A Summer in the Country Read online

  “Well,” she shrugged, picking up her mug, her eyes angry, “that’s all it takes, it seems.”

  “But don’t you think that your mother will be happier in that situation? She’s not a countrywoman. You know that, don’t you? If she is offered an opportunity which is suited to her temperament, why shouldn’t she take it? You don’t need your mother to live next door to you in order to prove that she loves you. You’re not a child.”

  “It’s not that!” she cried crossly.

  “What is it then?”

  “It’s … it’s …” Brigid cast around for the truth. Even in her present state she instinctively understood that nothing less would do for Alexander yet she could not admit it “It’s just so humiliating,” she said evasively at last. “It’s hurtful to go off without any hint of it. She might have telephoned and talked it through. So, yes, that hurts. Especially as I’d believed we were much closer now. But the real thing is that it’s so embarrassing for a woman of her age to run off with a man who’s even older than she is, just like they were two star-crossed lovers. Oh, it’s just so …” she shook her head as if lost for words,“… so utterly shaming,” she brought out at last.

  “For her or for you?” he asked.

  She stared at him. “Well, for her, of course. What will her friends say? People like Margot and Barbara and Harry?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Her blue eyes were enormous, dark with shock. “What do you mean? She’ll be a laughing stock. It was bad enough before. But now… She’s seventy-three. Oh, dear God, it’s unbelievable. And Gregory seemed so nice.”

  “He is nice. That’s why she wants to stay with him. He’ll make her life fun and he’ll be grateful to her because he’s lonely. He’s the kind of man who needs company so why not Frummie’s? Why shouldn’t two lonely old people, who might otherwise be a charge on younger people who have their own lives to lead, get together and be happy?”

  Brigid was silent, remembering that last conversation with her mother: the tears in her eyes when she’d said, “Forgive me…”

  She relaxed, letting the tension flow out of her. “You’re right,” she said dully. “As you say, why not? Mummie won’t care what people say at this late date so why should I?”

  “I can’t think of any reason,” he told her. “Nothing could matter less. I promise you that he will take care of her. Try to be pleased for her. She doesn’t love you less because she needs bright lights and sunshine. You gave her sanctuary when she had nothing left. Perhaps you can forgive her for all her hurts now, just as I hope Humphrey will be able to forgive me. Do try, Brigid dear. It will mean so much to her but she’ll never be able to ask, you see. She’s hurt you too much and her guilt stands like a barrier between you.”

  “I love her,” said Brigid slowly. “I always have.”

  ’Then tell her so and wish her happiness. Do it and see what happens. Why not?”

  “Why not?” she agreed, looking at him, trying to smile. “OK I’ll try.”

  “Have you ever considered,” he began, after a short silence, “whether your worries about having Humphrey permanently at home might be rooted in your fear of being abandoned again? You’ve taken to yourself a sense of inadequacy which is absolutely baseless. Frummie left Foxhole all those years ago—and again now—because of her own weaknesses, not yours. Don’t let this continue to colour your life, Brigid dear. Humphrey adores you. This is clear from how he has always written of you in his letters to me. You are utterly necessary to his happiness and to his own confidence. He will never leave you. Are you certain that your anxiety for your future together isn’t cloaking this deeper terror?”

  “I don’t know.” She answered him almost fearfully. “It might be. I worry that living together after all these years apart could come as a shock. To both of us.”

  “I suspect that you are harbouring an almost subconscious fear of losing him. You tell yourself that he doesn’t know the real you—your need for solitude, for example—whilst deep down your fear is that, once he comes to know you, he will probably cease to love you. Perhaps you block this fear by asking yourself how you will cope with your lack of privacy, imagining the pinpricks of day-to-day living, whilst refusing to face your terror that it is Humphrey who will find it impossible to adapt.”

  A silence. “I’ve been so frightened,” she muttered at last.

  “I know. Out of all proportion. I could see it on your face that night when Frummie gave you his message. My dear girl, have you no idea how much he loves you? His letters have been full of you. Of his happiness with you and his boys. His pride in you. Your relationship is a tremendous success and your children are happy and well balanced. Accept your part in this achievement. You’ve been looking through a glass darkly at a distorted, unreal landscape, Brigid. It is time to let the sunshine into your heart.”

  Before she could answer him the telephone rang. Brigid got up slowly, almost stiffly, still recovering from shock, and lifted the receiver.

  “Brigid?” Jemima sounded dazed. “Have you had a letter from Frummie this morning?”

  “Hello, Puddle-duck,” said Brigid. “I have, indeed.” She glanced at Alexander who smiled understanding and gave a little punch into the air with his fist, as if encouraging her. “No, I didn’t have the least idea about it, either… Yes, I’m afraid you’re right. She’s left both of us this time… No, I’m sure she didn’t see it like that. She probably didn’t think it through at all. You know our dear mama. Act first, think afterwards … I know. It is a shock. I’m still speechless … Look, why don’t you come over? Would you like to …?”

  Alexander swallowed his coffee, touched her lightly on the shoulder and slipped quietly away.

  CHAPTER 45

  Louise was sitting in the conservatory in the winter sunshine waiting for Rory. The gate-legged table had been taken back into the sitting room once the room had been decorated but she’d found a folding picnic table in the small bedroom and she used this for her breakfast and lunch if it was a sunny day. Even with the sunshine, the conservatory was a cold place in late November and she’d carried die convector heater through to help warm it up. She’d cleared her breakfast things away and now she sat, huddled in her shawl, staring at the small leather photograph case which lay before her on the scarred table. Rory must have dropped it yesterday for she’d discovered it on the floor, half under the chair in the sitting room. She’d picked it up and opened it out, glanced at the two photographs and then closed the case again quickly. Placing it on the mantelshelf, she’d left it alone but had been quite unable to eject from her mind’s eye the images it evoked. It was as if it shouted aloud to her, wherever she was, whatever she was doing, until at last she’d picked it up and carried it with her into the conservatory.

  Rory was bringing her back to life. Just as he had always been the one to reignite their love after long periods of separation, encouraging her with gentle, persistent persuasion out from the cold house of loneliness where she resided in his absence, so now he was gradually drawing her back to warm, busy, terrifying life. He reminded her of the things she had suppressed: denied love, forgotten laughter—and she was grateful to him; unable to make the first moves herself, she needed his insistence, his refusal to give in or be discouraged. She was quick to follow, however, so that, although she rarely initiated any positive statements which related to their future together, yet she always tried to respond quickly to his: showing him by her implicit agreement that he was right, silently begging him not to give up.

  “You can get glued to the past,” Frummie had said—and she was right. The past continually pressed in with its damaging experience upon the present, a constant reminder of failures, hampering progress.

  She thought: But I love him. Oh! I do so love him.

  As if empowered by the thought she leaned forward, took up the photograph case and opened it gently. Hermione gazed out at her with that oh-so-familiar look on her small face: a readiness to be delightfully surprised;
an interested, absorbed curiosity. She sat astride a wooden, push-along toy with a pony’s head whose ears were the handlebars. A chubby hand grasped one of these, the other clasped a teddy to her chest Eggy Bear. She’d had a problem, at first, pronouncing the letter D—she’d called Rory “Gaggy” at first—and so the teddy bear had started out as Teggy and then simply become Eggy. This was before the arrival of Percy the Parrot, who had stolen her heart and become her most constant companion, although Eggy had always been somewhere close at hand. She’d been a loyal child, even at three years old. She was wearing dungarees, her sandalled feet planted firmly on the ground, her long, fair hair escaping, as usual, from its restraining slides.

  Louise stared back at her. Presently it was borne in upon her consciousness that the old, agonising hungriness had abated; that she was able to look at her child with a gentler emotion: a loving sadness. The pain and emptiness had eased into a more tolerable suffering; one she could live with, perhaps, whilst embracing life again. Other images flitted across her mind and now, although tears blurred the picture of Hermione, she could allow them to take their place, admitting them at last.

  After a while she studied the other photograph. A younger Louise looked back at her. She was laughing, twisting back her hair with one hand, the other round Rory’s waist. He was smiling down at her, that same absorbed in-tentness in his eyes which his daughter had inherited, his arm about her shoulders. The picture had been taken at a barbecue during one of Rory’s leaves and she’d just heard that she was pregnant. He’d been ludicrously happy.

  “Anyone would think it was the first baby in the history of the world,” she’d teased him.

  “As far as I’m concerned it is,” he’d answered jubilandy.

  Louise stood the case upon the table, so that she could see the photographs, and sat back in her chair quietly, almost contentedly: the house was redecorated, her job here was done. She brooded on what might be her next step forward. A moment or two later, she heard him knock at the front door.

  “Gosh, it’s cold,” he said as she let him in, “but everything looks so sparklingly bright in the sunshine. There’s quite a frost.”

  “I’ve been sitting in the conservatory,” she said, leading him through. “It’s not too bad, although I’ve had to switch the fire on. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Oh, yes, please,” he said. “That would be… great.”

  His voice trailed off on a lower note as he saw the photograph case and he glanced at her quickly—and then looked away again.

  “It was on the floor,” she said, “under the chair.”

  “It must have fallen out of my coat,” he said, still not looking at her. “That’s the problem with not wearing a proper jacket. You don’t have very safe pockets. I like to have it with me, you see.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can imagine that.”

  Constraint lay between them and he searched for some means to banish it. He leaned forward and picked up the leather folder but, instead of closing it and putting it away, he held it open, looking down at it.

  “Do you remember?” he asked with a terrible, heart-shaking tenderness. “Dear old Eggy. By the time she could pronounce it properly it was too late. He was always Eggy. I have him still, you know. At home.”

  Home. The word hung in the air; inviting, so full of promise.

  Louise swallowed. “Yes,” she said, following his lead, letting him see that she wanted him to release her from this cold restraining hand of the past into the warm present which he inhabited. She sought about for something more positive to say. “And wasn’t that photograph taken at the Sewards’barbecue?”

  “Yes, it was.” He held the frame at an angle so that she might share it. “That was some party if I remember it rightly but you were afraid to drink any alcohol in case it harmed the baby. We’d just heard, hadn’t we?” He laughed a little, leading her on again from that tiny shock of memory, always onward. “Do you remember Phil and Jeff? When the flats began to be used as an overspill from the Mess and they moved in next door? Their telephone number was Rhu 007.”

  “Oh, yes.” She was actually chuckling, remembering. “We called them Bald Eagle and Silver Fox. Hermione adored them.”

  She fell silent but he persevered, refusing to allow her to stop now.

  “Wasn’t it Phil who bought Percy for her? Brought him back from London, didn’t he?”

  “Jeannie sent him down for her.” She bit her lip, blinking back the tears, clinging to the path he was showing her, away from the shadows and back into the light. “It was just so typical of her kindness. Phil came in with Percy behind his back and asked for Hermione…” She spoke the beloved name bravely and then shook her head, unable to go on.

  “That’s right.” He took the story up, stretching out a hand to her, his eyes still on Hermione, as though she were giving him courage. ” ‘I’ve brought a friend to meet you,’ he said and then brought him out with a flourish…”

  “And she jumped up,” she was clinging to his hand as though it were a lifeline, “and shrieked, ‘Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly.’ Do you remember that television programme? She adored it.”

  She began to cry and he put the photograph case back on the table and took her into his arms, his own eyes bright with tears.

  “There could be other children,” he said, holding her tightly. “We could try …”

  After an electrifying moment she nodded, her face hidden against his breast, and he gave a great sobbing gasp of relief, knowing the risk he’d taken. His tears fell on to her hair as he searched desperately for the right words to carry them once and for all across the final hurdle. She spoke first.

  “I love you,” she said, her face still buried in his jersey. “I didn’t really stop. Truly, I didn’t.”

  “Neither did I,” he said. “Not for a moment. Oh, darling, it’s all over. No more recriminations. No more guilt.” He felt her nod and he wanted to weep again, this time with joy and relief and thanksgiving. “So that’s that.” He took a deep breath, consigning fear and pain to the past; facing the future. “Now! Where were we?” He felt her embrace tighten and he turned her face up to his, smiling down at her. The present was here and now; the next step vitally important— and they must take it together. He felt an absolute requirement for her to share with him the responsibility of this momentous step. It would set the pattern for their whole future. “What shall we do?” he asked tenderly.

  She stretched up to kiss him, her arms tightly round him. “Oh, Rory,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

  BRIGID GOT into the car, was welcomed almost hysterically by Blot, and sat for a moment, looking with a certain satisfaction at the purchases lying on the passenger seat: two second-hand biographies from the Dartmoor Bookshop, a bottle of claret and a most original present for her daughter-in-law’s birthday. It had been a very pleasant morning, browsing in the bookshop with Anne and Barbara and then going to see Meg in Moorland Interiors, hoping to find something for Emma whilst enjoying a chat with her old friend. She’d looked unsuccessfully amongst the gifts and home furnishings until Meg had shown her the small quilted totebags which she made. Brigid had been delighted with them: pretty and original, this was exactly the sort of thing which Emma loved. Reminding Meg to telephone when her charming Christmas decorations were ready, Brigid had returned to the car park with her parcels.

  She backed the car out and drove away through the town. It was bitterly cold despite the sunshine: hoar frost glittered on the branches of the trees and ice cracked in the ditches. After days of rain Brigid’s spirits rose at the sight of the beauty all about her.

  She smiled suddenly at a gloriously happy thought. In ten days’ time Humphrey would be home. “I’ve got that coral necklace,” he’d told her. “Just wait till you see it.” There was no underlying echo of fear now at the prospect of his homecoming. In naming her private terror, in exposing it to the light, Alexander had shattered the web of life-long doubt and given her a new, singing co
nfidence which was building deep inside her. Humphrey adored her; he was proud of her, he needed her. He’d sounded so cheerful lately, confident that they’d made the right decision, even positive about continuing to employ Jenny. Jenny was less confident.

  “I don’t want to leave,” she’d said to Brigid anxiously. “I don’t know where I could go, to tell you the truth, but I feel very nervous about working with Humphrey. He’s never really liked me.”

  Brigid had made great efforts to reassure her, to point out how invaluable she would be and to explain that Humphrey would need her to show him the ropes and explain the working of the business to him.

  “He needs you,” she’d told her firmly. “He really does. At least give it a try, for my sake“—and Jenny had agreed, at last, that she would try.

  Brigid passed across Holne Bridge, slowing the car so that she could look down at the tumbling, gleaming water, and drove on, turning left up towards Holne and out on to the moor. It was so clear that she could see for miles: granite-topped tors rising out of blue-shadowed valleys, the rugged steep-sided cleave clothed with the bare bones of the trees and the wild stretches of glowing, fiery bracken. Brigid felt the now-familiar sense of peace invading her heart. She’d been so preoccupied with sorting out the problem of the sailing school, encouraging Humphrey in his growing interest in it, assuaging Jenny’s fears, that she had not given a thought to whether she wanted all this for herself. Since she had created the problem, it seemed churlish to complain about the solution, but she now looked ahead with growing courage. The shock of learning that her mother had bolted with Gregory had been diluted by Alexander’s loving support; resentment purged at last by long, self-releasing talks with him, distraction provided by the excitement and physical hard work of getting Jemima settled into the studio in Kings-bridge. Her growing relationship with her sister was another cause for quiet, deep-down joy. With the shrivelling of her exposed fear, no longer nourished in the dark recesses of her mind, the throbbing poisonous jealousy had flowed gently away, enabling love to develop, and the two of them were discovering all the unique joys of sistership. This was easier, somehow, with Frummie at a distance. Brigid had even managed a cheerful, friendly telephone conversation with her mother, wishing her luck, inviting them both to stay, promising to stay in touch. Afterwards she’d been surprised at the overwhelming sensation of freedom; of calm confidence. The anxiety and feeling of inadequacy had been absent for the first time ever and she was merely conscious of a warm affection for her parent. She’d taken a deep breath of cautious grateful relief. The longing which she’d experienced all those months ago one evening on Combestone Tor might yet be fulfilled; that tantalising, ephemeral promise of true contentment seemed at last to be within her reach. Today, as Brigid looked down upon the shining surface of the reservoir, her happiness was diminished only by the loss of Alexander.