Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

Wordlessly she stopped swinging, stood and let go of the seat. The ropes slackened and it lassoed back and forth. He saw that she was rather tall. She sat then on the stone edge, gathered her knees close to her chest so that her dress bunched high around her legs, and dipped in her toes, peering over the tops of her knees to watch the ripples as they ran away from her.

Tom felt the rise of indignation in his chest. He’d trespassed but he hadn’t done any real harm; nothing to earn this sort of silent treatment. She was behaving now as if he weren’t there at all; though she was sitting right by him, her face was fixed in an attitude of deep, distracted thought. He decided she must be playing some sort of game, one of those games that girls – that women – liked to play, the sort that confused men and thereby, in some strange counteractive fashion, kept them in line. What other reason had she for ignoring him? Unless she was shy. Perhaps that was it; she was young, there was every chance she found his boldness, his maleness, his – let’s face it – near nakedness confronting. He felt sorry then – he’d not intended anything like that, had only fancied a swim after all – and he adopted his most casual, friendly tone: ‘Look here. I’m sorry to surprise you like this; I don’t mean any harm. My name’s Thomas Cavill. I’ve come to-’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I heard you.’ She looked at him then as if he were a gnat. Wearily, mildly annoyed, but otherwise unaffected. ‘There’s really no need to trumpet on and on about it.’

‘Now hang on a minute. I was only trying to assure you that…’

But Tom let his assurances trail off. For one thing, it was evident that this strange person was no longer listening, for another he was far too distracted. She’d stood up while he was speaking and was now lifting her dress to reveal a swimsuit beneath. Just like that. Not a glance his way, no peeping beneath her eyelashes or giggling at her own forwardness. She tossed her dress behind her, a small pile of discarded cotton, and stretched like a sun-warmed cat, yawned a little, bothering herself with none of the female fripperies of covering her mouth or excusing herself or blushing in his direction.

With no fanfare at all she dived from the side and as she hit the water Tom hurried to climb out. Her boldness, if that’s what it was, alarmed him in some way. His alarm frightened him and his fear was compelling. It made her compelling.

Tom hadn’t a towel, of course, nor any other way of drying himself quickly enough to get dressed so he stood out in a sunny patch and tried to look as if he were relaxed about doing so. It was no mean feat. His ease had deserted him and he knew now what it was to be one of his bumbling friends who fell to shuffling their feet and confusing their words when faced with a pretty woman. A pretty woman who had swum to the pool’s surface and was floating lazily on her back, long wet hair fanning out like seaweed from her face, unalarmed, unaffected, seemingly unaware of his intrusion.

Tom tried to find some dignity, decided trousers would help and pulled them over his wet shorts. He aimed for authority, tried not to let nervousness tip him over into cockiness. He was a teacher, for God’s sake, he was a man about to become a soldier; it shouldn’t be so hard. Professionalism, though, wasn’t an easy thing to exude when one was standing bare-foot and semi-naked in someone else’s garden. All earlier epiphanies regarding the foolishness of property law were revealed now as crude, if not delusional, and he swallowed before saying as calmly as he could, ‘My name is Thomas Cavill. I’m a teacher. I’ve come here to check on a pupil of mine I believe has been evacuated here.’ He was dripping water, a rivulet ran warm down the centre of his stomach, and he winced when he added, ‘I’m her teacher.’ Which, of course, he’d already said.

She’d rolled over and was watching him now from the centre of the pool, studying him as if she might be making mental notes. She swam beneath the water, a silvery streak, and emerged at the edge, pressed her arms flat against the stones, one hand on top of the other, and rested her chin on them. ‘Meredith.’

‘Yes.’ A sigh of relief. At last. ‘Yes, Meredith Baker. I’m here to see how she’s doing. To check that she’s all right.’

Those wide-apart eyes were on him, her feelings impossible to read. Then she smiled and her face was transformed in some transcendent way and he drew breath as she said, ‘I suppose you’d better ask her that yourself. She’ll be along soon. My sister’s measuring her for dresses.’

‘Good then. That’s good.’ Purpose was his life raft and he clung to it with gratitude and a total lack of shame. He put his arms back through his shirtsleeves and sat down on the end of a nearby sun lounger; pulling the folder and its checklist from his satchel. With a pretence of composure he performed great interest in its information, never mind that he could have recited it if pressed. It was as well to read it through again: he wanted to be sure that when any of his pupils’ parents saw him back in London, he’d be able to answer their questions with honesty and certainty. Most of his kids had been accommodated in the village, two with the vicar at the vicarage, another at a farmhouse down the way; Meredith, he thought, glancing over his shoulder at the army of chimney pots above the distant trees, had scattered the furthest. A castle, according to the address on his checklist. He’d hoped to see inside, not just to see but to explore a little; so far the local ladies had been very welcoming, asking him in for tea and cake, fussing over whether he’d had enough.

He risked another glance at the creature in the pool and figured that an invitation here was decidedly unlikely. Her attention was elsewhere, so he let his focus rest on her a while. This girl was perplexing: she seemed blind to him and blind to his charm. He felt ordinary next to her and that was something he wasn’t used to. From this distance, however, and with his pride somewhat smoothed, he was able to put his vanity aside long enough to wonder who she was. The officious lady from the local WVS had told him that the castle was owned by one Mr Raymond Blythe, a writer (‘ The True History of the Mud Man - why, surely you’ve read it?’) who was old now and unwell, but that Meredith would be in good hands with his twin daughters, a pair of spinsters perfectly suited to the care of a poor, homeless child. No other occupant had been mentioned and he had assumed, if indeed he’d given it much thought at all, that Mr Blythe and the twin spinsters would be the full complement at Milderhurst Castle. He certainly hadn’t expected this girl, this woman, this young and ungraspable woman who was certainly no spinster. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt incredibly urgent all of a sudden that he know more about her.

She splashed and he looked away, shook his head and smiled at his own regrettable conceit; Tom knew enough of himself to realize that his interest in her was in direct proportion to her lack of interest in him. Even as a child he’d been driven by that most senseless of all motivators: the desire to possess precisely what he couldn’t. He needed to let it go. She was just a girl. An eccentric girl at that.

A rustle then and a bonny Labrador charged honey-blond through the foliage, chasing its wagging tongue; Meredith appeared on its heels, a smile on her face that told him all he needed to know about her condition. Tom was so pleased to see her, a little piece of normality in spectacles, that he grinned and stood, almost tripping over himself in his hurry to greet her. ‘Hey there, kiddo. How’s tricks?’

She stopped dead, blinked at him, confounded, he realized, to see him so decidedly out of context. As the dog ran circles around her and the blush in her cheeks spread to her neck, she shuffled her plimsolls and said, ‘Hello, Mr Cavill.’