Death in Summer Read Free Page A

married now. She was not in the business of making trouble, she had assured, each word of that underlined twice. But neither that nor her belief that the house had been abandoned rang true. What did was what wasn’t written: that she had come to know there was money where once there hadn’t been. There was a taste of blackmail here, in Maidment’s view.
    In the kitchen Zenobia’s sponge cake cooled on a wire tray, and when Georgina was in the house again and Maidment was laying the dining-room table Thaddeus pushed the lawnmower over the cobbles of the yard, its engine still running, the grass of the two lawns now cropped close. He turned the ignition off and, watched by Rosie, her shaggy head interestedly on one side, he hosed away the debris of clippings from the blades. Letitia was taking longer than she’d said and he imagined her asking questions at whatever farm it was she had gone to, and listening to the answers in her careful way.
    The clock in the hall was striking six when the two policemen came.

2
    There is Georgina to consider now: Letitia’s mother says that first, and Thaddeus wonders if somewhere beneath that comment there is Mrs Iveson’s wish to bring up her grandchild herself. There is no reason why the thought should not be there, why Mrs Iveson should not have envisaged Georgina in the flat near Regent’s Park, why grandmother and grandchild should not belong together, both being alone in the world. The assumption that he will not come up to scratch as a father on his own seems to Thaddeus to be a natural projection of Mrs Iveson’s more general opinion of him.
    But on the telephone one morning, just over a week after the funeral, nothing of that outrageous kind is mentioned. Instead, Mrs Iveson speaks of the employment of a nanny. ‘I’ll help you choose one,’ she offers, ‘if you would like me to.’
    Taken aback, for he had not considered such a necessity, Thaddeus hesitates before replying. ‘You feel I should take on a nanny?’ he responds eventually.
    ‘I rather think, you know, Letitia would want us to. If you advertise,’ Mrs Iveson quietly continues, seeming to Thaddeus to have taken charge of the matter, ‘I’d come and look the possibles over.’
    ‘It’s kind of you.’
    ‘You’ll phone me when you’ve had a few replies?’ AndMrs Iveson suggests where the advertisement should be placed and the form some of its wording should take. It is a woman’s thing, Thaddeus tells himself, and therefore understandable that his mother-in-law should slip into this role: she is not by nature a domineering person.
    ‘Yes, I’ll be in touch,’ he agrees. ‘I’m very grateful.’
    So, for the moment, the matter is left. ‘A girl is to be taken on,’ Maidment reports in the kitchen. ‘Mrs Iveson to have a hand in the appointment. Which stands to reason.’
    It is Zenobia who later draws attention to the little room next to the nursery, which long ago nannies must have occupied. She puts it to Thaddeus that she should run up new curtains for it, and a matching bedspread while she’s at it. The windowsill and skirting-board could do with a coat of paint, and Maidment does that work on the afternoon of the Derby, a transistor radio turned low beside him.
    While the advertisement is placed and replies to it awaited, the hiatus that affects the household continues. Kept private, disguised as best he can, melancholy is Thaddeus’s natural state. The cruel ending of a life aggravates this shrouded disposition, while permitting its exposure now. In the bleak aftermath of what so suddenly and so terribly occurred, as often he has on less awful occasions, Thaddeus seeks consolation in his possession of the house that long ago became his, in its rooms and garden and protective walls. The place is everything to him, is presently a comfort because its household order has so often survived the fractures of arrival and departure, of domestic drama and the finality of death. At a time when