Kate Morton - The Distant Hours

‘You came,’ said Meredith, nudging her spectacles with the back of her hand and blinking as if she might be seeing things.

‘I told you I would.’

‘But where are you staying?’

‘With my godfather.’

A grin broke across Meredith’s face and turned into a laugh. ‘Let’s get out of here then,’ she said, gripping Juniper’s hand tightly in her own.

‘I’m telling Mum you didn’t finish the kitchen like you were s’posed to,’ the sister shouted after them.

‘Don’t mind her,’ said Meredith. ‘She’s in a snit because they won’t let her out of the broom cupboard at work.’

‘It’s a great pity no one’s thought to lock her in it.’

In the end, Juniper Blythe had taken herself to London. By train, just as Meredith had suggested when they sat together on the Milderhurst roof. Escaping hadn’t been nearly as hard as she’d expected. She’d simply walked across the fields and refused to stop until she reached the railway station.

She’d been so pleased with herself when she did, that it skipped her attention for a moment that she’d need to do anything further. Juniper could write, she could invent grand fictions and capture them within an intricacy of words, but she knew herself to be perfectly hopeless at everything else. Her entire knowledge of the world and its operation had been deduced from books and the conversations of her sisters – neither of whom was particularly worldly – and the stories Merry had told her of London. It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, as she stood outside the station, to realize she had no idea what to do next. Only when she noticed the kiosk labelled ‘Ticket Office’ did she remember that of course, she would need to purchase one of those.

Money. It was something Juniper had never known or needed, but there had been a small sum left when Daddy died. She hadn’t concerned herself with the details of the will and the estate – it was enough to know that Percy was angry, Saffy concerned, and Juniper herself the unwitting cause – but when Saffy mentioned a parcel of actual money, the sort that could be folded and held and exchanged for things, and offered to put it away safely, Juniper had said no. That she preferred to keep it, just to look at awhile. Saffy, dear Saffy, hadn’t blinked, accepting the odd request as perfectly reasonable because it had come from Juniper whom she loved and therefore would not question.

The train when it arrived was full but an older man in the carriage had stood and tipped his hat and Juniper had understood that he meant for her to slide into the seat he’d vacated. A seat by the window. How charming people were out here! She smiled and he nodded, and she sat with her suitcase on her lap, waiting for whatever might come. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ the sign on the platform demanded. Yes , thought Juniper. Yes , it is . To remain at the castle, she knew with more certainty now than ever, would have been to submit herself to a future she refused to meet. The one she’d seen reflected in her father’s eyes when he took her shoulders between his hands and told her they were the same, the two of them, the same.

Steam swirled and eddied along the platform and she felt as excited as if she’d climbed onto the back of a great huffing dragon who was about to launch into the sky, carrying her with him as he flew away to a place of fascination and fancy. A shrill whistle sounded, making the hairs on Juniper’s arms stand up, and they were off, moving, the train lurching in mighty heaves. Juniper couldn’t help but laugh against the glass then, because she’d done it. She’d really done it.

Over time, the window misted with her breath and unnamed, unknown stations, fields and villages and woods, skimmed by: a blur – pastels of green and blue and streaky pink, run through with a watery brush. The skidding colours stopped sometimes, clarifying to form a picture, framed like a painting by the window’s rectangle. A Constable, or one of the other pastorals Daddy had admired. Renderings of a timeless countryside that he’d eulogized with the familiar sadness clouding his eyes.

Juniper had no patience for the timeless. She knew that there was no such thing. Only the here and now, and the way her heart was beating in its too-fast way, though not dangerously so, because she was sitting inside a train on her way to London while noise and movement and heat surrounded her.

London. Juniper said the word once beneath her breath, then again. Relished its evenness, its two balanced syllables, the way it felt on her tongue. Soft but weighted, like a secret, the sort of word that might be whispered between lovers. Juniper wanted love, she wanted passion, she wanted complications. She wanted to live and to love and to eavesdrop, to learn secrets and know how other people spoke to one another, the way they felt, the things that made them laugh and cry and sigh. People who weren’t Percy or Saffy or Raymond or Juniper Blythe.

Once, when she was a very small girl, a hot-air balloonist had launched from one of the Milderhurst fields; Juniper couldn’t remember why, whether he’d been a friend of Daddy’s or a famous adventurer, only that there’d been a breakfast picnic on the lawn to celebrate and they’d gathered, all of them, the northern cousins too, and a select few guests from the village, to watch the great event. The balloon had been tethered to the ground by ropes and as the flame leaped and the basket strained to follow it, men stationed at the base of each cord had worked to effect its release. Ropes screamed with tension, the flames raged higher, and for a moment, as all eyes widened, disaster had seemed imminent.

A single rope came loose while the others remained, and the whole contraption lurched to the side, flames licking perilously close to the fabric of the balloon. Juniper had glanced at Daddy. She was only a child and hadn’t then known the full horror of his past – it would be some time yet before he burdened his youngest daughter with his secrets – but she had known, even then, that he feared fire above all else. His face as he watched events unfold had been a sheer of white marble with dread cut clear upon it. Juniper had found herself adopting his expression, curious to know what it might feel like to be turned to stone and scored by fear. Just in time, the final ropes had released and the balloon had righted itself, jerked free and aimed for the sky, rising high into the blue beyond.

For Juniper, Daddy’s death had been like the release of that first rope. She had felt the liberation as her body, her soul, her whole being shifted sideways, and a significant portion of the weight that had shackled her fell away. The last ropes she’d cut herself: packing a small suitcase with a few mismatched clothes and the two addresses she had for people in London, and waiting until a day when both her sisters were busy so she could set off unobserved.

There remained now only a single piece of rope stretching between Juniper and her home. It was the hardest to sever, tied neatly in a careful knot by Percy and Saffy. And yet it had to be done, for their love and concern entrapped her just as surely as Daddy’s expectations. As Juniper had reached London, and the smoke and the bustle of Charing Cross Station had enwrapped her, she’d imagined herself a shining pair of scissors and leaned to slice the rope right through. She’d watched as it fell back upon itself, hesitated for an instant like an excised tail, before receding fast into the distance, gaining speed as it slithered back towards the castle.

Free at last, she’d asked directions to a postbox and sent the letter home, explaining briefly what she’d done and why. It would reach her sisters before they’d time to worry too deeply or send out search parties to bring her back. They would fret, she knew; Saffy in particular would be waylaid by fear, but what else could Juniper have done?