The Colour of Hope - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Susan Madison was born in Oxford and lives there now, following spells in Paris and Tennessee. A novelist of considerable experience, The Colour of Hope marks an exciting new direction in her writing career.

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All her life, Ruth Connelly had feared death by water. Once, standing as a child at the sea's edge, foam covering her feet, she had been filled with the sudden knowledge of terror, clear and sharp as the knife her parents sliced bread with. She held their hands, as water heaved away from her and lunged back again, heavy with intent. Wrinkles of water, glinting where the sun caught them. Diamond fingers, beckoning. Terrified, she tried to move away, out of its reach, but they urged her forward. Go on, don't be frightened, it won't hurt you. Unconvinced, she pulled at their hands but they held her tight, stepped nearer themselves. It's the sea, the sea, they said in high bright voices, come on, honey, the sea. Pebbles shifted under her toes. Slippery. Cold. The ground gave way. She stumbled and fell. Mommy! Daddy! She heard them, miles above her, laughing. She tried to stand but an unexpected wave slammed into her, green and glassy, determined. Daddy! She screamed again and the sea poured through her, swamped, deluged her. The gasp, the choke, clutching at green, at water which slid through her fingers: she remembered it still, salt stinging in her eyes, burning the back of her throat. She would never forget the purity of her panic, the premature step into adulthood as she sensed something of which she should not yet have been aware. Death. Oblivion. Nothingness. You were only under the water for a second, her father soothed, big, jovial, as he swung her up against his chest, it's all right, baby, it was only for a second. It was a second that would last a lifetime. All her life, she had feared death by water. All her life, she had imagined that the death would be her own.

Standing on Caleb's Point, the low bluff which marked the ocean-most edge of their property, she looked down at the scene of that unforgotten moment. Beyond the fallen boulders was a tiny strip of sand, not even sand, small pebbles really, ground over the centuries to the size of peas. A beach, that was all. Nothing to be frightened of. But all these years later, she still feared the sea. At some instinctual level, she knew that it would destroy her if it could. And yet she loved this place. Up here, with the murmur of the waves, the honey-colored air, the waving grass brilliant with devil's paintbrush and field daisies, she found solace. She had come here so often during the years of her growing up. She did the same now, as an adult, a mother, a wife. The Point pushed out into water dotted with lobster-pot buoys. Arms of green woodland curved round the horizon on either side, trees falling down to narrow shorelines of rocks crushed and scarred by the fierce winter tides. The woods were broken here and there by the shingled roofs of summer cottages. Further out, in the open channel, lay the gray hump of Bertlemy's Isle, a barren piece of granite which rose from the water like a turtle shell, crowned with a small stand of spruces. Tomorrow, as they always did, the four of them would be sailing out there to celebrate Will's birthday. She grimaced, thinking that they needed something to celebrate. Wind flattened the dry grass of the bluff. Hawkweed leaves scratched the back of her thighs as she lowered herself to the ground. Behind her, a granite boulder reared out of the earth; the rain-formed dip at its center provided a toehold for reindeer moss and sphagnum, a creep of bearberry, asters, blue flags. Ruth leaned against it and closed her eyes, turning her face up to the sun, smiling as she remembered how, as a little girl, Josie had believed that the boulder was a pixie's garden. She sighed. It was so peaceful up here. No arguments. No bickering. No tension. Ants scurried over her feet. Maybe she should get one of the local carpenters to make a bench so she could sit in comfort. Every time they came up to Maine from the city, she toyed with the idea of suggesting that they move here permanently. Paul already held a part-time visiting professorship down at Bowdoin; he would surely find it easier up here to finish the book he was writing than in the Boston apartment, spacious though that was. The children, it went without saying, would be ecstatic. What held her back were her own needs. She would probably find work with one of the legal firms in Portland or Bar Harbor, but she had worked too hard, for too long, to want to start again at the bottom. She stared at the distant whaleshapes of Mount Desert Island on the horizon. Triangles of white sail were scattered across the water, heading out to sea from the little yacht club down at Hartsfield. One of them belonged to the children, though at this distance it was impossible to say which. Could they see her up here, watching from the bluff like a new-made widow still scanning the heaving sea for the drowned sailor who would never again come home to sweep her into his arms, smelling of salt and wide horizons? Though she did not feel like smiling, she waved, just in case. Smiled. Just in case. At her back, higher up the slope, were the pinewoods. Spruce, red and white pine, balsam, hemlock. The hot resin-scented air always recalled the simplicity of summer days when she was still just a mother and not a lawyer as well. Picnics under the trees. Hide-and-seek. Swimming in the pond. All the innocent things which, as a child, she had done in this dear and familiar place with her own parents. Where had it all gone, that security, that sweetness? Time had rushed by, leaving her to wonder what had happened to the chirping voices of her children, to their unconditional love, their trust.