“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 scarlike 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 deathbed 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 areoldstones, but they’re still just stones. They’ve no doubt seen a lot but they’re good at keeping secrets.”
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?”
“There’s none like a sister for remembering one’s ancient sins.” She smiled at me then, but its warmth fell short of transforming her sentiment to humor. She must have suspected as much, for she let the smile fall away, nodding towards the staircase. “Come along,” she said. “Let’s go down. Careful, now. Make sure you hold the rail. My uncle died on those stairs when he was just a boy.”
