by Kate Morton
And so, in their spirit, Juliet had spent much of the past three days at her typewriter beneath the window in her bedroom. For all that it was not the most comfortable place to work – the dressing table upon which she’d positioned her typewriter was pretty, but not ideal when one had legs to accommodate – Juliet liked it very much. Tendrils of fragrant honeysuckle and clematis reached through the open window to clutch at the curtain fastenings, and the view over the orchard towards the village, in particular the churchyard at the end of the lane, was restorative. The stone church was very old and the grounds around it, though small, were beautiful: lots of tumbling ivy and mossy headstones. Juliet hadn’t had a chance yet to visit, but it was on her list of things to do.
Sometimes, when the day was simply too glorious to spend indoors, Juliet took her notebook into the garden. There she worked in the shade, lying on her stomach with her head resting on her palm as she alternated between scribbling notes and chewing on her pencil, all the while carrying out secret observations of the children. They seemed to be adjusting well enough: there was laughter and playing, their appetites were good, they fought and wrestled and thumped and drove her slightly mad as they always had.
Juliet was determined to remain strong for them. She was the pilot of her family’s little plane, and no matter the indecision she felt, the questions that suffocated her when she turned off the lamp at night and lay awake in the slow-passing dark, the worry that she would make the wrong choice and in so doing ruin them, it was her responsibility to make them feel safe and secure the next day. The responsibility was that much heavier without Alan. It wasn’t easy being the only grown-up.
Most of the time she managed to keep a cheerful face on things, but there had been that one unfortunate moment on Wednesday evening. She had thought the children were all outside in the meadow behind the back garden and had been sitting at her desk trying to finish the article for Mr Tallisker before dinner. Since the meeting on Monday she’d become convinced of her editor’s wisdom: the diverse and fascinating ladies of the Birchwood and Lechlade branches of the WVS had provided invaluable inspiration and Juliet was determined to do them justice.
She’d been writing about Imogen Stephens’s daughter, describing the moment in which the young woman glanced through the kitchen window and saw that the man she loved, whom she’d been told to give up for dead, was walking up the garden path towards her. Juliet’s fingers had been tapping faster than the hammers of the typewriter could manage; she had been right there with her subject as she threw off her apron and ran to the door, as she warned herself not to believe her eyes, as she hesitated, unwilling to prove herself wrong, and then heard the key turn in the lock. And as Imogen’s daughter fell into her lover’s arms, Juliet’s own heart had overwhelmed her: the months of worry and waiting, her weariness and all the change; just for a minute she had let down her defences.
‘Mum?’ The voice had come from behind her, and then closer, ‘Mummy? Are you crying?’
Juliet, her elbows on her dressing table, her face in her hands, had frozen in mid-sob. She’d caught her breath as quietly as she could and said, ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘What are you doing then?’
‘Thinking, of course. Why? How do you do it?’ And then she’d turned around and smiled and tossed a pencil lightly at her daughter, and said, ‘Funny Bear! Have you ever known me to cry?’
And then there was Tip. He was a concern, but then he always had been. Juliet was still trying to decide whether there was anything new to worry about. She just loved him so much – not more than the others, but differently. And he had been taking himself off alone quite often. (‘Great,’ said the Alan in her mind. ‘He’s self-directed. Best way to be. He’s creative, you’ll see, he’ll be an artist when he grows up.’) But along with the games that he was playing, lining up the little soldiers and then knocking them down again, taking them on secret missions in the garden and the quiet pockets of the house, Juliet was pretty sure she’d seen him talking when there was no one else around. She’d scoured the trees for birds, but he seemed to do the same thing inside, too. There was a warm spot on the stairs that he appeared to like especially, and once or twice Juliet had caught herself lurking around the corner, watching.
One day, when he was kneeling beneath an apple tree in the back garden, she’d crept up softly and sat beside him. ‘Who are you talking to?’ she’d said, with an attempt at ease that sounded strained even to her own ears.
‘Birdie.’
Juliet glanced up at the leaves. ‘Is the birdie up there, love?’
Tip was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.
‘Or has it flown away already? Maybe Mummy scared it?’
‘Birdie doesn’t fly.’
‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘She walks, just like you and me.’
‘I see.’ A ground-bound bird. They existed. Sort of. ‘Does she sing, too?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And where did you meet this Birdie? Was she in a tree?’
Tip frowned slightly at his soldiers as if making sense of the question, and then shrugged towards the house.
‘Inside the house?’
He nodded without shifting his attention.
‘What was she doing there?’
‘She lives there. And in the garden sometimes.’
‘I see.’
He looked up sharply. ‘Can you? Can you see her, Mummy?’
Juliet hadn’t known how to answer. She’d considered agreeing with him that, yes, she too could see his imaginary friend; but while she was willing to accept that he’d invented a companion to provide comfort at a time of great change, feeding the delusion seemed to cross a line. ‘No, darling,’ she said. ‘Birdie is your friend, not Mummy’s.’
‘She likes you, though, Mummy. She told me so.’
Juliet’s heart hurt. ‘That’s lovely, darling. I’m glad.’
‘She wants to help you. She said that I should help you.’
Juliet could resist no longer. She took the little man in her arms and hugged him tight, aware of his frail limbs within her embrace, how small and warm he was, how far he had to go in life and how dependent he was on her – her, for God’s sake, poor lad.
‘Are you crying, Mummy?’
Damn it! Again! ‘No, darling.’
‘I can feel you shaking.’
‘You’re right. But they’re not sad tears. I’m a very lucky mummy to have a little boy like you.’
Later that night, when the children were fast asleep, their faces returned by slumber to younger, poutier versions of themselves, Juliet had slipped out into the cooling air and taken a walk along the river, stopping again at the jetty so she could sit for a time and look back at the house.
She’d poured a glass of whisky and swallowed it straight.
She could still remember the rage she’d felt that day in 1928 when she told Alan that she was pregnant.
But what she’d thought then had been fury at Alan’s failure to understand her, she perceived now had not been fury at all, but fear. A sudden, emptying sense of aloneness that had felt an awful lot like childish abandonment. Which probably explained why she’d behaved like a child, stropping off like that.
Oh, to go back and do it all again, to live it again. That day. The next. The one after. The arrival of Bea in their lives, and then Red, and then Tip. All three growing up and away from her now.
Juliet topped up her drink. There was no going back. Time only moved in one direction. And it didn’t stop. It never stopped moving, not even to let a person think. The only way back was in one’s memories.
When she’d returned to their room at The Swan that day, after they’d kissed and made up, the two of them had lain together on the little bed with its pretty iron rails, Alan’s hands either side of her face, his eyes searching hers, and he’d promised solemnly never again to insult her by suggesting that she work less.
And Juliet, with a kiss to the tip of h
is nose, had promised never again to stop him from giving up acting if he wished to sell shoes instead.
First thing Friday morning, Juliet read through her ‘Letters from the Laneway’ article for a final time and then wired it to Mr Tallisker. She’d given the piece a provisional title: ‘Women’s War Rooms: or, An Afternoon with the Ministry of Defence’ and crossed her fingers that her editor would agree to keep it.
Pleased with how the article had turned out, Juliet decided to take a morning’s break from her typewriter and, at the insistence of the older children, while Tip was playing with his soldiers in the garden, went with them to the barn in the back field. There was something they were desperate to show her.
‘Look! It’s a boat.’
‘Well, well,’ said Juliet, with a laugh.
She explained to the children that she’d glimpsed a little wooden rowing boat strung from those very rafters twelve years before.
‘The same one?’
‘I should think so.’
Red, who had already scurried up the loft ladder, was hanging from it now by one arm in a state of alarming excitement. ‘Can we get it down, Mummy? Say we can, please!’
‘Careful, Red.’
‘We know how to row,’ said Bea. ‘And besides, the river’s not too deep here.’
Tip came to mind, tales of drowned girls; dangers.
‘Please, Mummy, please!’
‘Red,’ said Juliet sharply. ‘You’ll fall and end up in plaster and that will be the summer over for you.’
Naturally he didn’t heed her warning but started bouncing on the ladder’s rung.
‘Get down, Red,’ said Bea with a scowl of reproof. ‘How is Mummy supposed to look if you’re blocking the ladder.’
As Red scurried back to the ground, Juliet considered the boat from below. Alan was just behind her shoulder, his voice soft in her ear, reminding her that cosseting them would only lead to troubles down the line: ‘You’ll turn them into awful frightened people if you’re too protective, and then what will we do? We’ll be stuck with them! Dithering and worrying and spoiling our fun for the rest of our lives.’
‘Well,’ said Juliet, at length, ‘I suppose if we can untie it, and if it’s seaworthy, there’s no reason that the two of you shouldn’t carry it down to the river.’
Great elation ensued, Red leaping against Bea’s fine frame, foisting a hug on her, as Juliet took his place on the ladder. The boat, she discovered, was suspended via a system of ropes and pulleys which, though a bit rusted, still did the job. She released the rope from the hook on the rafter where it was fastened, let its end slip free and drop, and then followed it to the ground, where she began winching the boat down.
Juliet had been quietly confident, having glimpsed the boat twelve years before, that it would prove too derelict for use; but, although it was filled with spider webs and a thick cloak of dust, a careful inspection of the base yielded nothing of concern. The boat was bone-dry, no sign of wood-rot; it appeared that someone, at some point, had done some careful repair work.
Juliet was sweeping her fingertips along a join where the wooden edge met the base when something caught her eye. It glinted in the beam of sunlight.
‘Well, Mummy?’ Red was tugging at her shirt. ‘Can we take it down to the river? Can we, please?’
It was stuck down deep within the groove between pieces of timber, but Juliet managed to wedge it clear.
‘What is it?’ said Bea, standing on tiptoes to peer over Juliet’s shoulder.
‘A coin. An old coin. A tuppence, I think.’
‘Valuable?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’ She rubbed the surface with her thumb. ‘But pretty, isn’t it?’
‘Who cares?’ Red was leaping from foot to foot. ‘Can we launch her, Mummy? Can we?’
Suppressing all residual maternal worries and ‘what-if’s, Juliet awarded the little vessel a clean bill of health and helped them carry it as far as the field’s edge before standing back to watch as they teetered, one on either side of the awkward load, into the distance.
Tip was still in the front garden when Juliet returned. Sunshine filtered through gaps between the leaves of the maple tree, finding flecks of silver and gold in his soft, straight hair. He had the wooden soldiers out again and was playing an elaborate game, a mighty collection of sticks, stones, feathers and assorted items of interest arranged into a circular pattern.
He was chattering away, she noticed, and as she drew closer he laughed. The bell tinkle made the day, the sun – the future – brighter, until the moment he tilted his head and it became clear that he was listening to something Juliet couldn’t hear. From light to shadow in an instant.
‘Something funny, Tippy Toes?’ she said, coming to sit beside him.
He nodded and picked up one of his feathers, twisting it back and forth between his fingertips.
Juliet swept a piece of dried leaf from his knee. ‘Tell me – I love jokes.’
‘It wasn’t a joke.’
‘No?’
‘It was just Birdie.’
Juliet had been expecting this; nonetheless her stomach tightened.
He continued, ‘She makes me laugh.’
Juliet kept her sigh to herself and said, ‘Well now, that’s good, Tippy. If you’re going to spend time with people, it’s important to choose people who can make you laugh.’
‘Does Daddy make you laugh, Mummy?’
‘More than anyone. Except perhaps you three.’
‘Birdie says—’ He stopped short.
‘What is it, Tippy? What does she say?’
He shook his head, focusing his attention on the stone he was turning over in his lap.
Juliet tried another tack. ‘Is Birdie with us now, Tip?’
A nod.
‘Right here? Sitting on the ground?’
Another nod.
‘What does she look like?’
‘She has long hair.’
‘Does she?’
He lifted his gaze slightly to look straight ahead of him. ‘It’s red. Her dress is long, too.’
Juliet followed his glance and sat up straighter, forcing a broad smile onto her face. ‘Hello there, Birdie,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to meet you at last. I’m Juliet, Tip’s mummy, and I’ve been meaning to thank you. Tippy told me that you said he should help me, and I just wanted to let you know what a good boy he’s been. Helping with the washing-up at night, folding clothes with me when the other two are behaving like wild things. I really couldn’t be prouder.’
Tip’s little hand crept into hers and Juliet gave it a squeeze.
‘Being a parent’s a breeze,’ came Alan’s cheerful voice on the wind, ‘no more difficult than flying a plane with a blindfold on and holes in your wings.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
At six o’clock on Friday evening, the four of them set off together, down the lane towards the village. For children wearing the hand-me-downs of strangers, they had scrubbed up pretty well and, by six-thirty, having stopped to admire a number of long-lashed cows in a field along the way, and to allow Tip to collect a couple of stones that had caught his attention, they crossed the triangular green to arrive at The Swan.
Mrs Hammett had said to come in through the main entrance, but to turn right instead of left, into the dining room rather than the pub.
She was already there, drinking cocktails with a tall woman of around fifty years old who was wearing the most wonderful tortoise-shell-framed glasses that Juliet had ever seen. They both turned when Juliet and the children burst through the door, and Mrs Hammett said, ‘Welcome, all! Come on in, I’m so glad you could make it.’
‘Sorry we’re late.’ Juliet nodded fondly in Tip’s direction. ‘There were important stones to be gathered along the way.’
The woman with the glasses said, ‘A boy after my own heart,’ her accent betraying a hint of America.
The children stood relatively still to deliver the introductions Juliet had schoole
d them in along the walk, and then she ushered them back out to the entrance hall, where a pair of leather armchairs seemed to offer the perfect repository while they waited for dinner to be served.
‘Mrs Wright,’ said Mrs Hammett, when Juliet returned, ‘this is Dr Lovegrove. Dr Lovegrove is staying with us in the accommodations upstairs – another return visitor to the village. 1940 must be the year for it!’
Dr Lovegrove held out a hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you,’ she said, ‘and please, call me Ada.’
‘Thank you, Ada. And I’m Juliet.’
‘Mrs Hammett has just been telling me that you and your children have moved into Birchwood Manor?’
‘We arrived on Sunday evening.’
‘I went to school in that house, many years ago.’
‘I had heard it was a school, once upon a time.’
‘Once upon a time indeed. It closed decades ago, soon after I left. It was one of the last bastions of the old ideas about girls and their education. Plenty of sewing, singing, and, as I remember it, quite a lot of balancing books on our heads when we should have been reading them.’
‘Now, now,’ said Mrs Hammett. ‘Lucy did her best. And it doesn’t seem to have done you any harm, Doctor.’
Ada laughed. ‘That’s true. And you’re right about Lucy. I had so hoped to see her again.’
‘Such a shame.’
‘I only have myself to blame. I left it too long. Age catches up with us all, even Lucy, it would seem. In a funny way, I have the school at Birchwood, for all its oddities, to thank for the direction of my adult life. I’m an archaeologist,’ she explained to Juliet. ‘A professor at New York University. But before all that I was a very keen member of the Natural History Society at Miss Radcliffe’s school. Lucy – Miss Radcliffe – was a real enthusiast. I’ve met professors with a less keen instinct: she’d amassed a wonderful collection of fossils and finds. Her specimen room was a veritable trove. It was only small – but then, of course, you’ll know which one I mean, at the top of the stairs on the first floor.’