A Summer in the Country Page 24

  “I won’t do it again,” said Louise, picking up the spoons, feeling about ten years old. “Honestly, I won’t. Not so late in the evening. I sat down on one of the benches and I just didn’t realise how late it was getting.”

  “I still think we should have alerted the police.” Frummie wasn’t giving up easily. “It was our duty.”

  “I will if you want me to.” Louise put the spoons into the drawer. “It’s just that I can’t tell them anything positive. I don’t know the make or the colour of the car—or anything really.”

  “It’s too late now,” said Frummie, with a kind of self-righteous satisfaction. “The car will be long gone. And so will whoever it was who was in the woods with you.”

  Louise dried plates guiltily, racking her brains for some distraction. “The Prouts are supposed to move out this morning,” she said cunningly, hoping to deflect Frummie’s train of thought. “Alexander should be able to setde in. Brigid will be pleased, I expect.”

  Frummie’s brow cleared a litde. She was looking forward to having Alexander in a more accessible location, imagining little suppers together and jolly lunches at the pub.

  “I wonder if she needs any help,” she said thoughtfully. “Changeover day is always a busy one. Of course, Alexander might need some help too. Perhaps he’d like to come over for lunch. I doubt he’ll have time to bother about food.”

  “That’s true,” Louise agreed enthusiastically, relieved by this change of direction. “Have you remembered that Thea’s coming for coffee?”

  “I have,” Frummie swooshed water vigorously around the bowl, “but I doubt she’s coming to see me.”

  “No, well…” Louise felt a faint confusion. She felt that, as Frummie’s guest, she should be tactful regarding her own visitors. “The girls are with friends for the day and George is visiting his mother so she’s on her own for once.”

  “So you said. Well, I shall leave you to get ready for her while I go and see if Brigid needs help.” She (hied her hands, moving to look out of the window. “The Prats are already packing up by the look of it. I’m just going upstairs to change. See you later.”

  Presently, she went out, crossed the courtyard and entered the house with her usual call. Brigid was sitting at the table reading the Western Morning News.

  “Good morning, darling. No more murders, I hope? I still think we should have telephoned the police, you know.”

  Brigid, who had glanced up briefly from an engrossing article, did a double take. Frummie was wearing a very smart white shirt tucked into a pair of narrow-fitting tartan slacks. Her silvery-fair hair was newly washed and her make-up had evidently been applied without the assistance of the spectacles which she was too vain to wear. Brigid stared at this unexpected vision whilst her mother returned her surprised gaze coolly.

  “The Prats are packing their car“—“Prouts,” corrected Brigid automatically, still staring—“and I wondered if you might like a hand with the changeover.”

  “That’s very kind.” Brigid attempted to disguise her reaction, to pretend that there was nothing unusual in her mother’s suggestion or attire, and then decided to use the Alexander-technique. “You’re looking very smart this morning.”

  “Oh.” Frummie drew down the corners of her mouth and shrugged dismissively. “These old things? Had them for years.”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen them before.”

  “Probably not. But you’re hardly intimately acquainted with the contents of my wardrobe, are you, darling?”

  “No.” Brigid was nonplussed. Clearly, honesty was not necessarily the best policy when applied to her mother. She tried a new tack. “How’s Louise this morning? Has she recovered from her shock?”

  “Yes, she has. But please don’t encourage her to wander round the moor in the evening. I’ve given up trying to persuade you to be sensible, though I hope you might just think about it more carefully now.”

  “I’d rather wander round the moor at night than round the streets of Plymouth. Or any city, for that matter. All these murders have been in the towns.”

  “Very likely, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Louise was badly scared last night. I don’t think she’s by any means strong enough yet to cope with a real fright. It’s foolish to risk it.”

  “Of course.” Brigid was contrite. “I have to say that I hadn’t considered that aspect of it. She is OK?”

  “She recovered very quickly,” Frummie admitted. “But she was certainly shaken by it. I don’t want to take any chances.”

  “I can quite see that. I didn’t mean to be … uncaring. I expect she’ll be more cautious now, anyway. Look, I’d better go and see the Prouts. She’s nervous about coming over here in case Blot attacks her.”

  They both looked at Blot, who lay fast asleep on his back in his basket. His front paws were drawn up on his chest as if he were begging, his ears flopping like bedraggled plaits across his blanket.

  “Yes,” murmured Frummie. “A truly fearsome spectacle. I can see why she’s terrified of him.”

  “He’s been in the river,” Brigid explained. “It was glorious early this morning. Quite autumnal.”

  There was a silence.

  “You’ll be careful too, won’t you?” Frummie looked unnaturally strained. “About where you go, I mean?”

  “Of course I will.” Brigid was touched by her obvious anxiety. “I promise.” She tried for a lighter note. “At least we’ve got a man about the place now. I’ll go and get the Prouts on their way and then he can move in. Why don’t you sit and read the paper? I’ll give a shout when I’m ready to start”

  THEA ARRIVED alone, waved to the Prouts—who stared at her suspiciously—and joined Louise at the little table in the garden.

  “Are they going or coming?” she asked, sitting down. “They look rather fraught.”

  “Going,” answered Louise, pouring Thea a glass of elderberry cordial. “To everyone’s relief. They weren’t Brigid’s most successful visitors.”

  “Poor Brigid.” Thea took a cotton hat from her capacious carpet bag and set it on her red-gold head. “She’s worked so hard all these years, you know, and she tends to take it rather personally if people aren’t happy. I wish I knew if having Humphrey at home will be good for her.”

  “Good for her?” Louise shifted a little, folding her cotton skirt above her knees, stretching bare legs to the sunshine. “How d’you mean?”

  “He’s been away so much. And she has a need for solitude, doesn’t she?”

  “I don’t know her nearly as well as you do,” Louise reminded her. “But she certainly doesn’t have a problem with being alone.”

  “Quite. Now I don’t mind my own company—after all, I became inured to it as a child in the wilds of Shropshire— but, given a choice, I like to have all my people round me. Dear old George and the girls, and his mother, and any friends and relations who might drop by. I love him being retired and being able to potter about and do things together.”

  “You don’t think Brigid would enjoy that sort of thing? She and Humphrey always seem very happy together.”

  “Oh, they are.” Thea sipped her cold drink, considering the matter. “I just wonder if she wouldn’t find total togetherness just a touch claustrophobic. Perhaps it might be better if Humphrey had to work part time for a while until they adjust to it.”

  “I think the cottages are their pension plan. Or some of it.” Louise bundled her hair off her neck and sat with her hands clasped behind her head, face tilted back, eyes closed. “Goodness, it’s hot.”

  “Mmm.” Thea was still brooding on Brigid and Humphrey. “We’ve been very lucky. George inherited the Station House from his mother so that he’s never had to think about buying a property and, being a bachelor all those years, he’s saved and invested. George is very careful with money. Brigid inherited this from her fether so it’s a rather similar situation, except that with all the conversion work they had to raise a mortgage, so I suppose it’s possible that Hu
mphrey might have to carry on working for a while when he comes out of the Navy. Especially now that Frummie’s occupying one of the cottages.”

  “Will Humphrey want to retire? He can’t be much more than fifty. It seems terribly young.”

  “As a commander, assuming that he isn’t going to be promoted, he has to retire by fifty-three. George made captain and had to retire last year at fifty-five. Even with all his savings he might have to look for a job to help with the girls’ education. Poor old George! That’s the disadvantage of marrying and starting a family in your forties. At least Humphrey doesn’t have that problem.”

  “It seems odd—you with such young children and Brigid having a grandchild. Yet your husbands being contemporaries.”

  Thea laughed. “His friends thought he’d gone quite, quite mad when he married me. After all, I’m twenty years younger than George. They’re all very nice to me, although Humphrey thinks I’m rather peculiar.”

  Remembering his remarks at the dinner party a few weeks before—“One of the nicer sorts of nutter”—Louise hesitated. Thea grinned at her evident discomfiture.

  “It’s not a problem. I’m very fond of Humphrey but he finds it difficult adjusting to the age gap. I’m not much older than his oldest boy. Julian was at Mount House when it was a boys’ preparatory school and now it’s co-educational and my two girls are there, although they don’t board. It’s those sorts of things. He sees me and my children as a different generation yet George is his contemporary.”

  “Doesn’t Hermione go to Mount House too?”

  “Yes, she’s at The Ark. The pre-prep. She absolutely loves it. Well, they all do. It’s a terrific school and they’ll be heartbroken when they have to move on.”

  “What age is the pre-prep?” An idea was forming in Louise’s mind.

  “Three or four, I think they start. And then they can move over when they’re eight. Why?”

  “I was wondering. I think I told you I taught small children before I got married, didn’t I? Well, I shall need to get a job as soon as I can and it suddenly occurred to me that The Ark sounds rather nice.”

  Thea shifted her chair into the shade. “Do you feel ready to start again?”

  A little pause. The doves wheeled overhead, shiningly, startlingly white against the heavenly blue, diving and turning in their aerial dance: the Prouts stood together, surveying the neady packed contents of the car’s boot-space with satisfaction.

  Louise took a deep breath. “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. But I’d like to be doing something and I’d like to be doing it with children. Thank God that the absolute terror of being near a small child has passed. But I do get the occasional panic attack.”

  “I think you should talk to Charles Price,” said Thea thoughtfully. “He’s the headmaster. I’m sure he’ll help if he can. Two of the staff are naval wives, I know that.”

  “I’d have to tell him the truth.”

  “Yes, of course. But you needn’t feel nervous about it. He’s such a nice person I’m sure he’d be terribly understanding.”

  “It would be a start,” said Louise, “just to talk to someone to find out where I stand. I’m probably no longer eligible to work with small children. Rules are very strict these days.”

  “I’ll speak to Charles Price,” promised Thea, “and when term starts again you can come with me to meet Hermione and have a look around.”

  “Thanks,” said Louise gratefully. “If you feel it’s a sensible idea, I’d be really pleased to make some kind of move. In more ways than one. I have to think of somewhere to live too. Frummie’s got a friend coming for October so Fve got a cut-off point. Quite a challenge.”

  “Yes,” said Thea, not convinced for a moment by Louise’s cheerful, determined tone. “Yes, it is. But you don’t have to face it alone. We all want to share it with you.”

  ’That’s … very kind.” Louise fought down a weak desire to burst into tears. “Gosh, it’s getting hot. Oh look” the Prouts are off. Doesn’t Brigid look relieved?”

  Brigid was standing on the track, beaming wildly, her hand raised in farewell. On a sudden impulse, Louise and Thea waved too; standing up to cheer the travellers on their way, shouting “Goodbye, goodbye,” so that Brigid glanced round and laughed, shaking both fists in the air in a gesture of delighted thanksgiving. Frummie joined her and they went into the cottage together.

  “I’ll make some more cordial,” Louise said, getting up. “All the ice has melted.”

  Thea pulled her hat forward a little, relaxing in her chair, watching the doves. A movement on the extreme edge of her vision alerted her. Away to her right, across the field which sloped down to the river, someone was moving along the hedgeline which bordered the road. This was Foxhole property and Thea wondered if whoever it was might have wandered from the footpath and was lost. She sat up a litde, staring intently, but the person was standing quite still now, gazing towards her. Louise came out, carrying the tray, and when Thea looked again the figure had disappeared.

  CHAPTER 28

  It was much later, in her workroom, that Brigid found the unfinished letter to Humphrey. She picked up the sheets, staring at the words she’d written three days ago, before Alexander had come wandering into the courtyard; into their lives. Even now, he was moving into the cottage—with Frummie’s assistance. Still holding the sheets of writing paper, Brigid let her gaze roam round the room, resting almost unspeingly on the familiar objects which created the atmosphere and formed the shape of this small cell at the heart of her stony sanctuary. Alexander’s arrival, his extraordinary personality, had dominated her thoughts, occupying her mind to die exclusion of everything else. He was such a shock. Prepared to dislike him, with a lifelong partisanship on Humphrey’s behalf, she’d been taken by surprise and he’d disarmed her almost immediately.

  Brigid frowned a little, moving towards the window, her fingers trailing lightly across the material stretched out upon her work table, the letter still held in her other hand. No, “disarmed” was not the true word here: “disarmed” implied an intention on Alexander’s part and she was convinced that there had been no such intention. He was too direct, too open. Dealing only in facts, he appeared to be indifferent to praise and blame alike which gave him a tremendous inner strength. This was his attraction, the lodestone which drew her towards him. His was no febrile charm but a real power consisting of serenity and courage borne of that inner strength; a power of which he seemed unaware.

  She leaned upon the sill, staring out of the window towards the unevenly piled granite of Combestone Tor. The sun, now at its height, flooded the landscape with a brilliance which flattened and drained it of its mystery; the heat pressed down, suffocating, enervating. Even the waters of the West Dart were subdued to a distant muffled murmur. Brigid withdrew into the coolness of the room. Her former ideas, received learning accepted unthinkingly from Humphrey’s point of view, were now to be questioned. His mother had not been quite the saintly, hard-done-by, gende creature she’d imagined. She had been manipulative, controlling Humphrey by working on his childish affection and warm-heartedness, exploiting his loyalty. Other remarks, made over the years, held different meanings now. “Poor Mother felt things so keenly. She was such a sensitive soul that it wrung my heart to see her when she was hurt.” She suffered in silence—but it was a very loud, imposing silence. “She did so much for me; she made so many sacrifices.” A happy, willing martyr. “I felt I had to make up for Father’s thoughtlessness.” Humphrey gradually accepted her assessment of me. “Of course, she was never really out of pain, it was terrible sometimes to see her.” Humphrey was afraid of sickness, afraid that she might die. “Father always got her back up when he was home. I was quite relieved when he had to go away again.” Her resentment infected him.

  He was twenty-three when they’d married. One of the bonds between them had been the experience of a difficult parent: it had become a joke between them. They’d grown up together, each strengthening the other. Had she bee
n the mentor Humphrey had hoped he might find in his father once his mother had died? The Navy and marriage had between them forced Humphrey into adulthood; what might he have been like if his mother had lived? Freed from her influence he’d developed into the cheerful, determined man she knew and loved. He was not, by nature, weak or gullible. Perhaps Alexander had been right in his decision to make certain Humphrey stood on his own two feet, however brutal the method.

  Still slightly shocked by her capitulation, her readiness to change sides, Brigid looked again at the letter in her hand. “The real problem is that it’s to do with Jenny and I know we never see eye to eye about her. Not that that’s any excuse for not telling you the truth…”

  At the reality of the words, fear scraped in her throat and her gut clenched in a spasm of terror. It seemed impossible that she could have forgotten this problem which destroyed her peace and threatened her future. She simply had to concentrate on it; deal with it before the Bank lost patience and seized the cottage. Somehow she must find the words and phrases to complete the letter, explaining exactly what had happened and trusting that Humphrey would understand. Ignoring the worm of fear crawling in her gut, Brigid sat down at the corner of her work table, clearing a space, picking up the pen and blank sheets of writing paper which she’d flung down soon after Alexander’s arrival. She sat for a moment, idly imagining a scenario in which she might tell him her problem; ask his advice. The thought of sharing it was so tempting that she had to prevent herself from hurrying downstairs to find him. She shrugged hopelessly. Even if she didn’t consider it disloyal to tell him before Humphrey knew the truth, the idea was still nonpracticable. He would be busy, unpacking his few belongings, settling in; and then again Frummie would be with him, helping.