Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

From there, the pieces had fallen quickly into place. Why else had Juniper asked her to alter the dress? Not for something as ordinary as a dinner, but for a wedding. Her own wedding, to this Thomas Cavill who was coming tonight to meet them. A man they hitherto had known nothing about. Indeed, the extent of their knowledge now was limited to the letter Juniper had sent advising that she’d invited him to dinner. They’d met during an air raid, they shared a mutual friend, he was a teacher and a writer; Saffy racked her brains to remember the rest, the precise words Juniper had used, the turn of phrase that had left them with the impression that the gentleman in question had been responsible, in some way, for saving her life. Had they imagined that detail, she wondered? Or was it one of Juniper’s creative untruths, an embellishment designed to predispose their sympathies?

There had been a little more about him in the journal, but that information was not in a biographical vein. What had been written there were the feelings, the desires, the longings of a grown woman. A woman Saffy didn’t recognize, of whom she felt shy; a woman who was becoming worldly. And if Saffy found the transition difficult to reconcile herself to, Percy was going to need a great deal of coaxing. As far as her twin was concerned, Juniper would always be the baby sister who’d come along when they were almost fully grown, the little girl who needed spoiling and protecting. Whose spirits could be lifted, her loyalties won, with nothing more weighty than a bag of sweets.

Saffy smiled with sad fondness for her barnacled twin, who was, no doubt, even at this minute, arming herself so that their father’s wishes might be respected. Poor, dear Percy: intelligent in so many ways, courageous and kind, tougher than leather, yet unable ever to unshackle herself from Daddy’s impossible expectations. Saffy knew better; she’d stopped trying to please Himself a long time ago.

She shivered, cold suddenly, and rubbed her hands together. Then she crossed her arms, determined to find steel within them. Saffy needed to be strong for Juniper now; it was her turn. For she could understand, where Percy would not, the burden of romantic passion.

The door sucked open and Percy was there. A draught pulled the door closed with a slam behind her. ‘It’s bucketing down.’ She chased a drip from the end of her nose, her chin, shook her wet hair. ‘I heard a noise up here. Before.’

Saffy blinked, greatly perplexed. Spoke as if by rote: ‘It was the shutter. I think I fixed it, though of course I’m not much use with tools – Percy, where on earth have you been?’ And what had she been doing? Saffy’s eyes widened as she took in her twin’s wet, muddy dress, the – were they leaves? – in her hair. ‘Headache gone then, has it?’

‘What’s that?’ Percy had collected their glasses and was at the drinks table pouring them each another whisky.

‘Your headache. Did you find the aspirin?’

‘Oh. Thank you. Yes.’

‘Only you were gone a long time.’

‘Was I?’ Percy handed a glass to Saffy. ‘I suppose I was. I thought I heard something outside; probably Poe, frightened of the storm. I did wonder at first if it might be Juniper’s friend. What’s his name?’

‘Thomas.’ Saffy took a sip. ‘Thomas Cavill.’ Did she imagine that Percy was avoiding her eyes? ‘Percy, I hope-’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be nice to him when he arrives.’ She swirled her glass. ‘ If he arrives.’

‘You mustn’t prejudge him for being late, Percy.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘It’s the fault of the war. Nothing runs on time any more. Juniper’s not here either.’

Percy reclaimed the cigarette she’d left earlier, propped against the rim of the ashtray. ‘That’s hardly a surprise.’

‘He’ll be here eventually.’

‘If he exists.’

What an odd thing to say; Saffy tucked a wayward curl behind her ear, confused, concerned, wondering if Percy was making some sort of joke, one of the trademark ironies that Saffy had a habit of taking literally. Though her stomach had begun to churn, Saffy ignored it, choosing to take the remark as humour. ‘I do hope so; such a great shame to learn he’s a mere figment. The table will look terribly unbalanced minus a setting.’ She perched on the edge of the chaise longue, but no matter how she strove for ease, a peculiar nervousness seemed to have transplanted itself from Percy to her.

‘You look tired,’ said Percy.

‘Do I?’ Saffy tried to affect an amiable tone. ‘I suppose I am. Perhaps activity will perk me up. I might just slip down to the kitchen and-’

‘No.’

Saffy’s glass dropped. Whisky spilled across the rug, beading brown on the blue and red surface.

Percy picked up the glass. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just meant-’

‘How silly of me.’ Saffy fussed at a wet spot on her dress. ‘Silly, silly…’

And then it came, a knock on the door.

They stood as one.

‘Juniper,’ said Percy.

Saffy swallowed, noting the assumption. ‘Or Thomas Cavill.’

‘Yes. Or Thomas Cavill.’

‘Well,’ said Saffy with a stiff smile. ‘Whoever it is, I expect we’d better let them in.’

I couldn’t stop thinking about Thomas Cavill and Juniper Blythe. It was such a melancholy story; I made it my melancholy story. I returned to London, I got on with my life, but a part of me remained tethered to that castle. On the brink of sleep, in a moment of daydream, the whispers found me. My eyes fell closed and I was right back in that cool, shadowy, corridor, waiting alongside Juniper for her fiancé to arrive. ‘She’s lost in the past,’ Mrs Bird had told me as we drove away, as I watched through the rear-view mirror, the woods drawing their wings around the castle, a dark, protective shroud: ‘That same night in October 1941, over and over; a record player with a stuck needle.’

The proposition was just so terribly sad – an entire life spoiled in an evening – and it filled me with questions. How had it been for her that night when Thomas Cavill failed to show for dinner? Had all three sisters waited in a room done up specially for the occasion? I wondered at what point had she begun to worry; whether she’d thought at first that he’d been injured, that there’d been an accident; or whether she’d known at once she’d been forsaken? ‘He married another woman,’ Mrs Bird had told me when I asked, ‘engaged himself to Juniper then ran off with someone else. Nothing but a letter to break off their affair.’

I held the story in my hands, turned it over, looked at it from every angle. Envisaged, amended, replayed. I suppose the fact that I’d been similarly betrayed might have had a little to do with it, but my obsession – for, I confess, that’s what it became – was fed by more than empathy. It concerned itself particularly with the final moments of my encounter with Juniper; the transition I’d witnessed when I mentioned my return to London; the way the young woman waiting longingly for her lover had been replaced by a tense and wretched figure, begging me for help, berating me for having broken a promise. Most of all, I fixated on the moment she’d looked me in the eye and accused me of having failed her in some grave manner, the way she’d called me Meredith.

Juniper Blythe was old, she was unwell, and her sisters had been at great pains to warn me that she often spoke of things she didn’t understand. Nonetheless, the more I considered it the more awfully certain I became that Mum had played some part in her fate. It was the only thing, surely, that made any sense. It explained Mum’s reaction to the lost letter, the cry – for it had been of anguish, hadn’t it? – when she saw from whom it came, the same cry I’d heard as we drove away from Milderhurst when I was small. That secret visit, decades before, when Mum had taken my hand and wrenched me from the gate, forced me back into the car, saying only that she’d made a mistake, that it was too late.