The Summer House

by Marcia Willett

  This overwhelming sense of ownership was new to him: and yet ownership was the wrong word here. It was as if he had always belonged; as if it were his rightful home, as natural and comfortable as his skin. He knew that everything that he put into the Summer House must be in tune with this feeling and he simply wouldn’t be hurried. Milo had offered odd pieces from the High House which Matt had politely but firmly resisted: he was waiting, he’d said, to get the feel of it. He could see that Lottie understood – and Milo was too happy to know that the Summer House was staying in the family to press it. And Im had been so busy moving into the barn and getting Rosie settled that she’d had no opportunity to hurry him either.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she’d said, walking round with him, making suggestions as to what he’d need. ‘It really is. I’m still jealous – but actually I love the barn and, to be honest, it’s a better layout for us. Anyway, I’d never have a minute’s peace with the brook at the end of the lawn and Rosie just learning to walk. We’d have had to fence it right off, which would be a shame.’

  She’d been in a rather odd mood for the last few weeks, ever since Annabel’s visit, rather quiet and preoccupied, but she’d given him lots of sensible advice about curtains and furniture, and, though he’d listened to her suggestions, he’d taken no steps to implement them. The kitchen already had a built-in dresser along the wall opposite the old Rayburn, which had been converted to oil, and there was a fairly modern stainless-steel sink. The Moretons had left a sturdy oak gate-legged table and a handsome wooden carver which, they’d said, had been in the house when they’d moved in. He’d put these into the bay window at the other end of the kitchen, pleased to have some of the original furniture.

  ‘You were right,’ he’d said to Lottie, ‘about me being here. Though I never thought it would be like this. That I’d be buying the Summer House.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ she’d admitted. ‘But I’m so glad that you’re … peaceful here.’

  It had been an odd word to choose: peaceful. But it was the right word. ‘Happy’ would have implied an ephemeral state. ‘Peaceful’ described this unfamiliar sense of wellbeing, as if something important and necessary were soon to be revealed to him and, meanwhile, everything was as it should be. Only Annabel continued to be a slight source of anxiety but she was tethered, luckily, by her job in London so that he couldn’t be rushed into a relationship he might regret.

  The further away she was, the more he liked her, and the fact that there was no mobile signal at the Summer House protected him even more. She knew now that he was buying a house in Bossington and was very keen to see it. He’d prevaricated and gently held her at bay, but soon she’d be down again. The trouble was that he couldn’t make up his mind about her – and part of him was afraid of missing a wonderful opportunity. His friends told him that he’d never really know how he felt about a girl until he let himself go; took a few chances emotionally. But still he held back.

  ‘There’s something I don’t know about myself,’ he’d said to Lottie, confusedly. ‘Something important. And I simply can’t make such a huge commitment until I know what it is.’

  Being Lottie, she hadn’t scoffed, or even questioned him; she’d merely looked thoughtful.

  ‘I think you will know soon,’ she’d said at last. ‘Do you remember when we talked about it before, when I told you I believed that you needed to be here? Well, I think that the other thing will follow.’

  He’d nodded. ‘I’m beginning to believe it too, but I don’t really know why – or how.’

  ‘Wait,’ she’d said, with that odd, far-seeing look of hers. ‘Wait and be patient. I don’t mean resignation, as in waiting for the rain to stop, or for the end of something over which we have no control because we imagine that, once it does, then, magically, life will be different. I mean the true patience that allows us to live fully in the moment and to be content to be where we are while we wait. And be prepared to confront a few demons.’

  So that’s what he was doing. He’d decided to go to London to bring a few things down from his flat to the Summer House, and he’d see Annabel while he was there to prevent her from making another visit to Bossington just yet, and so as to give himself a bit of breathing space.

  ‘So what did you think of her?’ he’d asked Im, though he’d known that Annabel hadn’t been a great hit with any of them. Even so, he intended to make his own mind up without letting that knowledge put pressure on him.

  ‘She was putting on a bit of an act,’ she’d answered candidly: he and Im had always been honest with one another in these matters. ‘I didn’t absolutely take to her.’

  The trouble was, of course, that Annabel’s observation about vets had rather hit home and poor Im had clearly been a bit knocked sideways by it. At the same time, it seemed to have made her think carefully about this rift between her and Jules. As far as Matt could see, she was making much more of an effort to come to terms with them not buying the Summer House and Jules was looking more like his old cheerful self.

  ‘How will you use it?’ Im had asked, turning the subject back to the house. ‘Are you really going to live in it?’

  ‘I think so,’ he’d answered cautiously. ‘I shall still spend time in London, of course, but I’m going to be here a lot.’

  ‘Then you’d better buy some furniture,’ she’d said in her practical way. ‘And then you can give a house-warming party.’

  Now, he stood in the hall, at the bottom of the staircase, listening; staring at himself in the oval, gilt-framed looking-glass that hung there: another relic from the past. He imagined he could hear noises: footsteps in the kitchen; the swirl of a paintbrush in a jar of water; voices in the garden. He closed his eyes so as to hear them better and, suddenly, time seemed to arc backwards to his childhood. In his mind’s eye he saw his own small face as in a mirror image, and he was being lifted, swung up high, and he was crying out in fear and loneliness.

  His heart raced and stampeded and he opened his eyes, staring at himself again in the glass. He thought he glimpsed a movement behind him on the veranda and he turned sharply, but there was nobody there. He stood at the door, looking out into the rain-drenched garden, waiting, willing down the panic, and gradually the sense of peace gently took hold of him again. Matt took his jacket from where it hung over the banisters and, shrugging it on, he let himself out into the rain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The path led from the veranda round the side of the house to the walled area at the back. Here he could choose to walk past the open-fronted barns, used for cars and garden implements, along the drive, which wound through the avenue of walnut trees, or he could pass through the wicket gate that led through the kitchen garden into the grounds.

  Matt chose the wicket gate. He closed it behind him and, with his head bent against the rain, he made his way around the path under the high walls. A blackbird perched briefly on the corner of the high cage that protected the soft fruit from his predations, his beak full of food for his babies; his sharp, gold-rimmed eye charted Matt’s progress before he plunged into the curtain of ivy that grew over the red stone walls and camouflaged his nest hidden amongst the woody branches and sheltering leaves. Just here, by the greenhouses, purple violets grew in a glass frame and there were primroses under the wall. Matt breathed in the scents of newly dug earth and sappy, vegetative growth. He knew how hard Milo worked in the kitchen garden. It looked cherished, well-nourished; the vegetables stood in regimental lines. The grassy paths that cross-sectioned the well-filled beds were edged and mown with precision. At the further point, in the archway in the wall, Matt paused for a moment to give due homage to such effort.

  ‘The weeds are too scared to grow,’ Lottie told him. ‘Poor Milo. He’s going to miss Phil Moreton so much. Phil and Angela were very grateful to be able to have use of the garden and Phil always put in his fair share of hard work, especially since Milo’s operation.’

  ‘Perhaps I could help,’ Matt had suggested tentatively.
‘I’d like to.’

  ‘Be very careful,’ she’d warned. ‘Milo is a slave driver and you’ve got a book to write.’

  The path through the shrubbery was dank but Matt didn’t mind the gloominess of the overarching branches of laurel; today he still carried with him the sense of that presence, never so vivid as when he was in the Summer House, but still here in the gardens. Perhaps it was merely the glint of sunshine on the dark green leaves or a shimmer of light through the rain; but it seemed to him that someone moved along these paths, sometimes glimpsed ahead through the sturdy network of branches, or, should he turn his head suddenly, on the turn of the path behind him just out of sight.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ he’d asked Lottie once, long ago.

  ‘I think that wherever there have been truly strong emotions there will be echoes that remain,’ she’d answered, rather obliquely. ‘Your great-grandmother had the Sight so you’ve probably inherited the ability to connect to that. It can be an uncomfortable gift.’

  Her matter-of-fact answer had reassured him; oddly it made certain things clear to him and he’d ceased to be anxious. How vital she and Milo had been to him: the odd couple. Dear old Milo, with his soldier’s toughness informed by his love of poetry: the Great War poets, of course, but also the absurd: Lear, Carroll, Belloc.

  Matt paused at the edge of the shrubbery, looking across the lawn to the bench beneath the lilac tree. He had a clear vision of himself when small, sitting on that wooden seat, his hand clasped in Milo’s big one, listening to Milo reciting poetry: ‘The Jumblies’, perhaps, or ‘Jabberwocky’. Milo had been best at reading the night-time story. He entered readily into the world that children inhabit and he could invest the poem or the story with such reality that Matt would cling to his arm, listening in terror as the terrifying Mr Brock was confronted by the cunning Mr Tod, or transfixed with delight by Peter Pan’s entry into the Darling children’s nursery. By the time he was six he could chant most of A. A. Milne’s poems, bouncing on his bed with delight and shouting, “Butter, eh?” at the appropriate moment during ‘The King’s Breakfast’, or repeating ‘Disobedience’, half in dread because he knew that James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree’s mummy was going to disappear for ever, and, of course, in a different way, this had happened to him.

  As he stood beneath the dripping laurels, hot tears gathered in his eyes. His mother had disappeared just as surely as James’s had: that happy, laughing woman who had played with him had vanished, leaving behind an unfamiliar person whose face was clenched with sorrow and whose despair disabled her. He grieved silently for her whilst the rain washed the tears from his cheeks, then he crossed the lawn and went into the house.

  Lottie came out from the parlour as Matt came through the hall, almost as if she’d been waiting for him. She looked at him interrogatively, as if reading his recent experiences in his face, but he greeted her cheerfully.

  ‘Milo has something for you.’ She spoke quite low, almost warningly, and instinctively he lowered his own voice.

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘I hope you’re not giving the secret away!’ Milo’s voice boomed suddenly from the parlour, and Lottie quickly shook her head and squeezed Matt’s arm. He followed her into the room where Milo stood, looking pleased with himself.

  ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for these,’ he said to Matt. ‘Couldn’t think where they’d gone. What d’you think of them?’

  He gestured to the oval mahogany table and Matt moved further into the room to see what Milo had found. The shock was surprisingly intense. Standing together, some self-supporting, some resting on small lecterns, was a group of watercolours. At once he recognized the Summer House, though this was the original building: a single-storey pavilion with pretty pillars and long graceful windows. And here was an interior: the sitting room with its windows opened to the garden, the curtains moving in the breeze, a small marmalade cat curled in a low velvet-covered chair with curving wooden arms. In another, with a thrill of delight, he saw his drop-leaf table and the old carver chair exactly where he had placed them in the kitchen, with a jar of sweet peas standing on the table beside a trug full of fresh-picked runner beans. Another showed the veranda from the hall; a rocking chair looked as if it had just been vacated mid-rock, and a straw hat with pretty ribbons fluttering hung from the rail at its back. The sense of immediacy, the vividness that was inherent in the paintings, gripped Matt. He stared and stared in silent joy, and only when Milo moved suddenly just behind him did he startle back into awareness.

  ‘They are utterly beautiful,’ Matt said. ‘They are exquisite. Where did you find them? I mean …’ He shook his head, unable to articulate sensibly. ‘Sorry, but they are just so perfect.’

  ‘I knew I had them somewhere.’ Milo was looking intensely pleased at Matt’s reaction. ‘I’ve been searching everywhere. And then I found them in the little dressing room off the spare bedroom. My mother must have hung them there. I think she thought that they were a bit old-fashioned and insipid. She liked oils.’

  ‘But who painted them?’ Even as he asked the question he knew the answer, and he saw that Lottie was watching him, and knew that she knew too.

  ‘My great-grandmother had the Summer House built so that she could paint in peace,’ Milo was saying. ‘She spent a great deal of time in it and there were all kinds of rumours that filtered down through the years. Some say that she had a secret lover – she was a great deal younger than her husband – and some say that she had a great tragedy in her life, and others say that she was just a recluse who liked to paint. Anyway, my great-grandfather designed it for her. He died at Bloemfontein. Poor fellow, he died of enteric fever before he ever got to fire a shot. And after that she practically lived down at the Summer House, so the stories go, and her son took over the estate. That was George, my grandfather. He was wounded in the Great War and died soon afterwards. Anyway, I wondered if you might like them.’

  Matt stared at the paintings. ‘I should love to have them,’ he said at last. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘They are so fresh,’ Lottie said softly. ‘How she must have loved her little house.’

  ‘Yes.’ He couldn’t take his eyes from them. ‘And they shall go back there where they belong.’

  ‘And,’ said Milo, delighted by the success of his find, ‘there’s something else.’

  Matt turned, almost warily. Anything else must surely be the most awful anticlimax – but no. There, half hidden by the sofa, was a low velvet-covered chair with curling wooden arms: the chair in the painting.

  ‘It was in the same room with the paintings,’ Milo told him, ‘and I know you don’t want anyone interfering with your plans but we thought you’d like this, seeing that it’s in the painting there. It’s obviously come from the Summer House.’

  The rosewood glowed in the firelight though the dusty pink velvet was rubbed and worn. Matt stroked the scrolled wood with his finger. Milo and Lottie were watching him, sharing in his pleasure, and he smiled at the two of them: the odd couple. He couldn’t think of anything to say in this emotional mood that might not reduce him to tears, and he saw Milo give Lottie a wink, a little nod, and murmuring about things he had to do, he went out. Lottie followed him and Matt was left alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The puppy had found a wooden clothes peg. He sniffed at it cautiously at first, then, with growing confidence, he caught it in his mouth and pretended to worry it. He growled and shook it and dropped it again. A flurry of wind whirled around him, distracting him, and he pounced on a dead leaf, which disintegrated at the touch of his paw. He sat down in surprise and stared at the remains of the leaf.

  Imogen laughed at him as she hung out the washing; the puppy was another good reason for being at the barn. There was plenty of room for him here, and he slept at night in a slate-floored utility room which was easily washed down when accidents occurred. When he was older there would be wonderful walks over Goat Hill and up to the Chain
s, and along the Tarka trail. He was a good little fellow; coming on well – and Rosie adored him. Bab had almost been abandoned in favour of him: almost but not quite. When she was miserable or tired Rosie always reached for Bab to comfort her.

  Remembering how she’d once imagined that Bab rather resembled Nick, Im made a little shamefaced grimace. Things were very much better between her and Jules but there were still odd moments when a text from Nick, or the sound of his voice, cheered her. He’d been her comfort blanket and she couldn’t quite give him up. She reached for another garment, glancing over her shoulder to check that Rosie wasn’t doing something she shouldn’t. Another good thing about living at the barn was that the small garden was a very simple area of paving and grass. The holiday-makers had required only an area where they could have a barbecue and sit and look at the stark splendour of the surrounding moorland whilst they ate their charred sausages; and this suited Im very well. The dense beech hedge and sturdy gate kept both Rosie and the puppy in perfect safety and there were no flowerbeds to be dug up or to get muddy in: it was ideal.