Julian Britton was a man who knew that his life thus far
had amounted to nothing. He bred his dogs, he managed the
crumbling ruin that was his family's estate, and daily he
tried to lecture his father away from the bottle. That was
the extent of it. He hadn't been a success at anything
save pouring gin down the drain, and now, at twenty-seven
years of age, he felt branded by failure. But he couldn't
allow that to affect him tonight. Tonight he had to
prevail.
He began with his appearance, giving himself a ruthless
scrutiny in his bedroom's cheval glass. He straightened
the collar of his shirt and flicked a piece of lint from
his shoulder. He stared at his face and schooled his
features into the expression he wanted them to wear. He
should look completely serious, he decided. Concerned,
yes, because concern was reasonable. But he shouldn't look
conflicted. And certainly he shouldn't look ripped up
inside and wondering how he came to be where he was, at
this precise moment, with his world a shambles.
As to what he was going to say, two sleepless nights and
two endless days had given Julian plenty of time to
rehearse what remarks he wished to make when the appointed
hour rolled round. Indeed, it was in elaborate but silent
fantasy conversations—tinged with no more worry than was
enough to suggest that he had nothing personal invested in
the matter—that Julian had spent most of the past two
nights and two days that had followed Nicola Maiden's
unbelievable announcement. Now, after forty-eight hours
engaged in endless colloquies within his own skull, Julian
was eager to get on with things, even if he had no
assurance that his words would bring the result hewanted.
He turned from the cheval glass and fetched his car keys
from the top of the chest of drawers. The fine sheen of
dust that usually covered its walnut surface had been
removed. This told Julian that his cousin had once again
submitted to the cleaning furies, a sure sign that she'd
met defeat yet another time in her determined course of
sobering up her uncle.
Samantha had come to Derbyshire with just that intention
eight months previously, an angel of mercy who'd one day
shown up at Broughton Manor with the mission of reuniting
a family torn asunder for more than three decades. She
hadn't made much progress in that direction, however, and
Julian wondered how much longer she was going to put up
with his father's bent towards the bottle.
"We've got to get him off the booze, Julie," Samantha had
said to him only that morning. "You must see how crucial
it is at this point."
Nicola, on the other hand, knowing his father eight years
and not merely eight months, had long been of a live-and-
let-live frame of mind. She'd said more than once, "If
your dad's choice is to drink himself silly, there's
nothing you can do about it, Jules. And there's nothing
that Sam can do either." But then, Nicola didn't know how
it felt to see one's father slipping ever more inexorably
towards debauchery, absorbed in intensely inebriated
delusions about the romance of his past. She, after all,
had grown up in a home where how things seemed was
identical to how things actually were. She had two parents
whose love never wavered, and she'd never suffered the
dual desertion of a flower-child mother flitting off
to "study" with a tapestry-clad guru the night before
one's own twelfth birthday and a father whose devotion to
the bottle far exceeded any attachment he might have
displayed towards his three children. In fact, had Nicola
ever once cared to analyse the differences in their
individual upbringing, Julian thought, she might have seen
that every single one of her bloody decisions—
At that he brought his thoughts up short. He would not
head in that direction. He could not afford to head in
that direction. He could not afford to let his mind wander
from the task that was immediately at hand.
"Listen to me." He grabbed his wallet from the chest and
shoved it into his pocket. "You're good enough for anyone.
She got scared shitless. She took a wrong turn. That's the
end of it. Remember that. And remember that everyone knows
how good the two of you always were together."
He had faith in this fact. Nicola Maiden and Julian
Britton had been part of each other's life for years.
Everyone who knew them had long ago concluded that they
belonged together. It was only Nicola who, it appeared,
had never come to terms with this fact.
"I know that we were never engaged," he'd told her two
nights previously in response to her declaration that she
was moving away from the Peaks permanently and would only
be back for brief visits henceforth. "But we've always had
an understanding, haven't we? I wouldn't be sleeping with
you if I wasn't serious about... Come on, Nick. Damn it,
you know me."
It wasn't the proposal of marriage he'd planned on making
to her, and she hadn't taken it as such. She'd said
bluntly, "Jules, I like you enormously. You're terrific,
and you've been a real friend. And we get on far better
than I've ever got on with any other bloke."
"Then you see—"
"But I don't love you," she went on. "Sex doesn't equate
to love. It's only in films and books that it does."
He'd been too stunned at first to speak. It was as if his
mind had become a blackboard and someone had taken a
rubber to it before he had a chance to make any notes. So
she'd continued.
She would, she told him, go on being his girlfriend in the
Peak District if that's what he wanted. She'd be coming to
see her parents now and again, and she'd always have time—
and be happy, she said—to see Julian as well. They could
even continue as lovers whenever she was in the area if he
wished. That was fine by her. But as to marriage? They
were too different as people, she explained.
"I know how much you want to save Broughton Manor," she'd
said. "That's your dream, and you'll make it come true.
But I don't share that dream, and I'm not going to hurt
either you or myself by pretending I do. That's not fair
on anyone."
Which was when he finally repossessed his wits long enough
to say bitterly, "It's the God damn money. And the fact
I've got none, or at least not enough to suit your tastes."
"Julian, it isn't. Not exactly." She'd turned from him
briefly, giving a long sigh. "Let me explain."
He'd listened for what had seemed like an hour, although
she'd likely spoken ten minutes or less. At the end, after
everything had been said between them and she'd climbed
out of the Rover and disappeared into the dark gabled
porch of Maiden Hall, he'd driven home numbly, shell-
shocked with grief, confusion, and surprise, thinking No,
she couldn't . . . she can't mean No. After Sleepless
Night Number One, he'd come to realise—past his own pain—
how great was the need for him to take action. He'd
phoned, and she'd agreed to see him. She would always, she
said, be willing to see him.
He gave a final glance in the mirror before he left the
room, and he treated himself to a last affirmation: "You
were always good together. Keep that in mind."
He slipped along the dim upstairs passage of the manor
house and looked into the small room that his father used
as a parlour. His family's increasingly straitened
financial circumstances had effected a general retreat
from all the larger rooms downstairs that had slowly been
made uninhabitable as their various antiques, paintings,
and objets d'art were sold to make ends meet. Now the
Brittons lived entirely on the house's upper floor. There
were abundant rooms for them, but they were cramped and
dark.
Jeremy Britton was in the parlour. As it was half past
ten, he was thoroughly blotto, head on his chest and a
cigarette burning down between his fingers. Julian crossed
the room and removed the fag from his father's hand.
Jeremy didn't stir.
Julian cursed quietly, looking at him: at the promise of
intelligence, vigour, and pride completely eradicated by
the addiction. His father was going to burn the place down
someday, and there were times—like now—when Julian thought
that complete conflagration might be all for the best. He
crushed out Jeremy's cigarette and reached into his shirt
pocket for the packet of Dunhills. He removed it and did
the same with his father's lighter. He grabbed up the gin
bottle and left the room.
He was dumping the gin, cigarettes, and lighter into the
dustbins at the back of the manor house when he heard her
speak.
"Caught him at it again, Julie?"
He started, looked about, but failed to see her in the
gloom. Then she rose from where she'd been sitting: on the
edge of the drystone wall that divided the back entrance
of the manor from the first of its overgrown gardens. An
untrimmed wisteria—beginning to lose its leaves with the
approach of autumn—had sheltered her. She dusted off the
seat of her khaki shorts and sauntered over to join him.
"I'm beginning to think he wants to kill himself,"
Samantha said in the practical manner that was her
nature. "I just haven't come up with the reason why."
"He doesn't need a reason," Julian said shortly. "Just the
means."
"I try to keep him off the sauce, but he's got bottles
everywhere." She glanced at the dark manor house that rose
before them like a fortress in the landscape. "I do try,
Julian. I know it's important." She looked back at him and
regarded his clothes. "You're looking very smart. I didn't
think to dress up. Was I supposed to?"
Julian returned her look blankly, his hands moving to his
chest to pat his shirt, searching for something that he
knew wasn't there.
"You've forgotten, haven't you?" Samantha said. She was
very good at making intuitive leaps.
Julian waited for elucidation.
"The eclipse," she said.
"The eclipse?" He thought about it. He clapped a hand to
his forehead. "God. The eclipse. Sam. Hell. I'd forgotten.
Is the eclipse tonight? Are you going somewhere to see it
better?"
She said with a nod to the spot from which she'd just
emerged, "I've got us some provisions. Cheese and fruit,
some bread, a bit of sausage. Wine. I thought we might
want it if we have to wait longer than you'd thought."
"To wait? Oh hell, Samantha..." He wasn't sure how to put
it. He hadn't intended her to think he meant to watch the
eclipse with her. He hadn't intended her to think he meant
to watch the eclipse at all.
"Have I got the date wrong?" The tone of her voice spoke
her disappointment. She already knew that she had the date
right and that if she wanted to see the eclipse from Eyam
Moor, she was going to have to hike out there alone.
His mention of the lunar eclipse had been a casual remark.
At least, that's how he'd intended it to be taken. He'd
said conversationally, "One can see it quite well from
Eyam Moor. It's supposed to happen round half past eleven.
Are you interested in astronomy, Sam?"
Samantha had obviously interpreted this as an invitation,
and Julian felt a momentary annoyance with his cousin's
presumption. But he did his best to hide it because he
owed her so much. It was in the cause of reconciling her
mother with her uncle—Julian's father—that she'd been
making her lengthy visits to Broughton Manor from
Winchester for the past eight months. Each stay had become
progressively longer as she found more employment round
the estate, either in the renovation of the manor house
proper or in the smooth running of the tournaments, fêtes,
and reenactments that Julian organised in the grounds as
yet another source of Britton income. Her helpful presence
had been a real godsend since Julian's siblings had long
fled the family nest and Jeremy hadn't lifted a finger
since he'd inherited the property—and proceeded to
populate it with his fellow flower-children and run it
into the ground—shortly after his twenty-fifth birthday.
Still, grateful as Julian was for Sam's help, he wished
his cousin hadn't assumed so much. He'd felt guilty about
the amount of work she was doing purely from the goodness
of her heart, and he'd been casting about aimlessly for
some form of repayment. He had no available money to offer
her, not that she would have needed or accepted it had he
done so, but he did have his dogs as well as his knowledge
of and enthusiasm for Derbyshire. And wanting to make her
feel welcome for as long as possible at Broughton Manor,
he'd offered her the only thing he had: occasional
activities with the harriers as well as conversation. And
it was a conversation about the eclipse that she had
misunderstood.