L
uke and Dexter were already in the car when Celia drove up to collect us just before noon. Timothy leaped into the back seat with them and they were immediately deep in muttered conversation. Tessa slid into the front seat between Celia and myself. There were only two seat-belts, but there was not yet a law in America that said you had to wear them and I had noticed that Celia never bothered about hers.
Besides, what did it really matter? The seat-belt hadn't saved John.
Celia seemed preoccupied throughout the drive. After a couple of abortive attempts at conversation, I gave up and contented myself with simple comments on the sights along the way. She replied with equally simple assenting noises. Only once did she show any animation.
A long gleaming station wagon swept past us on the other side of the road. The occupants raised their hands in greeting as they passed. Celia flashed them a bright
smile, but her hands tightened on the steering-wheel until her knuckles turned white.
“Those silly people must be awfully hot,” Tessa observed. “They're driving with the windows closed.”
“Don't worry about
them
â” Celia gave a short harsh laugh. “That's the very latest model station wagonâthey're air-conditioned.
“You'll meet them sooner or later.” She flashed me that same bright insincere smile. “Viv and Hank Singleton. They're our local antique dealers. That's why they can afford such an expensive station wagon. They use it for transporting the pieces they pick upâso it comes off their income tax as a business expense. You'll like them, though. They're very nice people, really.”
“I'm sure I'll like them,” I said, wondering if anyone that nice needed the qualifying afterthoughts.
However, it was the most expansive Celia had been so far and I hoped for more information or local gossip.
My hopes were dashed. Celia retreated into her former silence, lit another cigarette and concentrated on the road, which needed little or no concentration. Traffic was light to the point of non-existence. The Singletons' was the only other vehicle we encountered.
With a faint sigh of resignation, Celia pulled up before the house so familiar to me from all the proud photographs she had sent over.
That had been a long time agoâseveral years now. The house was recognizably the same, but a faint air of shabbiness had settled over it. The paint no longer gleamed brightly; the shrubbery around the house was ragged; even the window-panes seemed dulled.
“I suppose”âCelia sighed againâ“you'd better come in.”
Luke, Dexter and Timothy were already tumbling up the path. Tessa and I followed more slowly, while Celia took her time over locking the car.
Patrick was standing in the hallway waiting to welcome us. His condition seemed to have deteriorated in just the short time since we had last seen him. The circles under his eyes were darker and more pronounced; there was a faint tremor in his hand as he patted Tessa's shoulder.
Tessa caught it, too. She looked up at me with sudden fear in her eyes. She had learned too well the lesson of the shortness of life, the swiftness with which someone could be swept away.
“I thought we'd have chicken salad as it's so hot.” Celia came up quickly, as though to distract us from awkward thoughts and, possibly, inquiries. “Outside on the patio. It's usually a bit cooler out there.”
“Not that it's cool anywhere, these days.” Patrick seemed vaguely puzzled at the speed with which Celia led us through the house and out on to the flagstone-paved patio at the side.
Despite the speed. I had time to notice the wallpaper was starting to peel away at the foot of the stairs, the cobweb in the corner of the ceiling, the frayed edges of the stair carpet. This, in Celia's house! Celia, who had always been so houseproud.
There was something else wrong about the house. I could not put my finger on it, but it added to my uneasiness.
“Now, isn't this better? You sit thereâ” Celia indicated
a plastic loungerâ“and Patrick will go and get us some drinks.” She raised her voice. “Patrick will get us drinks.”
“Oh yes, sure.” Patrick came out of his trance. He had been leaning against the doorframe staring unseeingly into space. “Right away.” He stumbled blindly into the house.
“Oh dear. I think I'd better ⦔ Celia let her thought trail off and turned and followed him, a look of deep concern on her face.
“
You
sit down,” I told Tessa. “I'll be right back.”
Patrick's study seemed gloomier and even more uninviting than it had when I had simply passed through it. Two doors stood open on the far side; giving no indication of what might lie beyond them. I hesitated but could hear no sound of footsteps or voices to guide me in the right direction. Celia and Patrick might have vanished off the face of the earth.
For that matter, there was no trace of the boys, either. The house seemed to have swallowed up everyone.
I started towards the door I thought I remembered. If I could find the hallway again, I ought to be able to find my way to the kitchen.
It was the wrong door. I seemed to be in the sort of cul-de-sac one used as a box room. At one time, Celia might have intended it as a sewing-room, but semed to have abandoned the idea. An adjustable dressmaker's dummy stood by the window. It was small, but still a size or two larger than Celia was right now. When had she lost all that weight?
An end table with a broken leg and splintery-looking rocking-chair jostled together with an ironing board at the
far end of the room. At some point, a washing-machine and spin drier had been added. A shabby wicker basket was filled to overflowing with limp clothing which had seen better days. Dark patches on the wallpaper betrayed that pictures had once hung there when the room had been used for better purposes in a previous incarnation.
If it were mine, I would have used it as a morning room. It could still be pulled back into some sort of ordered charm despite its dispirited appearance.
But it was Celia's problem, not mine, and she would not be pleased if she returned and caught me mentally rearranging one of the shabbier rooms in the house.
I backed out hastily, tried the other door and found myself in the hallway. Celia had sent me a picture of the long, lovely hallway to show me where she had placed the Pembroke table they had bought on their first trip to England before Luke's birth. They had gone on a buying spree in the antique shops to furnish their new house with English heirlooms.
John and I had been aghast at the prices they had paid without a quibble, not to mention the cost of shipping things back to the States. But time and inflation had soon taught us that what had seemed mad extravagance had merely been clever buying and wise investment.
Celia had sent triumphant photographs of the pieces
in situ
throughout the house: the carriage clock on the living-room mantelpiece; the Davenport desk in the corner of the living-room; the Pembroke table in the front hall just below the curve of the stairsâ
The Pembroke table was missing. That was what had
registered subconsciously as I had negotiated the hallway earlier, causing my initial uneasiness.
I looked around, not really expecting to find that it had been moved elsewhere. Celia had enthused too emphatically over the absolute perfection of every placement. Each piece seemed to her to have been designed for the exact location she had chosen and she could visualize no other spot for it. She was not a person who constantly rearranged her furniture. She furnished for the agesâat least, that was what she had intended when buying the furniture.
There had been one of many later acquisitions, a Chinese Chippendale mirror, above the table. Again, a dark oblong patch on the fading wallpaper gave witness to radical changes in the original decor.
It wasn't any of my business. With a mental shake of my head, I tried to dismiss what appeared to be a long-term problem and concentrate on the immediate question.
Where had Celia and Patrick gone? And where was the kitchen?
I turned towards the back of the house, moving silently. I felt instinctively that it was not for me to disturb the deep hush of this house. I ignored doors on either side of the hallway, holding firmly to the theory that kitchens were usually at the rear of the house.
The end of the hallway loomed ahead, with a door promisingly ajar and the murmur of voices beyond the door. I hurried towards it. Just as I was about to push it open and call out a greeting, something in the tone of Celia's voice stopped me cold.
The door silently swung farther open under my touch
and revealed a scene no one was meant to see.
Patrick was clinging to Celia, face hidden in her bosom, shaking with silent sobs. Celia cradled him in her arms, staring over his head with a look of burning desperation.
“Please, Patrickâ” she was pleading. “You promised me this summer. Please, please, darling, hold on. Until October. At least, September. Oh, please ⦔ her voice broke. “Please let me have this one last summer ⦔
Â
I was out of breath when I reached the patio, but I had escaped unseen. Celia and Patrick need never know I had been there, if only I could keep from betraying my guiltily-acquired knowledge.
No wonder Celia had been so anxious for me to come over. It looked as though she were going to need me more than I needed her. The worst shock of my widowhood was overâhers was still to come. Or was the shock of foreknowledge worse than the sudden appalling desolation that had befallen me? What would have been the difference if John and I had known what was to come and been able to discuss it and try to strengthen each other to face it?
“Mummy?” Tessa's small face was puckered with anxiety. “Mummy, are you all right?”
“Yes, darling, I'm fine.” I saw, with relief, that the boys had returned from their mysterious mission. Of course, nothing could have happened to them in the short time they had been gone. And yet â¦
“Where have you been?” I rounded on poor Timothy with more vehemence than I had intended. “What do you mean by running off like that?”
“I'm sorry.” Timothy answered the thought, not the question, while the other two boys looked puzzled. They had not yet had that brush with the ultimate which would decipher adult fears and incomprehensible behaviour for them. “I didn't know we were going to be gone so long, or I'd have told you. We've been adding to the bonfire down at the lake.”
“We were only just down thereâ” Dexter waved an arm towards a towering ramshackle structure visible at the edge of the lake about half a mile away. “You could have seen usâif you'd looked.”
I had been looking elsewhere.
“Isn't it a super bonfire?” Timothy came to my rescue. “They do theirs nowâinstead of Guy Fawkes Nightâwith fireworks and everything.”
“We don't have Guy Fawkes Night,” Luke said. “This is for the Fourth of July.”
“Yeah,” Dexter said. “That's when we threw the British out. We've been celebrating it ever since.”
“That isn't very polite,” Tessa reproved him primly. “
We're
English.”
“Oh, I don't mean you,” Dexter said. “I mean history.”
“It's a splendid bonfire,” I intervened hastily. “But what's that you've got on top instead of a Guy? It looks like a shedâor was it a tree house?”
“It's old man Peterson's privy,” Luke said. “We've been after it for years and we've finally got it. Good thing, too, there aren't many left around these parts. I suppose, by the time I'm grown up, there won't be any at all and we'll have to find something else to top the pile.”
“It's good and old!” Dexter's eyes gleamed enthusiastically. “It ought to go up like nobody's business! Some of them shoot off as many sparks as a rocket when the wood is that old and dry.” He sounded quite expert on the subject.
“Not too many sparks, I hope.” I looked around uneasily; you could smell the heat in the air, leaves rustled drily in the warm wind, the woods were fast approaching the tinderbox stage. “If we haven't had some rain by then, it could be dangerous.”
“Don't worry,” Luke said easily. “The Fire Department always keeps an engine standing by. When it's like this, they wet down the area all around the bonfire before they even let us light it.”
“Yeahâ” The thought made Dexter morose. “Bunch of old killjoys.”
“Oh, come now,” I said. “You wouldn't want the whole town to go up in flames, would you?”
“Wouldn't I?” His eyes gleamed dangerously. “This whole town is nothing but one big gaolhouseâit deserves to burn down.”
“Aw, Dex, it isn't that bad,” Luke protested.
“Maybe not for
you
â” Dexter broke off, looking over my shoulder. His features abruptly rearranged themselves into a welcoming smile; he looked a different person. “Let me give you a hand with that, Mrs. Meadows.”