Saffy could see that Meredith was unconvinced; more than that, the poor child looked so bitterly disappointed that Saffy would have done just about anything to cheer her up. She prevaricated, but only briefly and not with any real strength, and when Meredith let out a long, dispirited sigh, Saffy’s remaining resolve collapsed. “Oh, Merry,” she said, sneaking a glance over her shoulder, “I shouldn’t say anything, I really shouldn’t, but thereisanother reason I have to stay indoors.”
She slid to one end of the rickety garden seat and indicated Meredith should join her. Took a deep, cool breath and released it decidedly. Then she told Meredith all about the telephone call she was expecting that afternoon. “He’s a very important private collector in London,” she said. “I wrote to him after a small advertisement appeared in the newspaper seeking an assistant to catalogue his collection. And he wrote back recently to tell me that mine was the successful application, that he would telephone me this afternoon so we might work out the details together.”
“What does he collect?”
Saffy couldn’t help clasping her hands together beneath her chin. “Antiquities, art, books, beautiful things—whatheaven!”
Excitement brightened the tiny freckles across Meredith’s nose and Saffy thought again what a lovely child she was and how far she’d come in six short months. When one considered the poor skinny waif she’d been when Juniper first brought her home! Beneath the pale London skin and ragged dress, though, there lurked a quick mind and a delightful hunger for knowledge.
“Can I visit the collection?” said Meredith. “I’ve always wanted to see a real, live Egyptian artifact.”
Saffy laughed. “Of course you shall. I’m certain Mr. Wicks would be delighted to show his precious things to a clever young lady like you.”
Meredith really did appear to glow then and the first barb of regret poked holes in Saffy’s pleasure. Was it not just a little unkind to fill the girl’s head with such grand imaginings only to then expect her to keep quiet about them? “Now, Merry,” she said, sobering, “it’s very exciting news, but you must remember that it’s a secret. Percy doesn’t know yet, and nor shall she.”
“Why not?” Meredith’s eyes widened further. “What will she do?”
“She won’t be happy, that’s for certain. She won’t want me to go. She’s rather resistant to change, you see, and she likes things the way they are, all three of us here together. She’s very protective like that. She always has been.”
Meredith was nodding, absorbing this detail of the family dynamic with so much interest that Saffy half expected her to pull out that little journal of hers and take down notes. Her interest was understandable, though: Saffy had heard sufficient of the child’s own older sister to know that notions of sibling protectiveness would be unfamiliar to her.
“Percy is my twin and I love her dearly, but sometimes, Merry dear, one has to put one’s own desires first. Happiness in life is not a given, it must be seized.” She smiled and resisted adding that there had been other opportunities, other chances, all lost. It was one thing to feed a child a confidence, quite another to burden her with adult regrets.
“But what will happen when it’s time for you to go?” said Meredith. “She’ll find out then.”
“Oh, but I’ll tell her before that!” Saffy said with a laugh. “Of course I will. I’m not planning to abscond in the black of night, you know! Certainly not. I just need to find the perfect words, a way of ensuring that Percy’s feelings aren’t hurt. Until such time, I think it best that she not hear a thing about it. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Meredith, somewhat breathlessly.
Saffy bit down on her bottom lip; she had the uneasy sense that she’d made an unfortunate error of judgment, that it had been unfair to put a child in such an awkward position. She’d only meant to take Meredith’s mind off her own miserable mood.
Meredith misunderstood Saffy’s silence, taking it for a lack of faith in her ability to keep a confidence. “I won’t say anything, I promise. Not a word. I’m very good at secrets.”
“Oh, Meredith.” Saffy smiled ruefully. “I don’t doubt it. That’s not it at all—Oh, dear, I’m afraid I must apologize. It was wrong of me, asking you to keep a secret from Percy—will you forgive me?”
Meredith nodded solemnly and Saffy detected a glimmer in the girl’s face; pride at having been treated in such an adult manner, she supposed. Saffy remembered her own childish eagerness to grow up, how she’d waited impatiently on the cliff edge, pleading with adulthood to claim her, and she wondered whether it was possible ever to slow another’s journey. Was it even fair to try? Surely there could be nothing wrong in wanting to save Meredith, just as she’d tried to save Juniper, from reaching adulthood and its disappointments too fast?
“There now, lovely one,” she said, taking the last plate from Meredith’s hands, “why don’t you leave me to finish here? Go and have some fun while you wait for your parents to arrive. The morning’s far too brilliant to be spent doing chores. Just try not to get your dress too dirty.”
It was one of the pinafores Saffy had sewn when Merry first arrived, made from a lovely piece of Liberty fabric ordered years ago, not because Saffy had a project in mind, but because it was simply too beautiful not to possess. It had languished ever since in the sewing cupboard, waiting patiently for Saffy to find it a purpose. And now she had. As Meredith dissolved into the horizon, Saffy returned her attention to the table, making sure everything was just so.
MEREDITH WANDEREDaimlessly through the long grass, swishing a stick from side to side, wondering how it was that one person’s absence could rob the day so wholly of its shape and meaning. She rounded the hill and met the stream, then followed it as far as the bridge carrying the driveway.
She considered going further. Across the verge and into the woods. Deep enough that the light sifted, the spotted trout disappeared, and the water ran thick as molasses. All the way until she crossed into the wild woods and reached the forgotten pool at the base of the oldest tree in Cardarker Wood. The place of insistent blackness that she’d hated when she’d first come to the castle. Mum and Dad weren’t due for an hour or so yet, there was still time, and she knew the way, it was only a matter of sticking by the burbling brook, after all …
But without Juniper, Meredith knew, it wouldn’t be so much fun. Just dark and damp and rather smelly. “Isn’t it wonderful?” Juniper had said the first time they’d explored together. Meredith had been uncertain. The log they were sitting on was cool and damp and her shoes wet from where she’d slid off a rock. There was another pool on the estate, teeming with butterflies and birds, and a rope swing that lazed back and forth in the dappled sunlight, and she’d wished, wished, wished they’d decided to spend the day there instead. She didn’t say as much, though; the force of Juniper’s conviction was such that Meredith knew the fault was her own, that her tastes were too juvenile, that she just wasn’t trying hard enough. Screwing her determination to the sticking place, she’d smiled and said, “Yes.” And again, with feeling, “Yes. It is. Wonderful.”
In a single, fluid motion, Juniper had stood, arms extended to the sides, and tiptoed across a fallen log. “It’s the shadows,” she’d said, “the way the reeds slip down the banks, almost slyly; the smell of mud and moisture and rot.” She smiled sideways at Meredith. “Why, it’s almost prehistoric. If I told you we’d crossed an invisible threshold into the past, you’d believe me, wouldn’t you?”
Meredith had shivered then, just as she did now, and a small, smooth magnet within her child’s body had thrummed with inexplicable urgency, and she’d felt the pull of longing, though for what she did not know.
“Close your eyes and listen,” Juniper had whispered, finger to her lips. “You can hear the spiders spinning …”
Meredith closed her eyes now. Listened to the chorus of crickets, the occasional splashing of trout, the distant drone of a tractor somewhere … There was another sound, too. One that seemed distinctly out of place. It was an engine, she realized, close by and coming nearer.
She opened her eyes and saw it. A black motorcar, winding down the graveled driveway from the castle. Meredith couldn’t help but stare. Visitors were rare at Milderhurst, motorcars even rarer. Few people had the petrol for making social calls, and from what Meredith could tell, those who did were hoarding it so they could flee north when the Germans invaded. Even the priest who called on the old man in the tower arrived on foot these days. This visitor must be someone official, Meredith decided, someone on special war business.
The motorcar passed and the driver, a man she did not recognize, touched his black hat, nodding sternly at Meredith. She squinted after him, watching the car as it continued warily along the gravel. It disappeared behind a wooded bend only to reappear sometime later at the foot of the driveway, a black speck turning onto the Tenterden Road.
