The Distant Hours (8 page)

Saffy tapped the fingers of one hand against her ear. ‘No need to shout, Percy dear,’ came a soft singsong voice, ‘my earpiece is in place.’ She smiled shyly at me, blinking for need of the glasses her vanity had removed. She was as tall as her twin, but through some trick of dress or the light, or perhaps of posture she didn’t seem it. ‘Old habits die hard,’ she said. ‘Percy was always the bossy one. I’m Saffy Blythe and it’s really, truly, a pleasure to meet you.’

I came closer to take her hand. She was a carbon copy of her sister, or she had been once. The past eighty-odd years had etched different lines on their faces and the result was somehow softer on Saffy, sweeter. She looked just as an old lady of the manor should and I warmed to her immediately. Where Percy was formidable, Saffy made me think of oatmeal biscuits and cotton-fibre paper covered with a beautiful inky scrawl. It’s a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.

‘We’ve had a telephone call from Mrs Bird,’ said Saffy. ‘I’m afraid she’s been caught up in the village with her business.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was in a frightful flap,’ Percy continued flatly. ‘But I told her I’d be happy to show you round myself.’

‘More than happy.’ Saffy smiled. ‘My sister loves this house as other people love their spouses. She’s thrilled to have a chance to show it off. And well she might. The old place is a credit to her: only years of her tireless work have kept it from falling into disrepair.’

‘I’ve done what was necessary to stop the walls collapsing around us. No more.’

‘My sister is being modest.’

‘And mine is being stubborn.’

This chiding was evidently a normal part of their repartee, and the two paused to smile at me. For a moment I was trans- fixed, remembering the photograph in
Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst
, wondering which of these old ladies was which little twin, and then Saffy reached across the narrow divide to take Percy’s hand. ‘My sister has taken care of us all our long lives,’ she said, before turning to look with such admiration at her twin’s profile that I knew she had been the smaller, thinner of the two girls in the photo, the one whose smile wavered uncertainly beneath the camera’s gaze.

The additional praise did not sit well with Percy, who scrutinized her watch before muttering, ‘Never mind. Not much further to go now.’

It’s always difficult to know what to say when a very old person starts talking about death and its imminence, so I did what I do when Herbert hints about my taking over at Billing & Brown ‘one day’: I smiled as if I might have misheard and gave the sunlit bay window a closer inspection.

And that’s when I noticed the third sister, the one who must be Juniper. She was sitting statue-still in an armchair of faded green velvet, watching through the open window as the parkland spilled away from her. A faint plume of cigarette smoke rose from a crystal ashtray, smudging her into soft focus. Unlike her sisters, there was nothing fine about her clothing or the way she wore it. She was dressed in the international costume of the invalid: an ill-fitting blouse tucked in firm and high to shapeless slacks, her lap marked by greasy spots where things had spilled.

Perhaps Juniper sensed my gaze, for she turned slightly – just the side of her face – towards me. Her eye, I could see, was glassy and unsteady in a way that suggested heavy medication and when I smiled she gave no sign that she had seen, just continued to stare as if she sought to bore a hole right through me.

Watching her, I became aware of a soft press of sound I hadn’t noticed before. A small television set perched on a wooden occasional table beneath the window frame. An American sitcom was playing and the laugh track punctuated the constant hum of sassy dialogue with periodic stabs of static. It gave me a familiar feeling, that television set, the warm, sunny day outside, the still, stale air within: a nostalgic memory of visiting Gran in the school holidays and being allowed to watch television in the daytime.

‘What are you doing here?’

Pleasant memories of Gran shattered beneath the sudden icy blow. Juniper Blythe was still staring at me but her expression was no longer blank. It was distinctly unwelcoming.

‘I, uh . . . hello,’ I said. ‘I . . .’

‘What do you think you’re doing here?’

The lurcher gave a strangled yelp.

‘Juniper!’ Saffy hurried to her sister’s side. ‘Darling girl, Edith is our guest.’ She took her sister’s face gently in both hands. ‘I told you, June, remember? I explained it all: Edith’s here to have a tour of the castle. Percy’s taking her for a lovely little walk. You mustn’t worry, darling, everything’s all right.’

While I wished fervently that I could somehow disappear, the twins exchanged a glance that sat so easily in the different lines of their matching faces that I knew it must have passed between them many times before. Percy nodded at Saffy, tight-lipped, and then the expression dissolved before I’d worked out what it was about that glance that gave me such a peculiar feeling.

‘Well then,’ she said with an affected cheeriness that made me wince, ‘time is wasting. Let’s get on, shall we, Miss Burchill?’

I followed gladly as she led us out of the room, around a corner and down another cool, shadowed passage.

‘I’ll walk you past the back rooms first,’ she said, ‘but we won’t stop long. There’s little point. They’ve been under sheets for years.’

‘Why is that?’

‘They all face north.’

Percy had a pared way of speaking; a little like the way wireless commentators used to sound, back when the BBC was the last word on all matters enunciative. Short sentences, perfect diction, the hint of nuance concealed in the body of each full stop. ‘The heating in winter is impossible,’ she said. ‘It’s just the three of us so we hardly need the space. It was easier to close some doors for good. My sisters and I took rooms in the small west wing; near the yellow parlour.’

‘That makes sense,’ I said quickly. ‘There must be a hundred rooms in a building this size. All the different levels – I’d be sure to get lost.’ I was babbling, I could hear it but I couldn’t stop it. A basic lack of facility with small talk, excitement at finally being inside the castle, lingering discomfort from the scene with Juniper . . . whatever, it proved a lethal combination. I drew a deep breath and, to my horror, continued: ‘Though of course you’ve been here all your life so I’m sure it’s not a problem for you—’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said sharply, turning to face me. Even in the gloom I could see that her skin had whitened.
She’s going to ask me to leave
, I thought;
my visit is too much, she’s old and tired, her sister isn’t well
.

‘Our sister isn’t well,’ she said and my heart plunged. ‘It has nothing to do with you. She can be rude sometimes, but it isn’t her fault. She suffered a great disappointment – a terrible thing. A long time ago.’

‘There’s no need to explain,’ I said.
Please don’t ask me to leave.

‘Very kind, but I feel I must. At least a little. Such rudeness. She doesn’t do well with strangers. It’s been an awful trial. Our family physician died a decade ago and we’re still battling to find another we can tolerate. She gets confused. I hope you don’t feel unwelcome.’

‘Not at all, I understand completely.’

‘I hope so. Because we’re very pleased you could visit.’ That short hairpin smile. ‘The castle likes to be visited; it needs it.’

On the morning of my tenth birthday, Mum and Dad took me to visit the dolls’ houses at the Bethnal Green Museum. I don’t know why we went to see dolls’ houses, whether I’d expressed an interest or my parents had read a newspaper article about the collection, but I remember the day very clearly. One of those few shining memories you gather along the way; perfectly formed and sealed, like a bubble that forgot to pop. We went in a taxi, which I remember thinking very posh, and afterwards we had tea at a fancy place in Mayfair. I even remember what I wore: a diamond-patterned mini-dress I’d coveted for months and finally unwrapped that morning.

The other thing I remember with blinding clarity is that we lost my mum. Perhaps that event, rather than the dolls’ houses themselves, is why the day didn’t fade for me when it was tossed in amongst the crushing constellation of childhood experiences. It was all topsy-turvy, you see. Grown-up people didn’t get lost, not in my world: it was the province of children, of little girls like me who made a habit of following their daydreams and dragging their feet and generally Failing to Keep Up.

But not this time. This time, inexplicably, earth joltingly, it was my mum who’d slipped through the cracks. Dad and I were waiting in a queue to buy a souvenir booklet when it happened; we were shuffling forward, following the line, each of us keeping silent company with our own thoughts. It wasn’t until we reached the counter and both stood mutely, blinking first at the shop assistant, then at one another, that we realized we were somehow without our traditional family mouthpiece.

I was the one to find her again, kneeling in front of a doll’s house we’d already passed. It was tall and dark, as I recall, with lots of staircases, and an attic running along the top. She didn’t explain why she’d returned, saying only, ‘There are actual places like this, Edie. Real houses with real people living in them. Can you imagine? All those rooms?’ A twinge at the edge of her lips and she continued, the soft, slow lilt of recitation: ‘
Ancient walls that sing the distant hours
.’

I don’t think I answered her. For one thing there wasn’t time – my dad turned up right then looking flustered and somehow personally wounded – and for another I wasn’t sure what to say. Although we never discussed it again, it was a long time before I let go completely of the belief that somewhere out there in the great, wide world, stood real houses with real people living in them and walls that sang.

I mention the Bethnal Green Museum here only because, as Percy Blythe led me down darkening corridors, Mum’s comment came back to me, bright and brighter, until I could see her face, hear her words, as clearly as if she were standing right next to me. It might have had something to do with the odd sense that pressed upon me as we explored the enormous house; the impression that I’d fallen victim somehow to a shrinking spell and been transported inside a house for dolls, albeit a doll’s house that was rather down at heel. One whose child owner had grown beyond the point of interest and moved on to new obsessions, leaving the rooms with their faded wallpapers and silks, the rush-matted floors, the urns and stuffed birds, the heavy furniture waiting silently, hopefully, for reoccupation.

Then again, perhaps all that came second. Perhaps it was Mum’s comment that came to mind first because of course she’d been thinking of Milderhurst when she’d told me about the real people in their real houses with lots of rooms. What else could have inspired her to say such a thing? That unreadable expression on her face had been the result of remembering this place. She’d been thinking about Percy, Saffy and Juniper Blythe and the strange, secret things that must have happened to her as a girl when she was transplanted from south London to Milderhurst Castle. The things that had reached across fifty years with a grasp strong enough that a lost letter could make her cry.

Whatever the case, as I took Percy’s tour that morning, I carried my mum with me. I couldn’t have resisted her if I’d tried. No matter that I’d become inexplicably jealous that my exploration of the castle be my own – a small part of Mum, a part I’d never known, certainly never noticed, was anchored to this place. And although I wasn’t used to having things in common with her, although the very notion made the earth spin a little faster, I realized that I didn’t mind. In fact, I rather liked that the curious comment at the doll’s house museum was no longer an oddity, a mosaic piece that didn’t fit the whole. It was a fragment of Mum’s past, a fragment that was somehow brighter and more interesting than those surrounding it.

So it was, as Percy led, and I listened and looked and nodded, that a small ghostly Londoner stepped silently beside me: wide-eyed, nervous, glimpsing the house for the first time, too. And it turned out I liked her being there; if I could’ve, I’d have reached down across the decades to take her hand in mine. I wondered how different the castle must have been in 1939, how much change had occurred in the past fifty years. Whether even then Milderhurst Castle had felt like a house asleep, everything dull and dusty and dim. An old house biding its time. And I wondered whether I’d have the chance to ask that little girl, if she was still at large somewhere. If I’d ever be able to find her.

It is impossible to recount everything that was said and seen that day at Milderhurst, and, for the purposes of this story, unnecessary. So much has happened since, subsequent events have bowed and bent and mixed in my mind so that it’s difficult to isolate my first impressions of the castle and its inhabitants. I will stick, then, in this account, to the sights and sounds that were most vivid, and to those events pertinent to what came after, and what came before. Events that could never – will never – fade from memory.

Two important things became clear to me as I took the tour: first, Mrs Bird had been underplaying matters when she’d told me Milderhurst was a little shabby. The castle was distressed, and not in a glamshackle way. Second, and more remarkably, Percy Blythe was blind to the fact. No matter that dust smothered the heavy wooden furniture, that countless specks thickened the stagnant air, that generations of moths had been feasting on the curtains, she continued to speak about the rooms as if they were in their prime, as if elegant literary salons were staged, and royalty mingled with members of the literati, and an army of servants bustled unseen along the corridors doing the Blythe family’s bidding. I’d have felt sympathy for her, caught as she was in a fantasy world, except that she wasn’t at all the sort of person who engendered sympathy. She was resolutely un-victim-like and therefore my pity was transformed into admiration; respect for her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the old place was falling apart around them.