Summer's End Read Free Page A

Felicia who was the most quietly organised of them all, as well as bidding fair to becoming the most startlingly beautiful with her dark hair and deep brown eyes. Amazingly, Isabel was already here, and Phoebe and George were sauntering up behind her with the lackadaisical privileges of youth at sixteen and fifteen respectively.
    â€˜Beastly shame,’ glowered George.
    â€˜What is?’ his elder sister enquired. George’s dislikes varied from day to day.
    â€˜Ever-so, ever-so Edith and What-a-good-fellow-am-I William coming to lunch, of course.’
    Caroline laughed at her brother’s apt characterisation of the Swinford-Brownes. Emboldened, George continued: ‘Not to mention Pasty Patricia and Rainbow Robert.’
    â€˜Rainbow?’
    â€˜Have you seen his spotted waistcoats? And his stocks. Striped ! I ask you.’ George spoke with the lordly disgust of the youngster for his elders. Not much elder, though. Robert must be twenty-six by now, Caroline guessed, without much interest, as she took her place for prayer.
    â€˜Hast delivered us from the power of our enemy …’ Tilly was intoning, as Caroline brought herself back with a start to ‘Boot parade’, so dubbed from time immemorial because of the row of undersides of servants’ boots in front of her. She was hungry, and breakfast, awaiting them in chafing dishes on the sideboard, smelled good. After prayers, George would bear in the traditional Easter eggs, painted with caricatures – his own work. Caroline began to feel happy again, for life in the Rectory tended to be regulated not by months, or even by seasons, but by the Church calendar, which chimed out the high points, like the hours on Mother’s beloved French Cupid clock: Advent, ding dong, ‘Lo He comes with clouds descending’, help wash and pick over the fruit for the Christmas puddings, Christmas Even, ding dong, decorate the church with greenery, holly, mistletoe, androsemary, Solemn Evensong; Christmas, ding dong, ‘Born this happy morning’, carols, candles, goose, presents, love and laughter; Epiphany, ding dong, ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’, blessing the orchards or apple howling (according to whether you used the old religion’s terms or the new, Father had explained); Candlemas, ‘Let there be light’, Septuagesima, sing the Benedicite ; Lent; Passiontide; Holy Week, and now Easter, which meant that the huge stove in the Rectory entrance hall would stop spreading its warm glow until Michaelmas.
    Soon summer and autumn would tumble over themselves with activity. Church Helpers’ Supper, the Sunday school treat, fêtes at Rectory and Manor, and Harvest Supper were but a few of them. The village had its own seasons; hoops, tops, marbles, Ladyday and Michaelmas, for instance, when the farm labourers got bonuses and bought their new boots for the year from old Sammy Farthing. In August the hop-pickers swarmed down from London, in autumn the stonebreakers arrived to break up the huge piles of flints for road-mending. The Rectory too had its immutable timetable: ‘Dibbles day’, for a massive spring-cleaning when carpets were pounded and cleaned with vinegar and water, monkey soap made for the coming year, clothes put away with moth-balls; lavender day, when the church altar cupboard drawers received their new season’s bunches to keep insects away from the purificators and napkins – Caroline’s favourite job as a child; and there were bottling days, wine-making days, chutney and preserving days, all sorts of days, each with its own special flavour.
    The more she fretted for new fields to conquer, the more important the measured clock of the Rectory year seemed. And she still could not understand why today it had to be changed.
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    Elizabeth Lilley closed the heavy front door behind her. The chill of waiting in the porch for the sake of avoiding any more questions