RIVERTON REVISITED
Ursula has come as promised. We are driving the winding lane toward the village of Saffron Green. Any moment now we’ll take a bend and there’ll be tourist signs welcoming us to Riverton. I glance at Ursula’s face while she drives; she smiles at me then returns her attention to the road. Any misgivings she might have had about the wisdom of our excursion, she has pushed aside. Sylvia wasn’t pleased, but she agreed not to tell Matron, to stall Ruth if needs be. I suspect I am giving off the stench of last opportunities. It is too late to worry about preserving me for the future.
The metal gates are open. Ursula turns the car into the driveway and we weave our way toward the house. It is dark, the tunnel of trees is strangely still, strangely silent, as it always was, listening for something. We turn the last corner and the house is upon us. Just as it has been so many times before: my first day at Riverton, fourteen years old and green as a gardener’s thumb; the day of the recital, rushing from Mother’s, full of expectation; the evening of Alfred’s proposal; the morning in 1924 when we returned to Riverton from London. Today is a homecoming, of sorts.
There is a concrete car-parking space nowadays, after the driveway and before the Eros and Psyche fountain. Ursula winds her window down as we approach the toll booth. She has a word with the guard who waves us through. On account of my obvious frailty, she is given special dispensation to drop me off before finding a parking space. She drives around the turning circle-bitumen now, rather than gravel-and stops the car at the entrance. There is a little iron garden seat by the portico, and Ursula leads me to it, settles me, then returns to the car park.
I am sitting there, thinking of Mr Hamilton, wondering how many times he answered the Riverton front door before his heart attack in the spring of 1934, when it happens.
‘Good to see you back, young Grace.’
I squint up into the watery sun (or is it my eyes that are watery?) and there he stands, on the top step.
‘Mr Hamilton,’ I say. I am hallucinating, of course, but it seems churlish to ignore an old comrade, no matter he’s been dead sixty years.
‘We’ve been wondering when we might see you again. Mrs Townsend and I.’
‘You have?’ Mrs Townsend passed soon after him: a stroke in her sleep.
‘Oh, aye. We always like it when the young ones return. We get a little lonely, just the two of us. No family to serve. Just a lot of hammering and knocking and dirty boots.’ He shook his head and cast his eyes upward to take in the arch of the portico. ‘Aye, the old place has seen a lot of changes. Just wait till you see what they’ve done with my pantry.’ He smiles at me, down his long burnished nose. ‘And tell me, Grace,’ he said gently. ‘How are things with you?’
‘I’m tired,’ I say. ‘I’m tired, Mr Hamilton.’
‘I know you are, lassie,’ he says. ‘Not long now.’
‘What’s that?’ Ursula is by my side, pushing her parking ticket into her purse. ‘Are you tired?’ Concern knots her brow. ‘I’ll see about hiring a wheelchair. They’ve put lifts in as part of the renovation.’
I tell her perhaps that might be best, and then I sneak a glance back at Mr Hamilton. He is no longer there.
Inside the entrance hall a sprightly woman dressed like the wife of a 1940s country squire welcomes us and announces that our entrance fee includes the tour she’s about to start. Before we can demur, we are herded into a group with six other unwitting visitors: a couple of daytrippers from London, a schoolboy researching a local history assignment, and a family of four American tourists-the adults and son in matching running shoes and T-shirts that read
The tour starts downstairs. The hub of any English country house, says Beryl with a practised smile and a wink. Ursula and I take a lift installed where the coat cupboard used to be. By the time we reach the bottom, the group is already crowded around Mrs Townsend’s kitchen table, laughing as Beryl reads through a comic list of traditional English dishes of the nineteenth century.
The servants’ hall looks much as it did, yet it is unaccountably different. It has lost its friendly, frowsty ambience. It’s the lighting, I realise. Electricity has swept away the flickering, whispering spaces. We were without for a long time at Riverton. Even when Teddy had the place wired in the mid- twenties it was nothing like this. I miss the dimness, though I suppose it wouldn’t do to keep it lit as was, even for historical effect. There are laws about that sort of thing now. Health and safety. Public liability. No one wants to be sued because a daytripper accidentally misses his step on a poorly lit staircase.
‘Follow me,’ chirps Beryl. ‘We’ll take the servants’ exit to the back terrace, but don’t worry, I won’t make you put on uniforms!’
We are on the lawn above Lady Ashbury’s rose garden. It looks, surprisingly, much as it always did, though ramps have been constructed between the tiers. They have a team of gardeners now, says Beryl, employed continuously on grounds maintenance. There’s a lot to look after: the gardens themselves, the lawns, the fountains, other various estate buildings. The summer house.
The summer house was one of the first changes Teddy made when Riverton fell to him in 1923. It was a crime, he said, that such a beautiful lake, the jewel in the estate, had been allowed to fall to disuse. He envisaged boating parties in the summertime, planetary-observation parties in the evenings. He had plans drawn immediately and by the time we came from London in April 1924 it was almost complete, the only hold-ups a tardy shipment of Italian limestone and some spring rain.
It was raining the morning we arrived. Relentless, drenching rain that started as we drove through the outer villages of Essex and didn’t let up. The fens were full, the forest soggy, and when the motor cars crawled up the muddy Riverton driveway, the house wasn’t there. Not at first glance. So shrouded was it by low-lying fog that it only appeared gradually, as if an apparition. When we drew close enough, I wiped the palm of my hand against the misty motor-car window and peered through the cloud toward the etched glass of the nursery window. I had an almost overwhelming sense that somewhere inside that great dark house Grace of five years ago was busy preparing the dining room, dressing Hannah and Emmeline, receiving Myra’s latest wisdom. Here and there, then and now, simultaneously, at the capricious whim of time.
The first motor car stopped and Mr Hamilton materialised from the front portico, black umbrella in hand, to help Hannah and Deborah alight. The second car continued on to the rear entrance and stopped. I attached my raincoat to my hat, nodded to the driver and made a run for the servants’ hall entrance.
Perhaps it was the fault of the rain. Perhaps if it had been a clear day, if the sky had glittered blue and sunlight had smiled through the windows, the house’s decline would not have been so shocking. For though Mr Hamilton and his staff had gone to their best efforts-had been cleaning around the clock, said Myra-the house was in poor condition. It was a tall order to make up so promptly for years of Mr Frederick’s determined neglect.
It was Hannah who was most affected. Naturally enough, I suppose. Seeing it in its demoralised state brought home to her the loneliness of Pa’s last days. Brought back, too, the old guilt: her failure to mend the bridges between them.
‘To think he lived like this,’ she said to me that first evening as I readied her for bed. ‘All the while I was in London and I didn’t know. Oh, Emmeline made jokes every so often, but I never for a minute imagined…’ She shook her head. ‘To think, Grace. To think of poor old Pa being so unhappy.’ She was silent for a moment then said, ‘It goes to show, doesn’t it, what happens when a person isn’t true to their own nature?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, unaware that we were no longer speaking of
