Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

Her chin lifted as I watched her, and she exhaled thoughtfully. Apparently, as I’d been reaching my conclusions she’d been drawing her own. I smiled, and it seemed to decide her in some way. She straightened, then started towards me again, slowly but with clear purpose. Feline, that’s what she was. Her every movement contained the same elastic mixture of caution and confidence, languor that masked an underlying intent.

She stopped only when she was close enough that I could smell the naphthalene on her dress, the stale cigarette smoke on her breath. Her eyes searched mine, her voice was a whisper. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

I nodded, which made her smile; the gap between her two front teeth was impossibly girlish. She took my hands in hers as if we were friends in the schoolyard, her palms were smooth and cool. ‘I have a secret but I’m not supposed to tell.’

‘OK.’

She cupped her hand like a child and leaned in close, pressing it against my ear. Her breath tickled. ‘I have a lover.’ And when she pulled away her old lips formed a youthful expression of lustful excitement that was grotesque and sad and beautiful all at once. ‘His name is Tom. Thomas Cavill, and he’s asked me to marry him.’

The sadness I felt for her came upon me in a rush, almost too great to bear, as I realized she was stuck in the moment of her great disappointment. I longed for Percy to return so that our conversation might be ended.

‘Promise you won’t breathe a word of it?’

‘I promise.’

‘I’ve told him yes, but shhh – ’ a finger pressed against her smiling lips – ‘my sisters don’t know yet. He’s coming soon to have dinner.’ She grinned, old lady teeth in a powder-smooth face. ‘We’re going to announce our engagement.’

I saw then that she wore something around her finger. Not a ring, not a real one. This was a crude impostor, silver but dull, lumpy, like a piece of aluminium foil rolled and pressed into shape.

‘And then we’re going to dance, dance, dance…’ She started to sway, humming along to music that was playing, perhaps, in her head. It was the same tune I’d heard earlier, floating in the cold pockets of the corridors. The name eluded me then, no matter how tantalizingly close it came. The recording, as it must have been, had stopped some time ago, but Juniper listed regardless, her eyelids closed, her cheeks coloured with a young woman’s anticipation.

I worked on a book once for an elderly couple writing a history of their life together. The woman had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s but was yet to begin the final harrowing descent, and they’d decided to record her memories before they blew away like bleached leaves from an autumn tree.

The project took six months to complete, during which time I watched her slip helplessly through forgetting towards emptiness. Her husband became ‘that man over there’ and the vibrant, funny woman with the fruity language, who’d argued and grinned and interrupted, was silenced.

No, I’d seen dementia, and this wasn’t it. Wherever Juniper was, it wasn’t empty, and she’d forgotten very little. Yet there was something the matter; she clearly wasn’t well. Every elderly woman I’ve known has told me, at some point, and with varying degrees of wistfulness, that she’s eighteen years old on the inside. But it isn’t true. I’m only thirty and I know that. The stretch of years leaves none unmarked: the blissful sense of youthful invincibility peels away and responsibility brings its weight to bear.

Juniper wasn’t like that, though. She genuinely didn’t realize she was old. In her mind the war still raged and, judging by the way she was swaying, so did her hormones. She was such an unnatural hybrid, old and young, beautiful and grotesque, now and then. The effect was breathtaking and it was eerie and I suffered a sudden surge of revulsion, followed immediately by deep shame at having felt such an unkind thing-

Juniper seized my wrists; her eyes had reeled wide open. ‘But of course!’ she said, catching a giggle in a net of long, pale fingers. ‘You already know about Tom. If it weren’t for you, he and I would never have met!’

Whatever I might have said in reply was swallowed then as every clock within the castle began to chime the hour. What an uncanny symphony it was, room after room of clocks, calling to one another as they marked the passing time. I felt those chimes deep within my body and the effect spread icy and instant across my skin, utterly unnerving me.

‘I really do have to go now, Juniper,’ I said, when finally they stopped. My voice, I noticed, was hoarse.

A slight noise behind me and I glanced over my shoulder, hoping to see Percy returning.

‘Go?’ Juniper’s face sagged. ‘But you’ve just arrived. Where are you going?’

‘Back to London.’

‘London?’

‘Where I live.’

‘London.’ A change came over her then, swift as a storm cloud and just as dark. She reached out, gripping my arm with surprising strength and I saw something I hadn’t before: spider-web scars, silvered with age, scribbled along her pale wrists. ‘Take me with you.’

‘I… I can’t do that.’

‘But it’s the only way. We’ll go and find Tom. He might be there, up in his little flat, sitting by the windowsill…’

‘Juniper -’

‘You said you’d help me.’ Her voice was tight, hateful. ‘Why didn’t you help me?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t-’

‘You’re supposed to be my friend; you said you’d help me. Why didn’t you come?’

‘Juniper, I think you’re confusing me-’

‘Oh, Meredith,’ she whispered, her breath smoky and ancient. ‘I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing.’

Meredith. My stomach turned like a rubber glove pulled inside out too fast.

Hurried footsteps and the dog appeared, followed closely by Saffy. ‘Juniper! Oh, June, there you are.’ Her voice was drenched with relief as she reached her sister’s side. She wrapped Juniper in a gentle embrace, drawing back at length to scan her face. ‘You mustn’t run off like that. I’ve been so worried; I looked everywhere. I didn’t know where you’d got to, my little love.’

Juniper was shaking; I expect I was too. Meredith … The word rang in my ears, sharp and insistent as a mosquito drone. I told myself it was nothing, a coincidence, the meaningless ravings of a sad, mad old woman, but I’m not a good liar and I had no chance of fooling myself.

As Saffy brushed stray hair from Juniper’s forehead, Percy arrived. She stopped abruptly, leaning on her cane for support as she surveyed the scene. The twins exchanged a glance, similar to the one I’d witnessed earlier in the yellow parlour that had so perplexed me: this time, however, it was Saffy who broke away first. She’d managed, somehow, to penetrate the knot of Juniper’s arms and was holding her little sister’s hand tightly in her own. ‘Thank you for staying with her,’ she said to me, voice quavering. ‘It was kind of you, Edith – ’

‘E-dith,’ Juniper echoed, but she didn’t look my way.

‘ – she gets confused and wanders sometimes. We watch her closely, but…’ Saffy shook her head shortly, the gesture communicating the impossibility of living one’s life for another.

I nodded, unable to find the right words to reply. Meredith. My mother’s name. My thoughts, hundreds of them, swarmed at once against the current of time, picking over the past few months for meaning, until finally they arrived en masse at my parents’ home. A chilly afternoon in February, an uncooked chicken, the arrival of a letter that made Mum cry.

‘E-dith,’ said Juniper again. ‘E-dith, E-dith…’

‘Yes, darling,’ said Saffy, ‘that’s Edith, isn’t it? She’s come to visit.’