh tobacco mushroomed around us, and the silence deepened, I said, ‘I’m really sorry about Bruno. I’m sure Mrs Bird’s nephew will find him.’

‘Are you?’ Percy exhaled and her eyes scanned mine without kindness. A twitch on one side of her lip. ‘Animals know when their end is coming, Miss Burchill. They do not wish to be a burden. They are not like human beings, seeking always to be comforted.’ She inclined her head, indicating that I should follow her around the corner, and I felt foolish and small and resolved to offer no further words of sympathy.

We stopped again at the first door we came to. One of the many we’d passed during the tour all those months ago. Cigarette resting on her lip, she pulled from her pocket a large key and rattled it in the lock. After a moment’s difficulty, the old mechanism turned and the door creaked open. It was dark inside, there were no windows, and from what I could make out the walls were lined with heavy wooden filing cabinets, the sort you might find in very, very old legal firms in the City. A single light bulb hung from a fine, frail wire, drifting a little back and forth in the new breath of air from the open door.

I waited for Percy to lead the way, and when she didn’t I looked at her, uncertain. She drew on her cigarette and said only, ‘I don’t go in there.’

Perhaps my surprise showed for she added, with a tremor so slight I almost missed it, ‘I don’t enjoy small spaces. There’s a paraffin lamp around that corner. Pull it out and I’ll light it for you.’