Lost Summer. Stuart Harrison
converted for use as her studio and checked her email. She loved this room, with its big roof window that looked out towards the river and the fells. There was a message from Julian Crown, who was her publisher. He wanted her to call him.
As she stood in front of her drawing board looking at the illustrations for the story that she was working on, she wondered what he wanted. The books that she wrote were very simple, aimed at two- to four-year-olds. It was the accompanying pictures that breathed life into her words. It was a career she’d stumbled into almost by accident, when she’d answered an ad in one of the Sunday papers. After Kate was born the doctors had told Angela she wouldn’t have any more children, so when Kate started going to kindergarten she suddenly had the house to herself again and she was bored. David had said she could help out with the office work at the sawmill if she wanted to, but the business was doing well enough without her, and he already had Mollie as his personal assistant-cum-secretary-cum-administrator. Besides which, the sawmill was David’s passion. She wanted something for herself.
She had phoned her old boss at the mail order company in Carlisle where she’d worked after she’d finished art college, and he’d offered to give her back her old job, but seeing the old office again, and many of the same faces, had made her hesitant. While she was thinking it over she saw an ad inviting people interested in a career as an illustrator for children’s stories to submit samples of their work.
Believing she had nothing to lose she’d gone to the library and pored over a stack of books like the ones she’d read to Kate when she was younger. Then she had gone home and written one herself, basing it around Castleton and the fells and surrounding countryside, and including a few whimsical watercolours. She’d posted it off quickly, before she changed her mind, not really expecting anything to come of it.
The publisher, it turned out, liked her work. His name was Julian Crown. Over the phone he told her that her pictures evoked a strong sense of childlike innocence that was, in his words, ‘really quite charming’. She went down to London on the train to meet him, suspicious that there would be a catch, half expecting him to ask her to pay for the production of her book herself. In fact he turned out to be a likable and genuine man who wore a suit with a buttonhole flower. He took her to lunch at a restaurant in Poland Street and told her that if she listened to his advice he thought he could sell her work. She had, and he did. Since then on average she’d produced a book a year. She wasn’t about to retire to the South of France on the proceeds, but she enjoyed the feeling of independence and the sense of purpose it gave her. She only worked a couple of hours a day, usually in the mornings after Kate had left for school. She could have done more if she wanted. Julian was always trying to persuade her that she should.
She picked up the phone and called the number for Kimberley Books and was put through to Julian.
‘Angela, you got my message.’ He sounded pleased to hear from her.
‘Hello, Julian, how are you?’
‘Marvellous. Couldn’t be better. How’s life in the wild open spaces?’
‘It’s Cumbria, Julian. It isn’t exactly the Russian Steppes.’
He laughed, but to him it might as well have been. On one of her occasional visits to London he’d taken her to meet his wife. They lived in a three-storey Georgian terrace house in a leafy street near Belsize Park. The world of publishing apparently involved an endless round of social events. In between cocktail parties and book launches Julian and his wife, who Angela had thought was beautiful and sophisticated, went to the opera and the theatre and ate at fine restaurants. Their house was tastefully and expensively furnished. Angela had showed Julian on a map exactly where she lived and she recalled his expression of surprise.
‘My dear, it’s practically in Scotland.’ He seemed to think civilization ended somewhere just north of Hampstead, and Hadrian’s Wall hadn’t been built for nothing.
Now, as they chatted, and he asked how her current book was progressing she wondered what he really wanted. She told him the book would be finished on time.
‘Excellent,’ he said, and there was a significant pause.
‘Was there something specific you wanted to talk about, Julian?’
‘Actually there is, now that you come to mention it. An American firm is interested in publishing you.’ He paused to allow a moment for that to sink in. ‘They like your work, but they want you to do a series specifically for their market.’
‘You mean, set them in America?’
‘Actually, they want you to make them more English. Or at least more like the average American’s idea of England. Put in a few teashops and the odd m’lord perhaps. There is a catch,’ Julian added.
‘A catch?’ She should have known there would be. The excitement she’d begun to feel rapidly dissipated.
‘The thing is they want nine books over the next three years.’
‘Nine?’ she echoed.
‘And they would want you for a publicity tour.’
Suddenly she realized exactly what would be involved. What had begun as an interest, something she found personally rewarding, would become a full-time career. Three books a year would mean taking on a commitment way beyond her current contract with Julian. She understood that it wouldn’t end there. It would just be the beginning. A tour would mean she would have to go away, perhaps for weeks. Her life would change. ‘I don’t know, Julian. There’s Kate to think of.’
He sighed. ‘I was afraid you’d say that. This kind of opportunity doesn’t often come along, Angela. It may never happen again. Before you turn it down, at least think about it. Will you promise me?’
She hesitated before she agreed. She owed him that much. ‘Of course I will.’
‘That’s all I ask.’
He then spent another fifteen minutes reiterating what was at stake. He kept repeating that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If things went well perhaps other countries would publish her books too. The Americans would launch her with a tour of their major cities. New York, San Francisco, Chicago. When he finally let her go her head was spinning with the thought of all those places she had only ever read about. After they hung up she gazed out of the window at the fells. Once she had thought that this was the only life she ever wanted; herself and David and Kate, this house. They had been happy. Her expression clouded with sadness.
Downstairs Angela paused in the doorway to David’s study. The room smelt vaguely musty so she opened the window to let in some air. She glanced at some papers on the desk. A recent bank statement for the sawmill revealed that there was more money going out of the business than was coming in. She opened the drawer where she knew David kept his Scotch and the bottle she found was only two-thirds full. Yesterday it had been unopened.
She looked around at the hunting and fishing prints on the wall, the clutter of male effects. Three or four fishing rods in one corner, an old leather shotgun case that he kept behind the bookcase. The room had David’s stamp all over it. It was a man’s room. She used to think she knew him. For most of their married life together they’d been happy. They had the occasional argument and there were things about David that irritated her, but they weren’t important. No doubt he felt the same way about some of her habits. But these last few months he had changed. At first she’d put it down to worry about the sawmill. The local economy, which was so reliant on farming, had taken a battering in successive years, and uncertainty over the estate hadn’t helped matters. But it was more than that. She had the disconcerting feeling that this was the room of a stranger. These days when David was at home he sat in here brooding and drinking. He wouldn’t talk to her any more, though she knew there was something eating away at him. She couldn’t remember when he’d last slept in their bed. A month? Six weeks? It was affecting Kate as well. She avoided her father and these days hardly ever brought friends home from school.
For the first time in thirteen years Angela faced the possibility that her marriage was in trouble. How much longer was she prepared to go on like this? Briefly