Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

We passed a number of tantalizing sealed doors until finally, at the very end of the corridor, just before it turned a corner and disappeared into the further gloom, we came to one that stood ajar. A sliver of light smiled from inside, widening into a grin when Percy Blythe prodded it with her cane.

She stepped back and nodded bluntly, indicating that I should enter first.

It was a parlour and it stood in great welcoming contrast to the shadowy oak-panelled corridor from which we’d come: yellow wallpaper that must once have been fiercely bright had faded over time, the swirled pattern settling into a tepid languor, and an enormous rug, pink and blue and white – whether pale or threadbare I couldn’t tell – stretched almost to reach the skirting boards. Facing the elaborate carved fireplace was an upholstered sofa, oddly long and low, that wore the imprints of a thousand bodies and looked all the more comfortable for it. A Singer sewing machine fed with a swathe of blue fabric stood alongside.

The lurcher padded past me, arranging himself artfully on a flattened sheepskin at the base of a great painted screen, two hundred years old at least. A scene of dogs and cockerels was depicted, the olives and browns of the foreground faded to form a muted meld, the background sky eternally in the gloaming. The patch behind the lurcher had worn almost completely away.

At a rounded table nearby a woman the same age as Percy sat with her head bent close over a sheet of paper, an island in a sea of scattered Scrabble pieces. She wore huge reading glasses that were fumbled off when she noticed me, folded into a hidden pocket in her long silk dress as she stood. Her eyes were revealed as grey-blue, her brows a rather ordinary affair, neither arched nor straight, short nor long. Her fingernails, however, were painted a vivid pink to match her lipstick and the large flowers in her dress. Though dressed differently, she was as neatly packaged as Percy, with a commitment to outward appearance that was somehow old-fashioned even if the clothes themselves were not.

‘This is my sister, Seraphina,’ said Percy, going to stand beside her. ‘Saffy,’ she said in an exaggeratedly loud voice, ‘this is Edith.’

Saffy tapped the fingers of one hand against her ear. ‘No need to shout, Percy dear,’ came a soft singsong voice, ‘my earpiece is in place.’ She smiled shyly at me, blinking for need of the glasses her vanity had removed. She was as tall as her twin, but through some trick of dress or the light, or perhaps of posture she didn’t seem it. ‘Old habits die hard,’ she said. ‘Percy was always the bossy one. I’m Saffy Blythe and it’s really, truly, a pleasure to meet you.’

I came closer to take her hand. She was a carbon copy of her sister, or she had been once. The past eighty-odd years had etched different lines on their faces and the result was somehow softer on Saffy, sweeter. She looked just as an old lady of the manor should and I warmed to her immediately. Where Percy was formidable, Saffy made me think of oatmeal biscuits and cotton-fibre paper covered with a beautiful inky scrawl. It’s a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.

‘We’ve had a telephone call from Mrs Bird,’ said Saffy. ‘I’m afraid she’s been caught up in the village with her business.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was in a frightful flap,’ Percy continued flatly. ‘But I told her I’d be happy to show you round myself.’

‘More than happy.’ Saffy smiled. ‘My sister loves this house as other people love their spouses. She’s thrilled to have a chance to show it off. And well she might. The old place is a credit to her: only years of her tireless work have kept it from falling into disrepair.’

‘I’ve done what was necessary to stop the walls collapsing around us. No more.’

‘My sister is being modest.’

‘And mine is being stubborn.’

This chiding was evidently a normal part of their repartee, and the two paused to smile at me. For a moment I was trans- fixed, remembering the photograph in Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst , wondering which of these old ladies was which little twin, and then Saffy reached across the narrow divide to take Percy’s hand. ‘My sister has taken care of us all our long lives,’ she said, before turning to look with such admiration at her twin’s profile that I knew she had been the smaller, thinner of the two girls in the photo, the one whose smile wavered uncertainly beneath the camera’s gaze.

The additional praise did not sit well with Percy, who scrutinized her watch before muttering, ‘Never mind. Not much further to go now.’

It’s always difficult to know what to say when a very old person starts talking about death and its imminence, so I did what I do when Herbert hints about my taking over at Billing & Brown ‘one day’: I smiled as if I might have misheard and gave the sunlit bay window a closer inspection.

And that’s when I noticed the third sister, the one who must be Juniper. She was sitting statue-still in an armchair of faded green velvet, watching through the open window as the parkland spilled away from her. A faint plume of cigarette smoke rose from a crystal ashtray, smudging her into soft focus. Unlike her sisters, there was nothing fine about her clothing or the way she wore it. She was dressed in the international costume of the invalid: an ill-fitting blouse tucked in firm and high to shapeless slacks, her lap marked by greasy spots where things had spilled.

Perhaps Juniper sensed my gaze, for she turned slightly – just the side of her face – towards me. Her eye, I could see, was glassy and unsteady in a way that suggested heavy medication and when I smiled she gave no sign that she had seen, just continued to stare as if she sought to bore a hole right through me.

Watching her, I became aware of a soft press of sound I hadn’t noticed before. A small television set perched on a wooden occasional table beneath the window frame. An American sitcom was playing and the laugh track punctuated the constant hum of sassy dialogue with periodic stabs of static. It gave me a familiar feeling, that television set, the warm, sunny day outside, the still, stale air within: a nostalgic memory of visiting Gran in the school holidays and being allowed to watch television in the daytime.

‘What are you doing here?’

Pleasant memories of Gran shattered beneath the sudden icy blow. Juniper Blythe was still staring at me but her expression was no longer blank. It was distinctly unwelcoming.

‘I, uh… hello,’ I said. ‘I…’

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

The lurcher gave a strangled yelp.

‘Juniper!’ Saffy hurried to her sister’s side. ‘Darling girl, Edith is our guest.’ She took her sister’s face gently in both hands. ‘I told you, June, remember? I explained it all: Edith’s here to have a tour of the castle. Percy’s taking her for a lovely little walk. You mustn’t worry, darling, everything’s all right.’

While I wished fervently that I could somehow disappear, the twins exchanged a glance that sat so easily in the different lines of their matching faces that I knew it must have passed between them many times before. Percy nodded at Saffy, tight-lipped, and then the expression dissolved before I’d worked out what it was about that glance that gave me such a peculiar feeling.

‘Well then,’ she said with an affected cheeriness that made me wince, ‘time is wasting. Let’s get on, shall we, Miss Burchill?’

I followed gladly as she led us out of the room, around a corner and down another cool, shadowed passage.

‘I’ll walk you past the back rooms first,’ she said, ‘but we won’t stop long. There’s little point. They’ve been under sheets for years.’