Voices in Summer (2 page)

'You should have called!'

'I've come on an impulse.'

'Oh, darling, that does sound exciting. Come along!'

Laura followed her indoors, and Phyllis shut the door behind her. But it was not dark, because the narrow hall stretched straight through the house to another door, which led out into the garden, and this stood open. Framed within the aperture, Laura could see the sunny, paved yard, hung about with glossy greenery, and at the far end the white trellis summerhouse.

She stooped and set Lucy down on the ruby-red carpet. Lucy panted, and Laura dropped her handbag at the foot of the stair and went through to the kitchen to fill Lucy a bowl of water. Phyllis watched from the doorway.

‘I was sitting in the garden,' she said, 'but it's almost too hot. Let's go into the sitting room. It's cool there and the French windows are open. Darling, you look terribly thin. Have you been losing weight?'

‘I don't know. I suppose I might. I haven't been trying to.'

'Would you like a drink? I've just made some proper lemonade. It's in the fridge.'

'I'd love some.'

Phyllis went to collect glasses. 'You go and make yourself comfortable. Put your feet up, and we'll have a gorgeous chat. It's years since I saw you. How's that handsome Alec?'

'He's all right.'

'You'll have to tell me everything.'

It was heaven to be told to make yourself comfortable and put up your feet. Just like old times. Laura did as she was told, lying back in the corner of Phyllis' great downy sofa. Beyond the open glass doors, the garden stirred in the breeze with a faint rustling sound. There was the smell of wallflowers. It was very serene. Which was funny, really, because Phyllis wasn't a serene person. More like a little gnat, always on the go, her spindly legs carrying her up and down the stairs a hundred times a day.

She was her aunt, the younger sister of Laura's father. Their father was an impoverished Anglican clergyman, and many small economies and penny-pinching had been necessary to raise sufficient cash to send Laura's father to university to study medicine.

There was nothing left over for Phyllis.

Although the era, happily, was past when rectors' daughters were expected to stay meekly at home, helping Mother do the church flowers and run the Sunday School, the brightest prospect for Phyllis might well have been marriage to some solid and suitable man. But Phyllis, from an early age, had ideas of her own. Somehow, she got herself through a secretarial course and set off for London – not without a certain amount of parental opposition – where she found herself, in record time, not only a place to live, but also a job. Junior typist with Hay Macdonalds, an old-established firm of publishers. Before long her enthusiasm and enterprise had been noted. She became secretary to the fiction editor, and then, at the age of twenty-four, was made personal assistant to the chairman, Maurice Hay.

He was a bachelor of fifty-three, and everybody thought that he would remain in this happy state for the rest of his life. But he didn't, because he fell head over heels in love with Phyllis, married her, and bore her off – not exactly on a white charger, but at least in a very large and impressive Bentley – to live in state in his little jewel of a house in Hampstead. She made him very happy, never wasting a day of their time together, which was just as well, because three years later he had a heart attack and died.

To Phyllis he left his house, his furniture, and all his money. He was not a mean nor a jealous man, and there were no nasty codicils attached to his will ruling that she should have to relinquish the lot should she remarry. But even so, Phyllis never did again. The fact that she didn't was a conundrum to all who knew her. It was not that there was a shortage of gentlemen admirers; in fact, the very opposite. A constant stream was almost at once in attendance, telephoning, sending flowers, taking her out for dinner, abroad for holidays, to the theatre in the winter, and to Ascot in the summer.

'But darlings,' she protested when taxed with her independent life-style, T don't want to marry again. I'd never find anyone as sweet as Maurice. Anyway, it's much more fun being single. Specially if you're single and rich.'

When Laura was small, Phyllis had been something of a legend, and no wonder. Sometimes, at Christmas, Laura's parents brought her up to London, to see the decorations in Regent Street, and the shops, and to go perhaps to the Palladium or the ballet. Then, they had always stayed with Phyllis, and to Laura, brought up in the busy, humdrum establishment of a country doctor, it was like being suddenly magicked into a dream. Everything was so pretty, so bright, so scented. And Phyllis . . .

'She's just a fly-by-night,' Laura's mother said goodnaturedly on the way home to Dorset, while Laura sat pole-axed in the back seat of the car, stunned by the memories of so much glamour. 'One can't imagine her ever getting to grips with life, doing anything practical . . . and indeed, why should she?'

But there Laura's mother was wrong. Because, when Laura was twelve, her parents were both killed, driving home from a harmless dinner party, down a road they had both known all their lives. The pile-up was the direct result of a number of unimagined circumstances: a T-junction, a long-distance lorry, a speeding car with inefficient brakes, all met together in a disaster of hideous finality. Almost, it seemed, before the dust of this horror had settled. Phyllis was there.

She didn't
tell
Laura anything. She didn't tell her to be brave, she didn't tell her not to cry, she didn't say anything about it being God's will. She simply hugged her and asked her very humbly if, just for a little, Laura would be absolutely sweet and come to Hampstead and live with her, just to keep her company.

Laura went, and stayed. Phyllis looked after everything: the funeral, the lawyers, the disposal of the practice, the selling of the furniture. One or two precious and personal things she kept for Laura, and these were installed in the bedroom that was to become Laura's own. A desk of her father's, her dollhouse, her books, and her mother's silver-backed dressing table set.

'Who do you live with, then?' girls at her new London school would ask when their blunt questions evinced the sad truth that Laura was an orphan.

'My aunt Phyllis.'

'Gosh, I wouldn't like to live with an aunt. Has she got a husband?'

'No, she's a widow.'

'Sounds fairly dreary.'

But Laura said nothing, because she knew that if she couldn't be living in Dorset with her own darling mother and father, she would want above everything else in the world to be with Phyllis.

Theirs was, by any standards, an extraordinary relationship. The quiet and studious young girl and her extroverted, gregarious aunt became the closest of friends, never quarrelling or getting on the other's nerves. It was not until Laura was finished with college and qualified to go out and earn her own living that she and Phyllis had their very first difference of opinion. Phyllis wanted Laura to go into Hay Macdonalds; to her it seemed the obvious and natural thing to do.

Laura jibbed at this scheme. She believed that if she did so, it would be a form of nepotism, as well as undermining her determination to be independent.

Phyllis said that she would be independent. She'd be earning her living.

Laura pointed out that she already owed Phyllis enough. She wanted to start her career – whatever it was going to be – under an obligation to nobody.

But nobody was
talking
about obligations. Why turn down a wonderful opening, simply because she was Phyllis' niece?

Laura said that she wanted to stand on her own feet.

Phyllis sighed and explained patiently that she
would
be standing on her own feet. There was no question of nepotism. If she wasn't any good at her job and couldn't do the work, there would be no delicate compunctions about sacking her.

This was scarcely comforting. Laura muttered something about needing a challenge.

But Hay Macdonalds
was
a challenge. Laura might just as well take up this challenge as any other.

The argument continued, spasmodically, for three days, and Laura finally gave in. But at the same time, she broke the news to Phyllis that she had found herself a small, two-room flat in Fulham and that she was leaving Hampstead and going there to live. This decision had been made long ago; it had nothing to do with the argument about the job. It did not mean that she no longer
wanted
to live with Phyllis. She could have stayed forever in that warm and luxurious little house high on the hill above London, but she knew that it could not work. Their circumstances, subtly, had altered. They were no longer aunt and niece, but two adult women, and the unique relationship that they had achieved was too delicate and precious to risk putting into jeopardy.

Phyllis had a life of her own to lead – still full and exciting, despite the fact that she was now well into her fifties. And at nineteen, Laura had a life to
make,
and this could never be achieved unless she had the willpower to fly Phyllis' cosy nest.

After her initial dismay, Phyllis understood this. But, 'It won't be for long,' she prophesied. 'You'll get married.'

'Why should I get married?'

'Because you're the marrying kind. You're the sort of girl who needs a husband.' That's what people said to you after Maurice died.'

'You're not me, darling. I’ll give you three years as a career girl. Not a moment longer.'

But Phyllis, for once, was wrong. Because it was nine years before Laura set eyes on Alec Haverstock, and another six – by which time Laura was thirty-five – before she married him.

'Here we are. . . .' The tinkle of ice against glass, the tap of high heels. Laura opened her eyes, saw Phyllis beside her, setting down the tray on a low coffee table. 'Were you asleep?'

'No. Just thinking. Remembering, I suppose.'

Phyllis lowered herself onto the other sofa. She did not lean back because to relax in any way was totally foreign to her character. She perched, looking as though at any moment she might spring to her feet and dart away on some vital errand.

'Tell me all. What have you been doing? Shopping, I hope.'

She poured a tall tumbler of lemonade and handed it to Laura. The glass was frosty with cold and agony to hold. Laura took a sip and then put the glass on the floor beside her.

'No, not shopping. I've been to see Doctor Hickley.' Phyllis cocked her head, her face at once assuming an expression of alert interest, her eyebrows raised, her eyes wide. 'No.' said Laura, 'I'm not having a baby.'

'Why did you go and see her, then?'

'Same old trouble.'

'Oh,
darling.'
There wasn't any need to say more. They gazed at each other dolefully. From the garden where she had been having a little necessary visit, Lucy appeared, through the open windows. Her claws made a scratching sound on the parquet as she crossed the floor and leaped lightly up into Laura's lap, where she curled herself into a comfortable ball and proceeded to go to sleep.

'When did this happen?'

'Oh, it's been going on for a bit, but I've been putting off going to see Doctor Hickley because I didn't want to think about it. You know, if you don't take any notice and don't look, perhaps it will go away.'

'That was very silly of you.'

That's what she said. It didn't make any difference. I've got to go into the hospital again.' 'When?'

'As soon as possible. Maybe a couple of days.'

But darling, you're going to Scotland.'

'Doctor Hickley says I can't go.'

'I can't
bear
it for you.’ Phyllis' voice sank to match the total despair of the situation. 'You've been looking forward to it so much, your first holiday in Scotland with Alec . . . and what's he going to do? He isn't going to want to go without you.'

'That's really why I came to see you. To ask you a favour. Would you mind?'

‘I don't know yet what the favour is.'

'Well, can I come and stay with you when I come out of hospital? If Alec knows I'm here with you, he'll go to Glenshandra with the others. It means so much to him. And everything's been planned for months. He's booked the hotel rooms and rented a stretch of the river for fishing. To say nothing of the Boulderstones and the Ansteys.'

'When would that be?'

'Next week. I'll only be in the hospital for a couple of days and I don't need nursing or anything. . . .'

'Darling, it's too
awful,
but I'm going away.'

'You're . . .’ It was unthinkable. Laura stared at Phyllis and hoped that she was not going to burst into tears. 'You're . . . not going to be here?'

'I'm going to Florence for a month. With Laurence Haddon and the Birleys. We only arranged it last week. Oh, if you're desperate. I
could
put it off.'

'Of course you mustn't put it off.'

'What about Alec's brother and his wife? The brother who lives in Devon. Couldn't they take care of you?'

'Go to Chagwell, you mean?'

'You don't sound very enthusiastic. I thought you liked them when you stayed with them at Easter.'

‘I did like them. They're perfectly sweet. But they've got five children, and it's holiday time, and Janey will have quite enough to do without me arriving, all pale and wan, and expecting breakfast in bed. Besides, I know how one feels after these operations. Absolutely drained. I think it's something to do with the anaesthetic. And the noise at Chagwell is never below about a million decibels. I suppose it's inevitable with five children around the place.'

Phyllis saw her point, abandoned the idea of Chagwell, and sought for other solutions.

‘There's always Mrs Abney.'

'Alec would never leave me with Mrs Abney. She's getting on now, and she can't cope with the stairs.'

'Would Doctor Hickley consider postponing the operation?'

'No. I asked her, and she said no.' Laura sighed. 'It's on these occasions, Phyllis, that I long to be part of some enormous family. To have brothers and sisters and cousins and grandparents and a mother and a father . . .'