And that is what I did, Marcus. I imagined you on the end of my bed, stretched across my feet as you liked to lie when you were little, and I began to speak. I told you some of what I’ve been doing, about the film and Ursula. I treaded cautiously about your mother, saying only that she misses you. That she longs to see you.
And I told you about the memories I’ve been having. Not all of them; I have a purpose and it isn’t to bore you with tales from my past. Rather I told you about the curious sensation that they are becoming more real to me than my life. The way I slip away without warning, am disappointed when I open my eyes to see that I am back in 1999; the way the fabric of time is changing, and I am beginning to feel at home in the past and a visitor to this strange and blanched experience we agree to call the present.
A funny feeling, to sit, alone in one’s room, and talk to a small black box. At first I whispered, concerned that the others would hear. That my voice and its secrets would drift down the corridor to the morning room, like a ship’s horn floating forlornly into a foreign port. But when Matron popped in with my tablets, her look of surprise set my mind at ease.
She has gone now. The pills I have put on the windowsill beside me. I will take them later, but for now I need to be clear-headed.
I am watching the sun set over the heath. I like to follow its path as it slips silently behind the far-off band of trees. Today I blink and miss its last farewell. When my eyes open, the ultimate moment has passed and the shimmering crescent has disappeared, leaving the sky bereft: a clear, cold blue, lacerated by streaks of frosty white. The heath itself shivers in the sudden shadow, and in the distance a train sneaks through the valley fog, electric brakes moaning as it turns toward the village. I glance at my wall clock. It is the six o’clock train, filled with people returning from work in Chelmsford and Brentwood and even London.
I see the station in my mind. Not as it is, perhaps, but as it was. The big round station clock suspended over the platform, its steadfast face and diligent hands a stern reminder that time and the trains wait for no man. It has probably been replaced now with a blank, blinking digital device. I wouldn’t know. It has been a long time since I visited the station.
I see it as it was the morning we waved Alfred off to war. Strings of paper triangles, red and blue, flirting with the breeze, children racing up and down, weaving in and out, blowing tin whistles and waving Union Jacks. Young men-such young men-starched and eager in their new uniforms and clean boots. And, snaked along the track, the glistening train, anxious to be on its way. To spirit its unsuspecting passengers to a hell of mud and death.
But enough of that. I jump too far ahead.
‘The lamps are going out all over Europe.
We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.’
Lord Grey, British foreign secretary
3 AUGUST 1914
IN THE WEST
Nineteen-fourteen slipped toward nineteen-fifteen, and with each passing day went any chance that the war would end by Christmas. A gunshot in a faraway land had sent tremors across the plains of Europe and the sleeping giant of centuries-old rancour had awoken. Major Hartford was recalled to service, dusted off along with other heroes of long-forgotten campaigns, while Lord Ashbury moved into his London flat and joined the Bloomsbury Home Guard. Mr Frederick, unfit for armed service on account of a bout of pneumonia in the winter of 1910, swapped motor cars for war planes and was issued a special government badge announcing his valuable contribution to a vital war industry. It was cold comfort, said Myra, who knew about such things, it having always been a dream of Mr Frederick’s to serve with the military.
History tells that as 1915 unravelled, the war’s true character began to emerge. But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors. For while in France young men battled fear undreamt of, at Riverton 1915 passed much as 1914 had before it. We were aware, of course, that the Western Front had reached a stalemate-Mr Hamilton kept us well fed with his zealous recitations of the newspaper’s grisly fare-and certainly there were enough minor inconveniences to keep folks shaking their heads and tut-tutting the war, but these were tempered by the tremendous flurry of purpose the conflict gave those for whom daily life had become staid. Who welcomed the new arena in which to prove their value.
Lady Violet joined and formed countless committees: from the locating of suitable billets for suitable Belgian refugees, to the organising of motor-car excursions for convalescing officers. All across Britain young women (and some of the younger boys too) did their bit for national defence, taking up knitting needles against a sea of troubles, producing a deluge of scarves and socks for the boys at the front. Fanny, unable to knit but anxious to impress Mr Frederick with her patriotism, threw herself into the coordination of such enterprises, organising for knitted goods to be boxed and mailed to France. Even Lady Clementine showed a rare community spirit, billeting one of Lady Violet’s sanctioned Belgians-an elderly lady with poor English but fine enough manners to mask the fact-whom Lady Clementine proceeded to probe for all the most ghastly details of invasion.
As December approached, Lady Jemima, Fanny and the Hartford children were summoned to Riverton, where Lady Violet was determined to celebrate a traditional Christmas season. Fanny would have preferred to stay in London-far more exciting-but was unable to refuse the summons of a woman whose son she hoped to marry. (Never mind that the son himself was firmly stationed elsewhere and firmly set against her.) She had little choice but to steel herself to long winter weeks in country Essex. She managed to look bored as only the very young can and spent the time dragging herself from room to room, striking pretty poses on the off-chance Mr Frederick should make an unscheduled return home.
Jemima suffered by comparison, seemingly plumper and plainer than the year before. There was, however, one arena in which she outshone her counterpart: she was not only married, but married to a hero. When the Major’s letters arrived, carried solemnly by Mr Hamilton on a polished silver salver, Jemima was thrust centre stage. Receiving the letter with a gracious nod, she would pause a jot beneath respectfully lowered eyelids, sigh like endurance herself, then slit the envelope and seize its precious cargo. The letter would then be read in suitably solemn tones to a captivated (and captive) audience.
Meanwhile, upstairs, for Hannah and Emmeline time was dragging. They had already been at Riverton a fortnight, and with ghastly weather forcing them indoors, and no lessons to distract them (Miss Prince being engaged in war work), they were running out of things to do. They’d played every game they knew-cat’s cradle, jacks, goldminer (which as far as I could figure, required one to scratch a spot on the other’s arm until blood or boredom won out)-they’d helped Mrs Townsend with the Christmas baking until they were ill from pilfered pastry dough, and they’d coerced Nanny into unlocking the attic storeroom so they could climb amongst dusty, forgotten treasures. But it was The Game they longed to play. (I’d seen Hannah fossicking inside the Chinese box, re-reading old adventures when she thought no one was looking.) And for that they needed David, not due from Eton for another week.
On an afternoon in late November, while I was up in the drying room preparing the best tablecloths for Christmas, Emmeline burst in. She stood for a moment, scanning, then marched to the warm closet. She pulled the door open and a ring of soft candlelight spilled onto the floor. ‘Ah-ha!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I knew you’d be here.’