Leo Colston has two different aspects, he’s the narrator of the
book, a man of about sixty year old, and he’s a “dried up” man 
inside. 
Leo is a young boy of the middle class. He lives alone with his 
mother in West Hash, a little village near Salisbury. His father was 
a bank gardener in Salisbury is dead, Leo thinks he was a crank, he 
didn’t want his son to go to school but his mother always wanted him 
to go so as soon as he died, he went. His mother liked gossip and 
was very sensitive to public opinion, she needed social frame, and 
we can easily imagine her pleasure when her son has been invited to 
spend a summer to a rich friend. He has also an aunt, Charlotte, a 
Londoner. He and his mother were living on her money, the pension 
from the bank and the little; his father had been able to put by. 
Leo attends to the same school as upper class boys, such as Maudsley
 (he doesn’t remember his name probably because he has never been a 
special friend to him but while reading the diary he remembers his 
name was Marcus). Leo used to write his feelings and the happenings
 of each day on a diary. He believed he had magical powers and was 
able to cast spells. When he was at school, two boys who had annoyed 
him had an accident and he believes it is due to what he wrote on 
his journal. When he went to Brandham Hall, he was naïve and 
innocent. He didn’t know anything about love and sex. He naturally 
felt in love with a beautiful lady, as any young boy would have 
done. He’s curious about sex even if he doesn’t know what it is. The 
lack of father is especially important at that point; those 
explanations should be made by the father “it’s a job for your dad 
really…” At the end of the story he has discovered what he wanted to 
know but the outcome is devasting for him, he’ll be haunted all his 
life by the ghost of Ted. He’ll feel guilty all his life; his 
freshness and purity are gone. 
Marian Maudsley is the older sister of Marcus. She was a very 
beautiful woman with grey eyes and blond hair. Being a young woman 
of high class, she’s expected by her family and society to marry 
Lord Trimmingham. But is having a passionate affair with a farmer 
Ted Burgess. They are both in love one with another and years later 
she still thinks that it was they “were made for each other”. She 
knows what she had to do and eventually marries Lord Trimmingham. 
She stayed loyal to him all their life after Ted’s death but when 
she married him she was pregnant. 
Ted Burgess is a farmer on the Maudsley property. He’s in love with 
Marian and wants her to escape with him. He tries to explain to Leo 
what there is underneath love and the meaning of words 
like “spooning” but then realising he can’t; tells him that its his 
father’s job. He’s so desperate of having lost that he committed 
suicide. 

Discovering an old diary, Leo, now in his sixties, is drawn back to 
the hot summer of 1900 and his visit to Brandham Hall. He was a 
young boy of 12, invited to spend the summer school brake with a 
more affluent friend: Marcus. He fell in love with Marcus older 
sister, Marian. She was having a passionate affair with Ted, a 
farmer, but she was engaged with Lord Trimmingham. She exploited Leo 
who’s a messenger between Ted and herself. She took care of Leo, 
buying him the clothes he needed, talking to him (she was the only 
one except Marcus)…In exchange he asked Ted to explain him physical 
love but Ted refused. The boy had only a shadowy notion at first 
about the significance of the messages but he soon realized that it 
was love messages. Disillusioned, he took his revenge changing one 
of the messages. The day of Leo’s birthday, Marian is late and her 
mother goes to look for her: the lovers end up to be discovered. 
Pregnant, Marian is humiliated in front of everybody. Ted committed 
suicide. Leo is disappointed about life, fidelity and love. 
Remembering that summer, he wants to know what happened to Marian 
and goes back to Brandham Castle. There, he’s charged of his last 
message: telling to Marian’s grandson how beautiful and true her 
love with Ted was. The narrator has never married; perhaps does he 
still love her?