The Summer House Party

by Caro Fraser

  Amazed that he had guessed, she turned back to him and kissed him. ‘I can’t help it.’

  ‘It mustn’t stop here. I love you too much. You love me. Something has to be done.’

  ‘Don’t. This is bad enough.’

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Not like that. I mean it’s too soon, too… Oh, I don’t know what happens next. I can’t think.’

  The ringing of the phone in the hall jarred them both. Meg flung back the covers and stood up. She glanced around hastily, then picked up Dan’s shirt and put it on. Dan lay back, enjoying the sight of her in his shirt as she ran to the hall. He heard her pick up the phone, then her voice in low, staccato conversation. Her words were inaudible. He heard her replace the receiver, and a moment later she returned to the room. She sat down on the bed, not looking at him. Dan reached out a hand and caressed her shoulders.

  ‘That was Paul.’ Meg’s voice was toneless. ‘He’s coming to London this evening. He said he was sorry about what happened. His train gets in at eight o’clock. I said I would meet him.’ She burst into tears.

  ‘Hush,’ said Dan. ‘Come here.’ He drew her towards him. ‘You needn’t feel guilty. We’ve put right what was wrong. Don’t you believe that?’

  She wiped her eyes and shook her head. ‘No. We’ve just made things even more wrong.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Are you sorry it happened?’

  ‘No!’ She turned to look at him, then fell against him, kissing him. ‘No, no! What terrifies me is to think that it might never have. But that doesn’t make it any better. I’m married to him, Dan. I made promises. And he has never been anything but kind and loving to me.’

  ‘Don’t think about it.’ He slipped his shirt from her shoulders and on to his own. ‘Come on. We’re going to get dressed, then go and have an early supper somewhere, and after that you will go to the station and meet Paul. We have a lot of time to think about what happens next. But I will be thinking about you’ – he kissed her – ‘every minute of every day that I’m away from you.’

  They dressed in silence. Dan could sense she was already removing herself from him. As she slipped on her shoes, she glanced at the bed. Hurriedly she began to tug and smooth the rumpled sheets into place, plumping and arranging the pillows, pulling up and straightening the blankets, then the counterpane, moving round the bed and tucking things in firmly and snugly. When she had finished she stood back, her hand to her mouth, her expression uncertain, almost fearful. Dan watched her and knew that she was thinking of tonight, when she and Paul would be in this room, in this bed. His heart gave a lurch of dismay. This was not going to be in any way straightforward. In fact, it was probably the path to hell.

  *

  Over the next few days Meg felt as though she were living some other woman’s life. On the evening when she went to Paddington to meet Paul, her lips still soft and burning from Dan’s kisses, she was convinced it would be impossible for her to behave normally. But she found smiles and words came easily, the more of them the better. There was a kind of terrible giddiness about her emotions, and her happiness made it easy to pretend she was pleased to be with Paul again. It was the perfect disguise, not least for guilt.

  Christmas and New Year passed, and still she felt as though her life had become a fiction. She regarded Paul with a kind of impervious detachment, weighing her feelings and wondering. She saw it all with a terrifying clarity now. Paul had always been a wise friend who could be trusted to look after her, the hero of her childhood, and she had blindly gone into marriage thinking that was enough. She had known nothing, nothing. She now felt indivisible from Dan, body and soul. She saw now that everything that had gone before, since the moment he had stepped off the train last summer, had been leading inevitably to this. Why had she spent so long pretending otherwise? The happiness of her life lay in being with him, and the sooner they could be together, the better – the guilt that haunted her day in, day out in every living moment with Paul, demanded the same thing. She couldn’t go on letting Paul believe in her.

  Perhaps in an attempt to make sense of her divided situation, she found pretexts for avoiding sex with Paul. Some peculiar carnal fastidiousness would not allow her to continue with what she saw as the charade of their sex life, after what she had known with Dan, and to whom she now felt she belonged. If Paul minded, he didn’t show it. He was as affectionate as ever. As the days of early January went by, she could feel the rhythm of domestic life at Hazelhurst forcing her back to her old reality, and there were times when the light of the few precious hours that she and Dan had spent together seemed like that of some receding star. The time till she could see him again seemed unbearably far away. When they had parted, they had agreed that he could not write to her or ring her, and Meg did not want to write letters to which she could receive no reply. It had been left that she would make an excuse to come up to London in January and stay for a weekend – where and on what pretext, without the possibility of Diana finding out, was something she would have to work out. What happened after that, she had no idea.

  *

  Dan waited impatiently for Meg to get in touch to say when she was coming to London. Every day he expected a call or a letter. But the first days of January passed without any word.

  Late one morning his office phone rang, and as usual he snatched it up, hoping it might be Meg. It was Eve. His heart dropped. Their relationship had been bumping along in a casual way before Christmas, but it couldn’t carry on any more.

  ‘Hello, stranger,’ said Eve. ‘I’m at a loose end, and wondered if you’d like a bite of lunch.’

  ‘If you like.’ It would be an opportunity to explain to her that things had to end. ‘Will the café round the corner do?’

  ‘I’ll see you there in five minutes.’

  They established themselves at a corner table with sandwiches and tea, and chatted for a while about work and colleagues. When the small talk had dried up, Eve said, trying to keep her tone light, ‘I’ve missed you. I rather hoped you would be in touch over Christmas.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I meant to call, only things got a bit busy.’

  There was a silence. Eve could tell from his manner that something had changed. ‘Dan, if you have something to tell me, just come out with it.’

  ‘It’s the married woman I told you about.’ Eve appraised him with cool eyes. She took a cigarette from her bag and lit it, waiting. ‘Something happened over Christmas, and the upshot is, I believe now that she cares for me as much as I do for her.’ He looked up and met Eve’s gaze. ‘I think she may leave her husband. In fact, I’m hoping she will. I mean, the last thing I want to do is to break up anyone’s marriage—’

  ‘But you will if you have to.’ Eve’s face and manner were so composed that Dan found it impossible to know what she was thinking, but he caught her caustic tone.

  ‘You’re disappointed in me, evidently.’

  ‘It’s not my place to judge you. You’ve always been honest about your feelings for me. I knew from the start that it was hopeless ever to expect you to love me—’

  ‘I never intended to hurt you.’

  Eve gave an abrupt laugh, but he could see that her dark eyes were bright with tears. She tilted her chin, trying to blink them back, taking a hard drag of her cigarette. ‘I imagine those are words you say a lot, Dan. No doubt you’ll go on saying them to people, believing that somehow they make everything all right, that you can use them to excuse everything you do.’

  ‘I never pretended with you. I was honest from the beginning. You chose to accept it. I value what we have. I don’t want to lose your friendship.’

  ‘Fine, and I can keep your bed warm while you wait for your wonderful married lady to end her marriage?’

  ‘That’s an absurd thing to suggest. And the last thing I want.’

  ‘Then you have more scruples than I supposed.’ She opened her bag and fished for some change and dropped it on the table. ‘That’s for my share of lunch.’
/>
  ‘Don’t be silly. I don’t want—’

  Eve rose, interrupting him, and pulled on her coat. ‘Goodbye, Dan. At least you’ve always been candid. I can’t fault you there.’

  The bell on the café door tinkled as she left. Dan sat staring at the remains of the plate of sandwiches. He shrugged, picked one up and ate it. It was true, he’d always been strictly honest with her. Was he to blame if she felt more for him than he did for her? He didn’t think so. She’d known what she was getting into. He would rather not have hurt her, but in a situation like this people were bound to end up being hurt. At least now he could focus on Meg, and not feel guilty about anyone. Not even Paul, who was living a lie of his own, God help him. He finished the sandwiches and went back to the office.

  *

  At the beginning of the second week of January Meg began to feel unwell. She was listless and queasy, and wondered if she might have the beginnings of flu, which was doing the rounds locally. She made an appointment to see Dr Carr at his surgery in the village, but mentioned nothing to Paul.

  Dr Carr examined her, and asked her questions, nodding thoughtfully at her replies. At the end of his examination he folded up his stethoscope. ‘Pop your things on, and come out when you’re ready,’ he said, and left the curtained cubicle.

  Meg dressed herself, then slipped out from behind the curtain and sat down. Dr Carr was busily writing. He finished his notes and looked up with a smile.

  ‘I’m happy to say that I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with you, Mrs Latimer. In fact, it’s nothing more than the early stages of pregnancy.’

  Meg’s mind blazed with shock. She sat staring at him. Rational thoughts began to fall into place. ‘How long? I mean, how many…?’ She faltered, an agonised part of her longing for it to be Dan’s, and that very thought feeling like the worst treachery against Paul.

  ‘The uterus is quite full, so by my reckoning, seven to eight weeks. Which would account for your queasiness.’

  Meg sat rigid on the chair. ‘But it can’t be that many weeks. I mean, I had some bleeding just two weeks before Christmas.’

  ‘That isn’t necessarily significant. It can happen even when one is pregnant. But it’s something to keep an eye on. You must let me know if it happens again, even a little. Now, we must look ahead and think of arrangements for your care.’

  Meg was aware of Dr Carr’s mild voice as he continued to talk, but she wasn’t listening. The baby was Paul’s. The thing they had both wanted and hoped for had finally happened, just when she was on the verge of destroying their marriage. Maybe this was God’s way of resolving everything. She didn’t have a strong faith, but she believed in fate. And this one seemed inescapable.

  Her mind returned to the here and now, and she heard Dr Carr saying, ‘Your husband will be delighted, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure he will be.’

  She could feel doors closing around her. And Dan was on the other side of them all.

  Part 3

  1938

  1

  JANUARY PASSED WITHOUT any word from Meg, and a sick feeling of doubt began to grip Dan. He refused to believe that she had had a change of heart. He had only to recall that afternoon in Diana’s flat to know beyond doubt that she loved him. Certainly her situation was far from simple. Paul had claims upon her; the life that she had created for herself at Hazelhurst wouldn’t be easy to shed. She was probably afraid of many things if she were to abandon her marriage – the reaction of her family and financial uncertainty not least among them. But that monumental step didn’t have to be taken yet. Why had she failed to arrange to come up to London, as she had promised? That surely couldn’t be so hard to manage.

  In the first week of February, when he was sitting in his office, he suddenly decided he could bear it no longer. He would telephone her at Hazelhurst. If Paul answered, he would be ready with some reason for calling him up, a request for investment advice or some such easy excuse. But when the operator put him through it was one of the maids who answered. Dan asked to speak to Mrs Latimer.

  ‘Who shall I say is calling?’

  ‘Tell her it’s Mr Ranscombe.’

  Time ticked by, then the maid returned to the line. ‘I’m sorry, but Mrs Latimer isn’t able to come to the telephone.’

  It was as though his heart had been plunged in ice. She was there, but she wouldn’t speak to him. Dan thanked the maid and hung up. He pushed his typewriter away, leaned his elbows on the desk and ran his fingers through his hair, wondering what had happened, and what he could do to put it right.

  In the drawing room at Hazelhurst, Meg stared at the fire, waiting for the thudding of her heart to subside. The struggle not to take the telephone call, to hear his voice, had been intense. Thank God Paul was out. She would have been hard pushed to find a lie to excuse the fact of Dan ringing her here. If only he would stay away, make no contact. The pain of falling in love and losing him so quickly would never die, but it might gradually become tolerable. If she didn’t see or hear from him, then thoughts of him would inevitably retreat to the furthest corner of her mind, and she could get on with her real life. For this was real life. The fact of the baby made her glad now, and Paul’s delight and the prospect of being a proper family, and of having busy, filled days, made it all bearable. She was lucky, so lucky. That was what she had to keep telling herself.

  *

  The arrival of a card from Sonia on his twenty-sixth birthday at the end of March, sending affectionate greetings and reminding Dan that it was a while since he had been to Woodbourne House, filled him with guilt. He had been trying to obliterate the fact of Meg’s inexplicable withdrawal with savage amounts of work, and he had neglected a number of people, including Sonia. He rang and thanked her for the card and promised to come to Woodbourne that Saturday for lunch.

  His earnings as a journalist had risen over the past year, and with the extra income he made from freelance articles he had recently splashed out seventy guineas on a second-hand MG, which he reckoned something of a bargain. Lovelorn though Dan might be, like any young man he had a natural youthful resilience, and it restored his vanity and his spirits to speed through the Surrey countryside in his sports car. He understood himself sufficiently well to know that egotism was one of his chief weaknesses, and had lately begun to wonder whether the state of his feelings where Meg was concerned might not merely be a matter of wounded pride, and all he needed to do was teach himself not to care. Perhaps it was as simple as that.

  Over lunch he and Sonia exchanged gossip and discussed the political situation in Europe.

  ‘I think I may try to persuade my paper to send me to Berlin as a correspondent. It’s where the news is being made at the moment.’

  ‘Do you think war is inevitable?’

  ‘I’m afraid I do, rather.’

  ‘After the folly of the last one, it seems unthinkable that it should happen again. I’d only just become engaged when that war broke out. My fiancé, Gregory, died at Neuve Chapelle. All the beautiful young men. My aunt lost her four sons, my childhood cousins. For what? And here we are, starting it all over again.’

  ‘Well, there’s some way to go – maybe it won’t happen.’

  Sonia put down her napkin. ‘Let’s pray it doesn’t.’ She got to her feet. ‘Come and take a look at my garden. It’s looking quite wonderful now that spring is here.’

  Laura was brought down from the nursery and put in her pram, and Sonia and Dan set off for a stroll around the grounds, Sonia pushing the pram. Dan, who had noticed that so far Sonia hadn’t mentioned Avril once, asked how she was getting on at school.

  ‘Oh, quite well, I think. I had a letter from her last week. Her handwriting has certainly improved.’ Sonia pointed to some scillas coming into bloom beneath the trees in a carpet of blue. ‘Exactly the colour of Laura’s eyes.’ She smiled and touched the baby’s cheek. ‘Don’t you think she looks well?’

  ‘Thriving,’ replied Dan. ‘Do you hear from Madele
ine at all?’

  ‘No. When she left, she made it clear she was cutting her ties completely. She said she was grateful for everything I’d done, but that the baby could only stay here on condition that she need never have contact with her, so that she could put all this behind her for ever.’

  ‘It’s not easy to pretend the past never happened.’

  ‘I imagine it’s easier if one has no reminders. I don’t honestly expect to hear from her.’

  Dan wondered if this wasn’t so much an expectation as a hope. They wandered through the gardens, talking of this and that, and eventually came back to the courtyard, where Dan’s car was parked.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting back to town,’ said Dan.

  ‘Well, it’s been lovely to see you. Don’t leave it so long next time.’ As they walked to his car, Sonia asked, ‘Have you seen anything of Paul and Meg lately?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Paul since last autumn. The last time I saw Meg was just before Christmas.’ It had only just occurred to Dan that Sonia might know something which would give him a clue as to Meg’s silence. ‘How are they?’

  ‘Oh, very well. Meg was here just the other day. Paul is in Germany for a fortnight, so there was the usual gripe about how lonely she gets, but I assured her she’ll have plenty to keep her busy when the baby comes.’

  The news hit Dan like a blow. So Meg was pregnant. He stared at Sonia in shock, then asked abruptly, ‘When is it due?’

  ‘Next August, I think – or was it September? I’m not entirely sure.’

  Dan glanced distractedly at the pram. ‘Would you like me to help take the pram into the house?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I can manage.’

  ‘Right. Well, thank you for lunch. It was lovely to see you, as always.’ He kissed his godmother hastily and got into the car.

  He did the calculations as he drove, covering the miles to Hazelhurst. Why hadn’t she told him? How could she have kept this from him?

  Meg, who was in the morning room going through brochures for nursery furniture, heard the sound of a car on the driveway and went to the window. When she saw who it was, her first panicky thought was to tell the maid to say she wasn’t at home. But Dan was already heading towards the front door. The doorbell pealed through the house, and as she went out into the hallway, Enid appeared from the nether regions of the house.