Excerpt from The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

But Seaview, silently, relentlessly, had changed with the passing years. Mr. Huggett, originally blooming like a ripe plum—had begun to shrink. His crimson cheeks began to fade—leaving a network of tiny purple veins. One September the Stevenses had noticed how thin his hands had become, how the skin sagged round the knuckles, and how his hand had shaken as he signed the receipt.

Each year Mrs. Huggett had come one night into the Stevenses' sitting room, when the children had gone to bed, and told her lodgers in an anxious undertone, with frequent glances at the door, what a terrible winter Mr. Huggett had had—on his back on and off all the time, with bronchitis and other, more mysterious troubles which Mrs. Huggett could never properly explain.

Each year the recital had grown longer and more awesome, till at Easter one year the Stevenses had received a black-edged letter. It came from Mrs. Huggett to tell them that on the previous Tuesday night, at ten o'clock, her husband had passed away.

The following September they found Mrs. Huggett in black. She'd told them how wild it had been on the night that her husband died: how the sea had roared, how crumbs of snow had circled in the road; and although she described her husband's death as a happy release, she had worn mourning ever since.

Mr. Huggett had never been much use in the house towards the end. He had to give up his one definite job (the changing of the electric light bulbs) some years before, because looking up made him giddy. But that did not alter the fact that their landlady's partner had gone: that through the long winter she was alone.

The Stevenses had not definitely noticed anything amiss with Seaview in the years that followed. Mrs. Huggett remained as flustered, as tremblingly anxious to please as ever. Molly seemed on the go all day—and yet—there was just something different: some little thing each year. A few years back the bath plug had broken from its chain: it had never been recaptured, and lay each year in freedom at the bottom of the bath. Year by year the sheets grew more cottony and frail: and Mr. Stevens, happening one night to have a sharp toenail, slit his top sheet down the centre, and enlarged it accidentally with his foot each night as he got into bed.

The Stevenses never complained or pointed out these things. Their years of association with Seaview—their fear of harassing Mrs. Huggett—and perhaps a little pity for her—kept them silent. After all, they were out all day.

But to Mrs. Stevens, Seaview was only the background of a fortnight in each year which troubled and disturbed her. She hated herself for not enjoying it as the others did. It made her unhappy to pretend she was enjoying herself, because it was a sham: somehow dishonest. Dick, round about fourteen—digging in the sand—his sunburnt legs bare to his tucked-up shorts—would run to her suddenly with "Isn't it lovely, Mum!" and she would say "Lovely" and smile, and hate herself for the lie.

Only the honeymoon had been lovely: the coming of the children had made the fortnight a burden—sometimes a nightmare. At home the children were hers: they loved her: came to her in everything. At Bognor, somehow they drew away from her—became different. If she paddled, they laughed at her: saying she looked so funny. They never laughed at her at home.

When she was younger she had tried to play cricket with them on the sands, but she had no eye for a bouncing ball, and could not stoop quickly to stop it. They would laugh—and soon she would go and hide in a deck chair behind a magazine—while the hot sun brought on her headache.

But the journey was worst of all; for although the burden should have grown lighter as the children grew up—she had never conquered her dread of Clapham Junction, where they always had to change.

The rumble of porters' trucks: the wrong platforms: the shrieking trains: the losing of her husband once, when he came out of the wrong hole after getting the tickets—Hell, to Mrs. Stevens, would be a whitehot Clapham Junction with devils in peaked caps.

Excerpted from The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff. Copyright © 2021 by R.C. Sherriff. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.