face, though suffering had robbed it of expression.
To his left was the line of staff, in descending order of rank. Even Nanny had been exhumed from the nursery, and stood at half Mr Hamilton’s height, leaking silent tears into a white handkerchief.
Only Emmeline was absent, having refused to watch her sister leave. I saw her though, right before we left. Her pale face framed behind one of the etched Gothic panes of the nursery window. Or I thought I did. It may have been a trick of the light. One of the little boy ghosts who spent their eternity in the nursery.
I had already said my goodbyes. To the staff, and to Alfred. Since the night on the garden stairs we’d made tentative amends. We were circumspect these days, Alfred treating me with a polite caution almost as alienating as his irritation. Nonetheless, I’d promised to write. Extracted from him an undertaking to do likewise.
And I’d seen Mother the weekend before the wedding. She’d given me a little package of things: a shawl she had knitted years before, and a jar of needles and threads so that I might keep up my stitching. When I’d thanked her she’d shrugged and said they were no use to her; she wouldn’t be like to use them now her fingers were locked and as good as useless. On that last visit she’d asked me questions about the wedding and Mr Frederick’s factory and Lady Violet’s death. She surprised me, taking her former mistress’s death easily. I’d come lately to realise that Mother had enjoyed her years of service, yet when I spoke of Lady Violet’s final days she offered no condolences, no fond remembrances. She merely nodded slowly and let her face relax into an expression of remarkable dispassion.
But I did not think to query it then, for my mind was full of London.
The dull thump of faraway drums. Do you hear them, I wonder, or is it just me?
You have been patient. And there is not much longer to wait. For into Hannah’s world, Robbie Hunter is about to make his return. You knew he would, of course, for he has his part to play. This is not a fairytale, nor a romance. The wedding does not the mark the happy ending of this story. It is simply another beginning, the ushering in of a new chapter.
In a far grey corner of London, Robbie Hunter wakes. Shrugs off his nightmares and pulls a small parcel from his pocket. A parcel, nursed in his breast pocket since the final days of war, its safe delivery promised to a dying friend.
PART 3
6 JUNE 1919
The Estate Market
LORD SUTHERLAND’S PROPERTY
CATCHING BUTTERFLIES
They have brought us to the spring fair by minibus. Eight in all: six residents, Sylvia and a nurse whose name I can’t remember-a young girl with a wispy plait snaking down her back to sweep her belt. I expect they think the day out does us good. Though what can be gained from exchanging comfortable surrounds for a muddy oval of tents selling cakes and toys and soaps I do not know. I should have been just as happy to stay at home, away from the bustle.
A makeshift stage has been erected behind the town hall, as it is each year, and rows of white plastic chairs assembled before it. The other residents and the girl with the plait are sitting by the stage watching a man pluck numbered ping-pong balls from a metal bucket, but I prefer it here on the little iron seat by the memorial. I feel strange today. It is the heat, I’m sure. When I woke my pillow was damp, and I’ve been unable to shake this odd foggy sensation all morning. My thoughts are skimming. Coming quickly, fully formed, then slipping away before I can properly grasp them. Like catching a butterfly. It is unsettling, leaves me irritable.
A cup of tea will see me right.
Where has Sylvia gone? Did she tell me? She was here only a moment ago, about to smoke a cigarette. Talking again about her man-friend and their plans to cohabit. Once upon a time I’d have considered such extramarital relations improper, but time has a way of changing one’s views on most things.
The exposed skin on the top of my feet is cooking. I consider slipping them into the shade but an irresistible sense of masochistic ennui bids me leave them where they are. Sylvia will see the red patches later, will realise how long she has left me.
From where I sit I see the cemetery. The eastern side with its line of poplars, new leaves quivering at the suggestion of a breeze. Beyond the poplars, on the other side of the ridge, are the gravestones, amongst them my mother’s.
It’s been an age since we buried her. A wintry day in 1922 when the earth was frozen solid and my skirts blew icy against my stockinged legs, and a figure, a man, stood on the hill, barely recognisable. She took her secrets with her, into the cold, hard earth, but I learned them in the end. I know a lot about secrets; I have made them my life. Perhaps I hoped in some way that the more I learned of secrets, the better I would be at hiding my own.
I am hot. It is far too hot for April. No doubt global warming is to blame. Global warming, melting the polar ice caps, the ozone hole, genetically modified food. Some other disease of the 1990s. The world has become a hostile place. Even the rainwater is not safe these days, acid rain they call it.
That’s what’s eating the war monument. One side of the soldier’s stone face has been ravaged, the cheek pockmarked, the nose devoured by time. Like a piece of fruit left too long in a ditch, gnawed by scavengers.
He knows about duty. Despite his wounds he stands to attention atop the cenotaph, as he has for eighty years, lone eye surveying the plains beyond the town, hollow gaze cast over Bridge Street toward the car park of the new shopping centre; a land fit for heroes. He is almost as old as I am. Is he as tired?
He and his pillar have become mossy; microscopic plants thrive in the etched names of the dead. David’s is on there, at the top with the other officers; and Rufus Smith the ragman’s son, suffocated in Belgium by a collapsed trench. Further down, Raymond Jones, the village peddler when I was a
