Summer's Awakening Read Free Page B

ambitions—really more of a pipe-dream because she had little hope of ever being able to achieve it—was to retrace her father's footsteps, taking photographs of his work to illustrate a memoir of him.
    'James says it was because of Granpa's first wife being a well-known American that they gave him an obituary notice in the New York Times,' Emily went on. 'Otherwise American readers wouldn't have been interested in him, and he—James, I mean—mightn't have heard he was dead for ages. You see, he doesn't use his title in America. The old lady—Granpa's first wife—is the only person who knows he has anything to do with us.'
    'I see. Why is she well-known?'
    'I asked him that, and he grinned and said because she'd had almost as many husbands as Elizabeth Taylor. Granpa was the first one, but they didn't have any babies and they didn't get on, so after four years she ran away with a Frenchman. I wonder if Mummy and Daddy knew about her. I never heard them talking about her.'
    'They must have known, I should imagine. I'd better go down to the library—Conway told me when I arrived that your uncle wanted to see me there. I don't suppose I'll be long.'
    'Oh, is James up already? I thought he'd still be in bed, or I should have got up and had breakfast with him. He told me that flying through several time zones would upset his body clock; and that when he did go to bed he'd probably sleep through till lunchtime. He wasn't at all tired last night.'
    'Conway said he was up early, and it's certainly high time that you were up and about, my little slug-abed,' Summer told her, with a smile. 'Come on: out you hop, or you won't be washed and dressed in time to see the programme about Vienna.'
    Since becoming Emily's tutor, she had often made use of the BBC's television programmes for schools and also the more advanced programmes for Open University students.
    Lord and Lady Edgedale had seemed untroubled by the fact that her tuition of their daughter inevitably was biased in favour of Summer's own preferred subjects, and lacked the balance and scope of a normal education.
    Emily had never gone to school because her asthma was caused by a condition called airways irritability, and was thought to be exacerbated by frequent exposure to colds and similar infections. Summer had sometimes wondered if that diagnosis could be wrong and the asthma was actually psychosomatic; triggered by activities and people Emily disliked, such as riding and two of her governesses.
    'Miss Banks was a fresh air fanatic. She was always dragging me out for long boring country walks,' she had once confided, telling Summer about her predecessor.
    Summer had been sympathetic—her parents had liked sunny climates. Before coming to England to live with her mother's unmarried elder sister, her only experience of cold weather had been spending Christmas in Switzerland, in a warm and snug wooden chalet.
    The memory of her first winter in Miss Ewing's cold and draughty cottage could still make her shudder. No matter how low the temperature, her aunt had insisted she must always have her bedroom window open. The only heating in the bathroom had been from an inadequate oil stove. And every Saturday and Sunday afternoon, when she would have liked to curl up by the fire with a book, she had been forced to go out for a chilly trudge round the countryside. She had no intention of imposing a similar regime on Emily.
    They never walked in bad weather, and rarely and not far on fine days. They both preferred mental exercise to any form of physical exertion.
    'Perhaps we should skip lessons today and spend it with James,' said Emily, as she wriggled her way from the centre to the side of the double bed.
    Summer said, 'He may want you to spend the day with him. Perhaps that's why he wants to see me—to ask if you can have a holiday.'
    Emily flung back the bedclothes. The winter before her mother had bought her two frilly Victorian-style nightgowns, but she hadn't liked them,