Last Letter Home

by Rachel Hore

  As for how she felt about Paul, she knew she cared for him very much, but something held her back. His vulnerability unsettled her, his lack of confidence in himself. His loyalty, she felt, had been to his mother, and without Mrs Hartmann his ties to his life in England might be loosened. Perhaps this was why he needed Sarah. Well, she would be his steadfast friend. Part of her wanted to put her arms around him and hold him close, but would this be right? Did she, Sarah, need him?

  She wished, not for the first time, that her parents’ marriage had been happy, that from it she might have learned what to do. Her father had never made her mother content. He had adored her, but she remained aloof. Sometimes she wondered if her mother was capable of deep love. Diane seemed sadly to be the same. But I am, she told herself. If I can’t love deeply then I will never marry. I’m perfectly happy to be by myself.

  These thoughts went round and round in her head like howling devils in the depths of the night. This morning, nothing was any clearer to her.

  ‘Perhaps the fresh air will blow the headache away. Goodbye, Mummy. Don’t be late for school, Derek.’

  The garden’s looking sad, so much straggly or dead, Sarah noted, as she wheeled her bicycle to the gate. Well, it matched her mood.

  Round each corner on the way to Westbury Hall she expected to meet someone, Paul or Ivor, Ivor or Paul, but she reached the walled garden without even seeing Sam, who was late for the second time that week. She leaned her bicycle against the tool shed and walked along the lane to the Hartmanns’ cottage and knocked on the door.

  Nobody came. She tried the door but it was locked. He’d gone then, she thought dismally as she returned to the garden and surveyed the day’s work. The apple trees were heavy with fruit. It was time to prepare the crates for picking.

  At home that evening there was still no word from Ivor and, feeling guilty, Sarah wrote him a letter, saying that she was sorry that they’d quarrelled and suggesting that they meet for tea at the weekend.

  Initially, there was no reply. The following day a note arrived. It was cool to the point of formality. He was very sorry, but he was required to leave on Saturday to rejoin his battalion. He accepted her apology and considered the matter closed.

  How hurtful and bemusing, she thought angrily, rereading the letter. Despite the coolness, there was pain between the lines. The only concession he granted her was that he would write. Very piously he asked her to pray for his safety. She sat on her bed for a long time after this, trying not to feel hurt. Was he withdrawing from her for good, or simply being cruel and playing with her?

  Twenty-six

  Her best jeans with the pearl-buttoned ivory shirt, or a pale green cotton dress with flared skirt? Briony surveyed the heap of discarded clothes on the bed and wished she’d brought something smart with her. She was only meeting Greg at The Dragon, but if he was driving straight from London he might still be in his city suit, so it wouldn’t do to appear too casual. The dress was badly crumpled, however, and when she put on the shirt and inspected herself in the mirror it showed signs of strain at the bust. Jeans and a loose top it was, then. She pulled them on then hooked silver drops into her ears and fitted strappy sandals on her feet; a modest heel or she would be taller than him, though did that matter? After all, it wasn’t a date, was it? As she twisted her hair into its habitual knot and painted on lipstick, she asked herself why, in that case, did she feel so nervous?

  The pub down by the old stone bridge was pretty with its hanging baskets and a glimpse of lush back lawn running down to the river. Inside all was old beams and polished brass. Briony followed signs to the bar through a series of tiny rooms opening into one another until she reached a large main lounge. There she saw Greg, thankfully not too formally dressed in navy cords and a soft blue open-necked shirt. He was standing talking to an elfin-looking youth with a bright flame of magenta hair serving behind the bar. She crossed the wooden floor and touched his arm.

  ‘Greg.’

  ‘Briony, hi,’ Greg, said, turning, his amiable, handsome face lighting up with pleasure. He kissed her tenderly on both cheeks. ‘What’ll you have to drink?’

  ‘One of those, please,’ she said, pointing to the pint of foaming amber that stood before him, and the red-haired elf obliged. She took a mouthful of creamy beer and felt her nervousness fall away.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Greg went on, ‘but I’ve booked us a table for eight o’clock. My lunch was a cocktail sandwich and a very tiny samosa.’

  ‘Not enough for a growing boy,’ she laughed. She didn’t mind that her plans for an early exit had collapsed. Really this beer was delicious. Evening sunshine sparkled through the diamond-paned windows and the beauties of an English garden beckoned. They carried their drinks out to a small round table under the willows whose branches trailed in the rippling stream.

  ‘You are lucky having a place here,’ she sighed. ‘It’s idyllic.’

  ‘The drive can be a slog, but it’s well worth it,’ he agreed. ‘I was brought up nearby.’ He named a village and when she said she hadn’t heard of it he laughed, ‘No one has. It’s about five miles away off the main road going towards Norwich, so I’ve always thought of round here as home.’

  ‘Didn’t you say the house where you live now had been in the family?’

  ‘That’s right. My great-grandfather was estate manager at the hall and the house came with the position, so his son, my grandfather, was brought up there.’

  ‘And you, the wealthy scion, have come and taken over the lot. That is a very modern example of the Wheel of Fortune!’

  He smiled. ‘I suppose you could say that. It’s certainly odd to think that a Kelling of Westbury Hall is now a leaseholder of mine. I gather from Kemi that you’ve met old Mrs Clare.’

  ‘Yes, and I don’t believe she thinks of herself as beholden to you in any way.’ Briony gave Greg a look of amusement as she raised her glass to her lips.

  ‘No,’ he sighed. ‘She probably doesn’t.’ He rubbed his stubbled jaw in a thoughtful manner and the sunlight sparked off a gold ring he wore.

  It was true that he must have done well in life to be able to buy the Hall and its park, though high finance was a blur to her. She wondered how wealthy you’d have to be. What was he – early forties, she reckoned. His shirt was crisply ironed. Everything about him was neat, well-manicured, but bruised shadows under his shrewd blue eyes, a tautness about his lined forehead, spoke of strain.

  His gaze lingered on her and, self-conscious, she tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and sat up straighter. ‘How did you go about the development at Westbury Hall?’ she asked. ‘I mean, the whole building project must have been complicated.’

  ‘It was,’ he agreed. He talked for some time about planning permission and raising finance, partnerships with a specialist architect and builder, their difficulties in sourcing the correct materials and finding workers with the requisite skills. Problems with damp and wet rot. To her surprise, it fascinated her. The Hall had been dilapidated and failed to attract a buyer to restore it, which is why his proposals had eventually been accepted. The whole thing had taken several years. As he spoke and showed her before-and-after photos on his phone, Briony realized how much the place meant to him, and not simply on a financial level.

  ‘What about your house?’ she asked. ‘Are you going to keep it as a weekend place?’

  ‘To be honest, I haven’t decided. I had been going to move up here with my wife, or ex-wife, I should say. Perhaps start a family. All that stuff. It didn’t work out.’

  ‘I see. That’s sad.’ This must be the reason for his underlying strain.

  She waited in case he wished to confide, but he merely drained his glass and looked wistful, as though miles away. Their table was ready. They gathered up their things and moved indoors.

  In the gloomy restaurant, candlelight flickered over crystal and silver to create an intimate setting. The waitress brought artisan rolls and tiny patterned roundels of dewy but
ter; poured white wine, clear and cold.

  As they waited for their starter, Greg asked her about her work, the book she’d written, how she thought the changing political situation would affect her college. She did a passable impression of the pompous Head of Department who was obsessed with statistics and the bottom line, which made Greg laugh. She wondered if he often laughed, there was something guarded about the way he broke off and pressed his lips together.

  It was with embarrassment that she described what had happened to her earlier in the year, how she’d been hounded on social media. He looked horrified. ‘I’ve no time for that sort of thing,’ he said. ‘I don’t do any of it myself, Twitter and Facebook and stuff.’

  ‘Nor do I now, except Facebook, but I never post anything.’

  They were interrupted by the arrival of the first course and for a while ate quietly, she enjoying the tastes of fresh basil and creamy mozzarella delicate upon the palate. She was glad that she hadn’t splurged out how deeply the trauma of trial-by-media had affected her, unsure as she was how sympathetic he would be. There was a side of him that seemed very cut and dried. He might be of the ‘put up and shut up’ school, a way of dealing with problems she often tried herself, but which simply hadn’t worked for her this time. Instead, as their fish and chips arrived, she asked what she’d been bursting to all evening.

  ‘What did your father say the other day?’

  He gazed at her with eyebrows raised and she stumbled on, ‘Sorry, you kindly said you’d ask him if he knew anything about my grandfather.’

  ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ She sensed reluctance in him and wondered privately whether he’d wanted to avoid the subject. ‘And the other guy, what was the name?’

  ‘Hartmann, Paul Hartmann. What did your dad say?’

  ‘That’s the difficulty. He asked about you, who you were, where you’d come from, and of course there wasn’t much I could tell him, except that you were a historian and were looking into some family history.’

  ‘And how did he respond?’

  ‘He seemed a bit quiet. I don’t think he got on with my grandfather very well, but at the same time he’s quite protective of his memory. Even now, though he’s been dead for ten years. I knew him, of course, but not well. He didn’t give much of himself away. He was a bitter old sod, to tell you the truth. Thought life had been against him for some reason. Anyway, that’s as far as I got with Dad.’

  Nowhere at all in fact, Briony thought, crestfallen.

  ‘I’m sorry. I can see that you’re disappointed.’

  ‘I am a bit, yes. I can’t remember how much I told you, but I was given a collection of letters written to Paul Hartmann, who was a gardener at the Hall during the Second World War. The letter writer was a woman called Sarah, who apparently lived in Westbury. Then I found a note to her from Paul in a box of my grandfather’s things, and I realized they must all have known one another. So it’s important to me to find out about them. It’s family, you see. We lost my mother when I was very young and I’m fascinated to know about where we came from. You feel that, too, don’t you? Why else would you have bought the old house where your grandfather once lived?’

  ‘I like the idea of being somewhere I could put down roots. That’s how I saw it with Lara, anyway. We’d settle here and have kids, who would go to the village school.’

  ‘The country dream in fact?’

  ‘Yes, but then Lara chucked me out.’ He spoke bitterly, as he speared his last piece of fish, ate it, laid down his knife and fork and took a gulp of wine from his glass.

  Briony finished her own food and waited for him to say more about his ex, one of the usual explanations probably, about a stupid affair or the dying of romantic love. But he didn’t and she was puzzled, but also relieved as she never knew what to say in response to these stories, of which one only ever heard one side and that might not be entirely truthful. People wove their own versions of events in order to make sense of themselves, she often supposed. Certainly when studying the great personalities of history she found this to be true. Are the worst lies the ones we tell ourselves?

  ‘I thought at the beginning about living in the Hall itself.’ Greg was speaking again. ‘But the upkeep would have been ginormous. The cottage is fine for me and, yes, the family link is attractive.’

  ‘And, as you said, you’re owner of the whole park this time round!’ She spoke laconically.

  ‘There is pleasure in that element,’ he said, with a wry smile.

  Although his explanations made sense, she had the impression that there was something he was not saying. She and he, descendants of two Westbury families, had never met before and yet they were circling around some big and unknown subject.

  ‘Everything all right for you?’ The waitress collected their plates and pointed out a blackboard of specials.

  ‘The desserts aren’t bad here,’ Greg murmured to Briony. ‘I’ll go for the apple and blackberry crumble and cream. What about you?’

  ‘Maybe a scoop of ice cream to keep you company. I couldn’t possibly manage anything more.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said as they waited. ‘I don’t know if you meant it about wanting to develop the garden, but I have a friend who designs gardens. You met him and his girlfriend the other day, that is, you spoke to them when you passed them on the drive.’

  ‘Yes, I think I remember.’

  ‘His name’s Luke, Luke Sandbrook. I don’t know if he’s got time or anything, but he’s up staying with his parents for a few days. I showed him the walled garden and he loved it. He’s very good, everyone says so.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d give me his number,’ Greg said. ‘Some advice at this stage would be useful.’

  ‘OK! I’ll tell him, shall I? That you might call.’ She was pleased that she might have done Luke a favour.

  ‘Sure. I’ve no problem with that.’

  After dessert they had coffee and squabbled over the bill, which the persistent Greg ended up paying. It was dark by the time they emerged from the pub and went to stand for a moment on the bridge, enjoying how the downlights under the eaves picked out the soft creamy walls of the building and sparkled on the flowing water. Briony felt full and sleepy, but when Greg said that given the amount they’d drunk it would be sensible to leave the car in the car park overnight she was content to walk with him through the village and into the soft darkness of the lane that led up past Westbury Hall.

  In London she usually found darkness unnerving, a hiding place for muggers, but here it was gentle, calming, magical even, with the restless sound of the wind in the trees and here and there bright eyes in the undergrowth that would shine briefly before vanishing. High above, in gaps in the canopy, bright pinpricks of starlight began to gleam.

  They hardly spoke, awed by the darkness perhaps, though she heard Greg’s soft breath as they toiled up a slope. And then the tunnel of trees opened out and she sensed rather than saw the black shape of the gateway and, above it, the gleaming white dog and they passed under it into the park. Up ahead a faint glow was all they could see of the hall.

  ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she breathed and in the darkness she felt Greg’s hand close over hers, firm and strong, and it felt perfectly natural that they walk, hand in hand. After a while, his arm slipped round her waist and in this manner they drifted slowly up the drive to where it forked, and in one direction lay his house and in the other the hall and her own little lodge. There they stopped and he drew her to him and kissed her face and lips in the darkness, softly at first and then more urgently, his fingers stroking her hair and neck, sending shivers of desire through her. He kissed her again and again until she was dizzy. He sighed and moved to nuzzle her neck, pressed her to him till she felt she was moving in a dream. He whispered her name, but it wasn’t her name, and she came to herself and drew back.

  ‘I’m not Lara,’ she said, placing her finger on his lips to show she was not angry, but a little hurt.

  ‘I didn’t say you were.’ She could
make out the pale planes of his puzzled face and heard confusion in his voice. He kissed her again and murmured, ‘What should we do? Your place or mine?’

  There was something wrong, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. ‘No, Greg,’ she said. ‘It’s been a wonderful evening, thank you. This is lovely, but we hardly know each other.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, drawing back, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s just . . .’

  ‘It’s too soon. My apologies. I was overwhelmed.’

  ‘I think I must have been, too.’ She reached and stroked his face. He took her hand and held it against his lips and bit it gently, but not so it hurt. She laughed.

  ‘To be continued, maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She let the word trail.

  They said goodbye and Briony walked on up towards the Hall, her heart still racing, her lips swollen with his kisses. The whole episode had upset her. It must have been the close intimacy created by the darkness that had dissolved her natural reserve. She had felt, as Greg said he’d been, overwhelmed, not in control, that was the truth and that was unlike her. A great round moon the colour of old bone was rising over the Hall, illuminating the long brick wall of the kitchen garden to her right and the pale shape of its doorway, which drew her in. And as she stood under its arch looking out across the grassy patches of the sleeping garden, the wide arms of the trees whose fruit swelled in the silence, she knew suddenly and for certain that it hadn’t been his ex-wife’s name, Lara, that she’d heard Greg whisper, but ‘Sarah’, which didn’t make sense at all.