The Summer Before the War Page 4

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  Beatrice awoke to sunlight appearing to dance on blue wallpaper and the sound of birds squabbling for their breakfast in unseen trees. Her window was open, and the breeze brought the scent of a hot morning into the slight coolness of the room. For a moment she could not place where she was, and with a brief skip of her heart wondered if she were not still in Italy, in the village above Florence, and her father already at the pensione breakfast table on the terrace below, reading two-day-old newspapers and calling for more hot milk. She squeezed down into the pillow and tried to remain in the semiwaking moment that felt so happy.

  When she finally opened her eyes, the unfamiliar room swam into focus along with a slow awareness that she had made good her escape from her aunt’s family. She was in Sussex, and her room smelled of the garden outside and, faintly, of the sea. At least the grief, which weighted her limbs to her bed most mornings, could not win today against the anticipation of a new beginning. For the first time in months, she almost sprang from her bed to greet the summer day.

  Scrubbed and tidy, in a gray cotton dress with a tucked bodice and a wide belt fastened with bone buttons, Beatrice left her traveling bag closed and ready by the bedroom door and descended in search of breakfast. The polished hall was quiet and empty, as were the drawing room and a dining room across the way. Some faint sounds came from behind the stairs, but Beatrice hesitated to penetrate further into the house before being invited. The drawing room’s French windows stood open to the breeze, and so, anxious not to be seen hovering, she slipped out onto the terrace beyond.

  The stone terrace already looked older than the house, softened to a pleasant mossy gray under the relentless dripping of English rain, its stone balusters pressed by fat shrubs and draped in twisting vines of honeysuckle, wisteria, and the teacup-sized pale green flowers of a clematis. White roses climbed up the house from beds filled with brilliant blue agapanthus. Beatrice stooped to cup in her hands a waxy blue flower head as large as a hat and to wonder if plants ever sensed how far they were from home: this African lily carried on ships to England in the time of Henry VIII, rhododendrons dug from the rippled flanks of Chinese mountains, the passionflower twining about itself in air so much drier than the South American rain forest. Beyond the terrace, a croquet lawn fell away on its farthest edge to a lower terrace of rolling grass, hedged above the steep escarpment of the ridge. Below, the stacked red roofs of Rye poked up from its flat skirt of marshes, and beyond, the sea formed a broad, glittering swath under the wide blue bowl of the sky. On the left, the terrace ended in a thick wall of pine trees that separated the house from its nearest neighbor, but to the right it extended further, beckoning Beatrice along the flank of flower and kitchen gardens to a door in a hedge and old woodland beyond.

  Agatha Kent was dozing on the folds of a white cotton robe, on an intensely blue bench, perched on a smooth green lawn—entirely naked. If Beatrice had processed her pinkness as flesh a moment earlier, if she had only registered the rolling expanse of skin instead of the blue paint of the bench, she might have withdrawn before Mrs. Kent’s eyes snapped open. Instead she froze. She was aware of Mrs. Kent, a plump woman, flailing like a landed fish as she tried to collect her limbs, and then the edges of her robe, and attempt an awkward draping of her ample form. Beatrice felt her face flush hot as she cast her eyes around for some other place to focus. The lawn turned blurry under her stare.

  “I am so sorry,” she managed. “So very sorry.” The vast pink landscape still danced before her eyes.

  “You weren’t to know…” said Agatha, puffing out her cheeks as she sought to breathe and tie ribbons at the same time. “Everyone knows not to disturb me.”

  “So sorry,” repeated Beatrice, wondering if she should pick up her bag and head for the station now. “I didn’t mean to spy.”

  “I always meant to put a lock on that gate,” said Agatha. “Only it looks so funny in a garden and—”

  “I’m always up too early,” said Beatrice. “I don’t sleep very deeply.”

  “I was bathing in the sun,” said Agatha, her breath slowing and her voice assuming a more authoritative air. “It is prescribed as a vital part of my exercise program.”

  “Of course.”

  “You should try it yourself,” said Agatha. “No girl your age should look quite as drawn about the face.”

  “I’m not a girl,” said Beatrice. “And I wouldn’t look so pale if it didn’t rain here all the time.”

  “All the more reason we have to drink in the sun when we can,” said Agatha. “Why don’t you come and give it a try right now?”

  “I shouldn’t intrude.”

  “Oh, don’t worry; we’re not going to cavort like wood nymphs. Just come and sit by me. I’ll turn this way and we can both get a little sun, if not the whole bath.” With this she moved to the far end of the bench and shrugged her gown down from her shoulders, using a hand to keep it drawn above her large bosom. Beatrice moved swiftly to the near end of the bench and sat down. She unbuttoned the collar of her dress and turned its stiff edges down. She rolled up her cuffs to the elbow.

  “You’re going to have to shrug that dress right down to get any benefit,” said Agatha, turning her chin up into the sun and closing her eyes. Beatrice undid more buttons and pulled the dress from her shoulders. The breeze breathed across her collarbones and ruffled the edges of her light chemise. The sun felt like a warm hand on her shoulder. It began to heat the smooth rise of her chest and the fragile skin inside her elbows. She felt her nervous breath slow and relax. As she tipped up her face to the sun, she felt the strangest urge to take off her shoes and walk barefoot on the grass.

  —

  Hugh was pretending to enjoy a quiet breakfast, with one of last week’s London newspapers spread carelessly in front of him, but he was listening for noises in the hall which might mean the ladies coming to breakfast. He was aware of a pleasant sense of anticipation at the chance to see the young schoolteacher again this morning and had already run a few opening conversational gambits through his head. A desire for new conversation and companions his own age sparked his eager mood.

  A rustling in the hall and a murmur of voices caused him to wipe his hands on his napkin and tweak his collar straight. He did not have time to fold the newspaper before the door was opened by the maid.

  “Thank you, Jenny,” said Beatrice, coming into the room.

  “I’ll just bring some fresh tea for the pot and some hot toast,” said Jenny, whisking the large silver teapot from the sideboard. Hugh could not remember her ever offering to bring him a fresh pot of tea.

  “Good morning,” he said. “I do hope you don’t mind an informal breakfast? You are welcome to ask Jenny to bring you something else.” He was pleased at his own cheerful manner and wondered if his newly discovered affection for Lucy Ramsey was already making him easier in the company of all women.

  “I am very happy,” said Beatrice, looking at the fruit platter and lifting the lids of the chafing dishes to inspect scrambled eggs, sausages and bacon, warm raisin cakes, and kedgeree. The kedgeree was on its second visit from the kitchen, and Hugh wondered if he should mention that it had become more pungent since yesterday, a fact not disguised by Cook’s addition of generous amounts of chopped parsley. He decided it was not his place to notice.

  “Only we all like to keep our own schedules in the summer,” he added, aware that domestic arrangements did not qualify as scintillating conversation. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen any sign of my aunt yet.”

  Beatrice spooned a small mound of raspberries into a dish and added a large dollop of fresh cream from its pitcher. She placed a sausage on a second small plate and brought both to the table.

  “Your aunt has already given me a tour of the garden this morning,” she said. “After breakfast, we are to walk around the town, and then she has kindly offered to introduce me to my new landlady.”

  “I should warn you that my aunt knows everybody,” said Hugh. “She is
not in the least stuffy about stopping in the street to talk to them, and so any walk with my aunt is more a series of energetic starts with much lingering about, trying not to shuffle one’s feet too much.”

  “Oh dear,” said Beatrice. “I shall have to summon my best attempt at patience.”

  “And with waiting to hear if my uncle is coming from London, I’m sure she won’t get away from the house until late,” added Hugh.

  “What am I to do?” asked Beatrice. She spoke in a lighthearted tone, but Hugh noticed that she stabbed her sausage quite emphatically with her fork. “The plan was your aunt’s, and yet my willing acceptance of her direction has made me a dreadful inconvenience.”

  “Oh, not at all,” said Hugh. “I was only thinking you must be impatient to see the town and…” He trailed off as his own vague plan became clearer in his mind and the enormity of suggesting it crushed his recent sense of ease.

  “Perhaps she can spare a maid or someone to show me the way,” said Beatrice. “Though the town seems small enough for me to do very well by myself.”

  “My aunt wouldn’t like that,” said Hugh. He took a deep breath and plunged in. “I don’t believe I have any definite plans this morning, or at least I could try to change them.”

  “Indefinite plans are the worst to rearrange,” she said, smiling over her teacup.

  “What I mean is that perhaps you would permit me to escort you on a small tour of the town and then deliver you to your lodgings to meet my aunt at some appropriate hour?” With the offer made, in such a stumbling manner, he could only wait and try not to blush.

  “I would be delighted,” said Beatrice. “It’s such a lovely day and I would enjoy a real walk. Can I rely on you to set a fast pace, Mr. Grange?”

  “Oh, do call me Hugh,” he said, his sense of ease returning. “You are a walker then, Miss Nash?”

  “My father and I enjoyed nothing better than a tramping holiday,” she said. She did not invite him to call her by her first name. “Have you walked in the Alps, Mr. Grange?”

  “I have had that pleasure,” said Hugh. “There is nothing finer than the snowcapped mountains and dinner in some rustic Swiss farmhouse.”

  “Of course, the scenery is possibly more powerful in the American West,” said Beatrice. “But I agree that nothing beats a stein of homemade dark beer at the end of a day climbing through the passes.”

  “Well, quite,” said Hugh, hoping she was not planning on donning a knapsack and hobnailed boots for the walk into town. “So I can assume you are not afraid of a few briars and that we can go down via the fields instead of the road?”

  “Lovely,” she said. “A little fresh air and no quarter on the pace, please, Mr. Grange.”

  —

  After breakfast, Beatrice followed Hugh on a brisk descent down a muddy country path to town and then a climb up cobbled streets as steep as any in a Swiss village. At the high street, Beatrice paused, trying not to breathe too heavily as she leaned against a convenient post for a moment’s respite. She had matched Hugh’s every stride, but as she was to meet Agatha Kent at her new landlady’s home, she had been forced to wear her heeled town boots and had pulled her corset tighter than suitable for such exertion. Her face flamed, and despite her light cotton dress, she was conscious of a trickle of sweat down her spine.

  “I say, are you all right?” said Hugh. “You look a bit winded.”

  “I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”

  “It may not have been quite gentlemanly to take you absolutely at your word on the pace?”

  “It is only my attire that can’t quite keep up with you,” she said. She reached into a pocket for one of her father’s large, plain handkerchiefs and fanned her face as she looked about her. “Just a moment to take in an impression, perhaps?”

  The high street seemed to be a pleasingly crooked collection of Tudor and Georgian shopfronts with bright awnings. Plenty of customers, many overdressed for the day in the cautionary way of rural burghers everywhere, were puffing and fanning themselves in and out of doors. A cart went by sprinkling cool water onto the hot cobbled street. A large car nosed impatiently along behind it, coughing out the sharp odor of mechanical fumes to mingle with the humid scents of horses, flowering baskets, and meat pies cooling in an open shop window.

  When Beatrice had recovered, they continued up into the narrower lanes around the churchyard, passing old Elizabethan black-timbered houses with tiny leaded windows, bowed rooflines, and bricks mellowed under centuries of gentle English rain; then emerged onto the wide, green lawn of an ancient stone tower, rising far above the flat plain below.

  “It’s like a painting,” said Beatrice as they took in the tumble of roofs down the steep hill and the full sweep of the marshes, leading to the distant, shimmering English Channel. “It feels as if the sea should be right below us.” A breeze offered to dry their damp foreheads, and she took off her straw hat to pat back her hair.

  “It was, in earlier centuries,” said Hugh. “Now we are marooned in the marshes, and the boats have a devil of a time getting stuck in the mud.” To their left, a single huge sail seemed to be floating in a field of sheep, its boat invisible behind the grassy dyke. “That’s the Royal Military Canal, built to keep out Napoleon,” he added.

  “Hard to picture such a narrow waterway keeping out an invasion,” said Beatrice. “How far does it go?”

  “Runs twenty-eight miles from Hastings to Folkestone,” he said, pleased that she did not seem to mind what Lucy Ramsey had gently derided as his masculine need to burden all pleasant views with boring facts. “Keeping out the French has been a national pastime for centuries,” he added. “That castle in the distance was Henry VIII’s contribution.”

  “Whatever shall we do now that we’re so ‘Entente Cordiale’ with Paris?”

  “We’ll use them as a huge buffer against any unpleasantness in the rest of Europe,” said Hugh. “And we’ll hire French chefs for our dinner parties.”

  “Sounds wonderful,” said Beatrice. “Though I don’t think there will be a French chef in my immediate future.”

  “No, in my experience landladies tend to prefer mutton chops and gooseberry sponge,” said Hugh.

  “You have one?” she asked.

  “Yes, a Mrs. Rogers. A good woman, but her way of ensuring I and the other three medical students never go hungry is to wrap as many foods as possible in suet pudding or a cold-water crust. Only diligent exercise keeps me from corpulence.”

  “You are going to be a doctor?”

  “A surgeon, to the dismay of my parents,” he said. “I just finished a year of surgical fellowship under Sir Alex Ramsey, and he seemed to like my research because he has asked me to stay on.” A note of pride crept into his tone, for it was not a small accomplishment to have drawn the notice of London’s most respected surgeon.

  “Your family disapproves?” she asked. Hugh noted that she gave a wry glance, as if from experience of such disapproval.

  “My father has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in banking,” said Hugh. “I think my parents saw me embellishing the family honor by doing something more gentlemanly and less bloody than medicine.”

  “What did they have in mind?” said Beatrice. “Marrying a rich widow?”

  “Rich widows are in short supply, even the ugly ones,” said Hugh.

  “Whatever will you do?” asked Beatrice.

  “My surgeon does have a knighthood, and a practice at the more fashionable end of Harley Street, so my parents have become more amenable to my career in recent months,” said Hugh. “But they would prefer to see me a gentleman of leisure.”

  “You are a man of action?” she asked.

  “We’re building flying machines and talking to each other across copper telephone wires; and medicine is moving so fast, the books have to be revised every couple of years.” He stopped, and grinned as if he had once again spoken more than he should. “I can’t imagine just sitting by, playing golf, visiting my club, and do
ing the social rounds.”

  “I think that’s splendid,” said Beatrice. “What are you researching?”

  “Well, I’ve been investigating the impact of shock on patients after surgery,” said Hugh. “It’s quite interesting how many patients come through brain surgery without a problem and then just die in the wards.” Fearing the topic too gruesome, he changed the subject to add, “But of course I’m taking the summer off. My surgeon and his daughter have gone to the Italian Lakes.”

  “The advances of a new century must wait while we indulge in cures and sea bathing,” said Beatrice. “And is the eminent surgeon’s daughter impressed by your hard work?”

  “Lucy?” he said, and then wished he had referred to her as Miss Ramsey. He feared he might blush as he stammered. “She’s young and much too sensitive to stomach the details of our work. Her father and I do our best to protect her.”

  “I never aspired to delicacy,” said Beatrice. “I preferred to be at my father’s side.”

  “Well, Lucy is a great help with her father’s correspondence, and she is a wonderful hostess,” said Hugh. “I go to tea several times a week.”

  “You must be quite lonely while she is away,” said Beatrice. She was smiling, and he knew she was teasing him.

  “I’m keeping busy this summer.” He was flustered by her friendly challenges. Lucy often teased him, but she always maintained a charming deference, and he indulged her from all the advantage of superior age and knowledge. “I go around with old Dr. Lawton some afternoons,” he added. “There is a whole array of interesting cases among the poorer cottages.”

  “I expect the country doctor is suitably impressed?” asked Beatrice.