Seven years.
It took Edith Pelham, nèe Crawley, seven years to muster up enough confidence to do it, but she was finally ready. She knew it the very moment she turned the car on, and when she started building up speed at the wheel of her husband's open Bentley, she felt surprisingly serene, at peace with herself and the world. She had always loved driving motors, ever since Tom (well, it was Branson, back then – how much things had changed since then!) had taught her; she liked the exhilarating feeling of being in control of a powerful machine, the independence it gave her, the confidence she felt on the driver's seat. Back in her youth, whenever she felt restless, or the atmosphere at home got uncomfortable (usually because of Mary being – well, Mary), she just went for a drive by herself, for the sheer enjoyment of it, and she let the crisp Yorkshire air clear her head. Behind the wheel, she was not the lackluster middle child, but the skilled pilot, the speed fiend; and when she got back from one of those joyrides, she was usually in a state of grace that allowed her to endure having dinner with her family – sharp remarks from Granny, Mary's disdain and all – with a smile on her face.
Even now that she was a grown woman - with a husband, a child and a grand title - and cars had long stopped representing her escape hatch, driving had lost nothing of its charm to her: she still loved it, loved the way it made her feel.
Now, as she went down along the road, she enjoyed the warmth of the morning sun over her head, the breeze ruffling her hair under her hat, and she smiled as heather moorlands, green pastures and dry-stone walls unrolled before her eyes. She knew that landscape like the back of her hand, and she loved it now more than ever.
Now, she liked Northumberland; it was her new home, and she had learnt to appreciate its unspoilt wilderness, its high, bare moors, the jagged outlines of its sandstone ridges; but she sometimes found herself longing for her land with a burning, passionate intensity, yearning for its gentle rolling hills and orderly meadows, its small quiet cottages and white flocks of sheep. Now that she was back, if only for a short time, she was determined to savour every bit of Yorkshire she could get.
How many times had she passed by that very oak tree, nubby and twisted and bent by the wind? How many times had she seen the sun shining on that pond, turning it into a golden pool? The sight of these familiar landmarks made her smile again. But on that crisp, sunny morning she was not just driving for the pleasure of it, or to enjoy the scenery – she had a place to go, and a purpose.
When she finally reached her destination, she calmly parked the car, fixed her hair in the rearview mirror, retrieved her purse from the passenger's seat, and stepped out of her car on the gravel driveway. She felt a twinge of unease (who wouldn't have, in her shoes?) but she knew what she needed to do, and she knew she was now – at long last – ready to do it.
Edith looked up at the large Georgian house and frowned slightly, noticing how the red and white façade she remembered so well was starting to show signs of neglect: a hairline crack here, a leaking drainpipe there, a thin layer of moss on the windowsills facing north. She looked around: the grass on the lawn was a bit overgrown and there were no flowers in the flowerbeds: was the house abandoned? Shading her eyes from the sun with a hand, she looked up and saw smoke coming out of the chimneys: no, there was someone there. She took a long, slow breath and rang the bell. The deep, low sound of the bell reverberating inside the building triggered an unexpected burst of memories from her past – of herself standing there, young and jittery and a bit too eager to please, in a pink dress that (she knew that now) didn't suit her at all, clutching the handle of her purse with shaky, nervous hands.
After what felt like an eternity, a frail-looking, elderly man with tousled white hair opened the door, with painful slowness. He looked at Edith, narrowing his bleary, pink eyes in polite confusion. "Yes?" he said, in a thin, shaky voice. " How may I help you?"
He had a visible grease stain on the collar of his jacket and his hands were dreadfully deformed by arthritis: Edith nearly failed to recognize in that hunchbacked, shabby old man the once impeccable butler of the house. Her throat tightened up; in her mind, up until that moment, everything had stayed exactly the same as the last time she had seen it, in 1920. But, of course, she had changed in those seven years, and everyone else had changed, too. She realised now, with a pang, just how long it had been.
"Good morning, Stewart" she said eventually, and she managed to keep her voice calm and steady. "Is Sir Anthony home?"
