The House at Riverton aka The Shifting Fog

by Kate Morton

  It was three in the morning when Hannah crept down the servants’ stairs of number seventeen. I was waiting for her, as I’d promised, my stomach a knot of nerves. She was later than expected, and darkness and disquiet had conspired to feed my mind with awful scenes.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ Hannah said, slipping through the door as I opened it. ‘I was worried you’d forget.’

  ‘Of course not, ma’am,’ I said, offended.

  Hannah floated through the servants’ hall and tiptoed into the main house, shoes in hand. She’d started up the stairs to the second floor when she realised I was still following. ‘You don’t need to see me to bed, Grace. It’s far too late. Besides, I’d like to be alone.’

  I nodded, stopped where I was, stood on the bottom step in my white nightie like a forgotten child.

  ‘Ma’am,’ I said quickly.

  Hannah turned. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Did you have a nice time, ma’am?’

  Hannah smiled. ‘Oh, Grace,’ she said. ‘Tonight my life began.’

  III

  They never met at his house. As far as Hannah knew he didn’t have one. They met in borrowed locations, wherever it was that Robbie happened to be staying. It only added to the adventure so far as she was concerned. She found it thrilling to escape into someone else’s house, someone else’s life. There was something delicious, she thought, about captured moments of intimacy in a strange place.

  It was easy enough to arrange. Robbie would come to collect Emmeline and while he waited would slip Hannah a note with an address, a time, a date. Hannah would scan the note, nod agreement, and they would meet. Sometimes it was impossible-Teddy would demand her presence at a political event, or Deborah would volunteer her for this committee or that. On such occasions, she had no way of telling him. It pained her to imagine him waiting in vain.

  But most of the time she did make it. She would tell the others she was meeting a friend for lunch, or going shopping, and she would disappear. She was never gone for long. She was careful about that. Anything beyond two hours was liable to raise suspicions. Love makes people devious and she soon became adept: came to think quickly on her feet if she were seen somewhere unexpected, by someone unexpected. One day she ran into Lady Clementine on Oxford Circus. Where was her driver, asked Lady Clementine. She’d come out on foot, said Hannah. It was such beautiful weather they were having and she’d felt like a walk. But Lady Clementine didn’t come down in yesterday’s shower. She narrowed her eyes and nodded, told Hannah to be sure and be careful as she went. The street had eyes and ears.

  After that, Hannah was always sure to make a purchase on her way home-a new hat, a pair of gloves, a ticket to an exhibition-so that she might hold it up to show where she had been, why she was later than expected.

  And so they met. She would leave number seventeen and make her way to wherever the most recent note had told her, careful not to encounter any of Deborah’s spies. Sometimes it was an area she knew, other times it took her to a distant part of London. She would find the street, then the house or flat. Would make sure no one was watching, and then, breath catching in her throat, would ring the bell.

  He always came directly. Opened the door and let her in. They’d go upstairs then, away from the world and into their own. Sometimes they didn’t make it upstairs so quickly. He would close the door and kiss her before she could speak.

  ‘I’ve been waiting so long,’ he would say as they stood forehead to forehead. ‘I thought you’d never get here.’

  And then she would hold a finger between their lips, remind him of the need for quiet, and then, oh then, they would go upstairs.

  Sometimes, afterwards, they would lie together on the bed and she would guess at the kind of person who might live in such a place. A writer, she would say, eyes scanning the loaded bookshelf. ‘He must be a writer.’

  ‘He?’

  Hannah would look at him. ‘Or she. Is it a she?’ She was jealous then of this phantom woman who lived in her own flat, who was friends to Robbie and saw him when she, Hannah, could not.

  He would laugh at her then. ‘You’re telling this story.’

  ‘All right then,’ she said. ‘It’s a he. But he’s not a writer. He’s a doctor.’

  ‘A doctor?’

  ‘Only a doctor would have an entire shelf of anatomical books.’ She would look at him triumphantly, certain she had guessed it right this time.

  ‘True,’ he would say. ‘Unless he’s an artist. Artist’s need to know anatomy.’

  She would nod seriously. ‘I like that. An artist.’ And then she would grin at him. ‘And I was right. Ha! You said “he”. It is a man’s flat.’

  After a while they stopped playing guessing games and began playing house. One day, in a tiny bedsit in Hampstead, Hannah was making Robbie a cup of tea and he was watching, amused, as she stumbled with the tea leaves, wondered aloud whether they would still work being so dry and crispy.

  ‘If we lived here,’ said Hannah, ‘I’d need to work somewhere. To pay the rent.’

  ‘A sewing shop,’ Robbie said. He knew how badly she stitched.

  ‘A bookshop,’ she said, eyeing him sternly. ‘And you… you’d write beautiful poems all day, sitting here beneath the window, and you’d read them to me when I came home.’

  ‘We would move to Spain to escape the winters,’ Robbie said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannah. ‘And I’d become a toreador. A masked toreador. The greatest in all of Spain.’ She placed his cup of weak tea, leaves swimming on top, on the bedside table and sat next to him. ‘People everywhere would guess at my identity.’

  ‘But it would remain our secret,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would be our secret.’

  One drizzly day in October they lay curled up together. It was a dingy flat, dark and poky, belonging to a writer friend of Robbie’s. Hannah was watching the clock on the mantle, counting off the time before she had to leave. Finally, when the unfaithful minute hand reached the hour, she sat up. Retrieved her pair of stockings from the end of the bed and began to drag the left one on. Robbie walked his fingers along the base of her spine.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said.

  She bunched her right stocking and slipped it over her foot.

  ‘Stay.’

  She was standing now. Dropping her slip over her head, straightening it around her hips. ‘You know I would. I’d stay forever if I could.’

  ‘In our secret world.’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled, kneeled on the edge of the bed and reached out to stroke the side of his face. ‘I like that. Our own world. A secret world. I love secrets.’ She exhaled, she’d been thinking about this for some time. Wasn’t sure why she wanted so keenly to share it with him. ‘When we were children,’ she said, ‘we used to play a game.’

  ‘I know,’ said Robbie. ‘David told me about The Game.’

  ‘He did?’

  Robbie nodded.

  ‘But The Game is secret,’ said Hannah automatically. ‘Why did he tell you?’

  ‘You were about to tell me yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s different. You and I… It’s different.’

  ‘So tell me about The Game,’ he said. ‘Forget that I already know.’

  She looked at the clock. ‘I really should be going.’

  ‘Just tell me quickly,’ he said.

  ‘All right. Just quickly.’

  And she did. She told him about Nefertiti and Charles Darwin, and Emmeline’s Queen Victoria, and the adventures they went on, each more extraordinary than the one before.

  ‘You should have been a writer,’ he said, stroking her forearm.

  ‘Yes,’ she said seriously. ‘I could have made my escapes and adventures at the sweep of a pen.’

  ‘It’s not too late,’ he said. ‘You could start writing now.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t need to now. I have you. I escape to you.’

  Sometimes he bought wine and they would drink it from someone
else’s glasses while they sat wrapped in someone else’s sheets. They would eat cheese and bread, and when there was a gramophone they would listen to music. Sometimes, when they were sure the curtains were closed, they would dance.

  One such rainy afternoon he fell asleep. She drank the rest of her wine, then for a time she lay next to him, listened to his breaths, tried to match her own to his, succeeded finally in catching his rhythm. But she couldn’t sleep, the novelty of lying next to him was too great. The novelty of him was too great. She knelt on the floor and watched his face. She’d never seen him sleeping before, in all the time they’d been meeting.

  He was dreaming. She could see the muscles around his eyes tightening at whatever it was playing on his closed lids. The twitching grew fiercer as she watched. She thought she should wake him. She didn’t like to see him like this, his beautiful face contorted.

  Then he started to call out and she was worried someone in one of the neighbouring flats might hear. Might realise there were people there who shouldn’t be. Might contact someone. The police, or worse.

  She laid her hand on his forearm, ran her fingers lightly over the familiar scar. He continued to sleep, continued to call out. She shook him gently, said his name. ‘Robbie? You’re dreaming, my love.’

  His eyes flashed open, round and dark, and before she knew what was happening she was on the floor, he on top of her, his hands around her neck. He was choking her, she could barely breath. She tried to say his name, tell him to stop, but she couldn’t. It only lasted a moment, then something in him clicked and he realised who she was. Realised what he was doing. He recoiled. Jumped off.

  She sat up then, inched quickly backwards until her back hit the wall. She was looking at him, shocked, wondering what had come over him. Who he had thought she was.

  He was standing against the far wall, hands pressed against his face, shoulders curved. ‘Are you all right?’ he said, without looking at her.

  She nodded, wondered whether she was. ‘Yes,’ she said, finally.

  He came to her then, knelt beside her. She must have flinched, for he held his hands up by his shoulders and said, ‘I won’t hurt you.’ He reached out, lifted her chin to see her throat. ‘Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, more firmly this time. ‘Are you-?’

  He held a finger to her lips. He was still breathing quickly. He shook his head absently, and she knew he wanted to explain. Couldn’t.

  He cupped the side of her face with his hand. She leaned into his touch, eyes locked with his. Such dark eyes, full of secrets he wouldn’t share. She longed to know them all, determined to earn them from him. And when he kissed her throat, oh, so lightly, she swooned, as she always did.

  She had to wear scarves for a week after that. But she didn’t mind. In some way it pleased her to have his mark. It made the times between more bearable. A secret reminder that he really did exist, that they existed. Their secret world. She would look at it sometimes, in the mirror, the way a new bride looks repeatedly at her wedding ring. Reminding herself. She knew he would have been horrified if she’d told him.

  Love affairs, in the beginning, are all about the present, the moment. But there’s a point where the past and the future come back into focus. For Hannah, this was it. There were other sides to him. Things she hadn’t known before. She’d been too full of the wonderful surprise of him to look beyond immediate happiness. The more she thought about this aspect of him, of which she knew so little, the more frustrated she became. The more determined to know everything.

  One cool afternoon in April, in a bedsit in Islington, they were sitting together on a bed beneath a window watching the street below. There were people walking this way and that, and they’d been giving them names and imagined lives. They’d been quiet for a while, had been content just to watch the passing procession from their secret position, when Robbie hopped out of bed.

  She remained where she was, rolled over to watch him as he sat himself on the kitchen chair, one leg curled beneath him, head bent over his notebook. He was trying to write a poem. Had been trying all day. He’d been distracted while he was with her. Had been unable to play the game with any enthusiasm. She didn’t mind. In some way she couldn’t explain, his distraction made him more attractive.

  She lay on the bed, watching his fingers clutching his pencil, directing it in flowing circles and loops in one direction across the page, only to stop, hesitate, then backtrack fiercely across its previous path. He tossed the notebook and pencil onto the table and rubbed his eyes with his hand.

  She didn’t say anything. She knew better than that. This was not the first time she’d seen him like this. He was frustrated, she knew, by his own failure to find the right words. Worse, he was frightened. He hadn’t told her, but she knew. She’d watched him, and she had read about it: at the library and in newspapers and journals. It was a trait of what the doctors were calling shell shock. The increased unreliability of memory, the numbing of the brain by traumatic experiences.

  She longed to make it better, to make him forget. Would give anything to make it stop; his relentless fear that he was losing his mind. He took his hand from across his eyes and reached once more for the pencil and paper. Started again to write, stopped, scratched it out.

  She rolled over, onto her stomach and watched the people passing on the street below.

  In the winter he managed to find them somewhere with a fire. It was little more than a sitting room, with a sofa and a sideboard. They were sitting on the floor while the fire flickered and hissed in the grate; their skin was warm and they were drowsy with red wine and warmth and each other.

  Hannah was watching the fire when she said, ‘Why won’t you talk about the war?’

  He didn’t answer; instead he lit a cigarette.

  She’d been reading Freud on repression and had some idea that if she could get Robbie to speak about it, perhaps he would be cured. She held her breath, wondered if she dared to ask. ‘Is it because you killed somebody?’

  He looked at her profile, took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled and shook his head. Then he started to laugh softly, without humour. He reached out to lay his hand gently along the side of her face.

  ‘Is that it?’ she whispered, still not looking at him.

  He didn’t answer and she took another tack.

  ‘Who is it you dream about?’

  He removed his hand. ‘You know the answer to that,’ he said. ‘I only ever dream of you.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Hannah. ‘They’re not very nice dreams.’

  He took a drag of his cigarette, exhaled. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said.

  ‘It’s shell shock, isn’t it?’ she said, turning to him. ‘I’ve been reading about it.’

  His eyes met hers. Such dark eyes. Like wet paint; full of secrets.

  ‘Shell shock,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wondered who came up with that. I suppose they needed a nice name to describe the unspeakable for the nice ladies back home.’

  ‘Nice ladies like me, you mean,’ said Hannah.

  ‘You’re not a nice lady,’ he said, teasing.

  She was put out. Was not in the mood to be fobbed off. She sat up and slipped her petticoat over her head. Started to pull her stockings on.

  He sighed. She knew he didn’t want her to leave like this. Angry with him.

  ‘You’ve read Darwin?’ he said.

  ‘Charles Darwin?’ she said, turning to him. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Ought to have known,’ he said. ‘Smart girl like you.’

  ‘But what does Charles Darwin have to do with-’

  ‘Adaptation. Survival is a matter of successful adaptation. Some of us are better at it than others.’

  ‘Adaptation to what?’

  ‘To war. To living by your wits. The new rules of the game.’

  Hannah thought about this.

  ‘I’m alive,’ Robbie said plainly, ‘because some other bugger isn’t. Plenty of others.’

&nb
sp; So now she knew.

  She wondered how she felt about it. ‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ she said, but she felt a shiver from deep down inside. And when his fingers stroked her wrist she withdrew it despite herself.

  ‘That’s why nobody talks about it,’ he said. ‘They know that if they do, people will see them for what they really are. Members of the devil’s party moving amid the regular people as though they still belong. As if they’re not monsters returned from a murderous rampage.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ said Hannah sharply. ‘You’re not a murderer.’

  ‘I’m a killer.’

  ‘It’s different. It was war. It was self-defence. Defence of others.’

  He shrugged. ‘Still a bullet through some fellow’s brain.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t like it when you talk like that.’

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have asked.’

  She didn’t like it. She didn’t like to think of him that way, and yet she found she couldn’t stop. That someone she knew, someone she knew intimately, whose hands had run gently, lightly, over her body, whom she trusted implicitly, should have killed… Well, it changed things. It changed him. Not for the worse. She didn’t love him any less. But she looked at him differently. He had killed a man. Men. Countless, nameless men.

  She was thinking that one afternoon, watching him as he stalked about a friend’s apartment in Fulham. He had his pants on, but his shirt was still draped across the bed end. She was watching his lean muscled arms, his bare shoulders, his beautiful, brutal hands, when it happened.

  A knock at the door.

  They both froze, stared at each other; Robbie lifted his shoulders.

  It came again. More urgent this time. Then a voice, ‘Hello, Robbie? Open up. It’s just me.’

  Emmeline’s voice.

  Hannah slid off the side of the bed and quickly gathered her clothing.

  Robbie held his finger to his lips and tiptoed to the door.

  ‘I know you’re in there,’ said Emmeline. ‘There’s a lovely old man downstairs who said he saw you come in and that you haven’t been out all afternoon. Let me in, it’s bloody freezing out here.’