The Distant Hours

  I nodded, and a strange unsettled weight shifted in the pit of my stomach.

  ‘If there are any questions you still need answered, you will ask them of me. Not my sisters.’

  Which was when Saffy intervened, in her own inimitable fashion. She’d kept her head down during my exchange with Percy, but she looked up then, a pleasant, mild expression arranged on her face. She spoke in a clear voice, perfectly guileless. ‘Which means, of course, that she must take a look at Daddy’s notebooks.’

  Was it possible that the whole room chilled when she said it? Or did it only seem that way to me? Nobody had seen Raymond Blythe’s notebooks; not when he was alive, and not in the fifty years of posthumous scholarship. Myths had begun to form around their very existence. And now, to hear them mentioned like this, so casually; to glimpse a possibility that I might touch them, might read the great man’s handwriting and run my fingertip, ever so lightly, over his thoughts, right as they were forming – ‘Yes,’ I managed, in little more than a whisper, ‘yes, please.’

  Percy, meanwhile, had turned to look at Saffy and although I had no more hope of understanding the dynamics that stretched between them and back over nearly nine decades than I did untangling the undergrowth of Cardarker Wood, I knew that a blow had been struck. A fierce blow. I knew too, that Percy did not want me to see those notebooks. Her reluctance only fed my desire, my need, to take them in my hands, and I held my breath as the twins continued their dance.

  ‘Go on, Percy,’ said Saffy, blinking widely and allowing her smile to wilt a little at the corners, as if perplexed, as if she couldn’t understand why Percy needed prodding. She sneaked the briefest glance at me, sufficient only for me to know that we were allies. ‘Show her the muniment room.’

  The muniment room. Of course that’s where they were! It was just like a scene from the Mud Man itself: Raymond Blythe’s precious notebooks, concealed within the room of secrets.

  Percy’s arms, the cage of her torso, her chin: all were rigid. Why didn’t she want me to see those books? What was inside them that she feared?

  ‘Percy?’ Saffy softened her tone the way one might with a child who needs cajoling to speak up. ‘Are the notebooks still there then?’

  ‘I expect so. I certainly haven’t moved them.’

  ‘Well then?’ The tension between them was so thick I could barely stand to breathe as I watched and hoped. Time stretched painfully; a gust of wind outside made the shutters vibrate against the glass. Juniper stirred. Saffy spoke again. ‘Percy?’

  ‘Not today,’ Percy said finally, driving her spent cigarette into the little crystal ashtray. ‘The dark comes in quickly now. It’s almost evening.’

  I glanced at the window and saw that she was right. The sun had slid away quickly and the cool night air was sifting into place. ‘When you come tomorrow, I’ll show you the room.’ Her eyes were hard on mine. ‘And Miss Burchill?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll hear no more from you about Juniper or him.’

  ONE

  London, June 22nd, 1941

  It was a small flat, little more than a pair of tiny rooms at the top of a Victorian building. The roof sloped on one side until it met the wall that someone, at some time, had erected so that one draughty attic might become two, and there was no kitchen to speak of, only a small sink beside an old gas cooker. It wasn’t Tom’s flat, not really; he hadn’t a place of his own because he’d never needed one. He’d lived with his family near Elephant and Castle until the war began, and then with his regiment as it dwindled to a small band of stragglers on their way to meet the coast. After Dunkirk, he’d slept in a bed at Chertsey Emergency Hospital.

  Since his discharge, though, he’d been drifting from this spare room to that, waiting for his leg to heal and his unit to recall him. There were places empty all over London so it was never hard to find a new abode. It seemed that everything had been shuffled by the war – people, possessions, affections – and there was no longer one right way of doing things. This particular flat, this plain room that he would remember specially to his dying day, that was soon to become the repository for his life’s best and brightest memories, belonged to a friend with whom he’d studied at teacher training college, in a different version of his life, long ago.

  It was early still, but Tom had already walked to Primrose Hill and back. He didn’t sleep late any more, nor deeply. Not after the months in France, living by his wits, in retreat. He woke with the birds, the sparrows in particular, a family of whom had taken up digs on his sill. It had been a mistake, perhaps, to feed them, but the bread had been mouldy to begin with and the fellow down at the Salvage Department fierce that it shouldn’t be thrown away. It was the heat of the room and the steam from the boiler turning Tom’s bread to mould. He kept the window open but the day’s sun accumulated in the flats beneath, spread up the staircase and shrugged through the floorboards, before hitting his ceiling and stretching out with proprietorial ease to shake hands with the steam. It had been just as well to accept it: the mould was his, as were the birds. He woke early, he fed them, he walked.

  The doctors had said that walking was the best thing for his leg, but Tom would’ve done so regardless. There was something restless living inside him now, something he’d gained in France that needed to be exorcised daily. Each footfall on the pavement helped a little, and he was glad for the release, even though he knew it to be temporary. That morning, as he’d stood at the top of Primrose Hill and watched the dawn roll up its sleeves, he’d picked out the Zoo and the BBC and, in the distance, the dome of St Paul’s, rising clear of its blitzed surroundings. Tom had been in hospital during the worst of the raids and Matron had arrived on the thirtieth of December, The Times in hand (he’d been allowed the newspaper by then). She’d stood beside the bed, po-faced but not unkind, as he began to read, and before he’d finished the headline, she’d declared it an act of God. Although Tom had agreed that the dome’s survival was a wonder, he’d thought it had a bit more to do with luck than Lord. He had trouble with God, with the notion that a divine being might save a building when all of England was bleeding to death. To Matron, however, he’d nodded agreement: blasphemy would’ve been just the sort of thing to get her whispering to the doctor about worrying states of mind.

  A mirror had been propped on the ledge of the narrow casement window and Tom, dressed in his undershirt and trousers, leaned towards it, rolling the stub of shaving soap across his cheeks. He watched dispassionately the mottled reflection in the stippled glass, the young man cocking his head so that milky sunlight lay across his cheek, running the razor carefully along his jaw, stroke by stroke, flinching as he negotiated the territory around his earlobe. The fellow in the mirror rinsed the razor in the shallow water, shook it a little, and started on the other side, just as a man might when he was tidying himself up to visit his mother on her birthday.

  Tom caught himself drifting and sighed. He laid the razor gently on the sill and rested both hands on the outer curve of the basin. Screwed his eyes shut, beginning the familiar count to ten. This dislocation had been happening a lot lately, since he returned from France but even more so after leaving the hospital. It was as if he were outside himself, watching, unable quite to believe that the young man in the mirror with the amiable face, the mild expression, the day stretching ahead, could possibly be him. That the experiences of the past eighteen months, the sights and sounds – that child, dear God, lying dead, alone, on the road in France – could possibly live behind that still-smooth face.

  You are Thomas Cavill, he told himself firmly when he’d reached ten; you are twenty-five years old, you are a soldier. Today is your mother’s birthday and you are going to visit her for lunch. His sisters would be there, the eldest with her baby son, Thomas – named for him – and his brother Joey, too; though not Theo, who’d been sent up north with his regiment for training and wrote cheery letters home about butter and cream and a girl named Kitty. They would be their usual rowdy selves, th
e wartime version of themselves, at any rate: never questioning, hardly complaining, and then only ever in a jocular fashion about the difficulties of obtaining eggs and sugar. Never doubting that Britain could take it. That they could take it. Tom could vaguely remember feeling the same way himself.

  Juniper took out the piece of paper and checked the address once more. Turned it sideways, twisted her head, then cursed herself for her appalling handwriting. Too quick, too careless, too eager always to move on to the next idea. She looked up at the narrow house, spotted the number on the black front door. Twenty-six. This was it. It had to be.

  It was. Juniper decisively shoved the paper in her pocket. Number and street name aside, she recognized this house from Merry’s stories as vividly as she would Northanger Abbey or Wuthering Heights. With a skip in her step, she climbed the concrete stairs and knocked on the door.

  She had been in London for exactly two days and still she couldn’t quite believe it. She felt like a fictional character who’d escaped the book in which her creator had carefully and kindly trapped her; taken a pair of scissors to her outline and leaped, free, into the unfamiliar pages of a story with far more dirt and noise and rhythm. A story she adored already: the shuffling, the mess, the disorder, the things and people she didn’t understand. It was exhilarating, just as she’d always known it would be.

  The door opened and a scowling face caught her off guard, a person younger than she was but also somehow older. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to see Meredith Baker.’ Juniper’s voice was strange to her own ears, here in this other story. An image came to her of Percy, who always knew precisely how to behave out in the world, but it merged with another more recent memory – Percy, red-faced and angry after a meeting with Daddy’s solicitor – and Juniper let it turn to sand and scatter to the ground.

  The girl – with those pursed and grudging lips she could only be Rita – looked Juniper up and down before arriving at an expression of haughty suspicion and, oddly, for they had never met before, strong dislike. ‘Meredith!’ she called finally from the side of her mouth. ‘Get yourself out here now.’

  Juniper and Rita observed one another as they waited, neither speaking, and a host of words appeared in Juniper’s mind, knitting themselves together to form the beginning of a description she would later write back to her sisters. Then Meredith appeared with a clatter, spectacles on her nose and a tea cloth in her hand, and the words seemed unimportant.

  Merry was the first friend Juniper had made and the first she’d had occasion to miss, so the immense weight of her friend’s absence had been totally unexpected. When Merry’s father had arrived without notice at the castle in March, insisting that his daughter return home this time, the two girls had clung to one another and Juniper had whispered in Merry’s ear, ‘I’m coming to London. I’ll see you soon.’ Merry had cried but Juniper hadn’t, not then; she’d waved and returned to the attic roof and tried to remember how it was to be alone. Her whole life had been spent that way – though in the silences left by Merry’s departure, there’d been something new. A clock was softly ticking, counting down the seconds to a fate that Juniper was stubbornly determined to outrun.

  ‘You came,’ said Meredith, nudging her spectacles with the back of her hand and blinking as if she might be seeing things.

  ‘I told you I would.’

  ‘But where are you staying?’

  ‘With my godfather.’

  A grin broke across Meredith’s face and turned into a laugh. ‘Let’s get out of here then,’ she said, gripping Juniper’s hand tightly in her own.

  ‘I’m telling Mum you didn’t finish the kitchen like you were s’posed to,’ the sister shouted after them.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ said Meredith. ‘She’s in a snit because they won’t let her out of the broom cupboard at work.’

  ‘It’s a great pity no one’s thought to lock her in it.’

  In the end, Juniper Blythe had taken herself to London. By train, just as Meredith had suggested when they sat together on the Milderhurst roof. Escaping hadn’t been nearly as hard as she’d expected. She’d simply walked across the fields and refused to stop until she reached the railway station.

  She’d been so pleased with herself when she did, that it skipped her attention for a moment that she’d need to do anything further. Juniper could write, she could invent grand fictions and capture them within an intricacy of words, but she knew herself to be perfectly hopeless at everything else. Her entire knowledge of the world and its operation had been deduced from books and the conversations of her sisters – neither of whom was particularly worldly – and the stories Merry had told her of London. It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, as she stood outside the station, to realize she had no idea what to do next. Only when she noticed the kiosk labelled ‘Ticket Office’ did she remember that of course, she would need to purchase one of those.

  Money. It was something Juniper had never known or needed, but there had been a small sum left when Daddy died. She hadn’t concerned herself with the details of the will and the estate – it was enough to know that Percy was angry, Saffy concerned, and Juniper herself the unwitting cause – but when Saffy mentioned a parcel of actual money, the sort that could be folded and held and exchanged for things, and offered to put it away safely, Juniper had said no. That she preferred to keep it, just to look at awhile. Saffy, dear Saffy, hadn’t blinked, accepting the odd request as perfectly reasonable because it had come from Juniper whom she loved and therefore would not question.

  The train when it arrived was full but an older man in the carriage had stood and tipped his hat and Juniper had understood that he meant for her to slide into the seat he’d vacated. A seat by the window. How charming people were out here! She smiled and he nodded, and she sat with her suitcase on her lap, waiting for whatever might come. ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ the sign on the platform demanded. Yes, thought Juniper. Yes, it is. To remain at the castle, she knew with more certainty now than ever, would have been to submit herself to a future she refused to meet. The one she’d seen reflected in her father’s eyes when he took her shoulders between his hands and told her they were the same, the two of them, the same.

  Steam swirled and eddied along the platform and she felt as excited as if she’d climbed onto the back of a great huffing dragon who was about to launch into the sky, carrying her with him as he flew away to a place of fascination and fancy. A shrill whistle sounded, making the hairs on Juniper’s arms stand up, and they were off, moving, the train lurching in mighty heaves. Juniper couldn’t help but laugh against the glass then, because she’d done it. She’d really done it.

  Over time, the window misted with her breath and unnamed, unknown stations, fields and villages and woods, skimmed by: a blur – pastels of green and blue and streaky pink, run through with a watery brush. The skidding colours stopped sometimes, clarifying to form a picture, framed like a painting by the window’s rectangle. A Constable, or one of the other pastorals Daddy had admired. Renderings of a timeless countryside that he’d eulogized with the familiar sadness clouding his eyes.

  Juniper had no patience for the timeless. She knew that there was no such thing. Only the here and now, and the way her heart was beating in its too-fast way, though not dangerously so, because she was sitting inside a train on her way to London while noise and movement and heat surrounded her.

  London. Juniper said the word once beneath her breath, then again. Relished its evenness, its two balanced syllables, the way it felt on her tongue. Soft but weighted, like a secret, the sort of word that might be whispered between lovers. Juniper wanted love, she wanted passion, she wanted complications. She wanted to live and to love and to eavesdrop, to learn secrets and know how other people spoke to one another, the way they felt, the things that made them laugh and cry and sigh. People who weren’t Percy or Saffy or Raymond or Juniper Blythe.

  Once, when she was a very small girl, a hot-air balloonist had launche
d from one of the Milderhurst fields; Juniper couldn’t remember why, whether he’d been a friend of Daddy’s or a famous adventurer, only that there’d been a breakfast picnic on the lawn to celebrate and they’d gathered, all of them, the northern cousins too, and a select few guests from the village, to watch the great event. The balloon had been tethered to the ground by ropes and as the flame leaped and the basket strained to follow it, men stationed at the base of each cord had worked to effect its release. Ropes screamed with tension, the flames raged higher, and for a moment, as all eyes widened, disaster had seemed imminent.

  A single rope came loose while the others remained, and the whole contraption lurched to the side, flames licking perilously close to the fabric of the balloon. Juniper had glanced at Daddy. She was only a child and hadn’t then known the full horror of his past – it would be some time yet before he burdened his youngest daughter with his secrets – but she had known, even then, that he feared fire above all else. His face as he watched events unfold had been a sheer of white marble with dread cut clear upon it. Juniper had found herself adopting his expression, curious to know what it might feel like to be turned to stone and scored by fear. Just in time, the final ropes had released and the balloon had righted itself, jerked free and aimed for the sky, rising high into the blue beyond.

  For Juniper, Daddy’s death had been like the release of that first rope. She had felt the liberation as her body, her soul, her whole being shifted sideways, and a significant portion of the weight that had shackled her fell away. The last ropes she’d cut herself: packing a small suitcase with a few mismatched clothes and the two addresses she had for people in London, and waiting until a day when both her sisters were busy so she could set off unobserved.

  There remained now only a single piece of rope stretching between Juniper and her home. It was the hardest to sever, tied neatly in a careful knot by Percy and Saffy. And yet it had to be done, for their love and concern entrapped her just as surely as Daddy’s expectations. As Juniper had reached London, and the smoke and the bustle of Charing Cross Station had enwrapped her, she’d imagined herself a shining pair of scissors and leaned to slice the rope right through. She’d watched as it fell back upon itself, hesitated for an instant like an excised tail, before receding fast into the distance, gaining speed as it slithered back towards the castle.