The Last Summer (55 page)

‘Promise me you’ll never leave me . . .’

‘I promise. I promise I’ll never leave you.’

We’d been to the theatre, and afterwards dined at the Criterion. And it was he who brought up that night in the park, the night we’d first made love. He was in a provocative mood, playful, trying to embarrass me, I think. But he couldn’t, of course. That’s one of the few benefits of ageing; it becomes almost impossible to be embarrassed by one’s misspent youth, simply because we later revel in those early misdemeanours.

‘You know, you really were rather wicked,’ he said, leaning forward, smiling.

‘Wicked? No, I don’t think so.’

‘Do you remember what you pushed into my pocket – that night at Jimmy’s party?’

I smiled. ‘Yes . . . yes, I do.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘I shan’t tell you what happened to the garment in question.’

‘Ha! So you want me to know . . .’

He leant back in his chair, studying me. Then he lit a cigarette and watched it as it burned in the ashtray.

‘Well?’ I said. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

He glanced up at me, his head tilted to one side. Then he bit on his lip, pondering, wondering. ‘I must have relived that night a thousand times and more in my head.’

‘Yes, and so have I.’

‘You know, I still have your glove as well,’ he said, breaking into a smile.

But all I could think about was her, our daughter; the child conceived that night, in the middle of a war. And I knew I had to tell him. I wanted to tell him. I longed to be able to talk to someone about Emily, to speak her name out loud, at last; for her to be acknowledged by someone; and who better than her own father? But there was no way I could raise this subject in a restaurant, surrounded by people, strangers. So, when we returned to my flat, as we sat together with our nightcaps, I took that leap.

‘I need to tell you something, Tom; something about that night.’

‘Mm, what’s that, my darling?’ he replied, without turning to look at me.

‘After that night, that night in the park . . .’

‘Yes . . .’

Here it was at last, my moment. I knew I had to say the words clearly, precisely, slowly, calmly:

‘I had a baby.’

There, that was it. I’d said it. I’d finally said it.
I had a baby
.

Those four words, locked up for so long, were finally uttered. And I think he thought he’d misheard me.

‘What? Who had a baby?’

‘I did.’

‘
You
had a baby?’

‘Yes, yes, I did. I had a baby,’ I said, eagerly, as though I’d been waiting a lifetime to confirm this fact. ‘We had a baby, Tom.’

I was sitting on the very edge of my armchair and he’d been
lounging on the floor, his back pressed against it. He sat up, turned on to his knees and faced me, and his confusion, his shock, was palpable and seemed to fill the room.

He looked at me: astonished, dumbstruck. ‘
We
had a baby?’

‘I had a baby,’ I repeated half laughing, and beginning to cry at the same time.

Perhaps I’d thought I could tell him, talk about it all in a perfunctory way. It had all happened so very long ago. Perhaps I’d thought I’d be able to recite dates, facts, as though I was clearing up something almost akin to a business matter.

‘I had a baby,’ I said again, like a record stuck. And as I said those four words they tore open my heart, and I heard myself say them again. ‘I had a baby.’

‘Clarissa . . . what are you telling me? We had a child? We have a child?’

‘Yes. We had a child, Tom. I named her Emily . . . after Emily Brontë,’ I added, remembering. ‘She was born on November the twelfth, nineteen seventeen . . . in Plymouth. She was born in Devon,’ I said, trying to remember how I’d planned it; how I’d planned to tell him.

I looked directly at him as I spoke, but as his image blurred, my head began to shake, as though I was telling him something and saying ‘no’ at the same time.

‘A
daughter
? You had a
baby
, Clarissa?’ he said, repeating words, checking facts, staring at me.

‘I had a baby,’ I said again, his face barely visible. And then I heard myself say it again, and again:
I had a baby
. . .
I had a baby
. . .

He stood up, moved to the fireplace, his back to me, and I saw him grip the marble mantelshelf. Then, suddenly, he was in front of me, and once more on his knees.

‘You had a baby,’ he said, looking at me, into my eyes. ‘
We
have a child . . .’

I nodded my head, and I couldn’t stop nodding my head. ‘Yes, yes, we did . . . we do,’ I said.

He stared at me, searching my face as though he’d find every answer hidden there. Then he took my head in his hands and said, ‘But why . . . why did I not know? Why did you not tell me this?’

I can’t remember now what, exactly, I told him about the events of that year, but I told him everything there was to tell. Everything I could remember. I told him about my mother, Aunt Maude, Edith Collins, St Anne’s – and the moment I’d handed over Emily. And by the time I’d finished he’d covered his face with his hands. And so I lowered myself down on to the floor and held him.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

He looked up at me, his face contorted. ‘No . . . No,’ he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry that you went through all of this alone, without me. I’m sorry that I was not there for you – for her. I’m sorry that you’ve carried this with you for so long. That I . . .’ and he began to pull at his hair. ‘That I quizzed you on why you’d never had children.’ He stared at me, his face crumpled; defeated. ‘And that’s who
Emily
was . . .’ he said. ‘There was no imaginary friend . . . Emily’s our child.’

I nodded.

That night we lay awake, frozen in each other’s arms; each of us searching for that inaccessible moment in our past; the point to which we could return and then perhaps somehow change our now. The point to which we could return, reclaim our child, and from there rewrite our story, her story. How it
could
have been . . . how it should have been. Unlike me, Tom had lived his life without ever knowing he had a child. By withholding that information I’d spared him from the slow and steady stream of loss, a meandering trickle of dates and reminders, only to submerge him in the deluge of one almighty torrent.

The next morning, each of us weakened and spent by grief, he told me that he was going to find her. And it became his consuming passion for the next few weeks. But it proved more difficult than he’d anticipated.

‘Perhaps she doesn’t want us to find her,’ I said to him one evening.

‘No, we’ll find her,’ he said, turning to me and smiling. ‘I’ve already put Goddard on to it.’

‘But we might not find her, Tom. We might not . . .’

He stared at me, ran a finger across my forehead, down my cheek. ‘I’ll find her, my darling,’ he repeated. ‘I’ll find her,’ he said again.

. . . Yesterday I sat alone and reread all of your notes & letters to me. I put them all in chronological order, & then jumbled them up again . . . so that one day, they might be a treasure trail of clues – should anyone be interested! We did have such a perfect, heavenly time, didn’t we, that last summer?

There’s an old white gate at the end of the avenue of my dreams. It’s where I sit and watch the world pass by. From there I see my brothers go off to war. From there I see my daughter, playing in a distant field. And from there I see my love, walking back to me.

Unbeknown to me, Tom hadn’t just
put Goddard on to it
: he’d put quite a few people on to the task of tracing our daughter. But it was Oliver Goddard who later told me the pieces of the story Tom couldn’t bring himself to tell me. It was Oliver who told me that he and Tom had driven down to Plymouth, to speak with the sisters at St Anne’s. And it was Oliver who’d tell me so many parts of the story Tom would never speak of.

They’d been gone overnight. Tom had told me he had business in Bristol, but he’d telephoned me late in the evening. I’d missed him, and told him so. And he said, ‘But it’s only one night, darling. I think we can cope with one night apart . . .’

It’s strange to me, even now, the thought of him retracing my steps; moving through the silent passageways of St Anne’s; glancing out of those narrow windows, so many years after I’d
been there. For that time seems more than a lifetime ago, and my recollection of it – and the place itself – is hazy. Like the remembrance of a dream, there are gaps I know I shall never be able to fill. Oh, I can still see a girl, the girl I once was, sitting in a room, staring out through a window, but somehow it’s not me, for I was never
really
there. I was always with him.

Oliver told me that St Anne’s had kept records on everyone who’d passed through their doors: the date of arrival, due date of baby, and room assigned. There were no medical notes of course, only the most basic of information. And apparently the place was quite empty of
fallen women
. Different to during the War, one of the sisters had said, by way of explanation. Tom had asked to see my room, and then asked if he could have a moment there on his own. So Oliver and the young sister had waited outside the closed door, in the hallway, in silence. By the time they left St Anne’s they had the name and address of an adoption agency. Mission accomplished, Oliver said. They’d returned to London without stopping, and when Tom came into the flat that evening he’d rushed over to me, to where I was standing in the kitchen, taken me into his arms and said, ‘I’m never going to leave you again, not even for one night.’ He pulled me tighter. ‘I want to see your face each night before I fall asleep, and every morning when I awake. And one day, one day when I take my last breath,’ he whispered, ‘I want to be looking into your eyes.’

We received a reply from the adoption agency almost one month after Tom’s letter to them. They told him that yes, Emily Cuthbert Granville had been adopted, five months after she’d left me, and by a couple from London. At that stage it seemed as though they couldn’t or wouldn’t give any further information. And all I could think of was those five months . . . those five months she’d been on her own; those five months I’d been tucked up in Berkeley Square, unravelling and in agony. Five months.

And I realised that’s when it started, the lie that became my life, for I hadn’t been whole, hadn’t been complete, since that time. Something of me – a piece of my soul, a sliver of light – had quietly been extinguished at Plymouth in 1917, without any ceremony, mourning, or fuss. And I’d kept it a secret for so long that I’d become
the secret
: unspoken, unsaid, denied. Not-quite-but-almost Clarissa: haunted by nothing more sinister than the truth.

For so many years I’d tried not to think of her. I’d purposefully blurred and blotted out those early years, when she was still a baby, still a small child; when I’d been married to Charlie. I’d celebrated her precious birthdays in oblivion, and when no babies came, I’d accepted it as my punishment. It made sense. And I’d felt relief. The thought of another chance, another child, terrified me. For how could I, a mother already, a mother who had given away a beautiful healthy baby, be expected to love and look after another? I was not worthy of motherhood. And through my self-hatred I’d almost destroyed myself. And for a while I’d hated my own mother too: the person who’d made me give up my right to motherhood.

Of course no amount of drugs or alcohol had been able to assuage my guilt, or extinguish my love for my child, Tom’s child. I’d thought of her each and every day of my life since the day we’d parted. I’d tried to imagine her, what she looked like, how she spoke, where she lived: who she’d become. Twelve years had passed since I’d handed her into the outstretched arms of a nameless woman in a brown coat at St Anne’s. Did she even know I existed? And if she did, if her adoptive parents had told her the pathetic details of her birth, had she ever thought about me, her mother?

Despite the passing of years, in my dreams she remained a baby. The memory of her soft, clean skin, her tiny fingernails, her bright blue eyes, her smell; all of her, preserved and held
there. But occasionally, every so often, she’d come to me as a child: a miniature version of Tom. She’d speak my name, ‘Clarissa’; a sweet voice, so familiar to me. She’d reach out to me, smiling, and I’d take her into my arms.
Emily
. ‘But where have you been? I’ve been waiting,’ she’d say.