Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

She would go downstairs and she would write her novel, just as Percy had suggested. An hour or so in Adele’s lovely company was just the thing. Juniper was safe, Percy would find whatever there was to be found, and Saffy Would. Not. Panic.

She must not.

Resolved, she straightened the blanket and smoothed it gently across Juniper’s front. Her little sister didn’t flinch. She was sleeping so still: like a child, spent from a day beneath the sun; the clear, blue sky; a day beside the sea.

Such a special child she’d been. A memory came, instant and complete, a flash: Juniper as a girl, matchstick legs with white hairs shining in the sunlight. Crouching so her haunches supported her, knees with scabs, bare feet flat and dusty on the scorched summer earth. Perched above an old drain, scrabbling in the dirt with a stick, looking for the perfect stone to drop through the grille -

A sheet of rain slid across the window, and the girl, the sun, the smell of dry earth turned to smoke and blew away. Only the dim, musty attic remained. The attic where Saffy and Percy had been children together; within whose walls they’d grown from mewling babies into moody young ladies. Little evidence of their tenure remained, the sort that could be seen. Only the bed, the ink stain on the floor, the bookcase by the window that she’d -

No!

Stop!

Saffy clenched her fists. She noticed the bottle of Daddy’s pills. Considered a moment, then unscrewed the lid and shook one into her hand. It would take the edge off, help her to relax.

She left the door ajar and crept carefully down the narrow stairs.

Behind her in the attic room the curtains sighed.

Juniper flinched.

A long dress shimmered against the wardrobe like a pale, forgotten ghost.

It was moonless, it was wet, and despite her raincoat and boots, Percy was drenched. To make matters worse, the torch was being temperamental. She planted her feet on the muddied drive and gave the torch a whack against her palm; the battery rattled, light flickered and hope rose. Then it died. All of it.

Percy swore beneath her breath and swiped with her wrist at the hair that clung to her forehead. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to find, only that she’d hoped to have found it by now. The longer it took, the further from the castle she travelled, the less likely it was that the matter could be contained. And it must be contained.

She squinted through the rain, trying to make out what she could.

The brook was running high; she could hear it somersaulting, roaring on its way towards the wood. At this rate, the bridge would be out by morning.

She turned her head a little more to the left, sensed the glowering battalions of Cardarker Wood. Heard the wind skulking in the treetops.

Percy gave the torch another try. Damned thing ignored her still. She kept walking in the direction of the road, slowly, cautiously, scanning the way ahead as best she could.

A shard of lightning and the world was white; the sodden fields rolling away from her, the woods recoiling, the castle, its arms crossed in disappointment. A frozen moment in which Percy felt entirely alone, the cold, wet, white within as well as without.

She saw it as the light’s last echo died. A shape on the drive beyond. Something lying very still.

Dear God: the size, the shape, of a man.

Tom had brought flowers from London, a small bunch of orchids. They’d been hard to find, fiendishly expensive, and as day had dragged into night he’d come to regret the decision. They looked rather the worse for wear, and he’d started to wonder whether Juniper’s sisters would like shop-bought flowers any more than she did. He’d brought the birthday jam, too. Christ, he was nervous.

He checked his watch, then resolved not to do so again. He was beyond late. It couldn’t be helped: the train had been stopped, then he’d needed to find another bus and the only one heading east had gone from a nearby town so he’d had to run cross-country for miles only to find it was out of service that afternoon. This bus had come along three hours later to replace it, just as he was about to set out on foot and see if he could hitch himself a ride.

He’d worn his uniform; he was heading back to the Front in a few days and besides he was used to it now, but his nerves made him stiff and the jacket caught on his shoulders in a way that was unfamiliar. He’d worn his medal, too, the one they’d given him for the business on the Escaut Canal. Tom wasn’t sure how he felt about receiving it – he couldn’t feel it there against his chest without remembering the boys they’d lost as they scrambled madly out of hell, but it seemed to matter to others, his mother, for one, and seeing as it was his first time meeting Juniper’s family, he supposed it was best.

He wanted them to like him, for everything to go as well as possible. For her sake more than his; her ambivalence confused him. She’d spoken of her sisters and her childhood often, and always with affection. Listening to her, and recalling what he could of his own glimpse of the castle, Tom had begun to envisage an idyll, a rural fantasy; more than that, a fairy tale of sorts. And yet, for a long time she hadn’t wanted him to visit, had been almost wary if he so much as hinted at the possibility.

Then, not two weeks before – with characteristic suddenness – Juniper had changed her mind. While Tom was still reeling from the shock of her having accepted his proposal, she’d announced that they must visit her sisters and break the news together. Of course they must. So here he was. And he knew he must be getting close because they’d stopped a number of times already and he was one of the only passengers remaining. It had been overcast when he left London, a mask of white cloud covering the sky, gathering more darkly in the corners as he approached Kent, but now it was raining hard and the windscreen wipers were shushing in a way that would have made him sleepy if he wasn’t so nervous.

‘Going home then, are you?’

Tom searched the dark for the person attached to the voice, saw a woman sitting across the aisle. Fifty or so years old – it was difficult to know for sure – a kind enough face, the way his mother might have looked if her life had been an easier one. ‘Visiting a friend,’ he answered. ‘She lives on the Tenterden Road.’

‘She, eh?’ The woman wore a knowing smile. ‘A sweetheart, I think?’

He smiled because it was true, then let it drop again because it also wasn’t. He was going to marry Juniper Blythe, but she was not his sweetheart. ‘Sweetheart’ was the girl a fellow met when he was home between postings, the pretty girl with the pout and the legs and the empty promises of letters at the Front; the girl with a taste for gin and dancing and late-night groping.

Juniper Blythe was none of those things. She was going to be his wife, he would be her husband, but Tom knew, even as he clutched at absolutes, that she would never belong to him. Keats had known women like Juniper. When he wrote of his lady in the meads, the beautiful faery’s child with the long hair, the light foot, and the wild, wild eyes, he might have been describing Juniper Blythe.

The woman across the aisle was still awaiting confirmation, and Tom smiled. ‘Fiancé,’ he said, enjoying the word’s pregnant expectation of solidity, even as he cringed beneath its unsuitability.

‘Well now. Isn’t that lovely. So nice to hear happy stories at a time like this. Meet around here, did you?’

‘No – well, yes, but not properly. London, that’s where we met.’

‘London.’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘I go up to visit my friend sometimes, and when I last hopped off at Charing Cross…’ She shook her head. ‘Brave old London. Terrible, what’s happened. Any damage to you or yours?’