A Place Like Home, page 1
Begin Reading
Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.
For Felicity
Introduction
By Lucinda Riley
When I was asked by Kate Howard at Hodder & Stoughton to write an introduction to a book of short stories by Rosamunde Pilcher, I felt immediately emotional. It took me back to a moment in my late teens when, like so many women in the UK and the wider world, I read The Shell Seekers.
It was a ground-breaking novel, in that it elevated the usual romance books we all read then to a deeper and more realistic level, introducing us to a not-so-perfect heroine and her often troubled family. It focuses on an older woman, no longer in the full bloom of beauty and youth, who reflects back on her life, with Pilcher’s trademark vivid descriptions of her beloved Cornwall, where she grew up. Yet this was not a ‘literary’ book, but hugely accessible to all who turned its pages eagerly to discover what would happen. It was a wonderful story that was equally beautifully written, with memorable characters I can still remember to this day. In short, The Shell Seekers helped pave the way for many of us female novelists to write books that included ‘romance’, but gave a far more gritty and accurate portrayal of women living in the late twentieth century. As a young, aspiring writer myself, Rosamunde Pilcher and The Shell Seekers became my inspiration.
Like me, Rosamunde did not become an overnight success. She sold her first short story at nineteen whilst she was in the WRNS during the war, and in 1949 she published her first novel with Mills & Boon under ‘Jane Fraser’, a pseudonym she kept for ten novels before she began using her own name on all her books in 1965. It would take her another twenty years and twenty-two novels before she achieved worldwide fame with The Shell Seekers at the age of almost sixty.
Outside writing, Rosamunde had a long and happy marriage which produced four children. As her son Robin told me, in an era when it was still acceptable that children were ‘seen and not heard’, she always had time for hers. Many of Robin’s friends who came to play would say that they wished she was their mother which, as a working mother of four myself, is perhaps the ultimate compliment.
Over the years, Rosamunde also wrote a number of short stories for women’s magazines, some of which have already been published in collections such as The Blue Bedroom and Flowers in the Rain. After she sadly died in 2019, other short stories that had never been collated or published in book form were discovered at the British Library by Aoife Inman, an intrepid young assistant at the Felicity Bryan Associates literary agency, who spent days searching through old folios of magazines for stories Rosamunde had written, most of them between 1976 and 1984. Some of these are included in this new edition.
As with every Rosamunde Pilcher story – long or short – I began to read them and couldn’t stop. And as always, it took no more than a few pages before I came across one of her prosaic sentences: ‘Loving a person … is not finding perfection, but forgiving faults.’ Rosamunde had the unique gift of being able to sum up the essence of some of life’s big questions in just a few wise words.
To those of you who already know and love Rosamunde’s writing, these short stories will be a welcome pleasure, and for those readers that don’t, they are a wonderful introduction to her talent as a storyteller and the fictional worlds she so effortlessly brought to life. Just as some of our most famous female novelists, such as Austen and the Brontë sisters, have stood the test of time, I believe that Rosamunde Pilcher’s stories, all written in the twentieth century, will do the same – simply because she wrote so eloquently about universal themes that resonate with all women, whatever age they may live in.
Lucinda Riley
September 2020
Someone to Trust
When it was all over, when she had turned her back on him and walked away, leaving him standing on the pavement, staring after her, she had gone back to the office, stumbled through an afternoon’s work, somehow got herself back to the flat, and then rung Sally.
The numbers slotted into place at last. She heard the double ring of Sally’s telephone, far away in the uttermost reaches of Devon. She prayed, Let her be in, please let her be in.
‘Hello!’ Sally’s voice, marvellously close and clear. All at once Rachael felt better. She smiled, as though Sally could see her face, hoping that the smile would somehow get through to her voice.
‘Sally, it’s me, Rachael.’
‘Darling! How are you?’
‘I’m fine. How about you?’
‘Fairly desolate. Andrew’s gone off for an unspecified period in his submarine. Probably crawling along under some terrifying ice cap or other.’
‘Would you like a little company?’
‘Adore it, if it was yours.’
‘I thought maybe a couple of weeks?’
‘I can’t believe it! You mean, you can really get away from London for a couple of weeks? What about the job?’
‘I’m tired of jobs. I’m giving in my notice tomorrow. Anyway, it was only on a sort of temporary basis. And there’s another girl who can take my room in the flat for the time being.’
‘Oh, you couldn’t have told me anything I wanted to hear more. When will you be here?’
‘Next Friday week, if that’s not too soon.’
‘I’ll meet you off the train. Darling …’ Sally hesitated. ‘It’s frightfully boring. I mean, nothing but me and scenery, and I’m at the shop all day.’
‘That’s just what I need.’
There was another little pause, and then Sally said, ‘Nothing wrong?’
‘No, nothing.’ But Sally would have to know, sooner or later. ‘Well – everything, really. I’ll tell you when I come.’
‘You do that,’ said Sally. ‘Meantime, take care of yourself.’
* * *
Ten long days later and she was there. The train eased into the dark little station, the platform slid alongside. She saw the floodlit sign, Duncoombe Halt; a porter with a flag, a crate of chickens on a barrow. She stood up and heaved her suitcase off the rack and made her way to the door. She stepped down on to the platform, and saw Sally coming towards her. She put down the suitcase and was embraced in an enormous hug, and all at once nothing seemed quite so bad.
‘Oh, how lovely to see you. Did you have a horrible journey, or was it not too bad?’ Sally wore jeans and a raincoat and an enveloping woollen hat that came down to her eyebrows. She smelled of rain and open air and her cheek felt cool against Rachael’s own. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ She had never been one to waste time with formalities. She picked up the suitcase and led the way, down the platform and over the bridge and out into the station yard to where her old estate car waited. The mist was drenching.
‘It’s rained all day,’ Sally told her as they got into the car and she turned the ignition key. The windscreen wipers danced to and fro, headlights pierced the drizzling dark. ‘Never stopped for an instant.’
‘It’s rained in London too.’
It seemed to have been raining ever since she had said goodbye to Randall. But it was different from country rain. Just as being miserable and alone in London was a world away from being miserable and with Sally in Devon. They left the station and came through the little town and were in the country in a matter of minutes.
‘It’s been a horrible winter, so cold and wet. There’s scarcely a primrose showing and not a bulb in the garden …’
Rachael looked at Sally; saw the alert and childish profile that never seemed to change, the square chin, the slender neck. She was Rachael’s first cousin, ten years older but closer than any sister. When Sally married Andrew, a lieutenant-commander in the Navy, Rachael had been her bridesmaid; and when Rachael grew up and went to live and work in London, Sally was all enthusiasm, because now, she said, she had a cast iron excuse to come to town, to have lunch with Rachael and trail around the Tate Gallery while Andrew was attending some nameless conference at the Ministry of Defence.
It was Sally’s and Andrew’s reaction to Randall Clewe, politely enthusiastic, but unmistakably wary, which had first caused Rachael to stand back, as it were, and take her first, cool appraisal of him, forcing herself to see him through Sally’s eyes. After that she became aware of his imperfections, but she was still in love with him. Loving a person, she had told herself, is not finding perfection, but forgiving faults. She went on telling herself this for nearly three years.
When she had first met him, Randall had been married, with two children; he was now separated from his wife.
‘You don’t want to get involved with a married man,’ Sally had said. ‘You’ll get hurt. It’s all too complicated.’
‘But it’s happening all the time,’ Rachael had protested.
‘Not to people like you. You’re too vulnerable. You’ll get h
‘I can’t get hurt if I know the situation.’
‘But do you know the situation?’
‘He’s trying to get a divorce.’
‘But the children! And what’s going to happen to his wife?’
‘They haven’t been happy for ages. He has to be away so much. His job takes him abroad all the time, and she’s resentful …’
‘More likely lonely …’
‘Anyway, he sees his children.’
‘If he gets a divorce, is he going to marry you?’
‘We haven’t talked about it.’
‘I think you’re wasting your life.’
‘It’s my life.’
‘It’s too good to waste.’
‘As I said, it’s my life.’
* * *
It was the nearest they had ever come to quarrelling. At the end of the discussion, with neither of them giving an inch, they had not talked about Randall again, but simply carried on as though the argument had never taken place. Sometimes when Andrew and Sally were in London, they all went out for dinner together, always to an exorbitantly expensive restaurant of Randall’s choice, and always with Randall insisting on picking up the bill. This rankled with Andrew. His tastes were modest to match his financial resources, but he had a natural masculine pride, and there was always a slight atmosphere at the end of the meal when Randall, his cigar lit and his brandy glass empty, slapped down his credit card with scarcely a glance at the heart-stopping sum scribbled at the foot of the bill, and suggested that they all go on to a night club.
Sitting in Sally’s car, remembering all this, Rachael was suddenly visited by Randall’s image. His good looks, the smell of his aftershave, the expression in his eyes as he watched her across some candlelit table. Her physical longing for his presence made her tremble. To and fro went the windscreen wipers. Never again, they said. Never again. Never again.
* * *
Sally was still talking, needing no comment to encourage her flow of chat.
‘… it’s marvellous having the shop because it keeps me busy while Andrew’s away. You did know about the shop. I told you, didn’t I, that I scraped all my resources together and bought it from the woman who used to run it? I helped her for a bit before she sold up, so I learned all about buying in stock and doing accounts, and it really hasn’t been too much of a headache.’
Rachael pushed the image of Randall out of her mind, took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s a craft shop, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, right here in Duncoombe. There’s not much trade in wintertime, but in the summer it goes like a bomb.’
‘I’ll have to come and see it.’
Ahead of them lay the lights of the little village of Tudleigh. Beyond Tudleigh loomed the dark bulk of the moor, and above the village a light shone through a copse of elms. This was Sally’s cottage, which Andrew and Sally had bought five years before when Andrew was stationed in Plymouth. They came through the winding street of thatched houses, and then turned up the steep lane which led to the cottage itself. Elms arched overhead, the white gate stood open. The car bumped over the ruts, and there was the house, the light shining, as Sally had left it, over the front door.
She went to open it, fumbling in her pocket for the key while Rachael heaved her suitcase off the backseat. Inside was the little hallway, warm and smelling nostalgically of paraffin lamps. Sally shut the door behind them, turned on the lights and led the way up the wooden staircase and into her tiny guest room with its sprigged wallpaper and sloping ceilings.
‘You’d like a hot bath. I know you’d like a hot bath better than anything else.’ She drew the curtains. ‘And then we’ll have a drink and supper by the fire.’ She turned from the window and, for perhaps the first time, really looked at Rachael. ‘You’re terribly thin. Have you been losing weight?’
‘Not meaning to. But all my skirts and jeans are far too big.’
‘I’ll fatten you up,’ said Sally firmly. ‘Lots of Devonshire cream. Now make yourself at home, and I’ll go down and peel the spuds.’
When she had gone, Rachel stood there, in the middle of the room in her travel-weary clothes, suddenly exhausted. She took a deep breath, and let it out in a long and shaky sigh. The break was behind her. She was here. Now, physically, she had truly withdrawn from Randall. After a little, she unbuttoned her coat. She hung it up and began to unpack.
* * *
A scalding bath, a change of clothes. Warm and refreshed, she went downstairs and found Sally in the sitting-room, by a roaring log fire, watching television. When Rachael appeared, she switched off the television, gave Rachael a smile, and together they went into the kitchen to get their supper. There was soup, and steak and kidney pie, and Sally opened a half-bottle of wine.
‘I don’t know what it’s like. Andrew always buys the wine. But I get it from the off-licence in Duncoombe and the man assured me it was modest but full-blooded.’ She pulled the cork with a triumphant yank, set the bottle on the tray and carried the whole lot through to the sitting-room where they settled themselves in armchairs on either side of the fire and proceeded to demolish the delicious meal.
* * *
It was not until they had cleared the dishes and were back by the fire with mugs of coffee that Sally broached the subject of Randall. She didn’t do it in so many words, simply waited for a natural pause to break their conversation, and then said, in a changed and gentle voice, ‘Do you want to talk now or would you rather wait?’
Rachael met her eyes. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You said on the telephone that everything was wrong. It’s Randall, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s over?’
‘Yes.’
Sally said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry because I know how much he meant to you. But I’m glad as well.’
‘You never liked him. You or Andrew.’
‘You couldn’t help liking Randall. He could charm the birds off the trees. But we always felt he wasn’t the right man for a person like you. He was too – too much of a good thing, I suppose. A fair-weather friend. And the fact that he was married …’
‘He got a divorce,’ said Rachael flatly.
Sally’s eyes opened. ‘He did? When?’
‘About nine months ago.’
‘You never told us.’
‘I didn’t tell you because I thought that as soon as you knew, you’d be expecting us to get married. I didn’t want to have to tell you that nothing seemed to be any different. We just went on. Marking time. I didn’t want Andrew saying, “What the hell’s he playing at?”’
‘And what the hell was he playing at?’
‘He was …’ Rachael folded her fingers around the warmth of her coffee cup and stared into the fire. ‘He was free. He didn’t want to be anything else. Free to come and go, take out any girl he wanted. Free to go to Hong Kong and enjoy himself, without any strings. Free to take his children away and no questions asked. Free … simply to be himself.’
‘And you were still there.’
‘Oh, yes, I was still there. In London. Handy when he wanted me. And yet he never made it feel that way. Every time we went out it seemed to be some sort of celebration. Every time he came back from somewhere, he was laden with presents, with love and every sort of enthusiasm. Just to be with Randall made me feel vital and beautiful. As though that was the way he always saw me.’
‘But he didn’t love you?’
‘I suppose, in his way, he did. But Sally, three years is a long time. We’d done it all. Been on holidays together, to Gstaad to ski, to Monte Carlo for the weekend. But it was like playing games all the time. It wasn’t living. I couldn’t go on playing games, Sally.’
‘Did you tell him you wanted to get married?’
‘No. And by the end I wasn’t sure that I did. But after the divorce he asked me to go and live with him – move into his flat. I very nearly did. I wanted to, but somewhere, right at the back of my mind, was this image of myself, one day, packing my suitcase and moving out again. Somehow it was the ultimate degradation. And I was frightened. So I clung to my pride and stayed on my own.’
