thirteen, and although Saffy and I felt very important when our time finally came I must confess to missing the attic room. Saffy and I were used to sharing.’
‘I suppose that’s common for twins.’
‘Indeed.’ An almost smile. ‘Come. I’ll show you the caretakers’ door.’
The mahogany cupboard stood quietly against the far wall, in a tiny box-like room that opened out beyond the twin beds. The ceiling was so low that I had to duck to enter, and the fruity smell entrapped within the walls was almost suffocating.
Percy didn’t seem to notice, bending her wiry frame to pull at a low handle on the cupboard, creaking the mirrored door open. ‘There it is. Right in there at the back.’ She eye-balled me, hovering near the doorway, and her blade-thin brows drew down. ‘But surely you can’t see; not from all the way over there?’
Manners forbade me actually covering my nose so I took a deep breath, holding it as I moved quickly towards her. She stepped aside, indicating that I should come closer still.
Suppressing the image of Gretel at the witch’s oven, I climbed, waist-deep, into the cupboard. Through the grim darkness, I spotted the small door cut into the back. ‘Wow,’ I said on the last of my breath. ‘There it is.’
‘There it is,’ came the voice from behind me.
The smell, now I had no choice but to breathe it, didn’t seem so bad and I was able to appreciate the Narnia thrill of a hidden doorway in the back of a cupboard. ‘So that’s where the caretakers get in and out.’ My voice echoed around me.
‘The caretakers perhaps,’ said Percy wryly. ‘As to the mice, that’s another story. The little wretches have taken over; they don’t need a fancy door like that one.’
I climbed out, dusted myself off, and couldn’t help but notice the framed picture hanging on the facing wall. Not a picture: a page of religious script, I could see when I went a little closer. It had been behind me on the way in and I’d missed it. ‘What was this room?’
‘This was our nurse’s room. When we were very small,’ said Percy. ‘Back then it seemed like the nicest place on earth.’ A smile flickered briefly before failing. ‘It’s little more than a closet, though, isn’t it?’
‘A closet with a lovely outlook.’ I’d drifted towards the nearby window. The only one, I noted, whose faded curtains remained.
I drew them to one side and was struck immediately by the number of heavy-duty locks that had been fitted to the window. My surprise must have shown because Percy said, ‘My father had concerns about security. An incident in his youth that had stuck with him.’
I nodded and peered through the window, experiencing, as I did so, a frisson of familiarity; I realized that it wasn’t for something I’d seen, but for something I’d read about and envisaged. Directly below, skirting the footings of the castle and spanning twenty feet or so, was a swathe of grass, thick and lush, an entirely different green from that beyond. ‘There used to be a moat,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ Percy was beside me now, holding the curtains aside. ‘One of my earliest memories is of being unable to sleep and hearing voices down there. It was full moon and when I climbed up to look out of the window our mother was swimming on her back, laughing in the silvered light.’
‘She was a keen swimmer,’ I said, remembering what I’d read about her in
Percy nodded. ‘The circular pool was Daddy’s wedding gift to her, but she always preferred the moat, so a fellow was engaged to improve it for her. Daddy had it filled in when she died.’
‘It must have reminded him of her.’
‘Yes.’ Her lips twitched, and I realized I was exploring her family’s tragedy in a rather thoughtless way. I pointed at a stone protrusion that cut into the moat’s petticoat, and changed the subject. ‘Which room’s that? I don’t remember noticing a balcony.’
‘It’s the library.’
‘And over there? What’s that walled garden?’
‘That’s not a garden.’ She let the curtain fall closed again. ‘And we should be getting on.’
Her tone and her body had stiffened beside me. I felt sure I’d offended her in some way but couldn’t think how. After scrolling quickly over our recent conversation, I decided it was far more likely she was just upset by the press of old memories. I said softly, ‘It must be incredible to live in a castle that’s belonged to your family for so long.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t always been easy. There have been sacrifices. We’ve been forced to sell much of the estate, most recently the farmhouse, but we’ve managed to hold onto the castle.’ She very pointedly inspected the window frame, smoothed a piece of flaking paint. Her voice, when she spoke, was wooded with the effort of keeping strong emotion at bay. ‘It’s true what my sister said. I do love this house as others might love a person. I always have.’ A glance sideways. ‘I expect you find that rather peculiar.’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t.’
Those scar-like eyebrows arched, dubious; but it was true. I didn’t find it peculiar at all. The great heartbreak in my dad’s life was his separation from the home of his childhood. It was a simple enough story: a small boy fed on fables of his family’s grand history, an adored and moneyed uncle who made promises, a death-bed change of heart.
‘Old buildings and old families belong to one another,’ she continued. ‘That’s as it’s always been. My family lives on in the stones of Milderhurst Castle and it’s my duty to keep them. It is not a task for outsiders.’
Her tone was searing; agreement seemed to be required. ‘You must feel as if they’re still around you – ’ as the words left my lips, I had a sudden image of my mum, kneeling by the dolls’ houses – ‘singing in the walls.’
A brow leaped half an inch. ‘What’s that?’
I hadn’t realized I’d spoken the last aloud.
‘About the walls,’ she pressed. ‘You said something just now, about the walls singing. What was it?’
‘Just something my mother told me once,’ I swallowed meekly, ‘about ancient walls that sing the distant hours.’
Pleasure spread across Percy’s face in stark and brilliant contrast to her usual dour expression. ‘My father wrote that. Your mother must have read his poetry.’
I was sincerely doubtful. Mum had never gone in much for reading, and certainly never for poems. ‘Possibly.’
‘He used to tell us stories when we were small, tales of the past. He said that if he didn’t go carefully about the castle, sometimes the distant hours forgot to hide.’ As she warmed to recounting the memory Percy’s left hand drifted forth like the sail of a ship. It was a curiously theatrical movement, out of character with her thus-far clipped and efficient manner. Her way of speaking had altered, too: the short sentences had lengthened, the sharp tone softened. ‘He would come upon them, playing out in the dark, deserted corridors. Think of all the people who’ve lived within these walls, he’d say, who’ve whispered their secrets, laid their betrayals…’
‘Do you hear them too? The distant hours?’
Her eyes met mine, held them earnestly for just a moment. ‘Silly nonsense,’ she said, breaking into her hairpin smile. ‘Ours are
Something crossed her face then, a little like pain: she was thinking of her father, I supposed, and her mother, the tunnel of time and voices that must chatter to her down the ages. ‘No matter,’ she said, more for her own sake than mine. ‘It doesn’t do to brood on the past. Calculating the dead can make one feel quite alone.’
‘You must be glad to have your sisters.’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ve always imagined that siblings must be a great comfort.’
Another pause. ‘You haven’t any of your own?’
‘No.’ I smiled, shrugged lightly. ‘I’m a lonely only.’
‘Is it lonely?’ She considered me as if I were a rare specimen deserving of study. ‘I’ve always wondered.’
I thought of the great absence in my life, and then of the rare nights spent in company with my sleeping, snoring, muttering cousins, my guilty imaginings that I was one of them, that I belonged with somebody. ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it’s lonely.’
‘Liberating, too, one would expect.’
I noticed for the first time a small vein quivering in her neck. ‘Liberating?’
