The Last Summer (2 page)

There was no thunderbolt, no quickening of the heart, but there was a sense of recognition. A familiarity about his face: the nose, the eyes; his stature.

I opted out of whist. All three of my brothers were playing and I knew I stood no chance. Instead, I wandered to the other end of the room and sat down on the Persian rug in front of the fireplace. As I played with Caesar, Mama’s Pekinese dog, I caught Tom Cuthbert looking at me. I didn’t smile, but he knew I’d seen him. And, when I rose to my feet and walked back across the room, I was aware of him watching me. I sat down in an armchair, closer to the card tables, picked up a magazine and began to flick through its pages. I glanced over at him, caught his eye once more, and this time he smiled. And I knew it to be a special gesture, meant only for me. I didn’t realise what it was like for him then, of course; had no idea of his discomfort as his mother served us all tea.

My upbringing had prepared me for a certain life, a life where I’d never question my role or the cast of players sharing my stage. It was a thoroughly modern idea, then, to educate a daughter, and, in my father’s opinion, a pointless expense. So I’d studied at home, with Mademoiselle: a tiny bird of a woman, whose dislike of fresh air and susceptibility to draughts had rendered her pale and brittle. Her lessons in life had depended as much upon the temperature of her heart as the weather outside. Men, she had often told me – usually during arithmetic, and with a rug over her knees – were brutes; they had simply not evolved from animals, she said. However, Keats and Wordsworth appeared to bring out an entirely different side of Mademoiselle’s compact and complex character, for then she would sometimes throw back the rug, rise to her feet, and tell me that life was ‘
nuzzeen
’ at all if one had never loved. But by that summer Mademoiselle had left my life for good, for by then it was assumed I knew enough to be able to converse in polite society without appearing completely vacuous.

Like my mother’s orchids, I had been nurtured in a controlled environment, an atmosphere maintained at a consistent temperature, protected from cold snaps, clumsy fingers and bitter frosts.
My three brothers, on the other hand, had been allowed – even encouraged – to develop unruly tendrils, to thrive beyond the confines of any hothouse, to spread their roots, unrestrained, through that English earth they belonged to. It was different for a girl.

Marriage and children, a tidy home and a manicured garden were a foregone conclusion. And a husband with money was always a prerequisite. For how else could that life be achieved? I was a Home Counties girl, happy to be part of a family who enjoyed a sensible, uninterrupted existence, no matter the weather, the visitors, or the events beyond the white gate: the boundary between my understanding and the rest of the universe. When I was young I’d sometimes nudged that boundary: I’d walked down the long avenue of beech trees to the gate, and perched myself there, on top of it. There was little traffic on the road that bordered our land then, but occasionally an omnibus or new motor car would pass by and I would raise my hand to the unknown faces staring back at me. They were gone in an instant, but I always remembered those fleeting connections: new friends, all at once there, then gone again. Where did they go? What happened to them? Did they remember that moment too? Did they ever wonder what had become of me, the girl on the gate?

That evening, over dinner, I wanted to ask my mother about Tom Cuthbert, but she appeared abstracted. She gazed about the room with an unreadable expression on her face, and I wondered if she was thinking about the servants, again. She’d returned from London the day before, festooned with packages, and with a new hairdo, but noticeably agitated. ‘It’s simply
impossible
,’ she’d announced in the hallway, and in a voice much louder than usual, ‘to find any decent domestic staff these days. And when one does, one inevitably finds oneself replacing those months later.’ I couldn’t blame her for her exasperation. She
had travelled to London only the previous week to interview a prospective parlourmaid, a butler, and a new chauffeur, and had stayed overnight – as she quite often did – in the comfort of her Piccadilly club. It was no wonder to me she knew the train timetable to the second and off by heart, but so much to-ing and fro-ing had, she said, left her feeling
quite frazzled
.

‘I met Mrs Cuthbert’s son today, Mama. He’s called Tom, and he’s been away . . . though I’m not sure where.’

‘He attends university, dear,’ she replied, without looking at me.

‘But where?’ I asked.

‘Ha! Don’t become too intrigued by Cuthbert, sis,’ Henry broke in. ‘Mama expects you to have your sights set
slightly
higher, I think,’ he added, and then laughed.

‘I wondered about him, that’s all. He’s seems rather shy and . . . well, he has only his mother.’

Henry looked across the table at me. ‘Shy, eh? I reckon Cuthbert’s probably quite a rogue – underneath that aloof exterior.’

‘A rogue?’ I repeated. ‘I don’t think so. I think he probably prefers his own company to . . . to the likes of us.’

‘Aha! And she leaps to his defence! First sign, sister dear, first sign,’ Henry said, and George and William both sniggered.

‘Enough teasing, thank you, Henry,’ said Mama, glancing to my father for reinforcement. My father cleared his throat, as though about to speak, but then said nothing.

‘You’re simply jealous,’ I said, looking back at Henry and forcing a smile. It was one of my stock replies to him when I didn’t quite know what else to say.

‘And why on earth would I be jealous? He’s a servant, for God’s sake.’

‘No, he’s not. Mama’s just informed us – he’s at university.’

‘Oh yes, learning to polish silver, no doubt,’ Henry replied.

‘You’re jealous because he’s so much more handsome than you and isn’t inclined to boastfulness,’ I said, staring down at my plate, and then added, ‘Mademoiselle says gentlemen who feel the need to boast almost always have unusually small
cerveaux
.’

‘Ha! Mademoiselle . . . hmm, well, she would know of course. And yes, that’s right, I’m jealous of our housekeeper’s son, for I shall never have what he has and I can never be the bastard son of—’

‘Henry! That’s enough,’ my father intervened. ‘I don’t expect language like that from you or anyone else at this table. And I think you should leave your tittle-tattle and gossip at Cambridge. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ my brother answered.

And that was that.

I had no doubt that my eldest brother, Henry, knew a great deal of
tittle-tattle
. And more than that: I imagined there’d be idle gossip and tittle-tattle about him, too, somewhere. For of late he seemed to have acquired new friends, and spent more time in London than at home or Cambridge. Everyone knew Henry, and he, it appeared, knew everything about everyone. But his coterie had never been confined to Cambridge. Two of his closest friends from school had gone up to Oxford, another few straight into the army. He was the most outgoing of my three brothers, confident, popular, and extremely well connected. He liked to say he had his
ear to the ground
and I often imagined him lying prostrate upon some bustling city street.

Later that same evening I quizzed my brother, asked him what he’d meant by his remark, but he’d heeded my father’s warning. ‘I was being flippant, dear. It meant nothing,’ he said to me. But I knew there was more, and something specific: something my father did not wish to have repeated, particularly not in front
of me. There was no point in my pursuing it with Henry; he’d never go against Papa, no matter how full of bravado he appeared, and I was very much aware that to him I was still a child. But as I lay in my bed that night I pondered on it all again. I wondered who paid for Tom Cuthbert’s education; and then I wondered if I’d heard Henry correctly. Had he actually used the word
bastard
?

My father’s inheritance, though by no means insubstantial, had been built upon and added to over the years, mainly through returns on investments in the railways. Five years before I was born he’d purchased Deyning Park from the impoverished Earl, and commissioned one of England’s finest architects to make it grander than ever. A ballroom and two entire wings were added to the main building, old windows and doors replaced; the old panelled library was refurbished, and an ornate carved staircase, Italian marble floor and Corinthian pillars were added to the main lobby. Almost five hundred tons of white Tuscan marble had been brought to Deyning to create my father’s vision: a grand entrance hall with twenty-foot-high pillars. The oak-panelled dining room was easily big enough to comfortably seat thirty, and the sixteen bedrooms and four modern bathrooms ensured my parents could entertain and accommodate their house guests in style. Later, some five or six years after my birth, electric lights were installed in a few of the formal reception rooms, their twentieth-century brilliance altering Mama’s colour scheme, and
causing much debate and consternation amongst the servants. At that time, a rumour drifted about the house that looking directly upon the electric light could blind a person, and one of the servants – Edna, I think, suspect now, though I have no evidence and it was a very long time ago – had told George this. My brother – in the midst of a scientific phase – had been determined to test this theory, and, as usual, appointed me his assistant. My role in this particular experiment was to stand guard as he climbed up on to the dining-room table and then, once in position, beneath the new chandelier, and only when he gave me the codeword ‘eureka’, to flick the wall-mounted switch. But as I stood on a chair, waiting for my cue, George became distracted by new possibilities, and as he flew along the highly polished mahogany table in his stocking feet he collided with Mama’s oversized and elaborate crystal epergne, taking the thing with him on its final short journey. George and the epergne landed on the oak floor in a crash loud enough to wake the dead and within seconds half the servants and Mama were in the room. Luckily George wasn’t injured, but the epergne – which, we were informed by Mama, was an
airloom
– was pronounced unrepairable. Later on, in the library, George was tried: I was called to give evidence, and he was found guilty and sentenced by Papa to twenty-four hours’ solitary confinement. And that marked the end of George’s interest in electricity.

Parts of our home, I’d been told, dated back to the sixteenth century, but from the outside, at least, the place appeared resolutely Georgian: built in the neoclassical style from honey-hued stone with a pleasing symmetry, perfectly balanced lines, and a multitude of tall windows. At the front of the house, in the centre, two Ionic columns framed the doorway, supporting a stone pediment with the words
Ubi bene, ibi patria
carved into it. To the east of the house, around a cobblestoned courtyard – always referred to as the stable yard – were the stables, coach
house and a few servants’ cottages. A warren of dark passageways and small interconnecting rooms led from the house to the coach house, where two motor cars now sat alongside the old wagonette and landau carriage of my childhood. And there, too, the sleigh: still used occasionally in the depths of winter, when the lanes around us were white and thick with snow.

Father’s penchant for the neoclassical was a fitting backdrop to his and my mother’s vast collection of artefacts and souvenirs from abroad: antiques, paintings, books, bronzes and sculptures from their continental tours. A delivery of crates and the unveiling of new works of art for Deyning inevitably followed each return home. In his newly furbished library my father added to his burgeoning collection of rare books; books he would never read; books no one could read in any one lifetime. And whilst he indulged himself with his love of antiquities, Mama focused on our comfort, with new fitted carpets and expensive wall coverings from Harrods and Gamages. She’d taken advice, albeit paid for, from an old friend of hers who had an interior decorating business in London.

Sumptuous would best describe Mama’s style. It was what she’d been accustomed to all her life; was what she knew. Consequently, our home was as lavishly furnished and decorated as any other fine country house: each window festooned, draped in richly coloured silk brocades; looped back, tasselled and fringed; each vista – north, south, east and west – opulently framed in a colour specifically chosen to match the light of that room, and the views beyond.

From my bedroom window I looked out across the formal gardens and lake, beyond the six hundred acres of landscaped parkland to the South Downs in the distance. It was the only point in my vision that my father did
not
own, and I sometimes wondered who lived there, beyond my world, beyond Deyning. As a child I’d rarely ventured farther than the ha-ha, which
separated the park from the formal gardens. Terraces, ornamented with statues, urns and fountains, led down from the house’s south façade to the striped lawns and broad herbaceous borders, extravagantly stocked with Mama’s prize-winning roses and peonies.

A small army of gardeners and outdoor staff were employed at Deyning then. Even now, I see their faces, and their hands, my
outside friends
. Together, they managed the parkland, the home farm and the kitchen gardens; they maintained the formal gardens, and the tennis and croquet lawns, constantly rolling and trimming the grass to perfection. They pulled, planted, chopped, clipped and snipped, like defenders of a realm, for Deyning was a kingdom, guarded by acreage and entirely self-sufficient. The walled kitchen gardens produced all manner of fruit and vegetables: asparagus, strawberries, raspberries, logan-berries, currants (white, red and black), gooseberries, plums, pears, apples, rhubarb, potatoes, cabbages, carrots, cauliflowers and spinach. And in summer, up against the pink brick walls, peaches and nectarines. The home farm supplied us with all our milk, cream, eggs, butter and cheese, as well as our meat, poultry and game.