Chapter 16 Say You’ll Come Dancing #2
“London.” A change came over her then, swift as a storm cloud and just as dark. She reached out, gripping my arm with surprising strength, and I saw something I hadn’t before: spider-web scars, silvered with age, scribbled along her pale wrists. “Take me with you.”
“I … I can’t do that.”
“But it’s the only way. We’ll go and find Tom. He might be there, up in his little flat, sitting by the windowsill …”
“Juniper—”
“You said you’d help me.” Her voice was tight, hateful. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t—”
“You’re supposed to be my friend; you said you’d help me. Why didn’t you come?”
“Juniper, I think you’re confusing me—”
“Oh, Meredith,” she whispered, her breath smoky and ancient. “I’ve done a terrible, terrible thing.”
Meredith. My stomach turned like a rubber glove pulled inside out too fast.
Hurried footsteps and the dog appeared, followed closely by Saffy.
“Juniper! Oh, June, there you are.” Her voice was drenched with relief as she reached her sister’s side.
She wrapped Juniper in a gentle embrace, drawing back at length to scan her face.
“You mustn’t run off like that. I’ve been so worried; I looked everywhere.
I didn’t know where you’d got to, my little love. ”
Juniper was shaking; I expect I was too. Meredith … The word rang in my ears, sharp and insistent as a mosquito drone. I told myself it was nothing, a coincidence, the meaningless ravings of a sad, mad old woman, but I’m not a good liar and I had no chance of fooling myself.
As Saffy brushed stray hair from Juniper’s forehead, Percy arrived.
She stopped abruptly, leaning on her cane for support as she surveyed the scene.
The twins exchanged a glance, similar to the one I’d witnessed earlier in the yellow parlor that had so perplexed me: this time, however, it was Saffy who broke away first. She’d managed, somehow, to penetrate the knot of Juniper’s arms and was holding her little sister’s hand tightly in her own.
“Thank you for staying with her,” she said to me, voice quavering. “It was kind of you, Edith—”
“E-dith,” Juniper echoed, but she didn’t look my way.
“—she gets confused and wanders sometimes. We watch her closely, but …” Saffy shook her head shortly, the gesture communicating the impossibility of living one’s life for another.
I nodded, unable to find the right words to reply.
Meredith. My mother’s name. My thoughts, hundreds of them, swarmed at once against the current of time, picking over the past few months for meaning, until finally they arrived en masse at my parents’ home.
A chilly afternoon in February, an uncooked chicken, the arrival of a letter that made Mum cry.
“E-dith,” said Juniper again. “E-dith, E-dith …”
“Yes, darling,” said Saffy, “that’s Edith, isn’t it? She’s come to visit.”
I knew then what I’d suspected all along.
Mum had been lying when she told me Juniper’s message was little more than a greeting, just as she’d lied about our visit to Milderhurst. But why?
What had happened between Mum and Juniper Blythe?
If Juniper was to be believed, Mum had made a promise that she’d failed to keep; something to do with Juniper’s fiancé, with Thomas Cavill.
If that was the case, and if the truth really was as dreadful as Juniper suggested, the letter might have been an accusation.
Was that it? Was it suppressed guilt that had made my mother cry?
For the first time since I’d arrived at Milderhurst I longed to be free of the house and its old sorrow, to see the sun and feel the wind on my face and smell something other than rancid mud and mothballs. To be alone with this new puzzle, so that I might begin to unpick it.
“I hope she didn’t offend you …” Saffy was still speaking; I could hear her through my own reeling thoughts as though she was far away, on the other side of a thick and heavy door. “Whatever she said, she didn’t mean it. She says things sometimes, funny things, meaningless things …”
Her voice tapered off but the silence left behind it was unsettled.
She was watching me, unspoken sentiments in her eyes, and I realized that it wasn’t concern alone that weighted her features.
There was something else hiding in her face, particularly when she glanced again at Percy.
Fear, I realized. They were frightened, both of them.
I looked at Juniper, hiding behind her own crossed arms. Did I imagine she was standing especially still, listening carefully, waiting to see how I’d answer, what I’d tell them?
I braved a smile, hoping against hope that it might pass for casual. “She didn’t say anything,” I said, then shrugged my shoulders for good measure. “I was just admiring her pretty dress.”
The surrounding air seemed to shift with the force of the twins’ relief.
Juniper’s profile registered no change, and I was left with a strange, creeping sensation, the vague awareness that I’d somehow made a mistake.
That I ought to have been honest, to have told the twins all that Juniper had said, the cause of her upset.
But having failed thus far to mention my mum and her evacuation, I wasn’t sure that I could find the necessary words—
“Marilyn Bird has arrived,” said Percy bluntly.
“Oh, but things do have a habit of happening all at once,” said Saffy.
“She’s come to drive you back to the farmhouse. You’re due in London, she says.”
“Yes,” I said. Thank God.
“Such a shame,” said Saffy. Through sterling effort and, I suppose, many years of practice, she managed to sound completely normal. “We had hoped to offer you tea. We have so few visitors.”
“Next time,” said Percy.
“Yes,” Saffy agreed. “Next time.”
It seemed unlikely, to say the least. “Thank you again, for the tour …”
And as Percy led me back along a mysterious route, to Mrs. Bird and the promise of normality, Saffy and Juniper retreated in the opposite direction, their voices skirting back along the cold stones.
“I’m sorry, Saffy, I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. I just … I forgot …” The words broke then into sobs. A weeping so wretched I wanted to slam my hands against my ears.
“Come along now, dearest, there’s no need for all that.”
“But I’ve done a terrible thing, Saffy. A terrible, terrible thing.”
“Nonsense, little dear, put it out of your mind. Let’s have our tea, shall we?
” The patience, the kindness in Saffy’s voice made a small chamber within my chest clench tight.
I think that’s when I first grasped the interminable length of time that she and Percy had been making such reassurances, wiping the confusion from their younger sister’s aging brow with the same judicious care a parent gives their child, but without the promise that the burden would someday ease.
“We’ll get you back into something sensible, and then we’ll all have tea.
You and Percy and I. Things always look better after a cup of nice, strong tea, don’t they? ”
MRS. BIRD was waiting beneath the domed ceiling at the entrance to the castle, puffed up with apologies. She fawned on Percy Blythe, grimacing dramatically as she lambasted the poor unwitting villagers who’d held her up.
“It is of no matter, Mrs. Bird,” said Percy in the same imperious tone a Victorian nanny might use to address a tiresome charge. “I enjoyed leading the tour myself.”
“Well of course you did. For old times’ sake. It must be lovely for you to—”
“Indeed.”
“Such a shame that the tours were ended. Understandable, of course, and it’s a credit to you and Miss Saffy that you managed to keep them going for so long, especially with so much else on your—”
“Quite.” Percy Blythe straightened and I became aware suddenly that she didn’t like Mrs. Bird. “Now if you’ll both excuse me.” She bowed her head towards the open door, through which the outside world seemed a brighter, noisier, faster place than when I’d left it.
“Thank you,” I said before she could disappear, “for showing me your beautiful home.”
She eyed me a moment longer than seemed necessary, then retreated along the corridor, cane beating softly beside her. After a few paces she stopped and turned, barely visible in the cloaking dim. “It was beautiful, you know. Once upon a time. Before.”