The Distant Hours (21 page)

‘Not our Juniper though.’

Saffy’s skin cooled. There it was, the snag she’d been waiting for: Percy knew. Somehow she knew about Juniper’s love affair. That explained the sudden lightening of mood; this was a fishing expedition, a sneaky one, and Saffy had been caught on a hook threaded with tasty village gossip. Mortifying. ‘Of course not,’ she said as smoothly as she could manage. ‘Juniper’s not like that.’

‘Of course not.’ They sat for a moment, each regarding the other, matching smiles applied to matching faces, sipping their drinks. Saffy’s heart was ticking louder than Daddy’s favourite clock and she wondered that Percy couldn’t hear it; she knew now what it was to be an insect in a web, awaiting the great spider’s approach.

‘Although,’ Percy said, dropping ash into the crystal tray, ‘I did hear something funny today. In the village.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’

Silence stretched uneasily between them as Percy smoked and Saffy concentrated on biting her tongue. How maddening it was, not to mention underhanded: her own twin, using her predilection for local chatter in hopes of tempting her to give away her secrets. Well, she refused to fall into line: what did Saffy need with Percy’s village gossip anyway? She already knew the truth: it was she, after all, who had read Juniper’s journal, and she wasn’t about to be tricked into sharing its contents with Percy.

With as much poise as she could muster, Saffy stood, straightened her dress, and began an inspection of the table’s setting, aligning knives and forks with assiduous care. She even managed to hum mindlessly beneath her breath and affect a small, blameless smile. Which was a comfort of sorts when the doubts came creeping from the shadows.

That Juniper had a lover was surprising, certainly, and it had been hurtful to Saffy not to have been told, but the fact itself didn’t change things. Did it? Not things that Percy cared about; not things that mattered. Surely nothing ill could come from Saffy keeping the news to herself? Juniper had a lover, that was all. She was a young woman, it was natural; a small matter and one that was bound to be temporary. Like all of Juniper’s various fascinations, this fellow would fade and thin and be blown away on the same breeze that brought the next attraction.

Outside, the wind had picked up and the claws of the cherry tree scratched against the loose shutter. Saffy shivered, though she was not cold; her own small movement was caught by the mirror above the hearth and she glanced to meet herself. It was a grand mirror, gilt framed, and hung on a chain from a hook at great height. It leaned, therefore, away from the wall, angling towards the ground, and the effect as Saffy looked up, was of the glass glaring down, foreshortening her like a stumpy green dwarf beneath its thumb. She sighed, short and unintentional, alone suddenly and tired of obfuscating. She was about to look away, to return her attention to the table, when she noticed Percy, hunched on the mirror’s glass rim, smoking as she watched the green dwarf at its centre. Not merely watched, scrutinized. Searching for evidence, for confirmation of something she already suspected.

The realization that she was being observed made Saffy’s pulse quicken and she had the sudden urge to speak, to fill the room with conversation, with noise. She drew a short, cool breath and began. ‘Juniper’s late, of course, and I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised; no doubt it’s the weather keeping her, some sort of holdup on the line; she was due off the five forty-five, and even allowing for the bus from the village I’d have expected her home by now . . . I do hope she packed an umbrella, only you know what she’s like when it comes to—’

‘Juniper’s engaged,’ Percy interrupted sharply. ‘That’s what they’re saying. That she’s engaged.’

The entrée knife clinked high and metallic against its mate. Saffy’s lips parted, she blinked: ‘Pardon, dearest?’

‘To be married. Juniper’s engaged to be married.’

‘But that’s ridiculous. Of course she’s not.’ Saffy was genuinely stunned. ‘Juniper?’ She laughed a little, a tinny sound. ‘Married? Wherever did you hear such a thing?’

A stream of smoky exhalation.

‘Well? Who’s been talking such nonsense?’

Percy was busy rescuing a piece of stray tobacco from her bottom lip and for a moment said nothing. She frowned instead at the speck on her fingertip. Finally, she flicked her hand on its way to the ashtray. ‘It was probably nothing. I was just in the post office and—’

‘Ha!’ said Saffy, with rather more triumph than was perhaps warranted. Relief, too, that Percy’s gossip was just that: village talk with no grounding in truth. ‘I might have known. That Potts woman! Really, she’s an utter menace. We must all be thankful that she hasn’t turned her loose talk yet to matters of state.’

‘You don’t believe it then?’ Percy’s voice was woody, no modulation at all.

‘Of course I don’t believe it.’

‘Juniper hasn’t said anything to you?’

‘Not a word.’ Saffy came to where Percy was sitting, reached out and touched her sister’s arm. ‘Really, Percy dear. Can you imagine Juniper as a bride? Dressed all in white lace; agreeing to love and obey somebody else as long as they both shall live?’

The cigarette lay withered and lifeless in the ashtray now, and Percy steepled her fingers beneath her chin. Then she smiled slightly, lifting her shoulders, settling them again, shaking the notion away. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Silly gossip, nothing more. I only wondered . . .’ But what precisely she wondered, Percy let taper to its own conclusion.

Although there was no music playing, the gramophone needle was still tracing dutifully around the record’s centre and Saffy put it out of its misery, lifting it back to the cradle. She was about to excuse herself to check on the rabbit pie, when Percy said, ‘Juniper would have told us. If it were true; she would’ve told us.’

Saffy’s cheeks warmed, remembering the journal on the floor upstairs, the shock of its most recent entry, the hurt at having been kept in the dark.

‘Saffy?’

‘Certainly,’ she said quickly. ‘People do, don’t they? They tell each other things like that.’

‘Yes.’

‘Especially their sisters.’

‘Yes.’

And it was true. Keeping a love affair secret was one thing, an engagement quite another. Even Juniper, Saffy felt sure, would not be so blind to the feelings of others, the ramifications that such a decision would have.

‘Still,’ said Percy, ‘we should speak with her. Remind her that Daddy—’

‘Isn’t here,’ Saffy finished gently. ‘He isn’t here, Percy. We’re all of us free now to do exactly as we please.’ To leave Milderhurst behind, to set sail for the glamour and excitement of New York City and never look back.

‘No.’ Percy said it so sharply that Saffy worried for a moment that she’d spoken her intentions out loud. ‘Not free, not completely. We each of us have duties towards the others. Juniper understands that; she knows that marriage—’

‘Perce—’

‘Those were Daddy’s wishes. His
conditions
.’

Percy’s eyes were searching her own and Saffy realized it was the first time in months that she’d had the opportunity to study her twin’s face so closely; she saw that her sister wore new lines. She was smoking a lot and worrying, and no doubt the war itself was taking its toll, but whatever the cause the woman sitting before her was no longer young. Neither was she old, and Saffy understood suddenly – though surely she had known it before? – that there was something, some place, in between. And that they were both in it. Maidens no more, but a way yet from being crones.

‘Daddy knew what he was doing.’

‘Of course, darling,’ Saffy said tenderly. Why hadn’t she noticed them before – all those women in the great in-between? They were not invisible surely, they were merely going about their business quietly, doing what women did when they were no longer young but not yet old. Keeping neat houses, wiping tears from their children’s cheeks, darning the holes in their husband’s socks. And suddenly Saffy understood why Percy was behaving this way, almost as if she were jealous of the possibility that Juniper, who was only eighteen, might some day marry. That she still had her entire adult life ahead of her. She understood, too, why tonight of all nights Percy should lose herself in such sentimental thoughts. Though driven by concern for Juniper, motivated by gossip in the village, it was the encounter with Lucy that had her behaving this way. Saffy was drenched then by a wave of crashing affection for her stoic twin, a wave so strong it threatened to leave her breathless. ‘We were unlucky, weren’t we, Perce?’

Percy looked up from the cigarette she was rolling. ‘What’s that?’

‘The two of us. We were unfortunate when it came to matters of the heart.’

Percy considered her. ‘I shouldn’t think that luck had much to do with it. A basic matter of mathematics, wasn’t it?’

Saffy smiled; it was just as the governess who replaced Nanny had told them, right before she went away, returning to Norway to marry her widower cousin. She’d taken them for a lesson by the lake, her habit when she wasn’t in the mood for teaching but wanted to escape Mr Broad’s scrutiny; she’d looked up from where she was sunning herself to say, in that lazy, accented manner of hers, eyes glinting with malicious pleasure, that they’d do well to put all thought of marriage aside; that the same Great War that had wounded their father had also killed their chances. The thirteen-year-old twins had merely stared blankly, an expression they’d perfected, knowing it drove adults to agitation. What did they care? Marriage and suitors were the last things on their minds back then.

Saffy said softly, ‘Well, that’s a sorry luck of sorts, isn’t it? To have all one’s future husbands die on the French battlefields?’

‘How many were you planning on having?’

‘What’s that?’

‘Husbands. You said, “To have all one’s future”. . .’ Percy lit her cigarette and waved her hand. ‘Never mind,’ she said.

‘Only one.’ Saffy felt suddenly light-headed. ‘There was only one I wanted.’

The silence that followed was agonizing and Percy, at least, had the dignity to look uncomfortable. She didn’t say anything though, offered no words of comfort or understanding, no kind gestures, merely pinched the tip of her cigarette, sending it to sleep, and made for the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘A headache. It’s come on quickly.’

‘Sit down then; I’ll fetch you a couple of aspirin.’

‘No – ’ Percy refused to meet Saffy’s gaze – ‘no, I’ll fetch them myself from the medicine box. The walk will do me good.’

Percy hurried along the hallway, wondering how she could have been so bloody stupid. She’d meant to burn the pieces of Emily’s letter immediately, and instead she’d allowed the encounter with Lucy to flummox her so that she’d left them in her pocket. Worse yet, she’d delivered them directly to Saffy, the very person from whom the correspondence must be kept concealed. Percy drummed down the stairs, through the door and into the steam-filled kitchen. When, she wondered, might she have remembered the letter herself, if not for Saffy’s allusion to Emily’s husband, Matthew, just now? Was it too premature to lament the loss of her reliable mind; to wonder at the sorts of demonic deals she’d have to make to get it back?

Percy stopped abruptly before the table. Her trousers were no longer where she’d left them. Her heart lurched, a hammer against her ribs; she forced it back inside its cage where it belonged. Panic would not help; besides, this wasn’t of itself a terrible thing. Percy was quite sure Saffy hadn’t yet read the letter: her manner upstairs had been far too measured, too calm, for it to be otherwise. For, dear God, if Saffy knew that Percy was still in touch with their cousin, there’d be no masking that tantrum. Which meant all was not yet lost. Find the trousers, remove the evidence, and everything would be all right.

There had been a dress on the table too, she remembered, which meant there was a pile of laundry somewhere. How difficult could that be to find? More difficult, certainly, than if she had the vaguest notion how laundry was done, but unfortunately Percy had never paid much attention to Saffy’s housekeeping routine, an oversight she promised silently to amend just as soon as the letter was safely in her possession. She began with the baskets on the shelf beneath the table, rummaging through tea towels and baking trays, saucepans and rolling pins, one ear trained on the stairs in case Saffy should come searching. Which was unlikely, surely? With Juniper already late, Saffy would be loath to venture far from the front door. Percy wanted to get back there herself: as soon as Juniper arrived she intended to ask plainly about Mrs Potts’s rumour.

For although Percy had gone along with her twin’s certainty that Juniper, if engaged, would have told them the news, in reality she had no such confidence. It was the sort of thing that people did tell one another, that was true enough, but Juniper wasn’t like other people: she was beloved but she was also undeniably singular. And it wasn’t only the lost time, the episodes: this was the little girl who’d comforted herself by rubbing objects on her naked eyeball – smooth stones, the end of Cook’s rolling pin, Daddy’s favourite fountain pen; who’d driven away countless nannies with her incurable obstinacy and refusal to abandon imaginary cohorts; who, on the rare occasions she was induced to wear shoes, insisted on wearing them wrong-footed.

Oddness, of itself, was of no concern to Percy: as the family argument went, which person of value didn’t have a good pinch of strangeness in them? Daddy had his ghosts, Saffy had her panics, Percy herself made no claims on the pedestrian. No, oddness was neither here nor there; Percy cared only about doing her duty: protecting Juniper from herself. Daddy had given her the task. Juniper was special, he’d said, and it was up to all of them to keep her safe. And they had, so far, they had. They’d become expert at recognizing occasions when the very aspects that fuelled her talent were at risk of tipping over into fearsome rage. Daddy, when he was alive, had allowed her to rampage without restraint: ‘It’s passion,’ he’d said, admiration burnishing his voice, ‘unaffected, unbridled passion.’ But he’d made sure to talk to his lawyers. Percy had been surprised when she’d first discovered what he’d done; her immediate reaction had been the heat of betrayal, the sibling’s mantra of ‘It isn’t fair!’, but she’d soon enough come to heel. She’d understood that Daddy was right, that what he proposed would work out best for all of them. And she adored Juniper, they all did. There was nothing Percy wouldn’t do for her baby sister.