Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘We’ve been lucky. So far.’

‘Taken you long to get here?’

‘I left on the nine twelve. It’s been a comedy of errors since.’

She was shaking her head. ‘The stopping and starting. The overcrowding. The identity checks – still, you’re here now. Almost at the end of your journey. Pity about the weather. Hope you’ve got an umbrella with you.’

He hadn’t, but he nodded and smiled and went back to thinking his own thoughts.

Saffy took her writing journal to the good parlour. Its fire was the only one they’d lit that evening and, despite everything, the room’s delicate arrangement still gave her some small pleasure. She didn’t like to feel enclosed, so she eschewed the armchairs in favour of the table. Cleared away one place setting. She did it neatly, careful not to disturb the other three – it was mad, she knew, but a tiny part of her still clung to the hope that they might yet dine, the four of them together.

She poured herself another whisky then sat and opened her notebook to the most recent page; read it through, reacquainting herself with Adele’s tragic love story. She sighed as the secret world of her book stretched out its arms to welcome her home.

A tremendous clap of thunder made Saffy jump and reminded her that she’d wanted to see about rewriting the scene in which William broke off his engagement to Adele.

Poor, dear Adele. Of course her world should be broken apart during a storm in which the heavens themselves seemed likely to be rent asunder! It was only right. All life’s tragic moments should be granted such elemental emphasis.

It ought to have stormed when Matthew broke off his engagement to Saffy, but it hadn’t. They’d been seated, side by side, in the loveseat by the library’s French doors, sunlight streaming across their laps. Twelve months since the ghastly trip to London, the play’s premiere, the dark theatre, the hideous creature emerging from the moat, climbing up the wall, bellowing with hideous pain… Saffy had just poured tea for two when Matthew spoke.

‘I believe the best thing now would be for us to release one another.’

‘To release…? But I don’t…?’ She blinked. ‘You no longer love me?’

‘I’ll always love you, Saffy.’

‘Then… why?’ She’d changed into the sapphire-blue dress when she knew that he was coming. It was her best: it was the one she’d worn to London; she’d wanted him to admire her, to covet her, to want her as he had that day by the lake. She felt foolish. ‘Why?’ she said again, despising the weakness in her voice.

‘We can’t marry; you know that as well as I. How can we live as man and wife when you refuse to leave the castle?’

‘Not refuse; I don’t refuse, I long to leave-’

‘Then come, come with me now-’

‘I can’t…’ She stood. ‘I’ve told you.’

A change came upon him then, a bitter knife twisting his features. ‘Of course you can. If you loved me, you would come. You’d climb into my motorcar and we’d drive away from this ghastly, mildewed place.’ He stood beside her, implored her. ‘Come on, Saffy,’ he said, all trace of resentment dropping away. He gestured with his hat to the top of the drive where his car was parked. ‘Let’s go. Let’s drive away this instant, the two of us together.’

She’d wanted to say again, ‘I can’t,’ to beg him to understand, to be patient, to wait for her; but she hadn’t. A moment of clarity, a struck match, and she’d known that there was nothing she could say or do to make him comprehend. The crippling panic that crept upon her if she tried to leave the castle; the black and groundless fear that dug its claws into her, wrapped her in its wings and made her lungs constrict, her vision blur that kept her prisoner in this cold, dark place, as weak and helpless as a child.

‘Come,’ he said again, reaching for her hand. ‘Come.’ He said it so tenderly that, sitting in the castle’s good parlour sixteen years later, Saffy would feel its echo trickling down her spine and settling warm beneath her skirt.

She’d smiled, she hadn’t been able to help it, even though she’d known herself to be standing at the top of a great cliff, dark water swirling beneath her, the man she loved urging her to let him save her, unaware that she couldn’t be saved, that his adversary was so much stronger than he was.

‘You were right,’ she’d said, leaping from the cliff, falling away from him. ‘The best thing for us both would be to release each other.’

She’d never seen Matthew again, nor her cousin Emily, who’d been lurking in the wings, waiting for her chance; always coveting that which Saffy wanted…

A log. Nothing but a piece of driftwood, washed downstream by the fast-rising current. Percy pulled it off the drive, cursing the weight, the branch that snagged her shoulder, and wondering whether she was relieved or dismayed that the search must now continue. She was about to press on down the drive when something stopped her. A strange sense, not a presentiment exactly, rather one of those odd, twin things. A swirl of misgiving. She wondered whether Saffy had taken her advice and found some occupation.

Percy stood in the rain, undecided, looked down the hill towards the road, then back at the blackened castle.

The not completely blackened castle.

There was a light, small but bright, shining from one of the windows. The good parlour.

The bloody shutter. If she’d only fixed it properly in the first place.

It was the shutter that decided her absolutely. The last thing they needed tonight was the attention of Mr Potts and his Home Guard platoon.

With a last backward look at the Tenterden Road, Percy turned and headed for the castle.

The bus stopped at the side of the road and Tom hopped out. It was raining hard and his flowers lost their valiant bid for life the moment he disembarked; he debated for a second, whether ruined flowers were better than no flowers at all, before tossing the stems into the overflowing ditch. The mark of a good soldier was knowing when to call retreat, and he still had the jam, after all.

Through the dense, wet night he glimpsed a set of iron gates and laid his hand on one, pushing it open. As it gave way with a shriek beneath his weight, he tilted his face towards the black, black sky. He closed his eyes and let the rain slide clean across his cheeks; it was a bugger, but without a raincoat or umbrella, he had little choice but to surrender. He was late, he was wet, but he was here.

He closed the gate behind him, hoisted his duffel bag over his shoulder and started up the drive. By God, it was dark. The blackout was one thing in London, but in the country, and with foul weather having switched off all the stars, it was like walking through pitch. There was a looming mass to his right, blacker somehow than the rest, that he knew must be Cardarker Wood. The wind had picked up and the treetops gnashed their teeth as he watched. He shivered and turned away, thought of Juniper, waiting for him in the warm, dry castle.

One drenched foot after another, he kept on. He rounded a bend, crossed a bridge, water gushing fast beneath it, and still the drive wound on ahead.

A flash of jagged lightning then, and Tom stopped in wonder. It was magnificent. The world was drenched in silvery white light – a great heaving wrangle of trees, a pale stone castle on the hill, the winding driveway carving on ahead through shivering fields – before falling unevenly back to black. Imprints of the lit-up image remained, like a photographic negative, and that’s how Tom knew he was not alone in the dark and the wet. Someone else, a thin but mannish figure, was making its way up the driveway ahead of him.

Tom wondered idly why anyone else would venture out in such a night; whether perhaps there was another guest expected at the castle, someone else as late as he was, also caught in the rain. His spirits rose on the back of such a notion, and he considered calling out – it was better, surely, to arrive in tandem with another tardy fellow? – but the clap of murderous thunder decided him against trying. He pressed on, eyeing the spot in the darkness where he knew the castle stood.