Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

One by one, Saffy swept the gowns aside, until finally she glimpsed the peppermint silk. She held the others clear a moment, taking stock of its lustrous green front: the beading on the décolletage, the ribbon sash, the bias-cut skirt. She hadn’t worn it in years, could barely recall the previous occasion, but she could remember Lucy helping to mend it. It had been Percy’s fault; with those cigarettes and her careless manner of smoking them she was a menace to fine fabrics everywhere. Lucy had done a neat repair job though; Saffy had to hunt along the bodice to find the singe mark. Yes, it would do nicely; it would have to. Saffy drew it from the wardrobe, draped it across the bedspread, and took up her stockings.

The biggest mystery, she thought, spidering her fingers down the sides of the first stocking and easing her toes in, was how someone like Lucy could possibly have fallen in love with Harry the clock man in the first place. Such a plain little man, not at all a romantic hero, scuttering about the passages with his shoulders hunched and his hair always a little longer, a little thinner, a little less kempt than it should be-

‘Oh Lord; no!’ Saffy’s big toe caught and she began to topple sideways. There was a split second in which she might have righted herself, but her toenail had snagged in the fibre and to plant her foot would have risked a new ladder. Thus, she took the fall bravely, whacking her thigh painfully on the dressing-table corner. ‘Oh dear,’ she gasped. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ She slid onto the upholstered stool and scrambled to inspect the precious stocking: why, oh why, hadn’t she concentrated better on the task at hand? There would be no new stockings when these ones tore beyond repair. Fingers trembling she turned them over and over, running her finger-tips lightly across the surface.

All seemed in order; it had been a narrow escape. Saffy let out the sigh she’d been holding, and yet she wasn’t wholly relieved. She met her pink-cheeked reflection in the mirror and held it: there was more at stake here than the last remaining pair of stockings. When she and Percy were girls they’d had plenty of opportunity to observe adults up close and what they saw had mystified them. The ancient grotesques behaved, for the most part, as if they’d no inkling at all that they were old. This perplexed the twins, who agreed that there was nothing so unseemly as an old person who refused to acknowledge his or her limitations, and they’d made a pact never to let it happen to them. When they were old, they swore, they would jolly well act the part. ‘But how will we know?’ Saffy had said, dazzled by the existential knot at the question’s core. ‘Perhaps it’s one of those things, like sunburn, that can’t be felt until it’s too late to do anything about it.’ Percy had agreed on the problem’s tricksy nature, sitting quietly with her arms wrapped around her knees as she gave herself over to its consideration. Ever the pragmatist, she’d reached a solution first, saying slowly, ‘I suppose we must make a list of things that old people do – three ought to be enough. And when we find ourselves doing them, then we’ll know.’

Gathering the candidate habits had been simple – there was a lifetime’s observation of Daddy and Nanny to consult; more difficult was limiting their number to three. After much deliberation they’d settled on those leaving least room for equivocation: first, professing strong and repeated preference for England when Queen Victoria was on the throne; second, mentioning one’s health in any company other than that which included a medical professional; and third, failure to put on one’s undergarments whilst standing.

Saffy groaned, remembering that very morning when she’d been making up the bed in the guest chamber and caught herself detailing her lower-back pain to Lucy. The conversation’s topic had warranted the description and she’d been prepared to let it slide, but now this: felled by a pair of stockings? The prognosis was dismal indeed.

Percy had almost made it safely to the back door when Saffy finally appeared, gliding down the stairs as if she had nothing in the world to answer for. ‘Hello there, sister mine,’ she said. ‘Save any lives today?’

Percy inhaled. She needed time, space and a sharp swinging implement in order to clear her head and exorcise her anger. Otherwise, she was as likely as not to hurl it. ‘Four kittens from a drain and a clump of Edinburgh rock.’

‘Oh, well! Victory all round. Marvellous work indeed! – Shall we have a cup of tea?’

‘I’m going to chop some wood.’

‘Darling – ’ Saffy came a step closer – ‘I think that’s rather unnecessary.’

‘Better sooner than later. It’s about to pour with rain.’

‘I understand that,’ said Saffy, with exaggerated calm, ‘but I’m quite sure we’ve sufficient in the pile. Indeed, after your efforts this month, I estimate we’re set until approximately 1960. Why don’t you take yourself upstairs instead, get dressed for dinner – ’ Saffy paused as a loud noise sheeted from one side of the castle’s roof to the other – ‘there now, saved by the rain!’

Some days even the weather could be counted on to take the other side. Percy pulled out her tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. Without looking up she said, ‘Why did you ask her here?’

‘Who?’

A hard stare.

‘Oh that.’ Saffy waved her hand vaguely. ‘Clara’s mother was taken ill, Millie’s as daft as ever and you’re always so jolly busy: it was simply too much for me on my own. Besides, there’s no one who can sweet-talk Agatha quite like Lucy.’

‘You’ve done all right in the past.’

‘Darling of you to say so, Percy dear, but you know Aggie. I wouldn’t put it past her to cut out tonight, just to spite me. Ever since I let the milk boil over she’s held a mighty grudge.’

‘She’s – it’s – an oven, Seraphina.’

‘My point exactly! Who’d have thought her capable of such a ghastly temperament?’

Percy was being managed; she could feel it. The affected lightness in her sister’s voice, being cut off at the pass on her way to the back door, then shooed upstairs where she was willing to bet a dress – something wretchedly fancy – had already been laid out for her: it was as if Saffy feared she couldn’t be trusted to maintain civility in company. The suggestion made Percy want to roar, but such a reaction would only confirm her sister’s concerns, so she didn’t. Swallowing the urge, she dampened her paper and sealed the cigarette.

‘Anyway,’ Saffy continued, ‘Lucy’s been a darling, and with nothing decent to roast I decided we needed whatever help we could get.’

‘Nothing to roast?’ said Percy breezily. ‘Last I looked there were eight contenders fattening up nicely in the bird-house.’

Saffy drew breath. ‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I dream of drumsticks.’

A gratifying tremor had insinuated itself into Saffy’s voice, travelling all the way down to the tip of her pointed finger: ‘My girls are good little providers; they are not dinner. I will not have you looking at them and thinking of gravy. Why, it’s… it’s barbarous.’

There were a great many things Percy wanted to say, but as she stood there in the dank corridor, rain pounding the earth on the other side of the stone wall, her twin sister standing before her, shifting uncomfortably on the stair – hips and stomach stretching her old green dress in all the wrong places – Percy glimpsed the thread of time and all their various disappointments along it. It formed a block against which her present frustration slammed, concertinaing behind. She was the dominant twin, she always had been, and no matter how angry Saffy made her, fighting subverted some basic principle of the universe.