“Well, the house was full of gas,” said Al. “She didn’t have much choice if she didn’t want to be blown up.”
The officer conceded this. He stood at the bathroom door and looked at the bodies. Then he wandered around the bedroom and spent a minute or so staring at the heater.
“Nothing wrong with it,” said Al. “It’s just old. They knew never to turn it on without calling me to put it in order.”
“Sydney wouldn’t have remembered that,” said Dr. Coles.
“He must have fallen,” said Al.
“Looks like she was trying to keep him warm.” Neither of them wants to look into the bathroom again.
“I’m surprised she remembered there was a heater,” said Andy.
“It’s a real sorry way to go,” said the officer, wondering why nobody had been taking care of these sweet old people, if everyone knew they were so dotty.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Al.
The officer looked at him. He looked at the heater. He said, “Why wouldn’t they put in a furnace, if they were going to stay here in the cold.”
“The house is on ledge. You couldn’t use it far into the fall; the pipes would freeze.”
“They liked things the way they were.”
“What do we do now?” Shirley asked.
“Start calling the children, I guess.”
Shirley went into the study where Mrs. Moss kept the family telephone numbers written, in very big numbers, on a piece of paper attached to the blotter with yellowing Scotch tape. She began to dial.
Eleanor, Jimmy, and Monica are sitting in the dining room with the photograph albums and scrapbooks, stacks of clippings, letters, snapshots, and grocery lists that have emerged from drawers, bookcases, and the cupboard behind the chimney. It’s time to lock up the house and go, but none of them is ready to leave it. Eleanor picks up an old address book. It is bound in fabric with appliquéd felt golf balls and tees, and so stuffed with extraneous papers that a rubber band holds it closed. Eleanor found it back in the drawer of Sydney’s bedside table. At one touch, the brittle rubber snaps. She starts turning the pages.
Monica looks up when she hears her sister say, “Oh, my God.”
Lying before her on the table are a blue envelope and a matching sheet of letter paper.
“What is it?”
On the back of the envelope, in pencil, their mother had written “7/19/63.” Eleanor hands the paper across the table to Monica. It reads:
I loved you, even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain;
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.
Hopelessly and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I love you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.
N.
Jimmy takes it and reads it quietly as Monica says to Eleanor, “It’s Uncle Neville’s writing.” Which they all recognize. That architects’ printing.
After a pause, Jimmy says, “You didn’t know?”
His sisters turn together to him. “You did?”
“It went on for years,” Jimmy says, with no pleasure. He is thinking of the year he was kicked out of Country Day. The long phone calls behind closed doors. Their mother’s volatile moods that year, to which he was so attuned. The summer only he was at Leeway with Sydney, and she sang and laughed all the time. And the next summer, when she had herself taken away.
“Uncle Neville.” Eleanor and Monica were looking at each other. “And they had to go on seeing each other every day all summer, year after year…”
“How could she do that to Gladdy?” asks Monica.
“Did Dad know?” Eleanor asks.
“I couldn’t tell,” says Jimmy. “Gladdy did.”
“How do you know that?”
“She caught me watching Mom and Uncle Neville at a yacht club party. I was fourteen. They were dancing together, and suddenly while I was watching them, I saw Aunt Gladdy was watching me. She gave me this very steady look, and then she turned away from the dancers and began talking to somebody. So I did, too.”
“She adores Uncle Neville,” says Monica, trying to take it in.
“And she forgave them,” says Eleanor, puzzled. “She forgave them both. I wonder how.”
After a long silence, Monica says, “Come on, orphans. We’re going to freeze in here. Let’s lock it up and go get dinner.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sanna Borge Feirstein has given me priceless support throughout the research and writing of this book, sharing impossible-to-find books from her family’s library, and introducing me to the people and resources of the Scandinavia House in New York, where lectures and the library also proved invaluable. Sanna introduced me to Stig Høst, whose memories, writings, and advice were riches in themselves, as well as keys unlocking further doors. In Copenhagen, Henrik Glahns and Inge Bonnerup and Lars and Charlotte Lindeberg were extraordinarily generous, sharing memories, answering questions, lending an armload of books unavailable in English, not to mention supplying coffee and wienerbrød so delicious that we’re still wistful about them. Jim Colias has been unfailingly generous, not to mention charming, with his knowledge and contacts. Aase Van Dyke spent hours with me translating, answering questions, and illuminating cross-cultural mysteries, and has continued to be so helpful with books, information, and resources that I’ll never be able to thank her properly. Vebe Borge, pursuing a parallel project of his own, seemed sent from heaven as I was discovering exactly how hard it was going to be to get an accurate picture of life at Ravensbrück. John Hargraves introduced me to the Danish-American film- maker Alexandra Moltke Isles, whose documentary The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews is a marvel of concision and who graciously shared resources and family stories that helped immensely. Jerri Witt was my rod and my staff when it came to Laurus’s professional life and repertoire. Christina McHenry, Elvira Bass, Tom Richardson, Anne Johnson, and Bobby Patri all lent or pointed me to books I would otherwise have missed that contributed to my understanding of some aspect of my characters’ lives. Neal Johnston shared his vast knowledge of things musical, and even came up with an incredible rarity, a book in English on how Bulgaria saved her Jews, which had nothing directly to do with my subject but satisfied a by then rampaging curiosity. Lars Lindeberg, China Neury, and Philip Armour IV gave generous help on Swedish matters. Lucie Semler, Robin Clements, Sanna Feirstein, Jerri Witt, Joy Richardson, Shery and Breene Kerr, Susan Richardson, David Gutcheon, Alison Rogers, Angelica Baird, and Lars Lindeberg each read the manuscript in various stages of its evolution and provided notes and comments for which I am forever grateful. And, as always, I am grateful to my agent, Wendy Weil, for her support, her judgment, her humor, and her lifelong friendship, and to Meaghan Dowling, my wonderful editor, for much the same.
For those wishing to know more about the historical underpinnings of this novel, a selected bibliography is available at www.beth gutcheon.com.
About the Author
BETH GUTCHEON is the critically acclaimed author of More Than You Know, Five Fortunes, Saying Grace, Domestic Pleasures, Still Missing, and The New Girls, as well as several film scripts, including the Academy Award nominee The Children of Theatre Street. She lives in New York City.
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Also available from HarperAudio
Also by Beth Gutcheon
More Than You Know
Five Fortunes
Saying Grace
Domestic Pleasures
Still Missing
The New Girls
Credits
Jacket design by Bradford Foltz
Jacket photograph by Lisa Tyson Ennis
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. References to
real people, events, establishments, organizations, and locales are intended only to convey a picture of the real world in which the fictional story takes place. All other names, characters, and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book, are the products of the author’s imagination.
LEEWAY COTTAGE. Copyright © 2005 by Beth Gutcheon. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2005 ISBN: 9780061850301
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gutcheon, Beth Richardson.
Leeway cottage : a novel / Beth Gutcheon.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-053905-4
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
The Funeral is Over...
More than One Person in the...
Watching Candace Brant Arrive..
For Christmas in 1926 James...
Unfortunately, the Christmas...
"What'll it be, Gents?"
"How do you do, Mr. Moss?"
On the Morning of Tuesday, April 9...
It was their First Serious Argument...
Christmas Night, 1941. Laurus and his...
Kaj Moss has Always Suffered Somewhat...
The Truth was, Once America was in it...
Laurus has Asked Again and Again to be...
Baby Girl Moss Born 3:14 AM Stop.
In the Danish Summer of 1942, it is...
In November of 1942, when Eleanor Moss...
Nina Moss is a Luscious Girl, the Darling...
Laurus is Sometimes Sorry he didn't...
Throughout August of 1943, Unraveling...
In Dundee that Sunday, Gladdy Woke...
In London, at Churchill's Special...
Just After Labor Day in 1943,...
On September 17, 1943, as Bernard...
Nina is Already at the Apartment...
Sydney Stayed in Cleveland for Two...
Sunday Morning, While Per is out...
As the Schooner Skims out of Gille...
It is Said that no two Children...
Kaj Moss Never Intended to Join...
By the Time Sydney Finally Met her...
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler...
"I'm Offered an Artist in...
What Sydney Principally Remembered...
Everything was in Boxes. Boxes...
The thing About the Period you...
When Jimmy was Eight, the Fact...
The Elms Came Down in October,...
In the Spring of 1962, Laurus was...
The Third Tuesday in July,...
When Sydney didn't Come Back,...
In the Spring of 1964, Monica,...
Laurus Drove to Dundee to Collect...
In the Winter of 1965, Eleanor was...
Most of the Family's Milestones we...
Faster Nina Died in the Winter of...
In the Early Summer of 1993,...
Laurus was out on The Rolling...
OhnoOhNoOhNoOhNo
Shirley found them.
Nina is in...
Al Pease got to Leeway First,...
Eleanor, Jimmy, and Monica are...
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Beth Gutcheon
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Beth Gutcheon, Leeway Cottage
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