The End of Summer
Page 14
“Why didn’t Aylwyn ever come back from Canada?”
“Because of Sinclair. Sometimes, the image of a father can be better than … the father himself. Sinclair is…” she corrected herself, with scarcely a tremor to her voice, “Sinclair was another Bailey. It’s astonishing how a single bad trait will go right down through generations of the same family.”
“You mean, all that gambling and stuff.”
“Sinclair did talk to you, didn’t he?”
“A little.”
“There was no need for it, you know. He had a good job and a good salary, but he simply couldn’t resist the thrill. And the fact that we don’t understand it should never make us unsympathetic, although I sometimes think it was all Sinclair lived for.”
“But he loved coming to Elvie.”
“Only now and again. He didn’t feel about it as your mother did … or you. In fact—” she turned her needles and started in on another row— “I decided some time ago, that it would be a good idea if Elvie should belong to you one day. Would you welcome that?”
“I … I don’t know…”
“That was the real reason I was so anxious for your father to let you come home, and bombarded him with letters which the wretch refused to answer. I wanted to talk to you about Elvie.”
I said, “It’s a wonderful idea, but I’m scared of owning things … I don’t think I’d want to be tied down by all the responsibilities of a place like Elvie. And I wouldn’t be free to get up and go the way I’d want to.”
“That sounds very chicken-hearted, and also a little like your father talking. If he’d been more realistic about possessions, he might have put down a few roots by now, and a good thing too. Don’t you want roots, Jane? Don’t you want to get married and have a family?”
I looked into the fire and thought of many things. Of Sinclair and my father … and David. And I thought of all the world I had seen, and the vast tracts of it which I hoped very much that one day I would see. And I thought of children at Elvie, my children, being brought up in this perfect place, and doing all the things that Sinclair and I had done …
I said at last, “I don’t know what I want. And that’s the truth.”
“I didn’t think you did. And today, when neither of us is in a frame of mind to be sensible about anything, is not the best time to discuss it. But you should think about it, Jane. Weigh up the pros and cons. There’s all the time in the world to discuss it together.”
A log broke, and fell into the smouldering embers of the fire. I got up to put on another, and while I was on my feet, stooped to pick up the tea tray, and carry it out to the kitchen, but as I reached the door, and stood, juggling with the tray and the door-handle, my grandmother spoke again.
“Jane.”
“Yes.”
Still holding the tray, I turned to face her. She had stopped knitting and now she took off her glasses, and I saw the blueness of her eyes, set deep in the pallor of her face. I had never seen her look so pale. I had never seen her look so old.
“Jane … do you remember, we were talking the other day, about Sinclair’s friend, Tessa Faraday?”
My fingers closed over the handles of the tray and my knuckles showed white. I knew what was coming and prayed that it wouldn’t. “Yes.”
“I saw in the paper that she had died. Something about an overdose of barbiturates. Did you see that?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You never said anything.”
“No, I know.”
“Was it … had it anything to do with Sinclair?”
Across the room, our eyes met and held. I would have given my soul at that moment to be able, convincingly, to lie. But I was incompetent, and my grandmother knew me very well. I hadn’t a hope in hell of getting away with it.
I said, “Yes, it had.” And then, “She was going to have his baby.”
My grandmother’s eyes filled with tears, and it was the only time I ever saw her cry.
11
David came the next afternoon. My grandmother was writing letters, and I had retreated to the garden and was sweeping up leaves, having once been told that physical toil is the best form of therapy for mental distress. I had made a small pile, and was about to transfer it to a handy wheelbarrow, when the french windows opened, and David came out to join me. I straightened to watch him cross the grass, all tall lankiness and wind-ruffled hair, and wondered in that moment how we would have got through the last few days without him. He had done everything, seen to everything, arranged everything, even finding time to put through a person-to-person call to my father, and tell him personally of Sinclair’s death. And I knew that, whatever happened to the two of us, I should never cease being grateful to him.
He took the last bit of the bank in a single stride and was at my side. “Jane, what are you going to do with that little handful of leaves?”
“Put them into the barrow,” I said, and did. They fluttered around, and most of them blew out again.
He said, “If you can lay your hands on a couple of bits of wood, you’ll speed the process up considerably. I’ve brought you a letter…”
He took it out of his capacious pocket and I saw that it was from my father.
“How did you get this?”
“It was enclosed in one he wrote to me. He asked me to give it to you.”
We abandoned the wheelbarrow and the broom, went down the garden, jumping the ha-ha into the field, and so on to the old jetty, where we settled ourselves, in some danger, side by side on the rotting boards, and I opened the letter and read it aloud to David.
“My darling Jane,
“I was so very sorry to hear about Sinclair and your involvement in his death, but glad that you were able to be with your grandmother, and no doubt of the greatest possible comfort to her.
“I feel guilty—and have been, ever since you went away—that I let you return to Elvie without putting you in the picture as regards your Uncle Aylwyn. But somehow, with one thing and another and the dramatic fashion in which you departed, the opportunity never presented itself. I did, however, mention it to David Stewart, and he promised to keep an eye on you and the general situation…”
I said, “But you never told me.”
“It wasn’t my business.”
“But you knew.”
“Of course I knew.”
“And you knew about Sinclair as well?”
“I knew that he was getting through a hell of a lot of your grandmother’s money.”
“There’s worse to come, David.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sinclair died owing the most terrible amount.”
“I was afraid that would happen. How did you know about this?”
“Because he told me. He told me lots of things.” I went back to the letter.
“The reason that I was never over-anxious for you to return to Elvie was not so much what your Uncle had been, but what I was pretty sure your cousin Sinclair had become. After your mother died, your grandmother suggested that I should leave you with her, and indeed, this would have seemed to be the obvious answer. But there was the question of Sinclair. I knew how fond you were of him and how much he meant to you, and I was pretty sure that if you continued to see so much of him, the day would come when you would either have your heart broken, or your illusions shattered. Either process was bound to be painful, if not disastrous, and so instead, I kept you with me and brought you to America.”
David interrupted. “I wonder what made him so sure about Sinclair.”
I thought of the book, of Goldsmith’s Animated Nature, and for a moment considered telling David the whole story. And then I decided against it. The book was no more. The day after Sinclair was killed, I retrieved it from his cupboard, took it downstairs and shovelled it into the boiler, where I watched it burn. Now, there was no trace left of it. Out of loyalty to Sinclair, it was best forgotten.
“I don’t know … I suppose, instinct. He was always a
very perceptive person, and impossible to fool.” I went on reading:
“This was also the reason I was so tardy in replying to your grandmother’s requests that you should return to Elvie. It would have been different if Sinclair were married, but I knew he wasn’t and was devilled with apprehensions.
“I expect you will want to stay at Elvie for a bit, but business here has been fairly brisk. Sam Carter is doing great stuff for me, so I am in the money as the saying goes, and could even afford to buy you a ticket back to sunny California whenever you say the word. I miss you very much, and so does Rusty. Mitzi the poodle is small compensation for your absence, though Linda is determined that when the time is ripe and the moon in the right quarter, Mitzi and Rusty will fall madly in love and get themselves a family, but it is my considered opinion that the issue of such a union simply does not bear thinking about.
“Linda is well, adores Reef Point and what she calls the simple life, and has started, surprisingly, to paint. I don’t know if my instincts are right or not, but I have a feeling that she may be very good. Who knows, she may yet be able to support me in the style to which I would like to be accustomed. Which is more than I could ever say for you.
“My love, darling child,
from your father.”
In silence I folded the letter, and put it back into its envelope, and so into the pocket of my coat. After a little, I said, slowly, “It sounds to me as though he’s trying to talk her into marrying him. Or maybe she’s trying to talk him into marrying her. I’m not sure which.”
“Perhaps they’re trying to talk each other. Would you like that to happen?”
“Yes, I think I would. Then I wouldn’t feel responsible for him any longer. I’d be free.”
The word had a disappointingly empty ring to it. It was very cold out on the jetty and suddenly I shivered, and David put an arm around me and drew me close into the warm circle of his arm, so that I was warmed by his warmth, my head supported by his solid tweed-clad shoulder.
“In that case,” he said, “perhaps this is as good a time as any to start talking you into marrying a half-blind country lawyer who’s adored you since the first moment he set eyes on you.”
I said, “You wouldn’t need to talk very hard.”
His arm tightened and I felt his lips brush against the top of my head. “You wouldn’t mind living in Scotland?”
“No. Provided you acquire yourself plenty of clients in New York, and California, and perhaps ever farther afield, and promise faithfully to take me with you whenever you go to see them.”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“And it would be nice if I could have a dog.”
“Of course you shall … not another Rusty, of course, he has to be unique. But perhaps one with the same interesting ancestry and equal intelligence and charm.”
I turned in his arms, and buried my face in his chest. I thought for a dreadful moment that I was going to cry, but that was ridiculous, people didn’t cry when they were happy, only in books. I said, “I love you,” and David held me very close, and I did cry after all, but it didn’t matter.
We sat there, wrapped around in David’s coat, making unrealistic plans—like being married in the Reef Point Mission, and having Isabel Modes McKenzie knit me a wedding dress—which inevitably dissolved into laughter. So we abandoned them and made others, and so preoccupied were we that we did not notice the light fade, and the evening air grow chill. We were finally disturbed by my grandmother, opening the window and calling out to tell us that tea was ready, so we stood up, cramped and cold, and started back to the house.
The garden was bloomed with dusk and thick with shadows. We had not spoken again of Sinclair but all at once I felt him everywhere, not the man, but the boy I remembered. He ran, soft-footed, across the grass, and from the shadows beneath the trees came the soft scuffle of fallen leaves. And I wondered if Elvie would ever be free of him, and this made me sad, for whatever happened, and whoever lived there, I did not want it to be a haunted place.
David, going ahead of me, had stopped to collect my broom and the wheelbarrow and stow them, out of harm’s way, under the maple. Now, he waited, his tall figure silhouetted against the lights of the house.
“What is it, Jane?”
I told him. “Ghosts.”
“There aren’t any,” he said, and I looked again, and saw that he was right. Only sky and water, and the wind stirring the leaves. No ghosts. I went on and he took my hand in his, and together we went in to tea.
Read all of Rosamunde Pilcher’s wonderful novels
The Shell Seekers
The Carousel
Voices in Summer
The Blue Bedroom and Other Stories
September
Flowers in the Rain and Other Stories
Coming Home
Wild Mountain Thyme
Under Gemini
Sleeping Tiger
The Empty House
The End of Summer
Snow in April
The Day of the Storm
Another View
Winter Solstice
ENTER THE ENCHANTING WORLD OF ROSAMUNDE PILCHER …
PRAISE FOR COMING HOME …
“Rosamunde Pilcher’s most satisfying story since The Shell Seekers.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Captivating … The best sort of book to come home to … Readers will undoubtedly hope Pilcher comes home to the typewriter again soon.”
—New York Daily News
… FOR SEPTEMBER …
“A dance of life!”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Her characters inhabit your daily life … [a] rich story to get lost in … the sort of novel so many seek to imitate and fail. I’d call Pilcher a Jane Austen for our time.”
—Cosmopolitan
… FOR THE BLUE BEDROOM AND OTHER STORIES …
“Breathtaking … A book you will want to keep, to read and re-read!”
—Grand Rapids Press
… FOR THE CAROUSEL …
“Delightful … It exudes comfort as it entertains.”
—Publishers Weekly
… FOR VOICES IN SUMMER
“I don’t know where Rosamunde Pilcher has been all my life—but now that I’ve found her, I’m not going to let her go.”
—The New York Times
THE END OF SUMMER
Copyright © 1971 by Rosamunde Pilcher.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
ISBN: 0-312-96128-6
EAN: 978-0-312-96128-2
St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition published 1967
Dell paperback edition / March 1989
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / December 1996
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781250032218
First eBook edition: February 2013