The Last Summer of the World

by Emily Mitchell

  He lay back, tired from the conversation. It struck him anew how strange it was to see Marion Beckett in this place. He was still not used to the idea that she was here, close by. A memory came to him from the summer before the war. Sunlight, a river. He closed his eyes.

  Woman in a Field of Grass. Voulangis, July 1914. Autochrome process.

  THEY’RE DRIVING ALONG the road that skirts the edge of the valley, running from Crécy-en-Brie through the railway village of Esbly and then dropping down toward the river. Coming over a rise, they see a field that slopes away in billows of sun-parched grass and ends in a hunch of brambles at the water’s edge.

  “There, there,” Marion cries, pointing to where the hedge breaks and they can see through to the meadow beyond. “That one. Stop.” Edward shifts down and looks for a place where he can park the car.

  They have been driving out every morning for several days now; it is part of the pact that they’ve made. It originated on the fourth or maybe fifth day of Marion’s visit. Edward had been working in his studio that afternoon, looking for the right way to crop some of his Brittany pictures. It was the photograph of his daughters that was giving him the most trouble. What were the right proportions for it? How much sky and how much sea? Nothing he tried seemed quite right, and he was standing over his workbench staring down at it in frustration when there was a tentative knock at the door. It was Marion.

  “I am sorry to interrupt you,” she said. “I’m all out of linseed oil. I am here to commandeer some of yours. Don’t argue: your wife gave permission.”

  “Well, in that case,” he said, “you’d better come in.”

  She stepped inside, looking around her at the shelves and stacks of canvases against the far wall. She handed him an empty glass bottle, and he went to his supply cupboard and began to fill it with oil. While he was doing this, she drifted over toward the bench, scanning the negatives and prints he had laid out there.

  “Do you mind me looking at these?” she asked.

  “No, go ahead.” He finished filling the bottle, replaced the stopper and handed it back to her. He stood next to her, both of them looking down at the photography on his workbench. “This one,” he said, tapping one corner of it with his forefinger. “I can’t find the right way to frame it. It seems like there is too much blank space above or below the girls.”

  Marion took the blotting paper frame he was using and moved it horizontally over to one side. When she did this, the division between the sky and the sea was cut by the long, dark blade of the cliffs further down the coast. The figures in the foreground were moved off-center. Suddenly, it looked right; it looked balanced.

  “How about this?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said. “That is much better. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome.” She picked up the bottle of oil and started toward the door.

  “Wait,” he said. “I get to interrupt you now. What are you working on?”

  “Oh, my goodness. I’m working on a landscape; the view from the end of your field. I am not happy with it at all. I think maybe I need to take a break, make some new sketches, come back to it.”

  “Well, maybe you do; sometimes you need to see your work with fresh eyes. Anyway, I’d like to look at it, if you will show me.”

  “Yes, I will. When you are done with your work this evening.”

  When she was gone, he felt, suddenly, how much he would like to work alongside her. Her calm air would help him concentrate. And he began to hatch a plan, which simmered away in the back of his mind as he cut and mounted and framed photographs that day.

  After dinner he outlined his idea to her.

  “Here are the rules,” he said. “Each morning for a week we go out and drive until we find a new location, one that neither of us has sketched before. We both sketch it and swap, so you hold on to my drawings and I hold on to yours. At the end of the week I choose one of your sketches for you to turn into a painting. You choose one of mine. Do we have a deal?”

  “How do I know I’ll like the one you pick?” Marion said.

  “That’s just the point. You have to trust me.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Clara said, linking her arm through Marion’s and leaning toward her conspiratorially. “He just wants an excuse to drive your car.” Edward looked at her, nervous that she disapproved.

  But Clara’s smile was unfeigned when Marion said, “You think I’ll let him drive? After he almost put it into that ditch last time?”

  “All right, all right. I’m outnumbered here,” Edward said. He thought how much happier Clara had been since Marion’s arrival. How much more at ease and good-humored. She was like a different person.

  “Really,” Clara said, “I think it’s a terrific idea. As long as the paintings that result are dedicated to me.”

  “Of course they will be,” says Marion.

  “Yes, of course they will, my darling,” Edward followed.

  “What about Arthur?” Marion asked. “Should we ask him to come with us?”

  “Oh, Arthur never gets up until one,” Clara said.

  “True. We’ll most likely be back before he’s even out of bed.”

  So it was settled. This is the fifth morning, and Edward (who is driving after all) steers the car to the side of the road and stops. They get down from their seats and, carrying their sketching materials, make their way around to the stile. Edward climbs it first, then helps Marion over, and they walk through knee-high waves of grass, so pale they’re almost silver, toward the riverbank.

  “Look,” Marion says, pointing to the hem of her skirt. It is covered with tiny dashes, grass seeds that cling to the cloth. “You’ve got them, too.” She pulls at one on the sleeve of his jacket.

  They find a place where they can get to the water through the trees and underbrush. Along the watercourse in either direction, reeds wave in the shallows, pulled by the slow strength of the current. A kingfisher flashes down to the water’s surface. A pair of mallards glide by.

  “This is the place,” Marion says. “This is just what I wanted.” She sits down on the grass of the bank, tucking her skirt under her. She begins getting out her charcoal, her sketchbook. Edward sits a little above her on the slope, his back propped against the trunk of a tree, his feet against the protrusion of one of its roots.

  He doesn’t get out his sketching materials right away. Instead, he sits watching Marion begin work and thinking that he has not been as happy as this in a very long time. He feels this in spite of the turmoil that they are reading about in the newspapers each day: the Serbians and the Austrians trading threats over the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand; the Russians and the Germans taking sides. He feels very far away from all that.

  If only this summer could go on forever, if only he could keep this morning to draw on whenever he needed. This: the marbled green of the river swirling and changing under its own strange forces; the slope of pale grass to its edge; the girl with her fiery hair. This serious girl, biting her lip in concentration, and peering intensely at the water, while her hands work its replica on the page in front of her. This girl whom he realizes he wants to reach out and touch … She has turned and is looking at him, smiling and blinking against the light.

  “Go on, Mr. Steichen,” she says. “Hurry up. I’ll be done with mine before you’ve even opened your book.”

  “You know, I think I would rather photograph today,” he says.

  “That wasn’t part of the pact.”

  “I know. I’m breaking the pact.”

  “Unfair!”

  But he is already standing up and walking back to the car to get his camera. He will keep this afternoon, and he will keep its colors, too. When he returns to the river, Marion is still sitting where she was, finishing the sketch, shading carefully along the edges of the water. She is a good artist; sometimes, he thinks, there is a lightness of touch, an assurance to her work, that is almost magical. This happens most often in her painting of faces. When she makes a portr
ait, you can tell what the subject is thinking. But at other times she is too restrained, as though she were telling herself all the while how the image ought to be, not allowing it to come out of her naturally. He waits until she is finished drawing and then comes to sit beside her.

  “It’s good,” he says. “I like this particularly, the way you get the movement through those reeds over there.”

  “Thank you. I’m not happy with how the birds look.”

  “You thought too much, and stopped seeing. You were thinking as you were drawing them, right?”

  “Yes, I suppose I was.”

  “Over here, you looked but didn’t judge. You didn’t hesitate. You let your eyes carry you.”

  She is silent for a minute looking at her sketch. He stands and retreats a distance up the hill.

  “Turn around, will you?” She turns and looks at him, her face full of sunlight. Her hair curls over her shoulders, and against the green of the river, it’s scarlet. He takes the picture.

  “Wonderful. I’m going to develop it using autochrome. I’ve been waiting for another chance to try it.” He changes the plate. “Can I take another one? Just come up here.” He beckons to her.

  “Not only are you breaking our deal, but now you are making demands,” Marion says.

  “Please. I promise it will only take a minute.”

  “All right. Though I’m sure it isn’t entirely proper behavior for a married man …” She trails off and both of them are suddenly aware that the joke, intended to put them at ease, has only called attention to the tension that has come between them. “Making demands on women in isolated fields …” She tries again and only makes it worse.

  “Could you come up a little way?” he asks, turning his attention to his camera. “Just here.” He points to a spot on the ground. “Would you sit?”

  “All right.” She comes to the place he indicates and sits down.

  “Lie on your side.”

  “What?”

  “I want to get your hair against the background of the grass.”

  “Oh.” She lies down. “Like this?”

  “Yes.” He puts the camera down and comes to kneel next to her. He reaches down and takes a handful of her hair and curls it in front of her so that it seems to grow from the earth like the grass, as though the woman lying there is also part of the growing things in this place. Marion’s hair is soft in his hands.

  “Perfect,” he says.

  He retreats to where he was before and raises the viewfinder to his eyes. When he looks through it, the picture is wonderful, the contrast of the pale grass, the dark trees, the woman caught between the two. He takes the photograph, and it is not until he brings the camera down from his face that he sees something isn’t right. It is her face. She looks terribly unhappy. This was not what he wanted.

  “What on earth is the matter?” he asks her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t really like having my photograph taken. I think I’m not used to it.”

  “Well, I don’t mean to upset you. But I’ve been wanting to take your picture all summer.”

  “All summer? You mean for the whole past week?”

  “Well, all right, yes. But how wonderful these are going to be. I’m almost mad at myself for not having done this when you visited last year. Look at this line here; it’s beautiful.” He reaches up and runs his forefinger along the line of her jaw, which curves down from her ear, a perfect half-heart shape to her chin. A second later he realizes that this was the wrong thing to do, absolutely wrong.

  She flinches, and pulls her face away. Not looking at him, she says: “You know, we’d better go. Clara will be wanting us back soon. It is almost lunchtime and she invited Mildred today.”

  She starts to walk off across the field in the direction of the car. He gathers up his equipment and runs after her.

  “Wait!” he says. She doesn’t stop. He raises the camera to his eye and takes a picture of her walking away through the grass.

  Back at the car she says, “I will drive.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “I just meant …” Marion has put her hands over her face, as if she needs to generate the courage to come out from behind them and face the world again. He falls silent.

  “It’s all right,” she says. “We’ve had such a nice week, haven’t we? Let’s not spoil it.” She sounds as if she is addressing herself as much as him.

  “Yes,” he says. “You are right, of course.”

  On the drive home they are quiet, sitting far apart on the seat.

  “Have you heard from your parents?” he asks, the question sounding stilted even before he’s finished asking it. “Have they reached Petersburg all right, I mean?”

  “Yes,” she says. “Only the other day I got a letter from them. I showed it to you.”

  “Right. Of course you did. I should have remembered.” They lapse into silence again. Edward stares at the passing fields, feeling glum and wondering what exactly has been broken.

  Just as they reach the last rise before they come in sight of the house, Edward feels Marion reach across the seat and take his hand in her gloved one. He is surprised. She doesn’t look over at him; her eyes are fixed on the road, but there is her hand, squeezing his, offering a truce. A wave of relief washes over him, unexpectedly powerful. With this single gesture she has restored the lost balance to the world. He presses her fingers between both his palms, and when she withdraws her hand, it is only to shift gears and slow the car, so they can pull off into his own driveway, and there is Clara waiting for them in the doorway.

  “Honestly, my dears, I was beginning to worry you’d gotten lost,” she chides mockingly.

  “No need,” Edward calls. “Here we are.” Marion climbs down from the driver’s seat.

  “Did you find a good location?” Clara asks.

  “Yes, yes, we did. A lovely one. Right by the river,” Marion says. To Edward she sounds almost like her usual composed self, but not quite. She is speaking a little too fast. Her words tumble out in a hurry as though she is short of breath. Clara looks at her and furrows her brow.

  “Are you all right?” she asks. “You look flustered; you have quite a high color in your face.”

  “Oh, I’m fine. We just had a long walk uphill to get back to the car.”

  “Well, come in and have a drink of water. I’ll tell Louisa to bring it to you upstairs if you’d like. You can lie down a little before lunch.”

  “Thank you,” Marion says, and goes inside. Edward comes to the door after her and kisses Clara.

  “Marion seems out of sorts,” she says. “Is something wrong?”

  “Not that I know of. The long walk, I assure you, was her choice, not mine.” He shrugs. “I’m sure she’ll be OK.” He goes inside, puts down his sketching materials and camera on the hall table, and begins to take off his jacket. When he looks up, Clara is still standing in the door, watching him with an expression he knows he hasn’t seen on her face when they returned from their expeditions the previous four days.

  “You probably need Louisa in the kitchen right now, don’t you?” he says. “I’ll take that glass of water upstairs to Marion.”

  “That is thoughtful of you,” Clara says.

  “Well, it seems like the least I can do, after dragging her all over the countryside these last few days.”

  “Were you taking pictures, too?” She is picking up his camera from the side and turning it over, as though looking for something hidden underneath it.

  “I took some pictures of Marion by the river. I got inspired.”

  “Well, one never knows when inspiration will strike …”

  “Quite so. Go on, darling. I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  THEY ARE HAVING lunch outside today, under the trees. They are talking about whether or not there will be war. It is two weeks since the heir to the Austrian throne was shot and killed when his procession took a wrong turn into a back street in a mountainringed town called Sarajevo. The man holding t
he gun was a Serb nationalist whom no one had ever heard of, even in his own country. He just stepped out of the crowd and pulled the trigger. And now, this morning, the Russians have announced that they will not tolerate an Austrian invasion of Serbia; they will fight, if necessary, to defend it.

  Edward and Arthur move the big kitchen table out to the lawn, just under the outstretched boughs of the crab apple tree. Because it is such a perfect day it seems a pity to spend any of it cooped up inside. Louisa brings out the place settings. Kate and Mary pick some flowers, and these droop picturesquely from a vase in the middle of the table’s flat white expanse.

  “Why are they hanging over like that?” Kate asks, trying to prop up the shriveled head of a bluebell.

  “Because they are sad,” Mary says authoritatively. “About the war that is going to come.”

  “No war is going to come,” Clara says. She and Marion are carrying the dishes to the table. “At least it isn’t coming to our garden.”

  And now here they all are: Edward and Arthur, Mercedes and Marion and Clara, Mary and Kate and Mildred Aldrich, who has driven up the hill from Huiry to join them for the day. Mildred is still holding her copy of this morning’s newspaper, and every so often she uses it like a gavel to emphasize a point she is trying to make.

  “Have you read the list of demands they’ve given the Serbian government? Entirely unrealistic,” she says, the pages of newsprint thumping onto the table in time with her speech. The bread crumbs on the cloth jump with each blow. “Pass the salt, please, dear.”

  “Certainly. Would you like some of the brioche?” Clara asks her, passing the shaker. “It’s very good. Louisa made it this morning.”

  “Thank you very much,” Mildred says. “The demands are ridiculous and, furthermore, the Austrians know it. They don’t want the Serbs to comply. They want vengeance for their precious archduke, so they will set goals that can’t be met, and then when, surprise, surprise, they aren’t, they will invade.”

  “Well, that doesn’t mean that there is going to be war here, though, does it?” Edward says. “This is an issue between Austria and Serbia and maybe Russia. I mean, war is always terrible, don’t get me wrong, but this one needn’t involve France.”