The Echo of Twilight Page 11

  I walked under the archway and out of the yard, down the driveway to the gap in the wall, the steps and overgrown path, weaving my way through the long grass, tangled weeds and tall thistles, until at last the cottage appeared, its whitewashed walls peach tinted in the afternoon light.

  Standing next to an easel, smoking a cigarette, he turned as I approached. “Hello, you. I’m pleased you’ve come.”

  We sat side by side in a couple of old deck chairs. And as I gazed out across the glen, the river, beyond the alders and groves of silver birch to the mountains, the peace was overwhelming, newly extraordinary, deeper and more powerful than anything I’d known. And with it came a sense of belonging, a sort of contentment and connectedness. And I thought, even if nothing else happened in my life, this was enough: this sky, these hills, those high-up purples and blues, that dark bird’s wing, those feathery clouds and him. I knew I’d remember it all for the rest of my life.

  I turned, took in his profile: the line of his jaw and aquiline nose; his mouth, moving almost imperceptibly in thought; his long sandy lashes and sunburned cheeks. And his hands: the blond hairs that curled at his wrist, his fingers smeared blue and white with paint, and the paleness of his palms against his tan. And as I blinked and saved it to memory, I had an urge to reach out, take his hand and kiss it. Because I wanted him to know, this Ralph Stedman—a stranger who’d helped me board a train, who had watched me dance, sang “Happy Birthday” to me and later unfastened my shoes without unfastening me; for the first time in my life, I wanted someone to know everything about me.

  In that illuminated moment came an understanding my whole being craved, and a quiet rapture flooded my soul, and I thought, I am where I am meant to be.

  “Ralph, I just want you to know—”

  “No, I don’t need to know.”

  “But I want to thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For looking after me last night . . . for being kind.”

  He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “Have I been kind to you? I’m not so sure about that.”

  The sun disappeared behind a cloud; a shadow passed over the hills. I watched its progress in silence, perplexed by his words and waiting for more. But none came.

  Eventually I said, “Should I go?”

  “Yes, you probably should . . . But I don’t want you to.”

  He pointed to a buzzard circling high in the sky, to an oystercatcher swooping over the shingle. He told me the names of the surrounding hills, the names of the pools in the river—the Avon, pronounced A’an, he said.

  Slowly, we found our place again.

  He teased me about the previous evening, telling me, yes, I had danced for quite a while.

  “How long?” I asked, no longer embarrassed or shy.

  “Oh, only for an hour or so,” he said, turning to me, his eyes crinkling in a smile. “You accused a very ugly clock of being rather proud of itself, and then admonished it further for not being able to tell the correct time.” And then, at last, he reached out and offered me his hand. He said, “You and I are kindred spirits.”

  “Wanderers.”

  “Weary wanderers.”

  “But I don’t always want to wander. I’d like to have a home one day.”

  “And how do you see it, this home of yours?” he asked.

  “It’ll face due south,” I began, assuredly. “The morning sun will come into the kitchen, on the eastern side; the evening sun, into the sitting room on the western side. It’ll have three bedrooms and a modern bathroom. And I’ll paint the walls of the sitting room a deep, dark pink, like a sunset . . . and the walls of my bedroom a golden color.”

  “And is the bedroom to be south facing?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Gold might be a little too dazzling to the eye if it is.”

  “West facing?”

  “Or south facing and . . . green?”

  I shook my head. “No. I wouldn’t want a green bedroom.”

  “Will there be a husband? . . . Children?”

  I looked down, brushed an invisible fly off my dress. “I really haven’t thought that far.”

  “You’re being disingenuous, because I know you have. And so you should. You’ve pictured your home, how you wish it to look, and you need to populate it,” he said.

  I raised my eyes to him. “Well, of course, I’d like to think there’d be a family. I don’t relish the thought of spinsterhood.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ll be a spinster, Pearl.”

  “I might . . . if there’s to be a long war.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” he said. “Have you eaten?”

  We ate a rabbit stew he had made on the small stove inside and served on tin plates. He drank red wine from a jam jar; I drank water from a chipped china cup. And when he said, “You see, I know how to live in style,” I laughed.

  He asked me about Stanley, and I told him: “He was good-looking, sometimes funny. All the girls fell for him . . . and I suppose I was flattered. But we didn’t really have much in common.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I thought I might. But I know now that I didn’t.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  “No, my naïveté hurt me.”

  It was getting late, past the time I should be back, but I didn’t want to go, didn’t want to leave. And Ottoline had said she didn’t need me. So I stayed on, watching him, listening to him, learning him.

  Like me, Ralph had no siblings; like me, he had no home. The S stood for Sebastian, and Ralph Sebastian had been born in India, and then dispatched to a boarding school in England at five years old. School holidays had been spent with his housemaster or with Ottoline’s family, and often there—at Delnasay. When Ralph reached the age of ten, his housemaster introduced him to a man he was told was his father, and from whom he learned that the woman he’d been writing to as Mother had in fact passed away some years before. More latterly, he’d spent time on the Continent, traveling, and studying the Great Masters, imitating them and producing portraits and pretty vistas for English and American tourists—most of whom were rich philistines, he said, and had no real understanding of art.

  He was, he said, a disappointment to his father, who was a military man through and through, and had passed away some years ago. “I suspect I’m more like my mother. Certainly, having a painter for a son was an unspeakable embarrassment to my father. He’d have adored a son accomplished in sports or the sciences, not the arts . . . The last time I saw him, he asked me if I was batting for the other side,” he added, staring back at me and raising an eyebrow.

  I knew this term, and I suddenly wondered: Had I misread the signs? And so I took a moment and then said, “And do you . . . bat for the other side, I mean?”

  He smiled.

  “It wouldn’t matter to me if you did—were,” I said, picking up the chipped china cup and examining it as I pleaded with God.

  “You really are adorable, you know?”

  I looked up: “Am I?”

  “Utterly.” He took the china cup from my hand, ran his fingers over my open palm. “I could fall in love with this small hand,” he said. “I could draw it from memory, imagine its touch, its innocence and industry . . .”

  No one had ever said such things to me before, and I wasn’t sure what to do or say. Only when he released my hand and sat back in his chair did the words come, the inevitable words: “Are you going to go?”

  He sighed. “I’m not sure . . . I prefer to paint men rather than kill them.”

  “Does that mean you won’t?”

  “I can’t promise you that. In fact, I can’t promise you anything.” He lifted his paint-smeared hand and stared at it: “But I’m not sure I’ll be able to look Billy in the eye if I don’t go.”

  “Oh, but Billy’s
not going. Ottoline’s absolutely determined on that. And anyway, we have a pact.”

  “I’m not sure your pact will work. I rather think Billy’s decided.”

  “But he can’t have . . . When? It’ll kill Ottoline if he goes.”

  “And it might kill Billy, but he’s going—or more likely gone.”

  I thought of Ottoline and my words to her, my reassurance. “Do you know this? Do you know this for certain?”

  Ralph nodded. “He came to see me earlier today. I’m sorry, Pearl, but I imagine he’s already left.”

  I gasped. I rose to my feet. “I have to go . . .”

  “Will you be coming back?”

  “Yes . . . but I might be a while.”

  The air was filled with midges, and I stumbled more than once as I ran back along the overgrown path toward Delnasay. I felt my bun come undone, my stockings slide down, and my blouse, damp beneath my arms and sticking to my back. The door by the kitchen stood wide-open, and I paused for a moment, caught my breath and adjusted my hair. Then, collected, I walked down the long passageway into the lamp-lit hallway, up the main staircase and toward Ottoline’s room.

  She lay on her bed in the semidarkness, fully clothed and staring up at the ceiling.

  “Billy,” I said, “he’s planning to go, my lady.”

  “Too late.” She moved her hand across the bedcovers toward the piece of paper: “Read it.”

  Dearest Mama,

  I know this will not please you, but haven’t you always told me I should follow my heart? And my heart tells me this: If my brother, cousins & all of my friends are headed for France, I must go, too. Because I can’t stay here, hiding away when my fellow countrymen, friends & family are all headed to fight for Us & our Liberty. I can’t live with it. And the only pain & doubt I have right at this moment is about you. But rest assured, I will do my utmost to stay safe.

  Please forgive me, and keep us all in your prayers.

  Billy

  I put down the letter, asked Ottoline if she knew when Billy had left. “We might still have time,” I said, thinking someone—perhaps Mr. McNiven—could get to the station at Boat of Garten quickly enough to stop him.

  Ottoline closed her eyes and shook her head. “He left hours ago, Pearl. I imagine he’s already boarded the overnight train from Edinburgh to London.”

  I thought for a moment; then I said, “But His Lordship’s in London! Perhaps he can intervene—do something?”

  “Yes, perhaps,” murmured Ottoline. “Felix is going to try to put a call in to him first thing tomorrow.” She opened her eyes and turned to me. “You didn’t know, did you? Billy didn’t say anything?”

  “No, I had no idea, my lady.”

  “And Ralph?” she asked. “Do you think he knew? It’s just that . . . well, he and Billy are very close, and I’m not sure I could ever forgive him if he knew and hadn’t told me, warned me.”

  “I’m quite sure he didn’t know.”

  “He’s only just turned nineteen, Pearl.”

  I waited a moment; then I asked if she wished me to help her undress. She shook her head. I asked her if she needed anything. She shook her head again. Then came a knock at the door. Mr. Cowper appeared. He walked over to Ottoline’s bed, sat down on the edge of it and took hold of her hand. “Darling,” he said. And as Ottoline began to cry, I left the room.

  That night, a dark shape circled the twilit skies above Delnasay. I watched it from my open window. “He’s not here; he’s gone,” I whispered to it.

  Chapter Ten

  Hector Campbell went to King’s Cross, and to Waterloo and Charing Cross stations in search of Billy. He spoke to Billy’s friends, but none of them had any information, or at least nothing they were prepared to impart to Lord Hector at that time. He spoke to his own friends, including Mr. Asquith and Lord Kitchener—who put out an alert.

  And then hopes turned to Hugo, who was already in France with the British Expeditionary Force and might be able to somehow trace and find his brother, and persuade him to return home—because Billy was under twenty-one and had gone without his parents’ permission, as Ottoline repeatedly said. But then Lord Kitchener appealed for another one hundred thousand men and every country in Europe seemed to be declaring war, and Mrs. Lister said trying to find Billy would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

  So the waiting continued like a long prayer, and I began to see how the war was already reshaping lives and altering destinies. I began to understand that there was no escape from it, even in the Highlands of Scotland. For those of us left were all a little at odds with one another, and the paradise surrounding us, and even the peace—that exquisite peace enveloping the glen—began to feel unnatural.

  For a while Ottoline seemed to have no use for me. She rose early and spent her mornings studying the newspapers: underlining names, places in France, cutting up pages and columns, inserting them into envelopes later to be addressed and added to with notes and letters. Her correspondence became all-consuming, and in response to a daily deluge of shock and horror, she feverishly filled sheet after sheet of paper—murmuring to herself as she scrawled words to friends and relations, and to other mothers of sons.

  She scoured the map of France His Lordship had sent her, running her finger along some invisible line, nodding to herself when she saw a name she recognized from the newspaper and then, sometimes, marking it in ink with an X. There was never any mention of her novel, and the clothbound notebooks she’d brought with her from Northumberland remained stacked up where I’d placed them on the day of our arrival.

  Her afternoons and evenings were invariably spent with Felix Cowper—who usually rose at lunchtime. I suppose she was afraid to let him out of her sight—lest he, too, disappear. But I knew his departure was as inevitable as Ralph’s; I knew it was only a matter of time. Even in our isolation, I could almost hear the drums, sweeping through towns and villages and calling up men. They would go, I thought. How could they not?

  And Ralph? Ralph remained conspicuous by his absence. And aware as I was of his betrayal of Ottoline, and my own lie to her, aware as I was by then of my feelings, I was reluctant to go to him.

  And so the hours were slow and heavy, each one imbued with the still and melancholy air of an early Sunday evening. And we all remained indoors. As though to go outside, to disconnect for just one moment from it—the War—was in some way disrespectful and unpatriotic. No one wished to be caught staring appreciatively at any views—not at a time like this. Instead, we waited. We waited for a telegram from Lord Hector about Billy, or a letter from Hugo; we waited for updates—about Britain, about France, about Belgium. We waited for news.

  News . . .

  But the Belgians were holding out well against the Germans, and Liege remained well guarded. Then, on what should have been a Glorious Twelfth, Britain declared war on Austria. The following day, Mr. Cowper left, and Ottoline entered a new phase, one in which she took refuge in playing gramophone records very loudly, and indulged in her newly acquired habit of smoking. And as my last shreds of optimism sank, I took a rusting bicycle from the coach house and headed up the potholed road for the church in the nearby village. At the top of the hill, I stopped and turned. Across the valley, smoke rose from the chimney of a whitewashed cottage. He had not gone. Not yet.

  I sat in the church alone. And I tried to pray for peace, and for Billy’s safety and for Hugo’s. But my thoughts were littered with fighting words: combat . . . conflict . . . campaign . . . casualties . . . And muddled in with them—and above and beyond them, and selfishly, I know—was one name. And as the sun streamed in through the stained glass, I asked Kitty once again for guidance: Tell me what to do.

  Though she never married, Kitty had once had a sweetheart called Joe. She had been engaged to him for almost nine years by the time she learned about the barmaid at the Raven, a nearby public house, and rea
lized she had kept herself for a wedding night that would never be.

  Magnanimous, ever generous, Kitty always spoke to the woman who stole her Joe, even when she bumped into her with yet another infant in the perambulator. I think she knew she had wasted her years, but her extraordinary capacity for forgiveness allowed her to smile through the pain.

  ’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

  It was almost seven by the time I arrived back at Delnasay. I dropped the bicycle onto the grit in the courtyard, entered the house and almost collided with Mr. Watts emerging from the butler’s pantry. I heard him say, “Ah, Gibson,” but I ignored him and raced down the passageway toward the music coming from the drawing room.

  Ottoline sat with a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Seemingly oblivious and in a world of her own, she moved her shoulders back and forth to the music. When at last she saw me, she said, “This is one of Billy’s favorites.”

  And so I waited, watching her as she quietly sang along to the chorus: “Come on and hear, come on and hear, Alexander’s ragtime band . . . They can play a bugle call like you never heard before, so natural that you want to go to war . . .” I waited until the music ended and the crackling began. Then I asked if she could spare me for an hour or so.

  “An hour . . . a day . . . a week,” she said, quietly, nonsensically, and without so much as looking at me. “What does it matter?”

  “I shan’t be long, I just—”

  “You just have to go to him, I know . . . I know what it feels like.” She turned to me then. “Are you in love with him?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette, put down her glass and went over to the gramophone. She lifted the needle and the crackling stopped. And as she stood with her back to me, she said, “I don’t want him to break your heart.”