Summer at the Haven Read Online Free Page B

together in the summer of 1914 and had been killed in Flanders in the first battle of Ypres. Her short romance seemed now as if it had happened to someone in a book she had read long ago and when she thought about it, she felt ashamed that she could hardly recall Paul’s face or his voice – the miniature had never seemed real. She could only remember how the backof his hands and his arms were covered with fine golden hairs and that he had a habit of softly whistling to himself, whereas she could always still see her brother vividly and hear him speak and laugh.
    There was no one else left to marry among the families that her parents knew and “afterwards”, as Miss Norton always referred to the years immediately following the War, her parents anyway needed her at home. Her father, always keenly interested in racing, grew reckless. “One must do something, Meg,” he had said to his daughter, “you understand, don’t you, a man must do something, but promise me you’ll never bet yourself.” Gradually racing debts piled up and, at his death, the estate and the old house and most of its contents had to be sold. Miss Norton and her mother took a flat in Darnley and there her mother died and, eventually, Meg Norton, whose sight had begun to give serious trouble, moved into The Haven.
    She did not make friends there easily. “Stand-offish,” said Miss Blackett, but it was really that she had never learned to mix in a wider circle than the narrow one in which she had been reared. She found herself more at ease with Mrs Thornton than the rest. She had been the Squire’s daughter in a village and Mrs Thornton’s girlhood had been spent in a country parsonage. They had inhabited the same vanished world. It was Mrs Thornton, though, who had made the first overture. She noticed how blind Miss Norton was getting and wondered if she would like the morning papers read to her sometimes. Miss Norton agreed to the suggestion with some hesitation, though grateful for the offer, and Mrs Thornton soon found that she was not much interested. It took several sessions equally boring to both before Miss Norton brought herself to ask for the sports pages. She had kept her promise to her father but retained the interest which she had shared with him. By this time, however, Mrs Thornton had taken note of the row of silver cups on the long shelf opposite the windowand was not altogether surprised.
    “What a beautiful array you have there, Miss Norton,” she said.
    “I used to be quite a successful show jumper as a girl,” said Miss Norton, “but most of these cups were won by my brother – he was a fine all-round athlete.”
    Mrs Thornton felt a pang of sympathy and pity, while at the same time she was glad that her shelves held books and not silver cups. She possessed a living heritage from the past and she thought, not for the first time, that old age bore more grievously upon those whose main interests had been in physical activities. So from then on she patiently ploughed through reports of race meetings and when these were exhausted, accounts of cricket, tennis and football events in their due seasons, and followed the careers of notable sportsmen and women of many nationalities for Miss Norton’s sake. And then, one day, when she had finished reading about how “Sandhurst Prince won the Sirena Stakes at Kempton Park with consummate ease”. Miss Norton surprised her by asking if she knew anything about “Talking Books”.
    “Indeed I do,” said Mrs Thornton. “I have a blind cousin who would not know what to do without them. There is a great variety to choose from, too. Is there any special author you would like me to try and get for you?”
    “Do they have any of Shakespeare’s plays?” asked Miss Norton. “I am very fond of the plays.”
    “Now,” said Mrs Thornton to herself, “this just shows that nobody really knows anything about anybody when they think they do.”
    Miss Norton went on, “Of course, I don’t