The Summer House Party

by Caro Fraser

  ‘I didn’t know Constance was there.’

  ‘Are you saying that if she hadn’t been, it would somehow have mattered?’ Paul said nothing. ‘Dan’s a friend.’

  ‘It’s perfectly fine.’

  Meg got into bed. Paul laid a hand on her shoulder, trying to pull her gently towards him.

  She shrugged away. ‘I just don’t like what you’re implying.’

  ‘I’m not implying anything.’

  After a moment’s silence, in which he stroked her shoulder in a way she found maddening, she turned over to face him. ‘I shouldn’t have got cross.’

  He kissed her, and she tried not to shrink. She suddenly thought of the film, the desperate pathos of the scorned husband and heartless wife, all now seeming too close to home. She disengaged herself gently from his embrace, and said wearily, ‘Let’s get some sleep.’ Before he could say or do anything more, she turned over, drawing the covers around her shoulders, inching away from him. When he turned out the light a moment later, she breathed a sigh of relief into the pillow, and gave her mind over to her lover.

  3

  THE FABRIC OF the year that followed was, for Meg, woven of two realities – the cheerful homespun of keeping a household of seven people running amid the difficulties and privations of war, and, like small, silken threads glinting through this coarse weave, the times when she and Dan could be together. The latter were few and far between. With Constance overseas, Meg had lost a useful excuse, but she managed to make excursions on her own to coincide with Dan’s spells of leave – occasional shopping trips, and once to fetch her mother some clothes from the Chelsea house – but she could never stay overnight, and the hours spent together were frustratingly short.

  Paul was away so much that she scarcely gave him a thought. Their relationship had become perfunctory, and so preoccupied was Meg with her secret love affair that she neither noticed nor cared whether or not he was affectionate towards her. Their mutual love of Max was enough of a bond to maintain their marriage for as long as was necessary. For Meg now felt as though she was merely marking time until the day came when she could be with Dan for good. She did not dwell on the practicalities of how that was to be brought about. She simply saw it as the purpose of her life, one which would make all that she was living through worthwhile. When the war ends, she kept thinking. Then everything would be different. She just needed to keep going until then. There was a strange contentment in this suspended existence, with the constantly demanding preoccupations of the present and dreams of the future. She never stopped to think that the only thing that anchored her, that gave her a solid, day-to-day sense of purpose, was Hazelhurst and the reality of the life lived by its inhabitants within its walls. Even when she imagined a life with Dan, she never thought beyond it.

  *

  On an airless August night in 1943, while the rest of the household slept, and Paul was away, Meg was sitting in the kitchen on fire-watching duty. She had raised the blackout blinds from the windows to let in air, preferring to sit in the darkness, thinking, than try to read with them down, which would inevitably make her fall asleep. That would be the worst possible thing. On her fire-watching nights, which came every three weeks, she was always filled with an invincible sense of patriotism, and the idea of failing to guard the sleeping acres of wheat and barley around Hazelhurst seemed almost sacrilegious. The moon was almost full that night, so the kitchen wasn’t entirely dark. Ghostly light painted familiar objects, and beyond the window she could make out the silhouettes of trees at the edge of the garden. She thought of Dan, wondering where he was tonight. There had been no letter at the post office in weeks, which wasn’t like him. She had gleaned that the work he did was out of the ordinary run of soldiering, and the knowledge of the dangers he must face on whatever operations he was on had bred in her a constant, quiet dread, which only his letters could alleviate. But she would not let herself believe that he was anything but safe and sound. She felt she would know instinctively if it were otherwise, so closely bound to him was she in her head and heart.

  The open windows didn’t help to make the room much cooler. The air was as warm inside as out. She picked up a copy of Lilliput magazine and fanned her face for a moment. Then she dropped it on the table with a sigh, and let her hands fall back in her lap. The memory of a night just like this one came to her. A hot, still August night seven years ago, when she was just a girl, and Dan had come to her room. He had been not much more than a boy himself. She had known nothing then. Nothing. Would that she had been wiser. Without even realising it, she closed her eyes.

  Moments later she came out of her doze with a jerk. She got up and put the kettle on the gas to make a cup of coffee, which she took into the garden. She sat on the stone bench by the mulberry tree, tasting the fragrance of the night air, listening for a nightingale. She glanced up at the sleeping house as she sipped her coffee. Being the only one awake, on watch, filled her with a sense of protectiveness. She thought back to the first time she had come to Hazelhurst. It seemed a lifetime ago. She had been content – or so she thought – and utterly without self-awareness. She had surrendered herself to Paul, entirely believing in his ability to make her happy and keep her safe. She knew, now, that one had to make one’s own life, not leave it in the hands of another. The marriage had failed – and she had helped it to fail by her betrayal – but at least she was prepared to face that fact and start afresh. She wasn’t sure that Paul even recognised that things had gone wrong. And when the time came to end it, all this, the house she had grown to love, would be part of her past and her home no longer. She ran her hand over the lichened stone, chilled by the thought.

  She yawned and rubbed her eyes, and took another gulp of her coffee. An owl hooted somewhere in the woods. Then suddenly there rose on the air the lifting whine of the sirens from the camp beyond the village. She put her cup and saucer down and hurried inside to fetch her torch and whistle. Above her the household was stirring. She went into the hall and called up. Helen appeared on the landing in her dressing gown and slippers.

  ‘It is such a bore having to go to the shelter every time,’ she grumbled as she came downstairs. ‘I don’t know why we bother. A bomb hasn’t landed in these parts since I came here.’

  ‘There’s a first time for everything. Come on, I have to be off. Where is Lotte?’

  Lotte appeared, hand in hand with a sleepy-eyed Max, then Diana came down with Morven. They trooped out to the shelter at the end of the garden, padding across the moonlit grass. As she set off at a brisk walk down the driveway, Meg could hear Max behind her shouting excitedly about planes.

  Sure enough, a swarm of bombers came thundering low across the sky, and swept onwards. Meg walked for five minutes until she reached the first house in the village, then turned around and started to walk back. She would keep on doing this until the all-clear sounded. On the horizon to the east a dull red glow was growing. London taking another pounding. She wondered fleetingly if Paul was there, if he was safe. He could be anywhere in the country, for all she knew, or even out of it. That fact, not knowing where he was or what he did, was a further estrangement. Around her the wheatfields lay silent. A momentary breeze rippled them into shivering loveliness. The heat was dropping. She came round the bend in the road. The gates of Hazelhurst stood etched in moonlight. Then Meg heard the sound of a lone plane bursting across the sky in a fury, more terrifying in its singularity than any fleet of bombers. In a matter of seconds the bombs fell. She didn’t know how many, but as she threw herself face-down on the grass she could feel several enormous explosions shake the ground. Something pattered on her like hard rain, and she realised it was small clumps of grass and earth. She got to her feet and began running towards the gates of the house. Please God, let the shelter not have been hit. She ran, stumbling up the driveway, the stench of high explosives mixing in her nostrils with the smell of ripped earth. She shouted out, but the bombs had temporarily deafened her, and her own voice came to her as thoug
h from far under water.

  Hazelhurst had taken a hit. Through the smoke she could see that one side of the house had collapsed entirely, and the roof pitched at an angle over the gaping brickwork of the exposed rooms, lit by the blaze of the burning ground floor. She stood staring, her mind numb, feeling the heat of the fire, then staggered across the grass towards the shelter. It seemed intact. She hurried towards it and banged frantically on the corrugated iron roof. After a moment Helen emerged, her face scared and white. Meg realised her mistake, and shouted, ‘No, go back in! Stay there!’ She thought that was what she shouted, but her voice came from far away. She looked round, and saw a party of wardens from the village hauling the stirrup pump up the drive at a run. One of them still had his pyjamas on. She saw Dixon, who had his lodging above the workshop, in vest and underpants, dragging a hose around the side of the house.

  Meg sank to the grass on her knees. Across the air, behind the crackle of the burning house and the shouts of the men as they directed their pitiful jets of water at the flames, she could hear the faint ghost of the steady all-clear. Burning debris had somehow landed in the mulberry tree and had set the branches alight. Below it, on the stone bench where she had been sitting a short while ago, by the light of the flames she could see her coffee cup sitting there where she had left it, intact, presumably with the warm dregs of her coffee still in it. How absurd, she thought. How utterly absurd.

  *

  The next morning, when Meg awoke, she found herself gazing at a large gilt mirror hanging above an ornate fireplace. For a moment she had absolutely no idea where she was. Her eyes roamed the room, taking in the swirling pattern of birds and flowers on silk chinoiserie wallpaper, and then she remembered. She was at Anna’s. Max lay next to her in the big bed in a tangle of sheet and blanket, dark hair stuck damply to his forehead, his thumb in his mouth, fast asleep. She sat up. Lotte lay asleep on a camp bed a few feet away. Meg fell back on the pillow and let the events of last night play out in her mind. They had an unreal quality, like scenes from a film. She turned her head to gaze at the shafts of sunlight slanting in at the sides of the curtains. I will get up, she thought, and go to the window, and look out, and there will be Hazelhurst, whole and intact. It didn’t happen. If I think hard enough, it needn’t be real. What was it that someone had said when they heard George Gershwin had died? I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.

  But as she got out of bed and pulled aside the heavy brocade curtain, she knew in the depths of her heart that it was all too real. Her ears were still ringing from the force of the exploding bombs. Her body retained the memory of the crumps and crashes shuddering through it as she lay by the roadside. She stared out of the mullioned window. Beyond the grounds of Alderworth Hall, beyond the trees, she could see the jagged outline where half the house had been taken out, the dark smudge of smashed garden. Little drifts of smoke still rose from the ruin. She could see where another bomb had fallen in the field behind the house, another further away on the outskirts of the village, close to All Souls. She let the curtain drop back and sat down on the edge of the bed. She was wearing only her slip, and glanced around for the frock she’d had on last night. She found it over the back of a chair, and put it on. It smelt of smoke, and as she fastened the buttons she saw that the front was grazed with dirt where she had flung herself down. She put on her shoes and went downstairs to find Anna.

  *

  ‘I must get in touch with Paul,’ said Meg, as she and Anna sat drinking tea together at the breakfast table. ‘I need to go back to the house.’ She thought for a moment. ‘The kitchen side of the house is still standing, the morning room and the drawing room.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘I can’t remember if I left my handbag there or in the bedroom. That’s where I put his telephone number.’

  ‘I’ll walk over with you,’ said Anna.

  At that moment Helen appeared in the dining room. Clad only in the dressing gown and slippers she’d had on last night, she looked frail, like an invalid.

  ‘Come and have some tea and breakfast,’ said Anna, and drew out a chair.

  Helen sat down. ‘Diana will be down in a moment. She’s with your nanny, seeing to Morven.’ She smiled at Anna as she handed her a cup of tea. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Everyone will feel better after some breakfast. What an awful night you’ve all been through.’

  ‘I’m going over to the house with Anna,’ Meg told her mother. ‘There are things I need to find. Paul’s telephone number, for one. And I need to see what’s salvageable. The whole house hasn’t gone. We may be able to find clothes.’

  Helen shook her head. ‘I think I could see last night that the front bedrooms are gone, and the nursery. You’ll be able to get a better idea by daylight.’

  *

  It was another hot day. The countryside lay in its summer loveliness, indifferent to the awful events of the night before. Meg and Anna took the bridle path and walked through the woods until they reached the road leading to Hazelhurst. They talked about Anna’s husband, who had been a prisoner of war for two years.

  ‘He’s been moved to some place called Colditz. It’s where they put prisoners who keep trying to escape.’ Anna gave a rueful smile. ‘Indefatigable James. He hates being bored. Taking risks is a way of life for him. I wish he’d just spare a thought for us. He’s likely to be shot if he keeps on doing it.’

  ‘You must miss him.’

  Anna nodded. ‘Dreadfully. But raising money for the POWs helps me feel I’m doing something to help. And of course, I write and tell him all our news.’ Both women paused, shading their eyes to watch a fleet of Hurricanes sweep through the skies and disappear towards the coast. ‘One thing I haven’t been able to bring myself to tell him,’ continued Anna, as they walked on, ‘is that the Hall is being requisitioned. I got a letter saying they need it to house overseas troops. I had hoped we might escape, but there’s nothing we can do about it. The children and I shall have to squeeze ourselves into a few rooms and give the rest over. What’s ironic is that James suggested at the start of the war that we should offer the house to the government – you know, to be used as a school, or something of the kind, when all the evacuations were going on. But I wasn’t keen. I wish we had now. Schoolchildren might have been a sight more civilised than a load of soldiers.’

  They came in sight of the gates of Hazelhurst, and Anna laid a hand on Meg’s arm. ‘Are you all right?’

  Meg nodded. ‘I’m prepared for the worst. Maybe it won’t be as bad as I remember.’

  But it was worse. Seeing the stricken house by daylight was agonising. More than half the building had been obliterated, the rooms on the left side no more than heaps of rubble and smoking beams and cinders. Meg spotted the shattered remnants of familiar furniture – pieces of a walnut escritoire which had stood in Helen’s bedroom, the singed door of a large wardrobe flung on to the lawn among bricks and ash, and worst of all, spars of the white cot in which Morven had slept poking through a charred lump of mattress.

  The right-hand side of the house was largely intact, but the floors of the upper rooms pitched perilously downwards. The kitchen, dining-room and drawing-room windows were all shattered, but the rooms themselves had not been destroyed. Treading through the mess of glass and rubble, Meg walked round the back to the kitchen door. It stood open, just as she had left it when she had come outside with her coffee last night. She stepped tentatively inside. The force of the bomb had pitched the dresser forward and it lay heavily askew, its fall broken by the kitchen table, and its contents smashed and heaped on the tiled floor. Pots, pans, tins, jugs and plates had been flung from every shelf and surface in the room. There on a chair, filmed with dust, sat Meg’s handbag, with Paul’s telephone number in it. She picked it up, then went to the doorway and looked down the passageway that led to the hall. Daylight gaped beyond it where the other side of the house had disappeared. She wondered if she might venture further in, to see if anything could be salvaged from Paul’s study or
the drawing room, but thought better of it. The entire structure of the house was surely weakened to a point where the rest of it could collapse at any moment. Anna echoed her thoughts.

  ‘I don’t think you should go any further,’ she said.

  ‘No.’ Meg came back and went through the door to the laundry room. Two baskets of washing stood on the table near the mangle. She sifted through them. Enough clothes for Max and Morven to be going on with, some crumpled frocks and trousers, a number of blouses which just needed the attentions of a flat iron, and a useful assortment of underwear. She unhooked a large hemp bag which was hanging behind the door and bundled as many of the clothes into it as she could. Then she went back through to the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything else I can retrieve at the moment,’ she said to Anna. She looked around again, then a sudden wave of grief overwhelmed her and she leaned against her friend’s shoulder and wept.

  ‘I know,’ murmured Anna, although she couldn’t imagine what it must be like to lose one’s entire home overnight. ‘Don’t worry. You have a home with us for the time being. Though I believe the troops will start arriving next week.’

  Meg fished a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and dried her eyes. ‘You’ve been more than kind. We’ll make some kind of arrangement.’ She picked up the basket. ‘Come on. I can’t bear to stay here a moment longer.’

  As they went outside, Meg glanced across the paddock and saw Dixon coming out of the stables. ‘Oh! The horses! How could I forget them?’ She dropped the basket and ran across the garden and field, calling to Dixon.

  ‘Dixon, how are they? They must have been terribly frightened by the bombing.’

  ‘Morning, Mrs Latimer.’ Dixon touched his cap. ‘They’ve been all a-tremble, right enough, but they’re settling. Good job the stables are on this side of the house and far enough away. I’m keeping an eye on them.’