Chapter 2 #2
He went. And they stayed. And she draped her arm over Meredith’s shoulder and laughed as they returned up the hill; joked about Saffy’s habit of sticking pins into legs as well as fabrics; pointed out the old fountain, no longer working; paused a moment to inspect the stagnant green water sulking inside, the dragonflies hovering fitfully about its rim.
But all the while her thoughts drew out behind her like a spider’s thread, following the man as he made his way toward the road.
She began to walk, faster now. It was hot, so hot, her hair was already drying, sticking to the sides of her face; her skin seemed tighter than usual. She felt oddly animated. Surely Meredith could hear her heart, hammering away against her ribs?
“I have a grand idea,” she said. “Have you ever wondered what France looks like?” And she took her little friend’s hand and together they ran, up the stairs, through the briars, beneath the long row of tunneled trees.
Fleeting—the word came into her head and made her feel lighter, like a deer.
Faster, faster, both of them laughing, and the wind tore at Juniper’s hair, and her feet rejoiced against the baking, hard earth, and joy ran with her.
Finally, they reached the portico, tripped up the stairs, panting, both of them, through the open French doors and into the cool stillness of the library.
“June? Is that you?”
It was Saffy, sitting at her writing desk. Dear Saffy, looking up from behind the typewriter in the way that was habit with her; always just a little bewildered, as if she’d been caught in the middle of a rosepetal, dewdrop dream and reality was a slightly dusty surprise.
Whether it was the sunlight, the pool, the man, the clear blue of the sky, Juniper couldn’t resist planting a kiss on the top of her sister’s head as they hurried by.
Saffy beamed. “Did Meredith—Oh yes, she did. Good. Oh, I see you’ve been swimming; be careful that Daddy …”
But whatever the warning, Juniper and Meredith had gone before it was finished.
They ran along looming stone corridors, up narrow flights of stairs, level by level, until finally they reached the attic at the very top of the castle.
Juniper went swiftly to the open window, eased herself onto the bookcase, and swiveled so that her feet were on the roof outside.
“Come,” she said to Meredith, who was still standing by the door, a strange look on her face. “Quickly now.”
Meredith let out a tentative sigh, propped her spectacles back on the bridge of her nose, then followed, did exactly as Juniper had done. Inched her way along the steep roof until they came upon the ridge that pitched south like a ship’s prow.
“There, see?” said Juniper, when they were seated side by side, settled on the flat behind the edging tiles. She pointed, a scribble on the far horizon. “I told you. All the way to France.”
“Really? That’s it?”
Juniper nodded, but she paid the coastline no more heed. Squinted instead at the wide field of long, yellow grass skirting Cardarker Wood; scanning, scanning, hoping for just one final glimpse …
A jolt. She saw him then, a tiny figure, crossing the field by the first bridge.
His shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, she could tell that much, and he had his palms out flat beside him, brushing the tops of the long grass.
He stopped as she watched, lifted and bent his arms so that his hands rested on the back of his head, seemed to embrace the sky.
She realized he was turning; had turned.
Was looking back now at the castle. She held her breath, wondered how it was that life could change so much in half an hour when nothing much had changed at all.
“The castle wears a skirt.” Meredith was pointing at the ground below.
He was walking again, and then he disappeared behind the fold of the hill and everything was still. Thomas Cavill had slipped through the crack and into the world beyond. The air around the castle seemed to know it.
“Look,” said Meredith, “just down there.”
Juniper took her cigarettes from her pocket.
“There used to be a moat. Daddy had it filled in when his first wife died. We’re not supposed to swim in the pool either.
” She smiled as Meredith’s face became a study in anxiety.
“Don’t look so worried, little Merry. No one’s going to be cross when I teach you to swim.
Daddy doesn’t leave his tower, not anymore, so he’s not to know whether we use the pool or not.
Besides, when the day’s as warm as this it’s a crime not to have a swim. ”
Warm, perfect, blue.
Juniper struck the match hard. With a long, drawing breath, she leaned a hand back against the sloping roof and squinted at the clear, blue sky. The ceiling of her dome. And words came into her head, not her own.
I, an old turtle,
Will wing me to some wither’d bough; and there
My mate, that’s never to be found again,
Lament till I am lost.
Ridiculous, of course. Utterly ridiculous. The man was not her mate; he was no one for her to lament till she was lost. And yet the words had come.
“Did you like Mr. Cavill?”
Juniper’s heart kicked; she burned with instant heat. She’d been discovered! Meredith had intuited the secret workings of her mind. She thumbed her damp dress strap back onto her shoulder, was stalling, returning the matches to her pocket when Meredith said, “I do.”
And by the pinkness on her cheeks, Juniper perceived that Meredith liked her teacher very much indeed.
She was torn between relief that her own thoughts were still private and a wild, crushing envy that her feelings should be shared.
She looked at Meredith and the latter sensation passed as fast as it had flared.
She strove for nonchalance. “Why? What do you like about him?”
Meredith didn’t answer at first. Juniper smoked and stared at the spot where the man had breached the Milderhurst dome.
“He’s very clever,” she said at last. “And handsome. And he’s kind, even to people who aren’t easy to be with.
He has a simple brother, a great big fellow who acts like a baby, cries easily, and shouts sometimes in the street, but you should see how patient and gentle Mr. Cavill is with him.
If you saw them together, you’d say he was having the best time of his life, and not in that overdone way that people have when they know they’re being watched.
He’s the best teacher I’ve ever had. He gave me a journal as a present, a real one with a leather cover.
He says that if I work hard I could stay at school longer, maybe even go to a grammar school or university, write properly one day: stories or poems, or articles for the newspaper”—there was a pause as she drew breath, then—“nobody ever thought I was good at anything before.”
Juniper leaned to bump shoulders with the skinny sapling beside her. “Well, that’s just madness, Merry,” she said. “Mr. Cavill is right, of course, you’re good at a great many things. I’ve only known you a matter of days and I can see that much—”
She coughed against the back of her hand, unable to continue.
She’d been overcome by an unfamiliar feeling as she’d listened to Meredith describe her teacher’s attributes, his kindnesses, as the girl spoke nervously of her own aspirations.
A heat had started to build in her chest, growing until it could no longer be contained then spreading like treacle beneath her skin.
When it reached her eyes it had grown points and threatened to turn to tears.
She felt tender and protective and vulnerable, and as she saw the beginnings of a hopeful smile stir on the edges of the young girl’s mouth, she couldn’t help wrapping her arms around Merry and squeezing hard.
The girl tensed beneath the embrace, gripping the shingles tight.
Juniper sat back. “What is it? Are you all right?”
“Just a little frightened of heights, is all.”
“Why—you didn’t say a word!”
Meredith shrugged, focused on her bare feet. “I’m frightened of a lot of things.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Well, I suppose that’s pretty normal.”
Meredith turned her head abruptly. “Do you ever feel frightened?”
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“What of?”
Juniper dipped her head, drew hard on her cigarette. “I don’t know.”
“Not ghosts and scary things in the castle?”
“No.”
“Not heights?”
“No.”
“Drowning?”
“No.”
“Being unloved and alone forever?”
“No.”
“Having to do something you can’t stand for the rest of your life?”
Juniper pulled a face. “Ugh … no.”
And then Meredith had looked so downhearted that she couldn’t help saying, “There is one thing.” Her pulse began to race, even though she had no intention of confessing her great, blank fear to Meredith.
Juniper had little experience with friendship, but she was quite sure telling a new and treasured acquaintance that you feared yourself capable of great violence was inadvisable.
She smoked instead and remembered the wild rush of passion, the anger that had threatened to rip her apart from the inside.
The way she’d charged towards him, picked up the spade without a second thought, and then—
—woken up in bed, her bed, Saffy by her side and Percy at the window.
Saffy had been smiling, but there’d been a moment, before she saw Juniper was awake, in which her features told a different story.
An agonized expression, lips taut, brow creased, that belied her later assurances that all was well.
That nothing untoward had happened—why, of course it hadn’t, dearest!
Just a small case of lost time, no different than before.
They’d kept it from her out of love; they kept it from her still. She’d believed them at first; of course she had. What reason, after all, did they have to lie? She’d suffered lost time before. Why should this be any different?
Only it had been. Juniper had found out what it was they hid.
They still didn’t know that she knew. In the end it had been a matter of pure chance.
Mrs. Simpson had come to the house to see Daddy, and Juniper had been following the brook by the bridge.
The other woman had leaned over the railing and thrust a shaking finger, saying at her, “You!” and Juniper had wondered what she meant.
“You’re a wild thing. A danger to others.
You ought to be locked away for what you did. ”
Juniper hadn’t understood, hadn’t known what the woman was talking about.
“My boy needed thirty stitches. Thirty! You’re an animal.”
An animal.
That had been the trigger. Juniper had flinched when she heard it and a memory had dislodged. A fragmented memory, ragged around the edges. An animal—Emerson—crying out in pain.
Though she’d tried her hardest, forced her mind to focus, the rest had refused to clarify.
It remained hidden in the dark wardrobe of her mind.
Wretched, faulty brain! How she despised it.
She’d give up the other things in a flash—the writing, the giddy rush of inspiration, the joy of capturing abstract thought on a page; she’d even give up the visitors if it meant she could keep all her memories.
She’d worked on her sisters, pleaded eventually, but neither would be drawn; and in the end Juniper had gone to Daddy.
Up in his castle tower, he had told her the rest—what Billy Simpson had done to poor, ailing Emerson, the dear old dog who’d wanted little more than to while away his final days by the sunlit rhododendron—and what Juniper had done to Billy Simpson.
And then he’d said that she wasn’t to worry.
That it wasn’t her fault. “That boy was a bully. He deserved everything he got.” And then he’d smiled, but behind his eyes the haunted look was lurking.
“The rules,” he’d said, “they’re different for people like you, Juniper. For people like us.”
“WELL?” SAID Meredith. “What is it? What do you fear?”
“I’m frightened, I suppose,” said Juniper, examining the dark edge of Cardarker Wood, “that I’ll turn out like my father.”
“How do you mean?”
There was no way to explain, no way that wouldn’t burden Merry with things she mustn’t know.
The fear that held tight as elastic bands round Juniper’s heart; the horrid dread that she’d end her days a mad old lady, roaming the castle corridors, drowning in a sea of paper and cowering from the creatures of her very own pen.
She shrugged, made light of her confession.
“Oh, you know. That I’ll never escape this place. ”
“Why would you want to leave?”
“My sisters smother me.”
“Mine would like to smother me.”
Juniper smiled and tapped some ash in the gutter.
“I’m serious. She hates me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m different. Because I don’t want to be like her even though it’s what everyone expects.”
Juniper drew long on her cigarette, tilted her head and watched the world beyond. “How can a person expect to escape their destiny, Merry? That is the question.”
A silence, then a small, practical voice. “There’s always the train, I guess.”
Juniper thought at first she’d misheard; she glanced at Meredith and realized that the child was completely serious.
“I mean, there are buses, too, but I think the train would be faster. A smoother ride, as well.”
Juniper couldn’t help it; she started to laugh, a great hulking laugh that rose up from very, very deep within her.
Meredith smiled uncertainly and Juniper gave her an enormous hug. “Oh, Merry,” she said, “did you know you’re really, truly, and utterly perfect?”
Meredith beamed and the two lay back against the roof tiles, watching as the afternoon stretched its film across the sky.
“Tell me a story, Merry.”
“What sort of story?”
“Tell me more about your London.”