The House at Tyneford (49 page)

“Mr. Rivers! Daniel! Wake up. Fire.”

Not waiting for him to open it, I rushed inside. He was already half out of bed and pushed past me onto the landing teeming with girls.

“Downstairs!” he bellowed. “All of you, outside.”

The girls stopped scurrying, turning to stare at him.

“Now. Out.”

They didn’t wait to be told again, and in a flap of dressing gowns and a thump-thump of bedroom slippers they hurried down the stairs and filed out through the porch. Excited chatter drifted in through the vast front door. I didn’t follow them, but headed up the narrow steps at the far end of the landing that led up to the servants’ attic. Thick smoke streamed down, floating into the great hall, filling it with dark clouds, as black as any storm. Through the shouts and the fog, I was dimly aware of Wrexham appearing in the hall below and calling up to Mr. Rivers. I had only one thought: the viola. It lay upstairs besieged by fire. It must not burn. I’d lost Kit. Anna and Julian had disappeared into silence. The novel in the viola was all I had left and I would not lose it. The words would not burn before being read.

As the two men debated what was to be done, I slipped up the attic stairs, unseen. The smoke was thicker than the densest sea fog and my eyes streamed, hot tears coating my cheeks. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a grimy handkerchief, placing it in front of my mouth and nose, breathing in rasps, trying not to choke. In a second, I was utterly disoriented. I fumbled in total darkness like a blind man. I had to go on. I had to find the viola. In my mind, I heard it calling to me. It sang with Margot’s distinctive tone but it sang Anna’s melody, “Für Elise.” The music trickled along the narrow landing, mingling with the smoke-haze, so I imagined that it was music I saw drifting in the darkness.
Elise.
My father called out to me. He always fretted about losing a manuscript. We teased him for writing on yellow copy paper and for the stash of pages locked in the desk drawer but he was right—oh, he was right and I had failed him.
Elise!
His voice grew stronger now. I was close. The attic door loomed out of the smoke. I reached out to touch the door handle but hands wrenched me back. Strong arms grabbed me and hoisted me up. I sprawled over a set of broad shoulders. I kicked and screamed and sobbed, but I was carried away from the small wooden door and away from the viola.
Elise. Elise.
The voice grew louder. I yelled and struggled but I was blinded by smoke. I wanted to see. Hands laid me down on the ground. The smoke thinned. I sat up and found myself cradled in Mr. Rivers’ arms.

“Alice,” he said, half shouting, “what the hell were you thinking?”

His face was red with rage and terror. I pushed him away with all my strength and escaped back to the attic stairs. He caught me and gripped my arms.

“Alice! What is it? What are you doing?”

“The viola.”

I coughed and choked, spitting black stuff onto the floor.

“My father. His last novel. In the viola.” I twisted in his arms and looked into the tight face gazing down at me. “I have to save it.”

Mr. Rivers studied me for a second, then he gave a nod and he was gone. I scrambled after him but Mr. Wrexham blocked my way.

“Miss Land, please. If it is possible, he will find it.”

For a moment I toyed with the idea of pushing aside the old butler, but I leaned back against the wall, sliding down to sit on the floor. In the distance I heard the church bells ringing.
Invasion! Fire! Fire!
I saw villagers leap from their beds, ready to hurry down to the shore with broom-bayonets, only to see the manor ablaze. I screwed my eyes shut and willed his safe return.

“He mustn’t be hurt. I should have gone,” I said, covering my face with my hands.

“The master will be careful,” replied Mr. Wrexham, trying to chivvy me onto my feet. “We should wait outside. It’s not safe here.”

I wrenched away. “I won’t go without him. Leave if you like.”

The butler coughed, not with smoke but annoyance, and settled down beside me. We waited for days. Years. A hundred. Then a thousand more. Smoke. Then footsteps. Coughing and choking. Mr. Rivers half ran, half fell down the stairs. He clutched the viola case.

The fire was out before the engine arrived from Dorchester. The WAAFs gathered in excited huddles on the lawn, drinking cups of tea in the dark and chattering to the firemen, who, their conventional services not required, dedicated themselves to the soothing of maidens’ nerves.

Mr. Rivers and I remained alone in the house. I told him about the novel in the viola. He listened in silence, his brow creased with concentration. I sat with the case in my lap, stroking the battered leather. When I had finished, he reached for it, glancing to me for permission. I nodded and he unfastened the clasp, opening the small, coffin-shaped case to reveal the rosewood viola. He picked it up, holding it as carefully as a newborn chick, weighing it in his hands.

“So it’s inside?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve never tried to take it out?”

“I thought about it, but I’d have to break the viola.”

We were huddled in the drawing room, wrapped in horsehair blankets, and through an illicit hole in the blackouts watched dawn creep up over the hills. Mr. Rivers leaned forward and brushed my face with his fingertips.

“You’ve singed your eyelashes,” he observed, his voice harbouring only the faintest tinge of accusation.

“They’ll grow back,” I said with a shrug and edged closer toward him.

“What’s the novel about?” he asked, gesturing to the viola.

I smiled. “I have no idea. I often wonder. I like to believe that it has a happy ending.”

T
he following day those WAAFs who weren’t on the morning shift bustled around in droves, organised into cleaning battalions by Mrs. Ellsworth. They listened with bowed heads to her battery of scolding, none admitting who had disobeyed the neat signs entreating NO SMOKING IN THE BEDROOMS and tossed a careless cigarette into the wastepaper basket. Hammering came from the roof as Art dangled from a ladder, trying to shore up the new hole. The girls trudged around in filthy overalls, clutching pails of brown water, hardly daring to hum the previous night’s tunes under their breath. A thin layer of ash and soot like black snow coated the great hall and landing, streaked the panelling and smattered the tops of the dado rails. The paintings in the hallway had aged a hundred years and stared out through Tudor gloom. I didn’t offer to help with the cleanup but closed the door to my bedroom and settled down at the desk.

Ever since the last night in Vienna I had hoarded Julian’s novel, but after the fire I resolved on telling Margot about it. Nearly losing the viola frightened me. If it had been destroyed, I knew that she would never forgive me.

I sealed the envelope and took it downstairs to place on the tray in the hall. I wondered how long it would take for the letter to reach her. Weeks. Months. I might have to wait half a year for her reply. I was apprehensive of her anger. Margot did not rage but nurtured her resentment. When we were children, she had a doll with real hair, which I’d trimmed, believing it would grow back. Margot had refused to utter a single word to me for an entire fortnight. As Margot entered adolescence her silences lengthened. When I’d dared describe Robert as “a pleasant young man” (it being our sisterly code for dull) her quiet anger had taken six weeks to subside. She’d only allowed me to be a bridesmaid when Anna intervened. I dreaded to think how long her silence would last over this.

Despite the fire, more WAAFs arrived to stay at the hall. There was no use in objecting or saying that we had nowhere to put them. Any complaint might lead to the house being requisitioned, and we’d already heard the horror stories from Juno of statues at Lulcombe daubed with lewd graffiti and of stucco ceilings ruined by dry rot and pistol shot. The ancient beeches lining the avenue had been felled for firewood during the arctic January, despite Lady Vernon’s impassioned pleas. There was even talk of her being made to surrender the dower house. So we made not a word of complaint, but quietly removed the furniture from the dining room, stored it in the rapidly emptying wine cellar, and turned the room into a makeshift dormitory. The girls who slept there actually felt themselves quite fortunate since, unlike the bedrooms, it possessed a radiator.

By summer the house teemed with WAAFs and Mrs. Ellsworth was forced to surrender a portion of her kitchen to a forces cook, while the ancient servants’ hall was brought into use as a cafeteria. Mrs. Ellsworth wandered through the house for several days clucking miserably, “I don’t know if I’m living in a boarding school or a barracks.” Yet the girls were in general so gay and good-natured that they soon won her over—sharing homemade cures for dressing corns, or lighting the kitchen boiler at four on their way out for the early shift, so that for the first time in years Mrs. Ellsworth could laze till dawn. They even lent her a spare tin hat to use as a most effective bathing cap. Gaggles of them marching down to Lulcombe Camp for duty was a thrice-daily sight. Burt left shining mackerel in baskets for two dozen breakfasts, and Mr. Wrexham offered tips on the buffing of endless black shoes. Soon we were perfectly accustomed to their presence and could not imagine life being different.

I watched the weeks and then the months slip by without a letter from Margot. Every morning and afternoon I checked the tray in the hall for letters. It was always overflowing with post for the WAAFs but there was never anything for me. My unease steadily grew. Was she too irate even to write? Was she punishing me with silence? Then, one day in early June, just as the buttercups were starting to spill across the meadows, a letter arrived from California. Sitting on the terrace in the morning sunshine, I tore open the envelope and for a moment my heart soared—she was not angry—and then I saw the date: 6th March 1941. My own letter could not have reached her before she had written this. I closed my eyes and saw two ships pass in the Atlantic, each carrying a letter across the sea.