Riverton that night-she was related to the sisters through marriage-and it’s become a sort of family legend. My great-grandmother told Grandma, Grandma told Mum, and Mum told me. A number of times, actually: it made a huge impression. I always knew one day I’d turn it into a film.’ She smiled, shrugged. ‘But there are always little holes in history, aren’t there? I have files and files of research-the police reports and newspapers are full of facts, but it’s all second-hand. Rather heavily censored, I suspect. Unfortunately the two people who witnessed the suicide have been dead for years.’
‘I must say, it seems a rather morbid subject for a film,’ Ruth said.
‘Oh, no; it’s fascinating,’ Ursula said. ‘A rising star of the English poetry scene kills himself by a dark lake on the eve of a huge society party. His only witnesses are two beautiful sisters who never speak to each other again. One his fiancee, the other rumoured to be his lover. It’s terribly romantic.’
The knots in my stomach relaxed a little. So, she was going to treat the heart of their story in the usual manner. I wondered why I had supposed otherwise. And I wondered what sort of misguided loyalty had made me care either way. Why, after all these years, it still mattered to me what people thought.
But I knew that too. I had been born to it. Mr Hamilton had told me so the day I left, as I stood on the top step of the servants’ entrance, my leather bag packed with my few possessions, Mrs Townsend weeping in the kitchen. He’d said it was in my blood, just as it had been for my mother and for her parents before her, that I was a fool to leave, to throw away a good place, with a good family. He’d decried the loss of loyalty and pride, general in the English nation, and had vowed he wouldn’t allow it to infiltrate Riverton. The war hadn’t been fought and won just to lose our ways.
I’d pitied him then: so rigid, so certain that by leaving service I was setting myself on a path to financial and moral ruination. It wasn’t until much later that I began to understand how terrified he must have been, how relentless must have seemed the rapid social changes, swirling about him, nipping at his heels. How desperately he longed to hold onto the old ways and certainties.
But he’d been right. Not completely, not about the ruination-neither my finances nor my morals were the worse for leaving Riverton-but there was some part of me that never left that house. Rather, some part of the house that wouldn’t leave me. For years after, the smell of Stubbins & Co. silver polish, the crackle of tyres on gravel, a certain type of bell and I’d be fourteen again, tired after a long day’s work, sipping cocoa by the servants’ hall fire while Mr Hamilton orated select passages from
‘Here we are,’ Ursula said. ‘Thanks, Tony.’
A young man had appeared beside me, clutching a makeshift tray of motley mugs and an old jam jar full of sugar. He released his load onto the side table where Ursula began distributing them. Ruth passed one to me.
‘Mum, what is it?’ She pulled out a handkerchief and reached for my face. ‘Are you unwell?’
I could feel then that my cheeks were moist.
It was the smell of the tea that did it. And being there, in that room, sitting on that chesterfield. The weight of distant memories. Of long-held secrets. The clash of past and present.
‘Grace? Can I get you something?’ This was Ursula. ‘Would you like the heating turned down?’
‘I’m going to have to take her home.’ Ruth again. ‘I knew this wasn’t a good idea. It’s far too much for her.’
Yes, I wanted to go home. To be home. I felt myself being hoisted up, my cane thrust into my hand. Voices swirled about me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, to no one in particular. ‘I’m just so tired.’ So tired. So long ago.
My feet were aching: protesting their confinement. Someone-Ursula, perhaps-reached out to steady me, her hand grasping my arm. A cold wind slapped my damp cheeks.
I was in Ruth’s car then, houses, trees and road signs rushing past.
‘Don’t worry, Mum, it’s all over now,’ Ruth said. ‘I blame myself. I should never have agreed to take you.’
I put my hand on her arm, felt her tense.
‘I should have trusted to my instincts,’ she said. ‘It was stupid of me.’
I closed my eyes. Listened to the hum of the radiator, the pulse of the windscreen wipers, the drone of the traffic.
‘That’s it, you have a bit of a rest,’ Ruth said. ‘You’re going home. You never have to go back again.’
I smiled, felt myself drifting away.
It is too late, I am home. I am back.
17 JANUARY 1925
Preston’s Gorge Body Identified: Local Beauty Dead
THE NURSERY
It is mild this morning, a foretaste of spring, and I am sitting on the iron seat in the garden, beneath the elm. It’s good for me to get a bit of fresh air (so says Sylvia), thus here I sit, playing peek-a-boo with the shy winter sun, my cheeks as cold and slack as a pair of peaches left too long in the fridge.
I have been thinking about the day I started at Riverton. I can see it clearly. The intervening years concertina and it is June 1914. I am fourteen again: naive, gauche, terrified, following Myra up flight after flight of scrubbed elm stairs. Her skirt swishes efficiently with every step, each
