Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘Well, well,’ said the postmistress, recovering herself with the speed of one well practised in mild deception. ‘If it isn’t Miss Blythe.’

‘Good afternoon, Mrs Potts. Anything to collect?’

‘I’ll just have a look now, shall I?’

The very notion that Mrs Potts wasn’t intimately acquainted with every piece of correspondence that had come or gone that day was laughable, but Percy played along. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said, as the postmistress repaired to the boxes on the back desk.

After much officious riffling, Mrs Potts pulled free a small clutch of assorted envelopes and held them aloft. ‘Here we are then,’ she said, making a triumphant return to the counter. ‘There’s a parcel for Miss Juniper – from your young Londoner, by the looks; happy to be back home, is she, young Meredith? – ’ Percy nodded impatiently as Mrs Potts continued – ‘A letter hand-addressed to yourself and one for Miss Saffy alone, typed.’

‘Excellent. One hardly needs bother reading them.’

Mrs Potts lined the letters up neatly on the counter top but didn’t release them. ‘I trust all is well up at the castle,’ she said, with rather more feeling than such an innocuous query seemed to warrant.

‘Very well, thank you. Now if I-’

‘Indeed, I hear congratulations are in order.’

Percy let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Congratulations?’

‘Wedding bells,’ said Mrs Potts, in that irksome manner she’d perfected, managing both to crow at her ill-gained knowledge while greedily digging for more. ‘Up at the castle,’ she repeated.

‘I thank you kindly, Mrs Potts, but alas I’m no more engaged today than I was yesterday.’

The postmistress stood a while computing, before breaking into pealing laughter. ‘Oh! But you are a one, Miss Blythe! No more engaged today than yesterday – I must remember that.’ After much mirth she sobered, pulling a small lace-trimmed handkerchief from her skirt pocket to dab beneath her eyes. ‘But of course,’ she said between blots, ‘I never meant you .’

Percy feigned surprise. ‘No?’

‘Oh no, for heaven’s sake, not you or Miss Saffy. I know neither of you have any plans to leave us, bless you both.’ She wiped her cheeks once more. ‘It was Miss Juniper I was speaking of.’

Percy couldn’t help but notice the way her little sister’s name crackled on the gossip’s lips. There was electricity in the very sounds, and Mrs Potts a natural conductor. People had always liked to talk about Juniper, even when she was a girl. The little sister had done nothing to help matters; a child with a habit of blacking out at times of excitement tended to lower people’s voices and get them talking about gifts and curses. So it was throughout her childhood, that no matter what strange or unaccountable situation arose in the village – the curious disappearance of Mrs Fleming’s laundry, the consequent outfitting of Farmer Jacob’s scarecrow in bloomers, an outbreak of mumps – just as surely as bees were drawn to honey, loose talk turned itself eventually to Juniper.

‘Miss Juniper and a certain young fellow?’ Mrs Potts pressed. ‘I hear there’ve been quite some preparations up at the castle? A fellow she met in London?’

The very notion was preposterous. Juniper’s destiny lay elsewhere than marriage: it was poetry that made her little sister’s heart sing. Percy considered having fun with Mrs Potts’s eager attention, but a glance at the wall clock made her think better of it. A sensible decision: the last thing she needed was to be drawn into a discussion about Juniper’s removal to London. The chance was all too real that Percy might inadvertently reveal the trouble Juniper’s escapade had caused at the castle. Pride would never allow such a thing. ‘It’s true that we’re having a guest to dinner, Mrs Potts, but although it is a he , he is nobody’s suitor. Merely an acquaintance from London.’

‘An acquaintance?’

‘That is all.’

Mrs Potts’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not a wedding then?’

‘No.’

‘Because I heard it on good authority that there’s been both a proposal and an acceptance.’

It was no secret that Mrs Potts’s ‘good authority’ was obtained by careful monitoring of letters and telephone calls, the details of which were then cross-referenced against a healthy catalogue of local gossip. Though Percy didn’t go so far as to suspect the woman of steaming envelopes open before sending them on their merry way, there were those in the village who did. In this case, however, there had been very little post to steam (and not of the sort to get Mrs Potts excited, Meredith being Juniper’s only correspondent) just as there was no truth to the rumour. ‘I believe I would know if that were the case, Mrs Potts,’ she said. ‘Rest assured, it’s just a dinner. ’

‘A special dinner?’

‘Oh, but aren’t they all at a time like this?’ said Percy, breezily. ‘One never knows when one might be sitting down to eat one’s last.’ She plucked the letters from the postmistress’s hand and as she did so spied the cut-glass jars that had once stood on the counter. The acid drops and butterscotch were all but gone, but a small, rather sad pile of Edinburgh rock had solidified in the base of one. Percy couldn’t stand Edinburgh rock, but it was Juniper’s favourite. ‘I’ll take what you have left of the rock, if you don’t mind.’

With a sour expression, Mrs Potts broke the mass free from the jar’s glass base and scooped it into a brown paper bag. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’

‘Why, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, inspecting the small, sugary bag, ‘if we weren’t such firm friends, I’d suspect you of trying to fleece me.’

Outrage suffused the postmistress’s face as she spluttered a denial.

‘I’m joking, of course, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, handing over the money. She tucked the letters and the rock into her bag and donated a brief smile. ‘Good afternoon now. I shall enquire after Juniper’s plans on your behalf, but I suspect when there’s anything to know, you’ll be the first to know it.’

Onions were important, of course, but that did nothing to alter the fact that their leaves brought absolutely nothing to a flower arrangement. Saffy inspected the feeble green shoots she’d just cut, turned them this way and that, squinted in case it helped, and applied whatever creative power she could muster to imagining them in place at table. In Grandmother’s heirloom French crystal vase they stood a fleeting chance; perhaps with a splash of something colourful to disguise their origin? Or else – her thoughts gathered mo mentum and she chewed her lip as was her habit when a grand idea was breaking – she might surrender herself to the theme, throw in some fennel leaves and marrow flowers and claim it a humorous comment on the shortages?

With a sigh she let her arm drop, hand still clutching the flagging fronds. Her head shook sadly, seemingly of its own accord. Onto what mad thoughts did a desperate person latch? Clearly the onion shoots would never do: not only were they hopelessly ill suited to the task, but the longer she held them the more potently their odour struck her as remarkably similar to that of old socks. A smell the war, in particular her twin sister’s occupation in it, had given Saffy ample opportunity with which to become familiar. No. After four months in London, mixing in the smartest Bloomsbury circles, no doubt, braving the air raid warnings, sleeping some nights in a shelter, Juniper deserved better than eau de filthy laundry.

Not to mention the guest she had mysteriously invited to join them. Juniper was not one to gather friends – young Meredith being the single surprising exception – but Saffy had an instinct for reading between the lines and, despite Juniper’s lines being squiggly at the best of times, she’d gathered that the young man had performed some act of gallantry to earn Juniper’s good favour. The invitation, therefore, was a show of the Blythe family’s gratitude and everything must be perfect. The onion sprouts, she confirmed with a second glance, were decidedly less than perfect. Once picked they mustn’t be wasted though – such sacrilege! Lord Woolton would be horrified – Saffy would find a dish to take them, just not from tonight’s menu. Onions and their after-effects could make for rather poor society.