The Distant Hours

  It was Daddy’s fault, of course, in particular the terrific stories he’d told them when they were girls, small enough to be lifted, green enough to curl themselves perfectly within his wide, warm lap. Tales from his family’s past, about the plot of land that had become Milderhurst, that had starved and flourished, twisted and turned throughout the centuries, been flooded and farmed and fabled. About buildings that had burned and been rebuilt, rotted and been sacked, thrilled and been forgotten. About the people who had called the castle home before them, the chapters of conquest and sublimation that layered the soil of England and that of their own beloved home.

  History in the storyteller’s hands was a potent force indeed, and for an entire stretch of summer after Daddy left for the Great War, when she was a girl of eight or nine years old, Percy’s dreams had been vivid with invaders storming the fields towards them. She’d coerced Saffy into helping establish forts in the treetops of Cardarker Wood, building stockpiles of weapons, and beheading the saplings that displeased her. Practising, so that when the time came for them to do their duty, to defend the castle and its lands from the invading hordes, they’d be ready . . .

  The bus rattled round a corner and Percy rolled her eyes at her own reflection. It was ridiculous, of course. Girlish fancies were one thing, but for a grown woman’s moods still to hinge on their echo? It really was too sad. With a huff of disgust, she turned her back on herself.

  It had been a long trip, far longer than usual, and at this rate she’d be lucky to make it home for pudding. Whatever that might be. The storm clouds were amassing, darkness threatened to drop on them at any moment and the bus, with no headlights to speak of, clung to the verge in readiness. She checked her watch: already half past four. Juniper was expected at six thirty, the young man at seven, and Percy had promised to be back by four. Doubtless the Air Raid Precautions fellow had acted on good authority when he’d waved the bus over for random inspection, but tonight of all nights she had better things to be doing. Lending temperance to the preparations at Milderhurst, for one.

  What were the odds that Saffy hadn’t worked herself into a state during the day? Not good, Percy decided. Not good at all. No one submitted so willingly to the tumult of occasion as Saffy, and ever since word had arrived from Juniper that she’d invited a mysterious guest to join them, there’d been little chance of the Event, as it was thereafter known, being spared the full Seraphina Blythe treatment. There’d been talk at one stage of unpacking Grandmother’s leftover coronation stationery and writing out table places, but Percy had suggested that a party of four, three of whom were sisters, made such fuss unnecessary.

  A tap on her forearm and Percy realized that the little old lady beside her was holding an open tin, gesturing that she should take something from within. ‘My own recipe,’ she said in a bright, piping voice. ‘No butter to speak of but not bad at all, even if I do say so myself.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Percy. ‘No. Thank you. I couldn’t. You keep them for yourself.’

  ‘Go on.’ The lady rattled the tin a little closer to Percy’s nose, nodding approval at her uniform.

  ‘Well, all right.’ Percy selected a biscuit and took a bite. ‘Delicious,’ she said, with a silent lament for the glorious days of butter.

  ‘You’re with the FANYs then?’

  ‘Driving an ambulance. That is, I was during the bombing. Cleaning them for the most part lately.’

  ‘You’ll be finding yourself some other way to help the efforts now, I don’t doubt. There’s no stopping you young folk.’ An idea dawned, making saucers of her eyes. ‘But of course, you should join one of those sewing bees! My granddaughter belongs to the Stitching Susans, back home in Cranbrook, and oh, but they do a mighty job, those girls.’

  Needle and thread aside, Percy had to concede the notion was not a bad one. Perhaps she should channel her energies elsewhere: find a government official to chauffeur, learn how to defuse bombs, pilot a plane, become a salvage adviser. Something. Maybe then the ghastly restlessness would abate. Much as she hated to admit it, Percy was coming to suspect that Saffy had been right all these years: she was a fixer. No instinct for creation, but a habit of restoration and never happier than when she was put to good use, patching up holes. What a thoroughly depressing thought.

  The bus lumbered around another corner and at last the village came into view. As they drew nearer, Percy spied her bicycle, leaning against the old oak by the post office, where she’d left it that morning.

  Giving thanks again for the biscuit and solemnly promising to look in to the local sewing bee, she disembarked, waving at her old lady as the bus trundled on towards Cranbrook.

  The breeze had picked up since they’d left Folkestone and Percy shoved her hands into her trouser pockets, smiling at the dour Misses Blethem, who drew collective breath and gathered their string shopping bags close, before nodding a greeting and scurrying away home.

  Two years of war, and there were still some for whom the sight of a woman in trousers heralded the dawn of the apocalypse; never mind the atrocities at home and afar. Percy felt a welcome resurrection of spirits and wondered whether it was wrong to adore her uniform all the more for the effect it had on the Misses Blethem of the world.

  It was late in the day, but every chance remained that Mr Potts hadn’t yet made his delivery to the castle. There were few men in the village – across the country, Percy was willing to bet – who had taken to the office of Home Guard with a zest to match that of Mr Potts. So zealously did he seek to protect the nation that one was liable to feel quite neglected if not stopped at least once monthly for an identity check. That such dedication left the village without a reliable postal service, Mr Potts seemed to regard as an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice.

  The bell tinkled above the door as Percy entered, and Mrs Potts looked up sharply from a pile of papers and envelopes. Her manner was that of a rabbit caught unawares in a gardener’s patch, and she obliged the image further by giving a little sniff. Percy managed to conceal her amusement beneath stern congeniality, which was, after all, something of a speciality.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the postmistress, recovering herself with the speed of one well practised in mild deception. ‘If it isn’t Miss Blythe.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Potts. Anything to collect?’

  ‘I’ll just have a look now, shall I?’

  The very notion that Mrs Potts wasn’t intimately acquainted with every piece of correspondence that had come or gone that day was laughable, but Percy played along. ‘Why, thank you,’ she said, as the postmistress repaired to the boxes on the back desk.

  After much officious riffling, Mrs Potts pulled free a small clutch of assorted envelopes and held them aloft. ‘Here we are then,’ she said, making a triumphant return to the counter. ‘There’s a parcel for Miss Juniper – from your young Londoner, by the looks; happy to be back home, is she, young Meredith? – ’ Percy nodded impatiently as Mrs Potts continued – ‘A letter hand-addressed to yourself and one for Miss Saffy alone, typed.’

  ‘Excellent. One hardly needs bother reading them.’

  Mrs Potts lined the letters up neatly on the counter top but didn’t release them. ‘I trust all is well up at the castle,’ she said, with rather more feeling than such an innocuous query seemed to warrant.

  ‘Very well, thank you. Now if I—’

  ‘Indeed, I hear congratulations are in order.’

  Percy let out an exasperated sigh. ‘Congratulations?’

  ‘Wedding bells,’ said Mrs Potts, in that irksome manner she’d perfected, managing both to crow at her ill-gained knowledge while greedily digging for more. ‘Up at the castle,’ she repeated.

  ‘I thank you kindly, Mrs Potts, but alas I’m no more engaged today than I was yesterday.’

  The postmistress stood a while computing, before breaking into pealing laughter. ‘Oh! But you are a one, Miss Blythe! No more engaged today than yesterday – I must remember that.’ After much mirth she sobere
d, pulling a small lace-trimmed handkerchief from her skirt pocket to dab beneath her eyes. ‘But of course,’ she said between blots, ‘I never meant you.’

  Percy feigned surprise. ‘No?’

  ‘Oh no, for heaven’s sake, not you or Miss Saffy. I know neither of you have any plans to leave us, bless you both.’ She wiped her cheeks once more. ‘It was Miss Juniper I was speaking of.’

  Percy couldn’t help but notice the way her little sister’s name crackled on the gossip’s lips. There was electricity in the very sounds, and Mrs Potts a natural conductor. People had always liked to talk about Juniper, even when she was a girl. The little sister had done nothing to help matters; a child with a habit of blacking out at times of excitement tended to lower people’s voices and get them talking about gifts and curses. So it was throughout her childhood, that no matter what strange or unaccountable situation arose in the village – the curious disappearance of Mrs Fleming’s laundry, the consequent outfitting of Farmer Jacob’s scarecrow in bloomers, an outbreak of mumps – just as surely as bees were drawn to honey, loose talk turned itself eventually to Juniper.

  ‘Miss Juniper and a certain young fellow?’ Mrs Potts pressed. ‘I hear there’ve been quite some preparations up at the castle? A fellow she met in London?’

  The very notion was preposterous. Juniper’s destiny lay elsewhere than marriage: it was poetry that made her little sister’s heart sing. Percy considered having fun with Mrs Potts’s eager attention, but a glance at the wall clock made her think better of it. A sensible decision: the last thing she needed was to be drawn into a discussion about Juniper’s removal to London. The chance was all too real that Percy might inadvertently reveal the trouble Juniper’s escapade had caused at the castle. Pride would never allow such a thing. ‘It’s true that we’re having a guest to dinner, Mrs Potts, but although it is a he, he is nobody’s suitor. Merely an acquaintance from London.’

  ‘An acquaintance?’

  ‘That is all.’

  Mrs Potts’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not a wedding then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because I heard it on good authority that there’s been both a proposal and an acceptance.’

  It was no secret that Mrs Potts’s ‘good authority’ was obtained by careful monitoring of letters and telephone calls, the details of which were then cross-referenced against a healthy catalogue of local gossip. Though Percy didn’t go so far as to suspect the woman of steaming envelopes open before sending them on their merry way, there were those in the village who did. In this case, however, there had been very little post to steam (and not of the sort to get Mrs Potts excited, Meredith being Juniper’s only correspondent) just as there was no truth to the rumour. ‘I believe I would know if that were the case, Mrs Potts,’ she said. ‘Rest assured, it’s just a dinner. ’

  ‘A special dinner?’

  ‘Oh, but aren’t they all at a time like this?’ said Percy, breezily. ‘One never knows when one might be sitting down to eat one’s last.’ She plucked the letters from the postmistress’s hand and as she did so spied the cut-glass jars that had once stood on the counter. The acid drops and butterscotch were all but gone, but a small, rather sad pile of Edinburgh rock had solidified in the base of one. Percy couldn’t stand Edinburgh rock, but it was Juniper’s favourite. ‘I’ll take what you have left of the rock, if you don’t mind.’

  With a sour expression, Mrs Potts broke the mass free from the jar’s glass base and scooped it into a brown paper bag. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’

  ‘Why, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, inspecting the small, sugary bag, ‘if we weren’t such firm friends, I’d suspect you of trying to fleece me.’

  Outrage suffused the postmistress’s face as she spluttered a denial.

  ‘I’m joking, of course, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, handing over the money. She tucked the letters and the rock into her bag and donated a brief smile. ‘Good afternoon now. I shall enquire after Juniper’s plans on your behalf, but I suspect when there’s anything to know, you’ll be the first to know it.’

  TWO

  Onions were important, of course, but that did nothing to alter the fact that their leaves brought absolutely nothing to a flower arrangement. Saffy inspected the feeble green shoots she’d just cut, turned them this way and that, squinted in case it helped, and applied whatever creative power she could muster to imagining them in place at table. In Grandmother’s heirloom French crystal vase they stood a fleeting chance; perhaps with a splash of something colourful to disguise their origin? Or else – her thoughts gathered mo mentum and she chewed her lip as was her habit when a grand idea was breaking – she might surrender herself to the theme, throw in some fennel leaves and marrow flowers and claim it a humorous comment on the shortages?

  With a sigh she let her arm drop, hand still clutching the flagging fronds. Her head shook sadly, seemingly of its own accord. Onto what mad thoughts did a desperate person latch? Clearly the onion shoots would never do: not only were they hopelessly ill suited to the task, but the longer she held them the more potently their odour struck her as remarkably similar to that of old socks. A smell the war, in particular her twin sister’s occupation in it, had given Saffy ample opportunity with which to become familiar. No. After four months in London, mixing in the smartest Bloomsbury circles, no doubt, braving the air raid warnings, sleeping some nights in a shelter, Juniper deserved better than eau de filthy laundry.

  Not to mention the guest she had mysteriously invited to join them. Juniper was not one to gather friends – young Meredith being the single surprising exception – but Saffy had an instinct for reading between the lines and, despite Juniper’s lines being squiggly at the best of times, she’d gathered that the young man had performed some act of gallantry to earn Juniper’s good favour. The invitation, therefore, was a show of the Blythe family’s gratitude and everything must be perfect. The onion sprouts, she confirmed with a second glance, were decidedly less than perfect. Once picked they mustn’t be wasted though – such sacrilege! Lord Woolton would be horrified – Saffy would find a dish to take them, just not from tonight’s menu. Onions and their after-effects could make for rather poor society.

  Sounding a disconsolate huff, then doing the same again because the sensation so pleased her, Saffy started back towards the house, glad as always that her path didn’t take her through the main gardens. She couldn’t bear it; they’d been glorious once. It was a tragedy that so many of the nation’s flower gardens had been abandoned or given over to vegetable cultivation. According to Juniper’s most recent letter, not only had the flowers by Rotten Row in Hyde Park been flattened beneath great piles of wood and iron and brick – the bones of Lord only knew how many homes – the entire southern side was given over now to allotments. A necessity, Saffy acknowledged, but no less tragic for it. Lack of potatoes left a person’s stomach growling, but absence of beauty hardened the soul.

  Directly before her a late butterfly hovered, wings drawing in and out like the mirrored edges of a set of fireside bellows. That such perfection, such natural calm, should continue while mankind was bringing the world’s ceiling down around it – why, it was nothing short of miraculous. Saffy’s face lightened; she held out a finger but the butterfly ignored her, lifting then falling, darting to inspect the brown fruits of the medlar tree. Completely oblivious – what wonder! With a smile, she continued her trudge towards the castle, ducking beneath the knobbled wisteria arbour, careful not to catch her hair.

  Mr Churchill would do well to remember that wars were not won by bullets alone, and to reward those who managed to sustain beauty when the world was being blasted into ugly pieces around them. The Churchill Medal for the Maintenance of Beauty in England had a lovely ring to it, Saffy thought. Percy had smirked when she’d said so at breakfast the other morning, with the inevitable smugness of one who’d spent months climbing in and out of bomb craters, earning her very own bravery medal in the process, but Saffy had refused to feel foolish. Indeed, she was worki
ng on a letter to The Times on the subject. The thrust of it: that beauty was important, as were art and literature and music; never more so than when civilized nations seemed intent upon goading one another into increasingly barbarous acts.

  Saffy adored London, she always had. Her future plans depended upon its survival and she took each bomb dropped as a personal attack. When the raids had been in full swing and the crump of distant anti-aircraft guns, the screaming sirens, the miserable explosions had been nightly companions, she’d chewed her nails feverishly – a terrible habit and one whose blame she laid squarely at Hitler’s feet – wondering whether the lover of a city might suffer its plight all the more for being absent when disaster struck, in the same way a mother’s anxiety for a wounded son was magnified by distance. Even as a girl Saffy had glimpsed that her life’s path lay not in the miry fields or within the ancient stones of Milderhurst, but amidst the parks and cafes, the literate conversations of London. When she and Percy were small, after Mother was burned but before Juniper was born, when it was still just the three of them, Daddy had taken the twins up to London each year to live for a time at the house in Chelsea. They were young; time hadn’t yet rubbed away at them, polishing their differences and sharpening their opinions, and they were treated – indeed they behaved between themselves – as a pair of duplicates. Yet when they were in London, Saffy had felt the early stirrings of division, deep but strong, within herself. Where Percy, like Daddy, pined for the vast, green woods of home, Saffy was enlivened by the city.

  An earthy rumble sounded behind her and Saffy groaned, refusing to turn and acknowledge the heavy clouds she knew were gloating over her shoulder. Of all the war’s personal privations, the loss of a regular wireless weather forecast had been a particularly cruel blow. Saffy had faced the shrinkage of quiet reading time with equanimity, agreeing that Percy should bring her one book a week from the lending library instead of the usual four. On the matter of retiring her silk dresses in favour of practical pinafores she’d been positively sanguine. The loss of staff, like so many fleas from a drowning rat, and the consequent adjustment to her new status as head cook, cleaner, laundress and gardener, she’d taken in her stride. But in Saffy’s attempts to master the vagaries of the English weather she had met her match. Despite a lifetime in Kent, she had none of the countrywoman’s instincts for weather: she had discovered, in fact, a curious antithetical knack for hanging out washing and braving the fields on the very days rain was whispering in the wings.