The Last Summer (8 page)

‘Please don’t, Henry! Please don’t!’

He laughed. ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Issa, do get up. Look at the state of you.’

I could barely breathe. ‘I can’t,’ I gasped. ‘I’ve hurt my ankle.’

As Henry shook his head and walked away, Tom appeared, holding my shoe. He bent down. ‘Which ankle?’ he asked.

‘The left.’

He placed his hand over my white stocking. ‘Here?’

I shook my head.

He moved his hand up over my ankle. ‘Here?’

‘Yes . . . yes there,’ I replied, wiping away a tear.

‘Are you able to stand?’

He took my hand and I let him pull me up. I stood on one foot as he slipped his arm about my waist. ‘Hold on to me,’ he said. I put my arm around his shoulder and tried to walk, but it was too painful and I cried out. ‘There’s only one thing for it, I’m afraid, I shall have to carry you.’ He handed me my shoe, and then picked me up just as though I were a small child.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, as he strode back through the ferns towards the croquet lawn.

‘Don’t be sorry. Henry shouldn’t have chased you like that. Anyway, I get the chance to have you in my arms,’ he replied, glancing down at me, smiling.

When we emerged from the woods Edina and Lucy came rushing over from the boys, who were standing in a huddle on the lawn with Henry.

Edina said, ‘Oh, darling! Are you very badly hurt?’

‘She’s twisted her ankle,’ Tom replied, in a perfectly calm and assured voice, and Edina looked up at me, raised her eyebrows, and smiled.

Then Will, George, Archie and all the others were around us, all wishing to look at my injured ankle. But Tom didn’t stop. He continued walking across the lawn, then up the steps, on to the terrace, where my mother sat with Maude. When Mama saw us she stood up.

I remained silent in Tom’s arms as he explained to Mama, with Maude standing next to her, exactly what had taken place, and I saw my mother look across the lawn in Henry’s direction, narrowing her eyes. Maude looked at me, frowning with a tad too much concern, and then she scrunched her face up even more and said, ‘Such a brave Issa.’ Mama was examining my ankle, and as she rubbed her hand over it I cried out once more.

‘Oh my poor child, you have hurt yourself, haven’t you? He’s such a beastly boy, that brother of yours.’ She looked at Tom. ‘Tom, would you be even more of an angel and take Clarissa up to her room? I shall fetch Mabel; she always knows exactly what’s required with these sorts of injuries.’

As he carried me into the house I felt faint, almost as though I were in a dream. I couldn’t quite believe that Mama had asked Tom to take me to my room. And I suppose, looking back, it was a measure of her trust in him. I watched him, his face, as we moved through the hallway, past the jardinière, with its oversized palm, across the polished marble floor; his fingers spread out around my waist, his eyes fixed ahead. I studied the line of his jaw, the dark shadow of his clean-shaven chin, the curve of his mouth: a flicker of a smile playing upon his lips. We climbed the staircase in silence, through shafts of dust-filled light, and I could feel his heart, beating in perfect time with my own.

‘You’ll have to direct me from here,’ he said, standing at the top of the stairs.

I pointed. ‘Over there.’

My door was ajar and as he carried me into the room he
looked up and around, as though taking in its dimensions more than its detail: the walls, the windows, the ceiling, and then my bed.

‘Beautiful room,’ he said, at last. ‘Strange, but it’s exactly as I’d imagined.’

‘Are you going to put me down? I think you’ve more than done your bit, Tom.’

He moved to the side of the bed, stopped and looked down at me, into my eyes, and then we finally relinquished our hold on each other as he placed me upon my bed. I shuffled up against the pillows, without thinking bent my leg and unbuttoned my other shoe. He moved over to the window, the one looking directly south over the terrace and the lake.

‘Stunning view,’ he said. He turned and came towards me. ‘I should go. Mabel will be here in a moment and I’m sure she’ll look after you.’ But he seemed awkward, almost reluctant to leave me.

I looked up at him. ‘Thank you, Tom, you’ve been most gallant.’

He smiled at me, moved nearer. ‘You look like Titania,’ he said, pulling a piece of green fern from my hair.

At that moment Mama appeared in the doorway, shadowed by a stony-faced Mabel, carrying a small box and a bowl.

‘Thank you so much, Tom,’ she said, moving past him.

He raised his hand to me and disappeared through the door.

That night I did not go down to dinner. My ankle had swollen to the size of a baby elephant’s, despite Mabel bringing up towels filled with ice and insisting I rest it upon them. Edina and Lucy visited me in my room, as well as each of my brothers, and Henry apologised. Sitting on the side of my bed and taking my hand in his, he said, ‘You know, I really am sorry. I thought you were feigning, Issa – like you always used to.’

Mama, too, came and fussed over me. Plumping up my pillows
and straightening the bed, she said, ‘Tom Cuthbert was very considerate today, very charming and kind.’

‘Yes, he’s a nice boy,’ I replied, knowing how much the term
nice boy
meant to Mama.

She glanced at me. ‘Yes, a very nice boy.’

Some time after my eleventh birthday, I’d been relocated from the nursery floor to the vast expanse of my new ‘grownup’ bedroom, with its four tall windows looking out to the south and west. At first I’d hated it. The room seemed ridiculously large and much too formal with its matching wallpaper, curtains, upholstery and bedcover. I longed to return upstairs, to the gated confines of my childhood, to the sloping ceilings of my cosy attic life, and the dust and debris of a land far away from Mama’s coordinated, plumped-up world. I longed for the toys I’d had to leave behind there: my brothers’ toy soldiers and tattered fort; my dolls’ house, my dolls; and those treasured books suddenly deemed ‘too immature’. Miss Stephens, my nursemaid, departed, along with Miss Greaves – a governess (of sorts), and Mademoiselle arrived. I’d resented these changes, was quietly angry with my mother. But by now, by this time, I had grown into my room and rarely ventured upstairs. I’d moved on.

The following morning, my ankle greatly improved, I went down to breakfast. When Mama entered the dining room – accompanied by Aunt Maude – they both looked unusually troubled, and then Mama announced to us all that Germany had declared war upon Russia. All day it was all anyone could speak of, and though we continued our croquet tournament, it wasn’t the same. At four, play was suspended whilst Mabel and Mrs Cuthbert once again brought out trays of fresh tea, jugs of lemonade and iced coffee, strawberries, cream and scones; and then served us from linen-covered tables set up on the edge of the lawn. For an hour or so we slumped in deckchairs on the
grass under the sycamore tree, as Mama, Venetia and Aunt Maude looked on anxiously from the terrace. The boys all lay about on the lawn discussing whether and when they would enlist – if there were to be a war. And it seemed to me as though they were all set on it. From underneath my straw hat I watched Tom, even as I made conversation with Edina and Lucy. And from time to time he glanced at me, smiled, and then looked away.

Earlier that day, before our game started, when I’d been sitting on the grass with the others, Tom had sat down next to me. I’d had my hand behind me, resting flat upon the lawn, and I suddenly felt the tips of his fingers touching mine. I turned to him, but he did nothing; didn’t look to me and didn’t move his hand away from mine. I glanced at Edina, sitting directly opposite us, wondering if she could see, and when she smiled back at me I knew that she had, and I quickly pulled my hand away. Later, in the evening, Edina came to my room, asking if she could borrow a ribbon.

‘I think you have an admirer, Issa,’ she said, her back to me, as she fiddled with my comb box.

‘Oh really,’ I replied, with adroitly manufactured nonchalance.

‘Yes, and I think you know too.’ She turned to me, smiling. ‘Tom Cuthbert?’

I laughed. ‘Edina, really . . . Tom is Mrs Cuthbert’s son.’

‘That may be, but he’s extraordinarily handsome and, I believe, utterly preoccupied with you.’

This, of course, was music to my ears. And I immediately recognised the potential benefit of an ally, a spy. For Edina was nothing if not an observer of people, and for as long as I could remember she’d been an unexploited expert on the subtle intricacies of character and human dynamics.

‘Preoccupied with me? Do you really think so?’ I asked, looking down, playing with the ribbon in my hands.

‘Completely and utterly.’

I looked up at her, unable not to smile. ‘He is rather gorgeous, isn’t he?’

‘Divine, darling. And you appear to have captured his heart
and
his mind.’

‘But how can you tell? What did you see?’ I asked, eager for her to share her observations.

‘Oh but, Clarissa, you hardly need me to tell you, dear heart. You must surely see yourself.’ She glanced at me, smiling. ‘He’s completely enamoured by you; in love, I’d say. And how do I know this? Because from the moment I arrived – or rather the moment he appeared, when we all sat on the terrace that very first evening – he seemed to be . . . a little too aware of you,’ she continued, moving about the room, as though conducting a talk to an audience far larger than one. ‘He’d simply fail to notice any other beauty fluttering her eyelashes at him. And even when he’s talking, listening to someone else, he’s so obviously distracted by you, dear.’ She looked at me, gave a little shiver. ‘Captivated . . . totally captivated.’

It was tempting. I could have told her then that Tom Cuthbert and I had already begun a type of love affair, at least a love affair in my mind. But I decided not to. Although ten months older than me, which qualified her as indisputably worldly at that time, I knew Edina to be too easily flattered to be discreet. She’d be bound to want to disclose my secret to another, if only to be acknowledged in her role as confidante.

The following day, a little too self-conscious under Edina’s scrutiny, I found myself avoiding Tom’s gaze altogether. He and I seemed unable to converse in front of others, and so but for the occasional ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we usually said almost nothing at all to each other during those afternoon croquet games. But later, each evening, when we met in the meadow, we compared notes, dissecting the characters of Deyning’s assorted house guests.

‘She’s too uppity,’ he said, when I asked him about Edina. ‘And she watches you all the time. It’s as though she’s guarding you, or observing your every move for some in-depth study or other.’

‘How simply fascinating,’ I said. ‘She must be observing us both then . . .’

‘How so?’

‘Oh, nothing. Edina likes to watch people, and I have to say she’s really rather good at it.’

‘I hadn’t realised it was an art.’

‘And what do you make of Lucy?’ I asked.

‘She’s sweet. More like you . . . apart from that annoying habit of repeating the last line of everything anyone says.’

I laughed. ‘She’s only fifteen, Tom.’

‘I think Charlie Boyd rather likes you,’ he said, reaching down and pulling at a blade of grass.

‘Charlie? Oh, Charlie’s a dear, an absolute dear, and I’ve known him forever. He’s like another cousin, that’s all.’

He made no reply and I wanted to tell him then that I wasn’t in the least interested in Charlie, but instead I moved on, to my godmother.

‘And what of Venetia?’ I asked. I was curious to know what he thought of my godmother; curious to know if he was drawn to her in the same way other young men seemed to be. ‘Like moths to a flame,’ Mama had once said.

He turned to me. ‘Venetia?’

‘Yes, what do you make of her? She’s rather beautiful, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, I suppose she is rather . . . exotic,’ he replied, looking away from me.

I felt a twinge. I’d like to have been described as
exotic
; but it struck me that perhaps it was something one grew into.

‘Voluptuous?’ I asked, referring to Venetia’s unmistakable and much renowned curves.

‘Hmm, yes, voluptuous . . .’ he said, dreamily.

And I could feel my face flush. ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know she rather likes
young
men, Tom,’ I said, rising to my feet.

He looked up at me, smiling. ‘And what do you mean by that?’

I hesitated. ‘Oh, nothing . . . nothing at all. I must get back now.’

We walked back through the meadow in silence, maintaining our distance and separating at the stable-yard gate with a casual, ‘Goodbye’. Aunt Maude – like her daughter, a keen observer – had asked me over dinner the previous evening whom she’d seen me with, walking back from the meadow. ‘Oh, possibly Tom Cuthbert, or perhaps Mr Broughton,’ I replied. ‘I bumped into each of them on my walk. It was such a glorious evening, Aunt.’

Then Mama said, ‘Clarissa does so love her solitary ambles,’ and I caught the tail end of Edina’s knowing smile.

I couldn’t sleep that night. It was hot, too hot. And despite every window in my room being open, the curtains tied back, the air was completely still. I heard Henry on the terrace beneath my bedroom, talking to our cousins, Archie and Johnnie. And I moved over to my window seat. ‘We’ve all got to do it,’ he was saying. ‘Those Huns are on the move now and they won’t stop. They’re after our empire . . .’