The Empty House by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online Page B

remembered. The scrubbed table pulled into the bay of the window, the geraniums on the window-sills, the dresser packed with bright china. After all these years it remained the epitome of everything a proper kitchen should be, the heart of the house.
    When they had taken over Kirkton and were doing it up, cellar to attic, she had tried to get a kitchen like the Penfolda one. Somewhere comfortable and warm where the family would congregate, and drink tea and gossip round the scrubbed table.
    "Who wants to go into a kitchen?" Anthony had asked, not understanding at all.
    "Everybody. A farmhouse kitchen's like a living-room."
    "Well, I'm not going to live in any kitchen, I'll tell you that."
    And he ordered stainless steel fitments and bright Formica worktops and a black and white chequered floor that showed every mark and was the devil to keep clean.
    Now Virginia leaned against the table and said with deep satisfaction, "I was afraid it would have changed, but it's just the same."
    "Why should it have changed?"
    "No reason. I was just afraid. Things do change. Eustace, Alice told me that your mother had died . . . I'm sorry."
    "Yes. Two years ago. She had a fall. Got pneumonia." He chucked the empty can neatly into a trashbucket and turned to survey her, propping his length against the edge of the sink. "And how about your own mother?"
    His voice held no expression; she could detect no undertones of sarcasm or dislike.
    "She died, Eustace. She became very ill a couple of years after Anthony and I were married. It was dreadful, because she was ill for so long. And it was difficult, because she was in London and I was at Kirkton . . . I couldn't be with her all the time."
    "And I suppose you were all the family she had?"
    "Yes. That was part of the trouble. I used to visit her as often as I could, but in the end we had to bring her up to Scotland, and eventually she went into a nursing home in Relkirk, and she died there."
    "That's bad."
    "Yes. And she was so young. It's a funny thing when your mother dies. You never really grow up till that happens." She amended this. "At least, I suppose that's how some people feel. You were grown up long before then."
    "I don't know about that," said Eustace. "But I know what you mean."
    "Anyway, it was all over years ago. Don't let's talk about miserable things. Tell me about you, and Mrs. Thomas. Do you know, Alice Lingard said you'd either have a domesticated mistress or a sexy housekeeper? I can't wait to meet her."
    "Well, you'll have to. She's gone to Penzance to see her sister."
    "Does she live at Penfolda?"
    "She has the cottage at the other end of the house. This used to be three cottages, you know, in the old days, before my grandfather bought the place. Three families lived here and farmed a few acres. Probably had half a dozen cows for milking and sent their sons down the tin mines to keep the wolf from the door."
    "Two days ago," said Virginia, "I drove out to Lanyon and sat on the hill, and there were combine harvesters out, and men haymaking. I thought one of them was probably you."
    "Probably was."
    She said, "I thought you'd be married."
    "I'm not."
    "I know. Alice Lingard said that you weren't."
    After he had finished his beer, he took knives and forks from a drawer and began to lay the table but Virginia stopped him. "It's too nice indoors. Couldn't we eat the pasties in the garden?"
    Eustace looked amazed, but said, "All right," and found her a basket for the knives and forks and plates and the salt and pepper and glasses, and he eased the piping hot pasties out of the oven on to a great flowered china dish, and they went out of a side door into the sunshine and the untidy little farmhouse garden. The grass needed cutting and the flower-beds were brimming with cheerful cottage flowers, and there was a washing line, flapping with bright white sheets and pillow-cases.
    Eustace had no garden furniture so they sat on the grass, tall with daisies and plantains, with the dishes