The House at Tyneford (40 page)

Mr. Rivers was right. Two days later, Jack Miller returned to Tyneford on the morning milk cart. I was sitting in my old attic room perched on a tower of cushions, gazing out of the sloping window at the horizon. Dawn fired across the water, while in the distant farmyard a chorus of cockerels crooned. From the house below, I heard shouts.

“Elise! Miss Landau! The Miller boy is back.”

I pelted down the attic stairs and then the grand staircase. Mrs. Ellsworth and the daily maid lingered in the hall. Mr. Wrexham pointed to the library.

“The master is interviewing the boy inside, miss.”

I pushed open the door. Mr. Rivers leaned against his desk, while the youth stood before him, cap clasped in his hands, head bowed. Both glanced toward me as I entered.

“I jist wanted ter help Mr. Kit,” insisted the boy, kicking at a piece of mud on his boot.

“It’s all right,” said Mr. Rivers. “You’re not in any trouble. We just want to know what happened.”

Jack Miller looked over at me, his eyes watery green as a spring tide.

“Not much ter tell. After we left Tyneford, we sails ter Portsmouth an’ refuels. Then we gits on ter Dover. Thousands of boats there wis. Big ships spewin’ black smoke an’ lil paddle-steamers like them ones in Swanage fer day-trippers. An’ corvettes, an’ destroyers an’ even a battleship. All of ’em packed wi’ soldiers. Port and quays wis brown wi’ men. Thousands and thousands of ’em. Never seen ser many souls in all my life.”

Mr. Rivers gave a curt nod. “Yes. I saw it for myself at Portsmouth. What happened when you got to Dover?”

“Well, Mr. Kit, he knows where he wis going. Finds a motor launch wi’ a man with a hat and stripes on his shoulder an’ says ’ee needs a chap ter sail wi’ him back ter France. Mr. Kit tells him that I’m too young—I try ter argue but ’e won’t listen. Half an hour later, two blokes come on board the
Anna
and takes over from me at the’elm, an’ I’m put back on their rowing boat and sent back ter shore. A chap gives me a rail ticket and I gets a train back ter Wareham, and’ere I am.”

“Thank you, Jack,” said Mr. Rivers. He strolled over to the windows and gazed across the smooth lawns. “Nothing more to do. Wait. Hope.”

I didn’t reply. My life was spent waiting and hoping. Anna. Julian. Now Kit’s name was added to the echo inside me.

“Miss Landau?” asked the boy.

I jumped, lost in my reverie.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Kit talked about yoos all the time. Not soupy nonsense, like. But said yoos was a right special girl. He’s going ter marry yoos the minute ’ee gits home—I know cos ’ee invited me ter the weddin’ an’ all. Wis really bothered about all the upset that ’is going away would cause yer. An’ ’ee wrote yer a letter. Made me promise ter give it ter yoos right away, like.”

A letter from Kit. It made all the difference. Suddenly his going away didn’t seem so absolute. There was news. A message. Our story could continue. I felt a smile twitch at the corner of my mouth. The boy reached into his trouser pocket, pulling out various scraps of paper. He grinned awkwardly, then fumbled inside his jacket.

“Jist a minute, miss. Know ’ee’s ’ere.”

Mr. Rivers turned his back to the window and studied the boy as he emptied his pockets onto the desk.

“Take your time, Jack,” he said. “Don’t worry about making a mess. Lay everything out on the blotting pad.”

“Yes, sir,” said the boy, reddening. “Ah. ’ere we go. Got ’im.”

He passed me a scrap of paper. My hands trembling, I unfolded it.

“Oh,” I said, voice shaking. “It’s just a receipt for fuel.”

“No. No. Turn ’im over. Note’s on the back,” said Jack.

I flipped it over, but the reverse was blank.

“Shit. Shit,” said the boy. “Must ’ave slipped out my pocket. I chucked out the wrong ’un. Mr. Kit’ll ’ave ter tell yer hisself what ’ee wanted ter say.”

“Yes,” I repeated. “He’ll have to tell me himself.”

I don’t remember leaving the room. I suppose I spoke to Mr. Rivers and we shared some comforting platitudes of mutual concern. I remember disappearing up to the attic chamber and slipping the blank receipt into the viola case, alongside the letters I wrote to Anna. There were now so many letters in there that they spilled out every time I opened the case, jamming in the hinge and sliding across the floor. It was such a cruel joke: a cacophony of letters to those I loved, and now a single, blank reply.

Days passed. Hours. Weeks. Minutes. The rags of time. The sun rose and fell. Shadows skirted the banks of the hill, growing and shrinking. Scarlet strawberries ripened in the fields. Climbing roses bloomed along the stone at the front of the house. Yellow petals rained upon the ground, turned brown and rotted away. Will returned. Mr. Churchill declared the Dunkirk rescue a triumph. Only twenty-five little ships lost. Names not released. Sweet peas and mint flowered in the kitchen garden. Nightingales trilled in the heath. Poppy came back to Tyneford and spent days traipsing along the beaches with Will and I couldn’t bear to speak to them. Their happiness choked me. Mr. Rivers drank alone in his library. I spied an otter in a freshwater stream trickling down to the sea. In the darkness a nightjar called from the jasmine outside my window. I paced along the beach in bare feet, feeling the pebbles grind beneath my toes, and padded down to the surf. The water foamed around my ankles, still cold enough to make me gasp.

“Kit!” I shouted his name. “Anna. Julian. AnnaJulianKit!”

Their names mingled into fathomless sound, separated from all meaning. I reached into my mind for bad words, terrible words. I needed to curse. I needed words that would cut my tongue as I spoke them.

“Fuck. Hate. Cock. Shit.”

None of them was wicked enough. I remembered the first time I’d come to the beach to rage at the sea. I closed my eyes, waiting for him to join in the game. It was a silly joke, and in a moment I would hear his voice: “Oh, is it a private game?”

“Testes. Cockles.” I hurled the words at the waves, but there was only silence, and the grind and roar of the tide drawing back along the strand.

If there was only something: a body, wreckage from the boat. But there was nothing. The sea swallowed him up like Jonah into the whale. Then one night, a month after he disappeared, I heard music outside my window. I wasn’t asleep, merely writhing under the hot blankets, seeing his face in the dark. I had taken down the blackouts, suffocating in the warm July heat, and the glass was open to the drifting fiddle music and men’s voices. I slid out of bed and leaned on the sill. The fishermen stood in the darkness, ten of them singing a lament, as the strings rippled.

There was a crack of shutters as Mr. Rivers opened the doors from the drawing room and stepped out onto the terrace. He had not gone to bed, and he stood in his white shirt, a ghost against the stone wall. I slipped downstairs through the darkened hall and drawing room to join him outside. The summer night was warm and reeked of flowers: jasmine, honeysuckle and old china roses. He stood quite still, his skin like marble. I listened to the lament, licking away salt tears.

“They sing this when a fisherman is lost at sea,” said Mr. Rivers. “They know Kit is dead.”

No one had said the word
dead
aloud. I whispered it in the dark when I could not sleep. I had turned it over and over in my mind in every language I knew, but the moment Mr. Rivers uttered the word, I knew in my soul that it was true.

Kit is dead. Kit is dead. Kit is dead.

I tried it aloud.

“Kit is dead.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Kit is dead.”

We listened to the fishermen, who sang their melancholy song again and again. They retreated into the shadows at the edge of the lawn and then tripped away down to the sea, their voices mingling with the far-off crash of the tide. I don’t know how long we stood there in the darkness, side by side, not touching. We wanted comfort but only one man could give it and since he could not, we wanted none. I missed Anna and Julian and Margot and I grieved for Kit. I would not marry him and we would not make love and he would not grow old. I must age and my skin crease and dark age spots appear on my face and hands, and my hair turn grey then white, and I would speak with the slow-steady patter of age, but he would stay young, always a beautiful man-boy with blue eyes. I wondered that I did not shatter and break apart or blow away like a dandelion clock in the wind. I imagined myself hurling china and storming through the house, smashing vases and silver and clocks in my fury, but I did nothing. I stood silent in the dark.

The death of Kit was the death of Tyneford, even if I did not know it then. From that day the dust would never quite be swept away. The browning petals that fell from the vase of garden roses always remained on the table in the hall; even Mrs. Ellsworth did not care to tidy them. Mr. Wrexham stopped fretting that the war prevented him from ordering wine to lay down in the cellar. There was enough for twenty years, and after then—what did it matter? The church bells could not toll to mark the death of the son and heir and future squire, but we heard it just the same. We thought back of the great mackerel catch in the bay—would it have been a day of such happiness and abandon if we had known that it was our last?

Mr. Rivers broke the silence. “I read that they are interning German and Austrian women. I have done my best to keep you safe, but I want you to change your name. To something English.”

I looked at him. His face was pale and his blue eyes appeared black in the darkness. His shirt was crumpled and the top buttons undone. A dark shadow lined his jaw and above his lip a muscle ticked, making him seem wolfish in the gloom. On his breath I smelled the stench of cigars and whisky.

“I like my name.”

It linked me back to Anna and Julian. My father had cried when my sister changed her name on her wedding day. He claimed it was too much champagne and happiness but I knew better.

Mr. Rivers grimaced. “I did not ask if you liked your name. I asked if you would change it.”

He hissed the words at me, eyes glinting. He seized my wrist and tried to pull me closer, but, half frightened of him, I wrenched free and backed away along the wall. He closed his eyes, trying to gather himself, but his voice was firm and low. “Change your damned name.”

I felt the emptiness grow inside me, gobble up all my flesh and blood into nothingness. I imagined myself to be perfectly hollow. I would never be Mrs. Kit Rivers. What did my name matter anymore? I hadn’t noticed Mr. Rivers slip inside, but now he reappeared clutching the whisky decanter and a pair of glasses. He set them on the table and motioned me to sit. He sloshed liquid into each glass, slid one across to me and raised his own.

“To him,” he said.

“To him,” I replied.

We drank, and I felt whisky burn my throat and tears sting my eyes. I blinked them back.

“There has been a Rivers in Tyneford House since 1610,” he said matter-of-factly. “But all things come to an end. Kit has no cousins. The entail will simply die out with me. The world is changing and this is the way of things.”

His voice was calm but his hand shook like a branch in the wind. He had almost finished his second tumbler of whisky and I realised that he was well on the way to being very drunk.

“Well?” he said, turning to face me, eyes bright with alcohol. “What shall we call you?”

I shrugged. “My middle name is Rosa.”

“No.” He banged his fist down on the table. “Something English. So they won’t take you away.”

He drained his tumbler and poured himself another.