The Last Summer (32 page)

For a moment I thought he might cry. I could feel the tension in his body; see the strain in his face. And I felt immeasurably guilty to have caused him such distress.

‘Bloody stupid . . . bloody stupid . . .’ he muttered, as he turned and walked away.

Later that evening, before dinner, I telephoned Charlie.

‘Yes, it’s been a heavenly day here too, though I haven’t seen much of it,’ I lied. ‘Mabel and I have been so busy packing up the place.’

I’d already decided that I wanted to spend all the available time I had that week with Tom. I knew that our time was limited, and I also knew that though it would be unbearable to say goodbye to him, I had no choice; I had to. Somehow, in my mind, there seemed to be a degree of absolution for my sins, my infidelity with Tom, if I returned to my husband. My unfaithfulness was finite. I would, ultimately, do the right thing, I thought.

I’d invited Tom to join us for dinner that evening. Henry was drinking heavily again, and he, Michael and Julian were reminiscing about the War – about the brothels at the front. Tom and I barely spoke. Instead, we conducted a conversation with our eyes, knowing the others would not notice. After dinner the five of us retired to the drawing room and played gramophone records once again. And I danced with him once more as the other three sat around smoking, watching us. I’m really not sure what they saw, but they must have seen, must have known. Whilst we were dancing, holding each other, I whispered to him to come back to the house later, through the servants hall and up the back
staircase. I knew Henry would soon be out for the count. And, perhaps sadly, Michael and Julian didn’t really matter.

‘Goodnight, all,’ I said, when I left the room, leaving all four men there, and blowing them each a kiss.

As I climbed into my bed I heard Henry and the other two singing their way up the staircase, followed by an attempt – by Henry, I presumed – to play The Last Post on his bugle. Tom, I thought, must have gone home but would be back shortly. Then my door opened, and there he was.

‘Tom! Henry has only just gone to bed.’

‘Clarissa, they barely know what day of the week it is let alone where I am or what
we
may be up to,’ he replied, pulling off his tie.

‘Are you absolutely sure? If he finds out he’s bound to tell Mama.’

He didn’t answer me. He took off his clothes, leaving them scattered across the floor and climbed into bed with me. Then he said, ‘If we’re going to have an affair, Clarissa, can you please stop mentioning your mama?’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And that’s another thing, you must stop apologising to me.’

He took hold of me, kissed me passionately.

‘I’ve been longing to do that all evening,’ he said, and then he reached over and turned out the lamp.

The next few days were blissful. We spent every afternoon together, usually on the island with a picnic. Once, when it rained, we rowed back across the lake and spent the remainder of the afternoon locked inside the boathouse. We scripted and acted out a play all about life at Deyning, with each of us playing a multitude of different parts. Tom, of course, proved to be the better mimic, adding something more – ‘a soupçon of wickedness,’ he said – to each familiar figure: an unsurprising but ridiculously lascivious Mr Broughton, with a penchant for being
naked whilst gardening; a lusty Edna, with a preference for women; and an acutely observed spoilsport called Mabel. And as I rolled about the wooden floor, half naked and crying with laughter, I didn’t think about tomorrow or next week. I didn’t think about the future, or the past.

But sometimes, in our quiet moments, I’d watched a frown creep into his brow. I’d felt him wince, his whole body tense, seen him shut his eyes. And I knew in those moments that he was remembering the War. Not inviting it back, but having it forced forward in his memory. And I didn’t want to ask him about it, because I didn’t want him to have to go back there, to remember. And the one time I had asked him, when I’d said, ‘Tell me. What is it? You can tell me . . . I want you to know you can talk to me about it,’ he’d turned to me and said, ‘No. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll never talk about it.’ He’d looked at me with such intensity, such fear and pain in his eyes. ‘I don’t want you to know,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to know what I’ve seen . . . what I’ve done.’

Each evening, after dinner, we danced; and later, upstairs in my bed, we made love. On our last night he said to me, ‘We will be together, one day; I know it. And if I thought for a moment it wasn’t to be, I think . . . I think I might stop breathing.’

I wanted to tell him then about Emily. I wanted to but I didn’t know how to. I hadn’t uttered her name to a living soul, and I’d buried her so deep inside my own that it was almost impossible for me to think of her as being real. Had I actually had a child? Was there really a little girl somewhere looking out on to the world with those same serious dark eyes?

Emily.

She’d be two years of age: walking, speaking, part of another family. And that was my comfort, the one thing I’d held on to:
that she
belonged
to someone, somewhere. For if I wasn’t able to love her, the idea that she belonged, that she was held close, loved and cherished, offered a degree of assuagement.

But if I spoke her name – what would happen?

On our last night together I did speak her name. As we lay in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms, I said her name out loud.

‘Emily . . .’

He turned on to his side. ‘Emily? And who, exactly, is Emily?’

I closed my eyes.
He said her name.

‘A little girl. She’s a little girl,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘And
where
, pray tell, does Emily live?’ he asked. ‘Or is she one of your imaginary friends?’

‘Yes, I suppose she is.’

I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him we had a child, one I’d misplaced, given away, and then, after telling him that, leave him myself. So I played a game with him; a game dictated by him.

‘And what does she look like?’

‘Oh, she’s very small . . . with dark hair and very dark eyes. Serious eyes.’

‘Hmm. And is she kind?’

‘Oh yes, she’s very kind, but quite shy.’

He reached out, stroked my hair. ‘Is she here now?’ he asked.

I stared up into the blackness. ‘Yes and no . . . I like to think she’s here.’

‘Well, perhaps you can leave little Emily here with me tomorrow. And perhaps . . . perhaps occasionally I shall send her back to you with a message.’

I swallowed, closed my eyes again. ‘Yes, I think she’d like that,’ I said, beginning to cry. ‘I think she’d like that very much.’

He took me in his arms and held me tightly. ‘You’ll know
when I’m thinking of you now, because Emily will be there,’ he said.

The following morning Charlie arrived. I hadn’t expected him until later in the day, and, luckily, I was still at the house, attending to another list with Mabel.

‘Charlie!’

He stood in the doorway for a moment, smiling, then came towards me. ‘Hello, darling, I thought I might as well take the day off – come down here early and surprise you.’

‘Thank you, Mabel,’ I said, and then I whispered, ‘Oh, and Mabel, would you be so kind and let Mr Cuthbert know that my husband has arrived, and I shan’t be needing his help with the boxes.’

I’m not sure what Mabel thought. She must have known that Tom hadn’t lifted a box all week. But she nodded at me and said, ‘Yes, miss. I’ll let him know.’

That evening Tom declined my invitation to join us for dinner and sent a message via his mother that he was ‘otherwise engaged’. I sat in the dining room with the men, but I hardly spoke, and I couldn’t eat a thing. I looked down at the food on my plate, glanced up at Henry and the others as they spoke; and I tried to smile back at Charlie. I stared at the bare walls, felt each and every minute as it slipped away; and I longed for him. I wanted to run to the cottage, find him and hold him once more. And when Charlie climbed into my bed later that evening and reached over to me, I finally felt the shame of infidelity. For I
was
being unfaithful: I was being unfaithful to my heart.

Early the next morning, as we said our goodbyes, Tom was nowhere to be seen. Looking back, it was probably better that way. I couldn’t have coped with a farewell, or even a polite adieu, and I knew he didn’t want to see me with Charlie.

As we drove away I felt physically sick. And I didn’t look back. I didn’t want to see my world disappearing from view. I wanted to stop the car, get out and run back up the driveway, home, and to him. I wanted to tell Charlie. I wanted to say to him, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry, but I love someone else . . .’ And then he spoke. He said, ‘I know how hard this must be for you, Clarissa. I know you feel as though you’re leaving behind everything you’ve ever loved. But you have a new life now, a life with me. And I know we’re going to be happy.’ He reached over, placed his hand upon mine. ‘So happy.’

. . . Yes, the sale of the place is sad, very sad, it is a loss, the end of an era – as you say, but in truth that era ended for me when William and George died. It is all gone now, that life, & those halcyon days; it went with them, & belonged to them . . . and in my dreams I see them in the Elysian Fields . . . at Deyning.

. . . What worries me most is not the financial struggle, but H’s increasing alcohol addiction and fragile state of mind. He was once so full of life & ambition – easily the most ambitious of the three – but that aspect of his character has completely gone, & now all he does is sit & stare, lost in a trance, and often quite unable to hear me. He continues to suffer from nightmares, & is prone to weeping, about what he cannot tell me.

Had I known, that morning in the spring of 1919, how my life was to unfold, had I known how infinitely precious love is, I would have told Charlie everything and run back to Tom. But the War had just ended and I was still young and craved some semblance of the life I’d been brought up to live. I was neither mature enough nor strong enough to cope with any estrangement from the remnants of my shattered family. My mother had suffered such loss, and Charlie, mentally as well as physically fragile, was dependent upon me. It seemed to be up to me to try to restore a sense of normality to our lives, to be the Granville
who lived happily ever after. My marriage to Charlie – our future together – was the foundation of that, I thought.

When I left Deyning that day I hadn’t allowed myself to dwell upon a future without Tom. At that time I still lived from day to day, week to week. I simply didn’t think about the years ahead. And, apart from those few weeks we’d shared before the War, and that final week at Deyning, Tom and I had never spent any time together. Not really. He was not and had never been a part of my life. Oh, in my head, in my heart, he’d been everything, but that remained a secret, my secret. So, I followed a path through muted seasons, occasionally allowing myself to think of him, wonder about him, but I was resigned to the separateness of our lives; resigned to that sensation of
loss
as being part and parcel of life. Brothers, cousins and friends didn’t grow old, but remained childhood memories; fathers passed on; homes changed, and babies, too, could be taken. Why would the man I’d fallen in love with not disappear from my life too? It was part of a pattern. It seemed to me that anything, everything, I loved and held dear, I would be estranged from.