Summer's End Read Free

gone to Paris to finishing school, paid for by Grandmother, Father’s dragon of a mother, the Dowager Countess of Buckford. After her return, Caroline had seen her with a new detachment, and adoration had tempered into affectionate tolerance. Somehow for all Isabel’s looks and charm she was still unwed at twenty-five, and Caroline suspected the fact terrified her. Isabel, of all of them, found the constant lack of money at the Rectory hardest to treat as a challenge, as Mother encouraged them to do.
    She decided she could no longer ignore the rapidly cooling water Myrtle had brought in twenty minutes ago, and reluctantly put foot to floor.
    The Rectory boasted two bathrooms, one for themselves and one for the servants, but seven of them, let alone any guests, all expecting to wash at the same time led to strike action by both ancient boiler and boiler guardian, Percy Dibble. Since Father’s timetable necessarily governed the Rectory, he had precedence, with Mother comingsecond, and, then, of course, came Isabel. Somehow no one ever challenged her right.
    â€˜Blackbird has spoken’. Caroline thrust up the sash in her everyday ritual. Below her lay the Rectory gardens and beyond several farms, and beyond them the Forest of Ashdown, that mysterious and enchanted ‘other place’, almost all that was left of the great prehistoric forest of Anderida which had once covered three counties and even now cast its spell of the past on those who stood still to receive it. ‘My sermon today is life,’ Caroline solemnly informed the world. ‘He that hath ears to hear let him hear.’ A blackbird in the larch tree apparently didn’t, because he promptly flew away with a loud cry of alarm, followed by annoyed clucks. This was her life, these green lawns, this village, this church, this house, and every day she reminded herself how much she loved it, in case, she supposed, something changed. As it might do. Perhaps there was still time to be an intrepid lady traveller, another Lady Hester Stanhope or Isabella Bird; maybe she’d travel the desert like Gertrude Bell and write a book as good as The Desert and the Sown.
    Now the water really was cold. Ugh! She hurried over her ablutions, impatient now for the day to get going as she struggled into corset and stockings. She had already put on her new straight-skirted costume when she remembered she was going for a walk with Reggie Hunney this afternoon. Some consolation for the coming disaster of luncheon. Still, she couldn’t wear her blue walking skirt for church and anyway she’d forgotten to ask Harriet to clean the bottom from last week’s mud splashes. She thought enviously of the frightful Patricia Swinford-Browne and her daring appearance in old-fashioned bloomers on her bicycle. A brief appearance, for Patricia’s mother had all but fainted. All the same, trousers, or at least divided skirts, were entirely sensible forms of dress. She regarded herself critically in the mirror, thankful that for once her wayward hair had condescended to be swept up reasonably neatly and to remain there shackled firmly with pins. Perhaps the day wouldn’t be so bad after all. She raced down the stairs to family prayers and breakfast. Dear Aunt Tilly, still not recovered from the nose and throat problems that had brought her here a few days to convalesce, would be deputising for Father and Mother who were still at early Easter Celebration. Tilly was next in seniority, but it was hardly fair on her, Caroline thought. There was something a little odd about this visit, for her aunt was very vagueabout how long she intended to stay. She could not, Caroline wondered, by any chance have quarrelled with Grandmother? No, surely not; she was far too quiet and unassuming to quarrel with anybody.
    Caroline was a little late in arriving at prayers and the Dibbles, Agnes, Harriet and Myrtle were already sitting in their row. So was eighteen-year-old