The Distant Hours (37 page)

‘Jess?’ I called hopefully. ‘Jessie girl?’

There came no grateful padding, no laboured clamber up the stairs from the basement, just ripples of silence rolling towards me. There is something deeply disquieting about a beloved place relieved of its rightful occupants, and at that moment I’d never been so eager to jostle with Jess for room on the sofa.

‘Jessie?’ Still nothing. Which meant that she had gone to Shrewsbury, too, and I really was alone.

Never mind
, I jollied myself along, there was plenty of work to keep me busy all afternoon.
Ghosts of Romney Marsh
was going to proof on Monday and although circumstances had already gifted it my close attention, there was always room for improvement. I lifted the blinds, switched on my desk lamp, making as much incidental noise as I could, then sat down and leafed through the manuscript pages. I shifted commas, I put them back again. I vacillated over the merits of using ‘however’ in place of ‘but’ without drawing any conclusion and marked the spot for further thought. I similarly failed to reach a firm decision on the next five stylistic queries before deciding it had been madness to attempt concentration on an empty stomach.

Herbert had been cooking and there was fresh pumpkin lasagne in the fridge. I removed a slice, heated it up, and took my plate back to my desk. It felt wrong to eat over the ghost whisperer’s manuscript, so I slid across my file of
Milderhurst Mercury
printouts instead. I read bits and pieces, but most of all I looked at the pictures. There’s something deeply nostalgic about black-and-white photographs, the absence of colour a visual rendering of the deepening funnel of time. There were lots of shots taken of the castle itself at various periods, some of the estate, a very old one of Raymond Blythe and his twin daughters on the occasion of the publication of the
Mud Man
. Photos of Percy Blythe looking stiff and uncomfortable at the wedding of a local couple called Harold and Lucy Rogers, Percy Blythe cutting the ribbon at the opening of a community centre, Percy Blythe presenting a signed copy of the
Mud Man
to the winner of a poetry competition.

I flicked back through the pages: Saffy was in none of them, and the fact struck me as rather unusual. Juniper’s absence I could understand, but where was Saffy? I picked up an article celebrating the end of the Second World War, highlighting the involvement of various villagers. Yet another photograph of Percy Blythe, this time in ambulance uniform. I stared at it thoughtfully. It was possible, of course, that Saffy didn’t like having her photo taken. It was possible, too, that she was staunchly opposed to involvement in the wider community. More likely, though, I felt certain, having seen the pair in action, she was a twin who knew her place. With a sister like Percy, filled with the steel of resolution and a fierce commitment to her family’s good name, what hope had poor Saffy of getting her smile in the newspaper?

It was not a good photograph, very unflattering. Percy was in the foreground and the photo had been taken from below, no doubt in order to capture the castle behind her. The angle was unfortunate, making Percy seem looming and rather severe; the fact that she wasn’t smiling didn’t help matters.

I looked closer. There was something in the background that I hadn’t noticed before, just beyond Percy’s tightly cropped hair. I dug in Herbert’s drawer until I found the magnifying glass, held it over the photograph and squinted. Drew back in amazement. It was just as I had thought. There was someone on the castle roof. Sitting on a ridge by one of the peaks, a figure in a long white dress. I knew at once that it must be Juniper. Poor sad, mad Juniper.

As I looked at the tiny speck of white up by the attic window, I was overcome by a wave of indignant sadness. Anger, too. My feeling that Thomas Cavill was the root of all evil reawakened and I let myself sink once more into my imaginings of the fateful October night on which he’d broken Juniper’s heart and ruined her life. The fantasy was well developed, I’m afraid; I’d been there many times before, and it played like a familiar film, moody soundtrack and all. I was with the sisters in that perfectly set parlour, listening as they wondered what could be keeping him so long, watching as Juniper began to fall victim to the madness that would consume her, when something happened. Something that had never happened before.

I’m not sure why or how, only that clarity, when it came, was sudden and fevered. The dream soundtrack screeched to a halt and the vision dissolved leaving only one fact behind: there was more to this story than met the eye. There had to be. For people didn’t go mad simply because their lover stood them up, did they? Even if they did have a history of anxiety or depression or whatever Mrs Bird had meant when she spoke of Juniper’s episodes.

I let the
Mercury
drop and sat up very straight. I’d taken the sad story of Juniper Blythe at face value because Mum was right: I’m terribly fanciful and tragic tales are my favourite type. But this wasn’t fiction, this was real life, and I needed to look at the situation more critically. I’m an editor, it’s my job to examine narratives for plausibility, and this one was lacking in some way. It was over-simplified. Love affairs disintegrate, people betray one another, lovers part. Human experience is littered with such personal tragedies; ghastly, but surely, in the greater scheme, minor?
She went mad
: the words rolled off the tongue well enough, but the reality seemed thin, like something out of a penny dreadful. Why, I had been replaced in similar fashion myself recently and had not gone mad. Not even skirted close.

My heart had started to tick along rather quickly and I was already reaching for my bag, shoving my newspaper file back inside, gathering my dirty plate and cutlery for the kitchen. I needed to find Thomas Cavill. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Mum wasn’t going to talk to me, Juniper couldn’t; he was the key, the answer to everything lay at his feet and I needed to know more about him.

I switched off the lamp, dropped the blinds and locked the front door behind me. I’m a book person, not a people person, so it didn’t occur to me to do it any other way: with a skip in my step, I hurried back in the direction of the library.

Miss Yeats was delighted to see me. ‘Back so soon,’ she said, with the sort of enthusiasm you might expect from a long-lost friend. ‘But you’re all wet! Don’t tell me the weather’s come in again.’

I hadn’t even noticed. ‘I don’t have an umbrella,’ I said.

‘Well, never mind. You’ll dry off soon enough, and I’m very glad you’ve come.’ She gathered a thin pile of papers from her desk and brought it to me with a reverence befitting transportation of the holy grail itself. ‘I know you said you hadn’t time, but I did a little sleuthing anyway – the Pembroke Farm Institute,’ she said, having noticed, perhaps, that I hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. ‘Raymond Blythe’s bequest?’

‘Oh,’ I said, remembering. The morning seemed an awfully long time ago. ‘Terrific. Thanks.’

‘I’ve printed out everything I could find. I was going to ring you at work and let you know, but now you’re here!’

I thanked her again and gave the documents a cursory glance, flicking through pages detailing the institute’s history of conservation, making a small show of considering the information, before tucking them inside my bag. ‘I’m really looking forward to exploring them properly,’ I said, ‘but there’s something I need to do first.’ And I explained then that I was looking for information about a man. ‘Thomas Cavill is his name. He was a soldier during the Second World War and a teacher before that. He lived and worked near Elephant and Castle.’

She was nodding. ‘Is there anything in particular you were hoping to uncover?’

Why he failed to arrive at Milderhurst Castle for dinner in October 1941, why Juniper Blythe was plunged into a madness from which she never recovered, why my mother refused to talk to me about any aspect of her past. ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘Whatever I can find.’

Miss Yeats was a wizard. While I battled the microfilm machine solo, cursing the dial which refused to perform small incremental shifts and flew instead through weeks at a time, she darted about the library accumulating odd bits of paper from here and there. When we reconvened after half an hour, I brought a worse-for-wear newsreel and a crushing headache to the table, while she’d assembled a small but decent dossier of information.

There wasn’t much, certainly nowhere near the reams of local press concerning the Blythe family and their castle, but it was a start. There was a small birth notice from a 1916
Bermondsey Gazette
, that read,
CAVILL – Feb 22, at Henshaw St, the wife of Thomas Cavill of a son, Thomas
, an effusive report in the
Southwark Star
from 1937, entitled ‘Local Teacher Wins Poetry Prize,’ and another from 1939 with a similarly unambiguous title, ‘Local Teacher Joins War Effort’. The second article contained a small photograph labelled ‘Mr Thomas Cavill’, but the copy was of such poor quality that I could tell little more about him than that he was a young man with a head, shoulders and a British army uniform. It seemed rather a small collection of public information to show for a man’s life and I was extremely disappointed to see that there was nothing at all from after 1939.

‘That’s it,’ I said, trying to sound philosophical rather than ungrateful.

‘Almost.’ Miss Yeats handed me another clutch of papers.

They were advertisements, all dated March 1981, all taken from the bottom corner of
The Times
,
Guardian
and
Daily Telegraph
classifieds. Each one bore the same message:

‘Well,’ I said.

‘
Well
,’ Miss Yeats concurred. ‘Rather curious, wouldn’t you agree? Whatever could they mean?’

I shook my head. I had no idea. ‘One thing’s certain: this Theo, whoever he might be, was pretty keen to get in touch with Thomas.’

‘May I ask, dear – I mean, I certainly don’t like to pry, but is there anything here that helps you with your project?’

I took another look at the classifieds, pushed my hair behind my ears. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Because you know, if it’s his service record you’re interested in, the Imperial War Museum has a wonderful archive collection. Or else there’s the General Register Office for births, deaths and marriages. And I’m sure with just a little more time I could . . . oh dear,’ she said, flushing as she glanced at her watch, ‘but what a shame. It’s almost closing time. And right when we were getting somewhere. I don’t suppose there’s anything more I could do to help before they lock us in?’

‘Actually,’ I said, ‘there is one little thing. Do you think I could use your telephone?’

It had been eleven years since the advertisements were placed so I’m not sure what I expected, I know only what I hoped: that a fellow by the name of Theo would pick up at the other end and happily fill me in on the past fifty years of Thomas Cavill’s life. Needless to say, it’s not what happened. My first attempt was met by the rude insistence of a disconnection tone and I was so utterly frustrated that I couldn’t help but stamp my foot like a spoiled Victorian child. Miss Yeats was kind enough to ignore the tantrum, reminding me gently to convert the area code to 071 in line with the recent changes, then hovering very closely as I dialled the number. Under scrutiny I grew clumsy and had to try a second time, but finally – success!

I gave the receiver a quick tap to signal that the number had begun to ring; touched Miss Yeats’s shoulder excitedly when the line picked up. It was answered by a kindly lady who told me, when I asked for Theo, that she’d bought the house from an elderly man by that name the year before. ‘Theodore Cavill,’ she said, ‘that’s who you’re after, isn’t it?’

I could barely contain myself. Theodore
Cavill
. A relative, then. ‘That’s him.’

Beneath my nose, Miss Yeats clapped the heels of her hands like a seal.

‘He went to live in a nursing home in Putney,’ said the lady on the phone, ‘right by the river. He was very happy about that, I remember. Said he used to teach at a school across the way.’

I went to visit him. I went that very evening.

There were five nursing homes in Putney, only one of which was on the river, and I found it easily. The drizzle had blown away and the evening was warm and clear; I stood at the front like someone in a dream, comparing the address of the plain brick building before me to that in my notepad.

As soon as I set foot inside the foyer, I was accosted by the nurse on duty, a young woman with a pixie haircut and a way of smiling so that one side of her mouth rose higher than the other. I told her who I’d come to see and she grinned.

‘Oh, how lovely! He’s one of our sweetest is Theo.’

I felt my first pang of doubt then and returned her smile a little queasily. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, beneath the stark fluorescent light of the hallway we were fast approaching, I wasn’t so sure. There was something not terribly likeable about a person prepared to impose upon an unsuspecting old gentleman, one of the nursing home’s sweetest. An arrant stranger with designs on the fellow’s family history. I considered backing out, but my guide was surprisingly invested in my visit and had already railroaded me through the foyer with breathtaking efficiency.