A Summer in the Country Read online

  Brigid came running lightly down the stairs and through the two rooms towards her.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting. I got a bit muddy out with the boys and felt I simply must shower and change. Come into the kitchen…”

  Louise followed her, surrendering up the bottle, still half dazed, even frightened, by the flash of memory but Brigid was keeping up a light continuum of talk which required no serious response.

  “Mummie’s coming to supper,” she said, dealing competently with the bottle and standing it beside an already opened claret “Sorry about that but it can’t be helped. Jemima’s stood her up.”

  Louise murmured politely, took her glass and tried to concentrate but, before an answer was really necessary, there was a sharp rap on the door and Frummie came in.

  “Louise, my dear.” She kissed the younger woman lightly on the cheek. “How are you? So nice to see you again. Did Brigid tell you? I’ve been chucked. I do hope that I shan’t be de trop. You mustn’t mind me. I enjoy a good gossip.” She glanced around the kitchen. “You know, this wasn’t a kitchen in my day. It was Diarmid’s study. It was the only room in which he could incarcerate himself without interruption. I can’t imagine why you have it as a kitchen, Brigid. It would make a very pleasant sitting room. Of course, a drawing room would be ostentatious in a place like this but to use the only private room as a kitchen is such a waste.”

  “I’ve told you a hundred times why,” answered Brigid, placing a dish of salad on the table. “I’m a kitchen-dweller, it’s where I spend most of my time, and I like this room best. Have a drink, Mummie, and stop prowling. You know it makes me nervous.” She took a dish from the Aga. “It’s chops in a prune sauce so I hope you like it. There’s a salad and new potatoes.”

  “Egyptian, I expect,” said Frummie immediately. “Much too early for English ones.”

  “They’re Cornish, actually.”

  Brigid answered sharply but, as she took her place at the table, Louise saw that it was Frummie, rather than Brigid, who wore a tiny, triumphant smile, as if she had been the victor in some age-old contest.

  “It all looks delicious,” Louise said warmly. “I always look forward to my first supper here. Everything afterwards is an anticlimax.”

  “Brigid’s a wonderful cook,” agreed Frummie. “Such a homemaker, aren’t you, darling? Not like me or Jemima.”

  “I had to be,” said Brigid briefly, serving chops. “My father wasn’t what you might call terribly domesticated.”

  “He certainly wasn’t.” Frummie shuddered slightly. “I couldn’t believe that he lived here alone with no help whatever. Of course, it all seemed simply too romantic to begin with but I’m afraid the charm wore off rather quickly. You know, there wasn’t even electricity in those days. Oh, the smell of those oil lamps. Although I must say their light was very flattering.” She helped herself to potatoes. “I’m afraid I did rather escape back to London as often as possible. Fortunately, Brigid took after her father and loved the countryside.”

  “Yes, it was fortunate, wasn’t it?”

  Brigid’s voice was cool, reasonable, but Louise felt the crackle of tension between them and began to talk of other things: the collecting of die hired car, shopping, her plans for her holiday.

  “We’ll pick the car up in the morning,” Brigid suggested, “and then you can stock up. I’ve got to go into Ashburton.”

  “You must go over to Salcombe and see Jemima’s new flat,” said Frummie brightly. “Mustn’t she, Brigid? Jem’s father died last Christmas, Louise, and left Jem a tiny legacy. She’s renting the flat over the RNLI’s museum. Right on the waterfront. It’s absolute heaven.”

  “It would have been more sensible to use it as a deposit on her own place.” Brigid refilled the glasses and pushed the salad bowl towards Louise. “It’s silly to waste it on rent when she could be buying.”

  “Such a sensible girl,” murmured Frummie sweedy. “Darling Jem doesn’t have your practical streak. She couldn’t afford anything like that gorgeous flat. You simply must see it, Louise. There were hundreds of people after it. She was so lucky to get it, wasn’t she, Brigid?”

  ’Terribly lucky.” Brigid sounded faintly bitter, although she tried to smile. “But then Jemima always falls on her feet.”

  “That’s what comes of having big, flat, yellow, webbed ones, perhaps?”

  Louise, puzzled, looking up in surprise, caught Frummie’s malicious glance and Brigid’s painful flush. Once more she found herself hurrying into speech, diverting the conversation away to more general subjects, accepting another chop. Spooning some of the delicious sauce on to her plate, she wished that Frummie was somewhere else, having dinner as planned with Jemima. Her first evening at Foxhole was being spoiled. It was an important time, those first hours of holiday: winding down, settling in, getting back into the feel of the leisured pace and peaceful atmosphere. It was not the first time she’d experienced the antagonism between Brigid and Frummie, but tonight there seemed a different quality—a cruelty on Frummie’s side and depth of anguish on Brigid’s that she had never noticed before.

  She thought: You’re imagining things. You’ve been peculiar all day, ever since you waved to that woman…

  “You don’t have children, Louise, do you?” Frummie was watching Brigid collecting the empty plates together. “Of course, you’re still young…”

  “No, no children. Martin doesn’t want children.” She stood up abruptly, helping Brigid, putting out plates for the lemon pie and talking a bowl of thick, yellow clotted cream. “This looks good. Poor Humphrey! How he must hate going away.”

  “Oh, I send him off with food parcels and he spends alot of the time with Michael and Sarah now he’s at the Ministry of Defence. It’s nice to think of them all getting together. I think that he’s very touched that they should want him around.”

  “Oh, most people would want Humphrey around,” said Frummie. “He’s such a dear.”

  There seemed to be the faintest of insinuations that Brigid was one of the few who didn’t and Louise, once again, felt a need to defend her.

  “Are Michael and Sarah married now?” she asked quickly. “I know they were talking about it.”

  “Oh, the young don’t get married any more,” said Frummie, without giving Brigid time to answer. “It’s the mortgage that’s the commitment these days, though I can’t say that I blame them. We all got married far too young in my day. It was expected of us and we all rushed headlong into quite unsuitable marriages. I envy the modern young their freedom ”

  “I can’t imagine why.” Brigid helped herself to cream. “You didn’t exactly let marriage tie you down.”

  “But at least I married them, darling. All four of them. I’m rather ashamed of that now.”

  “Ashamed?” Brigid paused, fork upraised.

  “Oh, yes. So dreary and respectable and middle class. But I simply couldn’t quite bring myself to live in sin with them. Well, not for too long, anyway. Now Jemima is much more sensible. She doesn’t tie herself down—at least, not yet Why did you get married, Louise? Not to have children, obviously …”

  “Mummie, please,” cried Brigid, exasperated and embarrassed in equal measure. “It’s none of your business.

  Let’s finish this wine, shall we? More pudding, Louise?”

  “It doesn’t matter at all.” Louise smiled at her, letting her see that she wasn’t in any way upset. “Honestly. Anyway,” she grinned at Frummie, “I expect it was because I’m dreary, respectable and middle class.”

  “You and me both.” Brigid raised her glass gratefully to her, shrugging helplessly. “Sorry.”

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” grumbled Frummie, hunching in her chair like a sulky child, “it was a perfectly innocent question. Surely there’s no need to be so touchy about it I’ll have some more pudding, Brigid. It’s very good.”

  Recognising die twig of an olive branch when she saw one, Brigid took her mothers plate and cut a generous slice of lemon pie
, passed the cream, and stood up to make some coffee. Louise relaxed a little and, hoping to lead the conversation on to safer ground, decided to introduce the topic of Brigid’s elder son. Although she feared that this might lead on to a too maternal depth of discussion for her own peace of mind, she hoped that Frummie’s presence would keep this in check—and it would please Brigid.

  “How’s Julian?” she asked. “Are they all setding happily in Geneva?”

  Frummie, tucking into her second helping and undeceived by these tactics, snorted to herself and poured the last of the wine into her glass. She felt suddenly assailed by an overwhelming weariness, pushed aside her empty plate and began to nod pleasantly over her glass whilst die conversation drifted quietly in the background. Presendy Brigid glanced at her mother, who was now frankly asleep, and grimaced apologetically at Louise.

  “I’ve got some photographs of the baby,” she said quietly, unaware of Louise’s instinctive shrinking. “He’s gorgeous. Shall I be a proud grandmother and show you while we have our coffee?”

  WATCHING HER mother wavering uncertainly across the courtyard, waving in response to Louise’s soft “Goodnight and thanks, it was great,” Brigid went back inside and closed the door thankfully. Immediately an enormous relief, mushrooming inside her, caused her to lean for a moment against the heavy, ancient door. A stony sanctuary: that’s what Foxhole had been from her earliest memory; a stronghold. If she could not feel safe here then she might go quite mad. Yet surely she had little enough to fear? It was odd that it was only when she was alone that she could be utterly at peace. She suspected that it was due to a sense of inadequacy, born out of the shock of her mother’s departure, which informed her behaviour with other people, breeding ail anxiety lest she should in some way fall short of their requirements so that they, too, might leave her. It was easier to be alone. She knew very well that it was this at which Frummie had been hinting earlier and it was true that a small part of her dreaded Humphrey’s retirement. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him— he and the boys were the most important people in her universe—yet she’d spent so much time alone that she couldn’t imagine how it would be when he was permanendy at home. The boys had been seven and five, and already away at prep school, when she’d inherited Foxhole, and she and Humphrey had agreed that it was time to stop moving between naval ports and settle down. For over twenty years she’d lived here alone, except for the boys’ holidays from school and Humphrey’s leaves, and during that time she’d made her own life. The conversion of the barns had taken a few years to complete because Brigid had done a great deal of the painting and decorating, tiling and curtain-making, herself. After that, there was the house to be renovated and out of all this industry had grown a small soft-furnishing business. It was very small, just enough work to keep her happily occupied without causing anxiety, but brought enormous satisfaction along with the tiny income. That, and letting out the cottages, had brought her a kind of contentment. It was, however, a contentment which could be fractured only too easily—which was why she needed her stony sanctuary. Brigid went back into the kitchen, through to the lean-to, and let Blot into the kitchen. Pausing to look through the window, she saw that Oscar was still peacefully asleep on the cobbles and decided to leave him there.

  “He’s quite happy outside,” Thea had assured her. ‘Try not to think of him as a dog, more as a Shetland pony or something like that. Of course, he’ll want a cuddle now and again.”

  Brigid, nevertheless, felt anxious that Oscar might be pining for his people and had given him lots of cuddles whether he’d seemed to want them or not. He’d borne her affection with great patience and enormous courtesy and had lain down again afterwards with a sigh of relief. She’d grown terribly fond of him but dealing with Blot’s jealousy had rather taken some of the pleasure out of Oscar’s visit.

  “You’re spoiled rotten, that’s the problem,” she murmured, as he padded before her into the kitchen, tail wagging. “But then, whose.fault is that?”

  She placed his bowl, with the leftovers from supper, beside the Aga and began to tidy up. She was happy now. The dishwasher was taking most of the load—“Young people nowadays don’t know they’re born,” Frummie had muttered waspisly—and she enjoyed restoring the kitchen to its normal state: squeezing behind the rectangular oak table so as to plump up the cushions on the settle which was built in against the wall, replacing the blue lustre jug full of yellow tulips in the centre of the table, putting the remains of the cream into the fridge. She kneeled for a moment on the window seat, opening the window which looked east, leaning to listen to the murmuring lullaby of the West Dart, looking up at the stars. The owl which lived in Combestone woods was flying up the valley, his thin quavering call echoing tremulously over stone and heather; far below him a vixen yelped once and was silent.

  Leaning on her folded arms, Brigid was lulled, enfolded, in the mystery of the scene: the deep rural silence, the vast empty tracts of moorland, the singing of the spheres. She breathed deeply, gratefully, and then turned back to the warm, bright kitchen, refreshed and at peace.

  STANDING AT her bedroom window, which looked across the O Brook to Combestone Tbr, Louise was also listening to the owl. For once, however, she was not soothed by the peacefulness of the countryside: she felt restless, confused. Ever since she’d watched the man in the train, noting his body language, listening to his conversation, she’d been uneasy, her suspicions about Martin coalescing into a tangible fear; and then the unexpected sight of the woman in the field with her child had jolted her mind from its habitual guardedness, leaving it open to assault from the past. The past was buried and done with: finished, over. Yet those whispers, those images, had already undermined her hard-won contentment It was these, she was sure, which had made her abnormally aware of the rifts and tensions between Brigid and Frummie. She’d sensed other emotions underlying Frummie’s barbs and Brigid’s anguish.

  The vixen, down in the valley, yelped. It was a wild, disturbing cry that set the blood tingling, and Louise turned abruptly from the window, seized her dressing gown and went quickly into the bathroom.

  FRUMMIE SHUT her front door behind her, checked the locks with an unsteady hand and headed for the drinks cupboard beside the fireplace in her living room. It was a big, delightful room which faced south and west but she still hadn’t forgiven Brigid for giving her the smaller of the two cottages.

  “We simply can’t afford to, Mummie,” Brigid had said, almost pleadingly. “We can’t lose the income from the bigger one. You must understand that. It’s cost an awful lot to get them converted and we can’t just give away the bigger one. We’re very happy for you to have this one, though. Please try to see our point of view.”

  “Oh, there’s no need to make it quite so clear that beggars can’t be choosers,” She’d answered bitterly. “Don’t worry.

  I’m entitled to benefit from the government and I shall be able to pay you rent.”

  She’d enjoyed Brigid’s flush of embarrassment; it had eased her own shame.

  I’m not bothered about rent,” Brigid had said. “You know I’m not It’s just… Oh, forget it. I’m not going to argue with you. If you can manage here then I’m glad we have it so as to help you out. You must suit yourself. Come over to the house when you’ve looked round and made up your mind.”

  Frummie opened the door of the cupboard and reached for the whisky, her lips twisting in a grimace of remembrance. There had been no luxury of choice for her. Her fourth husband, who was considerably younger than she was, had left her for a woman half her age and she’d had nowhere to go. The lease was up on their flat, she’d had no income of her own, and she’d been utterly unable to meet the stares and knowing glances of her friends. Humiliation waited; little quarter would be given to one who had, in the past, been so ready to discourse wittily and cruelly upon the downfall of others. Flight to the country had been her only hope; a desperate need for sanctuary. She’d known just how generous Brigid was being but her own
fierce pride must be supported, fed, upheld. Her acceptance had been ungracious but, after all, she’d lived in this damned hole—Foxhole was a good name for it—for eight long, mind-numbing years. She’d deserved something for her trouble. Of course, he’d left the lot to Brigid.

  Frummie poured the whisky with a shaking hand, put the decanter back into the cupboard, and made her uncertain way upstairs. She undressed slowly, pausing for sips from the glass, and climbed into bed. Sitting for a while, cradling the glass, a pleasant drowsiness stealing over her, she nodded against the piled pillows. She, too, heard the owl’s haunting call, the vixen’s scream, and, with a shudder of horror, she drained the last drop from the glass and huddled down beneath her blankets.

  CHAPTER 4

  “You’re going home today,” Brigid told Oscar, giving him his morning biscuit and then watching whilst he ate it, lest Blot should snatch the pieces that fell to the ground before Oscar should be ready for them. He scrunched thoughtfully, in a leisurely manner, as if pondering on her words, and Brigid stroked his large black head. “It’s not that I want to get rid of you,” she assured him. “Get off, Blot. Eat your own biscuits and leave him alone. I’d be only too pleased to have you if it weren’t for this neurotic fleabag. Go away, Blot. You’re a very calming influence, Oscar. No wonder Thea is always so serene. You’re a bit like Humphrey, actually. Large and solid and dependable. Finished? Sure? Good. I’m going to have some coffee, then ”

  She left Oscar sitting outside the lean-to door, gazing down with a kind of regal astonishment at Blot who was hoovering busily round his large paws for any spare crumbs, and went back to the kitchen. The room was full of sunshine and she made coffee with an unusually heartfelt sense of gratitude. She’d discovered very early on that a surprising amount of holidaymakers who rented the cottages seemed to hold her responsible for the weather.