Read Online Unclouded Summer by Alec Waugh - Free Book Online

Allan. “He had two goes at everything.”
    â€œIn that case, as we also prevented the Renans from having an open row, I think we can consider our lunch party a success, and now it’s time for my siesta.”
    â€œI’m going to show Francis round, then run him back.”
    â€œWhy bother to do that? Why don’t we take him over to the Foresters? They keep open house. They’re always glad to have an extra man. That’s a much better idea now surely.”
    Judy laughed.
    â€œIt would be a much better idea for us, but I’m very sure that Francis has some pretty lady waiting for him in Villefranche.”
    Francis shook his head.
    â€œI’m afraid I haven’t.”
    â€œSo you’re being faithful to your sweetheart in America.”
    â€œI haven’t got that either.”
    â€œQuite heart-whole then?”
    â€œCompletely.”
    She hesitated. She looked at Francis thoughtfully. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind.
    â€œLet’s go and look at the house,” she said, “not that there’s really anything to see. Will you be all right, Rex?”
    â€œVery much all right. I’m going to have a siesta too.”
    â€œIn that case then …”
    She had said there was not anything to see, and in a sense there was not. The main addition which had been made to a Provencal cottage, consisted of a single room, long, broad and high, with a row of bookshelves running at shoulder height around it with ornaments arranged along the top, with pictures modern for the most part, widely spaced, with two Epstein heads, with a Chinese screen and with a Spanish cabinet. The one long room was really all that there was to see; the old part containing on the ground floor only Sir Henry’s study “And that’s really too much of a mess for you to see,” and a dark low-ceilinged raftered dining room which they only used when it was wet or cold, and on the first floor the two bedrooms, hers and Sir Henry’s and the one guest room “And Henry’s asleep in one and Rex is in the other.” There was nothing to see except the one big room;in a sense it was not anything, in another it was everything. It was a key to their joint Mf e, hers and his.
    â€œWe bought it in ‘19,” she said. “We’d been away all the war, first in the Balkans, then in Rome. I’d been married for three years without seeing Charlton. At first I found it rather overpowering. Look, there’s a picture of it, above the writing desk.”
    She pointed to an early nineteenth-century print; it was a broad, white three-storied house, with a flamboyant portico. It had a broad gravel courtyard: lawns sloped down from it to a pond that was fringed with rhododendrons. It was backed by what appeared to be a forest. An avenue of chestnuts led away from it.
    â€œI’ve got to love it now,” she said, “but when I saw it first I didn’t see how I was ever going to think of it as home, as my home. The Marriotts themselves haven’t had it for so very long. But on the other, the female side, it’s been in the family since the flood. It seemed to belong to the past far more than it did to Henry. There were two stepdaughters as well. It had been their home before anyone had ever heard of me. I felt I had to have something that was really mine, that was really ours. Then when I came down here…” She paused: she looked round her with a possessive fondness. “I’ve made this ours. I’ve moved down here all the things that are really Henry’s. There’s nothing here that hasn’t a personal association for him or me.”
    They walked slowly along the shelves, picking out a book here and there. Many of them were signed copies from their authors.
    â€œYou certainly have a great many friends,” he said. She laughed.
    â€œFriends, that’s a big word. But nearly everyone comes down to