The Dark of Summer

first few minutes.

“You look wonderful,” he said.

“Not really,” she said. “I've not been well lately. I need to get a little sun.”

It all sounded so inane and pointless, this small talk when they should have been making up for all those lost years. And yet… What else was there to do?

Elaine said, “How was your drive?” Her voice was cool, even, and touched by a faint British accent that amplified her sophistication. Her smile was absolutely dazzling.

“Very nice,” Gwyn said, her own voice stiff with expectancy. “I didn't mind it at all.”

Another moment of awkward silence passed.

Gwyn almost wished she had not come here. This reunion was going to take more out of her than she had to give.

Then, as if snapping out of a trance, her uncle said, “Gwyn, I'm truly sorry for what's happened.”

“It's all past,” she said.

“But that makes me no less sorry.”

“You mustn't worry about it,” she said.

“I can't help but worry,” he said. “I only wish that I had come to my senses years ago, before so much bad feeling had been generated — while Louise was still alive…”

Gwyn bit her lip.

Tears, unbidden, rose in her eyes.

She thought that she saw tears, also in William Barnaby's eyes, though she could not be certain.

Then, as the fat droplets brimmed up and trickled down her cheeks, the spell was broken altogether, and their uncontrollable emotions forced them to accept each other in a way that intellect alone could not have done. Elaine came swiftly forward, graceful and concerned, and she put an arm around the girl's shoulders, consoling her with few but well chosen words. When Gwyn had wiped the worst of the tears away and felt somewhat better, Elaine said, “Come and sit down. We've got so terribly much to talk about, the three of us.”

Elaine had been right: they couldn't get done talking. At times, all three of them would begin to speak at once, producing a senseless chatter that made them all break off in laughter. Then they would sip their brandy (a snifter had been wetted for Gwyn), take a moment to reorder their thoughts, and begin again. They talked about the past, about the present, about the summer ahead, and they gradually grew more accustomed to each other until, by late in the afternoon, Gwyn felt as if she had not been separated from them for years, but, rather, for a few short weeks.

She hoped they felt the same way about her, and she was fairly certain that they did, although she now and then sensed a caution, a cool reserve that was not unlike the same air she had noticed about the butler, Fritz Helman. She supposed that this was nothing intentional, but merely the way of those who have been very wealthy all their lives and have insulated themselves from the heat of the real world beyond their preserves.

Her Uncle William was not a man to indulge in self-pity or in self-recriminations. He was proud and a bit aloof. With others, outside of his circle of family and friends, he would be a bit snobbish, though not unlikable. Once he had convinced her of his sincere contrition for his past behavior — which he did at the outset when she first walked into the library — he never mentioned it again. Indeed, he spoke as if the separation between them had never existed at all, as if they were sitting down for a chat like a thousand others they had had. When he let his mind wander through the past and call forth amusing anecdotes, he laughed both at the stupidities perpetrated by himself and his father, and at the good times from his childhood, before the feuding had begun. He did not apologize repeatedly, and he did not whine over his mistakes; he was a man who was above that sort of behavior.

The conversation, therefore, was almost uniformly entertaining and contributed to a general lightening of Gwyn's spirits. The only time it grew depressing was when they wanted to know about her sickness.

“When you came in,” Elaine said, “you mentioned having been ill.”

“Yes.”

“Nothing too serious?”

“Nothing I could die from,” she said, laughing, trying to get them off the subject.

But they were both concerned for her. Her uncle said, “Our own doctor's quite good. I could make an appointment for you if—”

“That's not necessary,” Gwyn said.

“It's no trouble, and—”

“It wasn't exactly a physical illness,” she said, looking down at her hands which were folded around the thick stem of her brandy snifter and which were trembling noticably.

When she looked up, she caught the tail-end of a meaningful glance which the two older people had exchanged over this bit of news. For an instant, she almost thought that she had glimpsed an element of a smile in that glance… But that did not make sense. Mental illness was a misfortune; there was, surely, nothing about it that anyone could find humorous.

For a while, depressed by her own story, she had to tell them all that she had experienced because of the shock of her parents' death — the long naps, the longer nights in bed, and finally about her battle, with the help of a psychiatrist, to overcome her malaise. It was all very trying to recount, but she decided they had a right to hear about all of it. They were, she hoped, to be her only loved ones, and she did not want to have to keep secrets from them.

Much later, after the conversation had been channeled back to more pleasant subjects, Elaine stood abruptly, set down her glass and said, “Well, I think we've badgered Gwyn enough for now.” She turned to the girl and said, “You must be exhausted after your drive. I'll show you to your room, so you can rest and freshen up before supper.” She looked at her watch. “It's just six-thirty now. That gives you two hours before dinner.”

Gwyn's room on the second floor was huge and airy, furnished in genuine colonial antiques including a canopied bed. It had two large windows, both of which looked out on the lawn, the edge of the cliff, and the endless sea beyond. The sky was high and blue, marred only by a few scattered, dark clouds near the horizon — and the ocean threw back this blueness tenfold, like a painter's pot of color.

'It's a beautiful view,” Gwyn said.

The waves rolled toward the beach at the base of the cliff, which was not within view from this vantage point, tipped by brilliantly white foam that shimmered like a heat mirage.

“Do you really think so?” Elaine asked, standing next to her.

“Don't you?”

“Of course,” Elaine said. “But Will remembered about Ginny, about the accident… And he thought maybe you wouldn't like a view of the sea, that it would bring back unpleasant memories.”

“Of course it doesn't,” Gwyn said. But her voice was strained.

Ginny had died in a boating accident from which Gwyn had escaped with her life. Looking at the sea, Gwyn had not recalled the association — but now she could hardly avoid it. She remembered, with a sudden intensity that surprised her, the empty, hollow pain that had followed her sister's death when they were both twelve.

“Your life's been so full of death and pain,” Elaine said, touching her cheek. “But it's going to change now. You've only got good things coming to you.”

“I hope.”

“I know.”

Elaine showed her the private bathroom attached to her room, showed her where extra towels and linens were kept if she should need them. When the older woman left, her footsteps were like quickly fading whispers, testimony to her grace, and she closed the heavy door without making a sound.

Gwyn returned to the window, like an iron filing drawn to a magnet, and she watched the rhythmic pulsing of the great ocean which, in some small way, still harbored Ginny Keller… It held her atoms, sundered one from the other, which it had scattered to the four corners of the world, food for the fishes, no longer a person, no longer anything at all…

Dr. Recard had warned her that, when she found herself facing a particularly unpleasant chore or memory, that she should not turn from it, but should confront it, should become so familiar with it that it lost its frightfulness. Now, she confronted the ocean, the rolling waves, the low sky which was much like the sky beneath which Ginny had drowned so many years earlier…