The Echo of Twilight

by Judith Kinghorn

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Platform one . . . Newcastle.”

  “Follow me.”

  And so I did: past the bookstall, porters and barrows, through the sea of caps and straw boaters, frothy gowns and foaming skirts, onto the hot, bustling platform.

  “Carriage?”

  “Second.”

  “Best take the one furthest away, don’t you think? More chance of having a compartment to yourself.”

  I was a little disconcerted as he marched ahead of me down the platform with my suitcase, and I had to take small running steps in order to keep up, weaving my way through ticketed perambulators and bicycles, initialed trunks being loaded into the guard’s carriage. We were almost at the opposite end of the train when he looked back at me over his shoulder: “This one?”

  I nodded.

  He gestured to the open carriage door, followed me on board and—sure enough—into an empty compartment. And after he had placed my suitcase on the luggage rack, I thanked him and he smiled. “Stedman,” he said, extending a hand. “Ralph Stedman.”

  I gave him my white-gloved hand. “Ottoline Campbell.”

  His eyes widened. “Ottoline Campbell,” he repeated. “And will you be traveling onward from Newcastle, Miss . . . Mrs. Campbell?”

  “Miss,” I said, and then I paused. “Yes, indeed—I’m on my way to visit my dear old aunt in Northumberland.”

  “Ah, a short visit, then.”

  “Unfortunately so . . . My itinerary is always rather busy.”

  His eyes had an almost fierce life in them. They were neither brown nor green nor blue nor hazel, but tawny, and framed by pale lashes and thick sun-bleached brows.

  “And where to after Northumberland—back to London?”

  I looked away from him, removed my gloves. “Yes, back to dreary old London, but only for a short while, and then to Biarritz.”

  “Biarritz? I was there only a week ago—on my way home from Spain. But when are you planning to travel? I only ask because . . . well, many of our compatriots are heading back to England.”

  “Really?”

  “I think you might be well advised to delay your trip, wait a while . . . see how the current crisis plays out.”

  “Yes, possibly,” I said, glancing away again, vague and unsure what else to say.

  “You know, your name’s very familiar. Have we perhaps met before—in Biarritz?”

  I pondered this for only a very short time before shaking my head. “No. I don’t believe so.”

  “Paris?”

  I glanced up at the ceiling and blinked. “I think I’d remember if we’d met in Paris, Mr. Stedman.”

  “Quite so—how can one ever forget those encountered there?”

  I laughed. He stared.

  “You aren’t by any chance related to Lord Hector Campbell, are you?” he asked.

  I tapped a finger on my chin, shook my head again. “No . . . I’m afraid that name doesn’t ring any bells at all.”

  Conflicted, panicking, I wondered if he intended to take a seat in that compartment, if I’d have to be Ottoline and make conversation with him about Biarritz, compatriots and crises all the way to Newcastle. I said, “Will you be traveling on this train, Mr. Stedman?”

  He nodded: “All the way to Edinburgh. Third class.”

  My heart sank. For the first time in my life and thanks to the woman whose name I had borrowed, I was traveling in second. Now I wished I were plain Pearl Gibson and in third, with Ralph Stedman.

  He picked up his bag. “I shall leave you in peace now, Miss Campbell, but it’s been a pleasure . . . A bientôt.”

  I couldn’t recall what this meant, but it sounded French and so I said, “Bon voyage, Mr. Stedman.”

  The light seemed to dim a little as the door slid closed, and exhausted from the encounter and yet strangely elated at the same time, I took my seat. My habit of assuming another identity when traveling had got me into scrapes before, and I’d vowed never to do it again after traveling to Dorset as Tess Durbeyfield. I’d not long finished reading the novel, was still thinking of it and her, and simply didn’t imagine anyone—least of all the two old matrons I’d sat next to—would think anything. But whispered repetitions of that name had rippled through the warm carriage like a soft summer breeze. And amidst intermittent sniggering, I’d stepped down from the train long before we ever reached Bournemouth—then had to wait more than an hour for another.

  It wasn’t unusual for girls like me—girls in service—to put on airs and graces, to adopt the habits and mannerisms of those commonly known as their betters. I’d known quite a few who were breathtakingly good impersonators, able to mimic the style, accent and subtle nuances of the ladies of the house so that if you didn’t know better, you’d never know it wasn’t them. And Mrs. B.’s instruction had certainly paid off. Even she said my vowels were quite perfect, that I could easily be mistaken for a real young lady. And I was thinking on this, and halfheartedly practicing my A, E, I, O, U sounds, when the train began to move and the door opened. And I quickly lowered my feet.

  “I say, don’t mind if I join you?”

  The gentleman sat down, removed his hat, placed a monocle up against one eye and shook open his newspaper. There was a “Grand Summer Sale” at Peter Robinson, and carpets were reduced at Waring and Gillow.

  “News, eh? Damned worrying business, what?”

  “Yes, indeed . . . I suppose we’ll just have to see how the current crisis plays out,” I said, smiling at factories and chimneys, all sunlit brick and corrugated metal.

  “Plays out?” The man lowered his paper and leaned forward. “My dear girl, we’re not talking about a piano concerto . . . What we’re confronted with is a potential catastrophe!”

  He shook his head and disappeared behind his newspaper once more, and I wished he hadn’t come into that—my—compartment with his bad breath and talk of catastrophes. And as the train picked up speed and line upon line of neat little houses drifted by, and hoping I wouldn’t have to engage in any further conversation with the man, I settled back and closed my eyes . . .

  I am wearing rouge and my lips are painted. I see his face in the tall glass opposite me, and I turn as he says, “Darling.”

  “Ralph!”

  He has walked all the way from Spain for our rendezvous in this bar at Biarritz, and his mouth is parched and dry when we kiss.

  “I need to be with you alone,” he murmurs . . .

  I was still in Mr. Stedman’s arms—and trying to be virtuous—when Mr. Catastrophe released a loud snort. His head fell forward; his monocle slipped; his newspaper slid to the floor. And outside, the tidy green squares of England flew by.

  Chapter Four

  What immediately struck me about Northumberland was the quality of the light, the vastness of the sky. It stretched all the way down to the earth—like a great canopy, pegged and anchored into the empty land. That peculiar luminosity left little room for shadows and Northumberland was, I decided there and then, the brightest county I had so far visited, though I had heard tell from Mrs. B. and others of the shimmering light and frequent rainbows to be witnessed in the Lake District, and of the long summer twilights in Scotland.

  As instructed, I had taken a branch line train from Newcastle northward, catching intermittent glimpses of a steel gray sea as we rattled between dismal pit villages. But after an hour or so, the landscape became softer, more familiar, a patchwork of small fields amidst rolling moor and gorse, the sea bluer against those hues of green and gold. And I was thinking, I have traveled the length of England; I am at the very top of it, when the little train began to slow and I saw the sunlit ruins of a castle and knew I had reached my destination: Warkworth.

  I stepped down onto the platform of a grand little station in the middle of nowhere. And though Lady Ottoline had said someone w
ould be waiting for me, the place was quite deserted but for an oily-haired young man in uniform. He looked me up and down, and up and down again, smiling. He asked me where I was headed, told me Birling Hall wasn’t far, a twenty-minute walk at the most, and offered me directions. “You can leave that here,” he said in a strange guttural accent, nodding to my suitcase. “I’ll look after it till one of ’em comes to fetch it, eh?” he added, staring at my chest.

  And so I set off into the dusty afternoon, serenaded by an incessant hum from hedgerows and squawks from seagulls circling above the adjacent fields. The roadside verges were thick with nettles and thistles, and wildflowers I was able to name: cow parsley, foxglove, daisy and bloody cranesbill. Above them, the air was filled with small orange-tipped butterflies. And stopping every few yards to put down my case, I cursed my books, for my arms ached from their weight.

  I had been walking for longer than twenty minutes when I sat down on my case to empty my shoes of grit. Strands of hair stuck to my forehead and neck. My once white gloves were now gray, my blouse damp beneath my woolen jacket. And ahead of me the road stretched on and on, a line of molten silver. But in the distance, nestled among lambent trees and like a mirage, I saw the blurred shape of a building—part of a stone facade, rooftops and chimneys.

  Each house I’d worked at had been different. Mrs. B.’s—a brick-built Victorian villa with far-reaching sea views—was without doubt the most modest, but also the warmest. Perhaps because, as Mrs. B. claimed, it caught the tail end of the Gulf Stream, or perhaps because of the contrast to the house I was at before. That place, the one in Hampshire, had been falling down about our ears—without any electricity or bathrooms, and riddled with damp. In winter, there was as much ice on the inside of the windows as on the outside. Birling Hall, I saw as I approached, was easily as big as the place I’d worked at in Kent, and grew bigger and bigger as I neared it.

  The wrought-iron gates were open, and I stood for a moment beneath the tall beeches that lined the driveway. I was feeling light-headed and my mouth was parched. One of my heels was blistered and painful, and I longed to take off my shoes. Across the striped lawns, the pampas grass waved its plumes, and a horse-drawn delivery wagon moved in and out of shadows down another driveway. And beyond that, in the distance, and framed by two great Wellingtonia trees, I saw a thin steel line of sea.

  I walked on toward the house. Its stone was weather-beaten and dark, and though many of the windows were open—some with blinds half drawn down—there were no signs of life within. But anyone might have been watching me, I knew, so I held myself tall and tried not to limp as I approached the carriage sweep, and then walked past a highly polished motorcar to the stone-pillared entrance. I stood firmly in the center of the large coconut mat and pulled on the bell. An inner door opened, and an austere-looking butler in the usual tailcoat and striped trousers appeared. I peeled my tongue from the roof of my mouth. “Poll Gimsen,” he said.

  Then, happily, luckily, Lady Ottoline appeared. “Oh, my dear . . . We thought you were arriving on the four twenty-eight.”

  She took me by the hand, led me into the darkened hallway to a velvet-upholstered chair and asked me to take a seat. Someone handed me a glass of water, and Lady Ottoline stood back and watched as I gulped it down and the butler walked off with my suitcase. The house was entirely quiet apart from the loud ticking of a grandfather clock beneath the staircase where a bronze gong hung on a sturdy mahogany stand. On a circular table in front of me were carefully arranged copies of the Times, the Morning Post, the Illustrated London News, Country Life and the Connoisseur, and a Bradshaw’s Railway Timetable and the Postal Guide.

  “I’m so sorry, so terribly sorry you’ve had to walk from the station. It’s not awfully far, but with a suitcase—and on a day like this . . . well, I can only apologize,” said Lady Ottoline.

  I can’t rightly remember anyone having apologized to me before, about anything, ever, and I wasn’t sure what to say. Then I heard the familiar clip-clap of paws on the marble-tiled floor and saw a little russet-colored dog with long floppy ears and bulging brown eyes. It growled at me, and I thought, Here we go. Another one.

  “Lollipop! Really . . . We’ll have none of that, thank you.” Lady Ottoline scooped up the dog and kissed it. “This is my Lola, though I call her Lolly or Lollipop for short,” she said, confusingly. “She’s getting rather old—like her mummy,” and she proceeded to talk to the dog as though it were a baby. “Lolly’s very excited that you’re here, aren’t you, darling? Yes . . . yes, you are. And in a short while we’re going to show Miss Gibson round the house, aren’t we? Yes, we are.” She glanced over at me. “Are you up to a little tour of the house?”

  “Oh yes, I’m fine now, Your Ladyship.” But as I rose to my feet, I winced with the pain from my heel—and she winced, too. “Just a blister,” I said.

  She gasped. “You must take off your shoes.”

  So in my stocking feet I followed that sweet scent of gardenia across cool marble and down endless carpeted corridors. And as Lady Ottoline opened the doors of big bright rooms, she gestured and turned to me. “The green drawing room, which we only ever use in winter . . . The library, of course . . . My sitting room, though I’m still not sure about this wallpaper . . . The morning room . . . The billiard room . . . The smoking room . . .” On and on it went.

  I had never been in a house so opulently furnished, and it seemed to me almost too beautiful for anyone to actually live in. Each room had its own distinct character, and the whole—the gold and bronze patterned wallpapers, the sumptuous velvets and silk brocades, the polished mahogany and gilt, tasseled lamp shades, tapestries and rugs, glinting paperweights and crystal vases filled with fresh flowers—was like a work of art, a sensory feast of color and light, soft textures and scents.

  “His Lordship’s study . . . ,” said Lady Ottoline, opening yet another door, this time onto a somber room with oak paneling, heavy dark gold curtains and a deep red and purple Turkey rug. Then, “Yes, dear, Miss Gibson has arrived—and a little earlier than we’d anticipated . . . We’re doing the grand tour.”

  The gentleman removed his spectacles, rose to his feet and walked over to us. Distinguished-looking, he was tall and lean, with a prominent forehead, long nose and receding hairline; the tips of his mustache were beautifully waxed, and his thinning silver hair was brushed flat against his scalp and parted in a line down the center. He glanced down at my feet as he shook my hand.

  “Blisters,” said Ottoline, without offering any explanation as to how or why.

  The gentleman grimaced. “Bad luck. Damned painful things.”

  Ottoline handed him the dog. “I’m afraid my husband’s terribly caught up with events on the Continent,” she whispered, closing the door behind us. “Isn’t it all a horrendous worry?”

  “A potential catastrophe, Your Ladyship.”

  Upstairs, on the main landing, a set of double doors led into Her Ladyship’s suite of rooms: a bedroom of palatial proportion with tall south-facing windows overlooking the gardens, and draped in voluminous chintz, which matched the walls and bedcovers; a dressing room lined with bespoke cupboards and drawers; a large modern bathroom, its white china, glass and gray marble gleaming in the sunshine flooding in through yet another tall south-facing window.

  “I shall talk you through my wardrobe, routine and all of that sort of thing tomorrow,” said Lady Ottoline as we stepped back onto the landing and moved on.

  We raced along more passageways. “Guest room, guest room . . . guest room . . . guest room . . . ,” said Her Ladyship, waving a hand as we passed doors she did not bother to open. Then, up a familiar narrow staircase to an equally familiar long corridor, often called the Virgin’s Wing, where the female servants’ bedrooms were situated.

  “You’re here with the other girls, but you have the nicest room, I think. And, of course, you won’t be sharing.”

 
The room was unlike any I’d ever had, and at first I couldn’t believe it was for me. Like Her Ladyship’s room, it was south facing. The sun streamed in onto a gold and green patterned carpet—a fitted carpet, and one without any stains or holes. And there were curtains—proper curtains—hanging at the window, and a washbasin with a looking glass above it in the corner, and an upholstered armchair, and a bookcase, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a big brass bed with a pile of starched white linen pillows. All for me? All for me, I kept thinking, and for a moment I thought I might cry.

  “I do hope you like it,” said Her Ladyship, moving over to the open window. “It’s been freshened up, painted—and these curtains are new,” she added, running the back of her hand down the fabric. “Not everyone’s partial to yellow, but I thought it suited you.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. Like you, I thought.

  I watched her as she stared out of the window, and it was then, I think, in her silent distraction, and as her smile fell away, that I first sensed some ineffable sadness about her. And because of that sadness and because no one had ever before chosen a color for me, I said, “In fact, yellow happens to be my favorite color, Your Ladyship.”

  She turned to me. “Well, that is a good sign, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “I shall leave you to unpack now. Take what’s left of today to settle in and find your bearings—and do bathe those feet. Mr. Watts will be along presently. He’ll help you with anything you need and introduce you to the others. He’s been with us a long time . . . is an exceptionally good butler, and, despite appearances, rather a dear man.” She paused at the door. “Oh, I imagine you’re in need of some refreshment. I’ll have something brought up to you.”

  Minutes later, I sat down at the small table beneath my window. I unfolded the starched linen napkin, surveyed the silver cake stand in front of me piled high with dainty sandwiches, scones and cakes. I poured the fragrant Darjeeling into the porcelain china cup and stared out across the gardens to the cornfields. What would Kitty make of me now? I wondered.