Chapter Three
THREE
PERCY coasted down the slope of the Tenterden Road, across the rattle of stones at the base of the driveway, and jumped off her bicycle.
“Home again, home again, jiggety jig,” she recited under her breath, gravel crunching beneath her boots.
Nanny had taught them the rhyme when they were very small, decades ago now, yet it always came to mind when she crossed from the road onto the driveway.
Some tunes, some chains of words were like that; they lodged and refused to dislodge no matter how a person might wish it.
Not that Percy cared to rid herself of “Jiggety Jig.” Dear Nanny with her tiny, pink hands, her certainty in all things, the clickety needles as she sat by the attic fire at night, knitting them to sleep.
How they’d wept when she celebrated her ninetieth birthday by retiring to live with a great-niece in Cornwall.
Saffy had gone so far as to threaten a death plummet from the attic window in protest but, alas, the pronouncement had been dulled by previous deployment and Nanny was not swayed.
Even though she was already late, Percy walked rather than rode her bicycle up the drive, letting the familiar fields welcome her home as they fanned out on either side.
The farm and its oast houses to the left, the mill beyond, the woods to the distant right.
Memories of a thousand childhood afternoons roosted in the trees of Cardarker Wood blinking at her from the cooling shadows.
The exhilarating terror of hiding from the white slavers; hunting for dragon bones; hiking with Daddy in search of the ancient Roman roads …
The driveway wasn’t particularly steep and it wasn’t for lack of ability that Percy chose to proceed on foot, rather that she enjoyed walking.
Daddy had been a first-rate walker, too, particularly after the Great War.
Before he published the book, and before he left them to go up to London before he met Odette and remarried and was never really theirs again.
The doctor had advised that a daily walk would help his leg and he’d taken to roaming the fields with the stick Mr. Morris had left behind after one of Grandmother’s weekends.
“You see the way the end swings out before me with each stride?” he’d said as they strolled along Roving Brook together one autumn afternoon.
“That’s as it should be. Good and solid. It’s a reminder.”
“Of what, Daddy?”
He’d frowned at the slippery bank as if the right words might be hidden there, between the reeds. “Why … That I, too, am solid, I expect.”
She hadn’t understood his meaning then, had only presumed him enamored of the stick’s weight.
She certainly hadn’t probed further: Percy’s position as walking mate was tenuous, the rules governing its continuation firm.
Walking was, according to the doctrine of Raymond Blythe, a time for contemplation; on rare occasions, when both parties were amenable, for the discussion of history or poetry or nature.
Chatterboxes were certainly not tolerated and the label once given was never lost, much to poor Saffy’s chagrin.
Many was the time Percy had glanced back towards the castle as she and Daddy set off on their ramble, to see Saffy scowling from the nursery window.
Percy had always twinged in sympathy with her sister, but never sufficiently to stay behind.
She figured that the favor was just reward for the countless times Saffy held Daddy’s ear, making him smile with amusement as she read aloud the clever little stories she’d written—more recently it was for the months they’d spent together, the two of them, immediately after his return from war, when Percy had been sent away with scarlet fever.
Percy came to the first bridge and stopped, resting her bicycle against the railing.
She couldn’t see the castle from here, not yet; it remained hidden in the clutch of its woods and wouldn’t appear fully until she reached the second, smaller bridge.
She leaned over the edge and scanned the shallow brook below.
The water swirled and whispered where the banks widened, hesitating a little before continuing on towards the woods.
Percy’s reflection, dark against the white-reflected sky, wavered in the smoother, deeper middle.
Beyond was the hop field in which she’d smoked her first cigarette. She and Saffy together, giggling over the stolen case, pinched from one of Daddy’s more pompous friends while he roasted his hammy ankles by the lake on a stifling summer’s day.
A cigarette …
Percy felt the breast pocket of her uniform, the firm cylinder beneath her fingertips. Having rolled the damned thing, it was as well to enjoy it, surely? She had a feeling that once she entered the castle’s fray a quiet smoke would be but a distant dream.
She turned, resting against the railing, struck a match, and inhaled, holding her breath for a moment before letting go.
God, how she adored tobacco. Percy sometimes suspected she would be happy to live alone, to never speak another word to a single living soul, on condition she could do so here at Milderhurst with a lifetime’s supply of cigarettes for company.
She hadn’t always been so wretchedly solitary.
And even now she knew the fantasy—though certainly not without its comforts—to be just that.
A fantasy. She could never bear to be without Saffy, not for long.
Nor Juniper. It had been four months since their little sister took herself to London, and the two of them left at home had behaved in the interim like a pair of handkerchief-twisting old dearies: speculating as to whether she had sufficient warm socks, sending fresh eggs to London with whomever they knew was making the journey, reading her letters aloud over the breakfast table in an attempt to discern her mood, her health, her mind.
Letters, incidentally, in which no mention—veiled or otherwise—was made of the possibility of marriage, thank you very much, Mrs. Potts!
The suggestion was laughable to anyone who knew Juniper.
While some women were formed for marriage and prams in the hallway, others, most decidedly, were not.
Daddy had known that, which is why he’d arranged things the way he had, to ensure that Juniper would be taken care of after he was gone.
Percy huffed with distaste and flattened her spent cigarette beneath her boot. Thoughts of the postmistress reminded her of the items she’d collected and she pulled them from her bag, an excuse to linger in the calm of her own company a little longer.
There were three pieces in total, just as Mrs. Potts had advised: a parcel from Meredith to Juniper, a typed envelope addressed to Saffy, and another letter with her own name written across its front.
The script, with its dizzy loops, could belong to none other than Cousin Emily, and Percy tore open the envelope eagerly, angling the top page so it caught the remaining light and she could make out the words.
With the exception of the time she’d dyed Saffy’s hair blue, Emily had borne the esteemed title of Favorite Cousin throughout the Blythe twins’ childhood.
That her only challenge came from the pompous Cambridge cousins, the strange, thin cousins from the north, and her own younger sister, Pippa, whose unfortunate tendency to weep at the slightest provocation earned her immediate disqualification, rendered the honor no less heartfelt.
A visit from Emily had been cause for great celebration at Milderhurst and without her the twins’ childhood would have been a rather more stagnant place.
Percy and Saffy were very close, as twins couldn’t help but be, but they were not the sort whose bond excluded all others.
Indeed, they were a pair whose friendship was improved by the incorporation of a third.
Growing up, the village had been full of children with whom they might have played if not for Daddy’s suspicion of outsiders.
Darling Daddy, he’d been a terrible snob in his way, only he’d have been shocked to be labeled as such.
It wasn’t money or status that he admired, but brains; talent was the currency with which he sought to surround himself.
Emily, blessed with both, had received the Raymond Blythe stamp of approval and had thus been summoned to stay at Milderhurst every summer.
She’d even earned inclusion in the Blythe Family Evenings, a semiregular tournament instituted by Grandmother when Daddy was a boy.
The call would go out on the auspicious morning—“Blythe Family Evening!”—and anticipation would animate the household all day.
Dictionaries were located, pencils and wits were sharpened, and finally, when dinner was done with, everyone would gather in the good parlor.
Contestants would take up position at the table or in a favorite armchair, and finally Daddy would make his entrance.
He always withdrew from general activity on tournament day, secreting himself away in the tower to produce his list of challenges, and their announcement was something of a ceremony.
The specifics of the game varied, but at its most general a location, a character type, and a word would be supplied, then Cook’s largest egg timer flipped, and the race would be on to craft the most entertaining fiction.
Percy, who was bright but not a wit, who loved to listen but not to tell, who wrote slowly and punctiliously when she was nervous and made everything sound impossibly starched, had dreaded and despised these evenings until, quite by accident, when she was twelve years old, she discovered the amnesty accorded to the game’s official scorekeeper.
While Emily and Saffy—whose devotion to one another only fueled their competition—sweated over their stories, furrowed their brows, bit their lips, and raced their pencils across pages, vying hotly for Daddy’s praise, Percy sat serenely awaiting entertainment.
For written expression they were evenly matched, Saffy perhaps a little stronger in vocabulary; however, Emily’s wicked humor gave her a distinct advantage and for a time it had been clear that Daddy suspected the family’s gift of flowering specially in her.
That was before Juniper was born, of course, with a precocious talent that swept all other claims aside.
If Emily felt the chill when Daddy’s attention shifted orbit, her recovery had been swift.
Her visits had continued happily and regularly for many years, long beyond childhood, until that last summer in 1925, the last before she was married and it all ended.
It was to Emily’s great advantage, Percy had always supposed, that despite her talents she’d never possessed the artist’s temperament.
She was too even-tempered, too good at sports, too jolly and well liked to walk the writer’s path.
Not even the merest whiff of neuroses. Much better for Emily the fate that had found her after Daddy’s focus waned: marriage to a good sort, a clutch of freckle-nosed sons, a grand house overlooking the sea, and now, according to her correspondence, a pair of amorous pigs.
The entire letter was little more than a collection of anecdotes from Emily’s Devonshire village: news about her husband and boys, adventures of the local ARP officers, her elderly neighbor’s obsession with her stirrup pump, yet Percy laughed as she read it.
She was still smiling when she reached the end, folded the letter neatly, and tucked it back into its envelope.
Then she tore it in half and in half again, pushing it deep within her pocket as she continued up the driveway.
She made a mental note to remove the shreds to her wastepaper bin before her uniform found its way into the laundry pile.
Better yet, she’d burn the pieces that very afternoon and Saffy would be none the wiser.