A String in the Harp Read Free

Jen’s bed. “What do you think?”
    “I haven’t seen much yet,” Jen replied cautiously.
    “I do. I like it,” said Becky a little too firmly.
    “Peter doesn’t much, does he?”
    “Right on the nose,” agreed Peter, joining them. “I’d tell you why, but I expect you want to go to bed tonight!”
    “It can’t be that bad, Peter, really, or Dad wouldn’t stay,” said Jen, putting sweaters in a drawer, and blessing Aunt Beth for insisting on packing them.
    Peter shrugged. “He’s made up his mind to stay. I don’tthink he even notices most of it, he’s too busy. He’s always working. But I notice and I don’t like it one bit.”
    “But you didn’t like it when we first got here,” objected Becky. “You never tried to change your mind. It’s different from home, but that’s because it isn’t home. It really isn’t so bad.”
    “I’m glad to hear it!” Jen smiled at her sister. “But is it always this cold?”
    “At least!” said Peter. “This house wasn’t meant to be lived in year round, you know. They usually rent it out in the summer to people on vacation. I expect that’s why we found it right away.”
    Jen sat down beside Becky. “Is this a summer resort?”
    “In a manner of speaking. There’s a beach out there and I think sometimes the sun comes out by mistake. But wait till you really see it to get excited. The town’s one street wide and about two miles long with the ocean on one side and the great Borth Bog on the other—miles of one and acres of the other. I’ve never seen a place like it.”
    “It really is a bog, then.”
    “Oh, yes. You can sink in it. Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea.”
    “Peter!” Becky sounded shocked, and Jen changed the subject quickly.
    “How’s Dad doing at the University.”
    “Who can tell? He usually spends his time there or shut in his study downstairs. I told you, he doesn’t seem to notice very much, and he doesn’t talk about work.”
    “Do you ask him?”
    Peter shrugged.
    ***
    Jen wasn’t the least bit sorry to go off to bed with Becky at half-past eight as David insisted. But once the light in their room was out, she lay awake in the dark listening to the wind tear around the house.
    “Jen?”
    “Mmm.”
    “I’m really glad you’re here,” Becky whispered. “It’ll be much nicer.”
    “I’m glad, too.” At least I hope I am, she added to herself. Everything seemed unexpectedly complicated. It had been ever since their mother had been killed last December, and their family had seemed to come apart. She wasn’t surprised to hear from Peter that David kept to himself; he’d done that for months before they’d come to Wales. Only in Amherst they’d still had Aunt Beth to fill in some of the gaps. It wasn’t the same as having their own mother—Aunt Beth did her best to cope, but she’d never had children of her own and suddenly she was landed with three half-grown ones whose unhappiness and confusion she couldn’t really fathom. But there was still school and there were friends and music lessons and Boy Scouts and all the usual activities to turn to.
    But here David was all they had, and Jen felt rather bleak as she remembered Peter’s words. She’d missed her family far more than she’d expected to once they’d gone. Her first semester at school hadn’t been particularly successful. Even Aunt Beth had seen that. Everyone made allowances in the beginning: Jen had so many adjustments to make. But it didn’t get better; it actually got worse, and she had finally admitted to herself she needed her father and Peter and Becky more than she needed home.
    By November Aunt Beth was running out of patience, and when Jen had come down with ’flu and then a particularly violent cold, which sank her into depression and made her nearly impossible to live with, Aunt Beth had thrown in the towel. She wrote to her brother suggesting that his eldest daughter might like to be invited to Wales for Christmas vacation.