Voices in Summer Read Online Free PDF Page A

and her smile was wide and open, her teeth even and shining white. 'You're Alec Haverstock. Daphne wrote and told me. I got a letter yesterday. Come and have a drink.'
    He could scarcely believe his good fortune. He asked her out for dinner that very evening, and after that they were seldom apart. After murky London, Hong Kong was a positive fairground of pleasures to be enjoyed: a crowded, teeming fairground, to be sure, where poverty and riches rubbed shoulders on every corner; a world of contrasts that both shocked and delighted; a world of heat and sunshine and blue skies.
    There was, all at once, so much to do. Together they swam and played tennis, went riding in the early mornings, sailed her brother's little dinghy on the breezy blue waters of Repulse Bay. At night they were inundated with all the glitter and glamour of Hong Kong's considerable social life. There were dinner parties in establishments more luxurius than he had ever dreamed existed in this day and age. Cocktail parties on board visiting cruisers; regimental occasions – the Queen's Birthday and Beating Retreat; naval occasions. Life for two young people on the brink of falling in love seemed to have no limit to the good things it had to offer, and it finally sank through to Alec that the best thing of all was Erica herself. One evening, as he drove her home after a party, he asked her to marry him, and she gave a typical shout of pure pleasure and flung her arms around his neck, very nearly causing him to run the car off the road.
    The next day they went shopping and bought her the biggest star sapphire engagement ring that he could afford. Her brother gave a party for them in the Mess, and there was more champagne drunk that evening than Alec had ever seen consumed in such a relatively short time.
    They were married in the cathedral in Hong Kong by the bishop. Erica's parents flew out from England for the ceremony, and Erica wore a dress of fine white cotton lawn, encrusted with white embroidery. They spent their honeymoon in Singapore and then returned to Hong Kong.
    And so the first year of their married life was passed in the Far East, but the idyll finally had to end. Alec's term of duty was over, and he was recalled to London. They returned in November, a gloomy enough month at the best of times, and when they came to the house in Islington, he picked her up and carried her over the doorstep, which meant, at least, that she didn't get her feet wet, because it was pouring with rain at the time.
    Erica didn't think much of the house. Seen through her eyes, Alec had to admit that the decor was fairly uninspired, and he told her to do what she wanted to do with it, and he would foot the bill. This delightful ploy kept her happy and busy for some months, and by the time the house had been reconstructed, redecorated, and refurnished to Erica's exacting standards, Gabriel was born.
    Holding his daughter for the first time was one of the most astonishing experiences in Alec's life. Nothing had prepared him for the humbleness, the tenderness, the pride he experienced as he pushed aside the baby's shawl and looked for the first time into her small, downy face. He saw the brilliant blue of her open eyes, the high forehead, the crest of spiky, silky, black hair.
    'She's yellow,' said Erica. 'She looks like a Chinese.'
    'She isn't really yellow.'
    Some months after Gabriel's birth he was sent east again, this time to Japan. But now everything was different, and he was almost ashamed of his reluctance to leave his little daughter, even for three months. He admitted this to nobody, not even Erica.
    Least of all Erica. Because Erica was not a natural mother. She had always been more interested in horses than children and had shown a sad lack of enthusiasm when she had realized that she was pregnant. The physical manifestations of child-bearing revolted her . . . she hated her swollen breasts, her ballooning abdomen. The long wait bored her, and even the interest