Kate Morton: The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

Ruth nudged me. ‘Mum? Ursula’s talking to you.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear.’

‘Mum’s a bit deaf,’ Ruth said. ‘At her age it’s to be expected. I’ve tried to get her in for testing but she can be rather obstinate.’

Obstinate, I own. But I am not deaf and do not like it when people assume I am-my eyesight is poor without glasses, I tire easily, have none of my own teeth left and survive on a cocktail of pills, but I can hear as well as I ever have. It’s only with age I have learned only to listen to things I want to hear.

‘I was just saying, Mrs Bradley, Grace, it must be strange to be back. Well, sort of back. It must spark all sorts of memories?’

‘Yes.’ I was aware that my voice was wispy. ‘Yes, it does.’

‘I’m so glad,’ Ursula said, smiling. ‘I take that as a sign we’ve got it right.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Is there anything that looks out of place? Anything we’ve forgotten?’

I looked about the set again. Meticulous in its detail, down to the set of crests mounted by the door, the middle one a Scottish thistle that matched the etching on my locket.

All the same, there was something missing. Despite its accuracy, the set was strangely divested of atmosphere. It was like a museum piece: interesting but lifeless.

It was understandable, of course. Though the 1920s live vividly in my memory, the decade is, for the film’s designers, the ‘olden days’. A historical setting whose replication requires as much research and painstaking attention to detail as would the recreation of a medieval castle.

I could feel Ursula looking at me, awaiting keenly my pronouncement.

‘It’s perfect,’ I said finally. ‘Everything in its place.’

Then she said something that made me start. ‘Except the family.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Except the family.’ I blinked and for a moment I could see them: Emmeline draped across the sofa, all legs and eyelashes, Hannah frowning at one of the books from the library, Teddy pacing the Bessarabian carpet…

‘Emmeline sounds like she must have been a lot of fun,’ Ursula said.

‘Yes.’

‘She was easy to research-managed to get her name in just about every gossip column ever printed. Not to mention the letters and diaries of half the eligible bachelors of the day!’

I nodded. ‘She was always popular.’

She looked up at me from beneath her fringe. ‘Putting Hannah’s character together wasn’t so easy.’

I cleared my throat. ‘No?’

‘She was more of a mystery. Not that she wasn’t mentioned in the papers: she was. Had her share of admirers too. It just seems not many people really knew her. They admired her, revered her even, but didn’t really know her.’

I thought of Hannah. Beautiful, clever, yearning Hannah. ‘She was complex.’

‘Yes,’ Ursula said, ‘that’s the impression I got.’

Ruth, who’d been listening, said, ‘One of them married an American, didn’t she?’

I looked at her, surprised. She had always made it her business not to know anything about the Hartfords.

She met my gaze. ‘I’ve been doing some reading.’

How like Ruth to prepare for our visit, no matter how distasteful she found the subject matter.

Ruth turned her attention back to Ursula and spoke cautiously, wary of error. ‘She married after the war, I think. Which one was that?’

‘Hannah.’ There. I’d done it. I’d spoken her name aloud.

‘What about the other sister?’ Ruth continued. ‘Emmeline. Did she ever marry?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She was engaged.’

‘A number of times,’ Ursula said, smiling. ‘Seems she couldn’t bring herself to settle on one man.’

Oh, but she did. In the end she did.

‘Don’t suppose we’ll ever know exactly what happened that night.’ This was Ursula.

‘No.’ My tired feet were beginning to protest against the leather of my shoes. They’d be swollen tonight and Sylvia would exclaim, then she’d insist on giving them a soak. ‘I suppose not.’

Ruth straightened in her seat. ‘But surely you must know what happened, Miss Ryan. You’re making a film of it, after all.’

‘Sure,’ Ursula said, ‘I know the basics. My great-grandmother was at Riverton that night-she was related to the sisters through marriage-and it’s become a sort of family legend. My great-grandmother told Grandma, Grandma told Mum, and Mum told me. A number of times, actually: it made a huge impression. I always knew one day I’d turn it into a film.’ She smiled, shrugged. ‘But there are always little holes in history, aren’t there? I have files and files of research-the police reports and newspapers are full of facts, but it’s all second-hand. Rather heavily censored, I suspect. Unfortunately the two people who witnessed the suicide have been dead for years.’

‘I must say, it seems a rather morbid subject for a film,’ Ruth said.

‘Oh, no; it’s fascinating,’ Ursula said. ‘A rising star of the English poetry scene kills himself by a dark lake on the eve of a huge society party. His only witnesses are two beautiful sisters who never speak to each other again. One his fiancée, the other rumoured to be his lover. It’s terribly romantic.’

The knots in my stomach relaxed a little. So, she was going to treat the heart of their story in the usual manner. I wondered why I had supposed otherwise. And I wondered what sort of misguided loyalty had made me care either way. Why, after all these years, it still mattered to me what people thought.

But I knew that too. I had been born to it. Mr Hamilton had told me so the day I left, as I stood on the top step of the servants’ entrance, my leather bag packed with my few possessions, Mrs Townsend weeping in the kitchen. He’d said it was in my blood, just as it had been for my mother and for her parents before her, that I was a fool to leave, to throw away a good place, with a good family. He’d decried the loss of loyalty and pride, general in the English nation, and had vowed he wouldn’t allow it to infiltrate Riverton. The war hadn’t been fought and won just to lose our ways.

I’d pitied him then: so rigid, so certain that by leaving service I was setting myself on a path to financial and moral ruination. It wasn’t until much later that I began to understand how terrified he must have been, how relentless must have seemed the rapid social changes, swirling about him, nipping at his heels. How desperately he longed to hold onto the old ways and certainties.

But he’d been right. Not completely, not about the ruination-neither my finances nor my morals were the worse for leaving Riverton-but there was some part of me that never left that house. Rather, some part of the house that wouldn’t leave me. For years after, the smell of Stubbins & Co. silver polish, the crackle of tyres on gravel, a certain type of bell and I’d be fourteen again, tired after a long day’s work, sipping cocoa by the servants’ hall fire while Mr Hamilton orated select passages from The Times (those deemed fit for our impressionable ears), Myra frowned at some irreverent comment of Alfred’s, and Mrs Townsend snored gently in the rocker, knitting resting on her generous lap…

‘Here we are,’ Ursula said. ‘Thanks, Tony.’

A young man had appeared beside me, clutching a makeshift tray of motley mugs and an old jam jar full of sugar. He released his load onto the side table where Ursula began distributing them. Ruth passed one to me.

‘Mum, what is it?’ She pulled out a handkerchief and reached for my face. ‘Are you unwell?’

I could feel then that my cheeks were moist.

It was the smell of the tea that did it. And being there, in that room, sitting on that chesterfield. The weight of distant memories. Of long-held secrets. The clash of past and present.