The End of Summer

  The End of Summer

  Naomi Jessica Rose

  Copyright © 2018 Naomi Jessica Rose

  All rights reserved

  Contents

  The End of Summer

  Contents

  January

  February

  March

  May

  July 1

  July 2

  August 1

  August 2

  August 3

  January

  Marion Hunter tried to keep her attention on where she was. She stared at the books on the shelves behind the desk and listened to the solicitor’s voice drone on. The words he said didn’t mean anything at all to her. They were perfectly ordinary words, most of them, but they didn’t mean anything. It was just too difficult to think about. She smiled at the man nervously and he smiled back. Her family had had the same solicitor as long as Marion could remember; he was a middle aged man with pepper and salt hair and jowly cheeks, very unremarkable looking. Marion had forgotten his name, though she was sure he had been introduced when they came in. When had that been? Maybe an hour ago?

  She glanced at her sister. Philippa wasn’t listening either. How could Christopher want to be a solicitor? Would he end up looking like that? Marion almost giggled at the thought and then she felt guilty. Her parents were listening keenly to everything the boring little man was saying. What’s wrong with me? she wondered.

  It was just that none of this had anything to do with Grandma. Marion felt rebellious all of a sudden. Grandma was gone; they had had the funeral. They knew all about the money too for it had never been a secret. Grandpa and Grandma’s estate would be sold and all the proceeds and investments would go to Marion’s father. They would be rich. In fact, Marion supposed, since her father had known for years that this would happen, they already were rich. Nothing had changed, not really.

  Marion turned her head to look out of the window. It was one of those lovely cold-sunny days, a day to be out riding, not sitting in stuffy offices. She thought about Crusoe, her bright bay gelding, trotting along a lane with Christopher and Columbine. But Christopher had decided to sell Columbine so he would have more time to study, that’s what he said. So he could transform himself into someone like the funereal person on the other side of the desk.

  It was no use. Marion was lost in a wood with excitable Crusoe sniffing the air and Columbine skittering about, wondering where there were monsters like she always did. Marion had said Christopher could ride Crusoe after Columbine was sold, but she couldn’t help hoping that he would change his mind and not sell her at all. How could he sell her? She could end up going anywhere, with anyone and then what would happen to her?

  “And to Philippa and Marion Hunter,” the solicitor’s voice cut in somehow, “the sum of fifty thousand pounds to be shared equally between them.”

  Marion jumped in her seat, jerked up straight. What had he said? She collected herself together to listen properly, hoping he would say it again to prove it hadn’t been her imagination, but he was just droning on now about more things she didn’t understand. She looked at her sister and found Philippa was looking at her too, with just as much surprise as Marion supposed was on her own face.

  It’s only been four weeks, Dick told himself. There’s nothing wrong with needing time to get used to it. Four weeks since he had found himself employed as a groom in Major Holbrooke’s stable. And employed to ride Tranquil for Susan, and now Echo too, since Henry had gone back to Sandhurst. Riding Echo was not proving to be particularly successful though. Dick dared to contemplate that perhaps it was actually terrifying.

  “Henry tends to use brawn rather than brains when he’s riding,” the major had said. “And you don’t have any of that, so you’re going to need to develop a strategy.”

  Dick had been trying to develop a strategy. Echo was in a bad mood; he seemed to have been in a bad mood since Henry had left. He didn’t want to go on the bit, didn’t want to bend round corners. Then he decided he didn’t want to go forwards at all and went backwards instead, swishing his tail and Dick couldn’t fight back. His legs were like cotton wool. Another five minutes and they might as well go in. Maybe it was getting better, maybe…

  Echo pulled rudely towards the gate and wouldn’t stand to let Dick open it properly. Then the horse rushed through, bashing Dick’s leg on the gatepost and hurtling into the stable yard much too fast.

  “Steady!” Major Holbrooke said, taking a rein and looking up at Dick grimly. Major Holbrooke was capable of spine chilling grim when he wanted to be, though he wasn’t like that at all really. “I’ll take him if you like. Looks like you’ve a visitor.” He nodded in the direction of another man standing in the stable yard who Dick hadn’t noticed at all.

  And how could he not have noticed? He looked at that man and his heart seemed to knock in his chest, robbing him of the degree of strength required to get down from where he sat, that impeccably poised man stood somewhere so unexpected; his father.

  He slid down anyhow and Major Holbrooke took the horse, so Dick had to stand up by himself with nothing to hold on to.

  “Good to see you’re enjoying yourself,” Dick’s father said, not smiling.

  What are you doing here? Dick wondered. “I’m…” he faltered. “How are you?”

  “Very well thank you.” He stood, looking. There wasn’t really an expression on his face, but there was feeling in it, in the look he gave. It was impossible to look back. “I came to deliver this.” He fished in his inside pocket for a moment and then held out a letter, an ordinary enough letter, in a brown envelope. At least, it looked that way.

  Dick took the letter, unable to stop his hand shaking. It had been opened. He frowned.

  “I opened it because I wanted to know the specifics and I doubted you’d tell me. Besides, it was addressed to my house where you no longer live.”

  Dick knew what the letter was. It wasn’t the first one he had received and he had been expecting it, except not yet. He realised he was beginning to find it hard to breathe.

  “I felt it my duty to inform the Ministry of Defence of your decision to leave university. These actions have consequences as I’m sure you are aware. They haven’t wasted any time, have they?”

  “No.” Dick looked at his feet.

  “It’s a shame you won’t be able to stay on here, riding shiny thoroughbreds and enjoying the patronage of the benevolent aristocracy. Six weeks, the letter says.”

  “I’m not…” Dick felt blood pounding in his ears. He wanted to look up but he didn’t want to just as much.

  “I’ve been speaking to the Dean at your college, a very sharp man, wasn’t there in my day. He’s agreed to take you back, as a favour to me.”

  Dick jerked his head up involuntarily.

  “You’ll have to start putting some effort in though. Shoddy work and laziness isn’t going to cut it any longer I’m afraid.”

  “I’m not going back to college.” Dick spoke through clenched teeth, his stomach knotted up and ready to throw its contents all over the yard. He fought it.

  His father stepped closer and took the letter from his hand. “This isn’t going to go away you know.” He smiled, but not kindly. And he gave the letter back once more. “Your rich friends won’t be able to stop it happening.”

  Dick felt a hand descend onto his shoulder.

  “Good morning Mr Hayward,” Major Holbrooke said. “Would you care for a drink?”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Dick’s father replied, “but I’m afraid I have to be getting along.”

  Dick watched his father disappear around the corner of the last loosebox, heading for the drive where he must have parked his car. He heard the car start and drive off and he felt t
he Major’s hand lift from his shoulder as he tore himself away.

  Major Holbrooke waited in Cressida’s box. Cressida was the kind of horse who was good company in the stable. He talked to her and watched the yard until he saw Dick slip across and through Tranquil’s door. The major gave him five minutes, then followed.

  “Are you all right?”

  Dick looked up and smiled. The boy would have gone off to throw up. Major Holbrooke knew him well enough by now to work that much out.

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  Dick was shockingly thin, pale as a ghost. He looked only barely alive, but the major was somewhat used to that. “What’s that?” he indicated the letter the boy still held clasped in his hand. “Ministry of Defence? Call up papers?”

  Dick nodded.

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  Dick shrugged. “It’s all right. Everyone has to do it; I’m no different.”

  “You won’t pass the medical,” the major said gently.

  “Doctor Radcliffe says I’ll get temporary unfit, try again in six months.” Dick smiled.

  “You talked to Doctor Radcliffe about this?”

  “Yes, I talked to him and I talked to Henry too. I’ve got till the end of summer. Then I’ll be fit and I’ll go, God help me. It’ll be an opportunity to practise not being a coward at the very least.”

  Major Holbrooke looked at Dick and realised he was going to have to stop thinking of him as a boy. He wasn’t a boy, and he was going to make a better soldier than most people would. “Well in that case I insist you come to the kitchen for breakfast,” he said.

  Sebastian shivered. It was all very well when you were somewhere like Folly Court and there were people who knew. It seemed possible then. Major Holbrooke was hopelessly terrifying, but he had never said two words to Sebastian anyway. It was people like Noel and Dick who were younger and more ordinary; they filled his head with ideas. If it hadn’t been for Dick, Sebastian knew he would have given in and perhaps he should have.

  Idris stood solidly under the trees. Other people’s ponies ran away from them, played games until their humans were wild with frustration, chasing them about the field, but Idris never did that. He was always content to leave his companions, Bluey the donkey and the old chestnut steeplechaser Reynard and come with Sebastian to the sheds.

  They didn’t have a stable but Idris was off the Welsh hills and wouldn’t have wanted one anyway. Sebastian tied him to the fence and began to brush off the worst of the mud. Then he braced himself to pick up the pony’s great feet. It awed him that this huge creature would let him do such a thing as pick up its feet. He was frightened every time that Idris was going to snatch a foot away and swing it round into his small human body, by accident or on purpose, equally alarming either way in Sebastian’s imagination.

  Sebastian was small, that was the thing. His mother had bought him this massive formidable pony because Idris was beautiful and Mother loved anything beautiful. Seeing her beloved son riding his wild and beautiful pony in the wild and beautiful countryside was going to make his mother’s heart warm up with happiness. And Sebastian longed for his mother to be happy; she had been so sad for so long.

  “Look at him!” she had said last summer when they first saw Idris galloping in the distance. “There’s something elementally magical about him isn’t there?”

  And Sebastian had agreed. He still did agree. There was something not altogether of this world about Idris, but whether it was that or the real, solid certainty of huge muscles and bones and the free will of a massive animal that terrified him so, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter did it? The fear encompassed him completely.

  “You’re leaving?” Gay looked sad as well as shocked and Noel felt sorry she hadn’t been able to prepare for it better.

  “I’m going tomorrow,” said Noel. “I decided I was going to go at New Year. I didn’t expect it to happen so fast, that’s all.”

  They were walking through sodden grass to the bottom of the slope where the ponies were sheltering under the trees. The grass was too long, and Sonnet was too fat. Noel watched the grey pony lift her head as she heard them coming; it pulled at her heart. Sonnet had such a pretty head, like a horse in a fairy tale, completely different from Truant, the Anglo Arab gelding who had replaced her as Noel’s primary focus in life. It was strange how quickly one moved on from one horse to another.

  And the horses moved on too. Noel couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy when Sonnet went straight for Gay and not herself, poking at Gay’s pockets for oats or apples or whatever her favourite titbit was these days. Biddy came up too and Noel scratched the little pony’s face.

  “Is it a long way away?” Gay asked. She sounded almost shy, which wasn’t like Gay at all.

  Noel laughed. “Yes it is really. It’s in Yorkshire. The people there are friends of Mrs Exeter, the woman who gave me Truant. They breed horses and bring on eventers and showjumpers.”

  “So is that what you’ll be doing? Eventing and showjumping?”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose so!” Noel smiled. “Exercising and stable work is more likely. But they’re going to pay me and put Truant up and that’s all I wanted really.”

  Gay felt panic clutch at her. It was hard to accept that Noel was really going away and everything was about to change.

  “So you’re taking Truant,” she paused, chewing her lip. “What about Sonnet? Will you sell her?”

  “Of course not!” said Noel, looking surprised. “I could never sell Sonnet. I’m going to give her to you. That’s why I came. And to see her.”

  “Oh!” Gay was thunderstruck.

  “It’s not so surprising to be given a horse you know. After all, Sonnet was given to me in the first place, and Truant was too come to that.” Noel smiled. “Sonnet is only nine. She needs someone to do pony club things with her. You’ve had her all this time and I know you will look after her. She likes you better than she likes me!”

  “No she doesn’t!”

  Sonnet pushed Gay’s shoulder with her nose, asking for more oats, making a mockery of Gay’s protest.

  Noel laughed. “You’ll have to ask your parents, but they won’t mind will they?”

  “No, but…” Gay grinned. Just a few weeks ago she had made a plan that involved Noel and Henry getting married and moving into Folly Court to run the pony club together. All that seemed remarkably foolish now. Henry had gone, Noel was going, but the pony club would have to be able to carry on without them. Gay felt sad, but she felt happy too. After all, she had just been given a pony all of her own.

  “I’m going to buy another horse.” Marion had thought a lot about how to say it, so it would come out confident. Unfortunately the effect was ruined by the telephone ringing and Philippa rushing to answer it, then coming back to get Mummy because it was Aunt Sarah, and then of course Mummy had to hurry away to speak to her sister.

  “What did you say Marion?” her father asked.

  “I want to buy a horse,” Marion said, which wasn’t what she had meant to say at all.

  “Oh Marion you can’t!” Philippa said. “Surely you’re tired of riding by now? And anyway, you already have a horse. You can hardly ride two of them at once!”

  “I’ll never be tired of riding,” Marion said firmly. “The very best riders always have more than one horse. Look at Major Holbrooke! The horse I want to buy is very different from Crusoe.”

  “But it’s such a dreadful bind!” Philippa exclaimed. “Honestly Daddy, she’s mad. Don’t let her.”

  “If Marion wants to spend her own money on a horse there isn’t a thing I can do to stop her even if I wanted to.” Marion’s father smiled at her and she was immediately and overwhelmingly grateful to him. And in a way it was good that her mother had gone off to talk on the telephone; her mother would have agreed with Philippa.

  “Christopher, telephone!” called David from the hall.

  Christopher was annoyed. He was doing algebra homework, his least favourit
e, and it had just begun to make sense. “Who is it?” he called down. Perhaps he could pretend to be out.

  “Don’t know,” David shouted. “Someone female.”

  “Will you boys stop shouting?” His mother appeared in the bedroom doorway, hands on hips. “Christopher it seems you are wanted on the telephone, so the polite thing to do is to get up, go downstairs and speak to the unfortunate person in question civilly, like a human being. I’m sure you can manage that.”

  “All right!” Christopher said rudely. “I was just about to go down, there’s no need to over-react.”

  It was only Marion. Christopher wondered what she wanted. Marion had never been very good at getting to the point.

  “I’m rather busy at the moment,” he said to her.

  “Oh. Isn’t this a good time?”

  “Not really. Is it urgent?”

  “Well, not very. Perhaps I could call later.”

  Christopher sighed. Marion seemed to be worse at getting to the point even than usual. If she hung up now without telling him what she wanted he knew he’d be wondering about it all afternoon. “No it’s all right,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Oh! Well I was calling to ask if you had sold Columbine yet.”

  “No. Why? Do you know someone who might want to buy her?”

  Christopher had put Columbine, his four-year-old, dapple-grey mare up for sale two weeks before and as yet no-one had shown any interest at all. It hadn’t been very long, he supposed, but it still seemed hopeless. Christopher couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to buy the mare; she was completely useless.

  “I want to buy her.”

  Marion’s voice went so quiet Christopher wasn’t sure he had heard her right. “What did you say?”

  “I said I’d like to buy Columbine, if she’s still for sale.”

  Christopher laughed. “But you can’t ride Columbine Marion; she’s hopeless! She’ll need a really good rider to take her on if she’s ever going to be any good.”