The Last Summer

by Judith Kinghorn

  Henry had always been extravagant; it was part of him, his character. He’d been indulged, brought up to have certain standards, expectations, and he enjoyed life too much to embrace or understand any need for financial planning or frugality. He’d inherited some money, of course, after the sale of Deyning, but our home had been sold at the worst time, and for a ridiculous sum. And my father’s debts—coupled with taxes and death duties—had eroded my brother’s inheritance to no more than enough to live on adequately for a few years, not a lifetime. By that winter he’d run out of money and, it seemed, energy.

  Mama was of independent means, with an income derived from a trust set up by her father for her and her siblings. But in the years immediately after the war that income had fallen, and fallen dramatically. And, though entitled to some of the proceeds from the sale of Deyning, she’d forfeited her share in favor of Henry. She’d felt guilty about Henry’s shabby inheritance, and she said it would, at the very least, give him a start. But whatever monies Henry had received from the sale of our home had long gone and, more latterly, Mama had had to bail him out: paying off the arrears on his rent and clearing his gambling debts. She’d tried talking to him, told him that it couldn’t go on, that she couldn’t afford to fund his precarious lifestyle any longer. And I’d talked to him too, or I’d tried; but he’d stopped making sense, and appeared neither willing nor able to listen.

  “It’s not fair on Mama, Henry,” I said. “She can’t be expected to support you now, at this stage . . . it’s simply not fair on her.”

  We were sitting in my drawing room. He’d called on me unexpectedly, wanting money, telling me he’d be able to repay me in a few days. But he looked dreadful: pale, disheveled and exhausted, his hair uncut and unwashed, his coat threadbare.

  “That’s why I’ve come to you,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “And I hate myself for doing this to you, Issa, really I do . . .”

  It was snowing outside, already dark. I noticed he was shivering, and I rose to my feet and placed another log upon the fire.

  “But I have no money, Henry. Nothing apart from the pin money Charlie gives me,” I said, standing in front of the fire, my back to him.

  “I’ll pay you back in a few days, I promise. Anything . . . anything’s a help. I’ve just got myself rather stuck, you see.”

  I turned to him. “But you’re always rather stuck, dear. And it can’t go on . . . you know that. You know Mama has limited funds now.”

  He stared at the fire. “Yes,” he said, “I know that. And I intend to find myself a job, but I just need to sort a few things first.”

  I walked out to the hallway table and picked up my purse.

  “I can only give you two pounds, I’m afraid. It’s all I have,” I said, returning to the room. He was standing by the fireplace, his back to me, and when he turned to face me he looked so wretched.

  “I’m sorry, Henry, but it’s all I have,” I said again.

  He turned away, leaned his head upon the mantelshelf. “You know, Issa, I sometimes wish I’d not come back . . . wish I’d joined the others.”

  “No, don’t say that. You must never think that.”

  I moved over to where he stood, placed my hand upon his shoulder. “You just need to pick yourself up, dear, get a job . . . sort yourself out. Look at Charlie, and Jimmy too. If they can do it, you can.”

  He sighed, and then turned to face me. “Yes, you’re right, of course. I need to sort myself out . . . I’m a bit of a mess at the moment, I know that.” He smiled down at me, wearily.

  I put my arms around him. “Don’t worry, Henry,” I said. “It’ll be fine. It’ll all be fine.”

  When I walked him to the door, he said to me again, “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  “Don’t worry about the money, Henry. Just promise me, please promise me you’ll get yourself sorted.”

  I watched him walk off down the deserted snow-covered street, holding his collar up around his face, and my heart ached for him.

  About a week later, early one evening, Mama telephoned. Henry’s landlord had called on her, only minutes before, demanding money, she said, and telling her that Henry had not been at his flat in over a week. My mother wanted Charlie to try to find him. She thought Charlie might know where he was. Yes, Charlie said, he’d see what he could do; he’d go out immediately and make inquiries. So, as Charlie disappeared in a taxicab, in search of Henry, I headed on foot to my mother’s house.

  Had he made a decision? I wondered. Had he finally decided to join the others? Would his body wash up on the muddy banks of the Thames? And I prayed that he hadn’t taken his own life. That he was somewhere, drunk and perhaps lost, but not dead.

  Charlie was unable to find out anything that evening. He’d been to his club, asked the doorman, and others there, when they’d last seen Henry: not for some time, weeks at least, they’d told him. He’d been to a few bars and to the public house near Charlie’s flat; yes, they knew who Henry Granville was, but no one could recall having seen him of late. Charlie did his best to reassure Mama. He said it wasn’t unheard of for men . . . those who had survived the trenches, to do this sort of thing. He’d heard of such cases before, and usually these men turned up again, safe and unharmed. He would resume his search the next day, and he’d make a few calls, put a few people on to it.

  “But he can’t just disappear,” I said to Charlie, as we walked home from Mama’s later that evening.

  “Yes, he can,” he replied, lighting a cigarette. “And to be honest, Clarissa, I’m not entirely surprised.”

  “What do you mean? Do you think he’s taken his own life?”

  “Well, that can’t be ruled out, but no, I don’t think so. Your brother may be many things, but he’s not a coward. No, I think he’s gone. I think he’s fled London, for the time being at least.”

  I stopped. “Fled? Fled London? But to where? And with what? He has no money, Charlie.”

  “Yes, he’s certainly left a trail of debts behind him, and I didn’t want to say in front of your mother, but a lot of rather angry people too.” He took my arm and led me on. “His debts are more substantial than we’d supposed. Only last week he cashed a rather sizable check with the landlord at his local public house.”

  “But how? Mama says he has no money . . . nothing in his bank account. Nothing at all.”

  “He doesn’t. The check was not honoured by the bank.”

  “So he owes this man money as well?”

  “He did, and a considerable amount too. Tonight has been a rather costly evening in more ways than one . . .”

  I stopped again. “You mean to say you’ve had to clear all these debts? You’ve had to give people money?”

  He laughed. “I do indeed, and I did. And I’m now rather keen to catch up with your errant brother myself.”

  We continued walking, and then I asked Charlie, “And do you really think he’s gone, gone away somewhere?”

  “It would make sense, wouldn’t it? Leave all his troubles behind. And I went to his flat, went through his things . . . his passport’s nowhere to be found.”

  “You went through his things?” I said, slightly aghast, and knowing how Henry would feel.

  “Yes, of course I did. I was trying to find out where he might be. Oh really, I don’t know, Clarissa. Perhaps he’ll appear tomorrow . . . or next week, or next month, but I’ve a feeling we shan’t be seeing him for some time.”

  Over the next few weeks Charlie and I played a rather duplicitous game with my mother. We had no choice. At first, when it became apparent that Charlie wasn’t able to locate my brother, she’d wanted to go to the police, even though the last thing she wished for was a scandal, or any publicity. But Charlie very swiftly advised her against taking that course of action. He told her that it would only expose Henry’s sad situation, the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. He said as soon as Henry’s name appeared in the newspapers, which undoubtedly it would, all sorts of unscrup
ulous people would come forward to sell their tawdry tales.

  At that time, the newspapers, and certain magazines, were filled with stories of society figures embroiled in scandal—having affairs, or lost to drug addiction or alcohol. In the absence of war they’d had to find something else, I suppose, to secure their readership. But it seemed to me unnecessarily cruel that those viewed in any way privileged, no matter their circumstances, or how browbeaten, damaged or lost, had been so viciously exposed and held up as examples. And it had made people paranoid: paranoid that even the most off-the-cuff remark—let alone a conversation—would be sold and appear in the next day’s news.

  No, Mama said, there must be no publicity. So more weeks passed, and then Mama spoke of hiring a private detective. She’d seen advertisements in the newspaper, had even cut some out, and she showed them to Charlie and me. It appeared not altogether unusual, she said, sounding reassured and quite motivated, for people to disappear. She was right, of course, and, in a way, hiring a private detective made perfect sense. But it would be costly, and though my mother was by no means poor, she no longer had the income she’d once enjoyed. Charlie suggested that we wait a while. And so we did. We waited for my brother to contact us, to write or telephone, but months passed by and no letter or telephone call came.

  I never told my mother the extent of Henry’s debts, or of the sad state of his tiny flat, which I’d had to clear; nor did I tell her of his missing passport. But I eventually explained the likelihood of him no longer being in London, that he may well have fled the country.

  “But why? Why on earth would he do such a thing? Really, it simply doesn’t make any sense . . . none whatsoever.”

  “But if he wasn’t happy, had no money, felt his life here was . . . worthless, going nowhere, then perhaps it does make sense.”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, I still don’t understand why he’d choose to disappear . . . after everything we’ve gone through, Clarissa.”

  “Maybe he thought it would be easier this way, Mama. Perhaps he couldn’t face telling us how he really felt . . . couldn’t tell us the truth. And by disappearing, going some place where no one knows who he is, where no one knows anything about him at all, he can be whoever he wants to be.”

  She stared at me, wide eyed. “Whoever he wants to be? You mean change his identity . . . his name?”

  I said nothing.

  “Thank the Lord your father’s not alive to witness this.”

  “I’m sure he’ll turn up, Mama, sooner or later. He has to. He’ll get in touch with us eventually. Charlie’s quite certain of that.”

  This, too, was a lie. And it was to be years before we found out what had happened to my brother Henry.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  No one other than the very rich lived the way we once had at Deyning. The lack of an heir, extortionate death duties and the absence of anyone willing to go into domestic service made it nigh on impossible to run such places. Large country houses had been abandoned, left to wrack and ruin, or razed to the ground in order to avoid paying taxes, and almost inevitable bankruptcy.

  I knew that Deyning had been standing empty for a couple of years. The American family we’d sold it to had lost a fortune and been unable to sell it, and I’d recently seen it advertised across a whole page in Country Life. I’d gasped at the bargain price, and at the state of the gardens. It looked like a relic of a bygone era, a ghostly place. I’d peered through a magnifying glass at the hazy photographs, and there it was, that place I knew so well. Where each pathway, tree and rotting stump had meant so much; where every hollow and incline, each fence and stile and gate had once been so eagerly anticipated. But how different it now looked.

  It had been photographed in winter, the trees stark and black against a gloomy sky; the house, bereft, and suitably gray; the terrace, empty of its detail, and statues and urns; the lawns, overgrown, shrunken by rampant rhododendron and shapeless shrubs. And those broad herbaceous borders, once exuberant drifts of vibrant color, gone, lost in the tangled undergrowth. There, too, was the view: the lake, a dark expanse in the foreground, the fields beyond, strangely colorless, and the South Downs, reduced to a murky smudge.

  “Looks no different to the last time I saw it,” Charlie said, dismissively, when I showed him the photographs.

  “No, it looks worse . . . much worse,” I said, looking once more at the photograph of the house’s southern façade, and my old bedroom window. I could almost see myself there, peering out at that forlorn landscape, waiting for someone to come and rescue the place and, perhaps, me.

  “Someone will buy it . . . bound to. It’s going for a song,” Charlie said. “You wait and see. It’ll go to one of these new property developer types.”

  And it was through Charlie that the news came to me. He’d been sitting alone in a quiet corner of the bar at his club when he heard the name, Deyning. He didn’t recognize the voice with a hint of an American accent, he said, and remained where he was, his back to the gentleman, listening. The man was busy explaining to another that he’d purchased the place at a severely knocked-down price. “Yes, yes, it’s been on the market for some time, and in a dreadful state too. The army was there through the war, absolutely trashed the place, and the people who took it on never lived there . . . did nothing with it.”

  “And what will you do with it?” the other gentleman asked.

  “Return it to its former glory, I hope.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then . . . I’m not entirely sure.”

  As Charlie relayed the story to me, relishing its tiny details, I listened, unaware of what was to come but knowing there was something, something that had to be told. He’d stood up, he said, turned, and looked across the room. He didn’t recognize either of the men at first, supposed them both to be new members, and so he focused his attention once more on the voice he’d listened to, the one who’d spoken about Deyning, the one who had just bought Deyning. Tall and dark, and dressed in a well-cut suit, he looked almost like any other gentleman in the club that evening, “but perhaps a little too suave . . . a little too handsome,” Charlie added, and then laughed. Yet there was something, something about him so familiar, he continued. He’d moved toward him, and as he neared, as he approached the two men, he suddenly recognized him. He looked so different out of uniform, Charlie said.

  Tom Cuthbert.

  I could no longer hear Charlie. He continued to speak but the definition of his words was lost, distant and muffled, as though an invisible wall had sprung up between us. I looked away from him, tried to focus on something, anything, but my head felt heavy, too large for my body, and awash with his image. Tom. I focused on my breathing, trying to slow my heart. Charlie moved toward me, handed me a drink, and as I took the glass from his hand I smiled up at him, or at least I think I did. You see, I was drowning, drowning in the moment, in the mention of his name.

  I quietly sipped my drink, looking down into the glass, holding on to it tightly with both hands; and as my heart slowed and the room began to stop spinning, I heard my husband’s voice once more.

  They had spoken at some length, he said, had had a drink together. Neither one could recall the last time they’d seen each other, but they thought it had been at Jimmy Cooper’s, at a party there during the war. Yes, I thought, yes, it was then, it was that night, for they’d never come face-to-face during that last week at Deyning. Tom had only recently returned from America, Charlie said, had been away over six years. And then he told me, told me I’d be able to speak to Tom myself, for he and his fiancée would also be at a party at our American friends, the Blanches, the following evening.

  I could barely breathe. Not only was Tom back, and in London, but also I was to see him the very next day. Charlie sat down, lit a cigarette, and continued to muse aloud about Tom Cuthbert, his good looks and his new fortune.

  I wasn’t able to ask Charlie the pertinent questions I’d have liked to ask. I’d been blasé, told hi
m, yes, of course I remembered Tom Cuthbert. And I could tell already that Charlie was intrigued, almost captivated by Tom’s charm and obvious success. He sat opposite me, clutching his glass upon the arm of his chair, staring at the floor through half-closed bleary eyes, smiling to himself. And every so often I’d see another flash of their conversation ricochet through his memory, and he’d lift his head, smiling to himself; half laughing.

  “And he asked after you, dear,” he said. “He said, ‘And how is your wife, Charlie? How is Clarissa?’”

  “Oh, really . . . and what did you say?”

  He turned to me with a queer, sad sort of smile. “That you were well, of course.”

  For a few minutes we sat in silence. Charlie lost in his impressions, me in my memories.

  “I do wonder where all his money’s come from,” I said, at last, rising to my feet.

  “Haven’t the foggiest. Done very well for himself though . . . made a pile and bought a pile, ha!”

  “He was always destined to go far,” I said, as I left the room.

  Of course I wasn’t really surprised to hear how well Tom had done for himself. Even before the war, when he was still studying, he had been determined to succeed, driven by something neither my brothers nor most other young men I knew possessed: ambition. I’d heard mention of him only once of late, from Jimmy Cooper once more. He’d recently attended a college reunion dinner at Oxford and had heard from a mutual acquaintance that Tom was doing very well in New York, and making a packet. The mention of his name at that time had rocked me, and for a while I’d had vivid dreams about him. In those dreams I was always searching for him, always in a crowd trying to find him. I’d wake up and feel that same desperate longing, as though I’d only just left him. Eventually, but for the odd occasion, I’d stopped dreaming of him, and I concluded that it was probably for the best that an ocean separated us.

  But now the circle was closing: Tom Cuthbert was in my orbit once more.