The Distant Hours (41 page)

Everybody had a theory about the visitors. Dr Finley believed them to be ‘fibres of longing and curiosity’, projected from her own mind and linked in some way to her faulty heart; Dr Heinstein argued they were symptoms of psychosis and had provided a raft of pills he promised would end them; Daddy said they were the voices of her ancestors and that she had been chosen specially to hear them; Saffy insisted she was perfect as she was, and Percy didn’t mind much either way. She said that everyone was different and why on earth must things be categorized, people labelled normal or otherwise?

Anyway. Juniper had not really sat on the swing seat because it was the safest thing to do. She’d sat there because it afforded her the best view of the figment in the pool. She was curious and he was beautiful. The smoothness of his skin, the rise and fall of muscles on his bare chest as he breathed, his arms. If she had conjured him herself, then she had done a bloody brilliant job; he was exotic and lovely and she wanted to observe for as long as it took him to turn back into dappled light and leaves before her eyes.

Only that wasn’t what had happened. As she sat with her head resting against the swing’s rope, he’d opened his eyes, met hers, and begun to speak.

This, of itself, was not unprecedented; the visitors had spoken to Juniper before, many times, but this was the first time they’d taken the shape of a young man. A young man with very little clothing on his body.

She’d answered him, but shortly. Truthfully, she’d been irritated; she hadn’t wanted him to speak; she’d wanted him just to close his eyes again, to float upon the shimmering surface, so she could play voyeur. So she could watch the dance of sunlight on his limbs, his long, long limbs, his quite beautiful face, and concentrate on the queer sensation, like a plucked string humming, way down deep within her belly.

She hadn’t known many men before. There was Daddy, of course – but he hardly counted; her godfather, Stephen; a few ancient gardeners who’d worked on the estate over the years; and Davies, who’d babied the Daimler.

But this was different.

Juniper had tried ignoring him, hopeful that he might get the idea and stop trying to make conversation, but he’d persisted. He’d told her his name, Thomas Cavill. They didn’t usually have names. Not normal ones.

She’d dived into the pool herself, and he had made a hasty exit. She’d noticed then that there were clothes on the sun bed; his clothes, which was very strange indeed.

And then, the most peculiar thing of all. Meredith had come – released at last from Saffy’s sewing room – and she and the man had begun to converse.

Juniper, watching them from the water, had almost drowned in shock, for one thing was certain, her visitors could not be seen by others.

Juniper had lived at Milderhurst Castle all her life. She had been born, like her father and her sisters before her, in a room on the second floor. She knew the castle and its woods as one might be expected to know the only world one had met. She was safe and loved and indulged. She read and she wrote and she played and she dreamed. Nothing was expected of her other than to be precisely as and who she was. Sometimes, more so.

‘You, my little one, are a creature of the castle,’ Daddy had told her often. ‘We are the same, you and I.’ And for a long time Juniper had been perfectly content with this description.

Lately, though, in ways she couldn’t properly explain, things had begun to change. She woke at night sometimes with an inexplicable tugging in her soul; a desire, like hunger, but for what she couldn’t say. Dissatisfaction, longing, a deep and yawning absence, but no idea of how to fill it. No idea of what it was she missed. She’d walked and she’d run; she’d written with speed and fury. Words, sounds, had pressed against her skull, demanding release, and to put them on paper was a relief; she didn’t agonize, she didn’t ponder, she never reread; it was enough just to free the words so that the voices in her head were stilled.

Then one day an urge had taken her to the village. She didn’t drive often, but she’d steered the big old Daimler into the High Street. As if in a dream, a character in someone else’s story, she’d parked it and gone inside the hall; a woman had spoken at her but by then Juniper had already seen Meredith.

Later, Saffy would ask her how she’d chosen, and Juniper would say: ‘I didn’t choose.’

‘I don’t like to disagree, lamb, but I’m quite sure it was you who brought her home.’

‘Yes, of course, but I didn’t
choose
. I just knew.’

Juniper had never had a friend before. Other people, Daddy’s pompous friends, visitors to the castle, just seemed to take up more air than they should. They squashed one with their blustering and their posturing and their constant talking. But Meredith was different. She was funny and she saw things her own way. She was a bookish person who’d never been exposed to books; she was gifted with astute powers of observation, but her thoughts and feelings weren’t filtered through those that she’d read, those that had been written before. She had a unique way of seeing the world and a manner of expressing herself that caught Juniper unawares and made her laugh and think and feel things anew.

Best of all, though, Meredith had come laden with stories of the outside world. Her arrival had made a small tear in the fabric of Milderhurst. A tiny, bright window to which Juniper could press her eye and glimpse what lay beyond.

And now just look what she had brought! A man, a real man of flesh and blood. A young man from the outside, the real world, had appeared in the pool. Light from the outside world had shone through the veil, brighter now that a second hole was torn, and Juniper knew that somehow she must see more.

He’d wanted to stay, to come with them up to the castle, but Juniper had told him no. The castle was all wrong. She wanted to watch him, to inspect him like a cat – carefully, slowly, unnoticed as she drifted past his skin; if she couldn’t have that, it was better to have nothing. He would remain that way a sunlit, silent moment; a breeze against her cheek as the swing tilted back and forth across the warming pool; a new, low pull within her stomach.

He went. And they stayed. And she draped her arm over Meredith’s shoulder and laughed as they returned up the hill; joked about Saffy’s habit of sticking pins into legs as well as fabrics; pointed out the old fountain, no longer working; paused a moment to inspect the stagnant green water sulking inside, the dragonflies hovering fitfully about its rim. But all the while her thoughts drew out behind her like a spider’s thread, following the man as he made his way towards the road.

She began to walk, faster now. It was hot, so hot, her hair was already drying, sticking to the sides of her face, her skin seemed tighter than usual. She felt oddly animated. Surely Meredith could hear her heart, hammering away against her ribs?

‘I have a grand idea,’ she said. ‘Have you ever wondered what France looks like?’ And she took her little friend’s hand and together they ran, up the stairs, through the briars, beneath the long row of tunnelled trees. Fleeting – the word came into her head and made her feel lighter, like a deer. Faster, faster, both of them laughing, and the wind tore at Juniper’s hair, and her feet rejoiced against the baking, hard earth, and joy ran with her. Finally, they reached the portico, tripped up the stairs, panting, both of them, through the open French doors and into the cool stillness of the library.

‘June? Is that you?’

It was Saffy, sitting at her writing desk. Dear Saffy, looking up from behind the typewriter in the way that was habit with her; always just a little bewildered, as if she’d been caught in the middle of a rose-petal, dew-drop dream and reality was a slightly dusty surprise.

Whether it was the sunlight, the pool, the man, the clear blue of the sky, Juniper couldn’t resist planting a kiss on the top of her sister’s head as they hurried by.

Saffy beamed. ‘Did Meredith – Oh yes, she did. Good. Oh, I see you’ve been swimming; be careful that Daddy . . .’

But whatever the warning, Juniper and Meredith had gone before it was finished. They ran along looming stone corridors, up narrow flights of stairs, level by level, until finally they reached the attic at the very top of the castle. Juniper went swiftly to the open window, eased herself onto the bookcase and swivelled so that her feet were on the roof outside. ‘Come,’ she said to Meredith, who was still standing by the door, a strange look on her face. ‘Quickly now.’

Meredith let out a tentative sigh, propped her spectacles back on the bridge of her nose, then followed; did exactly as Juniper had done. Inched her way along the steep roof until they came upon the ridge that pitched south like a ship’s prow.

‘There, see?’ said Juniper, when they were seated side by side, settled on the flat behind the edging tiles. She pointed, a scribble on the far horizon. ‘I told you. All the way to France.’

‘Really? That’s it?’

Juniper nodded, but she paid the coastline no more heed. Squinted instead at the wide field of long, yellow grass, skirting Cardarker Wood; scanning, scanning, hoping for just one final glimpse . . .

A jolt. She saw him then, a tiny figure, crossing the field by the first bridge. His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, she could tell that much, and he had his palms out flat beside him, brushing the tops of the long grass. He stopped as she watched, lifted and bent his arms so that his hands rested on the back of his head; seemed to embrace the sky. She realized he was turning; had turned. Was looking back now at the castle. She held her breath; wondered how it was that life could change so much in half an hour when nothing much had changed at all.

‘The castle wears a skirt.’ Meredith was pointing at the ground below.

He was walking again, and then he disappeared behind the fold of the hill and everything was still. Thomas Cavill had slipped through the crack and into the world beyond. The air around the castle seemed to know it.

‘Look,’ said Meredith, ‘just down there.’

Juniper took her cigarettes from her pocket. ‘There used to be a moat. Daddy had it filled in when his first wife died. We’re not supposed to swim in the pool either.’ She smiled as Meredith’s face became a study in anxiety. ‘Don’t look so worried, little Merry. No one’s going to be cross when I teach you to swim. Daddy doesn’t leave his tower, not any more, so he’s not to know whether we use the pool or not. Besides, when the day’s as warm as this it’s a crime not to have a swim.’

Warm, perfect, blue.

Juniper struck the match hard. With a long, drawing breath, she leaned a hand back against the sloping roof and squinted at the clear, blue sky. The ceiling of her dome. And words came into her head, not her own.

Ridiculous, of course. Utterly ridiculous. The man was not her mate; he was no one for her to lament till she was lost. And yet the words had come.

‘Did you like Mr Cavill?’

Juniper’s heart kicked; she burned with instant heat. She’d been discovered! Meredith had intuited the secret workings of her mind. She thumbed her damp dress strap back onto her shoulder; was stalling; returning the matches to her pocket when Meredith said, ‘I do.’

And by the pinkness on her cheeks, Juniper perceived that Meredith liked her teacher very much indeed. She was torn between relief that her own thoughts were still private, and a wild, crushing envy that her feelings should be shared. She looked at Meredith and the latter sensation passed as fast as it had flared. She strove for nonchalance. ‘Why? What do you like about him?’

Meredith didn’t answer at first. Juniper smoked and stared at the spot where the man had breached the Milderhurst dome.

‘He’s very clever,’ she said at last. ‘And handsome. And he’s kind, even to people who aren’t easy to be with. He has a simple brother, a great big fellow who acts like a baby, cries easily and shouts sometimes in the street, but you should see how patient and gentle Mr Cavill is with him. If you saw them together, you’d say he was having the best time of his life, and not in that overdone way that people have when they know they’re being watched. He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had. He gave me a journal as a present, a real one with a leather cover. He says that if I work hard I could stay at school longer, maybe even go to a grammar school or university, write properly one day: stories or poems, or articles for the newspaper – ’ there was a pause as she drew breath, then – ‘nobody ever thought I was good at anything before.’

Juniper leaned to bump shoulders with the skinny sapling beside her. ‘Well, that’s just madness, Merry,’ she said. ‘Mr Cavill is right, of course, you’re good at a great many things. I’ve only known you a matter of days and I can see that much – ’

She coughed against the back of her hand, unable to continue. She’d been overcome by an unfamiliar feeling as she’d listened to Meredith describe her teacher’s attributes, his kindnesses, as the girl spoke nervously of her own aspirations. A heat had started to build in her chest, growing until it could no longer be contained then spreading like treacle beneath her skin. When it reached her eyes it had grown points and threatened to turn to tears. She felt tender and protective and vulnerable, and as she saw the beginnings of a hopeful smile stir on the edges of the young girl’s mouth, she couldn’t help wrapping her arms around Merry and squeezing hard. The girl tensed beneath the embrace, gripping the shingles tight.