“Moll, please. I won’t be able to be in the same room as my uncle if you don’t.”
Moll sits heavily on the side of the bed. “The police arrested your uncle because they had to arrest someone. That’s my opinion, Margot. Couldn’t find the poor mite in the river. Couldn’t find that funny man in the hat. The grand families around here, the Gores and the like, especially those Gores at Cornton, wanted the matter swept away as soon as possible, exerted pressure at the top, like they always do. And the police had to be seen to be doing something.” She shakes her head, her eyes glassy with tears. “Awful for Mrs. Wilde. She stuck by her husband, though. She knew he’d nothing to do with it.”
“Didn’t he?” I ask, preparing for the worst, thinking of Perry’s fat fingers.
“No, of course not, Margot!” Moll looks shocked that I should think such a thing. “They couldn’t pin anything on him, nothing but tittle-tattle and rumor, the mutterings of an old mystic in the next valley, and he was released. Although, in many eyes, he’ll always be guilty, but that’s the valley for you.” She stands up with a sigh, glances at the door. “And that’s Mrs. Wilde’s footstep on the landing below, if I’m not mistaken.”
Without thinking, I lean toward her, kiss her warm, papery cheek. “Thank you, Moll.”
Moll presses her fingertips to her cheek with a look of amazement, as if she’s not been kissed by anyone in years. Then she flicks me away, flustered and smiling. “Be off with you.”
Summer is almost over. Suddenly some apples in the orchard are ripe. An evening arrives with a sharp nip, requiring the novelty of a cardigan. Flora shows off a love bite on her left breast, just above the nipple. “A marriage proposal is only a matter of time,” Pam decides after inspecting it closely. “But he better get his skates on.”
In just over a week—“that day” as Sybil now refers to it, eyes closing as she speaks—we must pack our cases and return to Squirrels without Flora for the first time, and Flora is off to be polished like a precious stone in Paris.
There suddenly seems a lot to lose—Flora, Harry, Tom, the possibility of ever finding out what happened to Audrey, even Billy’s bashful hellos, Sybil brushing my hair, little things I’ve grown used to and will miss.
But most of all, it is the loss of our sisterhood, the tribe of Wildlings we were at the start of the summer, that hits hardest. The four of us are no longer solid, but dispersing, scattering in different directions. I try to close the gap between me and my sisters, especially Pam and Flora, but it’s like chasing dandelion seeds across the meadow. Just marking time until summer’s end.
Dot idles off on long walks with Moppet and Perry’s binoculars, enchanted by swallows and swifts tracking across the hot blue sky. Flora is preoccupied with Harry—so much so that when I told her about Perry’s onetime arrest she merely shrugged, rather than shrieking “Nooo!” But she is less love-dazed now, more serious, absorbed, unreachable: the love deeper, more real, I suppose. Pam is frustrated by Tom, who still shows no sign of succumbing to his romantic destiny. And I am useful to my older sisters only in that I can sweet-talk Sybil into allowing them more freedom. They don’t see the price of it. I fear they’d shun me completely if they could.
Leaving Dot reading, Pam and Flora to squabble upstairs—ostensibly about the division of un-lost hair clips, really about Pam’s fear that Tom is in love with Flora, who does nothing to discourage him—I sit at the edge of the Wilderness, my chin resting on my knees, feeling more distant from my sisters than ever, stoking my own misery in the evening sun.
A shadow cools my back, spreads across the ground like a cloud. I brace myself, expecting it to be Sybil again, come to suggest a meeting later. But when I look up it’s into the tunnels of two nostrils.
Perry’s wearing his dreadful knitted bathing trunks and a crumpled white dinner shirt, open to the waist, a silk handkerchief knotted on his head. “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he lands next to me with a puff of sweat and air.
In that moment, I know why Ma didn’t tell us about his arrest—how easy it is to make monsters out of large, heavy-breathing men who sit too close and smell of game and salt—but then the understanding slides away, not quite clarifying.
“Siblings are a nuisance, aren’t they?” Perry says.
I shrug, wondering what his agenda might be, not wanting to encourage him.
“I hated Clarence for years, Margot. He made me terribly cross.”
Clarence. Pa’s name rings out like a bell. It’s a shock to hear it. Perry rarely mentions Pa. Not knowing what to say, I pick a blade of grass and chew it.
“He was handsome, your father,” he continues gruffly. “Too clever by half. He married a woman so damn pretty that she made men’s hair stand on end, not caring what our parents thought, what it would do to the family name. And then he had the gall to have four daughters whereas Sybil and I only ever managed one, and we damn well . . .” He kicks out one leg like a mallet. “Oh, and the medals. How my brother liked to rub my nose in his bloody war medals, his heroic thumb. He shot Germans. I shot pheasant. Then, after achieving all that,” he laughs hollowly, “he still bloody well got himself killed in the most stupid way possible and broke my mother’s heart.” His tsk vibrates on his lips. “I always thought my little brother would outlive me by a country mile, move into Applecote Manor before I was even cold.”
I’m not sure what to say. Or who my uncle is anymore, only that he is not the prowling beast with the lascivious eyes right now, but a huge, lonely man.
“You know, after it happened,” he says more gently, “the awful business on the rail tracks, I started to miss having someone to get cross about, just every once in a while.” He leans back on his elbows, tilting his head to the sky. “And now I miss him every day. And I look across this garden and I see us both so clearly, really, I can see us now, two little boys in breeches, fishing rods over our shoulders, one destined for the battlefield, one for the hunt and the house, and . . . I think . . .” He stops, swallows hard, and his voice goes funny. “What I wouldn’t give to have just one more simple summer’s day, Margot, like that, me and my maddening little brother, everything ahead of us, no responsibilities, nothing to lose, everything still to play for, only thinking about trout.” He stumbles up, squeezing my shoulder under the great ham of his hand. I wait until he’s safely gone, then I start to cry.