The Summer Before the Dark Read Online Free Page B

said children to less vulnerable targets, for everybody’s sake, her own as well as theirs. So there was nothing surprising about what was happening. Perhaps she ought to have expected it sooner?
    She had not expected it this summer. Next summer, or the year after that, yes, but not
now
. What she had set herself to face had been all in the future. But it was
now
that it was happening. Only temporarily, of course, for the house would become their family house again in September, would again be the welcoming base for these “children” all now at home less and less often. But there was her husband to consider, a man who much appreciated his home and everything that went with it. When had all the family last been together, with everyone back from university, or various holidays and trips and excursions, at the same time? A very long time ago, when you came to think of it.
    But the fact was that she, this kingpin, was to be at a loose end from June to late September. With not so much as a room of her own. A very curious feeling that was, as if a warm covering had been stripped off her, as if she were an animal being flayed.
    She and Michael had, of course, discussed this question of her future; talked over her feelings, and his. Discussing everything was the root and prop of their marriage. They believed, always had, that things left unsaid festered, things brought out into the open lost their force. Their relationship had been conducted on this principle from the start.
    A great deal of intelligent insight had gone into their view of themselves and this marriage. They had not been wrong about much.
    For instance, in their joint bedroom, were two books, side by side, one by Bertrand Russell called
The Conquest of Happiness
, and one by Van der Velde,
Ideal Marriage
. From Kate to Michael—Russell; and from Michael to Kate—Van der Velde. Both inscriptions read: “For The First Phase. With all my love.” This commemorated that fact that a phase had ended when their delicious love affair had to end, and they married. They had known that things must change, that the deliciousness must abate, and their long discussions about it all were summed up by these friendly books, From Kate to Michael, From Michael to Kate,
For The First Phase
. Now, picking up these books and opening them on the inscription page, both might have been caught out in a humorous grimace,
had
been caught out by each other, which led to frank and certainly healthy laughter. (Laughter is by definition healthy.) The point was, why the humorous grimace at all? They had been so utterly right, about what had been finishing, and what was beginning—the solid, demanding, satisfactory marriage. There was no room for a humorous grimace. What were they being humorous, ironical, about? And similarly, with certain other long frank open discussions about changes and turning points. Neither would have relinquished these. But Kate had certainly caught herself thinking that perhaps these blueprints of psychological observation, or if youlike, manifestos, that accompanied stages or “phases” of the marriage, were perhaps not all they should be?
    The discussion, for instance, about the cold wind from the future. Which had taken place three years before: but things had happened since which had not been blueprinted or made into statements of account … 
For the Ninth—or Nineteenth—Phase
.
    What had happened was that Michael’s mouth tightened when Tim was mentioned, as now when he said, “I’ll ring the agent in the morning.” Putting her into perspective, laying her aside. So she felt it. That is what she had been
feeling
, regardless of the dozen or so mental attitudes, garments taken down off a rack, the words she used to describe her situation.
    Whatever that situation was, whatever it
really
was, by the end of that summer evening a hundred strands in Kate’s life seemed to be pulled together. This was manifested in many telephone numbers scribbled on bits