Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

The light is bright. I feel like a bird in an oven. Hot, plucked and watched. Why ever did I agree to this? Did I agree to this?

‘Can you say something so we can test the levels?’ Anthony is crouched behind a black item. A video camera, I suppose.

‘What should I say?’ A voice not my own.

‘Once again.’

‘I’m afraid I really don’t know what to say.’

‘Good,’ Anthony pulls away from the camera. ‘That’s got it.’

I smell the tent canvas, baking in the midday sun.

‘I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you,’ he says, smiling. ‘Sylvia tells me you used to work at the big house.’

‘Yes.’

‘No need to lean toward the microphone. It’ll pick you up just fine where you are.’

I had not realised I was leaning and inch backwards into the seat curve with the sense that I’ve been chastised.

‘You worked at Riverton.’ It is a statement, no answer required, yet I cannot curb my urge to comply, to specify.

‘I started in 1914 as a housemaid.’

He is embarrassed, for himself or for me I do not know. ‘Yes, well…’ He moves on swiftly. ‘You worked for Theodore Luxton?’ He says the name with some trepidation, as if by invoking Teddy’s spectre he may be tarred by his ignominy.

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent! Did you see much of him?’

He means did I hear much; can I tell him what went on behind closed doors. I fear I shall be a disappointment. ‘Not much. I was his wife’s lady’s maid at the time.’

‘You must’ve had quite a bit to do with Theodore in that case.’

‘No. Not really.’

‘But I’ve read that the servants’ hall was the hub of a household’s gossip. You must have been aware of what was going on?’

‘No.’ A lot of it came out later, of course. I read about it, along with everybody else, in the newspapers. Visits to Germany, meetings with Hitler. I never believed the worst charges. They were guilty of little more than an admiration for Hitler’s galvanisation of the working classes, his ability to grow industry. Never mind that it was off the backs of slave labour. Few people knew that then. History was yet to prove him a madman.

‘The meeting in 1936 with the German ambassador?’

‘I no longer worked at Riverton then. I left a decade earlier.’

He stops; he is disappointed, as I knew he would be. His line of questioning has been unfairly cut. Then some of his excitement is restored. ‘1926?’

‘1925.’

‘Then you must have been there when that fellow, that poet, what’s-his-name, killed himself.’

The light is making me warm. I am tired. My heart flutters a little. Or something inside my heart flutters; an artery worn so thin that a flap has come loose, is waving about, lost, in the current of my blood.

‘Yes,’ I hear myself say.

It is some consolation. ‘All right. We can talk about that instead?’

I can hear my heart now. It is pumping wetly, reluctantly.

‘Grace?’

‘She’s very pale.’

My head is light. So very tired.

‘Dr Bradley?’

‘Grace? Grace!’

Whooshing like wind through a tunnel, an angry wind that drags behind it a summer storm, rushing toward me, faster and faster. It is my past, and it is coming for me. It is everywhere; in my ears, behind my eyes, pushing my ribs…

‘Call a doctor; someone call an ambulance!’

Release. Disintegration. A million tiny particles falling through the cone of time.

‘Grace? She’s all right. You’ll be all right, Grace, you hear?’

Horses hooves on cobble roads, motor cars with foreign names, delivery boys on bicycles, nannies parading perambulators, skipping ropes, hopscotch, Greta Garbo, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Bee Jackson, the charleston, Chanel Number 5, The Mysterious Affair at Styles , F Scott Fitzgerald…

‘Grace!’

My name?

‘Grace?’

Sylvia? Hannah?

‘She just collapsed. She was sitting there and-’

‘Stand back now, ma’am. Let us get her in.’ A new voice.

The slam of a door.

A siren.

Motion.

The Shifting Fog

‘Grace… it’s Sylvia. Hold on, you hear? I’m with you… taking you home… you just hold on…’

Hold on? To what? Ah… the letter, of course. It is in my hand. Hannah is waiting for me to bring her the letter. The street is icy and the winter snow has just begun to fall.

It is a cold winter and I am running. I can feel my blood, thick and warm in my veins, pulsing quickly beneath my cold face. Icy air makes my skin stretch taut across my cheekbones, as if it has shrunk smaller than its frame, is stretched over a rack. On tenterhooks, as Myra would say.

The letter I clutch tightly in my fingers. It is small, the envelope marked a little where its sender’s thumb smudged still-wet ink. It is hot off the press.

It is from an investigator. A real detective with an agency in Surrey Street, a secretary at the door and a typewriter on his desk. I have been dispatched to collect it in person for it contains-with any luck-information far too inflammatory to be risked in the Royal Mail or over the telephone. The letter, we hope, contains the whereabouts of Emmeline, who has disappeared. It threatens to become a scandal; I am one of the few who have been trusted.

The telephone call came from Mr Frederick three days ago. Emmeline had been staying the weekend with family friends at an estate in Oxfordshire. She gave them the slip when they went to town for church. There was a car waiting for her. It was all planned. There is rumoured to be a man involved.

I am pleased about the letter-I know how important it is that we find Emmeline-but I am excited for another reason too. I am seeing Alfred tonight. It will be the first time since that foggy evening many months ago. When he gave me Lucy Starling’s address, told me he cared for me, and late that night returned me to my door. We have exchanged letters in the months since, with increased reliability (and increased fondness), and now, finally, we are to see each other again. A real, proper engagement. Alfred is coming to London. He has saved his wages and purchased two tickets to Princess Ida . It is a stage show. It will be my first. I have passed the signs for shows when I have walked along the Haymarket on errands for Hannah, or on one of my afternoons off, but I have never been to see one.

It is my secret. I do not tell Hannah-she has too much else on her mind-and I do not tell the other staff at number seventeen. Mrs Tibbit’s culture of unkindness has ensured they are all the sorts to tease, to poke cruel fun for the smallest reason. Once, when Mrs Tibbit saw me reading a letter (from Mrs Townsend, thank goodness, and not Alfred!), she insisted on seeing it herself. She said it was her duty to ensure that the under-staff (under-staff!) are not behaving improperly, keeping up improper liaisons. The Master would not approve.

She is right in one way. Teddy has become strict recently in matters of staff. There are problems at work, and although he is not by nature ill-tempered, it seems even the mildest man is capable of bad humour when pushed. He has become preoccupied with matters of dirt and filth, and has taken to checking our fingernails daily; it is one of the habits he’s adopted from his father.

That is why the other servants are not to be told of Emmeline. One of them would be sure to tell, to score points from having been the one to inform. The others are on Teddy’s team. I am on Hannah’s.

When I reach number seventeen, I enter via the servants’ staircase and hurry through, anxious not to draw undue attention from Mrs Tibbit.

Hannah is in her bedroom, waiting for me. She is pale, has been pale since she received the call from Pa last week. I hand her the letter and she immediately tears it open. She scans what is written. Exhales quickly. ‘They’ve found her,’ she says without looking up. ‘Thank God. She’s all right.’