The House at Tyneford (23 page)

I picked up the picture of his mother. It was odd to think that she was as much a stranger to Kit as to me. No wonder she looked so sad. I studied the angle of her jaw, the pale gold of her hair. I saw Kit in her face. He might have forgotten her, erased her from his childhood, but she was still there, her likeness hovering beneath his skin.

Mr. Rivers reached the open grassland and strode along the ridgeway, bent against the wind. I slipped out of Kit’s bedroom and hurried down the back stairs, collecting my woollen coat from the hook at the back door, and ventured out into the yard. The cobbles were slick with rain. Pulling my collar up around my ears, I hastened up the hill path, in pursuit of Mr. Rivers. I did not want to confront him in the library, the scene of my disgrace. I noticed that when he returned from his walks, blue eyes bright, he seemed almost happy. Sometimes I even glimpsed him smiling. Mr. Rivers did not smile often. I frowned and tried to rub some warmth into my hands. When I first came to Tyneford, he used to smile—usually at my poor English, though he always tried to suppress it, so as not to hurt my feelings.

The rain was falling thickly now. I blinked away great droplets that landed on my eyelashes. My shoes sucked and squelched in the muddy bank. Disgruntled cattle huddled under the barren trees, fat raindrops dangling from their ears like jewels. A dappled cow watched me with sad eyes as I trudged up the hill. I was too high to hear the roar of the sea, but the green waves hurled themselves against the cliffs as gulls soared and screeched. I wished I were like one of the heroines in the orange-jacketed novels that Kit lent to me; they were always irresistible in their wet things, only occasionally catching a dash of pneumonia, which inevitably served to drive them into the stammering hero’s arms. I could feel my nose turning red and dripping and my short hair clinging to my face. Not that I wanted Mr. Rivers to find me irresistible, just pathetic and wan, and as he gazed upon my tragic eyes (like the stern father in
La Traviata
gazing upon the dying Violetta) he would decide that he had to help me, hang the consequences. I sneezed. It seemed a trifle unlikely.

There was yapping at my feet as the brown-and-white spaniel surged toward me, bouncing up with muddy paws, licking at my hands.

“Down! Stanton. No.”

Mr. Rivers grabbed at the spaniel, which slipped through his fingers, smooth as a fish, and started to chase after a squawking pheasant.

“Elise?” he said, startled by my presence on the rain-soaked hill.

If I were a proper heroine, I should have swooned or broken my ankle and wept as I pleaded with him to help my family. But my ankles were stout and my cheeks a healthy scarlet from exercise.

“I came up here to find you, Mr. Rivers. Please don’t tell Mr. Wrexham.”

He said nothing but watched me with those blue eyes. I swallowed and felt my heart pound in my ears.

“They burned his books, Mr. Rivers. They took them outside and burned them.”

The wind picked up strands of my hair and whipped them against my face, stinging my skin.

“And the American visa?”

“It never comes.”

He stood quite still, unconcerned by the pounding rain and the scream of the wind in the bare trees. I felt impatient, almost ready to stamp my waterlogged shoe. He must know what I wanted.

“Will you help me? Please.”

He remained silent.

“Please. I know I’ve behaved dreadfully. But I’ve done my best since then, really I have. And I don’t know what else to do.”

He gave a slight nod to show he was listening. I took a deep breath and continued, meeting his level blue gaze.

“And if the war starts. And everyone says it must. Even Art and Burt and Mr. Wrexham say so. Anna and Julian must be in America or France or here.”

Putting his fingers to his lips, he let out a piercing whistle and, in a flurry of wagging mud, the spaniel reappeared, its pink tongue flopping with happiness.

“We should return to the house. It’s god-awful weather to be out.”

I stared at him for a moment. Was he going to help? I could not tell.

The whispers of war had built up to a cacophony, as a single leaf blowing in the wind becomes a forest floor spinning in a hurricane. Even Mrs. Ellsworth tuned her wireless in to the evening news, allowing May and me to sit in her little parlour and listen while we drank our cocoa before bed. I wanted war. I wanted my Austria back, as long as the fighting did not start until Anna and Julian were safely stowed across the sea. I tried to imagine them here in Tyneford: Julian striding across the hills beside Mr. Rivers, gun slung over his shoulder, or Anna playing Mendelssohn on the grand piano in the drawing room. The tuning was spoiled from the salt air, but I knew Anna could make it sing. Mrs. Ellsworth brought the sinister gas masks out of the basement, anxious despite Mr. Rivers’ endless reassurance, and quite certain that war could be declared at any second and German bombs would fall a minute later, gassing the entire household. At night I had uneasy dreams of Anna playing the piano, her fingers rippling across the keys and her angel voice muffled by her rubber gas mask.

One morning in February, a flock of letters arrived from Margot. The post from America was proving terribly unreliable; there was nothing for weeks and then I would receive a packet of letters all at once. They spilled off Mr. Wrexham’s silver tray, and I caught them in my apron before they fluttered to the floor. This was my one afternoon a week off, and I saved the letters until after lunch, stowing them in my pocket to read on the beach. Poppy had promised to take me to Brandy Bay, then all the way past Wagon Rock and on to the Tilly Whim caves. At two o’clock she waited for me outside the bungalow, wrapped in oilskins and layers of woolen scarves.

“Come on. You ready?” she called, impatient.

I nodded and Poppy took off along the high cliff path, not down to the beach at Worbarrow, but sprinting along the narrow chalk track. It was sopping from the weeks of rain and slippery as ice, and I shrieked, terrified that she would fall down the cliff. The hungry sea smashed against the base of the rocks, foam tufting on the breakers. She laughed and slowed to a jog, so I could catch up. Her hair broke free from its swaddling and flew around her face in red flames. The dark sea seemed to swallow all the light from the world, so that the sky glowered grey as it hovered over the water. Poppy’s hair was unnaturally bright against the winter seascape. She tried to knot it back into place.

“I used to hate it,” she said. “I was born with long hair. Not a good head of curls like some babies but long hair all the way down to my shoulders.”

There was a splutter overhead, gaggling and flapping, as a flock of geese, grey-blue with orange bills, skimmed the air above us.

“Greylag geese. Aren’t they beautiful?” asked Poppy. “Tell Art you saw them, and he’ll get out the shotgun. Roast goose, damson jelly—delicious.”

I stared at the soaring birds, vast and dark as shadows, their pinkish legs drawn up underneath their bellies, neat as the ancient aunts on the sofa, hiding their feet beneath the puff of their skirts. I didn’t want to eat the geese, I wanted to watch them fly. Poppy had raced on, and I ran to find her. My mind echoed with the call and crash of the sea, the wind whipping the swelling waves into an ever-increasing fury. In the distance a small fishing boat danced and leaped on the water. We ran and walked in fits and bursts for an hour, watching as Brandy Bay appeared below us, the smooth sand lapped by low tide, and then disappeared as we turned the headland. On the horizon stood Lovell’s Tower, a solitary stone folly perched on the cliff top above Kimmeridge Bay.

As we rounded the next bend, the cliff path split, one track continuing up and over the headland on toward Kimmeridge, and the other leading to a rocky shelf and several square black caverns. I hurried after Poppy to the flat limestone shelf. The caves loomed dark and ominous, and I stifled a delicious shudder. Poppy disappeared into one and I followed. The cave smelled damp and the walls were coated with green mould the colour of spinach. They were hewn with square strokes, and vast slabs of rock lay strewn across the ground. Poppy selected one for a seat, and I chose another beside her. While Poppy lounged and smoked, I drew out Margot’s packet, choosing her most recent letter to read first.

I knew nothing about exit taxes. Julian used to have plenty of money. I remembered the large, flat banknotes in his wallet, but now no one would take his books. I thought of the stash of gold chains, hidden in the stocking in my attic bedroom, and felt a ripple of guilt. I resolved to speak once again to Mr. Rivers. I kicked at a pebble and it flew against the cave wall, causing a tiny avalanche to rain down.

“Careful,” said Poppy. “It’s not very safe in here. Bits of roof are always falling in.”

She studied me for a minute, her feet tapping against the rock. “I am sorry about your family. I’d help if I could. And I might, you know. I’m off to London. For something secret.” She glanced over her shoulder as if someone might be eavesdropping and whispered, “For the government—in case there is a war.”

“You are?”

I was torn between curiosity and misery that she was leaving.

“Yes. I decided not to take up my place at Cambridge. I really don’t see the point for girls—all that work and then not allowed to collect your degree. It’s like being in an egg and spoon race only you aren’t allowed to win or even eat your egg at the end, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes. I think I do.”

“And if there is a war, I’m sure they won’t let girls fight. They never do, you know; it’s most unfair. But in this job I shall have to be discreet. I think I shall find that part rather hard. Oh, can you tell me something very secret, and then I can practise?”

Poppy fixed me with those grass green eyes, eager as a cuckoo on the first day of spring. I tried to think of both a secret and one I wouldn’t mind sharing. My only secret was Kit’s dawn kiss and I didn’t want to share that. It belonged to me alone—telling Poppy would dilute it somehow.

“Oh, well,” she said with a shrug. “Never mind. But if you think of something, be sure to let me know. I shall be gone three or four months.”

“So long?” I grimaced and looked away. First Kit, now Poppy. I felt rather sorry for myself.

“Oh, yes. Will is sure to miss me dreadfully,” she said happily. “I feel quite desolate whenever I think about it. Do you think he’ll weep and lose his appetite? I shall have to write him very passionate and very short letters.”

She was quiet for a few minutes and it took me a while to realise that she was staring at me with an intense expression.

“Elise, what do you know about sexual intercourse?”

I looked at her in surprise, absurdly flattered that she considered me so worldly. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I might make it with Will. Before I go away.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback. When they thought I wasn’t listening, Anna and Julian had once made a scurrilous joke about the repressed sexual desires of the British. Consequently, I believed that English people only had sex after they were married, and only then on Thursdays. It is funny to think how innocent we girls were in those days. Of course, we believed ourselves to be mighty sophisticated, but really we were terribly naïve, however bohemian our parents.

“Well,” I said, “my mother explained the . . . correct procedures. And according to Anna most operas revolve around sex. And singing. But really they’re all about sex.”

Poppy frowned. A discussion of the finer opera plots was not really the information she wanted.

“And I read Julian’s copies of Freud. That’s full of sex,” I added, determined to be helpful.

I’d sneaked into my father’s study and borrowed several volumes of Freud, anticipating a frisson of intrigue, similar to when I’d glimpsed the semiclothed ladies with come-hither eyes who were sold for a pfennig on picture postcards at the grimy stalls beside the Danube. I tingled when I imagined myself as one of those corseted beauties, with someone paying their penny to stare at me. The Freud books, on the other hand, were disappointing.

“And?” demanded Poppy. “What did Mr. Freud say? I really do need to know.”