The Distant Hours (47 page)

‘Why not?’ Meredith’s eyes widened further. ‘What will she do?’

‘She won’t be happy, that’s for certain. She won’t want me to go. She’s rather resistant to change, you see, and she likes things the way they are, all three of us here together. She’s very protective like that. She always has been.’

Meredith was nodding, absorbing this detail of the family dynamic with so much interest that Saffy half expected her to pull out that little journal of hers and take down notes. Her interest was understandable, though: Saffy had heard sufficient of the child’s own older sister to know that notions of sibling protectiveness would be unfamiliar to her.

‘Percy is my twin and I love her dearly, but sometimes, Merry dear, one has to put one’s own desires first. Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.’ She smiled and resisted adding that there had been other opportunities, other chances, all lost. It was one thing to feed a child a confidence, quite another to burden her with adult regrets.

‘But what will happen when it’s time for you to go?’ said Meredith. ‘She’ll find out then.’

‘Oh, but I’ll tell her before that!’ Saffy said with a laugh. ‘Of course I will. I’m not planning to abscond in the black of night, you know! Certainly not. I just need to find the perfect words, a way of ensuring that Percy’s feelings aren’t hurt. Until such time, I think it best that she not hear a thing about it. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Meredith, somewhat breathlessly.

Saffy bit down on her bottom lip; she had the uneasy sense that she’d made an unfortunate error of judgement, that it had been unfair to put a child in such an awkward position. She’d only meant to take Meredith’s mind off her own miserable mood.

Meredith misunderstood Saffy’s silence, taking it for a lack of faith in her ability to keep a confidence. ‘I won’t say anything, I promise. Not a word. I’m very good at secrets.’

‘Oh Meredith,’ Saffy smiled ruefully. ‘I don’t doubt it. That’s not it at all – Oh, dear, I’m afraid I must apologize. It was wrong of me, asking you to keep a secret from Percy – will you forgive me?’

Meredith nodded solemnly and Saffy detected a glimmer in the girl’s face; pride at having been treated in such an adult manner, she supposed. Saffy remembered her own childish eagerness to grow up, how she’d waited impatiently on the cliff edge, pleading with adulthood to claim her, and she wondered whether it was possible ever to slow another’s journey. Was it even fair to try? Surely there could be nothing wrong in wanting to save Meredith, just as she’d tried to save Juniper, from reaching adulthood and its disappointments too fast?

‘There now, lovely one,’ she said, taking the last plate from Meredith’s hands, ‘why don’t you leave me to finish here? Go and have some fun while you wait for your parents to arrive. The morning’s far too brilliant to be spent doing chores. Just try not to get your dress too dirty.’

It was one of the pinafores Saffy had sewn when Merry first arrived; made from a lovely piece of Liberty fabric ordered years ago, not because Saffy had a project in mind, but because it was simply too beautiful not to possess. It had languished ever since in the sewing cupboard, waiting patiently for Saffy to find it a purpose. And now she had. As Meredith dissolved into the horizon, Saffy returned her attention to the table, making sure everything was just so.

Meredith wandered aimlessly through the long grass, swishing a stick from side to side, wondering how it was that one person’s absence could rob the day so wholly of its shape and meaning. She rounded the hill and met the stream, then followed it as far as the bridge carrying the driveway.

She considered going further. Across the verge and into the woods. Deep enough that the light sifted, the spotted trout disappeared, and the water ran thick as molasses. All the way until she crossed into the wild woods and reached the forgotten pool at the base of the oldest tree in Cardarker Wood. The place of insistent blackness that she’d hated when she’d first come to the castle. Mum and Dad weren’t due for an hour or so yet, there was still time, and she knew the way, it was only a matter of sticking by the burbling brook, after all . . .

But without Juniper, Meredith knew, it wouldn’t be so much fun. Just dark and damp and rather smelly. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Juniper had said, the first time they’d explored together. Meredith had been uncertain. The log they were sitting on was cool and damp and her plimsolls wet from where she’d slid off a rock. There was another pool on the estate, teeming with butterflies and birds, and a rope swing that lazed back and forth in the dappled sunlight, and she’d wished, wished, wished, they’d decided to spend the day there instead. She didn’t say as much though; the force of Juniper’s conviction was such that Meredith knew the fault was her own, that her tastes were too juvenile, that she just wasn’t trying hard enough. Screwing her determination to the sticking place, she’d smiled and said, ‘Yes.’ And again, with feeling, ‘Yes. It is. Wonderful.’

In a single, fluid motion, Juniper had stood, arms extended to the sides, and tiptoed across a fallen log. ‘It’s the shadows,’ she’d said, ‘the way the reeds slip down the banks, almost slyly; the smell of mud and moisture and rot.’ She smiled sideways at Meredith. ‘Why, it’s almost prehistoric. If I told you we’d crossed an invisible threshold into the past, you’d believe me, wouldn’t you?’

Meredith had shivered then, just as she did now, and a small, smooth magnet within her child’s body had thrummed with inexplicable urgency, and she’d felt the pull of longing, though for what she did not know.

‘Close your eyes and listen,’ Juniper had whispered, finger to her lips. ‘You can hear the spiders spinning . . .’

Meredith closed her eyes now. Listened to the chorus of crickets, the occasional splashing of trout, the distant drone of a tractor somewhere . . . There was another sound, too. One that seemed distinctly out of place. It was an engine, she realized, close by and coming nearer.

She opened her eyes and saw it. A black motorcar, winding down the gravelled driveway from the castle. Meredith couldn’t help but stare. Visitors were rare at Milderhurst, motorcars even rarer. Few people had the petrol for making social calls and, from what Meredith could tell, those who did were hoarding it so they could flee north when the Germans invaded. Even the priest who called on the old man in the tower arrived on foot these days. This visitor must be someone official, Meredith decided; someone on special war business.

The motorcar passed and the driver, a man she did not recognize, touched his black hat, nodding sternly at Meredith. She squinted after him, watching the car as it continued warily along the gravel. It disappeared behind a wooded bend only to reappear some time later at the foot of the driveway, a black speck turning onto the Tenterden Road.

Meredith yawned and promptly forgot all about it. There was a patch of violets growing wild near the bridge and she couldn’t resist picking some. When her posy was lovely and thick, she climbed up to sit on the railing of the bridge and divided her time between daydreaming and dropping the flowers, one by one, into the stream, watching as they turned purple somersaults in the gentle current.

‘Morning.’

She looked up to see Percy Blythe pushing her bicycle up the driveway, an unflattering hat on her head, requisite cigarette in hand. The stern twin, as Meredith usually thought of her, though today there was something else in her face, something beyond stern and a little more like sad. It might just have been the hat. Meredith said, ‘Hello,’ and clutched the railing to save herself from falling.

‘Or is it afternoon already?’ Percy slowed to a stop and flicked her wrist, reading the small watch-face that sat against the inside. ‘Just gone half past. You won’t forget we have a tea engagement, will you?’ She glanced over the end of her cigarette as she drew long and hard, then exhaled slowly. ‘Your parents would be rather disappointed, I imagine: to travel all this way only to miss you.’

It was a joke, Meredith suspected, but there was nothing jovial about Percy’s expression or her manner so she couldn’t be sure. She hedged her bets, smiling politely; at the very least, she figured, Percy might assume she hadn’t heard.

Percy gave no indication that she’d noticed Meredith’s response, let alone given it further thought. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘things to do.’ And she nodded bluntly, continuing on towards the castle.

When Meredith finally caught sight of her parents, walking together up the driveway, her stomach flip-flopped. For a split second she felt as if she was watching the approach of two dream people, familiar yet entirely out of place here, in the real world. The sensation lasted only a moment before something inside her, some disc of perception, turned over and she saw properly it was Mum and Dad and they were here at last and she had so much to tell them. She ran forwards, arms wide, and Dad knelt, mirroring her posture, so she could leap into his big, wide, warm embrace. Mum planted a kiss on her cheek, which was unusual but not unpleasant, and although she knew herself to be far too old for it neither Rita nor Ed were there to tease her, so Meredith let her dad hold hands with her all the rest of the way, as she talked without pause about the castle and its library and the fields and the brook and the woods.

Percy was already waiting by the table, smoking another cigarette, which she extinguished when she saw them. She smoothed the sides of her skirt, held out a hand, and with a bit of fussing the greeting was effected. ‘And how was your train trip? Not too unpleasant I hope?’ The question was perfectly ordinary, polite even, but Meredith heard the toffy clip of Percy’s voice through her parent’s ears and wished it were Saffy’s soft welcome instead.

Sure enough, Mum’s voice was thin and guarded: ‘It was long. Stopping and starting all the way, letting the troop trains pass. We spent more time in the sidings than we did on the track.’

‘Still,’ said Dad, ‘our boys have gotta get themselves to war somehow. Show Hitler Britain can take it.’

‘Just so, Mr Baker. Sit down, won’t you, please?’ said Percy, indicating the prettily laid table. ‘You must be famished.’

Percy poured tea and offered slices of Saffy’s cake, and they spoke, somewhat stiltedly, about the crowding on the trains, the state of the war (Denmark had toppled, would Norway be next?), predictions for its progress. Meredith nibbled a piece of cake and watched. She’d been convinced that Mum and Dad would take one look at the castle, then another at Percy Blythe, with her plummy accent and broomstick spine, and adopt defensive manoeuvres, but so far things were going smoothly enough.

Meredith’s mum was very quiet, it was true. She kept one hand holding tightly onto the handbag on her lap in a nervous, stiff sort of way, which was a little disquieting given that Meredith couldn’t think that she’d ever seen her mother nervous before: not of rats, or spiders, or even Mr Lane from across the road when he’d spent too long in the pub. Dad seemed to be a bit more at ease, nodding as Percy described the Spitfire drive and the care packages for soldiers in France, and sipping tea from a hand-painted porcelain teacup as if he did so every day. Well, almost. He did manage to make it look rather like a doll’s-house tea set. Meredith didn’t think she’d ever realized quite how enormous his fingers were and an unexpected wave of affection washed over her. She reached out beneath the table to lay her palm on his other hand. They weren’t a family who expressed themselves physically and he glanced up, surprised, before squeezing hers in return.

‘How’s your schoolwork going, my girl?’ He leaned his shoulder a little closer and looked up to wink at Percy: ‘Our Rita might have got the looks, but young Merry here took all the brains.’

Meredith warmed with pride. ‘I’m doing lessons here, Dad, at the castle, with Saffy. You should see the library, there are more books even than at the circulating library. Every wall covered with shelves. And I’m learning Latin . . .’ Oh, how she loved Latin. Sounds from the past, imbued with meaning. Ancient voices on the wind. Meredith pushed her spectacles higher up the bridge of her nose; they often slipped with excitement. ‘And I’m learning the piano, too.’

‘My sister Seraphina is very pleased with your daughter’s progress,’ said Percy. ‘She’s come along rather well, considering she’d never seen a piano before.’

‘Is that right?’ said Dad, hands jiggling in his pockets so that his elbows moved most peculiarly above the table top. ‘My girl can play tunes?’

Meredith smiled proudly and wondered if her ears were glowing. ‘Some.’

Percy topped up everybody’s tea. ‘Perhaps you’ll take your parents inside later, Meredith; into the music room, where you might play one of your pieces for them?’

‘You hear that, Mum?’ Dad nodded his chin. ‘Our Meredith is playing real music.’

‘I heard.’ Something seemed to set then in Mum’s face, though Meredith wasn’t sure exactly what it was. It was the same look she got when she and Dad were fighting over something, and he made a small but fatal error ensuring that victory would be hers. Her voice tight, she spoke to Meredith as if Percy wasn’t there. ‘We missed you at Christmas.’

‘I missed you too, Mum. I did really want to come and visit. Only there were no trains. They needed them all for the soldiers.’

‘Rita’s coming home with us today.’ Mum set her teacup on its saucer, straightened the teaspoon decisively and pushed it away. ‘Found her a position with a hairdressing salon, we have, down on the Old Kent Road. Starts on Monday. Cleaning at first, but they’ll teach her how to do sets and cuts, too.’ Gratification brought a glimmer to Mum’s eyes. ‘There’s opportunities at the moment, Merry, what with so many of the older girls joining the Wrens or going to the factories. Good opportunities for a young girl without other prospects.’