The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

by Kate Morton

  ‘Katie?’ she called, wiping her warm forehead. ‘Katie?’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know! That girl is always underfoot but never to be found.’ She tottered to the servants’ table, eased herself into her seat and sighed.

  Katie appeared at the doorway, clutching a dripping cloth. ‘Yes, Mrs Townsend?’

  ‘Oh, Katie,’ Mrs Townsend scolded, pointing at the floor. ‘Whatever are you thinking, girl?’

  ‘Nothing, Mrs Townsend.’

  ‘Nothing’s about right. You’re wetting all over.’ Mrs Townsend shook her head and sighed. ‘Get away with you now and find a towel to wipe that up. Mr Hamilton will have your neck if he sees that mess.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Townsend.’

  ‘And when you’re finished you can make us all a nice pot of hot cocoa.’

  Katie shuffled back toward the kitchen, almost colliding with Alfred as he bounded down the stairs, all arms, legs and exuberance. ‘Whoops, watch it Katie, you’re lucky I didn’t topple you.’ He swung round the corner and grinned, his face as open and eager as a baby’s. ‘Good evening, ladies.’

  Mrs Townsend removed her glasses. ‘Well? Alfred?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Townsend?’ he said, brown eyes wide.

  ‘Well?’ She flapped her fingers. ‘Don’t leave us all in suspense.’

  I sat down at my place, easing off my shoes and stretching my toes. Alfred was twenty-tall, with lovely hands and a warm voice-and had been in service to Lord and Lady Ashbury all his working life. I believe Mrs Townsend held a particular fondness for him, though certainly she never ventured so much herself and I would not then have dared to ask.

  ‘Suspense?’ Alfred said. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Townsend.’

  ‘Don’t know what I mean, my foot.’ She shook her head. ‘How did it all go? Did they say anything that might interest me?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Townsend,’ Alfred said, ‘I shouldn’t say until Mr Hamilton gets downstairs. It wouldn’t be right, would it?’

  ‘Now you listen here my boy,’ Mrs Townsend said, ‘alls I’m asking is how Lord and Lady Ashbury’s guests enjoyed their meals. Mr Hamilton can hardly mind that now, can he?’

  ‘I really couldn’t say, Mrs Townsend.’ Alfred winked at me, causing my cheeks to ripen. ‘Although I did happen to notice Lord Ponsonby having a second helping of your potatoes.’

  Mrs Townsend smiled into her knotted hands and nodded to herself. ‘I heard it from Mrs Davis, who cooks for Lord and Lady Bassingstoke, that Lord Ponsonby was special fond of potatoes à la crème.’

  ‘Fond? The others were lucky he left them any.’

  Mrs Townsend gasped but her eyes shone. ‘Alfred, you’re wicked to say such things. If Mr Hamilton heard… ’

  ‘If Mr Hamilton heard what?’ Myra appeared at the door and took her seat, unpinning her cap.

  ‘I was just telling Mrs Townsend how well the ladies and gents enjoyed their dinner,’ said Alfred.

  Myra rolled her eyes. ‘I’ve never seen the plates come back so empty; Grace’ll vouch for that.’ I nodded as she continued. ‘It’s up to Mr Hamilton, of course, but I’d say you’ve outdone yourself, Mrs Townsend.’

  Mrs Townsend smoothed her blouse over her considerable bust. ‘Well, of course,’ she said smugly, ‘we all do our part.’ The jiggling of porcelain drew our attention to the door. Katie was inching around the corner, gripping tightly a tray of teacups. With each step, cocoa slopped over the cup rims and pooled on the saucers.

  ‘Oh Katie,’ Myra said as the tray was jolted onto the table. ‘You’ve made a real mess of that. Look what she’s done, Mrs Townsend.’

  Mrs Townsend cast her gaze upwards. ‘Sometimes I think I waste my time on that girl.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Townsend,’ Katie moaned. ‘I try my best, I really do. I didn’t mean to-’

  ‘Mean to what, Katie?’ Mr Hamilton said, clipping down the stairs and into the room. ‘Whatever have you done now?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Hamilton, I only meant to bring the cocoa.’

  ‘And you’ve brought it, you silly girl,’ Mrs Townsend said. ‘Now get back and finish those plates. You’ll have let the water go cold now, you see if you haven’t.’

  She shook her head as Katie disappeared up the hall, then turned to Mr Hamilton and beamed. ‘Well, have they all gone then, Mr Hamilton?’

  ‘They have, Mrs Townsend. I just saw the last guests, Lord and Lady Denys, to their motor car.’

  ‘And the family?’ she asked.

  ‘The ladies have retired to bed. His Lordship, the Major and Mr Frederick are finishing their sherry in the drawing room and will see themselves up presently.’ Mr Hamilton rested his hands on the back of his chair and paused for a moment, gazing into the distance the way he always did when he was about to impart important information. The rest of us took our seats and waited.

  Mr Hamilton cleared his throat. ‘You should all be most proud. The dinner was a great success and the Master and Mistress well pleased.’ He smiled primly. ‘Indeed, the Master has given his very kind permission for us to open a bottle of champagne and share it amongst ourselves. A token of his appreciation, he said.’

  There was a flurry of excited applause while Mr Hamilton fetched a bottle from the cellar and Myra found some glasses. I sat very quietly, hoping I might be permitted a glass. All this was new to me: Mother and I had never had much cause for celebration.

  When he reached the last flute, Mr Hamilton peered over his glasses and down his long nose at me. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘I think even you might be allowed a small glass tonight, young Grace. It isn’t every night the Master entertains in such grand fashion.’

  I took the glass gratefully as Mr Hamilton held his aloft. ‘A toast,’ he said. ‘To all who live and serve in this house. May we live long and graciously.’

  We clinked glasses and I leaned back against my chair, sipping champagne and savouring the tang of bubbles against my lips. Throughout my long life, whenever I have had occasion to drink champagne I have been reminded of that evening in the servants’ hall at Riverton. It is a peculiar energy that accompanies a shared success, and Lord Ashbury’s bubble of praise had burst over all of us, leaving our cheeks warm and our hearts glad. Alfred smiled at me over his glass and I smiled back shyly. I listened while the others replayed the night’s events in vivid detail: Lady Denys’s diamonds, Lord Harcourt’s modern views on matrimony, Lord Ponsonby’s penchant for potatoes à la crème.

  A shrill ring jolted me from contemplation. Everyone else fell silent around the table. We looked at one another, puzzled, until Mr Hamilton jumped from his seat. ‘Why. It’s the telephone,’ he said, and hurried from the room.

  Lord Ashbury had one of the first home telephone systems in England, a fact of which all who served in the house were immeasurably proud. The main receiver box was tucked away in Mr Hamilton’s pantry foyer so that he might, on such thrilling occasions as it rang, access it directly and transfer the call upstairs. Despite this well-organised system, such occasions rarely arose as regrettably few of Lord and Lady Ashbury’s friends had telephones of their own. Nonetheless, the telephone was regarded with an almost religious awe and visiting staff were always given reason to enter the foyer where they might observe first-hand the sacred object and, perforce, appreciate the superiority of the Riverton household.

  It was little wonder then that the ringing of the phone rendered us all speechless. That the hour was so late turned astonishment into apprehension. We sat very still, ears strained, holding our collective breath.

  ‘Hello?’ Mr Hamilton called down the line. ‘Hello?’

  Katie drifted into the room. ‘I just heard a funny noise. Ooh, you’ve all got champagne-’

  ‘Sshhh,’ came the united response. Katie sat down and set about chewing her tatty fingernails.

  From the pantry we heard Mr Hamilton say, ‘Yes, this is the home of Lord Ashbury… Major Hartford? Why yes, Major Hartford is here visiting his parents… Yes, sir, right away. Who may I sa
y is calling?… Just one moment, Captain Brown, while I connect you through.’

  Mrs Townsend whispered loudly, knowingly, ‘Someone for the Major.’ And we all went back to listening. From where I sat I could just glimpse Mr Hamilton’s profile through the open door: neck stiff, mouth down-turned.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ Mr Hamilton said into the receiver. ‘I’m most sorry to interrupt your evening, sir, but the Major is wanted on the telephone. It’s Captain Brown, calling from London, sir.’

  Mr Hamilton fell silent but remained by the phone. It was his habit to hold onto the earpiece a moment, that he might ensure the call’s recipient had picked up and the call was not cut off short.

  As he waited, listening, I noticed his fingers tighten on the receiver. Can I really remember that? Or is it hindsight that makes me say his body tensed and his breathing seemed to quicken?

  He hung up quietly, carefully, and straightened his jacket. He returned slowly to his place at the head of the table and remained standing, his hands gripping the back of his chair. He gazed around the table, taking each of us in. Finally, gravely, he said:

  ‘Our worst fears are realised. As of eleven o’clock this eve, Great Britain is at war. May God keep us all.’

  I am crying. After all these years I have begun crying for them. Strange. It was all so long ago, and they were none of them family, yet warm tears seep from my eyes, following the lines of my face until the air dries them, sticky and cool against my skin.

  Sylvia is with me again. She has brought a tissue and uses it to mop cheerfully at my face. To her these tears are a simple matter of faulty plumbing. Yet another inevitable, innocuous sign of my great age.

  She doesn’t know I cry for the changing times. That just as I reread favourite books, some small part of me hoping for a different ending, I find myself hoping against hope that the war will never come. That this time, somehow, it will leave us be.

  Mystery Maker Trade Magazine

  WINTER EDITION, 1998

  NEWS IN BRIEF

  Author’s Wife Dies: Inspector Adams Novels Halted

  LONDON: Fans eagerly awaiting the sixth instalment in the popular Inspector Adams novels will have a long wait on their hands. Author Marcus McCourt has reportedly stopped work on the novel, Death in the Cauldron, after the sudden death of his wife, Rebecca McCourt, last October, from an aneurism.

  McCourt could not be reached for comment, but a source close to the couple has told MM that the usually approachable author refuses to discuss his wife’s death and has suffered writer’s block since it happened. McCourt’s UK publisher, Raymes & Stockwell, refused to comment.

  McCourt’s first five Inspector Adams novels were recently sold to American publishers Foreman Lewis for an undisclosed sum thought to total seven figures. Crime Will Tell will be published on the Hocador imprint and is scheduled for American release in Spring 1999. Copies can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

  Rebecca McCourt was also a writer. Her debut novel, Purgatorio, is a fictionalised history of Mahler’s unfinished tenth symphony, and was short-listed for the 1996 Orange Prize for Literature.

  Marcus and Rebecca McCourt had recently separated.

  SAFFRON HIGH STREET

  The rain is on its way. The bones in my lower back, more sensitive than any meteorologist’s equipment, have begun to throb. Last night I lay awake, my body aching: bone moaning to bone, whispered tales of long ago litheness. I arched and bowed my stiff old frame, hopelessly pursuing sleep. Nuisance became frustration, frustration became boredom, and boredom became terror. Terror that the night would never end and I would be trapped forever in its long, lonely tunnel.

  I must eventually have slept, for this morning I woke, and as far as I can tell the one cannot be done without the other. I was still in bed, my nightie twisted about my middle, skin grimy with the night’s labour, when a girl with rolled-up shirt sleeves and a long thin plait that brushed her jeans bustled into my room and threw open the curtains, letting the light stream in. The girl was not Sylvia and thus I knew it must be Sunday.

  The girl-Helen, read her name badge-bundled me into the shower, gripping my arm to steady me, mulberry fingernails burrowing into flaccid white skin. She flicked her plait over one shoulder and set about soaping my torso and limbs, scrubbing away the lingering film of night, humming a tune I do not know. When I was suitably sanitary she lowered me onto the plastic bath seat and left me alone to soak beneath the shower’s warm course. I clutched the lower rail with both hands and eased forward, sighing as the water rained relief over my knotted back.

  With Helen’s assistance I was dried and dressed, powdered and processed, seated in the morning room by seven-thirty. I managed a piece of rubbery toast and a cup of tea before Ruth arrived to take me to church.

  I am not overly religious. Indeed there have been times when all faith has deserted me, when I railed against a benevolent father who could allow such earthly horrors to beset his children. But I made my peace with God a long time ago. Age is the great mellower. Our relationship is easy now: we don’t speak often, but I know where to find him.

  It is Lent, the period of soul-searching and repentance that always precedes Easter, and this morning the church pulpit was draped in purple. The sermon was pleasant enough, its subject guilt and forgiveness. (Fitting when one considers the endeavour I have decided to undertake.) The minister read from John 14, beseeching the congregation to resist the scaremongers who preach Millennial doom and to find instead an inner peace through Christ. ‘I am the way, the truth and the life,’ he read, ‘no man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ And then he bid us take our example from the faith of Christ’s Apostles at the dawn of the first millennium. With the exception of Judas, of course: there is not much to recommend itself in the traitor who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver then hanged himself.

  It is our habit, after church, to walk the short distance to the High Street for morning tea at Maggie’s. We always go to Maggie’s, though Maggie herself left town with a suitcase and her best friend’s husband many years ago. This morning, as we ambled down the gentle slope of Church Street, Ruth’s hand on my arm, I noticed the first eager buds emerging on the brambly hedgerows that line the path. The wheel has turned again and spring is on its way.

  We rested for a moment on the timber seat beneath the hundred-year Elm whose mammoth trunk forms the junction of Church and Saffron High streets. The wintry sun flickered through the lacework of naked branches, thawing my back. Strange these clear, bright days in winter’s tail, when one can be hot and cold all at once.

  When I was a girl, horses and carriages and hansom cabs rolled along these streets. Motor cars too, after the war: Austens and Tin Lizzies, with their goggle-eyed drivers and honking horns. The roads were dusty then, full of potholes and horse manure. Old ladies pushed spoke-wheeled perambulators and little boys with empty eyes sold newspapers out of boxes.

  The salt seller always set up on the corner, where the petrol station is now. Vera Pipp: a wiry figure in a cloth cap, thin clay pipe permanently hanging off her lip. I used to hide behind Mother’s skirt, watching bug-eyed as Mrs Pipp used a big hook to heave slabs of salt onto her handcart, then a saw and knife to carve them into smaller pieces. She turned up in many a nightmare, with her clay pipe and shiny hook.

  Across the street was the pawnbroker’s store, three telltale brass balls out front, same as every town across Britain at the dawn of the century. Mother and I visited every Monday to exchange our Sunday best for a few shillings. On Friday, when the mending money came through from the dress shop, she would send me back to collect the clothes, that we might have something to wear to church.

  The grocer’s store was my favourite. It’s a photocopy place now-the last grocer shut up shop a decade or two ago when the supermarket was built out on Bridge Road. Back in my time it was run by a tall thin man with a thick accent and thicker eyebrows and his roly-poly wife, who made it their business to fill customers’ requests, no matter how unusu
al. Even during the war Mr Georgias was always able to find an extra packet of tea-for the right price. To my young eyes, the store was a wonderland. I used to peer through the window, drinking in the bright boxes of Horlicks malt powder and Huntley & Palmer ginger biscuits. Luxuries the likes of which we never had at home. On wide, smooth counters sat yellow blocks of butter and cheese, boxes of fresh eggs-still warm, sometimes-and dried beans, measured out on brass scales. Some days-the best days-Mother would bring a pot from home, which Mr Georgias would spoon full of black treacle…

  Ruth tapped my arm and hoisted me to my feet and we set off again down Saffron High Street toward the faded red-and-white awning of Maggie’s. The scratchy blackboard menu boasted its customary array of ill-assorted modern fare-cappuccino grandes, Cajun chicken burgers, sun-dried-tomato pizzas-but we ordered the usual, two cups of English breakfast tea and a scone to share, and sat at the table by the window.

  The girl who brought our order was new, both to Maggie’s and to waitressing I suspect, judging by the awkward way she clutched a saucer in each hand and balanced the scone plate on a trembling wrist.

  Ruth looked on disapprovingly, raising her eyebrows at the inevitable pools of tea on the saucers. She was mercifully restrained, however, remaining tight-lipped as she planted paper napkins between our cups and saucers to soak up the spills.

  We sipped in habitual silence until finally Ruth slid her plate across the table. ‘You have my half as well. You’re looking thin.’

  I considered reminding her of Mrs Simpson’s advice, that a woman can never be too rich or too thin, but thought better of it. Her sense of humour, never abundant, has all but deserted her of late.