A Song for Summer

That the estate should go entire and unencumbered to the eldest son had been Mrs Kendrick's intention, as it was the intention of every landowner in this self-contained and rural district. Since her husband's death she had been in charge of Crowthorpe's affairs, and that Roland meant to leave the Indian Army and come home to Britain was a source of great satisfaction. Roland had been a pleasure to her from the moment of his birth; a handsome, outgoing, tough little boy who seldom cried, was good at sport, and went off to his prep school at seven with a brave smile.

Roland would make a good master for Crowthorpe and as he had had the sense to marry out there, there might soon be a son.

And if anything happened to Roland there was William. William was not quite as steady as Roland--there had been a few debts during his young days and rumours of trouble with a girl who was undoubtedly common and had had to be paid off. But he had steadied down a lot; he was handsome and popular with the county, and no doubt would soon get himself engaged to someone suitable.

So the succession was secure and normally Mrs Frobisher would not have given a second thought to poor Kendrick, that unfortunate afterthought which had resulted from her permitting her husband what she had virtually ceased to Dermit after her elder sons were born. Kendrick had been a disaster from the first, embarrassing and distressing her with his inability to fit in; his asthma, his fear of horses, his shame-making crying fits when it was time to return to school ... and, later, the way he buried himself in his room listening to obscure and depressing music and ruining his eyes with endless reading.

But that morning, in The Times, she had read that it was the intention of the Government to issue gas masks to the populace. Mrs Frobisher had not been very interested in the policies of Herr Hitler. She had no particular quarrel with him --indeed, with his attempts to clear away Jews, homosexuals, communists and gypsies she had a certain sympathy--but he was making a lot of noise about Lebensraum and colonies and that was a different matter. The art of colonisation was one that was only understood by the British, who knew how to deal with inferior races with justice and sternness. So it might after all be necessary to fight a war, and Mrs Frobisher, suppressing with an iron effort of will the panic that the memory of the last war and its hideous decimation of the nation's youth brought to her, had decided that Kendrick must be sent forand instructed to marry. Kendrick would survive whatever happened; with his asthma and his astigmatism, not to mention the slight curvature of his spine, there was no question of his being called up for military service. Horrible as it was to imagine him as master of Crowthorpe, it would be better than letting the estate go out of the family.

So Kendrick was sent for, and took Volume Three of A la Recherche du Temps Perdu for the train and a packet of Milk of Magnesia tablets, for a summons to Crowthorpe always gave him indigestion, and took the train north. At Carlisle, as always happened when he travelled home, it began to rain.

In the old Buick which his mother had sent for him, he watched the mist swirling round the hills, heard the forlorn bleating of the black-faced sheep, and the sinister rushing of the brown streams running almost at flood level, and wondered what he had done. Kendrick had his own income, inherited from a distant relative who had been sorry for the unwanted little boy, and owned his flat in Pimlico, so there was not really much that his mother could do to him, but logic played little part in Kendrick's perception of Patricia Frobisher.

It was not until after dinner, which he took alone with his mother in the freezing dining room, that he gathered why he had been summoned.

"I hope you can manage to have a sensible conversation about this, Kendrick," she said, when the maid had delivered herself of the blancmange and retreated, her duty done. "I don't want any hysteria or panic.

But it seems possible that there is going to be a war."

Kendrick put down his napkin, suddenly as pale as the pudding in front of him. In his head Zeppelins exploded into flame, planes zoomed, children ran screaming from their demolished houses.

"Do you really think so?"' he managed to stammer.

"I don't know. Chamberlain is doing his best to avert it, but we must always look at possibilities unflinchingly."

"Yes," said Kendrick, and thought longingly of Marcel Proust, his hero, who had spent twelve years in a cork-lined room working on his masterpiece. Strictly speaking this could not be regarded as an unflinching way of carrying on, but

of course he had been a genius.

"As you know, Roland is coming home, but if there's any trouble he's sure to join up and William is now an experienced pilot. If anything happens to them you will become the owner of Crowthorpe. Nothing can be done about this."