Sunflower Summer

by Sue Peters

  'My Marcia's dying to find out if you're a good dancer. I'm sure you must be ...'

  Nan abandoned Keir to his fate, which judging from his interested expression as he and Marcia swayed past among the dancers a few minutes later, unnecessarily close in each other's arms, thought Nan critically—the girl was literally draped over his shoulder—he did not find his fate at all distasteful. She wondered idly what they were talking about in such an absorbed manner. At least, Marcia was talking. Keir was looking absorbed.

  'Sorry, my fault,' she apologised for a mis-step and tried to concentrate on keeping in time with her own partner, a beanpole of a youth with hair dangling round his collar, and a string of beads showing under his open-necked shirt, who had been introduced as a friend of Rodney's. It was not a friendship she herself would encourage if Rodney was her son, thought Nan, trying in vain to find some kind of rhythm in their jigging progress, and failing lamentably, so that she eventually pleaded tiredness, and her escort went away to fetch her a glass of lemonade.

  'Now, isn't that a shame?' The voice of their host impinged on her consciousness, and she became aware of her aunt and uncle approaching her chair. 'There's been a call for Doctor Gray, just as the party was beginning to warm up, too,' Marcia's father cried. Beginning to get noisy, thought Nan ruefully. Someone had turned up the volume of the radiogram to what she hoped was its highest notch, and her host raised his voice almost to a shout to make himself heard.

  'I'm sorry, Lisle, but you know how it is,' Oliver Gray said apologetically, and Nan met his eyes briefly.

  'You old hypocrite!' hers accused him.

  'It's worked!' his said triumphantly, while she expressed her own regrets at her relatives being deprived of the evening's entertainment. And 'who's a hypocrite now?' her uncle's glance twinkled, and chokingly she wished she was ten years younger, and obliged to leave the party in his company, as she had had to do on more than one occasion when she was younger, and the call for his services had been genuine. Urgently she wanted to be somewhere else; anywhere but in the lovely old Manor hall, where she was obliged to sit and watch Marcia chatter and smile to Keir; to see Keir's dark head bent over her peroxided one, his lean face intent on whatever she was saying, giving her his whole attention, and never for one moment even glancing in her— Nan's—direction.

  'Come and join the scrum.' Her escort returned and pulled her unceremoniously to her feet. 'Everyone's having supper.' She found herself in the centre of a cheerfully milling crowd, all busily helping themselves at the lavish buffet provided. Without quite knowing how it happened, Nan found the paper plate that had been thrust into her hands by someone was loaded with an assortment of food—those ridiculous bits of things stuck on sticks, of which Oliver Gray had been so scornful, but which nevertheless looked delicious, and then she was on the edge of the crowd, escaping their suddenly suffocating closeness, and Keir was by her side, speaking to her, saying,

  'Let's go for a stroll and cool off somewhere, out of this melee, shall we?' And she did not know, or care, where her own escort or Marcia had got to. Only that they were no longer there. There was just herself and Keir, and the chatter and laughter, and the noise of the radiogram, somehow magically faded into the distance, and they were alone, strolling together in silence through the downstairs rooms of the old house that in the past had been dearly familiar to Nan, a second home as Minster House had been to the Squire's children. She grieved silently as her eyes wandered over the restless modern furnishings and ornaments that adorned the beautiful old rooms, like some garish fancy dress, shaming the wearer before her pitying eyes.

  'Lisle suggested you might show me round.' Keir quirked an eyebrow at her, nibbling at the contents of his plate as they strolled in easy companionship, as if they were children walking along the sea-front with a bag of crisps each, Nan thought, quick laughter in her eyes. She felt sure Mrs Lisle would not approve of her showing Keir round. No doubt her unfortunate husband would be taken sternly to task for suggesting such a thing, when she was sure his wife would have engineered the task to fall to her daughter's lot if she could have managed it.

  'I'd love to show you round,' she assured him demurely, and dimpled suddenly, meeting his eyes, and he laughed back happily and took her free arm, and guided her away from the noise and bustle as if he wanted to dissociate himself from them without exactly saying so.

  'I know the Manor well.' Nan steered him through the familiar rooms. 'The Squire's children and I were great friends, and we made free with one another's homes,' she smiled reminiscently, unaware of the sudden sadness in her face and voice, that tightened the man's hand about her arm, and brought his eyes down to rest on her absorbed face as they stood together at the open french windows of the drawing-room, looking out over the terrace where occasional shrubs and low flowering plants grew out of the crazy paving to break the level half circle of flatness into charming patches of colour and perfume.

  'Somehow,' her voice was wistful, 'the old place seems to have lost its—tranquillity—since they've gone.' She did not know how else to express it. Her feet took her out on to the stones of the terrace, refusing to go back indoors at least until they were obliged. She paused, her nostrils catching the sharp scent of thyme, and she moved aside slightly, careful not to step on another frond and crush the slender stems growing from between the cracks beneath their feet. 'That reminds me,' she sniffed appreciatively, 'I must pick our herbs while the weather stays fine.' She tied a mental knot in her hanky. It was a job she could do as soon as the dew dried out in the morning. 'We dry our own for the winter,' she explained, sensing rather than seeing Keir's questioning look, since the young moon bathed the garden in only a faint light, that left deep shadows to hide the change of expression on her companion's face.'

  'Autumn.' Keir's voice was flat, suddenly weary. 'It's the death of the year.'

  'Autumn's the beginning, not the end.' It was unlike Keir to be despondent, or at least to show it openly. Whatever he felt, he usually managed to keep it well hidden beneath a suave exterior. His professional training helped, of course, but the iron -self-control of the man was normally enough to shield his inner thoughts from his companions. Nan had learned to watch his eyes, which betrayed him as surely as her own heart had betrayed her.

  'The harvest's the start of the year, not the finish,' she protested, turning to face him with a swift urge to cheer him up. Had Marcia been unkind? The girl was an incorrigible flirt, and regarded men as trophies to be collected rather than as human beings who were capable of being hurt. Nan shrugged away the thought of Marcia irritably. 'They'll be ploughing at Coton Hill, now the crop's been brought in,' she persisted. 'By Christmas the winter wheat will already be showing through the ground.' It was an ageless continuity that always had a comforting effect on Nan. 'You're country bred yourself,' she. pressed her point. 'You must know this, too?' Her whole instinct was to comfort him, she did not know what for, and miserably she felt she did not know how, either. And what was worse, she had not got the right. Marcia might have—or Edwina?

  'It's a long time since I lived in the country. A lifetime since I left home.' He leaned back, relaxing with a sigh against the pillar of the stone balustrade, and his voice was lighter now, more reminiscent. 'After years of study and work, and living in the cities, one tends to forget. ..'

  'You can't forget your roots,' Nan said practically. 'They're always there.'

  'Roots have one failing,' his voice through the semi-darkness held a thread of amusement now, responding to Nan's argument, being deliberately controversial on purpose to keep her talking. Talking him out of his dark mood. 'Roots get buried.'

  'And send up shoots every now and then.' Nan caught his ball and tossed it back, grateful that her efforts were succeeding. 'They come up like periscopes, for a look round, just to see if anything's changed,' her voice held a smile.

  'And find all too often that it has.'

  'But they adjust.'

  'Ah!' His voice was soft, derisive. 'The
y adjust. But remember it's only adjustment. A new shoot may grow in an environment in which it's not happy, but it won't necessarily thrive. It—adjusts,' he repeated, and through the moonlit dusk Nan detected a note of bitterness in his voice that told her he had never adjusted completely. Had never thrived. His career had prospered, but for Keir himself there had always been something missing.

  'Did you never want to go back? To leave the city?' she asked him quietly. Intuition told her that he would not resent her question now, he seemed to want to talk. Maybe it was Marcia who had started him off, perhaps she had managed somehow to break through his habitual shell of reserve, and now he was deprived of her company for the moment, any listening ear was an acceptable substitute. Whatever the reason, Nan was glad he had chosen to talk, and that he was talking -to her, and not to their host's daughter. '

  'Oh yes, I often wanted to go back.' The bitterness was no longer in evidence, he had his voice once more under control. 'And latterly, more than ever. But we can't always have what we want in this world. There are usually obstacles.'

  Evidently he had not been able to overcome them, Nan concluded. Once again she let herself be guided by her instinct, and tactfully let the matter drop.

  'You've managed to compromise by coming to Minster,' she said lightly. He did not have a home of his own, but at least Minster House gave him very comfortable accommodation, and her uncle and aunt treated him as one of the family.

  'It's funny, really,' she added, 'the Lisles have just the same problem in reverse. They say the Manor is too small for them, and the grounds a lot too large.'

  'How much ground is there?' Keir asked, interestedly following her lead in a manner that made Nan glad she had not persisted on her previous tack. 'The gardens seem spacious enough from what I've seen from the road.'

  'They're not too big, really.' Nan leaned her arms along the stone coping, probing the soft darkness with memory-seeing eyes. 'There's about a couple of acres of garden in all, and that includes the walled bit. The rest consists of orchard, and some paddock land at the back, enough for grazing the family horses. The old Squire used to keep a donkey with them for company,' she remembered with a smile. 'We had great fun riding hint when we were little, and then when we got too big and he got too old he was allowed to stay on in the orchard, and he bit any other animal that dared to invade his territory. He used to share all our sweets and biscuits, we spoiled him in the most scandalous manner,' she remembered with a smile.

  'What became of him?' Keir sounded as if he really wanted to know.

  'Oh, he went to an honourable grave in the end, on the edge of the spinney.' Sensing his continued interest, Nan went on, 'There's a small animals' cemetery there, headstones and all. Some of them go back a couple of hundred years, the inscriptions are only just legible. The old Squire preserved the place, although it wasn't a habit he encouraged with his own children and their animals. The donkey was the only one of their pets that was ever buried there, and he gave way about that because Dinky was special.'

  'You'll have to take me to pay my respects, one day.'

  'You'll have to ask Marcia or Rodney. I can't take you.' Nan felt suddenly snubbed. He spoke as if he had forgotten that the daughter of the house was not still with him. I can't make a very deep impression on him, she thought miserably, and relapsed into silence.

  'Oh, there you are. What on earth are you doing, standing out here in the dark by yourselves?' Marcia's sharp tone suggested she could think of a dozen reasons, and did not like any of them.

  'Nan's been telling me something of the history of the Manor.' Keir straightened up from the balustrade and spoke smoothly. He's pulled the shutters down again, Nan thought, and wished heartily that Marcia had not discovered their whereabouts, at least not yet. Her glimpses of the man under the shell he presented to the outside world had been rare until tonight, and she resented the interruption of her first real talk with her uncle's partner. They had had plenty of opportunity to talk while she ferried him on his rounds, but their conversations in the Land-Rover always seemed to descend to sparring on both sides, and it was a game in which at any moment one of them might become careless, and dropping guard would immediately feel the prick of the other's blade. At first it didn't matter, but now Keir's pricks hurt.

  'I didn't know you boasted a pets' cemetery,' he added, and Marcia sneered,

  'Oh, that! Dad's going to have that old spinney bulldozed down, and some tennis courts put there instead. We could do with a couple of hard courts, there's only that old grass one by the paddock.'

  'But the badger setts are in the spinney!' Nan swung round from the wall, protesting. 'They've been there for hundreds of years, they're mentioned in the first of the parish records. You can't disturb the badgers,' she cried in a distressed voice. 'Doesn't your father know they're there?'

  'Of course he knows,' Marcia answered coolly. 'But we want the space, and that's that. I'm not having the tennis courts abandoned just for the convenience of a few badgers. They can take themselves off and find a home somewhere else,' she said indifferently. 'And if they've been there for hundreds of years, it's time someone else had a turn,' she giggled as if she had said something funny.

  'They're vandals!' Nan exploded furiously from within the circle of Keir's arm. 'Oh, it doesn't matter about the animals' graveyard, but the badgers are living creatures. Why drive them out when they've got plenty of room to put their beastly tennis courts elsewhere?'

  'They're entitled to do as they like on their own land,' Keir replied reasonably enough. 'Hey!' he expostulated, 'that's twice you've stood on my toes.' He tightened his arm about her waist as she stumbled over the simple quick step. 'Forget it,' he advised her as the music came to an end, and began again with a slow waltz.

  'I can't.' Nan choked on rising fury.

  'You'll have to.' Keir gave her a slight shake, and she looked up into his face, startled for a moment out of her train of thought. 'The Manor belongs to the Lisles. Your friends sold it to them,' he reminded her bluntly.

  'Only because they had to,' she said obstinately, and his jaw tightened. He scowled down at her, their glances clashing, and they were back on their old footing, he angrily impatient and refusing to see her point of view, and Nan including Keir in her fury with the Lisle family. Just for the moment, she felt she hated them all. They were all strangers to the village, and they all seemed intent on destroying the things she valued most, she thought mutinously. First the hospital and the old lady's cottage; then the wall round the Manor garden. Now the spinney, and ...

  'You two are glowering at one another as if war's been declared,' Rodney Lisle successfully tagged Nan, and Keir dropped his arms as if, she thought angrily, he was glad to let her go. For her part, she was not sorry that their dance had ended, either.

  'What on earth were you sparring about?' Rodney was openly curious, and although she did not much care for the boy, Nan felt too upset to hold back. Her new partner was young enough to still have some ideals left, she thought with a faint hope. He was an unlikely ally, but she seemed to have no other.

  'Oh, the senselessness of it all!' Despite her sudden decision she spoke cautiously; she could not very well criticise Rodney's family to him, particularly when she was a guest in their house. 'This row over the hospital and the old lady's cottage. And now your sister says you're going to put tennis courts where the spinney is, and destroy the badger setts.' She swallowed a quick lump in her throat. Her anger was evaporating fast, and it left her humiliatingly close to tears.

  'Do they matter so much—to you, I mean?' For once the boy's armour of modernism dropped from him, and left something rather nice showing through. It gave Nan courage.

  'It matters a great deal to me,' she said simply. 'It'll mean a great deal more to the badgers,' she added unhappily, and blinked.

  'I say, you are steamed up about it! I didn't realise ...' To Nan's consternation the boy divined the reason for her too-bright eyes, and frank concern showed on his face. 'Look, I'l
l tell you what I'll do,' he promised impulsively. 'I'll see if I can talk Dad into having the courts put on that bit of rough land between the orchard and the paddock. There's plenty of room there, and it'll do just as well. It won't be so costly either,' he warmed to his task. 'Scrub won't be as difficult to clear as trees, and it's flat, whereas the spinney is on a bit of a hill.' He steered her suddenly into the middle of the melee of dancers. 'Here's that twit from the pop group wanting to tag you,' he skilfully avoided the lank-haired youth with the beads, who was heading in Nan's direction with a look of determination oh his face.

  'I thought he was a friend of yours?' Nan said, surprised. She was seeing a side of Rodney Lisle that had not been visible before.

  'He says he is,' the boy replied scornfully. 'You know,' he confided suddenly, 'since we won this money it's been hard to tell who are friends, and who are just hangers-on. It was better before,' he said with unexpected honesty.

  'You don't like living in the country, do you?' For the second time that evening Nan sensed her question would not be resented.

  'No—at least not so far out as this,' he replied frankly. 'Before we won all that money we had a nice place on the outskirts of Birmingham. Dad had a decent enough job, so we never went short of anything we really wanted, and there was always plenty to do in our spare time. Out here . . .' He shrugged his shoulders expressively. 'Marcia wasn't all that keen either, until recently. It's Mother and Dad,' he grinned suddenly. 'They had a yen to be lord and lady of the manor, I suppose.'

  'Well, they've got their wish.' Nan tried to be kind.

  'You know that's not true.' The boy was more perceptive than she had given him credit for. 'Dad hasn't seen the light yet, but I think Mother's beginning to miss her bingo sessions,' he laughed. 'I think she's only holding on in the hope of getting Sis married off.'

  'To someone nice?' Nan could not resist it, and his grin broadened.

  'To someone nice,' he mimicked.

  'You've got a big enough field to choose from.' Nan glanced about them at the crowded room, and her partner answered indifferently.