by Kate Morton
Ursula comes. She kisses my cheek. I want to open my eyes; to thank her for caring about the Hartfords, for remembering them, but I can’t. Marcus looks after things. I hear him, accepting the video tape, thanking her, assuring her I’ll be glad to see it. That I’ve spoken highly of her. He asks if the premiere went well.
‘It was great,’ she says. ‘I was nervous as anything but it went off without a hitch. Even had a good review or two.’
‘I saw that,’ says Marcus. ‘A very good write-up in the Guardian. “Haunting”, didn’t they say, “subtly beautiful”? Congratulations.’
‘Thank you,’ says Ursula, and I can picture her shy, pleased smile.
‘Grace was sorry she couldn’t make it.’
‘I know,’ says Ursula. ‘So was I. I’d have loved her to be there.’ Her voice brightens. ‘My own grandmother came though. All the way from America.’
‘Wow,’ says Marcus. ‘That’s dedication.’
‘Poetic actually,’ says Ursula. ‘She’s the one who got me interested in the story. She’s a distant relation to the Hartford sisters. A second cousin, I think. She was born in England but her mother moved them to the States when she was little, after her father died in the First World War.’
‘That’s great she was able to come and see what she inspired.’
‘Couldn’t have stopped her if I’d wanted to,’ says Ursula, laughing. ‘Grandma Florence has never taken no for an answer.’
Ursula comes near. I sense her. She picks up the photograph on my bedside table. ‘I haven’t seen this before. Doesn’t Grace look beautiful? Who’s this with her?’
Marcus smiles; I hear it in his voice. ‘That’s Alfred.’
There is a pause.
‘My grandmother is not a conventional woman,’ he says, fondly. ‘Much to my mother’s disapproval, at the grand age of sixty-five she took a lover. Evidently she’d known him years before. He tracked her down.’
‘A romantic,’ says Ursula.
‘Yeah,’ says Marcus. ‘Alfred was great. They didn’t marry but they were together almost twenty years. Grace used to say she’d let him go once before and she didn’t believe in making the same mistake twice.’
‘That sounds like Grace,’ says Ursula.
‘Alfred used to tease her: he’d say it was just as well she was an archaeologist. The older he got, the more interested in him she became.’
Ursula laughs. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He went in his sleep,’ Marcus says. ‘Nine years ago. That’s when Grace moved in here.’
A warm breeze drifts in from the open window, across my closed eyelids. It is afternoon, I think.
Marcus is here. He’s been here some time. I can hear him, near me, scratching away with pen and paper. Sighing every so often. Standing up, walking to the window, the bathroom, the door.
It is later. Ruth comes. She is at my side, strokes my face, kisses my forehead. I can smell the floral of her Coty powder. She sits.
‘Are you writing something?’ she says to Marcus. She is tentative. Her voice strained.
Be generous, Marcus; she’s trying.
‘I’m not sure,’ he says. There’s a pause. ‘I’m thinking about it.’
I can hear them, breathing. Say something, one of you.
‘Inspector Adams?’
‘No,’ says Marcus quickly. ‘I’m considering doing something new.’
‘Oh?’
‘Grace sent me some tapes.’
‘Tapes?’
‘Like letters but recorded.’
‘She didn’t tell me,’ Ruth says quietly. ‘What does she say?’
‘All sorts of things.’
‘Does she . . . does she mention me?’
‘Sometimes. She talks about what she does each day, but also about the past. She’s lived an amazing life, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes,’ says Ruth.
‘A whole century, from domestic service to a doctorate in archaeology. I’d like to write about her.’ A pause. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Why would I mind?’ says Ruth. ‘Of course I don’t. Why would I mind?’
‘I don’t know . . .’ I can hear Marcus shrug. ‘Just had a feeling you might.’
‘I’d like to read it,’ says Ruth firmly. ‘You should write it.’
‘It’ll be a change,’ says Marcus. ‘Something different.’
‘Not a mystery.’
Marcus laughs. ‘No. Not a mystery. Just a nice safe history.’
Ah, my darling. But there is no such thing.
I am awake. Marcus is beside me in the chair, scribbling on a notepad. He looks up.
‘Hello there, Grace,’ he says, and he smiles. He puts his notepad aside. ‘I’m glad you’re awake. I wanted to thank you.’
Thank me? I raise my eyebrows.
‘For the tapes.’ He is holding my hand now. ‘The stories you sent. I’d forgotten how much I liked stories. Reading them, listening to them. Writing them. Since Rebecca . . . It was such a shock . . . I just couldn’t . . .’ He takes a deep breath, gives me a little smile. Begins again. ‘I’d forgotten how much I needed stories.’
Gladness—or is it hope?—hums warmly beneath my ribs. I want to encourage him. Make him understand that time is the master of perspective. A dispassionate master, breathtakingly efficient. I must make some attempt for he says softly, ‘Don’t speak.’ He lifts a hand, strokes my forehead gently with his thumb. ‘Just rest now, Grace.’
I close my eyes. How long do I lie like that? Do I sleep?
When I open my eyes again I say, ‘There is one more.’ My voice is hoarse from lack of use. ‘One more tape.’ I point to the chest of drawers and he goes to look.
He finds the cassette stacked by the photographs. ‘This one?’
I nod.
‘Where’s your cassette player?’ he says.
‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘Not now. For later.’
He is momentarily surprised.
‘For after,’ I say.
He doesn’t say, after what? He doesn’t need to. He tucks it in his shirt pocket and pats it. Smiles at me and comes to stroke my cheek.
‘Thank you, Grace,’ he says softly. ‘What am I going to do without you?’
‘You’re going to be all right,’ I say.
‘Do you promise?’
I don’t make promises, not any more. But I use all my energy to reach up and clutch his hand.
It is dusk: I can tell by the purple light. Ruth is at my bedroom door, a bag under her arm, eyes wide with concern. ‘I’m not too late, am I?’
Marcus gets up and takes her bag, gives her a hug. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not too late.’
We’re going to watch the film, Ursula’s film, all of us together. A family event. Ruth and Marcus have organised it and seeing them together, making plans, I’m not about to interfere.
Ruth comes to kiss me, arranges a chair so she can sit by my bed.
Another knock at the door. Ursula.
Another kiss on my cheek.
‘You made it.’ This is Marcus, pleased.
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ says Ursula. ‘Thanks for asking me.’
She sits on my other side.
‘I’ll just drop the blinds,’ says Marcus. ‘Ready?’
The light dims. Marcus drags a chair to sit beside Ursula. Whispers something that makes her laugh. I am enveloped by a welcome sense of conclusion.
The music starts and the film begins. Ruth reaches over and squeezes my hand. We are watching a car, from a great distance, as it winds along a country road. A man and a woman side by side in the front seat, smoking. The woman wears sequins and a feather boa. They reach the Riverton driveway and the car winds its way to the top, and there it is. The house. Huge and cold. She has captured perfectly its vast and melancholy glory. A footman comes to greet them and we are in the servants’ hall. I can tell by the floor. The noises. Champagne flutes. Nervous excitement. Up the stairs. The door opens. Across the hall, out on
to the terrace.
It is uncanny. The party scene. Hannah’s Chinese lanterns flickering in the dark. The jazz band, clarinet squealing. Happy people dancing the charleston . . .
There is a terrible bang and I am awake. It is the film, the gunshot. I have fallen asleep and missed the ultimate moment. Never mind. I know how this film ends: on the lake of Riverton Manor, witnessed by two beautiful sisters, Robbie Hunter, war veteran and poet, kills himself. And I know, of course, that’s not what really happened.
THE END
Finally. After ninety-nine years my end has come for me. The final thread that tethered me has released and the north wind blows me away. I am fading at last to nothing.
I can hear them still. Am vaguely aware that they are here. Ruth is holding my hand. Marcus is lying across the end of the bed. Warm upon my feet.
There is someone else in the window. She steps forward, finally, out of the shadow, and I am looking into the most beautiful face. It is Mother, and it is Hannah, and yet it is not.
She smiles. Holds out her hand. All mercy and forgiveness and peace.
I take it.
I am by the window. I see myself on the bed: old and frail and white. My fingers rubbing together, my lips moving but finding no words.
My chest rises and falls.
A rattle.
Release.
Ruth’s breath catches in her throat.
Marcus looks up.
But I am already gone.
I turn around and I don’t look back.
My end has come for me. And I do not mind at all.
THE TAPE
Testing. One. Two. Three. Tape for Marcus. Number four. This is the last tape I will make. I am almost at the end and there is no point going beyond.
Twenty-second of June, 1924. Summer solstice and the day of the Riverton midsummer’s night party.
Downstairs, the kitchen was abuzz. Mrs Townsend had the stove fire raging and was barking orders at three village women hired to help. She smoothed her apron over her generous middle and surveyed her minions as they basted hundreds of tiny quiche.
‘A party,’ she said, beaming at me as I hurried by. ‘And it’s about time.’ She swiped with her wrist at a strand of hair already escaped from her topknot. ‘Lord Frederick—rest that poor man’s soul—wasn’t one for parties, and he had his reasons. But in my humble opinion, a house needs a good party once in a while; remind folks it exists.’
‘Is it true,’ said the skinniest of the village women, ‘Prince Edward is coming?’
‘Everyone that’s anyone will be here,’ said Mrs Townsend, plucking pointedly a hair off a quiche. ‘Those that live in this house are known to the very best.’
By ten o’clock Dudley had trimmed and pressed the lawn, and the decorators had arrived. Mr Hamilton positioned himself mid-terrace, arms swinging like an orchestra conductor.
‘No, no, Mr Brown,’ he said, waving to the left. ‘The dance floor needs to be assembled on the west side. There’s a cool fog blows up from the lake of an evening and no protection on the east.’ He stood back, watching, then huffed. ‘No, no, no. Not there. That’s for the ice sculpture. I made that quite clear to your other man.’
The other man, perched atop a stepladder stringing Chinese lanterns from the rose arbour to the house, was in no position to defend himself.
I spent the morning receiving those guests who’d be staying the weekend, couldn’t help catching their excitement. Jemima, on holiday from America, arrived early with her new husband and baby Gytha in tow. Life in the United States agreed with her: her skin was brown and her body plump. Lady Clementine and Fanny came together from London, the former glumly resigned to the prospect that an outdoor party in June would almost certainly bring on arthritis.
Emmeline arrived after luncheon with a large group of friends and caused quite a stir. They’d driven in convoy from London and tooted their horns all the way up the driveway before turning circles around Eros and Psyche. On one of the car bonnets was perched a woman dressed in bright pink chiffon. Her yellow scarf drifted behind her neck. Nancy, en route to the kitchen with the luncheon trays, stood, transfixed, when she realised it was Emmeline.
There was precious little time, however, to be wasted tut-tutting about the decline of the nation’s youth. The ice sculpture had come from Ipswich, the florists from Saffron, and Lady Clementine was insisting on high tea in the morning room, for old time’s sake.
Late afternoon the band arrived, and Nancy showed them through the servants’ hall onto the terrace. Six tall, thin men with instruments slung over their shoulders and faces Mrs Townsend declared as black as Newgate’s knocker.
‘To think,’ she said, eyes wide with fearful excitement, ‘the likes of them at Riverton Manor. Lady Ashbury will be turning in her grave.’
‘Which Lady Ashbury?’ I asked.
‘All of them, I dare say,’ said Mr Hamilton, pausing a jot in his inspection of the hired wait staff.
Finally, afternoon tilted on its axis and began its slide toward evening. The air cooled and thickened, and the lanterns began to glow, green and red and yellow against the dusk.
I found Hannah at the burgundy-room window. She was kneeling on the sofa peering down toward the south lawn, watching the party preparations, or so I thought.
‘Time to get dressed, ma’am.’
She startled. Exhaled tensely. She’d been like that all day: jumpy as a kitten. Turning her hand first to this task, then to that, never leaving any more complete than she had found it.
‘Just a minute, Grace.’ She lingered a moment, the setting sun catching the side of her face, spilling red light across her cheek. ‘I don’t think I ever noticed what a pretty view it is,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think it’s pretty?’
‘I do, ma’am.’
‘I wonder that I never noticed before.’
In her room, I set her hair in curlers, an undertaking more easily said than done. She refused to stay still long enough for me to pin them tightly, and I wasted a good deal of time unwinding and starting again.
With the curlers in place, or good enough, I helped her dress. Silver silk, shoestring straps falling into a low-cut V at the back. It hugged her figure, terminating an inch below her pale knees.
While she pulled at the hem, straightening it, I fetched her shoes. The latest from Paris: a gift from Teddy. Silver satin with fine ribbon straps. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not those. I’ll wear the black.’
‘But ma’am, these are your favourites.’
‘The black are more comfortable,’ she said, leaning forward to pull her stockings on.
‘But with your dress, it’s a shame—’
‘I said black, for God’s sake; don’t make me say it again, Grace.’
I drew breath. Returned the silver and found the black.
Hannah apologised immediately. ‘I’m nervous. I shouldn’t take it out on you. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right, ma’am,’ I said. ‘Natural to be excited.’
I unrolled the curlers and her hair sat in blonde waves around her shoulders. I parted it on the side and brushed it across her forehead, catching the hair with a diamond clasp.
Hannah leaned forward to attach pearl drop earrings, winced then cursed as she caught her fingertip in the clip.
‘You’re rushing, ma’am,’ I said gently. ‘You must go carefully with those.’
She handed them to me. ‘I’m all thumbs today.’
I was draping ropes of pale pearls around her neck when the evening’s first car arrived, crunching the gravel on the driveway below. I straightened the pearls so they fell between her shoulderblades, rested in the small of her back.
‘There now,’ I said. ‘You’re ready.’
‘I hope so, Grace.’ She raised her eyebrows, scanned her reflection. ‘Hope there’s nothing I’ve overlooked.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so, ma’am.’
She used her fingertips to brush rapidly the edges of her brows, str
oking them into line. She straightened one of her pearl strands, lowered it a little, raised it again, exhaled noisily.
Suddenly, the squeal of a clarinet.
Hannah gasped, clapped a hand to her chest. ‘My!’
‘Must be exciting, ma’am,’ I said cautiously. ‘All your plans finally coming to fruition.’
Her eyes met mine sharply. She seemed as if about to speak, yet she didn’t. She pressed her red-stained lips together. ‘I have something for you, Grace. A gift.’
I was perplexed. ‘It’s not my birthday, ma’am.’
She smiled, quickly pulled open the small drawer of her dressing table. She turned back to me, fingers closed. She held it by the chain high above my hand, let it collapse into my palm.
‘But, ma’am,’ I said. ‘It’s your locket.’
‘Was. Was my locket. Now it’s yours.’
I couldn’t return it fast enough. Unexpected gifts made me nervous. ‘Oh no, ma’am. No, thank you.’
She pushed my hand away firmly. ‘I insist. To say thank you for all you’ve done for me.’
Did I detect the note of finality even then?
‘I only do my duty, ma’am,’ I said quickly.
‘Take the locket, Grace,’ she said. ‘Please.’
Before I could argue further, Teddy was at the door. Tall and slick in his black suit; comb marks channelling his oiled hair, nerves furrowing his broad brow.
I closed my hand around the locket.
‘Ready?’ he said to Hannah, fretting with his moustache ends. ‘That friend of Deborah’s is downstairs, Cecil what’s-his-name, the photographer. He wants to take family shots before too many guests arrive.’ He knocked the doorframe twice with his open palm and continued down the hall saying, ‘Where on earth is Emmeline?’
Hannah smoothed her dress over her waist. I noticed her hands were shaking. She smiled anxiously. ‘Wish me luck.’
‘Good luck, ma’am.’
She surprised me then, coming to me, kissing my cheek. ‘And good luck to you, Grace.’
She squeezed my hands and hurried after Teddy, leaving me holding the locket.
I watched for a while from the upstairs window. Gentlemen and ladies—in green, yellow, pink—arriving on the terrace, sweeping down the stone stairs onto the lawn. Jazz music floating on the air; Chinese lanterns flickering in the breeze; Mr Hamilton’s hired waiters balancing huge silver trays of sparkling champagne flutes on raised hands, weaving through the growing crowds; Emmeline, shimmering in pink, leading a laughing fellow to the dance floor to perform the shimmy-shake.