All Else is Folly: An unforgettable, moving saga from the Queen of Storytellers by Catherine Gaskin

Author:Catherine Gaskin [Gaskin, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: family saga, romance, 1960s, love triangle, love and marriage, womens fiction, american wife
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2021-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

TUESDAY

I

The morning was soft and mild; yesterday’s sun again made bright patches on the polished floor, timidly touched the silver on the table, lost itself among the faded folds of the curtains. The room was as usual; the table laid as it was always laid for breakfast at Hythebourne. In the orderly array of cutlery there was precision, but not peace. A sense of impending events made the atmosphere restless and alive. One caught it all over the house ‒ when one stood to listen to the silence, just as Susan stood now, within the deep door-frame of the dining-room.

Louis stood listening also, and looking at her. Her face matched the silence, he thought. Serene when one first glanced at it, but ready, in a second, to become full of meaning and animation. Her skin was so pale above the black she wore, but the colour of her hair was unsubdued. She might look confident and untouchable as she stood there, in a spot where the sun had not reached, but there was a hint of weariness about her. He wished she would stir or speak, anything to break that lifeless pose. She merely stood there, head thrown back, her body braced against the dark wood behind her in an attitude of listening.

‘Susan?’ He moved away from the window.

She started and turned in his direction. ‘It’s you,’ she said. The words reached him in a breathless rush. Her composure wavered and trembled.

‘You’re down early,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you sleep?’

‘Sleep?’ she repeated. It seemed to take her a long time to fasten her mind on an answer. ‘Oh, yes, fairly well. But one always seems to wake early in strange houses.’

‘Hythebourne is not strange to you, Susan.’

‘How can one say that?’ she murmured. He had to strain towards her to hear the words. ‘I never came off my period of probation here, did I?’ She spoke softly, as if to herself, as if it mattered little whether or not he heard. Not looking at him she walked forward, catching the back of one of the chairs and leaning against it heavily. He saw how tightly her hands gripped, but her face gave no indication of strain, but reflectiveness. ‘I never thought I should come back here, Louis. I don’t have happy memories of this place.’

Catching up with her mood, he said softly: ‘He is dead now … they are both dead.’

‘They are not my memories, Louis, although they are part of them. There’s so many mistakes I made, and it’s difficult to face them again. If it had been your father and mother alone who had made my time here unhappy I could have got over that ‒ but they weren’t everything. Just part of a whole.’

He said eagerly, too eagerly: ‘We both made mistakes, Susan.’

She shook her head, and her air of intimate reflectiveness dropped away from her. She frowned. ‘I didn’t come here to discuss our mistakes. It’s all much too late.’

‘I hoped that we might be able to

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