‘I have. I’ve brought them to be signed and witnessed, along with a copy for your records, of course.’
The details thereafter Saffy hadn’t heard, nor had she wanted to. She was the second daughter of an old-fashioned man, a spinster in her middle years: the masculine world of property and finance neither interested nor concerned her. She wanted only to free the weakened butterfly and get away from the tower, to leave the stale air and stifling memories behind her. She hadn’t been inside the little room for over twenty years, she intended never to set foot inside again, ever. And as she hurried down and away, she’d tried to elude the cloud of memories that pressed upon her as she went.
For they’d been close once, she and Daddy, a long time ago, but the love had spoiled. Juniper was the better writer and Percy the better daughter, which left very little room for Saffy in their father’s affections. There had only been the one brief, glorious moment in which Saffy’s usefulness had outshone that of her sisters. After the Great War when Daddy had returned to them, all bruised and broken, it was she who had been able to bring him back, to give him the very thing he needed most. And it had been seductive, the force of his fondness, the evenings spent in hiding, where no one else could find them . . .
Suddenly there was bedlam and Saffy’s eyes snapped open. Someone was shouting. She was in the tub but the water was icy, the light had disappeared through the open window leaving dusk in its place. Saffy realized that she’d slipped into a doze. She was fortunate that was all the slipping she’d done. But who was shouting? She sat up, straining to hear. Nothing, and she wondered whether she’d imagined the noise.
Then it came again. And the din of a bell. The old man in the tower, off on one of his rants. Well, let Percy see to him. They deserved each other.
With a shiver, Saffy peeled back the cold flannel and stood, sending the water buckling back and forth. She stepped, dripping, onto the mat. There were voices downstairs now, she could hear them. Meredith, Juniper – and Percy, too; they were all there, all of them in the yellow parlour together. Waiting for their dinner, she supposed, and she would fetch it for them as she always did.
Saffy tugged her dressing gown from the hook on the door, fought with the sleeves and fastened it over her cool, wet skin, then she started down the hallway, her wet footsteps echoing along the flagstones. Nursing her little secret close.
‘You wanted something, Daddy?’ Percy pushed open the heavy door to the tower room. It took her a moment to spot him, tucked in the alcove by the fireplace, beneath the Goya print; and, when she did, he looked frightened to see her and she knew immediately that he’d suffered another of his delusions. Which meant that when she went downstairs she’d more than likely find his daily medicine sitting on the hall table where she’d left it that morning. It was her own fault for having expected too much, and she cursed herself for not having thought to check on him as soon as she’d arrived home from the church.
She softened her voice, spoke to him the way she imagined she might to a child, had she ever had the chance to know one well enough to love them: ‘There now. Everything’s all right. Would you like to sit down? Come along, I’ll help you get settled here by the window. It’s a lovely evening.’
He nodded jerkily, started towards her outstretched arm, and she knew that the delusion had ended. She knew, too, that it hadn’t been a bad one because he’d managed to recover himself sufficiently to say, ‘I thought I told you to wear a hairpiece.’
He had, many times now, and Percy had dutifully purchased one (not an easy thing to do in a time of war), only to leave the wretched thing lying like a severed fox’s tail on her bedside table. There was a crocheted blanket draped over the arm of the chair, a small, brightly coloured thing that Lucy had made for him some years ago, and Percy straightened it over his knees when he sat down, saying, ‘I’m sorry, Daddy. I forgot. I heard the bell and I didn’t want to leave you waiting.’
‘You look like a man. Is that what you want? People to treat you like a man?’
‘No, Daddy.’ Percy’s fingertips went to the nape of her neck, centred on the little velvety coil that dipped lower than the rest of her hairline. He’d meant nothing by it and she wasn’t offended, only a little startled by the suggestion. She sneaked a sideways glance at the glass-fronted bookcase, caught her image rippling in the dimpled surface; a rather severe-looking woman, sharp angles, a very straight spine, but a pair of not ungenerous breasts, a definite curve at the hips, a face that wasn’t primped with lipstick and powder but which she didn’t think was manly. Which she hoped was not.
Daddy, meanwhile, had turned his head to look out across the night-draped fields, blissfully unaware of the line of thinking he had sparked. ‘All of this,’ he said without shifting his gaze. ‘All of this.’
She leaned against the side of the chair, rested an elbow on its top. He didn’t need to say more. She understood as no one else the way he felt as he looked out across the fields of his ancestors.
‘Did you read Juniper’s story, Daddy?’ It was one of the few topics that could be relied upon to brighten his spirits, and Percy deployed it carefully, hoping she might thereby pull him back from the edges of the black mood she knew was still hovering.
He waved his hand in the direction of his pipe kit and Percy handed it to him. Rolled herself a cigarette as he was feeding tobacco into the bowl. ‘She’s a talent. There’s no doubt about it.’
Percy smiled. ‘She gets it from you.’
‘We must be careful with her. The creative mind needs freedom. It must wander at its own pace and in its own patterns. It’s a difficult thing to explain, Persephone, to someone whose mind works along more stolid lines, but it is imperative that she be freed from practicalities, from distractions, from anything that might steal her talent away.’ He grabbed at Percy’s skirt. ‘She hasn’t got a fellow chasing her, has she?’
‘No, Daddy.’
‘A girl like Juniper needs protection,’ he continued, setting his chin. ‘To be kept somewhere safe. Here at Milderhurst, within the castle.’
‘Of course she will stay here.’
‘It’s up to you to make sure. To take care of both your sisters.’ And he launched into his familiar spiel about legacy and responsibility and inheritance.
Percy waited a time, finished smoking her cigarette, and only when he was reaching the end, said, ‘I’ll take you to the lavatory before I go, shall I, Daddy?’
‘Go?’
‘I’ve a meeting this evening, in the village—’
‘Always rushing off.’ Displeasure pulled at his bottom lip and Percy had a very clear picture of what he might have looked like as a boy. A spoiled child accustomed to having things as he wished.
‘Come along now, Daddy.’ She walked the old man to the lavatory and reached for her tobacco tin as she waited in the cooling corridor. Patting her pocket and remembered she’d left it in the tower room. Daddy would be a time, so she hurried back to fetch it.
She found the tin on his desk. And that’s where she also found the parcel. A package from Mr Banks but with no stamp affixed. Meaning it had been delivered personally.
Percy’s heart beat faster. Saffy had not mentioned a visitor. Was it possible Mr Banks had come from Folkestone, sneaked into the castle and made his way up to the tower, without announcing himself to Saffy? Anything was possible, she supposed, but it was surely unlikely. What reason would he have for doing such a thing?
Percy stood for a moment, undecided, fingering the envelope as heat collected along the back of her neck and beneath her arms so that her blouse stuck.
With a glance over her shoulder, even though she knew herself to be alone, she unsealed it and shimmied the folded papers from inside. A will. The date was today’s; she straightened the letter and skimmed it for meaning. Experienced the strange, oppressive gravity of having her worst suspicions confirmed.
She pressed the fingers of one hand against her forehead. That such a thing should have been allowed t
o happen. Yet here it was; in black and white, and blue where Daddy had slashed his agreement. She read the document again, more closely, checking it for loopholes, for a missing page, for anything that might suggest she’d misunderstood, read too quickly.
She hadn’t.
Oh Christ, she hadn’t.
PART FOUR
Back to Milderhurst Castle
1992
Herbert lent me his car to drive to Milderhurst, and as soon as I was off the motorway I wound down the window and let the breeze buffet my cheeks. The countryside had changed in the months between my visits. Summer had come and gone, and autumn was now in its final days. Enormous dried leaves lay in golden piles by the side of the road, and as I slipped deeper and deeper into the weald of Kent, great tree branches reached across the road to meet at its centre. Every time the wind blew, a fresh layer was shed; lost skin, an ended season.
There was a note waiting for me when I arrived at the farmhouse.
Welcome, Edie. I had some errands that couldn’t wait and Bird’s laid up with the flu. Please find attached a key and settle yourself into Room 3 (first floor). So sorry to miss you. Will see you at dinner, seven o’clock in the dining room.
Marilyn Bird.
PS I had Bird move a better writing desk into your room. It’s a little cramped, but I thought you might appreciate being able to spread out with your work.
A little cramped was putting it midly, but I’ve always had a thing for small, dark spaces and I set about immediately making an artful arrangement of Adam Gilbert’s interview transcripts, my copy of Raymond Blythe’s Milderhurst and the Mud Man, and assorted notebooks and pens; then I sat down, running the fingers of each hand along the table’s smooth edge. A small sigh of satisfaction escaped as I leaned my chin on my hands. It was that first-day-of-school feeling, but a hundred times better. The four days stretched ahead and I felt infused with enthusiasm and possibility.
I noticed the telephone then, an old-fashioned Bakelite affair, and was possessed by an unfamiliar urge. It was being back at Milderhurst, of course; in the very same location where my mum had found herself.
The phone rang and rang and just as I was about to hang up, she answered, somewhat breathlessly. There was a moment’s pause after I said hello.
‘Oh, Edie, sorry. I was looking for your father. He got it into his head to – . Is everything all right?’ Her tone had sharpened like a pencil.
‘Everything’s fine, Mum. I just wanted to let you know that I’d arrived.’
‘Oh.’ A pause as she caught her breath. I’d surprised her: the safe-arrival phone call was not a part of our usual routine; it hadn’t been for around a decade, since I convinced her that if the government trusted me to vote, perhaps it was time she trusted me to take the tube without calling in my successful journey. ‘Well. Good. Thank you. That’s very kind of you to let me know. Your father will be pleased to hear it. He misses you; he’s been moping since you left.’ Another pause, a longer one this time in which I could almost hear her thinking, and then, all in a rush: ‘You’re there then? Milderhurst? How – how is it? How does it look?’
‘It looks glorious, Mum. Autumn’s turning everything to gold.’
‘I remember. I remember how it looked in autumn. The way the woods stayed green for a time but the outer tips burned red.’
‘There’s orange, too,’ I said. ‘And the leaves are everywhere. Seriously, everywhere, like a thick carpet covering the ground.’
‘I remember that. The wind comes in off the sea and they fall like rain. Is it windy, Edie?’
‘Not yet, but it’s forecast to come in blustery during the week.’
‘You wait. The leaves fall like snow then. They crunch beneath your feet when you run across them. I remember.’
And her last two words were soft, somehow fragile, and I don’t know where it came from but I was overwhelmed by a rush of feeling, and I heard myself say, ‘You know, Mum – I finish here on the fourth. You should think about driving down for the day.’
‘Oh, Edie, oh no. Your father couldn’t—’
‘You should come.’
‘By myself?’
‘We could get lunch somewhere nice, just the two of us. Go for a walk around the village.’ The suggestion was met with the eerie whistling of the telephone line. I lowered my voice. ‘We don’t have to go near the castle, not if you don’t want to.’
Silence, and I thought for a moment she was gone, then a small noise and I knew that she hadn’t. I realized, as it continued, that she was crying, very lightly, against the phone.
I wasn’t due up at the castle to meet with the Sisters Blythe until the following day, but the weather was predicted to turn and it seemed wasteful to spend a clear afternoon sitting at my desk. Judith Waterman had suggested that the article include my own sense of the place so I decided to go for a walk. Once again, Mrs Bird had left a fruit basket on the bedside table and I selected an apple and a banana, then tossed a notebook and pen into my tote. I was surveying the room, about to leave, when Mum’s journal caught my eye, sitting small and quiet to one side of the desk. ‘Come on then, Mum,’ I said, snatching it up. ‘Let’s take you back to the castle.’
When I was a child, on the rare occasions that Mum wasn’t going to be waiting for me at home after school, I caught the bus instead to my dad’s office in Hammersmith. There I was supposed to find a patch of carpet – a desk, if I was lucky – in one of the junior partners’ rooms, a place to do my homework, or decorate my school diary, or practise signing the surname of my most recent boy-crush; anything really, so long as I stayed off the telephone and didn’t get in the way of industry.
One afternoon I was sent to a room I’d not been inside before, through a door I’d never noticed, right at the end of the very long hallway. It was small, little more than a cupboard with lighting, and although it was painted beige and brown, there were none of the glitzy copper-tone mirror tiles and glass bookshelves of the other corporate rooms. Instead, there was a small wooden table and chair, and a thin, towering bookcase. On one of the shelves, beside the jowly accounting tomes, I spied something interesting. A snow globe: you know the sort, a wintry scene in which a small stone cottage stood bravely on a pine-planted hill, flakes of white dusting the ground.
The rules of Dad’s workplace were clear. I wasn’t supposed to touch anything, and yet I couldn’t help it. The globe transfixed me: it was a tiny splinter of whimsy in a beige-brown world, a doorway at the back of the cupboard, an irresistible emblem of childhood. Before I knew it I was on the chair, dome in hand, tipping and righting it, watching as the snowflakes fell, over and over, the world within oblivious to that without. And I remember feeling a curious longing to be inside that dome, to stand with the man and woman behind one of the gold-lit windows, or with the pair of tiny children pushing a maroon sledge, in a safe place that knew nothing of the hustle and the noise outside.
That’s what it felt like to approach Milderhurst Castle. As I walked up the hill, nearer and nearer, I could almost feel the air changing around me, as if I were crossing an invisible barrier into another world. Sane people do not speak of houses having forces, of enchanting people, of drawing them closer, but I came to believe that week, as I still do now, that there was some indescribable force at work deep within Milderhurst Castle. I’d been aware of it on my first visit, and I felt it again that afternoon. A sort of beckoning, as if the castle itself were calling to me.
I didn’t go the same way as before; I cut across the field to meet the driveway and followed it over a small stone bridge, then a slightly larger one, until finally the castle itself came into view, tall and imposing at the peak of the hill. I walked on and I didn’t stop until I reached the very top. Only then did I turn to view the direction from which I’d come. The canopy of the woods was spread out beneath me and it looked as if autumn had taken a great torch to the trees, burnishing them gold, red and bronze. I wished I’d brought a camera so I could take a shot back for Mum
.
I left the driveway and skirted along a large hedge, looking up as I went at the attic window, the smaller one attached to the nurse’s room with the secret cupboard. The castle was watching me, or so it seemed, all its hundred windows glowering down from beneath their drooping eaves. I didn’t look at it again, continuing along the hedge until I reached the back.
There was an old chicken coop, empty now, and on the other side a dome-like structure. I went closer, and that’s when I recognized what it was. The bomb shelter. A rusty sign had been planted nearby – from the days of the regular tours, I supposed – labelling it ‘The Anderson’ and although the writing had faded over time, I could make out enough to see that it contained information about the role of Kent in the Battle of Britain. A bomb had landed only a mile away, it said, killing a young boy on his bicycle. This sign said that the shelter had been constructed in 1940, which meant, surely, that it was the very one in which my mum must have crouched when she was at Milderhurst during the Blitz.
There was no one around to ask, so I figured it would be OK to take a look inside, climbing down the steep stairs and beneath the corrugated iron arch. It was dim, but sufficient light slanted through the open doorway for me to see that it had been decorated like a stage set with paraphernalia from the war. Cigarette cards with Spitfires and Hurricanes on them, a small table with a vintage wood-panelled wireless in the centre, a poster with Churchill’s pointed finger warning me to ‘Deserve Victory!’ just as if it were 1940 again, the alarm had panicked, and I was waiting for the bombers to fly overhead.