Small Slice of Summer. Бетти Нилс

he paid for such elegance.

      ‘Warm enough?’ he wanted to know, and when she said yes, nodded carelessly and with a last wave took the car down the drive, past the little lodge and into the lane. ‘Nice day for a run,’ he observed, then lapsed into silence. Now would be the time, thought Letitia, when she should embark on a sparkling conversation which would hold him enthralled, but there wasn’t an idea in her head, and the harder she thought, the emptier it became.

      ‘Ankle all right?’ asked her companion, and she embarked with relief on its recovery, her gratitude to Julius and Georgina and himself, and how much she had enjoyed her stay at Dalmers Place. But even repeating herself once or twice couldn’t spin her colloquy out for ever; she lapsed into silence once more, looking at the scenery with almost feverish interest in case Jason should imagine that he might be forced to entertain her.

      They were slowing down to go through Epping when he said blandly: ‘This erstwhile young man of yours—did he train you to speak only when spoken to?’

      She was instantly affronted. ‘What a perfectly beastly thing to say! Of course not. I—I can’t think of anything to talk about, if you must know.’

      ‘Dear girl, I’m in the mood to be entertained by the lightest of chat, and surely you’re used to me by now— Big Brother Jason, and all that.’

      She laughed then and he said at once: ‘That’s better. I thought we might stop for coffee before we get on to the motorway—Windsor, perhaps, with luck we should be able to lunch in Ilminster, unless there is anywhere else you would prefer?’

      She shook her head. She didn’t know of any restaurants as far-flung as that; when she had gone out with Mike he had taken her to unpretentious places where he always made a point of assuring her that the food was good however humble the establishment appeared to be. She suspected that his ideas of good food weren’t quite in the same category as Jason’s; certainly the hotel where he chose to stop for coffee was a four-star establishment, the kind of place Mike would have considered a great waste of money. She savoured the luxury of their pleasant surroundings and began to enjoy herself. Jason was a charming companion and amusing and not in the least anxious to impress her. They went on their way presently, nicely embarked on the kind of casual talk which demanded very little effort and allowed for the maximum of laughter. Letitia hardly noticed the miles as they slipped by under the BMW’s wheels, and when they stopped in Ilminster, she said regretfully: ‘How quickly the time has gone!’

      The doctor smiled gently, remarking merely that he was hungry and hoped that she was too as he ushered her into the George Hotel. ‘See you in five minutes in the bar,’ he suggested, and left her to tidy her wildly untidy hair and re-do her face. The freckles were worse than ever, she noted with disquiet, and then decided to ignore them; Jason had said he liked them.

      The hotel was a pleasant place. They had their drinks and then ate their lunch with healthy appetites; cold roast beef, cut paper-thin, with a salad so fresh that it looked as though it had just been picked from the garden, and a rhubarb pie which melted in the mouth to follow, accompanied by enough clotted cream to feed a family of six. They washed down this splendid meal with a red Bordeaux and rounded everything off with coffee before taking to the road once more, making short work of the miles to Exeter, and once through that city and out on to the Moretonhampstead road, with the hills of Dartmoor ahead of them, they slowed down so that they might miss nothing of the scenery around them.

      Somehow it didn’t surprise her to learn that the doctor had been that way before, she suspected that he was a man who got around quite a bit without boasting about it—all the same, she was able to point out some of the local sights as they went along, and when they had gone through Moretonhampstead and slowed down still more to go through Chagford, she told him about the Grey Wethers stone circle close by before directing him to turn off the road and take a winding lane leading off towards the heart of the moor.

      ‘It’s such a small village that it isn’t on all the maps,’ she explained, ‘and the road isn’t very good, although a few people use it when they want to see Yes Tor, but most of them go from the Okehampton road, it’s easier.’

      Her companion grunted and dropped to a crawl; the lane had become narrow and winding, sometimes passing through open wild country with enormous views, and then dipping into small, densely wooded valleys which defied anyone passing through them to see anything at all.

      ‘We’re almost there,’ offered Letitia placatingly as Jason swung the car round a right-angled bend, ‘and you won’t need to come out this way; there’s a good road over the moor that will get you on to the Tavistock road.’ She pointed down into the valley running away to their left. ‘There’s the church.’

      The lane became the village street with a scattering of cottages on either side before it widened into a circle with an old-fashioned drinking trough for horses in its centre. The church lay ahead with the rectory alongside, a wicket gate separating its garden from the churchyard, past which the road wandered off again, up the hill on the other side. Jason, still crawling, afforded Mrs Lovelace, who ran the village shop and post office, and was the natural fount of all local gossip, an excellent opportunity of taking a good look at both him and his beautiful motor-car as he turned into the rectory gateway, slid up its short drive and stopped soundlessly before its porch.

      The garden had appeared to be empty, but all at once it was full of people; her father coming round the side of the house to meet them—a middle-aged, rather portly man, of medium height and with a cheerful face, and her mother, who rose, trowel in hand, from the middle of a clump of lupins ornamenting the herbaceous border, and four girls, all pretty, who came tearing out of the door to cluster round the car.

      Letitia cast a lightning glance at her companion and found him to be as placid as usual, only his brows were raised a little and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

      The introductions took quite a few minutes and the doctor bore up under them with equanimity. They were out of the car by now and Letitia, having made Jason known to her parents, started on her sisters.

      ‘Margo,’ she began, ‘back from Scotland, I daresay you’ve seen her at St Athel’s, and Hester, she’s married to a doctor in Chagford, and Miriam who’s married to a vet in Moretonhampstead, and this is Paula, who’s still at school.’

      He shook their proffered hands and submitted to a battery of eyes without appearing to mind.

      ‘A little overpowering,’ murmured the Rector as Letitia was drawn, with a lot of talking and laughter, into the family circle. ‘So many women—of course, I’m used to them, bless their hearts, but they might possibly strike terror into a stranger’s heart.’

      The doctor laughed: ‘Hardly that.’ He turned round to look at them, gathered in a charming bunch round Letitia. ‘You must be delighted to have them all home together,’ he observed to Mrs Marsden.

      She smiled at him, a small, still pretty woman. ‘Yes, it’s wonderful, and it happens so seldom. How kind of you to bring Letitia home—such an unfortunate accident…’

      ‘I was the cause of it, Mrs Marsden.’

      She shook her head. ‘But not to blame; Letitia wrote and told me exactly how it happened; it was hardly your fault that she was pushed into the road.’ She looked with interest at the BMW. ‘It’s a beautiful car, Doctor…’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’

      ‘Jason.’

      She smiled at him. ‘Such a nice name. You’ll stay to tea?’

      ‘I’d like to very much.’