The Summer House Party

by Caro Fraser

  ‘Hi, there,’ said Dan.

  She looked up. ‘Hello, Mr Ranscombe.’ With Haddon’s dark, intelligent eyes and well-defined brows, and her mother’s blond delicacy, she was turning into a remarkably pretty girl. ‘I’m trying to teach Star to be a circus dog, but he’s too silly. We saw a dog at the circus that could walk with a ball on his nose and jump through hoops, and sit up and beg, and everything. He looked a bit like Star, but I suppose he must have been a lot cleverer.’

  ‘Where are Colin and Sidney? I thought you three were thick as thieves.’

  ‘They’ve gone back to London.’ Laura’s expression was forlorn. ‘What’s thick as thieves?’

  Dan was just searching for a reply when Sonia emerged from the house in dungarees and gumboots, carrying a hopsack. Her eyes widened in surprise and delight when she saw Dan.

  ‘Dan! How lovely! Why didn’t you telephone to say you were coming?’ She embraced him.

  ‘I thought I’d give you a surprise. I only got back a couple of days ago.’

  ‘Goodness, you look…’ She hesitated.

  ‘Rough? I certainly feel it. I’ve had rather a hairy time of it. Glad to be back in one piece, but still feeling a bit shaky.’ It was true. His nerves still felt like taut wires.

  ‘Well, I’d like to promise you plenty of peace and quiet, but we’re a rather hectic household. How long can you stay?’

  ‘As long as you’ll have me.’

  ‘Splendid. I shall tell Effie to make up a bed. Now, go inside and say hello to everyone. I’m off to feed my chickens, and then we can sit down together and I can hear all your news.’

  Sonia departed in the direction of the chicken coops. At that moment Meg came out of the house, calling to Laura. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Dan.

  She turned to Laura. ‘Run inside, darling. Lotte wants you to tidy your toys away before tea.’ She sat down weakly on the edge of the fountain and gazed at Dan, then said in a low voice shaky with emotion, ‘I’m so glad to see you. I’ve been out of my mind with worry these past two months. Where have you been? You look all-in.’

  Dan sat down next to her. He smiled, but it was an effort. ‘Can’t tell you, I’m afraid.’ He picked some moss from between the stones and scattered it on the water. The goldfish rose expectantly, then nosed away, disappointed, into the dim depths. ‘But yes – I’ve been through the mill a bit. Badly in need of some rest and quiet.’ He paused, then said, ‘Sonia wrote and told me about Hazelhurst. I’m truly sorry. I know how you loved that place.’

  ‘Yes. Rather a rotten show.’ Tears sprang to her eyes, and she wiped them quickly away, adding, ‘But maybe it’s for the best.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘For us, I mean. It will make it easier to end everything with Paul, when it happens.’ She looked away. ‘Oh, just listen to me. I never used to be this kind of person. So callous. So selfish.’

  ‘We can’t help what’s happened.’

  Diana was passing the landing window. She paused when she saw Dan and Meg by the fountain. She couldn’t hear what was being said or see Dan’s face, but from Meg’s expression she could tell the conversation was intimate and intense.

  ‘That’s not true. We could have, if we’d been better people. Paul doesn’t deserve what I’ve done to him. He’s far too good for me. You know he’s in the RAF now? He gave up his desk job. He’s with bomber command. Couldn’t stand not fighting for his country.’

  ‘I see.’ This didn’t sound like someone who was trying to undermine the war effort. If Paul really was working for the Germans, surely Whitehall was a better place to be than in the cockpit of a Lancaster, facing Heinkels and Messerschmitts.

  She made an effort at brightness, and got to her feet. ‘Anyhow, come inside. Everyone will be thrilled to see you.’

  Diana moved away from the landing window, and came downstairs to the kitchen moment later.

  ‘Dan, darling, what a nice surprise!’ she exclaimed. ‘You look like a member of the foreign legion. All sunburnt and gaunt. How long are you on leave?’

  ‘Twenty-eight days.’

  ‘Goodness, you must have done something rather special to deserve that.’

  ‘Nothing to speak of.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re being modest. What will you do with all that time?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hadn’t really made any plans, but now that I find Woodbourne House full of scintillating women, I might just stay here for a while.’

  *

  If Dan had thought he would be happy at Woodbourne House, the closest thing he had to a proper home, with Meg there, he quickly discovered he was wrong. Being with Meg in circumstances where he had to behave with artificial restraint was trying enough, but when he heard at the end of his first week there that Paul was coming home on weekend leave, he knew he couldn’t face the prospect of the three of them being under the same roof. Added to which, he was still sleeping badly, and was afraid the fractious state of his nerves and his short temper might be disturbing the harmony of the household. He decided he would cut his visit short.

  He told Sonia so after lunch on Friday.

  ‘I wish you could stay longer,’ said Sonia. ‘Perhaps we’ll see you at Christmas?’

  ‘I can’t honestly say, but I’ll try.’ If there was a likelihood of Paul being at Woodbourne House for Christmas, Dan had no intention of coming back.

  ‘I need to talk to you before you go,’ murmured Meg, as she took the plates from the table.

  When lunch had been cleared away, Dan volunteered to take the pigs’ pails to the sty.

  Laura clapped her hands. ‘Can I come, please?’

  ‘And me!’ cried Max.

  ‘Come on, then,’ said Meg. ‘Let’s add the lunch leftovers to the pail. There’s a bucket of beer dregs that Lobb got from the pub. We can put those in, too.’

  Meg and Dan walked across the jagged, hay-cut turf that had once been Woodbourne House’s spectacular lawn, carrying the pails of swill, the children running ahead.

  ‘Why on earth are you leaving so suddenly?’ asked Meg.

  ‘I can’t possibly be here when Paul comes back. It’s hard enough being around you and not being able to so much as kiss you or touch you, or talk to you properly. I can’t act normally. Everything I do or say seems to strike a false note. And Diana’s watching us like a hawk.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Anyway, I’ll be in London till the end of my leave. Can you find a way to get up to town?’

  ‘I’ll try to think of one. It was hard enough when I was at Hazelhurst, but now…’ She sighed. ‘Oh Dan, I’m so tired of doing everything in secret, scraping around for excuses, snatching days and nights with you here and there. And the guilt, the deceit. I feel so worn down by everything.’

  ‘Then leave him. I know you think it’s too soon, but frankly, it seems to me the only honest way. Why wait till the end of the war?’

  ‘Come ON, Mummy!’ shouted Max. ‘The pigs are getting hungry.’

  Dan emptied the slop pails over the wall of the sty, and the children watched excitedly as the pigs jostled and grunted, nosing among the scraps. Dan and Meg leaned on the fence a little further off, so that they could talk.

  ‘The longer we go on deceiving him,’ went on Dan, ‘the worse it’s going to be when he finds out. I don’t understand why you don’t just end it now.’

  ‘Dan, it’s impossible. If I were to break with Paul while he’s flying these dangerous missions, I don’t think my mother or my aunt would ever forgive me. Or Diana. It simply isn’t the right time. I still haven’t got over losing Hazelhurst. It’s as though everything is in limbo, out of kilter and unreal.’ She fought for words to explain to him how the bombing of her home had fractured her world, how it was all she could do these days to hold together some sense of normal life for Paul and Max.

  ‘So you and I – we’re just some wartime romance? And when everything is back to normal yo
u’ll find another lovely house and carry on being Paul’s wife.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. That won’t happen. I want us to be together. And we shall be. But it can’t be now.’

  Max came running up. The novelty of pig-feeding had evidently worn off. ‘Mummy, can we go back now?’

  ‘You and Laura run along. We’ll be back in a minute.’

  The children scampered across the grass towards the house. Meg turned to Dan.

  ‘You don’t realise what losing my home has done to me, Dan. It’s changed my perspective on a lot of things. You see…’ She struggled for a way to say all that she had been thinking. ‘I’ve decided that when I leave Paul, it’s going to be in a certain way. You and I, we have to come later. I don’t want people judging me – thinking, my God, all the time her brave husband was fighting for his country, she was having an affair. I don’t want them to know about this. Any of them. Not Paul, not Sonia, or my mother—’

  ‘You want to be blameless?’

  ‘Yes, since you put it like that.’

  ‘But you’re not, are you? Neither of us is.’

  ‘That’s not the point. I don’t want Max to grow up thinking less of me. Knowing I was unfaithful to his father.’

  ‘So you won’t leave Paul now because you don’t want your son and other people to think badly of you?’

  ‘You make me sound like a coward.’

  ‘You’ve been afraid all along. You should have left him in the beginning.’

  ‘I know.’ She grew tearful. ‘I know, I’m weak and pathetic. But we can wait, can’t we? If we love one another, we can wait till the time is right. When the war is over I can leave Paul, and after a while you and I can be together. And he won’t be hurt so badly—’

  ‘What? Meg, stop this. You have to take responsibility. We both do. You can’t have it all ways. To care so much about what people think of you – it’s positively feeble.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I can’t take the risk of people finding out. It would mean losing everyone I hold dear. They wouldn’t love me any more. How could they?’

  Dan’s fragile nerves collapsed into anger. ‘You mean this, don’t you? You’re afraid, so you want to end us—’

  ‘No, we just have to be patient—’

  ‘I’m past all that. If you’re not brave enough to love me, and admit it to the world, there’s no real point. It’s over.’

  ‘Don’t say it like that, Dan. Please. We’ll be together when it’s possible—’

  ‘Meg, whatever you feel for me, it isn’t enough. You love yourself and the people around you more, including Paul. You’ve made the choice. Don’t ask me to wait until you feel brave enough, or until it’s easy or convenient enough. I won’t.’

  ‘But if you love me—’

  ‘Oh, stop! What do you mean – “if I love you”? Meg, if you loved me, you wouldn’t care about them.’

  ‘It’s not that easy—’

  ‘Yes, it is. If we don’t have a present, then we don’t have a future. It’s finished, Meg, just as you want it to be. Stay with the people who matter to you.’ He picked up the empty pails. ‘I need to go and pack.’

  ‘Dan, wait…’

  But he carried on walking.

  *

  Diana was in the kitchen garden, picking raspberries, when Max and Laura came running back.

  ‘Where have you two been?’ she asked.

  ‘Feeding the pigs.’

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘No, with Mummy and Dan. They’re still up there talking,’ said Max. ‘They’re always talking. It’s so boring. Come on, Laura, let’s go and find Star.’

  A few moments later Diana looked up to see Dan striding across the grass with the pails. His expression was angrier than she’d ever seen it. She watched wordlessly as he flung the pails down and went into the house, not even looking at her. It was obvious that he and Meg had been arguing. Suspicion settled on her soul like a frost. Only lovers argued in such a way. The idea that Meg and Dan were having an affair seemed at once absurd, and yet at the same time wholly believable. Events and incidents began to crystallise. The time that Meg had gone up to town to see Constance before she left to go overseas. She’d stayed the night then, when it had hardly been necessary. The visit to London at Christmas – surely Paul wouldn’t have asked about the presents she’d bought, if he’d been there, too? The time she had seen Meg and Dan coming through the woods together, deep in intimate discussion. Dan and Meg by the fountain just last week, the intensity of their conversation evident in the fact they had thought themselves unobserved.

  She took the bowl of raspberries back to the house, gathering her thoughts, working out how best to handle this.

  *

  Dan packed, said a hasty goodbye to Sonia, and returned by train to London. Unable to face the solitude of the Belgravia house, he took a taxi to Bellamy’s. He went to the bar and ordered a large Scotch, still brooding over everything. His nerves were so wrecked that he could hardly rationalise his angry thoughts. He might have ended it, but it was she, through her weakness and fear, who had destroyed everything. Her love for him was too thin a thing. It was evident she had no intention of leaving Paul. Why stay with him if she didn’t think the relationship still had some meaning? Perhaps she was hedging her bets. The war could claim both him and Paul; perhaps she knew that if she made the wrong choice, she could be left unprotected and alone. But the relationship couldn’t survive being put in abeyance until the war ended, to salvage her reputation and conscience. Who knew how long the bloody war would last?

  In this cynical frame of mind, he ordered another double. He glanced at his watch. Almost half past eight, and he was hungry and in need of distraction. He felt ragged, restless. He was a free man now, and could do as he liked. He took out his address book and flipped through the pages until he found Eve’s number. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to her. She might have moved again. She might have left the Herald, taken up war work. He doubted if she would want anything to do with him now, but he had nothing to lose. He went to one of the club’s private booths and called her. The phone rang for a long time at the other end, and just as he was about to give up, she answered.

  ‘Welbeck 878.’

  ‘Eve? It’s Dan.’

  The silence at the other end told him everything. Before she could hang up, he went on, ‘Look, I know it’s been a long time, and all that, but I’m on leave in London, and I wondered if you’d like to meet for dinner?’

  He closed his eyes against the anticipated reproach, and when it came it was gentler, sadder than he expected.

  ‘My God, all this time without a word. Not a phone call, or even a letter. It was only thanks to friends that I knew you weren’t dead. And now you ring up out of the blue and suggest dinner, as though…’ She stopped, seemingly lost for words.

  ‘Can’t a girl make some allowance for a chap being on active service?’

  ‘Are you telling me you couldn’t have picked up the telephone in all that time? Or put pen to paper?’

  ‘I have been busy, honestly. Look, let me make it up to you. How about Claridge’s? Can you be there by nine?’ She said nothing. ‘I tell you what – I’ll leave you to think about it. If you can bring yourself to forgive me for being a heartless ass, that will be wonderful. If you decide you can’t – well, I’ll just have to dine miserably on my own. And serve me jolly well right. But I hope you’ll be there.’

  Dan put the receiver in its cradle. In his present mood the attempt at charm and lightness of touch had probably failed. He wondered whether he should even have bothered. Still, the invitation had been extended, and he would have to go, just in case she showed up. He wasn’t sure now whether he wanted her to or not.

  *

  After the argument with Dan, Meg went back to the house and straight to her room. She felt numb, hardly able to comprehend what had happened. All she had wanted to do was to persuade Dan to wait. How could he just end everything
like that? Perhaps he was as tired as she was – not just of the lying and deceit, but of her, of the whole thing. He must be, to have done it so easily, with just a few words, without a backward glance. She stayed in her room on the pretext of having a bad headache until it was time for dinner. Then she bathed her tear-stained eyes, put on a little powder, and went downstairs. She didn’t want anyone in the household connecting Dan’s departure with any apparent distress on her part, so she did her best to be composed and cheerful.

  Diana was watchful, but she couldn’t detect anything untoward in Meg’s manner. In fact, it was Meg who remarked what a pity it was that Dan had to go back to London so soon.

  ‘He seemed very much out of sorts when he left,’ said Sonia. ‘I expect that mission he was on has taken it out of him. He didn’t look well when he arrived. I hope he’ll be all right.’

  Despite Meg’s calm demeanour, Diana suspicions remained. She was seething with defensive instincts, not just on behalf of Paul but the entire Latimer family. After dinner she volunteered herself and Meg for washing-up duties, so that she and Meg were left alone in the kitchen. While Meg finished drying the dishes, Diana sat down at the kitchen table and lit a cigarette, screwing up her courage.

  ‘Meg, I need to speak to you about something.’

  Meg, putting away the last of the plates, turned to Diana. Something in her sister-in-law’s tone made her wary. ‘What?’

  ‘I know that you and Dan quarrelled this afternoon. Was that why he left?’

  Though caught off-guard, Meg managed to shrug and reply casually, ‘It was nothing. You know how he’s been these past few days. He’ll fly off the handle about absolutely anything. He’d already decided to leave, so I don’t think I was the cause. At least I hope not.’ She smiled. ‘I’d hate to think something so trivial as an argument over pig-feeding would send him packing.’