The Last Summer (27 page)

Then, one day, when I arrived to take over from Rose, she said, ‘You’ll never guess whom I’ve just been talking to, literally – just gone on the last train.’

‘Who?’ I asked, hanging up my coat on the inside of the door.

‘Tom Cuthbert!’

I turned. ‘Really? Just now?’

‘Yes . . . minutes ago, dear,’ she replied. ‘He had a three-day pass, said he’d been down to Deyning.’

She must have seen something, sensed something, ‘You all right, dear?’ she asked, reaching out and touching my arm.

‘Yes, fine,’ I said, raising my hand to my head. ‘Just a headache, that’s all.’

‘Do you want Flavia to stay? Do your turn, dear? She can, you know . . . she’s already said that. She said she can stay until later.’

Flavia was hovering beside her, the two other girls standing further back.

‘No, I’m fine. Truly, it’s nothing.’

Rose lit a cigarette, picked up her handbag.

‘Right-o then, see you tomorrow, dear. Don’t expect it’ll be
too busy tonight, nothing much seems to be happening, but you never know.’

She turned to go.

‘Rose!’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘Tom . . . Tom Cuthbert, how did he seem?’

‘He looked exhausted, like the rest of them . . . said it was his first leave in ten months . . . said he’d slept for three whole days.’

‘Did he . . . did he mention me?’ I couldn’t help it; I had to ask.

She looked at me, perplexed for a moment. ‘No, darling, he didn’t. And do you know I completely forgot to tell him that you were helping here too, completely forgot. How silly of me.’

‘Oh well,’ I replied, smiling back at her, ‘not to worry. See you tomorrow then.’

I watched her go. Watched her and Flavia move off down the platform, their arms linked, their heads leaning inward, already deep in conversation. And I stood there completely still. Frozen on that spot.
He was here . . . moments ago he was here
. I closed my eyes, tried to imagine him standing where I now stood. I breathed in the dusty station air as though inhaling the echo of his energy, his breath. I took myself back through the preceding minutes. I’d been on my bicycle, cycling down the Strand . . . and then over Waterloo Bridge . . . and he’d been there. And I had that feeling once again: the queerest feeling of being out of kilter with the rest of the universe.

He was here.

We had missed each other by seconds.

I turned, went inside the hut, and began stacking the clean cups on to a shelf. Then I unstacked them, and put them into lines. I noticed one was chipped at its rim. A strange, perfectly formed chip, in the shape of a V. I stood there for some time, staring at
that chipped cup, running my finger round and round its imperfect rim, until my flesh finally caught its sharp edge, and tore.

I was lying on my back, stretched out on the pale pink velvet chaise longue at the end of her bed, and she said, ‘You know, dear, you’ll ruin your hair, lying like that.’

We should have been at Flavia Astley’s twenty-first birthday party, or at least on our way. But by now it was after nine.

‘Do you really want to go, Rose? I’m not sure I can be bothered . . . think I’d rather stay here.’

‘Hmm. I think we should . . . don’t you? We’ll have missed the dinner by now, of course, but if we don’t turn up . . . and there’s my parents, your mother . . . we did say we’d follow on.’

An hour earlier, as the front door slammed shut, and Rose’s parents – along with my mother – headed off to the Astleys’ party, two streets away, I’d once again taken a needle to my arm, after I’d injected Rose. She only wanted a light dose, she said. She’d taken a sixth of a grain. I had a quarter, I think, or perhaps a little more.

I said to her, ‘Tell me about your thing with Tom again . . . Tom Cuthbert.’

I don’t know why, but some dark, perverse part of me, my brain, wanted to hear her speak about it. It was a scrap, of something, sustenance, and – no matter how unappetising – I was famished, my heart desperate. And I thought just to say his name, hear another speak his name, might somehow satiate those splintered molecules of my being.

She lay on the bed next to me, her feet on the pillow, her head propped in her hands.

‘Tom Cuthbert,’ she said slowly, slurring the syllables, ‘is really . . .
quite
. . . delicious.’

I turned on to my side, looked up into her eyes: tiny black pinprick pupils swimming in a watery grey.

‘You know, Rose, your eyes are the colour of the sea.’

She looked down and smiled at me.

‘I think I need to tell you something,’ she said. She moved on the bed, pulled a pillow down and rested her chin upon it. ‘In fact . . . I need to tell you two things, darling.’

‘Hmm, and so,’ I said, watching her.

‘Well, that night with Tom, the time I said I was with him . . . I sort of lied.’

I stared at her. ‘Sort of?’

‘I didn’t mean to . . . he did kiss me . . . but nothing more. I made up the rest.’

I didn’t say anything. I wondered if I’d heard her correctly.

Did she just say she made it up?

After a minute or two I came up with one word to say to her: why?

‘Oh . . . I don’t know,’ she said, sounding quite angry and burying her face in the pillow.

Then she lifted her head. ‘You asked me, you egged me on, and I wanted to be able to tell you something . . . something more than the fact that he’d kissed me when he was drunk.’ She paused, sighed, and then turned over, on to her back. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Nothing exciting ever happens to me. No one’s ever been in love with me . . . desired
me
.’

‘But Henry said you were seeing him.’

‘Yes, because that’s what I told him. I wanted Henry to think that . . . I wanted to make him jealous. Oh really, Clarissa, I’ve been in love with your brother for years . . . and I don’t think he’s even noticed me.’

‘That’s not true, he really does rather like you, Rose, I know that.’ I sat up, slowly. There was a quivering sort of glow about
the room and I could feel my heart palpitating, my whole body trembling, as though everything were caught in the same vibration. I said, ‘Tell me the truth, Rose, what happened between you and Tom Cuthbert?’

She rolled on to her stomach, lifted her head and looked back at me. ‘Nothing, really, that’s just it. Oh, we kissed, but . . .’

‘Yes?’

She frowned, began to fiddle with the lace on the pillow. ‘He was drunk, and it was dark . . . and he seemed to think I was you, dear. You see, he said your name; he kept on calling me
Clarissa
.’

Charlie and I were married in October 1918, at the church round the corner from our home in Mayfair. He’d told me, and more than once, that it was all he was living for, to marry me. In the end, there seemed little point in waiting. Both Mama and the Boyds had said so. ‘The sooner you marry the better,’ Mama had said. ‘It will give poor Charlie the motivation he needs to pull through and make a full recovery.’

In the weeks leading up to my wedding Mama had repeatedly told me that I was a little too thin, a little
too
pale. But I had no appetite for food, and no appetite for marriage. On the day, an hour or so before the service, and sitting on my bed with Rose, I pushed a needle into my vein, and she said, ‘I’m really not sure it’s a good thing for you to be doing this at this moment in time . . .’ Minutes later, she stood with me, holding back my veil, as I’d retched over the lavatory, and then she held me as I cried silently on her shoulder. It was the last time I ever took morphia.

Henry had managed to secure two days’ leave and came home to give me away, and after the wedding we had a small reception
at Claridges. Our wedding photograph appeared in
The Times
, the
Tatler
and
Country Life
magazines: Charlie in his uniform, stern faced and minus his walking stick, and me, looking serene and wan in my gown of ivory duchesse satin and Mama’s long lace veil, staring back – unsmiling – at the camera with peculiarly dark eyes. Of course, it was not the wedding my mother had once hoped for, not the wedding she’d planned for me for so many years. There were simply too many missing for it to be a fulfilment of that dream. And there could be no honeymoon. The war was not yet over, and Charlie had to return to Craiglockhart to continue his convalescence and treatment. So we had only one night together, our wedding night, in the honeymoon suite at Claridges.

We were both nervous, and the combination of champagne and pills had made Charlie even more emotional. When I emerged from the dressing room, wearing the long silk negligee I’d selected at Selfridges only the week before, he smiled. ‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, and then burst into tears. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his pyjamas, and I immediately moved over to him, sat down next to him and held him in my arms. I wasn’t sure if it was wedding-night nerves or something else. But he told me then, through his tears, that I’d made him so happy; that our life together would be good. ‘We’re going to be so happy together, Clarissa,’ he said, looking down at my hand, held in his.

We lay in each other’s arms for quite some time, talking about the future, where we might buy a house, how we’d like it to be. And we talked about the war, the likelihood of it ending in the coming months.

‘I don’t want you to get better too soon . . . not if means you have to go back and fight. Not now,’ I said, looking up at him.

He stared up at the ornate cornicing on the ceiling. ‘And I don’t want to go back there. Ever.’

I think I realised that night that he would never be the Charlie I’d known before. The witty quips, the jesting and teasing I’d always associated with him seemed to have gone from his character for ever. There was a new intensity to him, which frightened and excited me at the same time. And he seemed so much older than the other Charlie.

He said, ‘I want you to know I’m not a virgin, Clarissa.’

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure why he had told me this, what he expected me to say, but I didn’t want to ask questions, and I didn’t want him to ask me any. He reached over to his side, switched off the lamp, then he moved down the bed, alongside me, and took me in his arms. ‘I shall be very gentle with you, darling.’

‘Yes.’

We kissed slowly, and as his hands moved over my body, following its lines and curves, I could hear his breathing, becoming heavier, quicker. ‘I love you . . . love you so much,’ he murmured. He pulled up my nightgown, moved his hand up my leg to the inside of my thigh. I felt him against me, felt his hardness. He pushed my legs apart with his own, pulled my nightgown up further still. I was beginning a descent, slowly moving through the blackness to a memory. I wrapped my arms around his neck, placed my lips upon his shoulder. ‘I’ll be gentle,’ he said again, in a whisper, and moving himself between my legs. I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance, feel
his
lips upon my neck,
his
hands exploring . . . And then, as he entered me, and moaned loudly, I came back into the room.

‘I’m sorry, darling, I don’t think that was quite as pleasurable for you as it was for me,’ he said, moments later. ‘It’ll get better though, I promise. First time’s never very enjoyable for the lady.’

I felt a tear escape. ‘Don’t worry, it’s been a long day . . . we’re both tired.’

‘I didn’t hurt you, did I?’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘you were gentle, very gentle.’

We lay in each other’s arms in silence, and as his breathing slowed I quietly moved away. I lay on my back, my eyes wide open to the darkness, and I pondered on that momentous day, my wedding day. None of it was as I’d once imagined. This is my new life, I thought, I am married: for I had said,
I do
.

I rewound the events of the preceding twelve hours: arriving at the church with my dashing elder brother; walking down the aisle on his arm, and seeing Charlie, standing there in his uniform, smiling nervously, leaning heavily on his stick; the small sea of ostentatious hats and plumage; the oversized arrangements of white roses, eucalyptus and ivy; Mama, turning to look at me with a queer, sad smile.

I do . . .

I whispered those words once more. I had married Charlie, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.

I do . . .

The following morning, after breakfast, Charlie delivered me back to my mother’s house, and then went to catch his train. He’d been in a strange mood that morning, distracted and monosyllabic. When he bid me goodbye, kissing me on my cheek, his manner was brusque. But I put this down to the fact that he didn’t wish to leave me, didn’t wish to go back to hospital.

Venetia was already at the house that morning, and she and Mama both fussed over me. I was a new bride; I had just had my wedding night.

‘Aha! Well, you look radiant, dear. And you were an absolute vision yesterday . . . stunning, wasn’t she, Edina?’

‘Yes, beautiful, very beautiful,’ Mama said, looking up at me from where she sat and taking hold of my hand. ‘Your father would have been so proud . . . so proud.’