The Distant Hours

by Kate Morton

‘Yes.’ I’d seen the review, too. I didn’t go hunting, I really didn’t; it just jumped out at me when I was looking for the letting pages. A very good review, as it happens. Damn paper: no suitable flats to rent either.

  Mum paused while the cappuccino I’d ordered for her arrived at the table. ‘And tell me,’ she said, laying a paper napkin between her cup and saucer to soak up the slopped milk, ‘what’s next on his agenda?’

  ‘He’s working on his own script. Sarah has a friend, a film director, who’s promised to read it when he’s done.’

  Her mouth formed a silent, cynical ‘Oh’ before she managed to utter some positive noises. The last of these was drowned when she took a sip of coffee, flinched at the bitter taste, and, blessedly, changed the subject. ‘And how’s the flat? Your father wants to know whether that tap in the kitchen’s still giving you trouble. He’s had another idea he thinks will fix it once and for all.’

  I pictured the cold and empty flat I’d left for the final time that morning, phantom memories sealed within the collection of brown cardboard boxes my life had become, then crammed into Herbert’s attic. ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘The flat’s fine, the tap’s fine. Tell him he really doesn’t need to worry any more.’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything else that needs attention?’ A faint pleading note had crept into her voice. ‘I thought I might send him around on Saturday to do some general maintenance.’

  ‘I told you. Everything’s fine.’

  She looked surprised and hurt and I knew I’d spoken brusquely, only these dreadful conversations in which I pretended all was going swimmingly were wearing me down. Despite my willingness to disappear inside story books, I’m not a liar and I don’t cope well with subterfuge. Under ordinary circumstances this might have been the perfect time for me to break the news about Jamie – but I couldn’t, not when I wanted to steer us back to Milderhurst and Juniper Blythe. In any case, the man at the next table chose that very instant to turn around and ask whether he could borrow our salt shaker.

  As I handed it to him, Mum said, ‘I have something for you.’ She pulled out an old M&S bag, folded over to protect whatever was inside. ‘Don’t get too excited,’ she added, passing it to me. ‘It’s nothing new.’

  I opened the bag, slipped out the contents and stared in puzzlement for a moment. People are often giving me things they think are worth publishing, but I couldn’t believe anyone could be that far off the mark.

  ‘Don’t you remember?’ Mum was looking at me as if I’d forgotten my own name.

  I gazed again at the stapled wad of paper, the child’s drawing on the front, the ill-formed words at the top of the page: The Book of Wet Animals, Written and Illustrated by Edith Burchill. A little arrow had been inserted between of and Wet and the word Magical added in a different-coloured pen.

  Mum said, ‘You wrote it. Don’t you remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. Something in Mum’s expression told me it was important to her that I did, and besides – I ran my thumb over an inky blob made by a pen allowed to rest too long between strokes – I wanted to remember.

  ‘You were so proud of it.’ She tilted her head to look at the little bundle in my hands. ‘You worked on it for days, crouched over on the floor beneath the dressing table in the spare room.’

  Now that was familiar. A delicious memory of being tucked in the warm, dark space withdrew itself from long-term storage and my body tingled with its release: the smell of dust in the circular rug, the crack in the plaster just large enough to store a pen, the hardness of wooden boards beneath my knees as I watched the sunlight sweep across the floor.

  ‘You were always working on one story or another, scribbling away in the dark. Your father worried sometimes that you were going to turn out shy, that you’d never make any friends, but there was nothing we could do to dampen your enthusiasm.’

  I remembered reading but I didn’t remember writing. Still, Mum’s talk of dampening my enthusiasm struck a nerve. Distant memories of Dad shaking his head incredulously when I returned from the library, asking me over dinner why I wasn’t borrowing from the non-fiction shelves, what I wanted with all that fairy nonsense, why I didn’t want to learn about the real world.

  ‘I’d forgotten that I wrote stories,’ I said, turning the book over and smiling at the pretend publisher’s logo I’d drawn on the back.

  ‘Well.’ She wiped an old crumb from the table. ‘Anyway, I thought you should have it. Your father’s been pulling boxes down from the attic, that’s how I came to find it. No point leaving it for the silverfish, is there? You never know, you may even have your own daughter to show it to one day.’ She straightened in her seat and the rabbit hole to the past closed behind her. ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘How was your weekend? Did you do anything special?’

  And there it was. The perfect window, curtains drawn wide. I couldn’t have constructed a better opening for myself if I’d tried. And as I looked down at The Book of Magical Wet Animals in my hand, the time-dusted paper, the imprints from felt pens, the childish shading and colouring; as I realized that my mum had kept it all this time, that she’d wanted to save it despite her misgivings about my wasteful occupation, that she’d chosen today, of all days, to remind me of a part of myself I’d quite forgotten; I was overcome by a sudden swelling desire to share with her everything that had happened to me at Milderhurst Castle. A sweet sense that it would all work out for the best.

  ‘Actually,’ I said. ‘I did.’

  ‘Oh?’ She smiled brightly.

  ‘Something very special.’ My heart had begun to gallop ahead; I was watching myself from the outside, wondering, even as I teetered on the cliff edge, whether I was really going to jump. ‘I went for a tour,’ said a faint voice rather like my own, ‘inside Milderhurst Castle.’

  ‘You . . . You what?’ Mum’s eyes widened. ‘You went to Milderhurst?’ Her gaze held mine as I nodded, then it dropped. She shifted her cup on the saucer, swivelled it by its dainty handle, this way and that, and I watched with cautious curiosity, unsure what was about to happen, eager and loath, in equal measure, to find out.

  I ought to have had more faith. Like a brilliant sunrise clarifying the clouded horizon, dignity reasserted itself. She lifted her head and smiled across the table as she set her saucer straight. ‘Well now,’ she said. ‘Milderhurst Castle. And how was it?’

  ‘It was . . . big.’ I work with words and that was the best I could come up with. It was the surprise, of course; the utter transformation I’d just witnessed. ‘Like something out of a fairy tale.’

  ‘A tour, did you say? I didn’t realize one could do such a thing. That’s our modern times, I suppose.’ She waved a hand. ‘Everything for a price.’

  ‘It was informal,’ I said. ‘One of the owners took me. A very old lady called Persephone Blythe.’

  ‘Percy?’ A tiny tremble in her voice; the only prick in her composure. ‘Percy Blythe? She’s still there?’

  ‘They all are, Mum. All three. Even Juniper, who sent you the letter.’

  Mum opened her mouth as if to speak; when no words came out she closed it again, tightly. She laced her fingers in her lap, sat as still and as pale as a marble statue. I sat too, but the silence took on weight and it became more than I could bear.

  ‘It was eerie,’ I said, picking up my teapot. I noticed that my hands were shaking. ‘Everything was dusty and dim and to see them all sitting in the parlour together, the three of them in that big, old house – it felt a little like I’d stumbled inside a doll’s—’

  ‘Juniper, Edie – ’ Mum’s voice was strange and thin and she cleared her throat – ‘how was she? How did she seem?’

  I wondered where to start: the girlish joy, the dishevelled appearance, the final scene of desperate accusations. ‘She was confused,’ I said. ‘She was wearing an old-fashioned dress and she told me she was waiting for someone, a man. The lady at the farmhouse where I stayed said that she isn’t well, that her sisters look after he
r.’

  ‘She’s ill?’

  ‘Dementia. Sort of.’ I continued carefully: ‘Her boyfriend left her years ago and she never fully recovered.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘Fiancé to be precise. He stood her up and people say it drove her mad. Literally mad.’

  ‘Oh, Edie,’ said Mum. The slightly ill look on her face resolved into the sort of smile you might give a clumsy kitten. ‘Always so full of fancy. Real life isn’t like that.’

  I bristled: it gets tiresome being treated like an ingénue. ‘I’m just telling you what they said in the village. A lady there said Juniper was always fragile, even when she was young.’

  ‘I knew her, Edie; I don’t need you telling me what she was like when she was young.’

  She’d snapped and it had caught me unawares. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I—’

  ‘No.’ She lifted a palm then pressed it lightly against her forehead and stole a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. ‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t think what came over me.’ She sighed, smiled a little shakily. ‘It’s the surprise, I expect. To think that they’re all still alive; all of them at the castle. Why – they must be so old.’ She frowned, affecting great interest in the mathematical puzzle. ‘The other two were old when I knew them – at least they seemed that way.’

  I was still startled by her outburst and said guardedly, ‘You mean they looked old? Grey hair and all?’

  ‘No. No, not that. It’s hard to say what it was. I suppose they were only in their mid-thirties at the time, but of course that meant something different back then. And I was young. Children do tend to see things differently, don’t they?’

  I didn’t answer; she didn’t intend me to. Her eyes were on mine, but they had a faraway look about them, like an old-fashioned silver screen on which pictures were projected. ‘They behaved more like parents than sisters,’ she said, ‘to Juniper, I mean. They were a lot older than she was, and her mother had died when she was only a child. Their father was still alive, but he wasn’t much involved.’

  ‘He was a writer, Raymond Blythe.’ I said it cautiously, wary that I might be overstepping again, offering information that was hers firsthand. This time, though, she didn’t seem to mind and I waited for some indication that she knew all that the name meant, that she remembered bringing the book home from the library when I was a girl. I’d kept an eye out when I was packing up the flat; hoping I might be able to bring it to show her, but I hadn’t found it. ‘He wrote a story called The True History of the Mud Man.’

  ‘Yes,’ was all she said, very softly.

  ‘Did you ever meet him?’

  She shook her head. ‘I saw him a few times, but only from a distance. He was very old by then and quite reclusive. He spent most of his time up in his writing tower and I wasn’t allowed to go up there. It was the most important rule – there weren’t many.’ She was looking down and a raised vein pulsed mauve beneath each lid. ‘They talked about him sometimes; he could be difficult, I think. I always thought of him as a little like King Lear, playing his daughters off, one against the other.’

  It was the first time I’d ever heard my mother reference a character of fiction, and the effect was to derail my train of thought entirely. I wrote my honours thesis on Shakespeare’s tragedies and not once did she give any sign that she was familiar with the plays.

  ‘Edie?’ Mum looked up sharply. ‘Did you tell them who you were? When you went to Milderhurst. Did you tell them about me? Percy, the others?’

  ‘No.’ I wondered whether the omission would offend Mum; whether she’d demand to know why I hadn’t told them the truth. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, nodding. ‘That was a good decision. Kinder. You’d only have confused them. It was such a long time ago and I was with them so briefly; they’ve no doubt quite forgotten I was there at all.’

  And here was my chance; I took it. ‘That’s just it though, Mum. They hadn’t, that is, Juniper hadn’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?

  ‘She thought I was you.’

  ‘She . . . ?’ Her eyes searched mine. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She called me Meredith.’

  Mum’s fingertips brushed her lips. ‘Did she . . . say anything else?’

  A crossroads. A choice. And yet, it wasn’t really. I had to tread lightly: if I was to tell Mum exactly what Juniper had said, that she’d accused her of breaking a promise and ruining her life, our conversation would most certainly be ended. ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Were you close, the two of you?’

  The man sitting behind stood up then, his considerable backside nudging our table so that everything upon it quivered. I smiled distractedly at his apology, focused instead on preventing our cups and our conversation from toppling. ‘Were you and Juniper friends, Mum?’

  She picked up her coffee; seemed to spend a long time running her spoon around the inside of her cup to tidy the froth. ‘You know, it’s so long ago it’s difficult to remember the details.’ A brittle, metallic noise as the spoon hit the saucer. ‘As I said, I was only there a little over a year. My father came and fetched me home in early 1941.’

  ‘And you never went back?’

  ‘That was the last I saw of Milderhurst.’

  She was lying. I felt hot, light-headed. ‘You’re sure?’

  A little laugh. ‘Edie – what a queer thing to say. Of course I’m sure. It’s the sort of thing one would remember, don’t you think?’

  I would. I did. I swallowed. ‘That’s just it. A funny thing happened, you see. On the weekend, when I first saw the entrance to Milderhurst – the gates at the bottom of the drive – I had the most extraordinary sense that I’d been there before.’ When she said nothing, I pressed: ‘That I’d been there with you.’

  Her silence was excruciating and I was aware suddenly of the murmur of cafe noise around us, the jarring thwack of the coffee basket being emptied, the grinder whirring, shrill laughter somewhere on the mezzanine. I seemed to be hearing it all at one remove, though, as if Mum and I were quite separate, encased within our own bubble.

  I tried to keep the tremor from my voice. ‘When I was a kid. We drove there, you and I, and we stood at the gates. It was hot and there was a lake and I wanted to swim, but we didn’t go inside. You said it was too late.’

  Mum patted her napkin to her lips, slowly, delicately, then looked at me. Just for a moment I thought I glimpsed the light of confession in her eyes, then she blinked and it was gone. ‘You’re imagining things.’

  I shook my head slowly.

  ‘All those gates look alike,’ she continued. ‘You’ve seen a picture somewhere, sometime – a film – and become confused.’

  ‘But I remember—’

  ‘I’m sure it seems that way. Just like when you accused Mr Watson from next door of being a Russian spy, or the time you became convinced you were adopted – we had to show you your birth certificate, do you remember?’ Her voice had taken on a note I recalled only too well from my childhood. The infuriating certainty of someone sensible, respectable, powerful; someone who wouldn’t listen no matter how loudly I spoke. ‘Your father had me take you to the doctor about the night terrors.’

  ‘This is different.’

  She smiled briskly. ‘You’re fanciful, Edie. You always have been. I don’t know where you get it from – not from me. Certainly not from your father.’ She reached down to reclaim her handbag from the floor. ‘Speaking of whom, I ought to be getting home.’

  ‘But Mum – ’ I could feel the chasm opening between us. A gust of desperation spurred me on. ‘You haven’t even finished your coffee.’

  She glanced at her cup, the cooling grey dribble at the bottom. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘I’ll get you another, my shout—’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘What do I owe you for the first?’

  ‘Nothing, Mum. Please stay.’

  ‘No.’ She laid a five-pound note by my saucer. ‘I’ve been out all mornin
g and your father’s by himself. You know what he’s like: he’ll have the house dismantled if I don’t get back soon.’

  A press of her cheek, clammy against mine, and she was gone.

  A Suitable Strip Club and Pandora’s Box

  For the record it was Auntie Rita who made contact with me, not the other way round. It so happened that while I was floundering, trying without success to find out what had happened between Mum and Juniper Blythe, Auntie Rita was getting revved up to host a hen night for my cousin Samantha. I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or flattered when she phoned the office to ask me the name of an upmarket male strip club, so I went with bemused, and ultimately, because I can’t seem to help myself, useful. I told her I didn’t know off the top of my head but that I’d do some research, and we agreed to meet in secret at her salon the following Sunday so I could pass on my reconnaissance. It meant skipping Mum’s roast again, but it was the only time Rita was free; I told Mum I was helping with Sam’s wedding and she couldn’t really argue.

  Classy Cuts squats behind a tiny shopfront on the Old Kent Road, breath held to fit between an indie record outlet and the best chippie in Southwark. Rita’s as old school as the Motown records she collects and her salon does a roaring trade specializing in finger waves, beehives and blue rinses for the bingo set. She’s been around long enough to be retro without realizing it and likes to tell anyone who’ll listen how she started out at the very same salon as a skinny sixteen-year-old when the war was still raging; how she’d watched through those very front windows on VE Day when Mr Harvey from the milliner’s across the road stripped off his clothes and started dancing down the street, nothing to know him by but his finest hat.

  Fifty years in the one spot. It’s no wonder she’s wildly popular in her part of Southwark, the busy chattering stalls set apart from the glistening dress circle of Docklands. Some of her oldest clients have known her since the closest she got to a pair of scissors was the broom cupboard out back, and now there’s no one else they’d trust to set their lavender perms. ‘People aren’t daft,’ Auntie Rita says, ‘give ’em a bit of love and they’ll never stray.’ She has an uncanny knack for picking winners from the local form guide, too, which can’t be bad for business.