Summer in the South (7 page)

“I’m especially proud of those,” Will said, flipping a switch so that the chandelier overhead glittered suddenly with light. “They’re original to the house. They were made to hold candles, and I had them taken down and shipped to a place in Memphis that electrified them. It took almost nine months but it was worth it, I think.”

“Incredible.” She stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, admiring the way the large gilt-framed mirror over the mantel reflected the light. It seemed to Ava that she could imagine the house as it must have been two hundred years ago, the endless days and the quiet, because that’s the thing modern people with their constant noise and hurrying couldn’t imagine, the quiet stillness of places like this.

She closed her eyes, struck suddenly by a memory of her mother standing in an empty room. “Do you think that houses soak up the energies of the people who have lived there?”

He stood watching her with an amused, baffled expression on his face. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think there’s some kind of residual energy left behind? Voices, emotions, images?”

He laughed. “Do you mean like ghosts? Remember, I was a chemistry major. We have our feet firmly planted in the soil of scientific skepticism.”

“You could have just said no,” she said.

None of the rooms on the first floor were furnished but upstairs in one of the bedrooms overlooking the fields he had arranged a platform bed and several chests and chairs. A small television sat atop a tall dresser in the corner.

“I pretty much live up here,” he said. “In these three rooms.”

Despite its collection of furniture, the room still felt large and grand. The bed was very neatly made, and there were no clothes or books or used dishes scattered about. The energy here was slightly different, very left-brained and orderly.

A door to the left led into a large bathroom. At the opposite end of the room was another closed door.

“What’s in there?” Ava said, and he hesitated just long enough to make her curious, standing with his hand on the knob. As she approached, he leaned suddenly and threw open the door.

It was a recording studio, complete with several guitars propped on stands, and various amps and speakers scattered around. A computer sat on a narrow table crowded with monitors and microphones, and beside it stood an electric keyboard.

“Wow,” Ava said.

“It’s just a hobby,” he said. “A way to pass the time.” He seemed shy again, his face beneath his summer tan flooded with color. Ava guessed he hadn’t told many about his music.

“What’s that?” she asked politely, pointing.

“An electronic drum kit.”

“Do you play all these instruments?”

“Yes. I write the music and then record it.”

“Everything?”

“I lay down one track at a time. It gives me more control, and I don’t have to depend on anyone else to show up and play.” He watched her move around the room. “What are you thinking?” he said.

“I’m thinking you’re a very interesting guy.”

H
e wouldn’t play anything for her but he did give her a CD, sliding it into her purse. “Listen to it later,” he said. “When I’m not around. And then give me your honest opinion.”

They went back downstairs into the kitchen, which was the only room in the house that seemed to be undergoing renovation. The walls were stripped down to the lathing, and he had left the old brick of the fireplace exposed. A bank of dilapidated cabinets stood along the back wall, crowded beneath a window overlooking the porch and the distant fields.

“This was added later by one of the tenants, and they did a terrible job,” he said, standing in the doorway with his shoulder against the jamb. “When the house was originally built, the kitchen was a separate building out back. They did that to prevent fires.”

“When was it built?”

“Randal started construction in 1806 and finished in 1810. There was an old log cabin just to the east of here where he lived until then. There’s nothing left now, just an indentation in the earth and what remains of an old stone fireplace. A group of archeology students from Harvard came down a couple of summers ago and excavated the site, as well as some of the other outbuildings. They found all kinds of interesting things: iron nails, buttons, broken pieces of pottery and china.”

“I like the way you’ve left the brick exposed,” she said, running her fingers across the rough surface. She went over to the old farmhouse-style sink and flipped on the tap, letting the water run before shutting it off.

“Are you thirsty?” he asked. “Would you like some lunch?”

She turned and leaned against the sink, giving the kitchen a doubtful look. “Should we go back to town and pick something up?”

He grinned and walked over to the back door, swinging it open. Outside on the porch was a table covered by a white linen tablecloth, set with a picnic lunch.

A
two-story white columned gallery ran across the back of the house. The bottom floor held a line of rocking chairs and several large pots of flowering plants, as well as the small table where Ava and Will sat enjoying their lunch. Beyond the scattered outbuildings a patchwork of rolling fields, hazy beneath the noonday sun, stretched beneath a wide blue sky.

“This is delicious,” Ava said, chewing slowly with her eyes closed. She didn’t know what else to say. No one had ever made her a picnic lunch before.

“Uncle Mait made the chicken salad,” he said. “It’s his grandmother’s recipe.”

“He’s quite the gourmet chef.”

“It’s his hobby, the way music is mine.” He had finished eating and sat watching her with a bemused expression, two fingers tapping softly against the table.

Ava had been surprised that Maitland did most of the cooking. She would have expected a cook or a housekeeper in a house as large as Woodburn Hall, although perhaps Will was right; she had read too many English novels, had watched too many old movies. The aunts had a cleaning service that came once a week but Maitland prepared all the evening meals. He was addicted to the food channel, and would spend long hours watching Bobby Flay whip up Fried Chicken with Ancho Honey or Black Pepper Biscuits with Orange-Blueberry Marmalade. Josephine handled breakfast and lunch.

“And the woman who lives behind the house?” Ava asked hesitantly.

“Clara?”

“Yes. Clara. She never worked for the aunts as a housekeeper or a cook?”

He seemed surprised by her question, a faint frown appearing above his brow. “No. Clara grew up with the aunts. Her mother, Martha, was the cook and her father, John, was the chauffeur for their parents. But Clara was a schoolteacher.”

“So Clara and her parents lived in the little yellow cottage behind the garden?”

“That’s right.”

“Clara and the aunts were girls together?”

“Yes.”

He stood and began to gather the dishes from the table. A shaft of sunlight illuminated his face, the strong chin, the fine clean line of his jaw. “When you’re finished,” he said, “there’s something I want to show you.”

A
fter lunch they packed the leftover food in the old Philco refrigerator and stacked the dishes in the sink.

“I have a surprise for you,” he said, and she followed him out the back door and across the yard to a small barn. The afternoon had warmed considerably, but there was an occasional breeze, and in the shade it was not unbearable.

The old barn was filled with a treasure trove of discarded machinery and farm equipment. A tractor sat in one corner beneath a wall hung with various tools and gardening implements. Sunlight slanted through the weathered boards, hazy with pollen and dust. He walked over and pulled a plastic tarp off a monstrous four-wheeler.

“Would you like to take a ride?” he said, and without a moment’s hesitation, she grinned and climbed on behind him.

S
he had never ridden a four-wheeler before and so she was unprepared for how exhilarating it was, flying up and down the green rolling hills, the wind in her face, rolling along darkly forested trails. He was a cautious driver, taking just enough risks to make her scream with laughter without fearing that they might flip over. They roared through gullies and creeks, up steep inclines and down steeper ones. She held tightly to him, resting her face against his shoulder when the climb became too steep or perilous. He took her all the way around the boundaries so she could see how far Longford stretched. They climbed to the top of a small rise, where he switched off the engine and they sat for a while, enjoying the quiet. To their left rose a tall stand of forest. Birds sang in the brush, flitting through the gloom like brightly colored wraiths.

Below them a wide field sloped down to a narrow wash before rising again to the distant ridge where the house sat. From this rear angle it did indeed look like Tara, with its white-columned gallery gleaming in the sun. The prospect was so pleasing that Ava couldn’t help smiling, having thought of Elizabeth Bennett’s comment upon being asked when she first loved Darcy.
I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.

“What’s so funny?” he said, leaning to one side so he could see her better.

“Nothing.” She raised her hand and pointed to the far field, to a distant island of gravestones surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. “What’s that?” she said.

“The family cemetery. Randal and Delphine and all of their children except for Isaac and Jerome are buried there.”

At the bottom of the ridge, behind the house, she could see the place where the slave cabins once stood. A grassy gully ran behind the staked plots, the remains of an ancient drainage ditch. She wondered where the slaves were buried. She wouldn’t ask him. She had seen from his expression when she asked about Clara that race was not something openly discussed down here. She felt like a blind woman feeling her way along a rocky precipice. She would have to go slowly. She would have to learn to keep her mouth shut.

He turned his head. “What do you think?”

She could smell the scorched cloth scent of his T-shirt, the faint fragrance of his cologne. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“Come on. There’s something else I want to show you.”

And restarting the quad, he accelerated, and they headed down to the river.

T
hey rode for a while through the dappled woods until they came to a strip of sandy beach spread between a jumble of large boulders. It was at a bend in the river where the water widened and slowed.

“My swimming hole,” he said, holding her arm so she could climb off the back.

“Are there snakes?”

“Probably.”

He laughed at her expression. After a few minutes of awkwardness, they stripped down to their underwear, Ava flinging her clothes atop a flat boulder while Will folded his carefully. He took her hand and they walked to the edge of the water. He was very tanned, with a slight sprinkling of freckles across his shoulders. The fact that he was attractive had not registered with her in college. Caught up in her dysfunctional relationship with Michael, she had hardly noticed what went on around her.

He let go of her hand, grinning. “I’ll go in first and scare off the snakes.” He dived, a pale swift shape in the clear green water.

She smiled, watching him surface.

Amazing how a few years of maturity could change your view of the world.

T
hey swam for a while, laughing and splashing each other like exuberant children. He showed her which rocks were safe to jump from and which ones were to be avoided. Afterward they stretched out on their backs in the hot sand.

“Do you come here often?” she asked him. She could feel the warmth of the sun creeping through her drowsy limbs.

“Every day.”

She turned her head and looked at him, shielding her face with one hand. “So what’s a typical day in the life of Will Fraser? I’m trying to figure out how you spend your time.”

He kept his eyes closed, lying on his back. “It’s not that exciting. I rise pretty early, around seven o’clock, and then I work on the house until lunch. Then I spend a couple of hours in the studio before coming down here to swim. After that I get dressed and drive in to join the aunts and Maitland for Toddy Time.”