The Last Summer (15 page)

When Mama and I returned to Deyning, briefly, and with Papa, I could barely contain myself. There would be at least twenty letters, I thought, waiting for me with Broughton, and all I had to do was get to him, to think of a pretext to get out of the house and meander towards his cottage. I felt dizzy and sick with excitement. And I was becoming cunning in my duplicity.

‘Shall we go for a long walk, Mama? To deep dene perhaps, and then back by the lake?’ I suggested, as our motor car passed through the white gate. I knew that the very last thing my mother would feel like was a long walk after the journey from London. And I was right.

‘Oh, Clarissa, I think you’ll have to take your walk alone, dear. I’m much too tired and I need to speak with Mrs Cuthbert and the servants . . .’

I couldn’t understand it. There were no letters. None at all, he said.

‘But are you quite sure? You see, it simply doesn’t make sense, Mr Broughton.’

We were standing by the greenhouse in the walled garden, and he didn’t look at me. As he spoke he kept his eyes down, looking into the wooden barrow in front of him, piled to a peak with darkest earth.

‘Yes, I’m quite sure. There’ve been no letters . . . none at all.’

‘I see.’ I turned and walked away.

No letters, no letters . . .

I wasn’t ready to go back inside the house, to face Mama, who’d immediately notice the change in my mood. I wandered down the pathway, towards the gate I’d skipped through only minutes earlier, and as I turned to close it I paused and looked back at Broughton. He was standing in the same spot, staring back at me, folding his hat in his hands. But then he looked away, put his hat back upon his head, picked up the long handles of the barrow and disappeared inside the greenhouse.

I walked through the stable yard, past Mrs Cuthbert’s cottage. He’d been there, quite recently, I thought, glancing up at the small window poking out from the red tiled roof. He’d been back and I wasn’t there. I stopped at the gate, ran my hand over the gnarled oak of the thick gatepost. His hand had touched that: had he thought of me? Then I lifted the iron latch and walked on into the field. The grass was long, heavy with dew and shimmering with gossamer. In my haste, I hadn’t changed my shoes, hadn’t supposed I’d be walking far.

No letters, no words . . .

When I reached the boathouse I sat down upon the damp steps and looked out across the lake. The day had a lifeless feel to it: the countryside silent and perfectly still, the water colourless and flat, and the air cooler than I’d anticipated. The sky hung low, so close to the earth it seemed to almost touch the water in front of me. I looked down at my feet, began to pick off the blades of wet grass clinging to the leather of my shoes. We’d made a pact, I thought; and I’d risked so much to get one letter to him. And I’d copied out a poem for him, by Emily Brontë.

. . . Yesterday we marched some 20 miles, stopping for tea and rum, & then on again, but the rum keeps us warm – & morale is quite high. Some of the men who joined us have gone for weeks without any real sleep or respite, & have not removed their boots in as long. They’ve had no proper meals, nothing hot, and the temperature has suddenly plummeted. When they fell out of line we tried to pick them up, but the CO came along with his stick. He had to. He couldn’t leave them there – they’d have frozen to death . . .

D
earest T, I do what I believe is best for ALL of us, which is not always easy, & my responsibilities – to everyone – weigh heavily on me. I too cannot bear this reality, but what choice do we have? We must nurture brave hearts, & pray for peace & for all that is noble, and good and fine. I neither know nor understand what ‘might lie ahead’, but I do know that without US my life would be devoid of all hope and beauty. It makes me utterly and unbearably miserable to think of you lonely and sad, & to know also that it is beyond my power to ease your suffering, but I want to remind you how very close you are to my heart, now & always . . . and ever in my thoughts . . . in haste, Yr D

We remained at Deyning for only three days before returning to London, and for me it was a thoroughly miserable time. The house had been requisitioned and my parents and Mrs Cuthbert were preoccupied with inventories, organising the removal of paintings and any items of value. Mrs Cuthbert, Mr Broughton and a few others were to remain at the house, as caretakers,
but my father was upset and agitated at the prospect of army personnel trampling through his precious home. ‘It’ll be wrecked,’ he said, shaking his head. Huts for soldiers were going up in the grounds, and the whole place had already taken on a somewhat gloomy, neglected look. Windows now stood bare, their views somehow altered and made ordinary by their lack of lavish frame. Stripped of its furniture and glorious interior colours, Deyning had become like a museum emptied of its exhibits. Certain rooms were to be used for storage and would remain locked, their ghostly contents shrouded in dust sheets. Other things were to be transported to London. The rooms I’d known since childhood now stood bare of family treasures and personal memorabilia. The curtains, carpets, rugs and tapestries, which had for so long cushioned our existence, lending the place softness and warmth, had been taken down to be put away for the duration of the war, and the whole place echoed with an unfamiliar sadness.

‘But what if the war ends soon?’ I asked my mother. ‘What if we wish to come back here?’

‘Sadly, I don’t think that will happen, Clarissa. People are saying that this war may go on for years.’

I sat upon the staircase, watching Broughton and the few remaining men from the estate carrying endless tea chests and crates, furniture and carpets. Back and forth, and back and forth across the marble floor, directing each other as they manoeuvred larger pieces through doorways.

‘Steady there . . . a little to the left . . . that’s it. Careful now . . .’

I felt as though I was watching the dismantling of a stage set; theatre in itself. I watched as they carefully carried Mama’s portrait – covered in a blanket – from the drawing room through the front door and out to a waiting wagon. It was moving to London along with us. I watched them carefully take down the
chandelier in the hallway, for that, too, was moving up to London. I shuffled along the step as Wilson and Mrs Cuthbert trudged up and down the staircase carrying hatboxes, bags, and tied bundles of linen and towels.

I remembered all the Christmases we’d celebrated, always with a huge tree, situated next to the staircase where I now sat. As a child, I’d sat upon that same step, huddled up against the balusters, studying the tree, its shape and decorations; enthralled by the magical light and shadows upon the walls around me. Dancing. Over Christmas the only light in the hallway had come from the silver candelabra burning on the hallway table. But on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day night small candles were attached to the branches of the tree, their soft light reflected in the vast chandelier suspended high above and thrown back across the walls like stars across the universe. I remembered the smell, that mingling of pine and wax and burning logs: the smell of home, the smell of happiness. I’d sat there in my nightgown, listening to the chime of crystal; the laughter, music and voices emanating from another room, an adult world I could only imagine. And always hoping for a glimpse of Mama, as she whooshed across the marble floor, beautiful, resplendent . . . invincible.

It was nearly always Stephens, my nursemaid, who’d find me there and march me back up to the nursery floor. ‘But I only wanted to see Mama,’ I’d plead, as she secured the gate at the top of the stairs.

‘Your mama is busy, Miss Clarissa; you know that. And she wouldn’t be pleased to see you running about the place in your nightgown now, would she?’

I wasn’t sure. Would she be so displeased? Mama loved me. She told me so. More than anything in the world, she said. Stephens didn’t know this of course. Stephens didn’t understand. How could she? She didn’t have a mama like mine.

Quite often Stephens found me hiding behind the jardinière
in the corner of the hallway, trying desperately to align myself with its narrow stand, trying to be invisible; but my usual hiding place had been inside the dumbwaiter, which carried Mama’s breakfast tray and meals up to the nursery floor each day. Oh, how much fun my brothers and I had had playing in that! We’d sent each other up and down and up and down, with Henry inevitably in charge of the pulley, as the rest of us gathered intelligence, spying on Mama and the servants . . . and hiding from Stephens and the dreaded Miss Greaves. And only once did it get stuck: with poor Georgie inside it. The ropes had become tangled – from overuse, Stephens later said. We could hear his desperate cries for help echoing throughout the house, as though he were trapped down a very deep well. And then, when I became somewhat hysterical and began to cry, because I really did wonder if we’d ever get him back, Henry had shouted at me to shut up, which had only made me cry all the more.

Of course those childhood games and adventures had long since ceased, but they remained a part of Deyning, a part of the world I was leaving.

‘You all right there, miss? Not too cold?’ Wilson asked as she passed me on the stairs.

I was freezing. Without carpets and furniture the house was cold, and colder still from every door standing open to the elements, and the air had a dusty, acrid smell to it. But I continued to sit there, lost in the warmth of my memories. Occasionally Mama appeared, directing operations with a slight frown but a steady, calm voice. My father remained in his library, amongst his last remaining boxes of books. Later, in her boudoir, Mama told me how hard it was for him.

‘This place is everything to him . . . everything,’ she said, tearfully. ‘We must rally him, Clarissa. You mustn’t allow him see you looking so miserable . . . otherwise he will feel even sadder.’ But I realised at that moment that she was speaking of
herself. Though my father was unsettled by the upheaval and chaos around him, he was essentially a pragmatic man. It seemed to me that it was Mama who was shaken and sad. And I was surprised, and wondered why, because she’d been the one who’d wanted to hand the place over to the army, and to the Belgian refugees; and because I was unused to seeing my mother upset or agitated by anything. And it still seemed so unnecessary. Why did our home have to be packed away? Why could Papa not have said ‘no’ to the army? It was
his
home after all.

My parents’ grim acceptance of a long war shocked me. It seemed defeatist in itself; a blindly pessimistic acquiescence in something which had for me, up until that point, at least, been a temporary state; something which
could
be endured and lived through, and then, at its end, normality restored. But their quiet acknowledgement of a long struggle ahead and the sight of our home, our lives, being dismantled and packed away for an indefinite period shook me out of that dream. And it made me begin to realise that perhaps I hadn’t fully come to terms with what was taking place across Europe.