Read Online A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale - Free Book Online Page A

so that anything he said was in effect an interruption and thus an irritant. By the time they were on the branch line out to Strawberry Hill, Winnie had made herself so tense that she had stopped talking entirely, and they travelled in silence.
    As they waited on the front doorstep, he could hear Kitty and May’s voices through an open window overhead, reciting some lesson for Madame Vance. Harry thought it might be capitals of the world. They sounded like their usual bouncy selves – geography was a favoured subject, perhaps because it suggested routes of escape from their Twickenham schoolroom – not like girls in a house oppressed by death.
    When the maid opened the door, Mrs Wells was hovering in wait a yard behind her and swept them into the sitting room at once.
    ‘Oh my dears,’ she told them, drawing Winnie down on to a sofa beside her and holding out a hand to Harry, as though she needed the support of both of them to cope. ‘Thank God you’ve come. The strain! I’ve told nobody yet. I only found out with the breakfast post, and the boys had already left for work, of course. And I could hardly tell Julie and the little ones.’
    ‘What is it?’ Winnie asked. ‘Who?’
    Mrs Wells looked her firmly in the face and released Harry’s hand so as to take both Winnie’s in hers.
    ‘It’s George,’ she said.
    Winnie let out a stifled cry. Of all her siblings, her favourite was the only one for whom she had imagined no awful fate that morning. George was so healthy and fearless; nothing bad could possibly happen to George!
    Harry recalled that George had been invited to be a bridesmaid at a smart friend’s wedding, which meant travelling all the way to Gloucester for the last three nights. There had been much associated fuss in the preceding weeks, first over Winnie’s discreet remaking and fitting of the dress the bride’s mother had sent from some country dressmaker, and then over the vexed question of whether it was appropriate for George to travel so far unaccompanied. The wedding had been on Saturday. After spending Sunday in some splendour as the family’s guest, George was due back at Ma Touraine that evening.
    He sank into a nearby armchair and pictured, in the instant, George’s happy face as she teased Winnie on the veranda that first afternoon of their acquaintance, and thought of Jack, so far from them in Chester and so isolated socially. Jack would be devastated.
    Since Harry and Winnie’s marriage, nothing but inconvenience had come in the way of Jack and George continuing their friendship. Although Jack had moved away to take up his new work in Chester, it was understood that there was a keen sympathy between the young people, and Jack had confided in Harry that he planned to ask her to marry him as soon as he was in a position to offer her a home. He did not say as much, and Harry did not press him, but Harry assumed they were harmlessly writing to one another all the while.
    The fond couple had been briefly reunited a month ago, when Jack came to Herne Bay for the baby’s christening. (With a touch of loving artfulness, Winnie had invited both him and George to be godparents.) Although doubly chaperoned – Phyllis’s adoring grandmother had come to stay, too – they had spent hours in each other’s company and would have exchanged all manner of confidences.
    Harry looked at the tears glistening on his wife’s kind face and had decided he must travel to Chester in person, to break the news that very day, when Mrs Wells said,
    ‘I don’t know whether to cry or laugh. I’ve spent the morning doing both. I’m quite drained.’
    ‘But . . .’ Winnie started.
    ‘She’s eloped,’ Mrs Wells told her. ‘The little goose is married.’ She glanced at Harry with a hint of flirtation. ‘We now have two Mrs Canes in the family. Here. You must read for yourselves. I’ve read them so often, and they’re such very sweet letters, I shall be overcome all over again if I try to read