The Last Summer at Home
Edward turned up on Wednesday, just as the sun was starting to slope towards midday, warming the roof so much that the slates cracked and shifted. The garden gate had come off its hinges about three years back, so he just stepped over it and stopped in front of the porch. Three steps upbottom one was all but rotten through. He tested the second, feeling it sway, but it held as he made his way inside.
The house smelt musty, with that lurking scent of mice you only find in places left too long. There was a proper layer of dust on the window sills, and a spiders web stretched from the beam in the sitting room across to the old Welsh dresser. Edward pushed open a window, the frame stiff and protesting, and suddenly the scent of hot nettles and hay from the garden burst into the room. He wandered through all four rooms, mentally ticking off what hed need to do: scrub the floors, check the fireplace, fix the temperamental tap in the summer kitchen, throw out everything that had grown mouldy. And then call Peter, Mum, the nieces. Say: come down for August, lets spend a month here, like we used to.
Used to was twenty-five years ago, back when Dad was alive and every summer theyd gather, whole family together. Edward remembered jam bubbling away in a copper pan, he and his brothers hauling buckets from the old well, Mum reading stories on the veranda in the long evenings. Then Dad passed away, Mum moved to the city to live with the youngest, the house got boarded up. Edward would come once a year, just to check if thered been any break-ins, then leave again. But this spring, something inside him nudged: just try to bring it back, just once.
The first week, he was on his own. Cleaned out the fireplace, replaced two of the steps up to the porch, scrubbed the windows. He drove to the nearby town to pick up paint and bags of cement, got an electrician round to look at the old wiring. The parish council chairman, catching Edward by the shop, shook his head.
Why spend all this, Ed, on a place falling to bits? Youll sell it anyway.
Edward shrugged, barely looking up. Not selling until autumn, he said, and carried on.
Peter was the first to arrive, Saturday evening, with his wife and their two kids. He stepped out of the car, glanced around the yard, and winced.
You actually think we can last a month here?
Three weeks,” Edward corrected gently. The children need the fresh air, and could do you good too.
There isnt even a shower.
Theres the old bathhouse. Ill get it going tonight.
The kids, an eleven-year-old lad and an eight-year-old girl, wandered half-heartedly towards the swing Edward had strung yesterday from the ancient oak. Peters wife, Frances, headed inside with a bag full of groceries, saying nothing. Edward helped them haul their things in. Peter was still frowning, but let it drop.
Mum turned up on Mondayneighbour dropped her off in his car. She stood in the middle of the sitting room and sighed.
Everything seems so small, she murmured. I remembered it bigger.
You havent been here in thirty years, Mum.
Thirty-two.
She drifted into the kitchen, running her fingers along the worktop.
It was always cold in here. Dad kept promising proper heating, never quite managed it.
Edward could tell, in her voice, it wasnt nostalgia but weariness. He made her tea, settling her out on the veranda, and she gazed into the overgrown orchard, telling him about how tough it had been lugging water, how her back ached after doing the washing, how the neighbours always gossiped. Edward just listened, realising that for his mum, this house wasnt a home so much as an old wound.
That evening, after Mum was in bed, Edward and Peter sat by a fire in the yard. The kids were asleep, Frances reading by candlelight in the roomelectricity only worked in half the house so far.
Why are you actually doing all this? Peter asked, watching the embers.
I wanted to get us all together again.
We see each other every Christmas.
Its not the same.
Peter gave a wry grin. Edward, you old romantic. Reckon a few weeks here and well all be best mates again?
I dont know, Edward confessed. I just wanted to try.
Peter was quiet, then his tone softened. Im glad you did, honestly. But dont expect miracles.
Edward didnt. But he still hoped.
The next few days were all busyness. Edward mended the fences, Peter helped re-tile the shed roof. The boy, Jamie, spent the first few days moody, but then found some battered old fishing rods in the shed and vanished off to the river most days. The girl, Alice, helped Gran weed the hasty vegetable patch Edward had thrown in along the south wall.
One afternoon while they were painting the veranda together, Frances burst out laughing.
Were like one of those old rural communes!
At least communes had a plan, Peter grumbled, but there was a smile in his voice.
Edward could tell, bit by bit, the tension was easing. They all had supper together every night on the long veranda table: Mum making big pans of soup, Frances baking cheesecakes from whatever shed managed to buy at the farm shop. The talk turned to little thingswhere to buy netting for the windows, whether it was worth mowing right up to the house, if the pump was finally fixed.
But one evening, once the children were asleep, Mum said quietly:
Your dad wanted to sell this place. The year before he died.
Edward froze, mug in hand. Peter frowned.
Why?
He was tired. Said the house was an anchor, holding him back. Wanted to move to town, get a flat near the hospital. I wouldnt have itinsisted it was ours, the family home. We argued about it. In the end, he didnt sell. Then, a year later, he was gone.
Edward put his mug down.
You blame yourself?
I dont know. Im just tired of this place. It always reminds me that I dug my heels in and he never got that bit of peace.
Peter leant back, thoughtful.
Youve never said that before, Mum.
You never asked.
Edward looked at herhunched, small, her hands shaped by years of work. Now he saw the house for her wasnt a treasureit was a burden.
Perhaps we should have sold it, he said quietly.
Maybe, Mum agreed. But you grew up here. That still means something.
What exactly?
She met his gaze.
It means you remember who you were. Before life scattered us all.
Edward didnt know what to make of that at first. But the next day, when he and Peter and Jamie tramped down to the river and Jamie caught his first perch, he saw Peter grab his son and laugh like he hadnt in years, all the tiredness gone from his voice. That evening, when Mum told Alice how shed taught her dad to read right there on that same veranda, Edward finally picked up on something new in her voice. Maybe not painmaybe a kind of peace.
Leaving day was set for Sunday. The night before, Edward fired up the old bathhouse, and they all squeezed in for a steam, then drank tea under the swirling porch light. Jamie asked if theyd come back next year. Peter glanced at Edward but didnt answer.
The next morning, Edward helped haul bags to the car. Mum hugged him tightly at the gate.
Thank you for asking us up.
I hoped it would be better than it was.
It was good, in its own way.
Peter clapped him on the shoulder. Sell it if you want. I wont mind.
Well see.
The car disappeared in a cloud of dust down the country lane. Edward wandered through the house, gathering up odd plates, taking out the rubbish. He closed the windows, locked the doors, then dug out the old rusty padlock hed found in the shed and hung it on the gate. Heavy and battered, but solid.
He stood there by the lane, looking back at the houseroof even, porch solid, windows gleaming. It looked lived in. But Edward knew that was just a trick. Houses were only alive when people filled them. For three weeks, it really had been alive. Maybe that was enough.
He got in his car and set off. That last glimpse of the roof faded in the mirror as the trees swallowed it up. Rolling slowly down the potholed road, Edward wondered if, come autumn, hed ring the estate agent after all. For now, though, he held tight to the memory of them all around that table, of Mum laughing at something Peter said, of Jamie waving his prize fish in the air.
The house had done what it needed to do. It brought them together. And maybe that would be enough, to let it go without regret.
