The representative from the AHA who’d given her the key had done so with an air of defensive apology. The house hadn’t been lived in for at least a year, not since the war started. Someone had made an effort to tidy things up, but there were certain telltale signs. The fireplace, for instance, had a significant amount of foliage protruding from its chimney, and the noises that fell from its dark cavern when she tugged at the tendrils made it clear that something was in habitation. It was summer, though, so Juliet reckoned it a problem for another time. Besides, as the AHA fellow had blustered when a swallow flew at them from the top of the pantry, there was a war on and it didn’t do to make a fuss.
Upstairs, the bathroom was basic, but the rings in the tub could be cleaned, as could the mouldy floor tiles. Mrs Hammett had mentioned to Juliet on the phone that although the old woman who’d owned the house had loved it dearly, she hadn’t had a lot to spend on it towards the end. And she’d been ‘very picky about tenants’, so for long stretches of time the house had stood empty. Yes, they had some work ahead of them, that much was certain, but the occupation would be useful. It would encourage the children to feel at home, give them a sense of possession and belonging.
They were all asleep now, despite the brightness of the long summer evening, and Juliet leaned against the doorway to the larger bedroom at the back of the house. The frown that had set up on Bea’s face some months before was gone. Her arms, long and slender, lay beside her atop the sheet. When she was born, the nurse had unfurled those arms and legs and declared her a runner, but Juliet had taken one look at the fine, pale fingers – spellbindingly perfect – and known that her daughter would be a musician.
Juliet had a flash of memory, the two of them holding hands as they crossed Russell Square. Bea, at four, talking earnestly, her eyes wide, her expression avid, as she made elegant, fawn-like leaps to keep up. She’d been a lovely child – engaged and engaging, quiet, but not shy. This intense changeling who had taken her place was a stranger.
Freddy, by contrast, was reassuringly familiar. His chest was bare and broad, and his shirt had been flung inside out onto the floor beside his bed. He lay with legs akimbo, as if he’d been wrestling the sheets. There was no hope in straightening them and Juliet didn’t try. Unlike Bea, he’d been scarlet and compact when born. ‘Good God, you’ve given birth to a small red man,’ Alan had said, peering wonderingly at the bundle in Juliet’s arms, ‘a very angry little red man.’ Thus had Freddy been known as Red ever since. His passions had not subsided. He had only to feel in order for those feelings to be known. He was dramatic, charming, fun and funny. He was hard work; sunshine in human form; thunderous.
Juliet stood at last above little Tip, curled up now in a nest of pillows on the floor beside his bed, as was his recent habit. His sweaty head had cast a damp ring on the white pillowcase, and fine blond hair was pasted slick on either side of his ear. (All of her children ran hot. It came from Alan’s side.)
Juliet lifted the sheet and draped it across Tip’s narrow chest. She tucked it gently on either side and smoothed the centre, hesitating for a moment with her flattened palm over his heart.
Was it only because he was her youngest that Juliet worried especially about Tip? Or was it something else – an innate, gossamer frailty she sensed in him; the fear that she could not protect him, that she would not be able to mend him if he broke.
‘Don’t slide down the rabbit hole,’ the Alan in her mind said cheerily. ‘The way down’s a breeze, but climbing back’s a battle.’
And he was right. She was being maudlin. Tip was fine. He was perfectly fine.
With a final glance at her sleeping three, Juliet pulled the door behind her.
The room she’d taken for herself was the smaller one in the middle. She’d always liked small spaces – something to do with the womb, no doubt. There was no desk as such, but a walnut dressing table beneath the window that Juliet had requisitioned for her typewriter. The arrangement wasn’t fancy but it was serviceable, and what more did she need?
Juliet sat on the end of the iron-framed bed with its faded patchwork quilt. There was a painting on the other wall, a deep wooded grove with a neon rhododendron in its foreground. The frame was suspended from a nail by a piece of rusty wire that seemed unequal to the task. Something made scurrying noises in the ceiling cavity above and the painting moved lightly against the wall.
Stillness and silence returned and Juliet released a breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She had longed for the children to go to sleep, finally to have some time for herself; now, though, she missed the certainty of their noise, their essential confidence. The house was quiet. It was unfamiliar. Juliet was quite alone.
She opened her suitcase bedside her. The leather was worn at the corners, but it was a faithful friend, harking back to her days in repertory theatre, and she was glad to have it. Her fingers traced a thoughtful line between two small piles of folded dresses and blouses, and she considered unpacking.
Instead, she dug out the slender bottle from where it was wedged beneath the clothing and took it downstairs.
Fetching a glass tumbler from the kitchen, she headed outside.
The air in the walled garden was warm, the light bluish. It was one of those long summer evenings when the day becomes fixed in transition.
There was a gate in the stone wall leading out to the dusty strip that the man from the AHA had called ‘the coach way’. Juliet followed the path and spied a garden table set up in the gap between two willows on the grassy knoll. Beyond it, a strip of water tripped cheerfully in the gully. Not as wide as the river; a tributary, she supposed. She set the glass down on the table’s iron top and poured the whisky carefully, eyeing the mid-line. When she reached it, she dropped another generous slug.
‘Bottoms up,’ she said to the dusk.
That initial long slow sip was a balm. Juliet’s eyes closed and for the first time in hours she let her thoughts settle on Alan.
She wondered what he’d think if he knew that she and the children were here. He’d liked this place well enough, but not as she had. Her affection for the small Thames-side village, more specifically the twin-gabled house on its edge, had always amused him. He’d called her a romantic, emphasising the capital ‘R’.
Perhaps she was. She certainly wasn’t the lowercase sort. Even with Alan away in France, Juliet had resisted the urge to shower him with ostentatious declarations of love. There was no need – he knew how she felt – and to allow absence and war to induce hyperbole, to trick her into a sentimentality she’d have been embarrassed to employ if they were speaking face to face, was to admit a lack of faith. Did she love him more because Britain was at war with Germany? Had she loved him less when he was whistling in the kitchen, apron round his middle as he fried their fish for dinner?
No. Stubbornly, resolutely, certainly, no.
And so, instead of reams of wartime promises and affirmations, they honoured one another by sticking to the truth.
The most recent letter she’d received was in her pocket, but Juliet didn’t take it out now. Instead, she collected the whisky bottle and followed the grassy track towards the river.