Voices in Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

smoothly tailored; a pale blue polo-necked sweater; and a pair of maroon and pale blue plaid slacks. His shoes were white. There was a thick gold watch on one sinewy wrist and a heavy gold signet ring on his left hand. He was a tall man, lean and muscled and obviously immensely strong, but it was hard to guess his age, for while his features were formidable, hawk-nosed, big-jawed, intensely brown, with eyes as pale as sixpences, his hair was corn coloured, thick as the hair of a boy, growing springily from his forehead in a deep wave.
    'Glad to meet you,' he said when Alec welcomed him and gripped his hand. It was like shaking hands with a steel spring. 'Erica's spoken so much about you, and it's a real privilege to make your acquaintance at last.'
    He continued to be charming. He kissed Gabriel – 'My little girlfriend,' allowed himself to be given a martini, sat in the middle of the sofa with one long ankle hitched up onto a hard-muscled plaid knee. He began at once to ask about Glenshandra, as though knowing that this topic would naturally bring everybody into the conversation and so break the ice. Marjorie was disarmed by this, and Daphne could scarcely keep her eyes off him and for the first five minutes was rendered speechless. After that she scarcely drew breath.
    'What's Tickleigh Manor House like? Didn't the Gerrards used to live there?'
    'They still do,' Erica said. They were eating grouse now, and Alec poured the red wine.
    'Well, they can't live there if Strick's living there.'
    'No, they've gone up to London for a couple of months.'
    'Were they going anyway, or did Strickland chase them out?'
    ‘I chased them out,' said Strickland.
    'He offered them money,' Erica explained to Daphne. 'You know that old-fashioned stuff you keep in your wallet.'
    'You mean he bribed them . . .!'
    'Oh, Daphne
    Erica was laughing at Daphne, but there was exasperation in her amusement. Alec sometimes wondered how the friendship of two such totally different women had lasted for so long. They had known each other since school days, and it was doubtful that there was a single secret they did not share, and yet, on analysis, they had nothing in common. It could be that this was the glue that cemented their friendship. Their interests had never overlapped, and so the relationship was not in danger from the destructive touch of jealousy.
    Daphne was interested only in men. That was the way she had been made, that was the way she would be even if she lived to be ninety. She came to life only if there was a man in the room, and if she did not have some current admirer tucked up her sleeve, to take her out for little luncheons or to telephone her in the mornings after Tom had gone to work, then life had lost all meaning and she became snappish and despondent.
    Tom knew about this and accepted it. Once, very late at night, he had talked to Alec. ‘I know she's a fool,' he had said, 'but she's a very sweet fool, and I wouldn't want to lose her.'
    Whereas Erica . . . Erica was not really interested in men. Alec knew this. For the last few years he and Erica had lived more or less apart, but agonized conjectures as to how she spent her time had been the least of his worries; in fact, had scarcely entered his mind.
    She had always been if not exactly frigid then sexually very cool. The emotions that other women needed – passion and excitement and challenge and affection – were apparently fulfilled by her obsession with her horses. Sometimes Alec was reminded of the small girls who haunted the Pony Club circuit.
    Pigtailed, single-minded, cleaning tack, mucking out their, ponies. 'It's a sex substitute,' some person had once assured him, when he remarked upon this phenomenon. 'Let them reach fourteen or fifteen, and it'll not be horses they'll be interested in, but men. It's a well-known fact. A natural development.'
    Erica must once have been just such a child. I rode every day of my life until I went to Hong Kong. But Erica, for some