‘—ologist. An archaeologist.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘One of those.’
Juliet took Tip with her to the top step and sat him on her lap. She had her arms around him and her cheek resting on the top of his warm head. Of all of her children, Tip was the most willing to accept these occasional bouts of excessive parental love. Only when she felt that she was straining even his unending patience did she say, ‘Right. Breakfast. And time, I think, to find out what your brother and sister are fighting about.’
‘Bea said that Daddy wouldn’t be able to find us here when he comes home.’
‘Did she?’
‘And Red said that Daddy was a magician and that he could find us no matter where we were.’
‘I see.’
‘And I came upstairs because I didn’t want to tell them.’
‘Tell them what?’
‘That Daddy isn’t coming home.’
Juliet felt light-headed. ‘What do you mean?’
He didn’t answer but instead reached his little hand up to press lightly on her cheek. His small heart-shaped face was solemn and Juliet could see at once that he knew.
She was aware of the letter in her pocket, the last that she’d received from Alan. She had carried it with her everywhere since it had arrived. That was the only reason she still had it. The black-rimmed telegram from the War Office that had arrived the same day was gone now. Juliet had planned to burn it herself, but in the end she hadn’t needed to. One of Hitler’s men had taken care of things for her, dropping his bomb when he was directly above Queen’s Head Street, Islington, destroying their house and everything in it.
She had meant to tell the children. Of course she had. The problem was – and Juliet had thought of little else – there was simply no acceptable way to tell her children that their wonderful, funny, forgetful, silly father had been killed.
‘Mummy?’ Tip slipped his hand into Juliet’s. ‘What will happen now?’
There was a lot that Juliet would have liked to say. It was one of those occasions that came rarely, in which a parent recognised that what she said next would remain with her child forever. She so wanted to be equal to it. She was a writer and yet the right words would not come. Every explanation that she considered and discarded put another beat of silence between the perfect moment for response and the moment that she was now in. Life really was a great big pot of glue, just like Alan had always said. A jar of flour and water in which they were all just trying to tread water as elegantly as they could.
‘I’m not entirely sure, Tippy,’ she said, which was neither reassuring nor wise, but truthful, which was at least something. ‘But I do know that we’re going to be all right.’
She knew what he would ask next: he would ask her how she knew. And what on earth could she say to that? Because she just did? Because they had to be? Because this was her plane, she was flying it, and blindfolded or not she was damn well going to make sure that they got home safely?
In the end, she was spared having to answer because she was wrong: he didn’t ask her that at all. With a faith that made Juliet want to curl up and weep, he took her at her word and moved on to a different subject entirely:
‘Birdie says that even inside the darkest box there are pinpricks of light.’
Juliet was suddenly bone-weary. ‘Does she, darling?’
Tip nodded earnestly. ‘And it’s true, Mummy. I saw them inside the hidey-hole. You can only see them from inside. I was frightened at first when I closed the panel, but I didn’t need to be, because there were hundreds of little lights in there, twinkling in the dark.’
VIII
It is Saturday and the tourists have arrived. I am in the small room where Fanny’s portrait hangs upon the wall. Or, as I prefer to think of it, Juliet’s bedroom. Fanny, after all, slept here only one night. I used to sit with Juliet while she was working at her typewriter, her papers spread out across the dressing table beneath the window. I was with her, too, late in the evening, after the children were asleep, when she would take out Alan’s letter. Not to read; she didn’t often do that. She just used to hold it in her hand as she sat and looked, unseeing, through the open window, into the long, dark night.
This is also the room where Ada was brought, after being pulled half-drowned from the river. Back then it was a trove of fossils and specimens next door to Lucy’s bedroom, the walls lined with shelves from floor to ceiling. Lucy insisted on taking over Ada’s care herself, instructing the nurse on how to do her job until the nurse eventually refused to do it any longer. There was not a lot of space to move after the bed was carried back in, but Lucy managed to fit a wooden chair in one corner and would sit there in the evenings for hours at a time, watching the sleeping child.
It was touching to see how caring Lucy was; little Lucy who had found so few people in her life, after Edward, to be close to. She made certain that the bed was warmed each night with a brass pan filled with coals, and she allowed Ada to keep the kitten, despite that Thornfield woman’s evident disapproval.
One of today’s tourists has gone to stand by the window, craning to see over the wall and into the orchard so that the morning sun bleaches her face. It reminds me of the day after the picnic, when Ada was well enough to be propped up against her pillows, and light spilled through the panes of glass in four neat rectangles to fall across the foot of her bed.
Lucy brought in the breakfast tray, and as she was setting it down on the dressing table, Ada, pale against the linen sheets, said, ‘I fell into the river.’
‘You did.’
‘I cannot swim.’
‘No, that much is clear.’
Ada did not speak again for a time. I could see, though, that there was more on her mind and, sure enough, ‘Miss Radcliffe?’ she said eventually.
‘Yes, child?’
‘Someone else was in the water with me.’
‘Yes.’ Lucy sat on the edge of the bed and took up Ada’s hand. ‘I am sorry to have to tell you, but May Hawkins fell into the river, too. She did not fare as well as you; she could not swim, either, and she drowned.’
Ada listened to this and then, her voice almost a whisper: ‘It was not May Hawkins who I saw.’
I waited then, wondering how much more she would tell Lucy; whether she would trust her with the truth of what had happened on the riverbed.
But she spoke no more about the ‘other person’, saying instead, ‘There was a blue light. And I reached out to grab it and it wasn’t a light at all. It was a stone, a shining stone.’ She opened her hand then and revealed within her palm the Radcliffe Blue, snatched from where it had been waiting amidst the river stones. ‘I saw it shining and I held onto it, because I knew that it would save me. And it did – my very own amulet found me, right when I needed it, and it protected me from harm. Just like you said it would.’