by Kate Morton
Tip let out a small sigh beside her and it occurred to Juliet that he was quieter than usual. The dark smudges from the night before were still under his eyes, too.
‘Sleep all right, little mouse?’
A nod.
‘It’s always a bit tricky in a new bed.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes, but only at first.’
He seemed to think about this. ‘Is it tricky for you, too, Mummy?’
‘Oh, yes. Because I’m a big person and everything is always tricky for us.’
‘But only at first?’
‘Yes.’
Tip seemed to take some relief at this, which was sweet but also a little disconcerting. Juliet hadn’t supposed her comfort played much on his mind. She glanced at her older two striding away into the distance. She was quite sure neither one of them had ever enquired as to whether she’d slept well at night.
‘A pooh stick!’ Tip slipped his hand free and picked up a slim silver branch, almost hidden in the grass.
‘Oh, yes. What a find. Isn’t it lovely?’
‘Very smooth.’
‘It’s willow, I think. Maybe birch.’
‘I’m going to see if it floats.’
‘Careful not to go too close to the river’s edge,’ she said, ruffling his hair.
‘I know. I won’t. It’s deep in there.’
‘It certainly is.’
‘That’s where the girl drowned.’
Juliet was taken aback. ‘Darling, no.’
‘Yes, Mummy.’
‘I’m sure that’s not true.’
‘It is. She fell from a boat.’
‘Who did? How do you know?’
‘Birdie told me.’ And then he smiled, his worrying, solemn little-boy smile and, with a quicksilver change of heart, ran off instead to where his brother and sister were fighting over a pair of long sticks, brandishing his own victoriously above his head.
Juliet watched him go.
She caught herself biting a snag from her fingernail.
She didn’t know what was more alarming: his talk of dead girls or the fact that the news had been delivered to him by a feathered friend.
‘He just has a vivid imagination,’ came Alan’s voice in her head.
‘He’s talking to birds,’ Juliet replied beneath her breath.
She rubbed her eyes, her forehead, her temple. Her head was still thumping from the night before, and she’d have given anything to curl up and go back to sleep for a few more hours; a few more days.
With a long, slow sigh, she decided to set the worry aside. There would be time to ruminate later. Tip had caught up to the others and he was laughing now as Red chased him around the field, glancing over his shoulder in raptures of delight while his brother pretended to hunt him. Just like a normal boy. (‘He is a normal boy,’ said Alan.)
Juliet looked at her watch and saw that it was almost eight. Giving her shoulders a light shake, she headed towards the children, who were all waiting for her now by the copse.
When she reached them, she waved her arm, signalling that they should follow her into the trees; and as they continued their gambolling game of swords and knights, Juliet thought again of Alan and the day twelve years before when she’d stormed away from him and followed this path for the first time …
She wasn’t in the centre of the village, that much was clear; she was, instead, standing on the edge of a field with big round hay bales set at intervals across it. Beyond, on the far side of a second field, was a stone barn; further yet she could make out the pitch of a roof. A twin-gabled roof possessing an embarrassment of chimneys.
With a sigh, because the sun was very high and very hot, and the initial fire of her rage had reduced to a pile of smouldering coals that now sat uncomfortably in her belly, Juliet started trudging through the grass towards it.
To think that Alan could so misunderstand her; that he could imagine, even for a second, that she would give up her job. Writing wasn’t something she did; it was who she was. How could he not realise that, the man with whom she’d pledged to spend her life, into whose ear she’d whispered her deepest secrets?
She had made a mistake. It was all so obvious. Marriage was a mistake, and now there was going to be a baby, hers and Alan’s, and it would be small and helpless and probably noisy, not welcome in theatres, and she was going to end up just like her mother after all, a woman whose grand dreams had withered to form a net that contained her.
Perhaps it was not too late to have the whole thing cancelled? It had only been a day. Barely twenty-four little hours. Maybe there was still time, if they went straight back to London this afternoon, to catch up with the official who’d married them and beg back the certificate before he even had time to file it with the register office. It would be as if it had never happened.
Sensing, perhaps, the precariousness of its future, the tiny life inside her sent another wave of nausea: Here I am!
And it was right. It was here. He or she, a little person, was growing and one day in the not too distant future would be born. Being un-married to Alan would not change that fact.
Juliet reached the end of the first field and opened a simple wooden gate to enter the next. She was thirsty; she wished she’d thought to bring the thermos with her.
Halfway across the second field she drew level with the barn. The large double doors were open and as she passed them she glimpsed inside a large farm machine – a thresher; the word came to her – and above, strung from the rafters, a wooden rowing boat with a distinct look of neglect about it.
As Juliet neared the edge of the field, the yellow crop made a dramatic transition to the vibrant, juicy green of an English country garden in summer. The garden was at the rear of the twin-gabled house, and while most of the fence line was concealed by an abundant blackthorn hedge, there was a hinged gate through which Juliet could see a gravel courtyard with a chestnut tree at its centre. Surrounding it were raised beds from which tumbled a profusion of foliage and cheerful flowers.
She skirted along the hedge until she reached the corner of the field and hit a dirt road. Faced with the choice to turn right and head back in the direction from which she’d come, Juliet turned left. The blackthorn hedge continued along the boundary of the garden before abutting a stone wall that became the side of the house. Just past the house was another gate, this one decorative iron with an arched top.
On the other side of the gate, a flagstone path led to the front door of the elegant house, and Juliet stopped to drink in its pleasing shape and details. She had always had an eye for beauty, especially that of an architectural nature. Sometimes, on weekends, she and Alan had taken the train to the country or borrowed a car from a friend and puttered around the winding lanes of the smallest villages. Juliet had a notebook into which she made quick notes about rooflines she liked or paving patterns that charmed her. The hobby had made Alan laugh fondly and call her ‘Lady Tessellated’, because she’d made the mistake of drawing his attention to the tile pattern one too many times.
This house was of lichen-coloured stone and stood two storeys high. The roof – also stone, but a shade or two darker – was deeply satisfying. The slates at the peak were small, gaining in size with each course as they lowered towards the eaves. Sunlight made them appear dappled and shifting like the scales of a slow-moving fish. There was a window in each of the gables, and Juliet pressed lightly against the gate to observe them more closely; for a second she thought she saw movement behind one of them, but there was nothing there, just the shadow of a passing bird.
As she studied the house, the gate pushed open beneath her hands like an invitation.
With barely a hesitation, Juliet stepped down onto the flagstone path and was suffused immediately with a sense of deep contentment. It was a beautiful garden: the proportions, the plants, the feeling of enclosure granted by the surrounding stone wall. The fragrance, too, was heady: a hint of late-blooming jasmine mingled with lavender and honeysuckle.
Birds flitted in the gaps between leaves, and bees and butterflies hovered over flowers in the ample garden beds.
The gate through which she’d come was the side entrance, Juliet saw now, for another larger path led away from the house towards a solid wooden gate set into the stones of the front wall. The wider path was lined on either side by standard roses wearing soft pink petals, and at its end was a large Japanese maple tree that had grown to reach across the front entrance.
The lawn was a deep bright green, and without thinking twice Juliet took off her shoes and stepped forward onto it. The grass was cool and soft between her toes. Heavenly – that was the word.
There was a particularly inviting patch of dappled shade on the grass beneath the Japanese maple tree, and Juliet went to sit down. She was trespassing, of course, but surely no one in possession of a house and garden like this one could be anything but charming.
The sun was warm and the breeze light and Juliet yawned widely. She had been struck by a wave of weariness so intense that she had no choice but to surrender to it. It had been happening a lot lately, at the most inopportune times – ever since she’d found out about the baby.
Using her cardigan as a pillow, she lay on her back, her head turned to face the house. She told herself that she would just take a few minutes to rest, but the sun was delicious on her feet and before she knew it, her eyelids had turned to lead.
When she woke, it took Juliet a moment to remember where she was. She’d slept so soundly: deep and dreamless, in a way she hadn’t for weeks.
She sat up and stretched. And that’s when she noticed that she was no longer alone.
There was a man standing at the corner of the house near the gate. He was older than she was. Not by much, not in terms of years, but she could tell at once that his soul weighed heavy. He had been a soldier; there was no mistaking it. They still wore uniforms, those poor, broken men. They would always be a generation unto themselves.
He was looking at her, his expression serious but not stern.
‘I’m sorry,’ Juliet called out. ‘I didn’t mean to trespass. I lost my way.’
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and then answered with a simple wave of his hand. From the gesture, Juliet understood that all was well; that he didn’t consider her a menace, that he understood the lure of this garden, this house, the magic it cast, and the helplessness a passer-by might feel when called on a hot day by the cool, shady patch of grass beneath the maple tree.
Without the exchange of another word or glance, the man disappeared inside the house, the door closing behind him. Juliet watched him go and then let her gaze fall to her shoes on the grass. She noticed the creep of the shadows since she’d arrived and glanced at her watch. It had been over four hours since she’d left Alan at the jetty.
Juliet slipped on her shoes and laced them up, and then she pushed herself to standing.
She knew she had to leave; she still wasn’t even sure where she was in relation to the village; and yet, it was a wrench. She felt a pain in her chest as if something were physically restraining her. She stood in the middle of the smooth lawn, staring up at the house, and an odd suffusion of light made everything seem so clear.
Love – that’s what she felt, an odd, strong, general love that seemed to flow from everything she saw and heard: the sunlit leaves, the dark hollows beneath the trees, the stones of the house, the birds that called as they flew overhead. And in its glow, she glimpsed momentarily what religious people must surely feel at church: the sense of being bathed in the light of certainty that comes with being known from the inside out, from belonging somewhere and to someone. It was simple. It was luminous, and beautiful, and true.
Alan was waiting for her when she found her way back to The Swan. Juliet hurried up the stairs, two by two, bursting through the door to their room, her face warm with the day’s heat, her day’s revelation.
He was standing by the leadlight window with its crooked glimpse of the river, his pose stiff and self-conscious, as if he’d assumed it only when he heard her coming, a performance of readiness. His expression was wary and it took a moment for Juliet to remember why: the argument on the jetty, the fire of her withdrawal.
‘Before you say anything,’ Alan started, ‘I want you to know that I never meant to suggest—’
Juliet was shaking her head. ‘It doesn’t matter, don’t you see? None of it matters any more.’
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
It was all inside her – the clarity, the illumination – but she couldn’t find the words to explain, only the golden energy that had infused her and that she could no longer contain. She hurried to him, passionate, impatient, seizing his face between her palms and kissing him so that any animosity between them, any lingering guardedness, fell away. When he opened his mouth to speak, surprised, she shook her head and pressed a finger to his lips. There were no words. Words would only spoil things.
This moment.
Now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The garden was more or less as Juliet remembered it. A little wilder, but then Mrs Hammett had mentioned that the woman who’d owned the house when Juliet first stumbled upon it had been forced to hand over the reins in recent years. ‘Ninety years old, she was, when she died last summer.’ The gardener still came once a month, but he was slapdash, and, she’d added with a moue of disdain, an out-of-towner. Mrs Hammett said that Lucy would turn in her grave if she could see how hard he’d pruned back the roses over winter.
Juliet, picturing the perfection of the garden in 1928, asked whether Lucy had still lived in the house back then, but Mrs Hammett said that no, it was around that time she’d started her ‘arrangement’ with the Art Historians’ Association and moved into the little place around the corner. ‘One of the stable cottages in the row. You might have seen them? Fewer stairs, Lucy used to say. Fewer memories, methinks is what she meant.’
‘She had bad memories of Birchwood?’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. She loved that place. You’re too young to understand, I expect, but when one gets old, all memories have a weight, even the happy ones.’
Juliet was perfectly familiar with the heaviness of time, but she hadn’t wished to get into all of that with Mrs Hammett.
The arrangement with the AHA, from what she understood, allowed the house to be granted to students as part of a scholarship scheme. The man who’d handed over the key on the night that they arrived from London, had pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose and said, ‘It’s not the most modern of houses. We usually accommodate individuals, not families, and not for long stretches of time. There’s no electricity, I’m afraid, but – well, the war … I’m sure everything else will be in order –’ And then the bird had launched itself from above the pantry, straight at their heads, and he’d become defensive, and Juliet had thanked him for coming and walked him to the exit, and they’d breathed parallel sighs of relief as he scurried along the path and she closed the door behind him. And then she’d turned around and been met by the faces of three small displaced people waiting for their dinner.
Since then, they’d settled into a good routine. It had been four days now, each one clear and bright, and they’d become used to early mornings in the garden. Bea had taken to climbing the stone wall that ran around the house, setting up in the sunniest spot, legs crossed, to play her recorder, while Red, who was worryingly less deft but not to be outdone, carried his arsenal of carefully selected sticks onto the thinnest part of the wall to practise jousting. Juliet continued to point out that there were perfectly lovely patches of grass on which they could be playing, but her suggestions fell on deaf ears. Tip, thank goodness, was not interested in scaling the heights. He seemed content to sit in whichever concealed patch of undergrowth he favoured that day, lining up the set of toy soldiers that a kind lady at the local Women’s Voluntary Service meeting had sent home with Juliet.
Home. Strange to think how quickly the word had slippe
d into her thoughts about Birchwood. It was one of those words of multiple meanings: the perfunctory description accorded the building in which one currently resides, but also the warm, rounded name used to describe the place from which ultimate comfort and safety are derived. Home was Alan’s voice at the end of a long, hard day; his arms around her; the known quantity of his love for her and hers for him.
God, she missed him.
Along with the children, work proved a welcome distraction. Juliet had met the women of the local WVS group as planned at eleven on Monday. Their meetings were conducted in the village hall, across the green from The Swan, and she’d arrived to the strains of what sounded like a lively dance in progress – music and laughter, chatter and singing. She’d stopped on the stairs and wondered for a moment whether she had the wrong address, but when she poked her head around the door Mrs Hammett had waved and called her over to where the group were sitting on a circle of chairs in the centre of the room. The hall was strung with Union Jack flags, and posters of Churchill puffed and glowered from each wall.
Juliet had arrived with a list of questions, but she’d soon turned over a page in her notebook and started taking shorthand summaries of the free-ranging conversation instead. For all that she’d sat up late the night before planning her articles, her imagination, it turned out, was no match for the reality of these women, whose eccentricities, charm and wisdom made her laugh with them and ache for them. Marjorie Stubbs provided a remarkable insight into the trials and tribulations of backyard pig farming; Milly Macklemore offered a revelatory perspective on the many uses of stockings with holes; and Imogen Stephens had everybody reaching for their handkerchiefs when she told of the recent return of her daughter’s pilot fiancé, who had been missing and presumed dead.
And although the other women evidently knew each other well, many of them mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, friends since childhood, they welcomed Juliet into the group with enormous generosity. They were as intrigued and amused, it seemed, at gaining a Londoner’s approach to life and the strange times in which they found themselves as Juliet was by their experiences. By the time she left the meeting, promising to come back for the next, Juliet had learned enough to keep readers of the newspaper engaged until the year 2000. If the war was going to be won, she had decided as she made the short walk back to Birchwood Manor, it was going to be won in part from rooms like that one, all over the country, where steadfast, ingenious women kept their collective chins up and refused to give in.