A Summer in the Country (3 page)

“Probably. Does it matter? Of course I don't want to be a nuisance. If you've got some spare eggs I can make myself an omelette.”

“Oh, don't be silly.” Brigid sounded cross, caught as usual between guilt and self-preservation. She enjoyed supper with Louise; there was an ease, a metaphorical kicking off of shoes which would be impossible with Frummie present, and she'd been looking forward to it enormously. She wanted to talk about her new grandson, Josh, and show the latest photographs, marvelling at his beauty and making up for the fact that because the little family lived in Geneva she was denied a closer contact. She knew that doing this under the cynical eye of her mother wouldn't be the same at all but there was nothing for it but to give in as graciously as she could. “There's plenty for three. It's just a bit casual of Jemima.”

“Nonsense. She's young, that's all. She has her own life to lead.”

Brigid thought: So do I but you don't worry too much about that.

“Well then.” Having achieved the object of her visit, Frummie prepared to leave. “I'll be over at about eight, shall I? So sweet of you, darling.”

She trailed out stopping to pat Blot, who wagged along behind her as far as the front door and then returned to sniff around the kitchen, pausing hopefully at the back door.

“Yes, he's out there,” said Brigid. “Having some peace and quiet. Oh, hell. Come on then. We might as well all go for a walk and get rid of our frustrations together.”

She put down her mug and opened the back door into a lean-to conservatory. A large Newfoundland, who had been lying asleep, roused up and struggled anxiously to his feet as Blot came hurtling out.

“Leave,” said Brigid, struggling into gumboots, taking down a coat. “I said,
'Leave. ‘
Come on, Oscar. He'll be less of a problem once we get going. Promise.”

She opened the outer door, waited for Oscar to manoeuvre his great bulk out into the sunshine, and strode away towards the river with the dogs close upon her heels.

Later, carrying the promised bottle, Louise crossed the yard. The long low house with its ancient thatch had a fairy-tale quality, and the white doves, murmuring cosily from their dovecot, enhanced this charming image. Outside the long lean-to, which ran the length of the kitchen, a large black dog lay stretched in deep sleep. This must be the visitor to whom Blot had taken exception. There was no sign of the spaniel, and Louise tapped on the silvered wood of the oaken door and went inside. In the small hall, she paused. The kitchen, on the right, was at the southeast end of the building and it was here that they would have supper. However, Louise couldn't resist a glance through the rooms which led one from the other in true longhouse fashion. These rooms looking east, to the moor, and west, into the courtyard, had slate floors and rough, granite, whitewashed walls; both had wood-buming stoves, back-to-back, sharing a chimney. The further room was the sitting room. Here a wooden staircase led to the upper floor and a door led to the children's quarters in the single-storey bam which formed one side of the courtyard. Nowadays, die big playroom with two bedrooms and a bathroom were kept for the two boys and their own young families, whilst the other half of the bam was used as a garage, but in the early days Brigid and Humphrey had been grateful for the extra space.

“Longhouses are very romantic-looking,” Brigid had said when Louise had first come to stay, “but there isn't much privacy. The bedrooms lead from one into another and it was a nightmare with two small children going to the loo several times a night”

As she looked at the evening sunshine slanting on white uneven walls, at thick, warm rugs, and at the tall jars holding dried flowers—burning blue cornflowers, sulphurous rudbeckia, scarlet poppies—Louise was seized with a spasm of covetousness. She knew all about the damp, the bone-chilling cold, the inconvenience, yet she was suddenly consumed with envy. Another image overlaid Brigid's living room: an image of a small stone cottage and the memory of the warmth of an arm lying along her shoulders, a quick flexible voice in her ear.
“No married quarters to be had. This will do, won't it? I've taken it for six months
…”

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?”

W
ATCHING 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.”