The Echo of Twilight

by Judith Kinghorn

  Afterward, we returned to Birling—chattering noisily and ready for a celebration. But as sherry and cake were served and passed round the drawing room, a telegram arrived for Lord Hector.

  He moved over to the window, and there was a lull in the proceedings as he lowered his eyes, read the words and then carefully folded the paper and pushed it into the pocket of his waistcoat. He stood perfectly still for a while, staring out at the gardens. And it would have been easy to think it was nothing more than an update from the Foreign Office. But as I watched him, I sensed something new in his features and stillness. He waited until conversation and clatter resumed before he walked over to Ottoline, who was holding Lila. I saw him look down at my baby, place his hand on Ottoline’s arm. “I need to speak with you in private, darling.”

  Calmly, Ottoline handed Lila to Mrs. Lister—resplendent in pink—and left the room with her husband.

  A short while after this, as I sat with Mrs. Lister, who was still clutching a sleeping Lila to her bosom, Rodney, too, left the room. And though Mrs. Lister and I looked at each other, we said nothing. To speak a name would be tempting fate. But as the minutes passed, Mrs. Lister’s nerves got the better of her; she had to fill up the waiting.

  “Might not be anything . . . as likely as not . . . Ah, and look at her now, little mite . . . worn-out, worn-out she is, and who can blame her . . . Yes, as likely as not some business of His Lordship’s . . . But you haven’t had any cake . . . Go on, have a piece . . . It’ll all disappear later . . . You know what them girls are like.”

  I lifted the china plate from the table in front of me, picked some icing from the slice of cake. Then the door opened. Rodney entered and sat down. It was Hugo, he said, staring at Lila. He had died of his wounds. I spat the icing into my hand.

  Hugo’s remains took a week to arrive in Northumberland. The undertaker collected the coffin from the station. After the funeral, we all followed the flag-draped hearse on foot, through a biting wind and falling elm leaves, to a cemetery near the beach.

  Ottoline was surprisingly stoical. Once more her grief was quiet, intensely private and dignified, her tears silent. She told me she found comfort in the knowledge that Hugo had joined a number of his friends—including one that had been with us at Delnasay. Once more she distracted herself with correspondence, writing to Billy, penning replies to each of the black-edged “in sympathy” letters she and His Lordship had received, and there were quite literally hundreds. And she threw herself into her own war effort with new commitment, writing to our prisoners of war and shopping for them.

  Almost every day I drove past the road to the beach and cemetery where Hugo lay, over the ancient bridge and through the towered archway into Warkworth. I parked Ottoline’s car in the market square. And sometimes, as I walked up the hill, beneath the looming castle and toward the post office, I thought I could sense the Gray Lady watching me. I didn’t like to look up at the castle, or its dark tower. And I didn’t hang about. After I’d handed in the letters and parcels, I hurried back down the hill with the list for Thompson’s, the grocers. And such was my imagination that I would often heave a sigh of relief as I drove back over the bridge and headed home to Birling, as though I had escaped the clutches of some supernatural force.

  Later, safe, all ghosts forgotten, we received the provisions from Thompson’s. And as Ottoline checked them, reading items and prices out loud, I recorded in one of her scrapbooks what we had sent, and spent:

  Golden Syrup—7d

  Potted Meat—6d

  Cake—1s 2d

  Biscuits—1s 6d

  Chocolate—1s

  Cigarettes—1s 2d

  Sardines—5d

  Marmalade—7d

  Soap—1d

  Tea—1s 10d

  Tobacco—5d

  It was in the late autumn, not long after Hugo’s death, that Ottoline went to London. I’m not sure how Lord Hector did it, but he had managed to secure a three-day pass for Billy. It wasn’t Billy’s first leave: Lord Hector had seen him earlier that spring, when Ottoline and I were in Scotland and Billy had turned up out of the blue at the Foreign Office. His Lordship didn’t tell Ottoline until after we’d returned to Birling, and she was understandably sad. At that time, the news of Billy’s leave had made me feel guilty: If it hadn’t been for me, Ottoline could have perhaps traveled to London and met her son, I thought. So I was very happy for her when she told me.

  “I’m going to see him, Pearl . . . I’m going to see my boy,” she kept on saying as I packed her bag.

  Naturally, she was excited, and yet I sensed some trepidation, too, when she said, “It’ll be the first time we have been together as three. Just three now.”

  Because of Lila, and because the trip south was only a matter of a few nights, I was to stay at Birling. But I knew by then that Ottoline was perfectly capable of looking after herself. The house in London had been requisitioned and was now a military hospital, and Ottoline was to stay at her club.

  I took her to the station and saw her onto the train, and four days later I collected her.

  “So handsome in his uniform, Pearl. And still so darling, so sweet . . . A little tired, perhaps . . . yes, tired. And thinner . . . Well, they don’t get much, you know . . . And such ghastly conditions . . . like your worst nightmare, he said . . . We took him to the theater, twice, dinner at the Savoy and the little Italian place round the corner. You’d think he hadn’t eaten in months. Well, he probably hadn’t, you know, not properly . . . and so tired . . . And sad, of course . . . Yes, immensely sad about Hugo. And sad about so many of his friends. But so darling, so sweet . . .”

  Seeing Billy had been both good and bad. A mother had been reunited with her boy, able to touch him, hold him and spend time with him. But it was an infinitely more fragile Ottoline I collected from the station that day. It was one thing to read about battles, gaze upon numbers and names, but quite another, it seemed, to see the effects of war firsthand—particularly on one you loved. Seeing Billy again had shaken Ottoline, and for a while after her return, though she rallied in front of the other servants when they inquired after Billy—“so handsome in his uniform”—she was unusually subdued. Her scrapbooks were abandoned, and there were no parcels for me to post.

  I later discovered that Billy’s account of life in the trenches was not necessarily what was printed in the newspapers. He had told his parents of the appalling and squalid conditions, of a lack of equipment, resources and properly trained men; he had spoken of poor communication, and mistakes being made—resulting in killing our own; and he had talked of the corpses, the half-dead and dead and body parts left lying in the mud; and of the crippling fear that sometimes took hold, and of deserters being shot.

  Yes, it had been too much for Ottoline; it was too much for anyone to comprehend. And I wondered if and how those inhabiting that hell—should they survive—would be able to resume normal life. Would they ever be able to put it behind them? And would we, those of us who had spent the duration at home, who had waved our boys off with flags and banners, ever be able to understand, or forgive ourselves? For they would all be damaged, I thought, even those still able to smile.

  I tried not to think of Ralph in that place of suffering and carnage. In my mind, I placed him elsewhere: an office, London, a sun-drenched field away from the fighting, anywhere but that dark hole. And I was resolute in my belief that he remained alive, for I knew Ottoline would have told me if she had heard anything, and she had not. I had never seen his hand on any envelope again, and I had been vigilant.

  I was lucky: I had a constant reminder of him in Lila, and she—along with Mrs. Lister’s intransigent patriotism—pulled me back from any hideous contemplation. Day by day my daughter grew bigger and stronger and more beautiful. She thrived on Mrs. Lister’s hip as the cook moved about the kitchen—stirring, tasting and always adding more salt.

  And s
o another Christmas passed and another year began, cold and bitter and black as coal. In February everything turned white and froze. Spears of ice hung from the guttering outside my window, pipes burst and for more than a week we were housebound. Snow turned to sleet and then rain, and Easter was shrouded in fog. But May brought longer days and daffodils. The hazel catkins came out overnight, the boughs of cherry trees burst pink, hawthorn hedges pricked green and we heard the first cuckoo. Each day the sky stretched farther over the ripening fields where larks soared and corncrakes rattled their song.

  In June we celebrated Lila’s first birthday. A few days later she took her first steps, staggering barefoot across the lawn into Ottoline’s outstretched arms as I looked out from an upstairs window.

  Then came July. The month Ottoline stopped reading the newspapers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I was below stairs in the laundry when I heard the howling. And at first I thought it was the dog, Lolly—or another animal, injured, in great pain, and somehow inside the house. But as it went on, and I put down the iron and moved out into the passageway, I realized that the sound was human and that it contained a word, repeated over and over, and that the word was a name and that the sound belonged to Ottoline.

  And so I knew. Knew before a silence fell over the house. Knew before Rodney appeared at the end of the passageway. Knew before he said it: “It’s Billy.”

  And I didn’t run. I stood stock-still for a moment, deafened by the new soundlessness, frozen in the sudden inevitability. Then, slowly, I walked up the stairs and into the hallway. I saw the telegram lying on the floor by her feet, but I didn’t pick it up. I wrapped my arms around her—so still, so quiet, it was as though she had stopped breathing. I held her for some time, and then with my arm around her, I led her up to her room. I removed her shoes, helped her onto the bed, pulled up a chair and sat holding her hand. She didn’t speak, didn’t utter a word, and neither did I. For what was there to say? They were gone, both of them. Lives not yet started, extinguished. Unspent decades snatched.

  I’m not sure how long I sat with her, but her continued stillness and the blankness of her eyes concerned me. So I whispered to her that I was going downstairs, and that I’d be back in a short while. I’m not sure if she even heard me.

  Rodney was standing at the bottom of the stairs. “How is she?”

  “Quiet. Too quiet . . . I think we should send for the doctor.”

  I hovered over him as he made the telephone call, closed my eyes as I listened to his words: “Yes, Master William . . . Oh, only today—minutes ago . . . Lying down, in her bedroom . . . Shock, yes . . . Of course . . . See you then, sir.”

  Rodney put down the receiver. “The doctor will be here in the next hour . . . Meanwhile, I think I should make an announcement, don’t you? Gather us all in the servants’ hall?”

  “Yes. You need to inform everyone.”

  I went back to the laundry. I scrubbed down the wooden bench, over and over until my hands were almost raw, until I heard the handbell in the servants’ hall. It was a formality, but one that had to be observed. And we were a raggle-taggle lineup of old and new, of differing shapes and ages and sizes, of differing worlds. Brought together for yet more bad news, another death. And I was pleased Mrs. Lister had taken Lila out on a walk and was not there. She had by that time lost two of her three sons, and I knew it would hit her hard and be better for Rodney to tell her in private.

  Rodney held a piece of paper in his hand. I suppose he wanted to get the facts right. He stared down at it as he officially informed us what we already knew: Billy Campbell had been killed. In a steady voice, a voice measured by experience, he said Billy had died on the first day of July, and during the first hours of a new offensive in the region of the Somme.

  One of the newly hired gardener-grooms shook his head: “Bad luck.”

  Rodney raised his eyes: “No, not bad luck. Bad luck is when you don’t have a winning number in a raffle. Billy Campbell—along with his brother and countless others—has sacrificed his life for you and me, for all of us.”

  Then our young kitchen maid, Sissy, asked Rodney if he was sure, quite sure, because she’d heard that soldiers reported killed often turned up again. A ripple of murmurings swept through the lineup; oh yes, that’s right; others had heard such things, too.

  Rodney waited. Then he said, “I’m afraid we’re quite certain, Sissy.”

  “Will he come back for his funeral—like Mr. Hugo did?” she asked.

  Rodney shook his head. “Sadly, there is no body for us to bid adieu to.”

  I closed my eyes as Rodney went on. He explained that many of those who had perished in France could not be recovered. He said the day Billy died, a truce had been negotiated in order for both sides to recover their dead and wounded from No-Man’s-Land. But, unfortunately, Billy Campbell’s body had not been found. Then he thanked everyone in advance for their understanding and left the room. And I returned upstairs to sit with Ottoline.

  Lord Hector arrived home in a taxicab later that evening, by which time the doctor had been to the house and attended Ottoline.

  “I’m so sorry, so very sorry,” I said.

  We stood together at the foot of Ottoline’s bed, watching her.

  “I caught the first train,” he whispered. “How is she?”

  Ottoline remained very still. She lay with her hands by her sides, staring past us at nothing. She had not spoken, not said anything at all. Not even when the doctor quietly whispered his condolences. The only movement I’d seen her make was when, from time to time, she closed her eyes, turned her head and clutched at the bedcovers, desperate, uncomprehending of a world in which it was possible for her children to die.

  “The doctor has given her something.”

  Lord Hector nodded and moved away from me. He sat down by his wife’s bedside and took hold of her hand. “My darling . . .”

  For days Ottoline stayed in her bed, in her room. And there was little for me to do. I was shut out; her bedroom door remained closed with Lord Hector on the other side of it. I knocked, I asked and inquired, and then passed over trays to His Lordship and later collected them. In grief, at least, Ottoline’s husband was strangely protective and possessive of her, and no one, not even I—her maid—was allowed entry.

  Sometimes, waiting outside the door, I heard his voice—quiet, murmuring, tender. Once, I heard her scream, “No! No! You did not! You weren’t there!” I heard her weeping; heard him weeping. And though it was impossible for me to understand the nature of a marriage such as theirs, I knew they had been reconciled in grief, and that it was something raw, profoundly intimate and deeply private.

  They say things come in threes, but they didn’t account for this war. And that summer, the summer of 1916, the summer of my daughter’s first unsteady steps, would forever in my mind be associated with a place called the Somme.

  And death did not always wait for ominous clouds or bad weather. Nor did it arrive with bells and telegrams. It came unannounced on fragrant mornings when dust motes danced and birdsong drifted in through open windows. It came amidst whistling and humming, the scents and sounds and industry of an ordered house, working at normality.

  So, when I heard the familiar shuffle and tread behind me in the kitchen, I didn’t turn. I was, I think, probably daydreaming, because we all—even I—continued to cling to that very fine thread of a still-beautiful and extraordinary thing called life. And I can’t remember now what Mrs. Lister said, exactly, about Harry’s death, but it was the Somme again; I heard that much. And I couldn’t recall—was Harry fourteen, fifteen or sixteen years old? The only thing I could see at that moment was a gaping collar and the aching vulnerability of a young pale neck. And like that tender stalk, something snapped in me, and for the first time in my life I felt the burning passion of hatred. Real hatred. But I said nothing. It wasn’t done to give way to emoti
on. To do so would signify some sort of surrender, or worse still, defeat.

  A short while later we were once again summoned to the servants’ hall, and once again Rodney carried out his grim duty. Afterward, I informed His Lordship, who said he would pass on the news to Ottoline—when the time is right.

  I presumed His Lordship must have decided that the time was indeed right later that day, because that same evening Ottoline appeared downstairs for the first time since Billy’s death. She came to the kitchen, where Rodney, Mrs. Lister and I sat with our cocoa. She was dressed in a purple gown—one I’d not seen before, and which was definitely not suitable mourning attire. Her face was pale, her eyes unusually bright, and when she began to extend her sympathy to Rodney in a quiet, monotone voice, Mrs. Lister couldn’t help herself. She interrupted, “No, it’s not Derek, Your Ladyship. It’s Harry . . .”

  Ottoline appeared confused.

  “Little Harry—our hallboy . . . Mollie Rankin’s brother?” Mrs. Lister went on.

  “But that can’t be right,” said Ottoline. “He’s still a child . . . He can’t possibly have been over there.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “Please, do sit down,” she said. For some minutes we sat in silence. Then, “How’s Lila?” she asked, glancing over to the perambulator where my baby lay sleeping.

  “She’s very well, my lady. Completely spoiled by Mrs. Lister here.”

  Ottoline placed her hand on Mrs. Lister’s. “Whatever would we do without you, Mrs. Lister? And whatever would I do without the three of you?”

  “It’s always been a pleasure to serve Your Ladyship,” said Rodney.

  Ottoline frowned. “That’s what they did, isn’t it—serve?”

  “Aye, they all served their country proud,” said Mrs. Lister, newly tearful.