Voices in the Summer

  ‘What is it?’ Eve asked.

  He stood up and silently handed it across to her. Gingerly, as though it were contaminated, Eve took it from him. He sat down again and began, minutely, to examine the envelope.

  She saw the child’s lined writing paper, and sickly pictures of a fairy at the top. The message was composed by letters cut from newspaper headlines and neatly stuck to form words.

  YoU WEnT WItH OTheR MEn

  anD DrOVE YoUR hUSbanD

  to dRiNK

  YOu ShoULd bE asHaMed OF

  YoURseLF

  She felt that for the first time in her life she was truly seeing evil, but on the heels of this repulsion came the most terrible fear.

  ‘Oh, Silvia.’

  ‘Wh—what am I to do?’

  Eve swallowed. It was very important to be objective. ‘How does the address on the envelope look?’

  Gerald handed it over, and she saw that this had been printed, not very evenly, in separate letters, and by means of a rubber stamp. A child’s printing set perhaps. A second-class stamp. Their local postmark and yesterday’s date. That was all.

  She gave the letter and the envelope back to Gerald.

  ‘Silvia, have you the slightest idea who could have sent you such a horrible thing?’

  Silvia, who had been standing by the window staring out at her garden, turned her head and looked at Eve. The amazing eyes, her best feature, were swollen with weeping. For a long moment Eve met her gaze. Silvia said nothing. Eve turned to Gerald, longing for reassurance, but he only watched her over the rim of his spectacles, and his expression was both grave and unhappy. All of them knew what the other was thinking. None of them could bring themselves to actually say the name.

  Eve took a deep breath and let it out again in a long, trembling sigh.

  ‘You think it’s May, don’t you?’

  Neither Gerald nor Silvia spoke.

  ‘You think it’s May. I know you think it’s May.…’ Her voice, rising, began to shake. She clenched her jaw against incipient tears.

  ‘Do you think it’s May?’ Gerald asked quietly.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to think.’

  He looked at Silvia. ‘Why should May write you a letter like this? What possible motive could she have?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The worst of her weeping seemed to be over, and she was calmer now, more like her usual self. With her hands deep in the pockets of her trousers, she came away from the window and began to pace the floor of the tiny sitting room. ‘Except that she doesn’t like me.’

  ‘Oh Silvia…’

  ‘It’s true, Eve. It’s never mattered particularly. It’s just that for some reason May could never stand the sight of me.’

  Eve, knowing that it was true, sat in miserable silence.

  Gerald said, ‘Even so, it’s not sufficient motive.’

  ‘All right. So Tom drank himself to death.’

  Eve was shocked at her coolness and at the same time filled with admiration. To speak thus of her own personal tragedy seemed to Eve both sensible and very brave.

  Gerald said, ‘I know May’s strong views on drink and temperance sometimes become a little tedious, but why should she take them out on you?’

  ‘“Went with other men,” then. Is that what you’re driving at, Gerald?’

  ‘I’m not driving at anything. I’m trying to be objective. And I can’t see that your friends, or your private life, are any concern of May’s.’

  ‘They might be, if the friend was Ivan.’

  ‘Ivan.’ Eve’s voice, even to herself, sounded shrill with incredulous disbelief. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Why not? Oh, Eve, darling, don’t look like … what I meant was, that sometimes, when you and Gerald are away from home, Ivan asks me up to the coach house for a drink … He’s just being kind. Another time, he gave me a lift to a party over at Falmouth that we’d both been asked to. Nothing. Nothing. But I’ve seen old May spying away out of her upstairs window. Nothing goes on beyond that window that she doesn’t know about. Perhaps she thought I was undermining his morals or something. Old nannies are always possessive, and after all, he was her baby.’

  Eve’s hands clenched tightly together in her lap. She heard May’s voice. Hmmm. Lonely. I could tell you some things you wouldn’t like to hear.

  She saw the scrapbook. The unexplained scrapbook, the newspapers, the scissors, and the paste.

  She thought of May’s Union Jack carrier bag, bulging mysteriously with things that she had bought on her day out. Had they included the fairy writing paper, the child’s printing set?

  Oh, May, my darling May, what have you done?

  She said, ‘You mustn’t tell anybody.’

  Silvia frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We mustn’t tell anybody about this terrible thing.’

  ‘But it’s criminal.’

  ‘May’s a very old lady.…’

  ‘She would have to be mad to send a thing like that.’

  ‘Perhaps … perhaps she is … a little…’ She could not say the word mad. She finished, feebly, ‘confused.’

  Gerald was studying the envelope again. ‘It was posted yesterday. Did May go to the village yesterday?’

  ‘Oh, Gerald, I don’t know. She’s always pottering up and down to the post office. It’s her little bit of exercise. She gets her pension there and buys peppermints and darning wool.’

  ‘Would the girl in the post office remember seeing her?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have had to go into the post office. She always keeps a book of stamps in her bag. I’m constantly borrowing stamps from May. She could simply have posted the letter and come home again.’

  Gerald nodded, accepting this. They fell silent, Eve haunted by visions of May in her woollen hat making her slow way out of the gates at Tremenheere, down the road to the village, dropping the venomous envelope into the mouth of the scarlet letter box.

  Silvia went to the fireplace, took a cigarette from a packet on the mantelpiece, and lit it. She stood looking down into the empty, uncleared grate. She said again, ‘She could never stand me. I’ve always known that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a civil word from the old cow.’

  ‘You mustn’t call her that! You mustn’t call May a cow. She isn’t. She may have done this appalling thing, but that’s because she’s muddled and old. And if anyone gets to hear of it … if we tell the police or anyone we ought to tell, then there’ll be questions, and … nobody will understand … and May really will go out of her mind … and they’ll take her … and…’

  She had tried so hard not to cry, but now she couldn’t stop. In a single movement, Gerald had left his chair and come to her side on the sofa. His arms were around her, her face pressed to the familiar warmth of his chest. Shoulders heaving, she wept into the lapel of his naval blazer.

  ‘There,’ said Gerald, comforting her in much the same way that Eve had comforted Silvia, with pats and gentle words. ‘That’s all right. That’s all right.’

  She finally pulled herself together and apologized to Silvia. ‘I’m sorry. It’s we who came to help you, and now I go all to pieces.’

  Silvia actually laughed. Without much humour, perhaps, but she did at least laugh. ‘Poor Gerald, what a pair of females we are. I really feel badly about landing you with this, but I knew that you had to know. I mean, after the ghastly shock of opening the letter and reading those horrible words, I couldn’t think of anybody but May.’ She had stopped her pacing and halted behind the sofa. Now she leaned down and kissed Eve’s cheek. ‘Don’t be upset. I’m not going to be upset about it anymore. And I know how fond you are of her.…’

  Eve blew her nose. Gerald glanced at his wristwatch. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that we should have a drink. I suppose, Silvia, you wouldn’t have any brandy in the house?’

  She had. They each had a snifter and talked things over. In the end they decided to do nothing, to tell nobody. If it was May who had sent the
letter, Gerald pointed out, hopefully, she would have shot her bolt. Probably, by now, she would have forgotten all about it, so unreliable was her memory. But if anything remotely similar should happen again, then Silvia must let Gerald know at once.

  She agreed to this. As for the letter, she intended burning it.

  ‘I’m afraid you mustn’t do that,’ Gerald told her gravely. ‘We never know. If things turn out badly, it might be needed as some sort of evidence. If you like, I’ll keep it for you.’

  ‘I couldn’t let you. I couldn’t bear the thought of it contaminating Tremenheere. No, I’ll shut it away in a drawer in my desk and forget all about it.’

  ‘You promise not to burn it.’

  ‘I promise, Gerald.’ She smiled. The familiar endearing grin. ‘What a fool I was to be so upset.’

  ‘Not a fool at all. A poison-pen letter is a frightening thing.’

  ‘I am so sorry,’ said Eve. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry. In a way I feel personally responsible. But if you try to forgive poor May and understand the position I’m in…’

  ‘Of course I understand.’ In silence, they drove the short distance home to Tremenheere. Gerald parked the car in the courtyard, and they went into the house through the back door. Eve crossed the kitchen and started up the back stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Gerald asked.

  She stopped, a hand on the banister, and turned to look down at him. She said, ‘I’m going up to see May.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I shan’t say anything. I just want to make sure that she’s all right.’

  * * *

  By the time lunch was finished, Eve had been overcome by a blinding, throbbing headache. Gerald observed that under the circumstances, this was hardly surprising. She swallowed two aspirin and took to her bed, a thing she very seldom did. The aspirin did their work, and she slept through the afternoon. She was awakened by the telephone ringing. Looking at her watch, she saw that it was past six o’clock. She reached out a hand and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Tremenheere.’

  ‘Eve.’

  It was Alec, calling from Scotland, wanting to speak to Laura.

  ‘She’s not here, Alec. She went to Penjizal with Ivan, and I don’t think they’re back yet. Shall I tell her to ring you back?’

  ‘No, I’ll ring her later. About nine.’

  They exchanged a few more remarks and then rang off.

  Eve lay for a little while and watched the clouds race across the sky beyond her open window. Her headache had, mercifully, gone, but for some reason she still felt very tired. Dinner must be prepared, however. After a bit, she got out of bed and went to the bathroom to take a shower.

  * * *

  The lane that led to the clifftop was rutted and winding and so narrow that the gorse bushes on either side scratched and scraped against the wings of Ivan’s car. They were covered with yellow flowers and smelled of almonds, and beyond them lay fields where dairy cows grazed. These fields were small and irregular in shape, stitched into a patchwork by meandering stone walls. It was rocky terrain, and here and there outcrops of granite broke the surface of the rich green pasture.

  The lane ended finally in a farmyard. A man on a tractor was loading dung on a forklift. Ivan got out of the car and went to speak to him, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the tractor engine.

  ‘Hullo, Harry.’

  ‘’Ullo there, Ivan.’

  ‘All right if we leave the car here? We’re going down to the cove.’

  ‘That’s all right. It’s in nobody’s way there.’

  Ivan returned to the car, and the farmer continued his work.

  ‘Come on,’ Ivan said to Laura and Lucy, ‘out you get!’ He shouldered the haversack and, carrying the picnic basket, led the way towards the sea. The path narrowed to a stony track, plunging down into a tiny valley, where fuchsia grew in profusion and a small stream, concealed by hazel thickets, kept them company. As they neared the cliffs, this valley opened out into a deep cleft, thick with bracken and brambles, and the sea lay ahead.

  Now the little stream revealed itself, bubbling down the hill through carpets of kingcups. They crossed a rough wooden bridge and paused at the rim of the cliff before descending farther.

  Underfoot, sea pinks and heather grew in the tussock-grass, and the wind pounced upon them, salty and fresh, and blew Laura’s hair all over her face. The tide was out. Here, there was no beach, only rocks, stretching to the rim of the sea. Wet with emerald seaweed, cruel and jagged, these rocks glittered and dazzled in the sunshine. From the ocean—the Atlantic now, she told herself—enormous waves, stirred up by the freshening wind, gathered themselves up—quite far out—to pour in upon the shore, breaking on the coastline in a fury of pounding white surf. The sound of this was ceaseless.

  Beyond the breakers the sea stretched to the horizon and seemed to Laura’s enchanted eyes to contain within its depths every shade of blue: turquoise, aquamarine, indigo, violet, purple. She had never seen such colour.

  She said, unbelieving, ‘Does it always look like this?’

  ‘Heavens, no. It can look green. Or navy blue. Or, on a dark, cold winter evening, a particularly sinister shade of grey.’ He pointed—‘That’s where we’re headed for.’

  She followed the line of his arm and finger, and saw, caught within a bastion of rocks, a large natural pool, shining in the sunlight like an enormous jewel.

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘Down this little path and over the rocks. I’ll lead the way. Watch your feet, because it’s treacherous. And perhaps you’d better carry Lucy. We don’t want her going over the edge.’

  It was a long, tough scramble before they finally reached their destination, and took the best part of half an hour. But they were there at last. Laura edged her way around the final overhanging hazard and joined Ivan on a great flat rock, which sloped to the edge of the pool.

  He wedged the picnic basket into a crevice, dropped the haversack, which contained their swimming things. He smiled at her. ‘Well done. We’ve made it.’

  Laura set Lucy down on her feet. Lucy went at once to explore, but there were no rabbit smells here. Only seaweed and limpets. After a bit she got bored and hot, found herself a shady corner, and curled up to sleep.

  They changed at once and then swam, diving into cold, salty water, twenty feet deep or more, clear and blue as Bristol glass. The bottom of this was strewn with round, pale stones, and Ivan, diving deeply, brought one of these to the surface and placed it at Laura’s feet.

  ‘It isn’t a pearl, but it will have to do.’

  After a little, they stopped swimming and came out and lay in the sunshine, sheltered from the wind by the surrounding rocks. Laura unpacked the picnic, and they ate cold chicken, Tremenheere tomatoes, crusty bread, and peaches with the bloom still upon them, unbruised and dripping with juice. They drank wine, which Ivan had cooled by the simple expedient of placing the bottle in a handy rock pool. There were shrimps in the pool, who scurried away when this strange object invaded their private world.

  ‘They probably think it’s a Martian,’ said Ivan. ‘A creature from outer space.’

  The sun beat down, the rocks were warm.

  ‘There were clouds at Tremenheere,’ Laura observed, lying on her back and gazing at the sky.

  ‘All blown away along the other coast.’

  ‘Why is it so different here?’

  ‘A different coast, a different ocean. At Tremenheere we grow palm trees and camellias. Here, they can scarcely grow a tree, and escallonia’s about the only shrub that can stand the wind.’

  She said, ‘It’s like another country. Like going abroad.’

  ‘How many times have you been abroad?’

  ‘Not very often. I went once to Switzerland in a party to ski. And Alec took me to Paris for our honeymoon.’

  ‘That sounds very romantic.’

  ‘It was, but it was only for a weekend, because he was in the middle
of some enormous deal, and he had to get back to London.’

  ‘When were you married?’

  ‘In November, last year.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In London. In a registry office … It rained all day.’

  ‘Who came to your wedding?’

  Laura opened her eyes. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, looking down into her face.

  She smiled. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to be able to picture it.’

  ‘Well … nobody came, really. At least, Phyllis came, and Alec’s driver, because we had to have two witnesses.’ She had already told him about Phyllis. ‘And then Alec took Phyllis and me out for Lunch at the Ritz, and then we caught the plane to Paris.’

  ‘What did you wear?’

  She began to laugh. ‘I can’t even remember. Oh, yes, I can. A dress I’d had for ages. And Alec bought me some flowers to hold. They were carnations and freesias. The carnations smelled of bread sauce, but the freesias smelled divine.’

  ‘How long had you known Alec?’

  ‘A month, maybe.’

  ‘Were you living together?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did you first meet?’

  ‘Oh’—she sat up, resting her elbows on her knees—‘at a dinner party. Very banal.’ She watched the surf pouring over the rocks. ‘Ivan, the tide’s coming in.’

  ‘I know. It does. It’s the natural course of events. Something to do with the moon. But we don’t have to move just yet.’

  ‘Does it cover the pool?’

  ‘Yes, which is why the water is so clean and clear. It gets laundered twice a day. And the sea covers where we’re sitting and a great deal more besides. But not for another hour or so. If we’re lucky and keep our eyes open, we’ll see the seals. They always appear on a rising tide.’

  She raised her face to the breeze, letting it blow her wet hair back over her shoulders.

  He said, ‘Go on about Alec.’

  ‘There’s nothing more to go on about. We got married. We had a honeymoon. We went back to London.’

  ‘Are you happy with him?’

  ‘Of course.’