The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

by Kate Morton

  The man who stood before her in the morning room was tall, dressed in a black suit and a white shirt. It was ordinary enough clothing, but he wore it differently to Teddy and the other businessmen Hannah knew. His face was striking but lean: hollows below his cheekbones, and shadows beneath his dark eyes. She could see the lack of respectability to which Boyle referred, and yet she was at just as much of a loss to articulate it.

  ‘Good morning,’ she said.

  He looked at her, seemed to look right inside her. She’d had men stare before, but something in the focus of his gaze caused her to blush. And when she did, he smiled. ‘You haven’t changed.’

  It was then she knew him. Recognised his voice. ‘Mr Hunter,’ she said incredulously. She looked him over again, this new knowledge colouring her observation. The same dark hair, the same dark eyes. Same sensuous mouth, always slightly amused. She wondered how she’d missed them before. She straightened, stilled herself. ‘How nice of you to come.’ The moment the words were out, she regretted their ordinariness and longed to pull them back.

  He smiled; rather ironically it seemed to Hannah.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ She indicated Teddy’s armchair and Robbie sat perfunctorily, like a schoolboy obeying a mundane instruction unworthy of defiance. Once again she had an irksome sense of her own triviality.

  He was still looking at her.

  She checked her hair lightly with the palms of both hands, made sure the pins were all in place, smoothed the pale ends against her neck. She smiled politely. ‘Is there something amiss, Mr Hunter? Something I need to fix?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve carried an image in my mind, all this time… You’re still the same.’

  ‘Not the same, Mr Hunter, I assure you,’ she said, as lightly as she could. ‘I was fifteen when last we met.’

  ‘Were you really so young?’

  There was that lack of respectability again. Oh, it wasn’t so much what he said-it was a perfectly ordinary question, after all-it was something in the way he said it. As if he concealed a double meaning she couldn’t grasp. ‘I’ll ring for tea, shall I?’ she said, and regretted it immediately. Now he would stay.

  She stood and pressed the bell button then hovered by the mantle, straightening objects and collecting herself, until Boyle was at the door.

  ‘Mr Hunter will be joining me for tea,’ said Hannah.

  Boyle looked at Robbie suspiciously.

  ‘He was a friend to my brother,’ Hannah added, ‘in the war.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Boyle. ‘Yes, ma’am. I’ll have Mrs Tibbit fetch up tea for two.’ How deferential he was. How conventional his deference made her seem.

  Robbie was looking around, taking in the morning room. The Art Deco furnishings that Deborah had selected (‘the latest thing’) and Hannah had always tolerated. His gaze drifted from the octagonal mirror above the fire to the gold and brown diamond-print curtains.

  ‘Modern, isn’t it?’ Hannah said, striving for flippancy. ‘I’m never quite sure I like it, but my husband’s sister says that’s the point of modernity.’

  Robbie seemed not to hear. ‘David spoke of you often,’ he said. ‘I feel that I know you. You and Emmeline and Riverton.’

  Hannah sank onto the edge of the lounge at mention of David. She had schooled herself not to think of him, not to open the box of tender memories. And yet here sat the one person with whom she might be able to discuss him. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘tell me about David, Mr Hunter.’ She steeled herself. ‘Was he… did he…’ She pressed her lips together, looked at Robbie. ‘I’ve often hoped he forgave me.’

  ‘Forgave you?’

  ‘I was such a prig that last winter, before he left. We weren’t expecting you. We were used to having David to ourselves. I was rather stubborn, I fear. I spent the entire duration ignoring you, wishing you weren’t there.’

  He shrugged. ‘I didn’t notice.’

  Hannah smiled wistfully. ‘Then it seems I wasted my energy.’

  The door opened and Boyle appeared with the salver of afternoon tea. He laid it on the table by Hannah and stood back.

  ‘Mr Hunter,’ said Hannah, aware that Boyle was lingering, eyeing Robbie. ‘Boyle said you had something to return to me.’

  ‘Yes,’ Robbie said, reaching into his pocket. Hannah nodded to Boyle, assured him everything was in hand, his presence no longer required. As the door closed, Robbie withdrew a piece of cloth. It was tatty, with threads loose, and Hannah wondered how on earth he thought this might belong to her. As she watched she realised it was an old piece of ribbon, once white, now brown. He peeled the ribbon open, fingers shaking, and held it toward her.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Wrapped inside was a tiny book.

  She reached over and plucked it gingerly from its shroud. Turned it over in her hands to look at its cover, though she knew well enough what it would say. Journey Across the Rubicon.

  A wave of reminiscence: being chased through the Riverton grounds, drunk on the thrill of adventure; whispered secrets in the shadowy nursery. ‘I gave this to David. For luck.’

  He nodded.

  Her eyes met his. ‘Why did you take it?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘David would never have given this away.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t, he didn’t, I was only ever its messenger. He wanted it returned, the last thing he said was take it to Nefertiti. And I have.’

  Hannah didn’t look at him. The name. Her own secret name. He didn’t know her well enough. She closed her fingers around the little book, dropped the lid on memories of being brave and untamed and full of prospect, lifted her head to meet his gaze. ‘Let’s speak of other things.’

  Robbie nodded slightly and pushed the ribbon back into his pocket. ‘What do people speak of when they meet again like this?’

  ‘They ask each other what they’ve been doing,’ said Hannah, tucking the tiny book inside her escritoire. ‘Where their lives have taken them.’

  ‘Well then,’ Robbie said. ‘What have you been doing, Hannah? I can see well enough where life has taken you.’

  Hannah straightened, poured a cup of tea and held it out to him. The cup jiggled against its saucer in her hand. ‘I’ve married. A gentleman called Theodore Luxton, you might have heard of him. He and his father are in business. They collect companies, or so I believe.’

  Robbie was watching her, but gave no indication that Teddy’s name was familiar to him.

  ‘I live in London, as you know,’ Hannah continued, trying to smile. ‘Such a wonderful city, don’t you think? So much to see and do? So many interesting people…’ Her voice trailed off. Robbie was distracting her, watching her as she spoke with the same disconcerting intensity he’d offered the Picasso all those years ago in the library. ‘Mr Hunter,’ she said with some impatience. ‘Really. I must ask you to stop. It’s quite impossible to-’

  ‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘You have changed. Your face is sad.’

  She wanted to respond, to tell him he was wrong. That any sadness he perceived was a direct consequence of having her brother’s memory resurrected. But there was something in his voice that stopped her. Something that made her feel transparent, uncertain, vulnerable. As if he knew her better than she knew herself. She didn’t like it, but she knew somehow it would do no good to argue.

  ‘Well, Mr Hunter,’ she said, standing stiffly. ‘I must thank you for coming. For finding me, returning the book.’

  Robbie followed her lead, stood. ‘I said I would.’

  ‘I’ll ring for Boyle to show you out.’

  ‘Don’t trouble him,’ said Robbie. ‘I know the way well enough.’

  He opened the door and Emmeline burst through, a whirl of pink silk and shingled blonde hair. Her cheeks glowed with the joy of being young and well connected in a city and a time that belonged to the young and well connected. She collapsed onto the sofa and crossed one long leg over the other. Hannah felt old suddenly, and strangely faded. Like a wa
tercolour left by error in the rain, its colours washed into each other so only the barest outline remained.

  ‘Phew. I’m pooped,’ Emmeline said. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any tea left?’

  She looked up and noticed Robbie.

  ‘You remember Mr Hunter, don’t you, Emmeline?’ said Hannah.

  Emmeline puzzled for a moment. She leaned forward and rested her chin on the palm of her hand, wide blue eyes blinking as she gazed at his face.

  ‘David’s friend?’ said Hannah. ‘From Riverton?’

  ‘Robbie Hunter,’ said Emmeline, smiling slowly, delightedly, hand dropping into her lap. ‘Of course I do. By my count, you owe me a dress. Perhaps this time you’ll resist the urge to tear it from me.’

  At Emmeline’s insistence, Robbie stayed for dinner. It was unthinkable, she said, that he be allowed to leave when he had only just arrived. So it was, Robbie joined Deborah, Teddy, Emmeline and Hannah in the dining room of number seventeen that night.

  Hannah sat on one side of the table, Deborah and Emmeline on the other, Robbie the foot to Teddy’s head. They made amusing book ends, Hannah thought: Robbie the archetype of the disillusioned artist, and Teddy, after four years working with his father, a caricature of power and plenty. He was still a handsome man-Hannah had noticed some of his colleagues’ young wives making eyes at him, little use it would do them-but his face was fuller and his hair was greyer. His cheeks, too, had taken on the blush of plentiful living. He leaned back against his chair.

  ‘So. What is it you do for a crust, Mr Hunter? My wife tells me you’re not in business.’ That an alternative existed no longer occurred to him.

  ‘I’m a writer,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Writer, eh?’ said Teddy. ‘Write for The Times, do you?’

  ‘I did,’ said Robbie, ‘amongst others.’

  ‘And now?’ said Teddy.

  ‘I write for myself.’ He smiled. ‘Foolishly, I thought I’d be easier to please.’

  ‘How fortunate,’ said Deborah breezily, ‘to have the time to give oneself over to one’s leisure. I wouldn’t recognise myself if I wasn’t rushing hither and yon.’ She began a monologue on her organisation of a recent masked society ball, and smiled wolfishly at Robbie.

  Deborah was flirting, Hannah realised. She looked at Robbie. Yes, he was handsome, in a languid, sensuous sort of way: not at all Deborah’s usual type.

  ‘Books, is it?’ said Teddy.

  ‘Poetry,’ said Robbie.

  Teddy raised his eyebrows dramatically. ‘“How dull it is to stop, to rust unburnished rather than to sparkle in use.”’

  Hannah winced at the mishandled Tennyson.

  Robbie met her eye and grinned. ‘“As though to breathe were life.”’

  ‘I’ve always loved Shakespeare,’ said Teddy. ‘Your rhymes anything like his?’

  ‘I’m afraid I pale by comparison,’ said Robbie. ‘But I persist nonetheless. Better to lose oneself in action than to wither in despair.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said Teddy.

  As Hannah watched Robbie, something she had glimpsed came into focus. Suddenly she knew who he was. She inhaled. ‘You’re RS Hunter.’

  ‘Who?’ said Teddy. He looked between Hannah and Robbie, then to Deborah for clarification. Deborah lifted her shoulders affectedly.

  ‘RS Hunter,’ said Hannah, eyes still searching Robbie’s. She laughed. She couldn’t help it. ‘I have your collected poems.’

  ‘First or second?’ said Robbie.

  ‘Progress and Disintegration,’ said Hannah. She hadn’t realised there was another.

  ‘Ah,’ said Deborah, eyes widening. ‘Yes, I saw a write-up in the paper. You won that award.’

  ‘Progress is my second,’ said Robbie, looking at Hannah.

  ‘I should like to read the first,’ Hannah said. ‘Tell me the name, won’t you, Mr Hunter, so I may purchase it.’

  ‘You can have my copy,’ said Robbie. ‘I’ve already read it. Between you and me, I find the author quite a bore.’

  Deborah’s lips curled into a smile and a familiar glint appeared in her eye. She was assessing Robbie’s worth, cataloguing the list of people she could impress if she produced him at one of her functions. By the keen way she rubbed her glossy red lips together, his value was high. Hannah felt a surprising jolt of possession then.

  ‘Progress and Disintegration?’ said Teddy, winking at Robbie. ‘You’re not a socialist, are you, Mr Hunter?’

  Robbie smiled. ‘No, sir. I have neither possessions to redistribute, nor desire to acquire them.’

  Teddy laughed.

  ‘Come now, Mr Hunter,’ said Deborah. ‘I suspect you’re having fun at our expense.’

  ‘I’m having fun. I hope it’s not at your expense.’

  Deborah smiled in a way she thought beguiling. ‘A little birdie tells me you’re not quite the stray you’d have us think.’

  Hannah looked at Emmeline, smiling behind her hands; it wasn’t difficult to deduce the identity of Deborah’s little birdie.

  ‘What are you talking about, Dobby?’ said Teddy. ‘Out with it.’

  ‘Our guest has been teasing us,’ said Deborah, voice rising triumphantly. ‘For he isn’t Mr Hunter at all, he’s Lord Hunter.’

  Teddy lifted his eyebrows. ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  Robbie twisted his wineglass by its stem. ‘It’s true enough my father was Lord Hunter. But the title isn’t one I use.’

  Teddy eyed Robbie over his plate of roast beef. Denying a title was something he couldn’t understand. He and his father had campaigned long and hard for Lloyd George’s ennobling. ‘You sure you’re not a socialist?’ he said.

  ‘Enough politics,’ said Emmeline suddenly, rolling her eyes. ‘Of course he’s not a socialist. Robbie’s one of us, and we didn’t invite him so we could bore him to death.’ She fixed her gaze on Robbie, rested her chin on the palm of her hand. ‘Tell us where you’ve been, Robbie.’

  ‘Most recently?’ said Robbie. ‘Spain.’

  Spain. Hannah repeated it to herself. How wonderful.

  ‘How primitive,’ said Deborah, laughing. ‘What on earth were you doing there?’

  ‘Fulfilling a promise made long ago.’

  ‘Madrid, was it?’ said Teddy.

  ‘For a time,’ said Robbie. ‘On my way to Segovia.’

  Teddy frowned. ‘What’s a fellow do in Segovia?’

  ‘I went to Alcázar.’

  Hannah felt her skin prickle.

  ‘That dusty old fort?’ said Deborah, smiling broadly. ‘I can’t think of anything worse.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Robbie. ‘It was remarkable. Magical. Like stepping into a different world.’

  ‘Do tell.’

  Robbie hesitated, searching for the right words. ‘Sometimes I felt that I could glimpse the past. When evening came, and I was all alone, I could almost hear the whispers of the dead. Ancient secrets swirling by.’

  ‘How ghoulish,’ said Deborah.

  ‘Why would you ever leave?’ said Hannah.

  ‘Yes,’ said Teddy. ‘What brought you back to London, Mr Hunter?’

  Robbie met Hannah’s eyes. He smiled, turned to Teddy. ‘Providence, I suspect.’

  ‘All that travelling,’ said Deborah, in what Hannah recognised as her beguiling voice. ‘You must have some of the gypsy in you.’

  Robbie smiled, but he didn’t answer.

  ‘Either that or our guest has a guilty conscience,’ said Deborah, leaning toward Robbie and lowering her voice playfully. ‘Is that it, Mr Hunter? Are you on the run?’

  ‘Only from myself, Miss Luxton,’ said Robbie.

  ‘You’ll settle down,’ said Teddy, ‘as you get older. I used to have a bit of the travel bug myself. Entertained notions of seeing the world, collecting artefacts and experiences.’ By the way he ran his flat palms over the tablecloth either side of his plate. Hannah knew he was about to launch a lecture. ‘A man accumulates responsibilities as he gets older. Gets set in his ways.
Differences that used to thrill when he was younger start to irritate. Take Paris, for instance; I was there recently. I used to adore Paris, but the whole city is going to the dogs. No respect for tradition. The way the women dress!’ He shook his head. ‘No way a wife of mine would be allowed to get about like that!’

  Hannah couldn’t look at Robbie. She focused attention on her plate, moved her food about and set her fork to rest.

  ‘Travelling certainly opens one’s eyes to different cultures,’ Robbie was saying. ‘I came across a tribe in the Far East in which the men carved designs into their wives’ faces.’

  Emmeline gasped. ‘With a knife?’

  Teddy swallowed a lump of half-masticated beef, enthralled. ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘Wives are considered mere objects of enjoyment and display,’ said Robbie. ‘Husbands think it their god-given right to decorate them as they see fit.’

  ‘Barbarians,’ said Teddy, shaking his head, signalling to Boyle to refill his wine. ‘And they wonder why they need us to civilise them.’

  Hannah didn’t see Robbie again for weeks after that. She thought he’d forgotten his promise to lend her his book of poetry. It was just like him, she suspected, to charm his way into a dinner invitation, make empty promises, then vanish without honouring them. She was not offended, merely disappointed in herself for being taken in. She would think of it no more.

  Nonetheless, a fortnight later, when she happened to find herself in the H-J aisle of the little bookstore in Drury Lane, and her eyes happened to alight on a copy of his first poetry collection, she bought it. She had appreciated his poetry, after all, long before she realised him a man of loose promises.

  Then Pa died, and any lingering thoughts of Robbie Hunter’s sudden return were put aside. With news of her father’s death, Hannah felt as if her anchor had been severed, as if she had been washed from safe waters and was at the whim of tides she neither knew nor trusted. It was ridiculous of course, she hadn’t seen Pa for such a long time: he had refused to see her since her marriage and she’d been unable to find the words to convince him otherwise. Yet despite it all, while Pa lived she had been tied to something, to someone large and sturdy. Now she was not. She felt abandoned by him: they had often fought, it was a part of their peculiar relationship, but she had always known he loved her specially. And now, with no word, he was gone. She started to dream at night of dark waters, leaking ships, relentless ocean waves. And in the day she began to dwell once more, upon the spiritualist’s vision of darkness and death.