Chapter Four
FOUR
THAT Juniper, the only known Blythe not to occupy the nursery in childhood, should wake on the morning of her thirteenth birthday, toss a few valued possessions into a pillowcase, then head upstairs to stake her claim on the sleeping attic had surprised no one.
The perfect contrariness of the event was so in keeping with the Juniper they knew and loved that whenever anyone spoke of it, in years to come, the progression seemed utterly natural and they found themselves debating the very suggestion that the whole thing hadn’t been planned in advance.
For her part, Juniper said very little on the subject, either at the time or later: one day she slept in her small annexed room on the second floor, the next she presided over the attic. What more could one say?
More telling than Juniper’s removal to the nursery, Saffy always thought, was the way in which she’d dragged an invisible cape of curious glamour after her.
The attic, an outpost in the castle, the place to which children had traditionally been banished until by age or attribute they were deemed worthy of adult regard, a room of low ceilings and feisty mice, skull-freezing winters and simmering summers, the outlet through which all chimneys passed on their way to freedom, suddenly seemed to hum.
People with no reason at all to subject themselves to the climb began to gravitate to the nursery.
“Just going to pop my head in,” they would say, before disappearing up the staircase, only to reappear somewhat sheepishly an hour or so later.
Saffy and Percy would exchange an amused glance and entertain one another with guesses as to what on earth the poor unwitting guest had been doing up there when one thing was certain: Juniper had not been playing hostess.
It wasn’t that their little sister was rude, only that she wasn’t particularly affable either, and there was no company she enjoyed as much as her own.
Which was a good thing, given that she’d been afforded very little opportunity to meet anyone else.
There were no cousins her age, no family friends, and Daddy had insisted she should be educated at home.
The best Saffy and Percy could figure out was that Juniper ignored her visitors completely, leaving them to potter unfettered in the busy chaos of her room until finally they tired sufficiently and took it upon themselves to leave.
It was one of Juniper’s strangest, most indefinable gifts and one she’d possessed all her life: a magnetism so strong it was worthy of study and medical categorization.
Even people who didn’t like Juniper wanted to be liked by her.
The last thing on Saffy’s mind, however, as she climbed the uppermost staircase for the second time that day, was unraveling the mysteries of her little sister’s charm.
The storm was gathering faster than Mr. Potts’s Home Guard patrol, and the attic windows were wide open.
She’d noticed them when she was sitting in the henhouse, stroking Helen-Melon’s feathers and fretting over Lucy’s sudden sternness.
A light’s ignition had drawn her attention and she’d glanced up to see Lucy collecting the hospital dollies from the sewing room.
She’d followed the housekeeper’s progress—a shadow as she passed the second-floor window, the spill of lingering daylight as she opened the hallway door, then a minute or so’s passing before a light flickered in the upper staircase that led to the attic.
And that’s when Saffy had remembered the windows.
She’d opened them herself that morning in the hope that a day’s fresh air might clear away months of stagnation.
It had been a fond hope and one whose fulfillment Saffy doubted, but it was better, surely, to try and fail than to throw one’s hands in the air.
Now, though, with the smell of rain on the breeze, however, she needed to get them shut.
She’d watched for the light to be extinguished in the stairwell, waited another five minutes, then, judging it safe to venture upstairs without fear of meeting Lucy, headed inside.
TAKING GREAT care to avoid the third step from the top—the last thing Saffy needed tonight was the little uncle’s ghost making mischief—she pushed open the nursery door and switched on the light.
It glowed dully, as did all the Milderhurst electrics, and she paused a while in the doorway.
Murky light aside, it was her custom when considering a foray into Juniper’s domain.
There were few rooms on earth, Saffy suspected, where it was as prudent to plot a course before attempting entry.
Squalor was perhaps going a little too far, but only a little.
The smell, she noticed, remained; the blend of stale tobacco smoke and ink, wet dog and feral mouse, had been too stubborn for a single day’s breeze.
The doggy odor was easily explained—Juniper’s mutt Poe had languished in her absence, splitting his moping between the top of the driveway and the end of her bed.
As to the mice, Saffy wasn’t sure whether Juniper had been feeding them on purpose or if the little opportunists were merely benefiting from her slatternly occupation of the attic.
Either was possible. And, although she wouldn’t confess it too widely, Saffy quite liked the mousy smell; it reminded her of Clementina, whom she’d bought from the Harrods pet department on the morning of her eighth birthday.
Tina had been a dear little companion, right up until the unfortunate altercation with Percy’s snake, Cyrus.
Rats were a much-maligned breed, cleaner than people gave them credit for and truly companionable, the nobility of the rodent world.
Having glimpsed the clear-ish passage to the far window—a legacy of her previous expedition—Saffy started gingerly through the jumble.
If Nanny could only see the place now! Gone were the clean, clear days of her reign, the supervised milky suppers, the little broomette pulled out at night for crumbs, the twin desks against the wall, the lingering scent of beeswax and Pears soap.
No, Nanny’s epoch had been ended well and truly; replaced, it seemed to Saffy, by anarchy.
Paper, paper everywhere, inked with odd instructions, illustrations, questions Juniper had written to herself; clusters of dust gathering contentedly, lining the skirting boards like chaperones at a dance.
There were things stuck to walls, pictures of people and places and oddly assembled words that had, for some inexplicable reason, captured Juniper’s imagination; and the floor was a sea of books, articles of clothing, cups with dubiously grimy insides, makeshift ashtrays, favorite dolls with blinking eyes, old bus tickets with scribble around their edges.
The whole made Saffy light-headed and decidedly queasy.
Was that a bread crust beneath the quilt?
If so, it had hardened by now into a museum piece.
Though tidying up after Juniper was a nasty habit and one against which Saffy had long ago waged war and won, on this occasion she couldn’t help herself.
Mess was one thing, comestibles quite another.
With a shudder she reached down, wrapped the granite-hard crust in the quilt, and hurried to the closest window, releasing the crust and listening for the dull thud as it hit the old moat grass below.
Another shudder as she shook out the quilt, then she pulled the window closed and sealed the blackout curtains.
The tatty quilt would need washing and patching, but that was for another day; for now Saffy would have to content herself now with giving it a thorough folding.
Not too neatly, of course—though Juniper, it was safe to assume, would neither notice nor care—just enough to restore to it some semblance of dignity.
The quilt, Saffy thought fondly, drawing the corners to arm’s length, deserved better than a four-month furlough on the floor playing shroud to a stale lump of bread.
It had been a gift originally; one of the estate farmers’ wives had sewn it for Juniper many years before, that being the sort of unsolicited affection Juniper tended to inspire.
Although most people would be touched by such a gesture, bound by it to take special care of the item, Juniper was not most people.
She placed no greater value on the creations of others than she placed on her own.
This was one of the aspects of her little sister’s character Saffy found most difficult to understand, and she sighed as she took in the autumn of discarded papers on the floor.
She looked for a place to leave the folded quilt and settled on a nearby chair.
A book lay open atop a pile of others and Saffy, pathologically literate, couldn’t help flicking back to the title page to see what it was.
Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, inscribed to Juniper by T.
S. Eliot after he came to visit and Daddy showed him some of June’s poems. Saffy wasn’t sure about Thomas Eliot; she admired him, of course, as a wordsmith, but there was a pessimism in his soul, a darkness in his outlook, that always left her somehow more aware of hard edges than she had been before.
Not so much with the cats, who were whimsy itself, as with his other poems. His obsession with ticking clocks and passing time, it seemed to Saffy, was a recipe for depression, and one she could quite do without.