Beatriz Williams - A Hundred Summers - The ultimate romantic escapist beach read

ROUTE 5, TEN MILES SOUTH OF HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE October 1931 Contents Cover Title Page Beatriz Williams Copyright Dedication Epigraph Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. MATTHEW ARNOLD “Dover Beach” (1867) 1. Route 5, Ten Miles South of Hanover, New Hampshire: October 1931 2. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938 3. Hanover, New Hampshire: October 1931 4. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938 5. Smith College, Massachusetts: October 1931 6. Seaview, Rhode Island: May 1938 7. Smith College, Massachusetts: Mid-December 1931 8. Seaview, Rhode Island: July 4, 1938 9. 725 Park Avenue, New York City: December 1931 10. Seaview, Rhode Island: July 1938 11. 725 Park Avenue, New York City: New Year’s Eve 1931 12. Seaview, Rhode Island: August 1938 13. Manhattan: New Year’s Eve 1931 14. Seaview, Rhode Island: Labor Day 1938 15. Route 9, New York State: New Year’s Day 1932 16. Manhattan: Tuesday, September 20, 1938 17. Lake George, New York: January 2, 1932 18. Manhattan: Tuesday, September 20, 1938 19. Lake George, New York: January 1932 20. Manhattan: Wednesday, September 21, 1938 21. 1932–1938 22. Seaview, Rhode Island: Wednesday, September 21, 1938 23. Seaview, Rhode Island: Wednesday afternoon, September 21, 1938 Epilogue: Seaview Rhode Island - June 1944 Historical Note Keep Reading The House on Cocoa Beach Acknowledgments Readers Guide: A Hundred Summers About the Author Also by Beatriz Williams About the Publisher

One hundred and twelve miles of curving pavement lie between the entrance gates of Smith College and the Dartmouth football stadium, and Budgie drives them as she does everything else: hell-for-leather.

The leaves shimmer gold and orange and crimson against a brilliant blue sky, and the sun burns unobstructed overhead, teasing us with a false sense of warmth. Budgie has decreed we drive with the top down, though I am shivering in the draft, huddled inside my wool cardigan, clutching my hat.

She laughs at me. “You should take your hat off, honey. You remind me of my mother holding on to her hat like that. Like it’s the end of civilization if someone sees your hair.” She has to shout the words, with the wind gusting around her.

“It’s not that!” I shout back. It’s because my hair, released from the enveloping dark wool-felt cloche, will expand into a Western tumbleweed, while Budgie’s sleek little curls only whip about artfully before settling back in their proper places at journey’s end. Even her hair conforms to Budgie’s will. But this explanation is far too complicated for the thundering draft to tolerate, so I swallow it all back, pluck the pins out of my hat, and toss it on the seat beside me.

Budgie reaches forward and fiddles with the radio dials. The car, a nifty new Ford V-8, has been equipped with every convenience by her doting father and presented to her a month ago as an early graduation present. Nine months early, to be exact, because he, in his trust and blindness, wants her to make use of it during her last year at Smith.

You should get out and have some fun, buttercup, he told her, beaming. You college girls study too hard. All work and no play.

He dangled the keys before her.

Are you sure, Daddy? Budgie asked, eyes huge and round, like Betty Boop’s.

No, really. It’s the truth; I was standing right there. We’ve been friends since we were born, only two months apart, she at the beginning of summer and me at the end. Our families summer together at the same spot in Rhode Island, and have done so for generations. She’s dragged me along with her this morning on the basis of that friendship, that ancient tie, though we don’t really run in the same circles at college, and though she knows I have no interest in football.

The Ford makes a throaty roar as she accelerates into a curve, swallowing the scratchy voices from the radio. I grasp the door handle with one hand and the seat with another.

Budgie laughs again. “Come on, honey. I don’t want to miss the warm-ups. The boys get so serious once the game starts.”

Or something like that. The wind carries away two words out of three. I look out the side and watch the leaves hurry by, the height of the season, while Budgie chatters on about boys and football.

As it turns out, we have missed the warm-ups, and most of the first quarter as well. The streets of Hanover are empty, the stadium entrance nearly deserted. A distant roar spills over the brick walls, atop the muffled notes of a brass band. Budgie pulls the car up front, on a grassy verge next to a sign that says NO PARKING, and I struggle with my hat and pins.

“Here, let me do it.” She takes the pins from my cold fingers, sticks them ruthlessly into my hat, and turns me around. “There! You’re so pretty , Lily. You know that, don’t you? I don’t know why the boys don’t notice. Look, your cheeks are so pink. Aren’t you glad we had the top down?”

I fill my lungs with the clean golden-leaf New Hampshire air and tell her yes, I’m glad we had the top down.

Inside, the stands are packed, pouring over with people, like a concrete bowl with too much punch. I pause at the burst of noise and color as we emerge into the open, into the sudden deluge of humanity, but there’s no hesitation in Budgie. She slings her arm around mine and drags me down the steps, across several rows, stepping over outstretched legs and leather shoes and peanut shells, excusing herself merrily. She knows exactly where she’s going, as always. She grips my arm with a confident hand, tugging me in her wake, until a shouted Budgie! Budgie Byrne! wafts over the infinite mass of checked caps and cloche hats. Budgie stops, angles her body just so, and raises her other arm in a dainty wave.

I don’t know these friends of hers. Dartmouth boys, I suppose, familiar to Budgie through some social channel or another. They aren’t paying much attention to the game. They are festive, laughing, rowdy, throwing nuts at one another and climbing over the rows. In 1931, two years after the stock crash, we are still merry. Panics happen, companies fail, but it’s only a bump in the road, a temporary thing. The great engine coughs, it sputters, but it doesn’t die. It will start roaring again soon.

In 1931, we have no idea at all what lies ahead.

They are boys, mostly. Budgie knows a lot of boys. A few of them have their girls nestled next to them, local girls and visiting girls, and these girls all cast looks of instinctive suspicion at Budgie. They take in her snug dark green sweater, with its conspicuous letter D on the left breast, and her shining dark hair, and her Betty Boop face. They don’t pay my pretty pink cheeks much attention at all.

“What’d I miss? How’s he doing?” she demands, settling herself on the bench. Her eyes scan the field for her current boyfriend—the reason for our breakneck morning drive from Massachusetts—who plays back for Dartmouth. She met him over the summer, when he was staying with friends of ours at Seaview, as if Hollywood central casting had ordered her up the perfect costar, his eyes a complementary shade of summertime blue to her winter ice. Graham Pendleton is tall, athletic, charming, glamorously handsome. He excels at all sports, even the ones he hasn’t tried. I like him; you can’t help but like Graham. He reminds me of a golden retriever, and who doesn’t love a golden retriever?

“He’s all right, I guess,” says one of the boys. He seats himself on the bench next to Budgie, so close his leg touches hers, and offers her a square of Hershey. “Decent run in the last series. Eleven yards.”