The Echo of Twilight Read online

  When, one evening during dinner, Mr. Watts said, “I’m afraid His Majesty’s intervention signifies the gravity of the situation for England and all of Europe,” I still had my doubts, still couldn’t understand how events on the other side of the continent could affect us. But there’s no smoke without fire, as Kitty would have no doubt said, and Mr. Watts’s solemn pronouncement prompted me to remain in the servants’ hall for longer than usual that particular evening, listening with the others as he read aloud from the previous day’s newspaper.

  Later that same evening, when I returned below stairs to check on Ottoline’s breakfast tray and ask Cook if she would kindly ensure Her Ladyship’s egg was soft-boiled, I heard Mr. Watts and Cook talking quietly in his pantry.

  “I can’t see how the prime minister will be able to join us at Delnasay,” Mr. Watts said. “Not now.”

  Cook murmured something, and I thought I heard the word warning. Mr. Watts almost laughed. He said, “I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s not my place to tell her. Miss Gibson will make her own judgment. We all do.” He sighed loudly. “But this war will certainly put a stop to that sort of thing. You mark my words.”

  There was a moment’s silence, and then Mr. Watts said, “Oh, come, come, Mrs. Lister. We must be strong . . . and you must be brave for those fine young sons of yours.”

  I didn’t wait for Mrs. Lister. I went to the empty drawing room. If I was going to read the newspaper, I wanted to read new news—not old news, because I’d done that once before. Not long after Kitty’s passing, and while clearing the room I had once shared with her, I’d found two folded yellowing pages at the bottom of her sewing basket: the verdict on my mother’s death circled in her violet ink on one, the birth announcement of an “Arabella Godley” circled on the other.

  The name had clearly meant something to Kitty, and instinctively I knew it was a part of the jigsaw of my mother’s life, and, more specifically, her death. But it would be years before I’d fit the name Godley into that puzzle and see the full picture emerge.

  Chapter Five

  I was awake at midnight. Awake at one, two, three o’clock and then four. It was the first day of a new month, and we had not long left Perth when the blackness faded and the stars disappeared. High up to the east, a silver blue sky flickered, then stretched itself farther, and as the dark contours of the mountains came into focus, my eyes followed their great sweep down to the tumbled rocks and boulders, and to the river.

  No doubt tired from my lack of sleep on that overnight journey north, I found myself wiping away tears and couldn’t help but think of Kitty and of all the things she had never seen. During those unfolding moments, I was acutely aware of the distance I’d traveled from her and my origins. I had crossed a border, entered a new country.

  And yet I had so nearly not seen any of it.

  Prior to our departure, the news had not been good. The situation on the Continent had escalated further, and there had been much discussion as to whether we should head north to Scotland, and whether there would even be a “Glorious Twelfth.” Troops were being mobilized all over Europe, and Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia, where the recently unknown but already famous Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been brutally shot down weeks before.

  But Ottoline was determined.

  The morning before our departure, as Ottoline lay in her bath with rose-water-infused pads on her eyes and I sat nearby, packing items of her toilette as she’d asked, His Lordship’s brown leather brogues creaked into the marble-walled bathroom.

  “I’ve decided we should delay our departure for a week or so.”

  “We can’t possibly do that. Watts and Cook have already gone . . . ,” said Ottoline without moving. “And so have the trunks.”

  “Watts and Cook can come back.”

  “And the trunks?”

  “They can stay up there until . . . until we know.”

  Ottoline removed the pads from her eyes and rose up from the scented bathwater. And though I quickly moved over to her with a towel, she didn’t take it from me. She turned and stood facing His Lordship. She said, “Hector, whether we are here or in Scotland will make no difference to what’s happening in Europe. We’re heading north weeks later than planned as it is, and I’m afraid I’m not prepared to alter our arrangements again.”

  It has to be said, and particularly in view of her age, Ottoline had a magnificent body. Her breasts were still full and high, her waist slender, and her stomach betrayed no sign of having expanded itself to carry children. And I knew from touch that her skin was firm and unusually smooth, perhaps due to the precious oils she had shipped over to her from somewhere in the East.

  “And anyway, what about Gigi?”

  I saw His Lordship’s eyes move down his wife’s shape, his mouth twitch. “What about her?”

  “Oh come, you know how she adores her trips north . . . and going for all those long walks with you.”

  He closed his eyes: “For God’s sake, Lila, you know perfectly well this isn’t about bloody Virginia!”

  Ottoline took the towel from my still-outstretched hand, wrapped it round herself and stepped out from the bath. “I’m really not in the mood for a scene, Hector.” She patted her arms with the towel as I quickly lifted another and placed it on her shoulders and dried off her back. “And I would’ve thought you had far better things to do with your time than march in here and be quite so aggressive.”

  Then, with newly measured calmness, and staring over at the window, His Lordship said, “I’ve just spoken to Winston. He says the city is in chaos, the world’s credit system on the brink of collapse. Soon it will be impossible to cash a check . . . And meanwhile, there’s a vast concourse of warships out there in the North Sea.”

  “All the more reason to go to Scotland,” said Ottoline.

  As the door closed, Ottoline dropped the towel to the floor. “Bloody Winston,” she muttered.

  I shivered as I stepped down from the train at the strangely named Boat of Garten. The air was a good deal cooler than in Northumberland, and the promising sky of earlier that morning had become ever more gray and low as we’d journeyed northward. It took some time for our luggage to be unloaded from the guard’s carriage, and there was no sign of Mr. McNiven or the luggage van, or of any of the pony and traps to take us onward.

  And I was thinking about Harry, because he’d been left behind, and because shortly before we left, I’d found him in a crumpled heap, sitting on the stone floor in the scullery. He was stifling tears and wiping his nose on the baggy sleeve of his old man’s jacket, his stiff collar dirtier than ever against his scrawny pale neck. He said, “They’re never going to take me nowhere, Pearl . . . not without a uniform.” I tried to tell him that it wasn’t the uniform; I tried to tell him that only a few of us were going north. And then, when he began his usual “Mollie says,” I said, “Harry, I don’t wish to hear another word about what that wretched girl thinks.”

  He looked up at me. “You don’t like my sister, do you?”

  I should have guessed, perhaps, but I hadn’t. Nor had I managed to abate Harry’s tears. I left him slumped on the cold floor, drowning in the heap of his suit.

  Unlike the other servants, I had traveled first-class with the family. It was a privilege, of course, but the singularity of my position made me feel awkward. I belonged nowhere. I wasn’t family. I was—no matter what Ottoline said—a servant, and yet I was unable to be with the other servants. And as I watched them, all together, smoking and laughing at the other end of the small platform, I felt newly envious. Meanwhile, His Lordship paced up and down, puffing on a cigar and pulling out his pocket watch every few seconds, while Ottoline held Lolly in her arms and chatted with her sons and their friends.

  I surreptitiously watched the boys. It was hard not to—such a handsome group of young men, so confident and assured. They were not that much younger than
me, or Stanley—who suddenly seemed middle-aged by comparison. Hugo Campbell was twenty-one years old and studying at Oxford. His younger brother and only sibling, Billy, had just turned nineteen and had recently finished at Eton. Both boys possessed their parents’ good looks, and both had impeccable manners. In fact, I had never known any young men quite so polite. And whereas Hugo was clearly the more confident and ebullient of the two, I had quickly developed a soft spot for Billy.

  Eventually McNiven appeared, uttering a long diatribe of unintelligible words; then he and another man set to work loading the van with our luggage—and hatboxes, fishing bags and fishing rods, picnic hampers marked Fortnum & Mason, and at least a half dozen new lamp shades. Minutes later, Hector, Ottoline, the dog and I climbed onto one trap while Hugo, Billy and their four friends crammed onto another, and the servants onto a third. And thus, in convoy, and with rugs over our knees, we headed out of Boat of Garten.

  All around us were endless heather-covered hills, desolate and purple against the melancholy sky. And we climbed and climbed, zigzagging our way up the perilous road, and then down again, past a low cottage where scantily clad children waved to us, over an ancient humpback bridge and then up once more. And the clouds grew ever nearer until we were in them, and the landscape around us was blotted out by what Ottoline described as a “fine summer mist.” I saw her close her eyes as she breathed in that damp air, and I saw her husband watch her and saw his mouth twitch.

  I was beginning to feel sick, beginning to wonder why I’d ever wished to see another country, when Ottoline pointed to something far below us and I saw silver gray stone and a single turret. And though the mist seemed to follow us down into the valley, the wilderness shrank back, and beyond the pillared gateway were the vaguely reassuring contours of clipped shrubs and hedges, and a manicured lawn with an herbaceous border. And then, finally, we came to a stop.

  It was not a castle, and not at all on the same scale as Birling. It was simply a large gray-stoned house with a turret or two, and castellated gables, and a round tower structure at the front where the main door was situated.

  I climbed down from the trap and followed Ottoline into a lobby. It smelled familiarly damp. Worn-out galoshes and antique-looking walking boots were lined up to one side of the stone floor opposite a long coat stand, the lower compartments of which were filled with canes and umbrellas, and above which hung multitudinous tweed cloaks and Mackintosh raincoats. A set of broad double doors led into the main hallway, where a vast stone fireplace dominated. Here, and hanging from every wall, were stuffed heads and antlers, and lining the broad staircase that rose up from the hall were weapons: shields, swords, spears and daggers—exhibited where one would perhaps have normally seen ancestors’ portraits, or even quaint pastoral scenes. Primitive, I thought.

  Although it was summer and still early afternoon, a fire burned in the hallway. But the place felt horribly cold, and I wished we hadn’t gone there; I wished we’d stayed in Northumberland, with its fitted carpets and new windows, and my lovely yellow room. And then Ottoline said, “Isn’t it magical?”

  And I nodded and smiled. “Oh yes, my lady . . . Magical.”

  Though dead on my feet, I was busy all of that first afternoon and into the evening, unwrapping cashmere, silk, chiffon and, Ottoline’s favorite, mousseline de soie, blouses from tissue paper; pressing garments; brushing off gowns and jackets; and hanging them all away. Much of Ottoline’s underlinen came from Paris, beautifully appliquéd by French seamstresses. Her shoes were mainly from Pinet, with evening shoes of silk or velvet, many heavily embroidered; and her bespoke tweeds were made for her in London by Lord Hector’s tailor.

  She had told me that she’d take me with her to Paris—to the fashion shows and famous French couturiers. (What she hoped I might be able to do, what other lady’s maids did, she said, was copy their designs. However, though I was handy with a needle and had made my own clothes, I wasn’t sure my talent stretched that far.) And in London, we’d go shopping on Bond Street, and to Selfridges and Marshall and Snelgrove—which were both within minutes from the house in Chesterfield Gardens, she said.

  Ottoline’s definition of shopping was for me something of an abstract notion, and which had to date only ever involved staring through polished glass to admire items I knew I should never be able to afford, or own. And so the mere idea of it—going shopping—was as tantalizing as the thought of an ice cream on a hot day.

  Unpacking Ottoline’s toilette, I glanced at the labels—Youth-Giving . . . Restores Beauty . . . Brings Vitality and Radiance to the Complexion. And I shook my head as I lined up the jars and bottles on the small table in the small room Ottoline imaginatively called her bathroom, one that would have undoubtedly been classified as a cupboard at Birling, and where an old tin hip bath stood in a corner. For there was nothing remotely close to luxury here, and no running hot water. And I knew it would mean one of the maids—or me—having to carry cans of hot water up from the kitchen; those half-forgotten rituals and rigmaroles I’d so happily and quickly become unaccustomed to. I had become lazy, already spoiled by the modern conveniences at Birling—and by Ottoline. I had come a long way from carrying coals and slops up and down a candlelit back staircase, a long way from a bath every other week in a mouse-infested shared attic bedroom. I was a superior sort of girl now.

  It was Billy who woke me. And I was embarrassed as I sat up. I’d fallen asleep on Ottoline’s bed with her half-unpacked jewelry case tipped over next to me. I’d been waiting for the twilight, which had come and gone, and I had been dreaming of Kitty: I’d been sitting once more in the tiny kitchen of my grandfather’s house, watching her as she busied herself with pots and pans; I’d been watching the bright orange embers beyond an iron door as it opened and then closed as my Kitty said, “There. There, now.”

  The room was dark but for the candle Billy held in his hand. And as he moved about, using it to light more candles, I tried to sort the jewels and untangle the ropes of pearls. He came next to me, scooping up the jewels and dumping them willy-nilly inside the case. “I think my mother’s trinkets can wait until tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know how I fell asleep like that,” I said, rising to my feet, still a little disorientated.

  “It’s always a killer—that overnight journey. And the air here simply knocks one for six.” He closed the case and carried it over to the dressing table. “Mother tells me you’ve traveled about a bit . . . in the South of England?”

  It made me feel newly shy to think of Ottoline’s speaking about me with her family. And whether Billy was simply being polite or was genuinely interested, I didn’t know, but I said yes, I had worked in a number of counties.

  “Good for you, I say. You know, I intend to travel,” he said. “Not the way my parents do. I couldn’t care less for fancy hotels, and I certainly won’t be sending any trunks ahead—or taking lamp shades with me.”

  I smiled. By candlelight his features were childlike, his face innocent of any real experience, and yet his eyes shone with a fierce intensity I’d seen in another, not so long ago, at King’s Cross station. And I was momentarily catapulted back and reminded.

  “No, I’ll take a knapsack and tent, that’s all,” Billy went on, staring beyond me into the dimness. “And then I’ll wander . . . just wander wherever my fancy takes me.”

  At that moment Lolly appeared in the doorway. Billy picked her up and turned to me. “Do you like dogs, Pearl?”

  “Yes,” I said, because apart from Mister Darcy, I always had. He asked me if I liked wild animals. I wasn’t sure how wild he meant, but I nodded. Then he asked if I’d ever seen deer, and I told him I had, in Hampshire, and before I knew it, I was telling him about the pet fox in Kent, and the mother and baby hedgehogs in Dorset.

  “I think you’re going to like it here.”

  He placed the dog down on Ottoline’s bed and continued to tell me about the wildlife to be
seen on the estate: capercaillies, red squirrels, hares and birds of prey. “There used to be ospreys, but I believe they’re extinct now,” he added.

  I knew already that the estate encompassed some ten thousand acres of rivers, woodland, hills and fields. And I knew it had a history, too, for Ottoline had told me. People had lived there, she said, since the fourteenth century. The previous evening, over dinner on board the train, she had relished telling the story of a man who had been captured there one dark and stormy night by Cromwell’s soldiers and then marched to Edinburgh to be executed. I wasn’t pleased by the story, for I knew if there were to be ghosts at Delnasay, he’d be one of them.

  “You know, I’ve even seen wildcats. And last summer I saw a golden eagle down by the castle rock,” said Billy now, as though I knew the place. “It was incredible, Pearl . . . So majestic, so graceful . . .” He extended his arms outward, mimicking the bird’s soaring movement. “I was with Raffy. You’ll like him, I think. He prefers to stay in a cottage on the estate—uses it as his studio—but he knows the hills better than anyone, every path, exactly where to go . . . He knows how to light fires and skin rabbits, how to survive in the wild . . . He’s a painter,” he added, newly matter-of-fact.

  One of the reasons I had a soft spot for Billy was because he seemed completely oblivious to my rank. He spoke to me as though I were his mother’s friend, not maid; another guest, not a servant. And his innocence was humbling.

  As we stepped onto the broad landing, Billy handed me the candle. “Good night, Pearl. I have a feeling you’re going to sleep well.”

  He disappeared down the staircase, leaping beneath the multitudinous weapons and stuffed heads—now sinisterly illuminated by the oil lamps in the hallway below. A wave of noise swept out and up from the drawing room, then abated. I turned from the grinning stags and quickly made my way to my room.