Leo Colston
In the summer of 1900, Leo Colston was 13 years old and an inveterate chronicler of the daily goings-on in his life. Now in his sixties, unmarried and employed as a librarian, the rediscovery of that teenage diary unleashes a flood of long-forgotten memories of events that led to his choosing to live exactly the kind of isolated and disconnected life that inexorably leads to being a 60-something bachelor antiquarian. The centerpiece of those memories his conscious mind worked so hard to repress is a visit to an estate that one of his school chums called home. There, Colston came face to face with the duplicity of adults and struggles for the rest of his life to come to grips with that humiliation he was forced endure.
Hugh, former Viscount Trimingham
As any Viscount should, Hugh is blessed what the upper class call good breeding: He exhibits good taste, demonstrates good manners and is aware of the duty that comes with being a member of the aristocracy. Back in 1900, he had just returned from fighting the Boers and bears a scar upon his face to prove it. Hugh definitely does love Marian Maudsley, whose family are the occupants of the estate that Leo visits, but the emotions of love are inextricably intertwined with the duty of finding the right marriage partner as part of the obligation placed upon him to restore the estate to his family and preserve familial honor. Though outwardly kind to Leo, he nevertheless does use his status to manipulate the boy as his go-between in delivering messages to Marian.
Marian Maudsley
A major player in the events leading to that humiliation of Leo is Marian who is engaged to the Viscount, but whose heart belongs to Ted. Ted is a farmer and thus out of play as far as marriage partners go. Marian is characterized by high spirits, but beneath that façade of sympathy lies a woman very much concerned with herself ahead of others. Marian wins the adoration of young Leo by virtue of buying him a new set of clothes so he won’t feel quite so out of place among the aristocracy. She also wins him over with the gift of a new bike. That gift is corrupted, however, by her insistence that he use the bike in his role as the go-between delivering messages to her beloved farmer.
Ted Burgess
Physically more appealing than the disfigured war veteran as well as virile and Marian’s equal in spiritedness, Ted would be the perfect match for Marian in every way were it not for his one unassailable flaw: he’s simply not rich enough to be a suitable husband. Ted is reluctant to involved Leo in their little love triangle, but the ever self-centered Marian manipulates him past that moral qualm easily enough. As events play in his role as the go-between working both sides of Marian’s predicament, Leo comes to view Ted as something of a father-figure. Which is why his suicide essentially breaks the young man in half, leaving him to enter maturity unwilling to trust other adults even as he becomes one of them.
Mrs. Maudsley
Marian’s mother is the one pressing hardest for the union with the Viscount to come off. It is she who extends the invitation to Leo to visit the estate and keep her son occupied while she is busying trying to control events so that they inevitably lead to her preferred conclusion. This obsessive need to control and excessive confidence that events can be controlled ultimately results in a complete emotional collapse upon discovering her daughter and the poor farmer in a compromising situation.
Marcus Maudsley
One of those events that simply cannot be controlled, for instance, is the sudden occurrence of measles in the young boy who purposely chosen Leo of all his schoolmates to become his companion at the estate. The infirmity afflicting Marcus effectively creates the time and space necessary for Leo to be pressed into service as the go-between. No measles for Marcus and Leo might well have lived an entirely different life. Or not.
Edward, current Viscount Trimingham
The only major character existing entirely in the present along with Leo is the grandson that was produced from that compromising situation between Marian and Ted. In his twenties, he is now being pressed to find a suitable marriage partner, but is obdurately opposed to entering into a union with the love of his life because he is convinced that the events taking place in that long-ago summer resulted in a curse upon his family still in effect. While he calls the estate home, he has rented the bulk of it over to a school for girls. Marian shows up with one last request for his services as a go-between. His acceptance of the responsibility is usually interpreted as a sign that he is about to come out of self-imposed exile from the human race.
