The Summer Before the Dark Read Online Free Page A

future.
    She said, “Of course I’d like to. Can I do the washing up first?”
    They laughed, she laughed. Alan then said, “Well, if somebody else could do the washing up while you telephone?” He gave her a name, a number, and escorted her into the house, using a pleasant formality, like an intimacy that is so easy it is almost impersonal: she recognised this as the air of the life she was about to enter. It was both supporting and relaxing, this manner of his; he stood by her while she telephoned, mouthing at her words she should use—words that would not have come easily to her, because they had the ring of committees. All that finished, he kissed her on both cheeks, and with his arm around her, led her back to the tree on the lawn. He was a good-looking man, of about their age—Michael’s and hers—a family man, with a wife and growing or grown children, a man who earned a great deal of money and spent all his life travelling from conference to conference to talk about food with people from dozens of countries. She liked him. She was thinking that after all it would be a release and a relief to breathe that easy impersonal air for a while. She really did like everything about him, including the way he dressed and presented himself: she had not been much liking the way her husband was dressing these days, nor the way he cut his hair. But better not to think about that, for after all it wasn’t important.
    The reason she felt as if she were falling through the air was because if Tim were not going to be here, there was no point at all in keeping the house open.
    Back under the tree, the hot Sunday afternoon proceeded towards evening, while the men were talking about some medical problem in Iran.
    The question of the letting of the house had been dealt with in a dozen words.
    In the past great discussions had gone on about the letting or the non-letting of the house, everyone having strong opinions about it. They had gone on for days, weeks.
    Now she said, “Well, we’ve never let it before, have we?”
    “What of it?” said Michael. “Some visiting family will take it and be glad to, even if we do leave things in the cupboards.”
    “But what are the children going to use as headquarters if they happen to be in London on their way to somewhere?”
    “They can use somebody else’s house for once, and about time too.”
    “But I don’t really think …”
    “I’ll ring the agent in the morning,” said Dr. Michael Brown, shaming Kate, since he worked from dawn to dusk and would be no less busy than she at her committee.
    But the point was, she was feeling dismissed, belittled, because the problem of the house was being considered so unimportant.
    And when her committee was over, what would she do? It was being taken for granted she would fit herself in somewhere—how very flexible she was being, just as always, ever since the children were born. Looking back over nearly a quarter of a century, she saw that that had been the characteristic of her life—passivity, adaptability to others. Her first child had been born when she was twenty-two. The last was born well before she was thirty. When she offered these facts to others, many envied her; a large number of people, in many countries, knew the Michael Browns as an enviable family.
    The small chill wind was blowing very definitely, ifstill softly enough: this was the first time in her life that she was not wanted. She was unnecessary. That this time in her life was approaching she had of course known very well for years. She had even made plans for it; she would study this, travel there, take up this or that type of welfare work. It is not possible, after all, to be a woman with any sort of a mind, and not know that in middle age, in the full flood of one’s capacities and energies, one is bound to become that well-documented and much-studied phenomenon, the woman with grown-up children and not enough to do, whose energies must be switched from the