The Summer Season. Julia Williams

      Edward

      Edward dreams of Lily. She comes to him in the garden, holding a bunch of pansies. It is summer and she wears a sun hat, which falls down her back.

      ‘Here, for you,’ she proffers, ‘to ease your heart.’ She laughs, and her long, dark curls fly loose down her back in the summer breeze. It is always summer, with the Lily of his dreams.

      He reaches out to touch her, to feel her, to know that she is once more real and dear to him, as she ever was. As he does so, she scatters petals to the wind, and her touch on his hand is as light and insubstantial as the breeze. As soon as he grasps her, she is gone away from him, to a place he knows he cannot reach.

      Edward dreams of Lily, and awakes to a cold hearth, a lonely old age and tears forming on his face. One day soon, he knows he will join her. Why can’t it be today?

      Edward and Lily

      1890–1892

      In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love …

      Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’

      ‘Edward, you never said you were coming!’ His mother rose to greet him as Edward came into the garden; she was sitting entertaining as was her wont. He hadn’t let her know and he had walked up from the station so as to surprise her. Now he was caught, left-footed, wanting to have her to himself, unwilling to share her with these strangers spilling out of the rose arbour on the veranda, which overlooked the garden, nonchalantly sipping tea, in the wilting summer heat.

      ‘I wanted to surprise you,’ he said. Her delight at seeing him was infectious, and he couldn’t keep up his feelings of discontent for long. He was here, back where he belonged at Lovelace Cottage, a larger residence than its name suggested, nestling in roughly an acre of land on the Sussex, Downs where they bordered Surrey. The air always seemed better here, purer, away from the fetid smells of London where he was studying.

      ‘Come, sit,’ she said, linking her arm in his, ‘you must eat, I insist.’

      ‘Sorry to break up your party, ladies.’ Edward bowed slightly, tipping his hat. He vaguely recognized some of his mother’s companions, worthy women of the parish all, but there were one or two new to him; he had after all been away for several months.

      ‘You haven’t met Mrs Clark, have you?’ his mother made the introduction. ‘She’s our new vicar’s wife. And we’re very pleased to have her. The church flowers have never looked more beautiful.’

      ‘Oh, that’s Lily’s doing, not mine,’ said Mrs Clark. ‘My daughter has a way with flowers. Always had, ever since she was a little girl. She works magic in the garden at the rectory I tell you.’

      ‘Then she has something in common with Edward,’ said his mother. ‘You know he studies Botany, don’t you?’

      Botany – a subject his late and unlamented father had been very sneering about. John Handford had wanted his son to follow him into the family business – as an importer of exotic goods from the colonies – it was a business that had made his father rich enough to buy this beautiful house and gardens. But like his casual acceptance of Edward’s mother, his father hadn’t appreciated what he’d had. The house and gardens were merely signs of his success, possessions to be gloated over, just as Edward’s mother was. He’d never appreciated the beauty and the peace here, preferring the hurly-burly of city life that had always sustained him.

      When he’d died five years previously, Edward’s father had left the house to Edward and the business jointly to Edward and his mother. Edward had sold his share of the business to his cousin Francis, who was more suited to it than he. His mother had retained her share, which provided an income on which she could live comfortably, while she ran the house in Edward’s absence. They were both much the happier for it.

      ‘Talking of Lily, where is she?’ said Mrs Clark. ‘It really is about time we were going.’

      ‘I could sense she was getting bored with our conversation,’ said Edward’s mother, ‘so I sent her down to the wood.’

      The loosely styled ‘wood’ was an area of the garden that Edward had long wanted to change, but had so far lacked time and funds to do so. In the spring it was full of blue-bells, but the trees were old and creaking, and overshadowed the house too much in Edward’s opinion. He longed to cut them back and open up the space in the middle to make a more formal garden. It was his hope that after he had completed his studies, he would design gardens for the gentry, and he planned to start here.

      ‘I’ll go and fetch her,’ offered Edward, happy to escape the clacking of the women for a moment. The veranda steps led down to a green lawn, which fell away from the house for nearly two hundred feet. In the bottom left-hand corner the offending trees stood in a dip, and Edward made his way down to it. He couldn’t see any sign of anyone at first, so he strode through the trees to the clearing, where he caught sight of a tiny, dark-haired girl, framed in the sunshine. She was wearing a white muslin dress, and peering intently at the flowers in her lap. Long, brown curls tumbled down her back, and her sun hat was slung halfway down it. Her dress was covered in grass stains, and her hands looked rather grubby.

      Edward’s first impression was of a small, and no doubt tiresome, child, and he immediately regretted his offer to fetch her. Then she looked up at him and his preconceptions fell right away. Her green eyes opened wide and her perfect heart-shaped mouth formed an ‘oh’ of surprise at seeing him, and her slender hands flew to her mouth, as she blushed prettily with embarrassment. This was no child, but a girl on the verge of becoming a woman. Her radiant beauty was like nothing he had ever seen before, made more charming by her unconscious ignorance of it.

      ‘Hallo,’ she said, shaking the daisies from her lap, as she rose in some disarray. He could see that even standing she was small, but her petite frame couldn’t hide her womanly figure. He swallowed hard again. ‘Are you Edward?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Edward, still reeling from how wrong his first impression had been. ‘How did you know who I was?’

      ‘Oh, your mother talks about you all the time,’ said Lily. ‘It’s Edward this and Edward that. How did you know my name?’

      ‘Your mother sent me to fetch you,’ Edward offered.

      ‘Oh,’ Lily pulled a face. ‘I was enjoying it here. No doubt I shall be summoned back home to face Papa and be told off again for my hoydenish ways.’

      She looked down ruefully at her stained skirt. A stray curl fell across her face and she absentmindedly pulled it back, reminding him again of the child he had thought her to be.

      ‘Are you often told off for being hoydenish?’ Edward said, laughing. There was something so lively and disingenuous about her, it was impossible not to be enchanted.

      ‘All the time,’ said Lily, with an impish look