Chapter 8
EIGHT
GIVEN that neither Juniper nor her gentleman friend had arrived, what Saffy really wanted to do was scurry back downstairs, put the pieces of torn letter back together, and learn Percy’s secret.
To find her twin in such placatory spirits, though, was an unexpected boon and one she couldn’t afford to squander.
Not tonight, not with Juniper and the special guest expected any minute.
On that note, it was as well to remain as close as possible to the front door, all the better to catch Juniper alone when she finally arrived.
“Thank you,” she said, accepting the proffered glass, taking a healthy sip to signal goodwill.
“So,” said Percy, returning to perch on the edge of the gramophone table, “how was your day?”
Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might have said. Percy, as a rule, did not peddle in small talk. Saffy hid behind another sip of her drink and decided it was wise to proceed with extreme caution. She fluttered her hand and said, “Oh, fine. Although I did fall over putting on my underwear.”
“You didn’t,” said Percy, with a genuine crack of laughter.
“I most certainly did; I’ve got the bruise to prove it. I’ll see every color of the rainbow before it’s gone.” Saffy prodded her bottom delicately, shifting her weight as she sat on the end of the chaise longue. “I suppose that means I’m getting old.”
“Impossible.”
“Oh?” Saffy perked up slightly, despite herself. “Do tell?”
“Simple. I was born first; technically I’ll always be older than you are.”
“Yes, I know, but I don’t see—”
“And I can assure you I’ve never so much as teetered when getting dressed. Even during a raid.”
“Hmm …” Saffy frowned, considering. “I see your point. Shall we ascribe my misadventure to a momentary lapse then, unrelated to age?”
“I expect we must; to do otherwise would be to script our own demise.” It had been one of Daddy’s favorite expressions, uttered in the face of many and varied obstacles, and they both smiled.
“I’m sorry,” Percy continued. “About before, on the stairs.” She struck a match and lit her cigarette. “I didn’t mean to quarrel.”
“Let’s blame the war, shall we?” Saffy said, twisting to avoid the oncoming smoke. “Everybody else does. Tell me, what’s new in the big, wide world?”
“Not a lot. Lord Beaverbrook’s talking about tanks for the Russians; there’s no fish to be had in the village; and it appears that Mrs. Caraway’s daughter is expecting.”
Saffy inhaled greedily. “No!”
“Yes.”
“But she’d be what, fifteen?”
“Fourteen.”
Saffy leaned closer. “A soldier, was it?”
“Pilot.”
“Well, well.” She shook her head dazedly.
“And Mrs. Caraway such a pillar. How terrible.” It didn’t pass beneath Saffy’s notice that Percy was smirking around her cigarette, almost as if she suspected her twin of enjoying Mrs. Caraway’s misfortune.
Which she was, a little, but only because the woman was an eternal bossy-breeches who picked fault with everybody and everything, including, word had made its way to the castle, Saffy’s very own stitching.
“What?” she said, flushing. “It is terrible.”
“But not surprising,” said Percy, tapping away ash. “Girls these days and their missing morals.”
“Things are different since the war,” Saffy agreed. “I’ve seen it in the letters to the editor. Girls playing up while their husbands are away, having babies out of wedlock. It seems they barely have to know a fellow and they’re walking down the aisle.”
“Not our Juniper though.”
Saffy’s skin cooled. There it was, the snag she’d been waiting for: Percy knew.
Somehow she knew about Juniper’s love affair.
That explained the sudden lightening of mood; this was a fishing expedition, a sneaky one, and Saffy had been caught on a hook threaded with tasty village gossip.
Mortifying. “Of course not,” she said as smoothly as she could manage. “Juniper’s not like that.”
“Of course not.” They sat for a moment, each regarding the other, matching smiles applied to matching faces, sipping their drinks.
Saffy’s heart was ticking louder than Daddy’s favorite clock and she wondered that Percy couldn’t hear it; she knew now what it was to be an insect in a web, awaiting the great spider’s approach.
“Although,” Percy said, dropping ash into the crystal tray, “I did hear something funny today. In the village.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
Silence stretched uneasily between them as Percy smoked and Saffy concentrated on biting her tongue.
How maddening it was, not to mention underhanded: her own twin, using her predilection for local chatter in hopes of tempting her to give away her secrets.
Well, she refused to fall into line; what did Saffy need with Percy’s village gossip anyway?
She already knew the truth: it was she, after all, who had read Juniper’s journal, and she wasn’t about to be tricked into sharing its contents with Percy.
With as much poise as she could muster, Saffy stood, straightened her dress, and began an inspection of the table’s setting, aligning knives and forks with assiduous care.
She even managed to hum mindlessly beneath her breath and affect a small, blameless smile.
Which was a comfort of sorts when the doubts came creeping from the shadows.
That Juniper had a lover was surprising, certainly, and it had been hurtful to Saffy not to have been told, but the fact itself didn’t change things.
Did it? Not things that Percy cared about; not things that mattered.
Surely nothing ill could come from Saffy keeping the news to herself?
Juniper had a lover, that was all. She was a young woman, it was natural; a small matter and one that was bound to be temporary.
Like all of Juniper’s various fascinations, this fellow would fade and thin and be blown away on the same breeze that brought the next attraction.
Outside, the wind had picked up and the claws of the cherry tree scratched against the loose shutter.
Saffy shivered, though she was not cold; her own small movement was caught by the mirror above the hearth and she glanced to meet herself.
It was a grand mirror, gilt framed, and hung on a chain from a hook at great height.
It leaned, therefore, away from the wall, angling towards the ground, and the effect as Saffy looked up was of the glass glaring down, foreshortening her like a stumpy green dwarf beneath its thumb.
She sighed, shortly and unintentionally, alone suddenly and tired of obfuscating.
She was about to look away, to return her attention to the table, when she noticed Percy, hunched at the mirror’s glass rim, smoking as she watched the green dwarf at its center.
Not merely watched, scrutinized. Searching for evidence, for confirmation of something she already suspected.
The realization that she was being observed made Saffy’s pulse quicken and she had the sudden urge to speak, to fill the room with conversation, with noise.
She drew a short, cool breath and began.
“Juniper’s late, of course, and I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised; no doubt it’s the weather keeping her, some sort of holdup on the line; she was due off the five forty-five, and even allowing for the bus from the village I’d have expected her home by now …
I do hope she packed an umbrella, only you know what she’s like when it comes to—”
“Juniper’s engaged,” Percy interrupted sharply. “That’s what they’re saying. That she’s engaged.”
The entrée knife clinked high and metallic against its mate. Saffy’s lips parted, she blinked: “Pardon, dearest?”
“To be married. Juniper’s engaged to be married.”
“But that’s ridiculous. Of course she’s not.” Saffy was genuinely stunned. “Juniper?” She laughed a little, a tinny sound. “Married? Wherever did you hear such a thing?”
A stream of smoky exhalation.
“Well? Who’s been talking such nonsense?”
Percy was busy rescuing a piece of stray tobacco from her bottom lip and for a moment said nothing. She frowned instead at the speck on her fingertip. Finally, she flicked her hand on its way to the ashtray. “It was probably nothing. I was just in the post office and—”
“Ha!” said Saffy, with rather more triumph than was perhaps warranted.
Relief, too, that Percy’s gossip was just that: village talk with no grounding in truth.
“I might have known. That Potts woman! Really, she’s an utter menace.
We must all be thankful that she hasn’t turned her loose talk yet to matters of state. ”
“You don’t believe it then?” Percy’s voice was woody, no modulation at all.
“Of course I don’t believe it.”
“Juniper hasn’t said anything to you?”
“Not a word.” Saffy came to where Percy was sitting, reached out, and touched her sister’s arm. “Really, Percy dear. Can you imagine Juniper as a bride? Dressed all in white lace; agreeing to love and obey somebody else as long as they both shall live?”
The cigarette lay withered and lifeless in the ashtray now, and Percy steepled her fingers beneath her chin.
Then she smiled slightly, lifting her shoulders, settling them again, shaking the notion away.
“You’re right,” she said. “Silly gossip, nothing more. I only wondered …” But what precisely she wondered, Percy let taper to its own conclusion.
Although there was no music playing, the gramophone needle was still tracing dutifully around the record’s center and Saffy put it out of its misery, lifting it back to the cradle.
She was about to excuse herself to check on the rabbit pie, when Percy said, “Juniper would have told us. If it were true; she would’ve told us. ”
Saffy’s cheeks warmed, remembering the journal on the floor upstairs, the shock of its most recent entry, the hurt at having been kept in the dark.
“Saffy?”
“Certainly,” she said quickly. “People do, don’t they? They tell each other things like that.”
“Yes.”
“Especially their sisters.”
“Yes.”
And it was true. Keeping a love affair secret was one thing, an engagement quite another. Even Juniper, Saffy felt sure, would not be so blind to the feelings of others, the ramifications that such a decision would have.
“Still,” said Percy, “we should speak with her. Remind her that Daddy—”
“Isn’t here,” Saffy finished gently. “He isn’t here, Percy. We’re all of us free now to do exactly as we please.” To leave Milderhurst behind, to set sail for the glamour and excitement of New York City and never look back.
“No.” Percy said it so sharply that Saffy worried for a moment that she’d spoken her intentions out loud. “Not free, not completely. We each of us have duties towards the others. Juniper understands that; she knows that marriage—”
“Perce—”
“Those were Daddy’s wishes. His condition.”
Percy’s eyes were searching her own and Saffy realized it was the first time in months that she’d had the opportunity to study her twin’s face so closely; she saw that her sister wore new lines.
She was smoking a lot and worrying, and no doubt the war itself was taking its toll, but whatever the cause the woman sitting before her was no longer young.
Neither was she old, and Saffy understood suddenly—though surely she had known it before?
—that there was something, someplace, in between.
And that they were both in it. Maidens no more, but a way yet from being crones.
“Daddy knew what he was doing.”
“Of course, darling,” Saffy said tenderly.
Why hadn’t she noticed them before—all those women in the great in-between?
They were not invisible surely, they were merely going about their business quietly, doing what women did when they were no longer young but not yet old.
Keeping neat houses, wiping tears from their children’s cheeks, darning the holes in their husband’s socks.
And suddenly Saffy understood why Percy was behaving this way, almost as if she were jealous of the possibility that Juniper, who was only eighteen, might someday marry.
That she still had her entire adult life ahead of her.
She understood, too, why tonight of all nights Percy should lose herself in such sentimental thoughts.
Though driven by concern for Juniper, motivated by gossip in the village, it was the encounter with Lucy that had her behaving this way.
Saffy was drenched then by a wave of crashing affection for her stoic twin, a wave so strong it threatened to leave her breathless. “We were unlucky, weren’t we, Perce?”
Percy looked up from the cigarette she was rolling. “What’s that?”
“The two of us. We were unfortunate when it came to matters of the heart.”
Percy considered her. “I shouldn’t think that luck had much to do with it. A basic matter of mathematics, wasn’t it?”
Saffy smiled; it was just as the governess who replaced Nanny had told them, right before she went away, returning to Norway to marry her widower cousin.
She’d taken them for a lesson by the lake, her habit when she wasn’t in the mood for teaching but wanted to escape Mr. Broad’s scrutiny; she’d looked up from where she was sunning herself to say, in that lazy, accented manner of hers, eyes glinting with malicious pleasure, that they’d do well to put all thought of marriage aside; that the same Great War that had wounded their father had also killed their chances.
The thirteen-year-old twins had merely stared blankly, an expression they’d perfected, knowing it drove adults to agitation.
What did they care? Marriage and suitors were the last things on their minds back then.
Saffy said softly, “Well, that’s a sorry luck of sorts, isn’t it? To have all one’s future husbands die on the French battlefields?”
“How many were you planning on having?”
“What’s that?”
“Husbands. You said, ‘To have all one’s future’ …” Percy lit her cigarette and waved her hand. “Never mind,” she said.
“Only one.” Saffy felt suddenly light-headed. “There was only one I wanted.”
The silence that followed was agonizing and Percy, at least, had the dignity to look uncomfortable. She didn’t say anything though, offered no words of comfort or understanding, no kind gestures, merely pinched the tip of her cigarette, sending it to sleep, and made for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“A headache. It’s come on quickly.”
“Sit down then; I’ll fetch you a couple of aspirin.”
“No—” Percy refused to meet Saffy’s gaze—“no, I’ll fetch them myself from the medicine box. The walk will do me good.”