Voices In Summer

by Rosamunde Pilcher

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1. Hampstead

  2. Deepbrook

  3. Islington

  4. Tremenheere

  5. Landrock

  6. Penjizal

  7. Saint Thomas

  8. Roskenwyn

  9. Homes

  Also by Rosamunde Pilcher

  An Outpouring of Praise for the Fiction That Has Touched The World

  Copyright

  For Mark

  for reasons that will be obvious to him

  1

  HAMPSTEAD

  THE DOCTOR’S RECEPTIONIST, a pretty girl in horn-rimmed spectacles, saw Laura to the door, opened it for her, and stood aside, smiling, as though the visit had been a social one that they had both enjoyed. Beyond the open door, scrubbed steps led down into Harley Street, sliced by the houses opposite into bright sunlight and dark shadow.

  ‘It’s a lovely afternoon,’ the receptionist remarked, and indeed it was; the end of July now, and fine and bright. She wore a crisp skirt and blouse and nylon tights on her well-rounded legs, and businesslike black court shoes, but Laura wore a cotton dress and her legs were bare. There was, however, a freshness to the brisk breeze that swept the summer streets, and she had tied a pale cashmere cardigan, by its sleeves, around her shoulders.

  Laura said yes, but couldn’t think of anything else to say about the weather. She said thank you, although the receptionist hadn’t done anything very much except announce her arrival for her appointment with Dr Hickley and then, fifteen minutes later, appear to take her away again.

  ‘Not at all. Goodbye, Mrs Haverstock.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  The shiny, black painted door closed behind her. Laura turned her back on the façade of the handsome, imposing house and walked a little way down the pavement of the terrace, where she had found, by some miracle, an empty parking meter and had been able to leave her car. She stooped to unlock the door, and there was a stir from the back seat, and as she got in behind the wheel, Lucy leaped lightly over the back of the seat into her lap, stood on her back legs with plumy tail waving full tilt, and gave Laura’s face a quick and affectionate wash with her long pink tongue.

  ‘Oh, poor little Lucy, you must be boiling.’ She had left a bit of window open, but still the inside of the car was like an oven. She reached up and opened the sun roof, and at once everything felt a bit better. Cool air circulated, and hot sunshine struck the top of her head.

  Lucy panted obligingly for a moment or two, as proof of her own personal doggy discomfort, her forgiveness, and her love. Her love was all for Laura. Despite this, she was a polite little creature, with charming manners, and made a point of greeting Alec each evening when he came back from work. Alec always told people that when he married Laura he got a sort of job lot, like a man at an auction sale: a new wife, with a dog thrown in.

  When she was desperate for a confidant, Laura told Lucy things, secrets that she could safely divulge to no other person. Not even Alec. Especially Alec, because the secret thoughts were usually about him. Sometimes she wondered about other married women. Did they have secret thoughts from their husbands? Marjorie Anstey, for instance, who had been married to George for sixteen years and organized his entire life, from clean socks to aeroplane tickets. And Daphne Boulderstone, who flirted outrageously with every man she met and was constantly being spied in discreet restaurants lunching intimately with some other woman’s husband. Did Daphne take Tom into her confidence, laughing, perhaps, at her own foolishness? Or was Tom cool and detached—disinterested, even—as he usually appeared? Perhaps he simply didn’t care. Perhaps next week when they were all in Scotland together, at Glenshandra, for the long-planned fishing holiday, Laura would have time to observe these marriages and come to some sort of a conclusion …

  She took a deep breath, maddened by her own stupidity. What was the point of sitting here fabricating these random possibilities, when, now, she wasn’t even going to Scotland. Dr Hickley had minced no words about this. ‘Let’s get it over as soon as possible, waste no time. A couple of days in hospital and then a good rest.’

  What Laura had dreaded had happened. She put Daphne and Marjorie out of her head. Alec. She must concentrate on Alec. She must be dynamic and decisive, and work out a plan of action. Because whatever happened, Alec must go to Glenshandra with the others. Laura would have to be left behind. This, she knew, would take some persuasion. It was necessary to think up some convincing and foolproof plan, and nobody could do this but herself. Now.

  Slumped in the seat behind the wheel of her car, Laura did not feel capable of being dynamic or decisive.

  Her head ached, her back ached, her whole body ached. She thought about getting home, which was a tall, thin house in Islington, not very far, but far enough when you were tired and despondent on a hot afternoon in July. She thought about getting home and going upstairs and lying on her cool bed and sleeping away the remainder of the afternoon. Alec was a great believer in emptying one’s mind and giving the subconscious a chance to solve apparently unsolvable problems. Perhaps Laura’s subconscious would come up trumps and, beavering away while she slumbered, would present her, on waking, with some brilliant and obvious plan. She considered this and sighed again. She hadn’t that much faith in her subconscious. To be truthful, she hadn’t that much faith in herself.

  ‘I’ve never seen you look so pale,’ Dr Hickley had said, which was disturbing in itself, because Dr Hickley was a cool and professional lady and seldom moved to make such impulsive remarks. ‘Better take a little blood test just to be sure.’

  Did it really show so much?

  Laura pulled down the sunshield and inspected herself in the mirror set in its back. After a bit, without much enthusiasm, she took a comb from her bag and tried to do something with her hair. And then a lipstick. The lipstick was too bright, the colour wrong for the pallor of her skin.

  She looked into her own eyes, which were a very dark brown and fringed with long, bristly lashes. They gave the impression, she decided, of being too large for her face, like two holes cut in a sheet of paper. She met her gaze sternly. Going home and going to sleep isn’t going to solve anything. You know that, don’t you? There had to be somebody who could help, some person to talk to. At home there was nobody, because Mrs Abney, who lived in the basement, took firmly to her bed every afternoon between two and four. She objected strongly to disturbance, even if it was something important like the man come to read the meter.

  Someone to talk to.

  Phyllis.

  Brilliant. When I come out of hospital, I could stay with Phyllis. If I was with Phyllis, then Alec could go to Scotland.

  She could not think why this obvious scheme had not occurred to her before. Delighted with herself, Laura began to smile, but at that moment a short toot on a car horn jerked her back to reality. A big blue Rover was drawn up alongside her car, the driver a red-faced man who made it clear that he wished to know whether she was about to vacate the parking space or if she intended sitting there, primping and preening in the mirror, for the rest of the day.

  Embarrassed, Laura pushed the sunshield out of the way, started the engine, smiled more charmingly than was necessary, and, a little flustered, manoeuvred herself out into the street without actually hitting anything. She made her way out into the Euston Road, edged along as far
as Eversholt Street, in the three-deep stream of traffic, and there turned north and headed up the hill, towards Hampstead.

  * * *

  At once she felt marginally better. She had had an idea and she was doing something about it. The traffic was thinner, the car picked up a little speed, air poured through the open roof. The road was friendly and familiar, because when she was young and living with Phyllis, she had travelled this way each day by bus—first to school, and then to college. Stopped at traffic lights, she remembered well the houses on either side, shabby and tree-shaded, some of them coming up in the world, with freshly painted faces and brightly coloured front doors. The sunny pavements were crowded with people in flimsy clothes: bare-armed girls and mothers with half-naked children. As well, small shops had put up awnings and spilled their wares out onto the pavement. She saw vegetables, piled artistically, a set of scrubbed pine chairs, and green buckets packed with roses and carnations. There were even a couple of tables set up outside a little restaurant with striped umbrellas and white iron chairs. Like Paris, thought Laura. I wish we lived in Hampstead. And then the car behind her blared its horn and she realized that the light had gone green.

  It wasn’t until she was actually driving up Hampstead High Street that the thought occurred to her that perhaps Phyllis wouldn’t be in.

  Laura should have stopped to telephone. She tried to imagine what Phyllis could be doing on a fine summer afternoon, but it wasn’t difficult because the possibilities were endless. Shopping for clothes or antiques; prowling around her favourite art galleries; sitting on a committee dedicated to bringing music to the masses; or raising money to preserve some crumbling Hampstead mansion.

  It was too late now to do anything about it, however, because Laura was almost there. A moment later, she turned out of the main road and into a lane that narrowed, curving uphill, and then straightened, and she saw the terrace of Georgian houses that climbed with it, each just a step higher than its neighbour. Front doors stood flush with the cobbled pavement, and in front of Phyllis’ house was parked her car, which was at least a hopeful sign, although it didn’t necessarily mean that Phyllis was in, because she was an indefatigable walker and only took the car when she had to go ‘down to London’.

  Laura parked her own car behind it, closed the sun roof, gathered Lucy up, and got out. There were tubs of hydrangeas on either side of Phyllis’ front door. Laura banged the knocker and crossed her fingers. If she’s not in, I shall simply go back down the hill, go home, and telephone her. But almost at once came the sound of Phyllis’ busy tapping footsteps (she always wore the highest of heels), and the next moment the door opened, and everything was all right.

  ‘Darling.’

  It was the best of welcomes. They embraced, Lucy getting in the way, and as always, hugging Phyllis felt like hugging a bird. A tiny-boned, bright-feathered bird. Today Phyllis was dressed in apricot pink, with cool, glassy beads at her neck and earrings that jangled like Christmas tree decorations. Her child-size hands were laden with rings, her face, as always, perfectly made up. Only her hair looked a little unruly, springing from her brow. It was greying now, but that detracted in no way from the youthful enthusiasm of her face.

  ‘You should have called!’

  ‘I’ve come on an impulse.’

  ‘Oh, darling, that does sound exciting. Come along!’

  Laura followed her indoors, and Phyllis shut the door behind her. But it was not dark, because the narrow hall stretched straight through the house to another door, which led out into the garden, and this stood open. Framed within the aperture, Laura could see the sunny, paved yard, hung about with glossy greenery, and at the far end the white trellis summerhouse.

  She stooped and set Lucy down on the ruby-red carpet. Lucy panted, and Laura dropped her handbag at the foot of the stair and went through to the kitchen to fill Lucy a bowl of water. Phyllis watched from the doorway.

  ‘I was sitting in the garden,’ she said, ‘but it’s almost too hot. Let’s go into the sitting room. It’s cool there and the French windows are open. Darling, you look terribly thin. Have you been losing weight?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose I might. I haven’t been trying to.’

  ‘Would you like a drink? I’ve just made some proper lemonade. It’s in the fridge.’

  ‘I’d love some.’

  Phyllis went to collect glasses. ‘You go and make yourself comfortable. Put your feet up, and we’ll have a gorgeous chat. It’s years since I saw you. How’s that handsome Alec?’

  ‘He’s all right.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell me everything.’

  It was heaven to be told to make yourself comfortable and put up your feet. Just like old times. Laura did as she was told, lying back in the corner of Phyllis’ great downy sofa. Beyond the open glass doors, the garden stirred in the breeze with a faint rustling sound. There was the smell of wallflowers. It was very serene. Which was funny, really, because Phyllis wasn’t a serene person. More like a little gnat, always on the go, her spindly legs carrying her up and down the stairs a hundred times a day.

  She was her aunt, the younger sister of Laura’s father. Their father was an impoverished Anglican clergyman, and many small economies and penny-pinching had been necessary to raise sufficient cash to send Laura’s father to university to study medicine.

  There was nothing left over for Phyllis.

  Although the era, happily, was past when rectors’ daughters were expected to stay meekly at home, helping Mother do the church flowers and run the Sunday School, the brightest prospect for Phyllis might well have been marriage to some solid and suitable man. But Phyllis, from an early age, had ideas of her own. Somehow, she got herself through a secretarial course and set off for London—not without a certain amount of parental opposition—where she found herself, in record time, not only a place to live, but also a job. Junior typist with Hay Macdonalds, an old-established firm of publishers. Before long her enthusiasm and enterprise had been noted. She became secretary to the fiction editor, and then, at the age of twenty-four, was made personal assistant to the chairman, Maurice Hay.

  He was a bachelor of fifty-three, and everybody thought that he would remain in this happy state for the rest of his life. But he didn’t, because he fell head over heels in love with Phyllis, married her, and bore her off—not exactly on a white charger, but at least in a very large and impressive Bentley—to live in state in his little jewel of a house in Hampstead. She made him very happy, never wasting a day of their time together, which was just as well, because three years later he had a heart attack and died.

  To Phyllis he left his house, his furniture, and all his money. He was not a mean nor a jealous man, and there were no nasty codicils attached to his will ruling that she should have to relinquish the lot should she remarry. But even so, Phyllis never did again. The fact that she didn’t was a conundrum to all who knew her. It was not that there was a shortage of gentlemen admirers; in fact, the very opposite. A constant stream was almost at once in attendance, telephoning, sending flowers, taking her out for dinner, abroad for holidays, to the theatre in the winter, and to Ascot in the summer.

  ‘But darlings,’ she protested when taxed with her independent life-style. ‘I don’t want to marry again. I’d never find anyone as sweet as Maurice. Anyway, it’s much more fun being single. Specially if you’re single and rich.’

  When Laura was small, Phyllis had been something of a legend, and no wonder. Sometimes, at Christmas, Laura’s parents brought her up to London, to see the decorations in Regent Street, and the shops, and to go perhaps to the Palladium or the ballet. Then, they had always stayed with Phyllis, and to Laura, brought up in the busy, humdrum establishment of a country doctor, it was like being suddenly magicked into a dream. Everything was so pretty, so bright, so scented. And Phyllis …

  ‘She’s just a fly-by-night,’ Laura’s mother said goodnaturedly on the way home to Dorset, while Laura sat pole-axed in the back seat of the car, stun
ned by the memories of so much glamour. ‘One can’t imagine her ever getting to grips with life, doing anything practical … and indeed, why should she?’

  But there Laura’s mother was wrong. Because, when Laura was twelve, her parents were both killed, driving home from a harmless dinner party, down a road they had both known all their lives. The pile-up was the direct result of a number of unimagined circumstances: a T-junction, a long-distance lorry, a speeding car with inefficient brakes, all met together in a disaster of hideous finality. Almost, it seemed, before the dust of this horror had settled, Phyllis was there.

  She didn’t tell Laura anything. She didn’t tell her to be brave, she didn’t tell her not to cry, she didn’t say anything about it being God’s will. She simply hugged her and asked her very humbly if, just for a little, Laura would be absolutely sweet and come to Hampstead and live with her, just to keep her company.

  Laura went, and stayed. Phyllis looked after everything: the funeral, the lawyers, the disposal of the practice, the selling of the furniture. One or two precious and personal things she kept for Laura, and these were installed in the bedroom that was to become Laura’s own. A desk of her father’s, her dollhouse, her books, and her mother’s silver-backed dressing table set.

  ‘Who do you live with, then?’ girls at her new London school would ask when their blunt questions evinced the sad truth that Laura was an orphan.

  ‘My aunt Phyllis.’

  ‘Gosh, I wouldn’t like to live with an aunt. Has she got a husband?’

  ‘No, she’s a widow.’

  ‘Sounds fairly dreary.’

  But Laura said nothing, because she knew that if she couldn’t be living in Dorset with her own darling mother and father, she would want above everything else in the world to be with Phyllis.

  Theirs was, by any standards, an extraordinary relationship. The quiet and studious young girl and her extroverted, gregarious aunt became the closest of friends, never quarrelling or getting on each other’s nerves. It was not until Laura was finished with college and qualified to go out and earn her own living that she and Phyllis had their very first difference of opinion. Phyllis had wanted Laura to go into Hay Macdonalds; to her it seemed the obvious and natural thing to do.