Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

David made a show of deep consideration. ‘How old are you now?’

‘Eleven,’ said Emmeline.

‘Eleven…’ repeated David. ‘Practically twelve.’

Emmeline nodded eagerly.

‘All right,’ he said finally. He nodded at Robbie, smiled. ‘Give me a hand?’

Between them they carried the decorating ladder to the tree, seated the base amongst the crumpled paper that was strewn across the floor.

‘Ooh,’ Emmeline giggled, beginning to climb, the angel clutched in one hand. ‘I’m just like Jack, climbing his beanstalk.’

She continued until she reached the second to last rung. She stretched the hand that held the angel, reaching for the treetop, which remained tantalisingly aloof.

‘Bully,’ she said under her breath. She glanced down at the three upturned faces. ‘Almost. Just one more.’

‘Careful,’ David said. ‘Is there something you can hold onto?’

She reached out with her free hand and clutched a flimsy bough of fir, then did the same with the other. Very slowly, she lifted her left foot and placed it carefully on the top rung.

I held my breath as she lifted her right. She was grinning triumphantly, reaching out to place Mabel on her throne, when all of a sudden our eyes locked. Her face, poking above the treetop, registered surprise, then panic, as her foot slipped and she began to fall.

I opened my mouth to call out a warning but it was too late. With a scream that made my skin prickle, she tumbled like a rag doll to the floor, a pile of white skirts amid the tissue paper.

The room seemed to expand. For just one moment, everything and everyone stood still, silent. Then, the inevitable contraction. Noise, movement, panic, heat.

David scooped Emmeline into his arms. ‘Emme? Are you all right? Emme?’ He glanced at the floor where the angel lay, glass wing red with blood. ‘Oh God, it’s sliced right through.’

Hannah was on her knees. ‘It’s her wrist.’ She looked about for someone; found Robbie. ‘Fetch some help.’

I scrambled down the staircase, heart knocking against my ribcage. ‘I’ll go, miss,’ I said, slipping out the door.

I ran along the corridor, unable to clear my mind of Emmeline’s motionless body, every gasped breath an accusation. It was my fault she’d fallen. The last thing she had expected to see as she reached the treetop was my face. If I hadn’t been so nosy, if I hadn’t surprised her…

I swung around the bottom of the stairs and bumped into Myra.

‘Watch it,’ she scowled.

‘Myra,’ I said between breaths. ‘Help. She’s bleeding.’

‘I can’t understand a word of your gabble,’ said Myra crossly. ‘Who’s bleeding?’

‘Miss Emmeline,’ I said. ‘She fell… in the library… from the ladder… Master David and Robert Hunter-’

‘I might have known!’ Myra turned on her heel and hurried toward the servants’ hall. ‘That boy! I had a feeling about him. Arriving unannounced as he did. It’s just not done.’

I tried to explain that Robbie had played no part in the accident, but Myra would hear none of it. She clipped down the stairs, turned into the kitchen and pulled the medicine box from the sideboard. ‘In my experience, fellows as look like him are only ever bad news.’

‘But Myra, it wasn’t his fault-’

‘Wasn’t his fault?’ she said. ‘He’s been here one night and look at what’s happened.’

I gave up my defence. I was still breathless from running and there was little I could ever say or do to change Myra’s mind once it was made.

Myra dug out disinfectant and bandage strips and hurried upstairs. I fell into step behind her thin, capable frame, hurrying to keep up as her black shoes beat a reproach down the dim narrow hall. Myra would make it better; she knew how to fix things.

But when we reached the library, it was too late.

Propped in the centre of the lounge, a brave smile on her wan face, was Emmeline. Her siblings sat either side, David stroking her healthy arm. Her wounded wrist had been bound tightly in a white strip of cloth-torn from her pinafore, I noted-and now lay across her lap. Robbie Hunter stood near but apart.

‘I’m all right,’ said Emmeline, looking up at us. ‘Mr Hunter took care of everything.’ She looked at Robbie with eyes rimmed red. ‘I’m ever so grateful.’

‘We’re all grateful,’ said Hannah, eyes still on Emmeline.

David nodded. ‘Mighty impressive, Hunter. Where did you learn to do that?’

‘My uncle’s a doctor,’ he said. ‘I’d thought to follow him, but I’m not fond of blood.’

David surveyed the red-stained cloths on the floor. ‘You did a good job pretending otherwise.’ He turned to Emmeline and stroked her hair. ‘Lucky you’re not like the cousins, Emme; a nasty cut like that.’

But if she heard, Emmeline made no sign. She was gazing at Robbie in much the same way Mr Dudley had gazed at his tree. Forgotten, at her feet, the Christmas angel languished: face stoic, glass wings crushed, gold skirt red with blood.

25 FEBRUARY 1916

An Aeroplane to Fight Zeppelins

MR HARTFORD’S PROPOSAL

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT)

IPSWICH, 24 FEB.

Mr Frederick Hartford, who will be giving an important speech in the Parliament tomorrow on the aerial defence of Britain, gave me today some of his views on the general question at Ipswich, where his motor-car factory is located.

Mr Hartford, brother of Major James Hartford V.C. and son of Lord Herbert Hartford of Ashbury, thinks that Zeppelin attacks are to be warded off by producing a new light and fast type of one-seater aeroplane, of the kind proposed earlier this month by Mr Louis Blériot in the Petit Journal.

Mr Hartford said he does not believe in building Zeppelins which, he says, are awkward and vulnerable, and, on this latter account, are capable of operating only at night. If the Parliament is amenable, Mr Hartford plans temporarily to suspend his manfacture of motor-cars in favour of the light-weight aeroplanes.

Also addressing the Parliament tomorrow is businessman Mr Simion Luxton, who is similarly interested in the question of aerial defence. In the past year Mr Luxton has purchased two of Britain’s smaller motor-car manufacturers and most recently acquired an aeroplane factory near Cambridge. Mr Luxton has already commenced the manufacture of aeroplanes designed for warfare.

Mr Hartford and Mr Luxton represent the old and new faces of Britain. While the Ashbury line can be traced as far back as the court of King Henry VII, Mr Luxton is the grandson of a Yorkshire miner, who started his own manufacturing business and has since had much success. He is married to Mrs Estella Luxton, American heiress to the Stevenson’s pharmaceutical fortune.

That night, high in the attic, Myra and I curled up close in a desperate bid to stave off the icy air. The winter sun had long since set, and outside the angry wind shook the rooftop finials and crept, keening, through cracks in the wall.

‘They say it’s going to snow before year end,’ Myra whispered, pulling the blanket up to meet her chin. ‘And I’d have to say as I believe them.’

‘The wind sounds like a baby crying,’ I said.

‘No it doesn’t,’ Myra said. ‘It sounds like many things but never that.’

And it was that night she told me the story of the Major and Jemima’s children. The two little boys whose blood refused to clot, who had gone to their graves, one after the other, and now lay side by side in the cold hard ground of the Riverton graveyard.

The first, Timmy, had fallen from his horse, out riding with the Major on the Riverton estate.