Memories of the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page A

to make sure she's
happy about it, and then come and stay and we'll
talk.'
    'I'd really like that. It's taking time for me to get
my head round it all. That my grandfather was
actually here with my mother, I mean, and that they
were friends with your family.'
    'Watch it, Hes. He'll be making up a story about
it if you're not careful.' Clio was standing by the car
with the door open, watching them with affection.
'He's a dramatist, remember.'
    Hester gave a final wave as the car turned onto
the road, smiling a little. St Francis had strolled out
behind her and was now sitting on the bridge with
his tail hanging down, and she smoothed his hard
head. There would be no need for Jonah to invent
a story: the truth was more than enough to satisfy
his creative need. And how like his grandfather he
was: not very tall but neat and strong-looking. As he
and Clio had come in through the door last night,
his black hair plastered to his skull, his dark eyes
shocked and wide, her heart had somersaulted in
recognition. Just so had Michael looked all those
years ago, coming back into the house from the
dark, wild evening, with Eleanor's arm protectively
about his shoulders, soaked with the rain and dazed
with horror.
    Leaning on the bridge beside St Francis, Hester
was uncomfortably aware that the memory of her
sister-in-law was still able to trigger a reaction of
animosity. From the very beginning, when Edward
had brought her home to meet his family, Hester
had disliked Eleanor. Standing in the sun, stroking
the cat's soft warm back, Hester wondered just
how much she would tell Jonah. Where would the
story begin? With the return to the family's fishing
lodge by the river Barle when their father died in
1936 and she was just eight years old? She could
remember the preparations for the long journey
to the West from Cambridge, one or two of her
father's colleagues from the university coming to
the station to bid them farewell: her mother, silent
with grief, and attended anxiously by her two older
children, Edward and Patricia, whilst their nanny
kept the three younger ones entertained.
    She could remember, too, the terrible emptiness
and anguish in her own small heart. It was because
of the sudden death of her adored father that
she'd transferred her love wholesale to Edward,
who most resembled him, and why, five years later,
she had so resented Eleanor. Perhaps that was the
beginning: Eleanor's arrival at Bridge House with
Edward.
    St Francis was purring with a kind of rumbling
growl, pulsating gently beneath her caressing hand,
and Hester chuckled suddenly with a swooping
uplift of the spirits. The prospect of revisiting the
past, exorcising the ghosts, filled her with an odd
kind of pleasure. It would bring release to relive
it. After all, there was nobody left to be hurt by
the story that she would tell Jonah: surely not even
Lucy could suffer now. Last night she'd been
fearful, infected by Jonah's reaction on the bridge
and anxious lest she might reveal secrets that his
mother had deliberately kept private. This morning
she wondered if she'd been foolish. If Lucy gave her
blessing to it then she would gladly tell Jonah their
story. Already her mind was fingering the past as
one might peruse an old book, turning the pages
and looking upon long-forgotten scenes.
    She leaned on the sun-warmed stones beside the
cat and gave herself up to the luxury of remembering.
    In the car the atmosphere was oddly strained.
Without Hester and her calm acceptance of the
previous evening's events, Jonah and Clio were
both suddenly rather shy.
    'How different it looks this morning,' Jonah
was saying, clearly determined to play the part of
an appreciative guest. 'It's an extraordinary landscape.'
    They were travelling beneath a canopy of bare
branches, the high wooded hill rising precipitously
to the right of the road; the misshapen woody roots
of massive trees grasped the mossy banks like prehensile
toes digging deep into a rich black mulch of
wet leaves and