The Summer House Page 17

  On reflection, the Summer House would have presented a great many problems and she was surprised how glad she was, now, that she hadn’t insisted on living there. And, of course, this was simply great for Jules, with the practice hardly ten minutes away. He was delighted that she loved the barn so much and it had been rather sweet how he’d appeared with the puppy one evening, when she’d believed that she’d forfeited her chance to have him because of dithering about where they might live.

  ‘They kept him for us,’ Jules had said, holding out the squirming bundle. ‘He’s a house-warming present.’

  Well, she’d been overwhelmed, of course, and swamped with love and guilt and remorse, and that night they’d made love for the first time for ages, whilst the puppy howled mournfully in his new bed, missing his mother.

  It was rather nice having the Websters just down the track in the farmhouse. They were so sweet and kind, so delighted to have their favourite vet and his family in the barn, and they adored Rosie and spoiled her to bits, and Mrs Webster – Jane – was always ready to look after her for an hour or so, which was wonderful.

  Im hung up the last garment and looked with delight across Goat Bridge to the moor, listening to the clear, bubbling song of a skylark. Below her, two pretty Exmoor Hornies balanced on a rocky outcrop, and she could see a herd of red deer browsing their languid way across the grassy slopes of Roosthitchen. The strong warm west wind was filling the washing; socks and shirts and jeans dancing on the line, yearning towards the Chains: toes pointing, arms outstretched, legs kicking. Behind her, Rosie squealed loudly: she’d crawled out on to the patio and the puppy was licking her face enthusiastically.

  ‘What shall you call him?’ Jules had asked – and Im had held the soft, warm bundle and put her cheek against his coat.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she’d answered. ‘Not yet. It’s too early.’

  So he was still ‘Puppy’ or Rosie’s ‘Gog-gog’ because no proper name had yet suggested itself. She went to rescue Rosie, swinging her up high – and heard her mobile ringing inside the house. Guilt clutched at her heart: it was probably Nick. He was still looking to her for consolation, having found no comfort or resolution with Alice yet, and it was impossible to ignore him. After all, he’d been so sweet and understanding when Jules had been so unapproachable.

  Carrying Rosie, the puppy dancing at her heels, she went in, through the utility room to the amazing interior of the barn: she still caught her breath at the sheer space, the high raftered ceiling, the great doors – now glazed – that had once admitted the wagons, and the big stone inglenook. She set Rosie down on the wooden floor and picked up her mobile: there was a voicemail.

  ‘Hello, sweetie. Just wondering how you are. I’m missing you so much. No change here. Shall I make a quick dash down? It seems ages since I saw you and I expect you’re more or less settled in by now, aren’t you? Give me a buzz, darling. Make my day. Love you.’

  Im put the phone down: she felt anxious. How could she say to Nick that her moment of madness was over: that he’d just been a handy emotional scapegoat? It was so heartless, so cruel. And, after all, the occasional affectionate message could do no harm, could it; just until he and Alice were settled again? Some tiny instinct warned her that it might; that it could be dangerous. She wavered, thinking about Nick and how lonely he was, shrugging away the warning.

  Quickly she picked her mobile up again, and began to text.

  ‘So has he got a name yet?’ asked Jules, coming in and putting his laptop well out of Rosie’s reach. He bent to stroke the puppy, who chewed at his fingers. ‘Ouch! His teeth are like pins.’

  Im laughed. ‘He’s a terrible chewer. We could call him “Jaws”.’

  ‘He ought to have a name. Don’t they say that a baby should have a name straight away? Perhaps it’s the same thing with puppies.’

  ‘You think he might be psychologically damaged if we keep calling him “puppy”? Well, you could be right. Names are so important, though, aren’t they? And you have to live with them for such a long time … if you’re lucky,’ she added. ‘And it has to be something you can shout without sounding an idiot. Are you on call tonight?’

  ‘No,’ he answered thankfully. ‘I can have a drink.’

  He looked round happily at their new home; it was all working out just as he’d hoped and the puppy was a great success. He crossed the space of the big living room – Milo called it ‘the atrium’ – and put his arm around Im’s shoulders and kissed her.

  ‘I’ve been down at Brayford,’ he told her. ‘A difficult birthing with a mare but they’re both OK now.’

  Im’s mobile rang, and she glanced at it quickly and then pushed it away from them across the table, turning her back on it and smiling at him.

  ‘Answer it if you want to,’ he said. ‘Who is it?’

  She made a little face, wrinkling her nose. ‘It’s not important, ’ she said. ‘It can wait.’

  He was surprised – it was unusual for Im not to answer her phone; a trickle of unease edged down his spine. ‘But who is it?’ he repeated. ‘Is everything OK?’

  ‘It’s only Julie,’ she said. ‘She’ll just be confirming a date I texted her earlier for lunch next week. I just don’t want to get tied up with her now. Anyway, you haven’t said hello to Rosie yet.’

  ‘Where is she? Is she in bed already?’ For some reason he still felt slightly uneasy, though he was glad that Im wasn’t going to be tied up for ages talking to one of her mates. ‘I thought it was a bit early for her bedtime.’

  ‘She’s not in bed, but she’s in her bedroom. She’s had her bath and her milk and now she’s taken every single one of her toys out of the toy box and thrown them all over the floor and it looks like a tip. Come and see.’

  She slipped her arm through his and hugged it slightly and he pressed it close against his side, too relieved to know that all was well between them to worry any more about the phone call.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she was saying, ‘to be all on one level. I thought it would be a bit odd at first but it’s great not to have to worry about Rosie on the stairs. And I love the bedrooms with the rafters and the odd-shaped windows. It’s like being in Matt’s attic.’

  She let go of his arm and led the way down the short passage into the tiny hallway outside the two bedrooms and the bathroom. She pushed the door to Rosie’s bedroom further open and stood back to let him see. The scene was one of chaos. Every soft toy and all her books were piled in one heap and Rosie lay amongst them all, with Bab clutched to her chest and sucking her thumb.

  ‘She’ll be falling asleep if we’re not careful,’ Im said. ‘Come on, Rosie. Come and say hello to Daddy. He’ll read you a story.’

  ‘Hi, Rosie.’ Jules bent to pick her up. ‘What a mess you’ve made. Shall we tidy up a bit?’

  Rosie screwed her face up, as if she might protest, then she reached out and seized a piece of his hair to twiddle. She put her thumb back in and her eyelids drooped sleepily.

  ‘She’s nearly asleep,’ Im said. ‘Look, put her into her cot and read to her until I’ve tidied her room up. Here, give her Bab or she’ll fuss.’

  He put the unresisting Rosie into her cot, covered her with her quilt and gave her the rabbit.

  ‘He was one of your better buys, this rabbit,’ he said to Im. ‘Funny how she’s taken to him and takes no notice of some of the others, isn’t it?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Im, kneeling on the floor, sorting toys and books, hair falling forward over her face. ‘Here you are, Jules. Read this one until she drops off.’

  And so he perched on the chair beside the cot and began to read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Venetia towelled her hair dry, peering at herself in the steamy glass over the wash basin, pausing to pull her warm bathrobe more closely around her. She wound the towel into a turban over her hair and stopped to admire the effect. It was rather flattering; the lilac-blue towel against her skin. The severity of it mad
e her look rather beautiful, even without any make-up. She smiled at herself, gave her mirror-image the tiny, private wink that somehow excited her: ‘Go, girl,’ she murmured, and drained the last of the wine in her glass. She’d been feeling a bit odd today, a bit dizzy and rather shaky, but a long scented soak in the bath had reinvigorated her, and the wine had steadied her and lifted her spirits.

  In her adjoining bedroom she pushed her narrow feet into warm sheepskin slipper-boots – rather like Lottie’s Uggs but not nearly so clumpy – and went out on to the landing still carrying the glass. She would pour herself another little drink and think about some supper before she dried her hair. Standing for a moment at the landing window, looking down into her pretty little garden in the last of the early evening light, she thought with pleasure of the summer ahead and jolly lunches out there in the sheltered courtyard.

  At the top of the stairs she felt dizzy again; she stumbled a little, her hands flew out and the glass smashed against the banister; she gave a cry of fright and fear, and overbalanced, toppling and bumping down the steep narrow staircase.

  Some time later she opened her eyes on to darkness and was at once aware of an agonizing pain in her ankle and in the arm that was doubled under her. How cold it was. She tried to remember what had happened and was filled with anguish and a terrible fear. She moved gingerly and the pain stabbed so viciously that she cried out. She lay still. Her head was wrapped in something sodden and heavy and cold – her face and her neck felt wet. Why should they be wet? Dimly the hall swung into focus around her and, slowly, all the previous events clicked into place. She’d washed her hair and had a bath and then she’d fallen – but how long ago? Willing down panic, she tried to edge herself along the hall floor. Every movement was agony and she was obliged to stop every few seconds to rest.

  In the sitting room the telephone began to ring; she listened to it, biting her lips, weeping with frustration.

  ‘Please,’ she cried, ‘help me,’ and wept again at her stupidity: nobody could hear her. She lay still, feeling the deathly cold creeping around her, trying to cover her icy limbs with the bathrobe, wincing with pain. Presently she lay still, trying to think what she could do. Even if she could get to the front door, how would she manage to kneel up to unlock it and then open it to cry for help? She must try: she mustn’t spend all night on the hall floor, and who knows when anyone might come to find her?

  ‘Milo,’ she muttered, her cheeks wet with tears. ‘Milo. Help me.’

  Crying with pain, she began to force herself along again, inching towards the front door and the oblong edge of light that was cast across the floor from the half-open kitchen door, and then the pain overwhelmed her and she fainted.

  When she came to, the telephone was ringing again. Perhaps it would be more sensible to try to get to the phone: it was further away but at this time of the evening – what was the time? – it might get better results than lying on the doorstep and calling for help. That was assuming that she could manage to lift the phone and dial for an ambulance. One leg dragging painfully, her left arm useless, she continued the slow progress, praying for help.

  Lottie put down the telephone and looked at Milo. His irritation was apparent, the remote held at an expectant angle that indicated that he was waiting to continue with his DVD.

  ‘There’s still no answer,’ she said, puzzled.

  ‘She might be out to supper with one of her chums,’ he said. ‘She does go out, you know. Why are you being so twitchy?’

  Since early evening Lottie had been restless; rather silent over supper, unable to concentrate on the film that Milo had chosen for their later entertainment, picking up her knitting and putting it down again. Matt was watching her.

  ‘Shall I dash into Dunster?’ he suggested. ‘Just see if she’s OK?’

  ‘Oh, really,’ said Milo crossly, drawing in his long legs, preparing to get up. ‘If anyone does any dashing it had better be me. But what if she is out? What then? Are you going to track down all her friends to see where she is?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Milo.’ Lottie came to sit down again. ‘It’s just a feeling I’ve got. And it’s quite late. Nearly eleven o’clock. I don’t think that Venetia and her friends have such late nights these days.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ He allowed them to see his resignation. ‘You’d better come with me, so that you can be the one to explain exactly why we’re waiting for her when she gets home. Or waking her up if she’s decided to have a nice early night.’

  ‘I shall come,’ said Lottie, ignoring his sarcasm. ‘She said this morning when she phoned that she was feeling a bit light-headed. Perhaps she isn’t well and has gone to bed. But she’s got a phone beside her bed …’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said impatiently. ‘If we’re going let’s get on with it. Where’s her spare key?’

  ‘In the usual place. On the hook in the hall.’ Lottie bundled her knitting away and grimaced at Matt. ‘I shall feel such a fool if she’s having an early night,’ she said.

  ‘It’s better to make sure,’ he said reassuringly.

  She nodded. ‘See you later. I’m coming,’ she shouted to Milo, who was roaring some instruction from the hall. ‘See you later, Matt.’

  He’d fallen asleep, and wakened with a shock when the telephone rang.

  ‘Oh, Matt.’ Lottie’s voice was tremulous. ‘She’d fallen down the stairs. A broken arm and ankle and some cuts to her hand. We’re in Minehead Hospital and she’s OK now but very shaken. She looks so frail, it’s heartbreaking. She wept all over Milo and practically had hysterics when we arrived but she’s been so brave. She was lying in the hall, absolutely freezing with her hair all wet. Poor Venetia.’

  ‘Thank God you went,’ he said. ‘She might have been there all night. I bet Milo was horrified to think he nearly didn’t go.’

  ‘Well, he was.’ Lottie’s voice sounded as if she were smiling. ‘You know that thing people do when someone they love is hurt. When he saw her there all crumpled up in the hall he practically shouted at her but she didn’t seem to mind. I went with her in the ambulance and she told me that the worst thing was Milo and the ambulance men seeing her without her make-up on and her hair in rat’s-tails.’

  Matt was smiling now. ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘That sounds so like Venetia. How she’d hate to be caught at a disadvantage, poor old love.’

  ‘Well, they’ve bandaged her up and sedated her, and they’ll be doing some other tests tomorrow. We’re on our way home, darling, but don’t wait up.’

  He put the telephone down and stood up, stretching. The fire was practically out and he was cold. He crouched down before the wood-burner, building up the fire with small twigs and then bigger logs so that it would be warm when they got back. He was remembering an incident from his schooldays in Blackheath, when he’d fallen off one of the climbing bars and concussed himself, and Lottie had suddenly appeared before there’d been time for anyone at home to be notified.

  ‘I was just passing,’ she’d said, ‘on my way to a meeting just round the corner.’

  Matt sat back on his heels, watching the flames and lost in memories, and then he heard the car’s engine as it came up the drive and he got up and went out to meet them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  He still couldn’t decide where to hang the paintings. He’d brought them all down to the Summer House and now he stood in the kitchen, by the table in the window where he’d arranged them, and studied them. They were even more magical now that they were here in the house, but he knew that until he was living here he wouldn’t know where each one should be hung. Meanwhile he gloated over them, marvelling at the delicacy and beauty of the colours and at the evocation of a spring and summer long ago.

  ‘There are others,’ Milo had told him casually, ‘but I’ve no idea where they’d be. These were probably the only ones worth framing.’

  His words had sent Matt into a frenzy of desire for the other paintings and he’d begun a systematic search of
the High House in between moving some furniture into the Summer House. His sense of belonging was very strong today: as if he were moving closer to the unlocking of the mystery that was at the core of his inner loneliness. He stepped back from the table and wandered out into the hall and on to the veranda, wondering how it would have looked all those years ago. The rhododendrons and azaleas would have been small shrubs in those days, planted so as to edge the small square of lawn that had once been a rough, grassy corner of the meadow. Here and there, growing in sheltered corners of the lawn, the delicate pinky-mauve lady’s-smocks were a reminder of that meadow.

  He crossed the grass and stood looking down into the brook: not much change here. The marsh marigolds would have been casting their richly gold reflection in the water then, and the stiff, brittle rushes would have been rustling in the little shivering breeze; and the long green tresses of weed that floated beneath the surface might have reminded her, as they did him, of Ophelia, clasping her ‘fantastic garlands’, drifting and drowning in the weeping brook. There was even the willow on the bank – several willows – growing aslant the brook. A low wall separated the lane from the brook and, by crouching on his heels and making a frame with his hands, he believed he could recognize a section of the wall and a stretch of the water from one of the paintings.

  ‘What was her name?’ he’d asked Milo, and he’d answered: ‘Helena.’

  And that in itself had been another shock. Standing now, with his hands in his pockets, Matt stared down into the fast-flowing brook: the connections were being made and he felt excited and scared in equal parts. This young woman, Helena, had had a son and a daughter; then her husband had been killed in a war. So she’d closed herself away in her Summer House, grieving and painting, but not, as far as he knew, succumbing slowly to drink as his own mother, Helen, had. No, Helena had worked out her grief in the paintings to such a successful extent that she’d left a strong impression of tranquillity in her little house. Yet that was not quite all. He had a very strong instinct that there was something more: something to be finished.