The Pieces of Ourselves

by Maggie Harcourt

  Hal slides his palm underneath the old paper to support it. “Careful,” he whispers, as though speaking too loudly will make the page fall apart in front of us. “AEH. Like Albert Holmwood?”

  “Or Albie.” Now I’m whispering too. I can’t help it – that’s the mood we’re going for. (See, Sanjay? I’m matching the mood.)

  “Or both.”

  “Can you read it?” It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me – it’s that old-fashioned kind of handwriting that makes it look like a quick note took a month to write, and takes just as long to read.

  “Some of it. Hang on…” Hal frowns, trying to pick out words, piecing together fragments of ink. This letter is clearer than the other ones – the paper has stood up to time better.

  “‘It has always struck me as sad, somehow,’” he reads softly, translating the loops and curls aloud, “‘that the gardens are at their most beautiful when no one is there to see them. Only the ill-sleepers of the world would ever understand how the mist rises from the streams in the woods and clings to the trees like silk; how the deer move so gently and quietly that often they seem to glide through the bosky grounds like ghosts. How, in the summer, the moon balances on the west chimneys like a globe, and how, when the dew falls on the lawns, it looks like handfuls of diamonds thrown by a fairy queen.’”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Hang on – there’s more. ‘I thought I was the only one who saw the world at this hour, when I ought to have been asleep. But now I discover you are there too. Perhaps I shall sleep more soundly knowing that someone else, after all, is there to see these things; that they are not just mine. Because what is the point of sights like these if there is no one with whom to share them?’”

  My heart is beating faster with every word Hal reads. “Who’s this to? Does it say?”

  He ignores me, skimming down to the last line of the page. “‘And more than any of this, I hope that next time I will see you again.’” He lowers the page, then lifts it again, almost waving it. “Look – he’s underlined the ‘you’. This is it. It is!” His voice is higher now, louder, the excitement in it matching the faint flush in his cheeks…which matches the pounding in my own chest. It is exciting. More exciting than I imagined it could be…Already I can see him, this Albie, walking through the gardens, through the woods and the deer park, as the sky lightens. I can see him stopping to watch the deer moving in the rising light…because I’ve done it too, from my bedroom window. On the nights when Manic Flora has decided that sleep is for normal people, something so far beneath her as she soars above the rest of the world, I’ve sat at my window and watched the sun come up on Hopwood.

  Because what is the point of sights like these if there is no one with whom to share them?

  The words settle on my heart like falling feathers. Of all the things that mania is – in all its terrifying brightness, its loudness, its speed and its dazzling colours – the worst of all is it’s lonely. How can anyone keep up with a mind moving that fast? How can anyone understand what you’re looking at when you see things in a million new colours – colours that don’t exist outside your own head?

  It’s lonely when you’re standing in the middle of an exam room, and everyone is looking at you and leaning across the desks, whispering behind their hands…Or when you’re standing on the pavement near the college bus, outside looking in…It’s lonely when your worst enemy is inside your own head, and nobody else can hear it or see it – and even if you could somehow magically project it outside for the rest of the world to see, what could they do?

  I drag my mind back into the room and into the moment.

  “So he’s an insomniac. He’s wandering around in the middle of the night, going for a walk in the gardens – and what? He’s seen somebody? Who would be up at that time?”

  “One of the maids. The maids were always the first ones up in the morning.” Hal is already spreading papers across the only clear bit of the table. “What did the book say Iris Campbell did?”

  “Umm…” I leaf back through the pages of the housekeeping book. “Second housemaid.”

  “Ha!” He brandishes yet another wedge of papers at me, these covered in horrible handwriting. Seeing as I don’t think they had biros in 1913, it must be some of his research. “Housemaids lit the fires. That was the first thing they had to do. Early in the morning, they had to clear out the ashes from the night before and light a fresh fire before the family got up.”

  “I guess it’s not all that different to how guests here dump wet towels on their beds and come back to find everything tidied up, and a whole new set of dry ones by the bath,” I say, rolling my eyes.

  Hal flips a couple of pages in the bundle he’s holding, then scribbles something across the top of one of them, not even looking up as he speaks. “That’s just how it was back then. It didn’t occur to most of the upper class that the fires had to be lit, because they just were. I bet half of them didn’t even know where the servants’ quarters were.”

  “What, like you know where all the staff rooms are in your hotels?” I don’t mean to say anything out loud, let alone that. But it falls out anyway. This does make him look at me, one eyebrow arched, even as I wish I could somehow suck the words back into my mouth and parcel them up inside my head, where they were meant to stay all along.

  “My family’s hotels. Not mine,” he says quietly. “Not the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Even if you’re the one who’s going to take everything over in time? Like a…like an heir?”

  “Whether I want to or not? Not every heir wants to inherit the estate. And not all of them carry on the family name.” Hal’s mouth twists as he says it. “Albert didn’t, did he?”

  I shake my head. “You don’t think he did. Until there’s actual proof, you can’t say that for sure.”

  “Even though we’re standing in his house, and it’s a hotel?”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. It could be a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences.” He folds his arms across his chest, like a little kid who’s about to stamp his foot.

  “Fine, then. I guess we’ll have to keep looking, won’t we?” I growl back at him, folding my own arms for good measure.

  But as he turns away and reaches for yet another box, I’m sure I catch the briefest flash of a smile on his face.

  Luckily, with his back to me, he can’t see that I’m smiling too.

  Nobody is more surprised than me when I find myself hurrying back to the Hopwood library the next morning. I barely even stop for breakfast – until Charlie flags me down outside the front door, shoving a piece of toast at me. Mira, halfway across the driveway at the front of the hotel, actually does a full double-take when she sees me, waving and shouting my name (after checking over her shoulder, just in case Mrs Tilney appears from nowhere – it’s a habit you get into very quickly working here).

  “What’s the rush?” She reaches for my arm as soon as she gets close.

  “No rush – I just want to get back to the research.”

  “You’re not avoiding me?”

  “Why would I be avoiding you?”

  “You know why.”

  Of course I know why. I could be avoiding her because I’m upset she’s planning on leaving – or I could be avoiding her because I’m upset that she didn’t tell me. Or it could be because I’m upset that she thought she couldn’t tell me in case it upset me. Even though I’m pretty used to untangling my thoughts, I’m not sure whether that one makes sense.

  I stop and look at her. “I wish you’d said something.”

  “Oh.” Mira stares at the ground, rolling a bit of gravel around under her shoe. “I wanted to, I think? I didn’t mean to not tell you.”

  I remember her face across the kitchen table. “You were waiting for the right moment.”

  “Yes? I didn’t…” She looks thoughtful, and I know she’s trying to pick her way through the mine
field that is Talking About Flora’s Feelings. “I didn’t want you to think it was about you. You understand? You have this way of taking everything and making it personal. Anything bad, anything that makes you sad, it has to be a punishment for something you’ve done. Like you deserve it. And you hold on to that in your head and you tell it to yourself over and over and over until you believe it. And it’s not true.” Mira sighs. “I didn’t want to do that to you, so…I was waiting for a good time to tell you.”

  “I don’t think there ever would have been a good time,” I say. “Not with this head.”

  She puts her arm around my shoulder, gently cuffing the side of my head. “Tell you a secret,” she whispers, pulling me alongside her. “I think your head isn’t right about you deserving to be sad. You should remember that.”

  She’s right – as usual. But she’s still leaving.

  We cover the rest of the driveway together, and she changes the subject. “So what is it that’s so interesting in the library all of a sudden? Two days ago, you were hating it…”

  “I never said I hated it, exactly…”

  “And now you’re here, practically sprinting back to all the boxes.” A slow grin spreads across her face. “Or is it not so much the boxes but the boy?”

  “He’s not a boy, Mee.”

  “Ah! I knew it!” Her elbow digs into my ribs.

  “I meant that he’s the same age as you, so ‘boy’ doesn’t exactly sound right. And you know it.”

  “Meh. But it is him you’re making such a rush for, yes?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Can you just drop it? It’s not funny.” I yank my bag up on my shoulder. Someone has opened the first of the library’s French windows. An image of Hal striding across the library and reaching for the handle of the window fills my mind, captured in slow-motion. I can feel the movement of the air as the window opens, see the sunlight flash on his hair, catch the scent of him as he turns back from the window towards me – his hair falling just in front of his eyes, his hand outstretched, reaching for mine, and…

  “Hello? Flora?”

  Hal’s face is replaced by Mira’s, her eyebrows raised expectantly at me.

  “Sorry – what?”

  “I said, what did you find? More houses?”

  “No. We think maybe we found the soldier he was looking for after all – maybe.”

  “Good! This means he’ll be gone soon, and I get you back. Mrs Tilney keeps pairing me with Ursula on the rota, and she’s so boring.” Mira drops her voice to a stage-whisper. “And she smears the mirrors.”

  I take a breath to tell her about the flashes of something I’ve seen in Hal – the glimpses of whatever it is underneath the surface. But as soon as I open my mouth, there’s a shout from behind us, and jogging up the drive from the village is a figure dressed in black-and-white chef’s trousers and a red T-shirt, a satchel thrown over his shoulder. Philippe, one of the sous-chefs from the kitchens.

  “Hey! How’s it going?” He turns his beaming smile on us, looking from me to Mira.

  “Oh, you know. It’s going.” She waves a hand vaguely in the air.

  Everything I was about to say to Mira turns to jelly in my mouth, sitting on my tongue and clogging my throat. I shrug, and fiddle with the strap on my backpack. Philippe’s arrival has dimmed a bulb in my head. Because however nice he is, he’s someone else. Like pretty much the rest of the world. And with him comes the constant scratching feeling under my skin – a reminder that I have to keep up my guard. Don’t get manic. Don’t get depressed. Keep being normal.

  But as the three of us fall into step, Mira and Philippe already moving towards the staff entrance on the left of the drive, me towards the hotel’s main entrance ahead, I realize that the entire time I’ve been in the library, I’ve not felt like that.

  I’ve known Philippe the whole year I’ve worked here, and I still feel edgy around him. It’s not personal, it’s just people. But I’ve known Hal Waverley about five minutes…and I don’t feel like that at all.

  Maybe it’s the stranger thing – just the same as he knew he could tell me something that felt secret. Maybe it’s because I know that when he’s gone, he’s gone. I’ll never have to see him again after this.

  Then, as the three of us are about to go our separate ways, there’s a movement behind the French windows and suddenly Hal appears on the terrace. One hand shades his eyes from the sun, the other is clutching a piece of paper. He scans the driveway and spots me. I feel it. I can see it in the way he straightens, as though a weight has fallen from his back.

  He’s found more.

  Something in my stomach knots and lurches, the way it does at the first drop on a roller coaster.

  “Flora! Come on!” The hand that was shielding his eyes is waving now, beckoning; the other holding up the page. “You have to see this!”

  With a mumbled, “Got to go – see you,” to the others, I jog towards the terrace steps.

  As soon as I make it to the top of the wonky stone steps he clears his throat and starts reading.

  “‘The ball may only have lasted a few hours, but our dance has continued every night since in my dreams. I hear the music, feel the floor beneath my feet, just as clear and as real as it was that night. The only thing missing is you.’” He looks up from the page expectantly.

  “What is that? What ball?”

  “You’re going to love this – come and see.” With a grin, he darts through the open French window into the library.

  “Love what?” It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to coming indoors from the bright sunlight. When they do, I see he’s cleared most of the papers that were spread out across the table and re-stacked at least half the boxes in neat piles on the far side of the room. Now, three boxes are sitting on the table, lids off, the contents piled in front of each one.

  “When did you do this?”

  “Oh, last night.” He’s already grabbing for another piece of paper.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” I wonder if this is what it’s like for Charlie, talking to me?

  “Apparently not. Here.” He holds the page out to me. Like on most of the other papers from the boxes, the ink has faded over the years, but it’s still just about clear enough to know what I’m looking at.

  “It’s a shopping list. A big one.” Bottles of wine, fruit, meat, eggs, flour…and a whole load of things I don’t recognize. But whatever they are, there’s a lot of them. I look from the page to Hal, and back again. “It’s for a party, right?”

  “A party or a…?” He waits for me to finish his sentence. Which I would, except I have no idea what he’s talking about. After a long, long pause, he bites his lip and looks up at me from beneath his fringe. “No?”

  “I have nothing. Sorry.”

  “A ball. Like there was in the note I just read?”

  “Oh!” How stupid do I feel? “But if she’s a servant, how come they were at a ball together?”

  “This is the bit you’re going to love. I found this…” He waggles the list, forgetting that it could genuinely fall apart at any second – then remembers and panics, laying it down on the table. He pats it carefully with his fingertips, just to make sure it’s okay. “So I went back to the housekeeper’s book. And I found this.”

  The book is open to a new place, the pages covered in notes and columns and numbers. But the bit that catches my eye – the bit that Hal has to be talking about – is at the top. “A servants’ ball? As in, a ball for the servants?”

  “It was a thing they did. Servants had the night off and got to have a big party, dancing – a ball. And the family would come down to their dining hall and dance with them, and sometimes they’d act as their servants…stuff like that. It was the only time they actually got to interact as people. Just for one night.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  Hal wrinkles his nose. It makes him look about eleven years old. “I like history. But look – a ball.” He j
abs his finger at the paper triumphantly.

  “Exactly what a romantic story needs, I guess. And they danced. They danced!” The roller-coaster feeling in my stomach is back, and a shiver runs the full length of my spine. I’m not sure if it’s because of the story or because a picture of being spun around a ballroom by Hal flashes through my head and is gone again before I can even work out where it came from.

  “But this is the best part. You keep saying we need proof?”

  “I was talking more about the history of the house, but…”

  I stop talking as he slides one more page across the table in front of me.

  Thank you for the ribbon you enclosed with your letter, and which gives me cause to hope. I will keep it with me always, to remind me of how it felt to dance with you in a room full of people.

  It’s addressed to my Iris, and signed with an A, on the same monogrammed paper.

  The roller coaster meets the shiver, and turns into a cloud of furiously fluttering butterflies inside me.

  “This is it, right?”

  “This is really it, Flora. I told you I don’t believe in coincidences. It’s them. It’s definitely them. It’s real.”

  Hal’s eyes are blazing, and his voice is full of light and life, and suddenly the room feels both smaller and larger at the same time.

  The butterflies in my stomach swirl in formation.

  “‘To dance with you in a room full of people…’”

  “Sorry?” Hal catches my words, even though they were muttered under my breath.

  “Oh. Nothing. I was just thinking – that’s kind of a weird thing to say, isn’t it? Why not just say, ‘how it felt to dance with you’? Why the ‘room full of people’?”

  “Because,” he says, finishing my thought for me, “they were used to being together. Just not where anyone could see them.”

  It makes perfect, perfect sense. “Of course! They aren’t meant to be together, but they are. In secret. He’s wealthy, she’s the maid…imagine if they got caught! She’d lose her job and be out of the house like that.” I snap my fingers.