by Kate Morton
‘Doesn’t she know it’s your afternoon off?’ said Alfred. He was taller than I’d remembered, and his face more lined, but still, I thought him very nice to look at.
‘Yes, but—’
‘You should have told her what she could do with her errand.’
His scorn did not surprise me. Alfred’s frustrations with service were growing. In his letters from Riverton, distance had exposed something I hadn’t seen before: there was a thread of dissatisfaction that ran through his descriptions of his daily life. And lately, his enquiries about London, reportage of Riverton, were peppered with quotes from books he’d been reading about classes and workers and trade unions.
‘You’re not a slave,’ he said. ‘You could have told her no.’
‘I know. I didn’t think it would . . . The errand took longer than I thought.’
‘Oh well,’ he said, face softening so that he looked like himself again. ‘Not your fault. Let’s make the most of it before we’re back to the salt mines, eh? How about a spot to eat before the film?’
I was overwhelmed with happiness as we walked side by side. I felt grown-up and rather daring, out about town with a man like Alfred. I found myself wishing he would link his arm through mine. That people might see us and take us for a married couple.
‘I looked in on your ma,’ he said, breaking my thoughts. ‘Like you asked.’
‘Oh, Alfred,’ I said. ‘Thank you. She wasn’t too bad, was she?’
‘Not too bad, Grace.’ He hesitated a moment and looked away. ‘But not too good, neither, if I’m honest. A nasty cough. And her back’s been giving her grief, she says.’ He drove his hands into his pockets. ‘Arthritis, isn’t it?’
I nodded. ‘It came on sudden when I was a girl. Got bad really fast. Winter’s the worst.’
‘I had an aunt the same. Turned her old before her time.’ He shook his head. ‘Rotten luck.’
We walked in silence a way. ‘Alfred,’ I said, ‘about Mother . . . Did she seem . . . Did she look to have enough, Alfred? Coal, I mean, and the like?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘No problems there. A nice pile of coal.’ He leaned to bump my shoulder. ‘And Mrs T makes sure she receives a nice parcel of sweets now and then.’
‘Bless her,’ I said, eyes filling with grateful tears. ‘And you too, Alfred. For going to see her. I know she appreciates it, even if she wouldn’t say so herself.’
He shrugged, said plainly, ‘I don’t do it for your mother’s gratitude, Gracie. I do it for you.’
A wave of pleasure flooded my cheeks. I cupped one side of my face with a gloved hand, pressed it lightly to absorb the warmth. ‘And how is everyone else?’ I said shyly. ‘Back in Saffron? Is everybody well?’
There was a pause as he absorbed my subject change. ‘Well as can be expected,’ he said. ‘Downstairs that is. Upstairs is another matter.’
‘Mr Frederick?’ Nancy’s last letter had suggested all was not right with him.
Alfred shook his head. ‘Gone all gloomy since you left. Must’ve had a soft spot for you, eh?’ He nudged me and I couldn’t help but smile.
‘He misses Hannah,’ I said.
‘Not that he’d admit it.’
‘She’s as bad.’ I told him about the aborted letters I’d found. Draft after draft cast aside but never sent.
He whistled and shook his head. ‘And they say we’re s’posed to learn from our betters. Ask me, they could learn a thing or two from us.’
I continued walking, wondering at Mr Frederick’s malaise. ‘Do you think if he and Hannah were to make it up between them . . . ?’
Alfred shrugged. ‘Don’t know if it’s that simple, to be honest. Oh, he misses Hannah, all right. No doubt about that. But there’s more to it than that.’
I looked at him.
‘It’s his motor cars, too. It’s like he’s got no purpose now the factory’s gone. He spends all his time wandering the estate. He takes his gun and says he’s looking for poachers. Dudley says it’s all in his mind, that there are no poachers really, but still he goes on looking.’ He squinted into the fog. ‘I can understand that well enough. A man needs to feel utilised.’
‘Is Emmeline any consolation?’
He shrugged. ‘Turning into quite a little miss, if you ask me. She’s got the run of the place with the Master as he is. He doesn’t seem to mind what she does. Barely notices she’s there, most times.’ He kicked a small stone and watched as it bounced along, disappeared into the gutter. ‘No. It’s not the same place any more. Not since you left.’
I was savouring this comment when he said, ‘Oh,’ and dipped his hand into his pocket. ‘Speaking of Riverton, you’ll never guess who I just saw. Just now when I was waiting for you.’
‘Who?’
‘Miss Starling. Lucy Starling. Mr Frederick’s secretary as was.’
A prickle of envy; his familiar use of her first name. Lucy. A slippery, mysterious name that rustled like silk. ‘Miss Starling? Here in London?’
‘Lives here now, she says. A flat on Hartley Street, just round the corner.’
‘But what’s she doing here?’
‘Working. After Mr Frederick’s factory closed down she had to find another job and there’s lots more of those in London.’ He handed me a piece of paper. White, warm, the corner folded where it had lain against the inside of his pocket. ‘I took down her address, told her I’d give it to you.’ He looked at me, smiled in a way that made my cheeks red all over again. ‘I’ll rest easier,’ he said, ‘knowing you’ve a friend in London.’
I am faint. My thoughts swim. Back and forth, in and out, across the tides of history.
The community hall. Perhaps that’s where Sylvia is. There will be tea there. The ladies auxiliary will be sure to have set up in the kitchenette, selling cakes and pikelets, and watery tea with sticks in place of spoons. I pick my way toward the small flight of concrete stairs. Steady as I go.
I step, misjudge, my ankle cuts hard against the rim of a concrete stair. Someone clutches my arm as I falter. A young man with dark skin, green hair and a ring right the way through his nostrils.
‘You all right?’ he says, his voice soft, gentle.
I cannot take my eyes from his nose-ring, cannot find the words.
‘You’re white as a sheet, darlin’. You here alone? You got someone I should call?’
‘There you are!’ It is a woman. Someone I know. ‘Wandering off like that! I thought I’d lost you.’ She clucks like an old hen, plants her closed fists against her waist, only higher, so that she looks to be flapping fleshy wings. ‘What in heaven’s name did you think you were doing?’
‘Found her here,’ says green hair. ‘Almost fell on her way up the stairs.’
‘Is that right, you naughty thing,’ Sylvia says. ‘I turn my back one minute! You’ll give me a heart attack if you’re not careful. I don’t know what you were thinking.’
I begin to tell her but stop. Realise that I cannot remember. I have the strongest sense that I was looking for something, that I wanted something.
‘Come on,’ she says, both hands on my shoulders, steering me away from the hall. ‘Anthony’s dying to meet you.’
The tent is large and white with one flap tied back to permit entry. A painted fabric sign is strung above the entrance: Saffron Green Historical Society. Sylvia manoeuvres me inside. It is hot and smells like freshly mown grass. A fluorescent light tube has been fastened to the ceiling frame, humming as it casts its anaesthetic glow across the plastic tables and chairs.
‘That’s him there,’ Sylvia whispers, indicating a man whose ordinariness renders him vaguely familiar. Grey-flecked brown hair, matching moustache, ruddy cheeks. He is in deep conversation with a matronly woman in conservative dress. Sylvia leans close. ‘Told you he was a good sort, didn’t I?’
I am hot and my feet ache. I am confused. From nowhere, a delicious urge to petulance. ‘I want a cup of tea.’
Sylvia glances at me, quickly masks
surprise. ‘Of course you do, ducky. I’ll fetch you one, and then I’ve got a treat for you. Come and sit down.’ She bundles me over to sit by a hessian-covered board tiled with photographs, then disappears.
It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down, before they knew their endings.
At first glance they are a froth of white faces and skirts amid a sepia sea, but recognition brings some into sharp focus while others recede. The first is the summer house, the one Teddy designed and had built when they took up residence in 1924. The photograph was taken that year, judging by the people in the foreground. Teddy stands near the incomplete stairs, leaning against one of the white marble entrance pillars. There is a picnic rug on the grassy escarpment nearby. Hannah and Emmeline sit on it, side by side. Both with the same faraway look in their eyes. Deborah stands at the front of frame, tall body fashionably slumped, dark hair falling over one eye. She holds a cigarette in one hand. The smoke gives the impression of haze on the photo. If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was a fifth person in the photo, hidden behind the haze. There’s not of course. There are no photos of Robbie at Riverton. He only came the two times.
The second photograph has no people in it. It is of Riverton itself, or what was left of it after the fire swept through before the second war. The entire left wing has disappeared as if some mighty shovel descended from the sky and scooped out the nursery, the dining room, the drawing room, the family bedrooms. The remaining areas are charred black. They say it smoked for weeks. The smell of soot lingered in the village for months. I wouldn’t know. By that time war was coming, Ruth was born, and I was on the threshold of a new existence.
The third photograph I have avoided recognising, avoided assigning its place in history. The people I identify easily; the fact that they are dressed for a party. There were so many parties in those days, people were always dressing up and posing for photographs. They could be going anywhere. But they are not. I know where they are, and I know what is to come. I remember well what they wore. I remember the blood, the pattern it sprayed across her pale dress, like a jar of red ink dropped from a great height. I never managed to remove it completely; it wouldn’t have made much difference if I had. I should simply have thrown it out. She never looked at it again, certainly never wore it.
In this photo they do not know; they are smiling. Hannah and Emmeline and Teddy. Smiling at the camera. It is Before. I look at Hannah’s face, searching for some hint, some knowledge of impending doom. I don’t find it, of course. If anything, it is anticipation I see in her eyes. Though perhaps I only imagine it because I know it was there.
There is someone behind me. A woman. She leans across to look at the same photograph.
‘Priceless, aren’t they,’ she says. ‘All those silly outfits they used to wear. A different world.’
Only I perceive the shadow across their faces. Knowledge of what’s to come spreads cold across my skin. No, it is not knowledge I feel; my leg is weeping where I bumped it, sticky liquid seeping down toward my shoe.
Someone taps my shoulder. ‘Dr Bradley?’ A man is bending toward me, his beaming face near mine. He takes my hand. ‘Grace? May I call you that? It’s a pleasure to meet you. Sylvia’s told me so much about you. It really is a pleasure.’
Who is this man, speaking so loudly, so slowly? Shaking my hand so fervently? What has Sylvia told him of me? And why?
‘. . . It’s English I teach for a living, but history’s my passion. I like to consider myself a bit of a local history buff.’
Sylvia appears through the tent’s entrance, polystyrene cup in hand. ‘Here you are then.’
Tea. Just what I felt like. I take a sip. It is lukewarm; I can no longer be trusted with hot liquids. I have dozed off unexpectedly one too many times.
Sylvia sits in another chair. ‘Has Anthony told you about the testimonials?’ She blinks mascara-clumped eyelashes at the man. ‘Have you told her about the testimonials?’
‘Hadn’t quite got round to it,’ he says.
‘Anthony’s video-taping a collection of personal stories from local people about the history of Saffron Green. It’s to go to the Historical Society.’ She looks at me, smiles broadly, ‘He’s got a funding grant and all. He’s just been recording Mrs Baker over there.’
She continues, with his help, to explain; occasional snatches jump out from the rest: oral histories, cultural significance, millennium time capsule, people in a hundred years . . .
Once upon a time, people kept their stories to themselves. It didn’t occur to them that folks would find them interesting. Now everybody’s writing a memoir, competing for the worst childhood, the most violent father. Four years ago a student from a nearby technical college came to Heathview asking questions; an earnest young man with acne and a habit of shredding the skin around his fingernails while he listened. He brought a little tape-recorder and a microphone, and a manila folder with a sheet of questions written out by hand. He went from room to room, asking whether people would mind answering questions. He found plenty of folk only too happy to volunteer their stories. Mavis Buddling, for one, kept him busy with tales of a heroic husband I knew she’d never had.
I suppose I should be glad. In my second life, after it all ended at Riverton, after the second war, I spent much of my time digging around discovering people’s stories. Finding evidence, fleshing out bare bones. How much easier it would have been if everybody came replete with a record of their personal history. But all I can think of is a million tapes of the elderly ruminating on the price of eggs thirty years ago. Are they all in a room somewhere, a huge underground bunker, shelves from floor to ceiling, tapes lined up, walls echoing with trivial memories that no one has time to hear?
There is only one person whom I wish to hear my story. One person for whom I set it down on tape. I only hope it will be worth it. That Ursula is right: that Marcus will listen and understand. That my own guilt and the story of its acquisition will somehow set him free.
The light is bright. I feel like a bird in an oven. Hot, plucked and watched. Why ever did I agree to this? Did I agree to this?
‘Can you say something so we can test the levels?’ Anthony is crouched behind a black item. A video camera, I suppose.
‘What should I say?’ A voice not my own.
‘Once again.’
‘I’m afraid I really don’t know what to say.’
‘Good,’ Anthony pulls away from the camera. ‘That’s got it.’
I smell the tent canvas, baking in the midday sun.
‘I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you,’ he says, smiling. ‘Sylvia tells me you used to work at the big house.’
‘Yes.’
‘No need to lean toward the microphone. It’ll pick you up just fine where you are.’
I had not realised I was leaning and inch backwards into the seat curve with the sense that I’ve been chastised.
‘You worked at Riverton.’ It is a statement, no answer required, yet I cannot curb my urge to comply, to specify.
‘I started in 1914 as a housemaid.’
He is embarrassed, for himself or for me I do not know. ‘Yes, well . . .’ He moves on swiftly. ‘You worked for Theodore Luxton?’ He says the name with some trepidation, as if by invoking Teddy’s spectre he may be tarred by his ignominy.
‘Yes.’
‘Excellent! Did you see much of him?’
He means did I hear much; can I tell him what went on behind closed doors. I fear I shall be a disappointment. ‘Not much. I was his wife’s lady’s maid at the time.’
‘You must’ve had quite a bit to do with Theodore in that case.’
‘No. Not really.’
‘But I’ve read that the servants’ hall was the hub of a hous
ehold’s gossip. You must have been aware of what was going on?’
‘No.’ A lot of it came out later, of course. I read about it, along with everybody else, in the newspapers. Visits to Germany, meetings with Hitler. I never believed the worst charges. They were guilty of little more than an admiration for Hitler’s galvanisation of the working classes, his ability to grow industry. Never mind that it was off the backs of slave labour. Few people knew that then. History was yet to prove him a madman.
‘The meeting in 1936 with the German ambassador?’
‘I no longer worked at Riverton then. I left a decade earlier.’
He stops; he is disappointed, as I knew he would be. His line of questioning has been unfairly cut. Then some of his excitement is restored. ‘1926?’
‘1925.’
‘Then you must have been there when that fellow, that poet, what’s-his-name, killed himself.’
The light is making me warm. I am tired. My heart flutters a little. Or something inside my heart flutters; an artery worn so thin that a flap has come loose, is waving about, lost, in the current of my blood.
‘Yes,’ I hear myself say.
It is some consolation. ‘All right. We can talk about that instead?’
I can hear my heart now. It is pumping wetly, reluctantly.
‘Grace?’
‘She’s very pale.’
My head is light. So very tired.
‘Dr Bradley?’
‘Grace? Grace!’
Whooshing like wind through a tunnel, an angry wind that drags behind it a summer storm, rushing toward me, faster and faster. It is my past, and it is coming for me. It is everywhere; in my ears, behind my eyes, pushing my ribs . . .
‘Call a doctor; someone call an ambulance!’
Release. Disintegration. A million tiny particles falling through the funnel of time.