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

But if Clapham Junction marked the summit of her panic fears, the journey in the train reached the limits of patient endurance. The carriage was invariably crowded on the first Saturday in September when they always went away. On one occasion someone was taken faint and called in a hollow voice for the window to be let down. Once—some years back—a lady in a corner had had a kind of fit, and tapped her heels on the ground and moaned. It had turned Mrs. Stevens cold with terror. She still dreamed about it sometimes: and ever since, her first anxious duty on getting into the carriage was to scan the faces of her fellow passengers, hoping against hope that all would look robust and at ease. If anyone were pale and delicate she sought to hide them from view with another passenger between, despising her cowardliness for doing it.

One trouble at least had been removed by the growing up of the children, for Mary, as a child, was always sick in the train: sick with unerring regularity, just after the curve that took them out of Dorking. Mrs. Stevens had tried starving the child: she had tried strong peppermints— to no avail. Ultimately she learnt of a good plan from her neighbor Mrs. Jack, whose little Ada was just the same. Mrs. Jack always carried on railway journeys, in her purse, two or three small paper bags. They could be quickly opened—easily applied and conveniently dropped out of the window. So adept had Mrs. Jack become that she boasted sometimes of getting the whole incident over before her surprised fellow passengers knew what had happened.

But Mrs. Stevens hated that journey. She had never been a reader. She could not lose herself in a book or magazine. She came away with the luggage rack and the ominous red communication cord burnt upon her aching eyes.

Yet now, as she busied herself with the supper, as she lifted the saucepan lid and forked the boiling beef, she was happy—almost elated at the unexpected sunlight of the evening: happy because the holiday brought such joy to the others. She looked forward to their coming home this evening: bursting to be off next day, yet reluctant to leave home now that it had become for one night the anteroom to freedom.

There was another reason, too, why she looked forward to the holiday this year with less reluctance than in the past. Dick and Mary were growing up now. Dick was seventeen and Mary nearly twenty. Once or twice in the past year Dick had spoken vaguely of a camping holiday with some friends, and Mary had talked of the jolly time some girls in the shop had had together on a farm.

Dick and Mary went out a good deal in the evenings now. There was the Thursday Dance at St. John's Hall—and things like that. Home was not quite the same these days, and the holiday, instead of separating them, seemed likely to bind them together. Last year Dick had still been at school: now he had started work. He did not seem very happy in his work. The holiday would do him good, and settle him, perhaps. Only Ernie, the third and youngest child, was still at school: for Ernie was only ten, and although he did not know it, he had set the spirit of the holiday in the last two years as far as the gaiety and horseplay went.

Luckily the hints of separate holidays had come to nothing, for when the day came to book the rooms, no other plan was raised. Dick seemed in fact more anxious than ever for Bognor since he had started work: which seemed to Mrs. Stevens a little strange.

The rain had quite stopped now: the sun was shining. Mrs. Stevens took the tablecloth from the kitchen drawer and went into the dining-room.

Ernie, released from the house, was playing with a tennis ball against the wall.

"You'll get your feet sopping," called Mrs. Stevens.

"It's dry," shouted Ernie.

Six o'clock was striking from St. John's Church up the road. The others would soon be home now. It was lucky they had all managed to get their holidays together. It would be lovely if it kept fine, the whole fortnight, and everybody enjoyed it like they always had before.

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.