Kate Morton - The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

Hannah raised her eyebrows and took a sip of red wine as Emmeline continued. ‘She said, “Nonsense. You’re a Hartford. Shooting’s in your blood.”’

‘Be that as it may,’ said Teddy. ‘There will be no hand guns in this house. I can imagine what my constituents would make of my possessing illegal firearms!’

Emmeline rolled her eyes as Hannah said, ‘Future constituents.’

‘Do relax, Teddy,’ said Emmeline. ‘You won’t have to worry about firearms if you go on like that. You’ll give yourself a heart attack. I didn’t say I was going to get a hand gun. I was just saying that a girl can’t be too careful these days. What with husbands killing wives and wives killing husbands. Don’t you agree, Mrs Christie?’

Mrs Christie had been watching the exchange with wry amusement. ‘I’m afraid I don’t much care for firearms,’ she said. ‘Poisons are more my thing.’

‘That must be disquieting, Archie,’ said Teddy, with a show of humour for which I hadn’t given him credit. ‘A wife with a penchant for poison?’

Archibald Christie smiled thinly. ‘Just one of my wife’s delightful little hobbies.’

Husband and wife regarded one another across the table.

‘No more delightful than your own sordid little hobbies,’ said Mrs Christie. ‘And a lot less needy.’

Late in the evening, after the Christies had left, I pulled my copy of The Mysterious Affair at Styles from under my bed. It had been a gift from Alfred, and I was so absorbed with re-reading his inscription that I barely registered the telephone ringing. Mr Boyle must have answered the call and transferred it upstairs to Hannah. I thought nothing of it. It was only when Mr Boyle knocked on my door and announced the Mistress would see me that I thought to worry.

Hannah was still dressed in her oyster-coloured silk. Like liquid. Her pale hair was pressed in waves about her face and a strand of diamonds was pinned around the crown of her head. She was standing with her back to me and turned as I entered the room.

‘Grace,’ she said, taking my hands in hers. The gesture worried me. It was too personal. Something had happened.

‘Ma’am?’

‘Sit down, please.’ She led me to sit by her on the lounge and then she looked at me, blue eyes round with concern.

‘Ma’am?’

‘That was your aunt on the telephone.’

And I knew. ‘Mother,’ I said.

‘I’m so sorry, Grace.’ She shook her head gently. ‘She took a fall. There was nothing the doctor could do.’

Hannah arranged my transport back to Saffron Green. Next afternoon the car was brought round from the mews and I was packed into the back seat. It was very kind of her and much more than I expected; I was quite prepared to take the train. Nonsense, Hannah said, she was only sorry Teddy’s upcoming nomination dinner prohibited her from accompanying me.

I watched out the motor-car window as the driver turned down one street and then another, and London became less grand, more sprawling and decrepit, and eventually disappeared behind us. The countryside fled by, and the further east we drove the colder it became. Sleet peppered the windows, turning the landscape bleary; winter had bleached the world of vitality. Snow-dusted meadows bled into the mauve sky, gradually giving way to the ancient wildwood of Essex, all grey-brown and lichen green.

We left the main road and followed the lane to Saffron through the cold and lonely fen. Silvery reeds quivered in frozen streams and grandfather’s beard clung like lace to naked trees. I counted the bends and, for some reason, held my breath, releasing it only after we had passed the Riverton turn-off. The driver continued into the village and delivered me to the grey-stone cottage in Market Street, wedged silently, as it had always been, between its two sisters. The driver held the door for me and set my small suitcase on the wet pavement.

‘There you are then,’ he said.

I thanked him and he nodded.

‘I’ll collect you in five days,’ he said, ‘like the Mistress told me.’

I watched the motor car disappear down the lane, turn into Saffron High Street, and I felt a great urge to call him back, to beg him not to leave me here. But it was too late for that. I stood in the dim dusk looking up at the house where I had spent the first fourteen years of my life, the place where Mother had lived and died. And I felt nothing.

I’d felt nothing since Hannah told me. All the way on the journey back to Saffron I had tried to remember. My mother, my past, my self. Where do the memories of childhood go? There must be so many. Experiences that are new and brightly coloured. Perhaps children are so caught up in the moment they have neither time nor inclination to record images for later.

The streetlights came on-hazy yellow in the cold air-and sleet began again to fall. My cheeks were already numb and I saw the flecks in the lamplight before I felt them.

I collected my suitcase, took out my key, and was climbing the stairs when the door flew open. My Aunt Dee, Mother’s sister, stood in the doorway. She held a lamp which cast shadows on her face, making it appear older and surely more twisted than it really was. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Come inside then.’

She took me into the sitting room first. She was using my old bed, she said, so I would have the sofa. I put my suitcase against the wall and she huffed defensively.

‘I’ve made soup for supper. Might not be what you’re used to in your grand London house, but it’s always been good enough for the likes of me and mine.’

‘Soup would be lovely,’ I said.

We ate silently at Mother’s table. Aunt sat at the head with the warmth of the stove behind her and I sat at Mother’s seat near the window. Sleet had turned to snow, tip-tapping on the glass panes. The only other sound was the scraping of our spoons and an occasional crack from the stove fire.

‘I s’pose you’d like to see your mother,’ my aunt said when we had finished.

Mother was laid out on her mattress, brown hair loose behind. I was used to seeing it tied back; it was very long and much finer than mine. Someone-my aunt?-had pulled a light blanket to her chin, as if she were sleeping. She looked greyer, older, more sunken than I remembered. And she looked flat. Years of sleeping on the same mattress had worn it thin. Beneath the blanket, it was difficult to make out the shape of her body. One could almost imagine that there was none, that she was disintegrating, piece by piece.

We went downstairs and my aunt made tea. We drank it in the sitting room and said very little. Afterwards I managed something about being tired from the journey and started making up the sofa. I spread the sheet and blanket my aunt had left for me, but when I reached for Mother’s cushion it was not in place. My aunt was watching.

‘If you’re looking for the cushion,’ she said, ‘I’ve put it away. Filthy, it was. Tatty. Found a big hole on the bottom. And her a seamstress!’ She tut-tutted. ‘I’d like to know what she was doing with the money I was sending!’

And she left. Took herself up to bed in the room next to her dead sister. The floorboards above me creaked, the bed springs sighed, and then there was silence.

I lay in the dark but I could not sleep. I was imagining my aunt casting her critical eye over Mother’s things; Mother being caught unawares, unable to prepare, to put forward her best foot. I should have been the first to come. I should have arranged things, put on a good face on Mother’s behalf. Finally, I wept a little.

We buried her in the churchyard near the showgrounds. We were a small but respectable gathering. Mrs Rodgers from the village, the lady who ran the dress shop where Mother had done repairs, Doctor Arthur. It was a grey day, as such days should always be. The sleet had held off but the air was crisp and we all knew it was only a matter of time. The vicar read quickly from the Bible, an eye on the sky-whether to the Lord or the weather, I couldn’t tell. He spoke about duty and commitment and the direction they bring to life’s journey.