Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

‘No,’ Jemima said, bottom lip trembling. ‘I want to be here. For James. And for you.’

Lady Violet took Jemima’s hands, withdrew them gently from her stomach and cradled them within her own. ‘I know you do.’ She reached out, stroked tentatively Jemima’s mousy brown hair. It was a simple gesture but in its enactment I was reminded that Lady Violet was herself a mother. Without moving, she said, ‘Grace. Help Jemima upstairs so that she might rest. Leave all that. Hamilton will collect it later.’

‘Yes, my Lady.’ I curtseyed and came to Jemima’s side. I reached down and helped her stand, glad for the opportunity to leave the room and its misery.

On my way out, Jemima beside me, I realised what was different about the room, aside from the dark and the heat. The mantle clock, which usually marked each passing second with detached consistency, was silent. Its slender black hands frozen in arabesque, observing Lady Ashbury’s instructions to stop all the clocks at ten minutes before five, the moment of her husband’s passing.

With Jemima settled in her room, I returned to the servants’ hall where Mr Hamilton was inspecting the pots and pans Katie had been scrubbing. He looked up from Mrs Townsend’s favourite sauté pan only to tell me that the Hartford sisters were down by the old boathouse and I was to take them refreshments along with the lemonade. He had not yet learned of the spilled tea and I was glad. I fetched a jug of lemonade from the ice room, loaded it onto a tray with two tall glasses and a platter of Mrs Townsend’s ribbon sandwiches, and left via the servants’ hall door.

I stood on the top step, blinking into the clear unbroken glare while my eyes adjusted. In a month without rain, colour had been bleached from the estate. The sun was midway across the sky and its direct light provided a final wash, giving the garden the hazy look of one of the watercolours that hung in Lady Violet’s boudoir. Although I wore my cap, the line down the centre of my head where I parted my hair remained exposed and was instantly scorched.

I crossed the Theatre Lawn, freshly mown and rich with the soporific scent of dry grass. Dudley crouched nearby, clipping the border hedges. The blades of his shears were smeared with green sap, patches of bare metal glistened.

He must have sensed me nearby because he turned and squinted. ‘She’s a hot one,’ he said, hand shielding his eyes.

‘Hot enough to cook eggs on the railway,’ said I, quoting Myra, wondering whether there was truth in the expression.

At lawn’s edge, a grand set of grey-stone stairs led into Lady Ashbury’s rose garden. Pink and white buds hugged the trellises, alive with the warm drone of diligent bees hovering about their yellow hearts.

I passed beneath the arbour, unlatched the kissing gate and started down the Long Walk: a stretch of grey cobblestones set amongst yellow and white stonecrops. Halfway along, tall hornbeam hedges gave way to the miniature yew that bordered the Egeskov Garden. I blinked as a couple of topiaries came to life, then smiled at myself and the pair of indignant ducks, mallards with green feathers, that had wandered up from the lake and now stood, regarding me with shiny black eyes.

At the end of the Egeskov Garden was the second kissing gate, the forgotten sister (for there is always a forgotten sister), victim of the wiry jasmine tendrils. On the other side lay the Icarus fountain, and beyond, at lake’s edge, the boathouse.

The gate’s clasp was beginning to rust and I had to lay down my load that I might unlatch it. I nestled the tray on a flat spot amongst a cluster of strawberry plants and used my fingers to prise open the latch. I pushed open the gate, picked up the lemonade and continued, through a cloud of jasmine perfume, toward the fountain.

Though Eros and Psyche sat vast and magnificent in the front lawn, a prologue to the grand house itself, there was something wonderful-a mysterious and melancholic aspect-about the smaller fountain, hidden within its sunny clearing at the bottom of the south garden.

The circular pool of stacked stone stood two-feet high, twenty-feet across at its widest point. It was lined with tiny glass tiles, azure blue like the necklace of Ceylonese sapphires Lord Ashbury had brought back for Lady Violet after serving in the Far East. From the centre emerged a huge craggy block of russet marble, the height of two men, thick at base but tapering to a peak. Midway up, creamy marble against the brown, the lifesize figure of Icarus had been carved in a position of recline. His wings, pale marble etched to give the impression of feathers, were strapped to his outspread arms and fell behind, weeping over the rock. Rising from the pool to tend the fallen figure were three nymphs, long hair looped and coiled about angelic faces: one held a small harp, one wore a coronet of woven ivy leaves, and one reached beneath Icarus’s torso, white hands on creamy skin, to pull him from the deep.

On that summer’s day a pair of purple martins, oblivious to the statue’s beauty, swooped overhead, alighting atop the marble rock, only to take flight again, skim the pond surface and fill their beaks with water. As I watched them, I was overcome with heat and a desire, strong and sudden, to plunge my hand into the cool water. I glanced back toward the distant house, far too intent upon its grief to notice if a housemaid, all the way at the bottom of the south park, paused a moment to cool herself.

I rested the tray on the rim of the pool and placed one tentative knee on the tiles, warm through my black stockings. I leaned forward, held out my hand, withdrew it again at the first touch of sun-kissed water. I rolled up my sleeve, reached out again, ready to submerge my arm.

There came a laugh, tinkling music in the summer stillness.

I froze, listened, inclined my head and peered beyond the statue.

I saw them then, Hannah and Emmeline, not at the boathouse after all, but perched along the rim on the other side of the fountain. My shock was compounded: they had removed their black mourning dresses and wore only petticoats, corset covers, and lace-trimmed drawers. Their boots, too, lay discarded on the white stone path that rounded the pool. Their long hair glistened in complicity with the sun. I glanced back to the house, wondering at their daring. Wondering whether my presence implicated me somehow. Wondering whether I feared or hoped it did.

Emmeline lay on her back: feet together, legs bent, knees, as white as her petticoat, saluting the clear blue sky. Her outer arm was arranged so that her head rested on her hand. The other arm-soft pale skin, a stranger to the sun-was extended straight over the pool, her wrist dancing a lazy figure eight so that alternate fingers pricked the pool’s surface. Tiny ripples lapped one another keenly.

Hannah sat beside, one leg curled beneath her, the other bent so her chin rested on her knee, her toes flirting carelessly with the water. Her arms were wrapped around her raised leg and from one hand dangled a piece of paper so thin as to be almost transparent beneath the sun’s glare.

I withdrew my arm, rolled down my sleeve, collected myself. With one last longing glance at the sparkling pool, I picked up the tray.

As I drew closer, I could hear them talking.

‘… I think he’s being awfully pig-headed,’ Emmeline said. They had accumulated a pile of strawberries between them, and she popped one in her mouth, tossed the stalk into the garden.

Hannah shrugged. ‘Pa’s always been stubborn.’

‘All the same,’ Emmeline said. ‘To flat out refuse is just silly. If David can be bothered to write to us all the way from France, the least Pa could do is read the thing.’

Hannah gazed toward the statue, inclined her head so that the pool’s reflected ripples shimmered, in ribbons, across her face. ‘David made a fool of Pa. He went behind his back, did the very thing Pa told him not to.’