Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

Saffy waved her hand. ‘There’s no need to explain; I understand completely. Affairs of the heart and all that. We all of us have lives to lead, Lucy, particularly at a time like this. War makes one see what’s important, doesn’t it?’

‘I should get on.’

‘Yes. All right. And we’ll see each other again soon. Next week perhaps, to make some piccalilli for the auction? My marrows-’

‘No,’ said Lucy, a fresh note tightening her voice. ‘No. Not again. I shouldn’t have come today, only you sounded beside yourself.’

‘But Lucy-’

‘Please don’t ask me again, Saffy. It isn’t right.’

Saffy was at a loss for words. Another gust of angry wind and a distant rumble of thunder sounded. Lucy gathered up the tea towel of eggs. ‘I should get on,’ she said, more gently this time, which was somehow worse and brought Saffy to the brink of tears. ‘I’ll fetch the dollies, take a look at Juniper’s dress, and be on my way.’

And then she was gone.

The door swung shut and Saffy was alone again in the steaming kitchen, clutching a bowl of mushy fish and racking her brains, wondering what had happened to drive her friend away.

Percy coasted down the slope of the Tenterden Road, across the rattle of stones at the base of the driveway, and jumped off her bicycle. ‘Home again, home again, jiggety jig’, she recited under her breath, gravel crunching beneath her boots. Nanny had taught them the rhyme when they were very small, decades ago now, yet it always came to mind when she crossed from the road onto the driveway. Some tunes, some chains of words were like that; they lodged and refused to dislodge no matter how a person might wish it. Not that Percy cared to rid herself of ‘Jiggety Jig’. Dear Nanny with her tiny, pink hands, her certainty in all things, the clickety needles as she sat by the attic fire at night, knitting them to sleep. How they’d wept when she celebrated her ninetieth birthday by retiring to live with a great-niece in Cornwall. Saffy had gone so far as to threaten a death plummet from the attic window in protest but, alas, the pronouncement had been dulled by previous deployment and Nanny was not swayed.

Even though she was already late, Percy walked rather than rode her bicycle up the drive, letting the familiar fields welcome her home as they fanned out on either side. The farm and its oast houses to the left, the mill beyond, the woods to the distant right. Memories of a thousand childhood afternoons roosted in the trees of Cardarker Wood blinking at her from the cooling shadows. The exhilarating terror of hiding from the white slavers; hunting for dragon bones; hiking with Daddy in search of the ancient Roman roads…

The driveway wasn’t particularly steep and it wasn’t for lack of ability that Percy chose to proceed on foot, rather that she enjoyed walking. Daddy had been a first-rate walker, too, particularly after the Great War. Before he published the book, and before he left them to go up to London; before he met Odette and remarried and was never really theirs again. The doctor had advised that a daily walk would help his leg and he’d taken to roaming the fields with the stick Mr Morris had left behind after one of Grandmother’s weekends. ‘You see the way the end swings out before me with each stride?’ he’d said as they strolled along Roving Brook together one autumn afternoon. ‘That’s as it should be. Good and solid. It’s a reminder.’

‘Of what, Daddy?’

He’d frowned at the slippery bank as if the right words might be hidden there, between the reeds. ‘Why… That I, too, am solid, I expect.’

She hadn’t understood his meaning then; had only presumed him enamoured of the stick’s weight. She certainly hadn’t probed further: Percy’s position as walking mate was tenuous, the rules governing its continuation firm. Walking was, according to the doctrine of Raymond Blythe, a time for contemplation; on rare occasions, when both parties were amenable, for the discussion of history or poetry or nature. Chatterboxes were certainly not tolerated and the label once given was never lost, much to poor Saffy’s chagrin. Many was the time Percy had glanced back towards the castle as she and Daddy set off on their ramble, to see Saffy scowling from the nursery window. Percy had always twinged in sympathy with her sister, but never sufficiently to stay behind. She figured that the favour was just reward for the countless times Saffy held Daddy’s ear, making him smile with amusement as she read aloud the clever little stories she’d written; more recently it was for the months they’d spent together, the two of them, immediately after his return from war, when Percy had been sent away with scarlet fever.

Percy came to the first bridge and stopped, resting her bicycle against the railing. She couldn’t see the castle from here, not yet; it remained hidden in the clutch of its woods and wouldn’t appear fully until she reached the second, smaller bridge. She leaned over the edge and scanned the shallow brook below. The water swirled and whispered where the banks widened, hesitating a little before continuing on towards the woods. Percy’s reflection, dark against the white-reflected sky, wavered in the smoother, deeper middle.

Beyond was the hop field in which she’d smoked her first cigarette. She and Saffy together, giggling over the stolen case, pinched from one of Daddy’s more pompous friends while he roasted his hammy ankles by the lake on a stifling summer’s day.

A cigarette…

Percy felt the breast pocket of her uniform, the firm cylinder beneath her fingertips. Having rolled the damned thing, it was as well to enjoy it, surely? She had a feeling that once she entered the castle’s fray a quiet smoke would be but a distant dream.

She turned, resting against the railing, struck a match and inhaled, holding her breath for a moment before letting go. God, how she adored tobacco. Percy sometimes suspected she would be happy to live alone, to never speak another word to a single living soul, on condition she could do so here at Milderhurst with a lifetime’s supply of cigarettes for company.

She hadn’t always been so wretchedly solitary. And even now she knew the fantasy – though certainly not without its comforts – to be just that. A fantasy. She could never bear to be without Saffy, not for long. Nor Juniper. It had been four months since their little sister took herself to London, and the two of them left at home had behaved in the interim like a pair of handkerchief-twisting old dearies: speculating as to whether she had sufficient warm socks, sending fresh eggs to London with whomever they knew was making the journey, reading her letters aloud over the breakfast table in an attempt to discern her mood, her health, her mind. Letters, incidentally, in which no mention – veiled or otherwise – was made of the possibility of marriage, thank you very much, Mrs Potts! The suggestion was laughable to anyone who knew Juniper. While some women were formed for marriage and prams in the hallway, others, most decidedly, were not. Daddy had known that, which is why he’d arranged things the way he had, to ensure that Juniper would be taken care of after he was gone.

Percy huffed with distaste and flattened her spent cigarette beneath her boot. Thoughts of the postmistress reminded her of the items she’d collected and she pulled them from her bag, an excuse to linger in the calm of her own company a little longer.

There were three pieces in total, just as Mrs Potts had advised: a parcel from Meredith to Juniper, a typed envelope addressed to Saffy, and another letter with her own name written across its front. The script, with its dizzy loops, could belong to none other than Cousin Emily, and Percy tore open the envelope eagerly, angling the top page so it caught the remaining light and she could make out the words.