Summer Season

by Julia Williams

  ‘Look at these,’ said Joel, as he leafed through and discovered some delicate watercolours of different flowers and birds, drawn by a different hand, ‘aren’t they lovely?’

  ‘Hey, look,’ said Kezzie, pointing at a picture of a robin, perched on a step, ‘I’m sure that’s in the garden – see the gate behind it? Did Lily draw these, do you think?’

  Joel squinted at the tiny signature in the corner of the painting. ‘I think it says LH,’ he said.

  Carefully he rolled the pictures up again, and they carried on looking for a while longer, until Joel said, ‘Here, this looks promising,’ as he stumbled across a dusty old trunk in the corner. He carefully opened the trunk and caught his breath as he saw it contained books and papers, and letters all neatly stacked up inside. There was writing on the inside of the lid. He shone his torch on it: Harry Handford, Lovelace Cottage, Heartsease bore the inscription.

  ‘So who’s he?’ said Kezzie.

  ‘No idea,’ said Joel. ‘I’ve never heard of him, but he must be some relation, I guess. Mum would know.’

  ‘Look at all these letters,’ whispered Kezzie, her eyes shining. ‘It’s like we’re touching history.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ agreed Joel. His excitement was growing now. This was fascinating, he’d had no idea any of this was here.

  They started flicking through the bundles of letters, some addressed to Mr and Mrs Handford, some to Lily, some to Harry Handford. And several from Edward to Connie, talking about the work she was doing as V.A.D. in France.

  ‘Oh look,’ said Kezzie, ‘this is from Edward to Lily.’ She picked up the letter and began to read.

  Lahore, June 1893

  My dearest Lily,

  Every day I am away from you, I feel my heart ache just that little bit more. I cannot tell you how much I long to see you again. I wish you had after all been here at my side. The work here is long and arduous, particularly in the heat, and the man they have given me as an assistant is by no means as diligent and attentive as you. It is of some satisfaction to me that I will be able, I hope, to bring home some new species of plants that will be of interest to Kew.

  Edward went into a lot more detail about the exhibition he’d been on, before ending, But however much pleasure I get from my work, not a day goes by, my darling, without my wishing to come home to you, and our beautiful garden. To think that in less than a year we will have a new family, is a joy beyond measure. With all my love to you as ever, my darling,

  Your Loving

  Edward.

  Lovelace Cottage

  September 1893

  My dearest Edward,

  The worst has happened and you are away from me. The dark days of winter draw in, and I cannot summon the strength to raise a smile, now I know there will be no happy event in the spring.

  Mother tells me it is God’s Will. I daresay she is right, but do you think it very wicked of me to question why God should have willed that our baby should have died before it even saw life?

  I think of nothing else but what might have been. I fear your mother thinks I am overindulgent in my grief, but how can I not be? Our future has been stolen from us. I feel my heart has broken and you so far from home. Hurry back to me, my love,

  Your Lily

  ‘Oh and look at this.’ Kezzie had uncovered a diary, which was lying underneath the batch of letters she’d been reading through. Joel peered over her shoulder and shone the torch on the spidery handwriting. ‘I think this is Lily’s diary.’

  October 1893

  Today is a better day. The best in a very long time. Edward is home, come back to me at last. Together we have mourned our baby. I feel stronger and able to stand it now he is once more by my side. He took me out in the garden and he promised he’d plant something in memory of the baby we have lost, once the spring is here. And he took my hands and whispered, ‘Do not fret, there will be more babies’ and he is right. My future hasn’t been stolen from me. Just postponed for a while.

  ‘Oh, how very sad!’ exclaimed Kezzie. ‘Just think of them having that lovely garden, and hoping to plant flowers in it to celebrate the births of their children and then they lost a baby.’

  ‘Tragic,’ agreed Joel. ‘I have a feeling they had a lot of tragedy. I think Lily might have died quite young, but I’m not sure. I should ask Mum.’ He felt a sudden odd surge of kinship with Edward, who’d clearly known heartache too.

  ‘This is amazing,’ Kezzie said, ‘real social history. You must show Eileen – you know, who lives on our road. She’s interested in all this stuff, and wants your help on the committee. I reckon a gardening museum would be interested in this. It’s fascinating.’

  ‘And it’s taking up an awful lot of our time,’ said Joel. ‘I think we’d better get this trunk downstairs and look through it at our leisure.’

  By the time they emerged from the loft, blinking in the sunlight and covered in dust, Lauren had fed the children, put Sam down for his nap, and produced a monster pile of bacon sandwiches. She was sitting in the lounge watching CBeebies with the twins.

  Joel popped his head round the door with a plateful of sandwiches, while Kezzie went to freshen up.

  ‘Thanks for this,’ said Joel, ‘you didn’t have to.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ snapped Lauren waspishly.

  ‘Oh, no. Sorry.’ Joel felt wrongfooted, but then Lauren’s tone softened as she said, ‘So did you find anything interesting?’

  ‘Yes, it was incredible,’ said Joel, who was really feeling fired up by the morning’s discoveries. ‘There was a trunk with loads of letters in, and Lily’s diaries – that’s Edward’s wife – and pictures they’d both done, but no sign of any plans yet.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ said Lauren, but she didn’t really seem interested. ‘Come on girls, it’s time to go.’

  ‘Oh, do you have to go so soon?’ said Joel. ‘I was hoping to get back in the garden for a bit this afternoon.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to hope won’t you,’ said Lauren, with exasperation. ‘I do have other things to do, you know.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Joel ploughed on. ‘Sorry. I thought maybe the money could be useful …’

  ‘The money is always useful,’ exploded Lauren. ‘That’s not the bloody point. I’ve got to walk the girls to their granny’s for a sleepover so I can work a late shift in the pub. I don’t have much of a life, but not all of it revolves around you and Sam.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Joel, ‘I’m really sorry, I didn’t think—’

  ‘No, that’s the problem,’ said Lauren. ‘You never do. Come on, girls, time we were off.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kezzie, looking embarrassed, as Lauren swept past her. ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Me putting my size elevens in it again,’ groaned Joel.

  ‘Well, you do treat that poor girl like she’s a bit of furniture, sometimes,’ said Kezzie.

  Joel looked a bit rueful.

  ‘I know,’ he sighed. ‘I don’t mean to. She’s so much better with Sam than I am.’

  ‘Not better, necessarily,’ said Kezzie. ‘Just different. I think you need to spend a bit more time concentrating on being a dad and not letting other people do it for you.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t help me by getting Sam up from his nap then?’ said Joel as a telltale sound of gentle wailing proclaimed Sam was waking up.

  ‘Nope,’ said Kezzie. ‘I’m nobody’s nursemaid. Least of all yours.’

  Edward and Lily

  1893

  Lovelace Cottage

  Heartsease

  February 1894

  My darling Edward,

  I trust this letter finds you well. I wish I could be by your side drawing all your discoveries, as I used to when we went on our country rambles, here in Sussex. I cannot imagine how you manage in such a hot climate, with only poor Mr Salter to help you. He doesn’t sound as though he is the best or most interesting of companions!

  I long to see you, and hope that you will be
back in Heartsease in the summer when our son – I am sure it is a son, he kicks so lustily! – will be born. Won’t it be lovely to have a baby in the summer, sitting out in our beautiful garden? I cannot wait to see him or you.

  Hurry home to me soon, my love, we both grow impatient!

  Your loving wife

  Lily

  Delhi

  March 1894

  Dearest Lily,

  You are quite right, Mr Salter is a poor companion compared with you. He suffers badly in this heat, poor chap, constantly takes snuff and I suspect from the way his hand shakes in the morning he secretly drinks. He tries very hard, but his skills in drawing are nothing like yours, but I don’t have the heart to tell him so. Besides if I got rid of him, I’m not sure who would help me.

  I hope to be finished with my expedition towards the end of the month, and am aiming to be back in Heartsease in June, just in time for the baby to be born.

  The days cannot pass quickly enough till we meet again.

  Your ever loving

  Edward

  Lovelace Cottage

  Heartsease

  May 1894

  My dearest Edward,

  I am sorry to write with sad news, but Lily’s baby arrived too soon. The doctor did all he could, but your son was born with the cord wrapped round his neck. He died soon after he was born. Lily is distraught and has not risen from her bed since. I cannot persuade her that her grief is too much and she should be more restrained. She is like a wild child when I try to calm her. The doctor has been and prescribed laudanum, but I fear for her wits if she carries on like this.

  I hope you will be able to return soon, Lily needs you.

  Your ever loving Mother

  Delhi

  May 1894

  My dear Mother,

  Thank you for you letter. I write to you with a heavy heart. I am sorry to be away once again, when Lily has need of me. I know you will look after her as I would. She is too fragile sometimes for this world, I fear, and bears her sorrows more keenly than others do. I am sure God will see fit to bless us with a child soon. I wish Lily could share this hope, but sadly she does not.

  I hope to be home as soon as I can. Until then I remain,

  Your ever loving son,

  Edward

  Lily Handford’s diary, June 1894

  The summer blooms bright and strong out there in the garden. Edward’s garden. I hear the sounds of the birds and part of me wants to join the joyful song. But I cannot. I feel trapped here in this dark room, but the dark is like a warm shroud that comforts me. I cannot abide the windows being opened. I do not want to let the light in. There is precious little light in my life now. I cannot believe we will ever hold a baby that breathes and lives long enough to laugh.

  At least this time I was able to hold my baby boy for a short time, even if he didn’t have the strength to suckle.

  They say he died in sin. There was no time to baptize him. Father will not even allow him to be buried in the churchyard. My poor innocent little boy. How could he have sinned? How could God have let him die?

  No, there is no light in my life, and none in my heart. Nor do I think there can ever be again.

  Edward Handford came home to a very different wife. The household was cold and bare. There was no joy any more. The Lily he remembered only two short years ago, laughing with him by the willow tree, the Lily who had had so many hopes and plans for the future – that Lily had gone. In her place was a silent, pale ghost who barely moved from her bed. She stared blankly into space, her skin translucent against the pillow, her lips pale and bluish. Sometimes he feared she was dying; her hands were so cold; she lay so still.

  Many an evening, he sat at his writing desk, recording his thoughts in his diary. Lily is not like other women, he wrote in November of 1894, she is more fragile than they are, less able to deal with the loss of her baby. Where other women accept it as God’s will, Lily rages against Him, in ways her parents both find blasphemous. Perhaps I should, but I cannot. Lily feels things more than others do. I cannot condemn her for it.

  There were times when Edward had to stand up for Lily to his whole family – as the months wore on and still she seemed more and more enshrouded in her gloom, and less able to engage in the outside world, he even found himself quarrelling with his mother.

  ‘I will not hear of it,’ he said, when his mother suggested that he should have Lily committed because her behaviour was too extreme, too feverish, too hysterical. ‘Lily will stay here with me, and she will get better.’ Edward recalled with horror an aged aunt who had been locked in a sanatorium, and he had no desire for his beloved wife to be sent to one, however scattered her wits.

  Later he wrote, Perhaps it is wrong of me to have had Mother live with us. She, who is so strong and steady, cannot understand the pressures the world brings to one such as Lily who flourishes in its light, but is bowed under by the dark. I know Lily will get better. She needs tender nurturing to take her through the winter of her pain. One day it will be spring, and she will smile again.

  So Edward persevered that whole long dark winter, refusing her family’s demands to have Lily sent away, gently encouraging her day by day to re-enter the world once more. Until a day came, in the spring, when he was able to persuade her to join him in the garden to show her the agapanthus he’d planted in memory of Edward James, the son who had lived a mere six hours.

  Lily cried in his arms then, and he rocked and cherished her and promised there would be other babies, and that he would never leave her again.

  Chapter Nine

  After Lauren left, Joel and Kezzie dragged the trunk, paperwork and pictures down the stairs.

  ‘You should really give Eileen a ring about some of this,’ said Kezzie, ‘I’m sure she’d love to have a look through it.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Joel. ‘Lauren’s been nagging me about getting involved in the summer fete. I have to confess, it’s not my kind of thing really, but I’m beginning to change my mind. The more I find out about Edward Handford, the more I think the world needs to know about him.’

  ‘I think there’s enough here to mount an exhibition,’ said Kezzie. ‘Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to do in his anniversary year?’

  ‘Just look at all this stuff,’ said Joel. Now they had it in the light, they could see just exactly what was there.

  There were boxes and boxes of letters, files, paperwork and photos piled higgledy-piggledy into the trunk. They were loosely organized into piles of letters with neat handwriting, saying Lily to Edward/Edward to Lily, Connie to Edward, and so on.

  ‘I wonder who organized all this,’ said Kezzie. ‘Someone must have pulled all this stuff together.’

  ‘Hmm, I wonder …’ Joel picked up some of the packets of letters and compared the handwriting. ‘I think it may have been Connie – see this letter here from her to Edward, the writing looks the same.’

  ‘Remind me who Connie was again,’ said Kezzie.

  ‘Edward’s daughter, I think, which makes her my great great aunt,’ said Joel. ‘I think she died just before I was born and Uncle Jack inherited the house from her. I can’t believe how much stuff there is here, it’s going to take forever to sort out.’

  ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ said Kezzie. ‘I don’t mind having a look through it, I bet Eileen will be interested in it as well. I’ll call in on her on my way home.’

  Before she left, Kezzie turned to him and said, ‘By the way, you are going to apologize to Lauren, aren’t you? I know it’s not my business, but I think she deserves better.’

  ‘I know,’ said Joel with a sigh. ‘Claire always said I was a bit thick about other people’s feelings. I’ll apologize next time I see her.’

  As he waved Kezzie off, Joel decided he’d have to try and make it up to Lauren sometime. Kezzie was right, he could be casual with Lauren, and it wasn’t fair. He appreciated what she did for him and Sam, and he barely ever said so.

  ‘You stupid
sod, haven’t you learnt anything?’ he said out loud.

  He thought back to that last catastrophic night with Claire, and how they’d argued because she felt he’d let her down and now here he was doing the same thing to Lauren. In the morning he’d go round with some flowers and apologize. It was too late to make it up to Claire, but it wasn’t too late to put things right with Lauren.

  Lauren flew home in absolute fury with Joel. She snapped at the children, who trotted by her side like such frightened little mice till she got them home and hugged them, she felt terrible. It wasn’t their fault Joel could be such an insensitive sod. Lauren felt immensely guilty that she’d taken her bad mood out on the twins, and made it up to them by giving them a cookie each. Lauren wasn’t sure what had annoyed her most, the casual way Joel had let her make everyone lunch, the fact that he’d assumed she’d be able to drop everything to stay and help him out, or the way that Joel and Kezzie made her feel so left out.

  ‘Serves you right for being such a soft touch,’ she murmured. This was the problem of course. She did have a soft spot for Joel. Partly because of Claire – Lauren felt she should help him for her friend’s sake – partly because of the situation he was in, and partly because it was impossible to stay cross with Joel for long. So by the time Lauren had walked the girls to her mum’s, had a moan about Joel and got home again, she was feeling better. She decided that what she needed was to chill out before work and banish all thoughts of Joel and Sam from her mind. She walked back home fantasizing about a nice hot soak in the bathtub.

  But as she got home, all her previous irritations paled into insignificance. She approached the house and to her surprise saw someone was waiting on the doorstep. As she drew closer, she saw to her horror it wasn’t just anyone – Troy was lounging nonchalantly on her doorstep, smoking a roll-up. Her heart thudded in her chest and she felt slightly sick as she took in his sensuous good looks, the piercing blue eyes, the mane of slightly dishevelled hair, and incredibly sexy, unshaven look. She had forgotten just how good looking he was.