The Last Summer

by Judith Kinghorn

  “And where is he?” I asked.

  She leaned toward me. “Right behind you,” she whispered.

  I turned. He’d seen me, was watching me. I smiled at him as he spoke with a huddle of eager people, and then I turned back to Davina. I tried to make small talk, the way one does at those types of gatherings, but I was distracted and Davina was smiling a little too broadly, too obviously for my liking, and so, after a few minutes, I moved away, saying I must look for Charlie. I walked through the room, smiling and excusing myself through strangers, looking for my husband, and for once hoping he was there. But I was aware of someone following in my pathway. I could hear him behind me: “Good to see you . . . thank you for coming.” And as I reached the other side of the room, I stepped out on to a balcony, overlooking Park Lane.

  “Are you trying to escape from me?”

  I looked straight ahead, over Hyde Park. The sun was just beginning to set, slipping down behind the trees, and I didn’t turn; I kept my gaze on that pink ball of fire.

  “No, not at all. I was looking for Charlie, actually,” I replied, still unable and unready to meet his eyes.

  “He telephoned earlier. I’m afraid he’s going to be stuck at the office until late . . . at least ten,” he said. And I thought, as flies to wanton boys . . .

  “That’s a shame. He was looking forward to being here.”

  He moved alongside me, placing his hands upon the painted wrought-iron rail, inches from my own. Beautiful hands: hands that had touched me, loved me.

  “I suppose you’ll just have to make do with me,” he said.

  I turned to face him. “Yes, it would seem that way,” I replied.

  “Will you have dinner with me later?”

  “And Nancy?”

  “She’s not here. She’s in New York.”

  I looked away; felt that knot in my stomach, hard and tight from years of longing, years of wanting. Was it always going to be like this? Was I always going to give in to one man?

  “Yes. Yes, I’ll have dinner with you,” I said.

  “I’m pleased you came. It’s been a while . . .”

  “It’s always been a while.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. You know that.”

  I said nothing.

  “I have to mingle now, say a few words . . . wait for me,” he added, and then he stepped back inside the room.

  I stood in the doorway, watching him as he moved through the room: smiling, greeting people, shaking hands. I watched him as he stepped away from the huddle and began his speech. And I looked away as I listened to his voice: so cultured, so assured. I clapped with everyone else, moved further into the room and spoke to a few people. Had I known him long? Had I been at the wedding? Was I a friend of Nancy’s? Yes, he was charming—and yes, rather humble with it too. No, I hadn’t been at the wedding; I didn’t really know Nancy. Yes, it was such a shame she wasn’t there.

  I could see him on the other side of the room, head bowed, listening intently as someone spoke to him. And he shone. For there was a light that emanated from him, his soul, his substance. I hadn’t seen it when I was young, or perhaps I had but had failed to recognize it. But now I saw it, saw it quite clearly, and even at a distance I felt its heat. Tom. He looked up, straight at me, as though he’d heard me think his name. Then he turned, said something to the gentlemen he was standing with, and moved over to me. He stood alongside me without uttering a word, and as the fabric of his jacket brushed my arm I felt that current once more: a bolt of electricity traveling through my veins, straight to my heart.

  “Right, I’m done. Let’s go,” he said, taking my arm, and leading me through the room, toward the elevator. As we stepped into it, he sighed, lit a cigarette—the first I’d seen him smoke all evening—then he looked at me and said, “And now, Clarissa . . . now to business.”

  He was being funny, of course, and I laughed. I was as relieved as he to be away from that ordeal. When we stepped out of the building onto the street, a cream-colored Bentley was waiting—pulled up by the curb. He opened the door, saw me inside, closed it, and said something to the uniformed driver.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as he climbed inside the car.

  “Home, of course,” he replied.

  There was a bottle of already-corked champagne standing in an ice bucket in the back of the car. He lifted the top of the walnut compartment between our seats, pulled out two glasses and poured the champagne.

  When he said home, I’d presumed he meant his home; that he was taking me back to his place in London, though I wasn’t entirely sure where that was, and I knew he owned a number of properties in the city. I was nervous and couldn’t help but wonder if he kept a place specifically for taking women back to. I wasn’t convinced he’d be a faithful husband to Nancy; in fact, I imagined he’d have more than one glamorous girlfriend. After all, he was rich and handsome—what was to stop him? But had he assumed I’d be the same? Was I simply another conquest? As we headed over the river, and then through the streets of Battersea, I began to feel irritated, and mildly alarmed. I pictured some seedy flat in the outer suburbs, and I turned to him and said, “Tom . . . where, exactly, are you taking me?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, turning to me and smiling. “Everything’s been sorted.”

  “No really, I need to know. Charlie will be worried.”

  “Charlie knows. I have your husband’s permission.”

  “Knows what, exactly? Have his permission for what?”

  “Permission to take you out for dinner.”

  I laughed. “But where?”

  “Deyning.”

  “Deyning! And you arranged this with Charlie?”

  “Yes, I did. He’s working on a rather big deal for me tonight, so I said—I said the least I could do was take you out to dinner.”

  “But did you tell him where you were taking me to dinner?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “No, I’m not sure that I did.” He turned to me. “But to be honest, Clarissa, at that point I hadn’t decided where I was going to take you.”

  I’d been kidnapped, albeit politely, and with my husband’s approval. How convenient, I thought, that Charlie should be stuck at the office working on Cuthbert-Deyning business. Tom’s company was his biggest client, there’d have been no way he could have said anything other than “yes” to whatever Tom Cuthbert suggested. I could hear their telephone conversation in my head, hear Tom telling Charlie not to worry about me; he’d see to it that I was looked after. And of course my husband—oblivious to my feelings, insensitive to any chemistry—no doubt thought it an ideal time for me to get to know what a “jolly nice chap” his rich client, Tom Cuthbert, was.

  At that time I hadn’t worked out the exact level of Tom’s duplicity, but I later realized he’d set the whole thing up so that I’d be on my own. He’d learned from Charlie that we would both be attending his drinks reception, and on the day, late in the afternoon, he’d specifically requested Charlie to handle an urgent piece of business. “Work through the night if you have to,” he’d said to him. And I suppose Charlie saw the enormous fee he’d be able to invoice Cuthbert-Deyning. It was all too strange, too wonderful for words. There I was, going back to Deyning, with Tom, alone.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  From the moment we arrived at Deyning I didn’t think of Charlie. Not once. Deyning had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Tom and me. In my mind it was sacred, like our love for each other; like all the snatched moments of the preceding years. Stacked together they amounted to so little, and yet I had lived more, felt more alive during those moments than any time in between.

  I remember breathing in that soft smoky night air, the scents of pine and cedarwood so familiar to my senses. And for a split second, as I stepped through the open doorway, time reversed and I was back to that summer: I saw Mama’s roses standing in a crystal vase on the hallway table; Caesar, clip-clapping across the marble floor toward me; George, disappea
ring down the passageway toward the library. Then I saw myself, hat in hand, coming down the staircase, en route to meet Tom.

  He stood behind me, in the doorway, leaning against its frame, smoking, watching me. “Home,” I said, turning to him, and he smiled.

  I walked on, into the lamp-lit drawing room, glanced around, and then went back into the hallway, down the passageway to my father’s library, now Tom’s study. I walked along the shelves of books and stood by his desk at the window. But for the light from the hallway the room was dark. I could see the lake in the distance, a shimmering mirror, reflecting the vast night sky. Yes, I was home, I was where my heart lived, and I turned and wrapped my arms around him.

  There was no dinner, nothing at all prepared and no one about. And I realized that he’d been truthful in the car: he’d decided at the very last minute to take me back to Deyning. In the kitchen, as I looked about, noting all the modern new conveniences, he disappeared down to the cellar, and returned with a bottle of wine, saying, “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.” And so we ate there, at the table, pulling at a carcass of a cold chicken with our bare hands, and giggling like children at the mess in front of us, and on our faces. Then he picked up the bottle and our glasses and said to me, “Let’s go down to the lake.”

  “But I can’t. Look at me.”

  I was in heels, still dressed for a formal night out in London. He scratched his head, then pulled a “eureka” face. “Come with me.”

  He led me upstairs to the small room opposite his own bedroom, which I recalled—much to his amusement—as once having been known as “the sewing room.” It was Nancy’s dressing room.

  “No, I don’t want to wear her clothes,” I said. “I can’t wear her clothes.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ll have to improvise, Miss Clarissa.”

  “Don’t call me that. I hate it.”

  He took me through his bedroom, turned on the light of his dressing room, stepped back and sat down upon the bed as I moved hangers—looking through his wardrobe for something, anything. As I pulled down my dress, I glanced up through the open door and caught his eye. I pulled on a pair of his trousers, made a point of showing him the rather roomy waist.

  “There’s a belt in the top drawer, the one on the left,” he said.

  I chose a pale pink cashmere sweater, and as I pulled it over my head, I breathed him in, wanted to wrap my face in its softness; languish in the feel of it against my skin.

  When I emerged through the doorway, he smiled: “You could be seventeen.”

  “Really, is this what I looked like then?” I asked, looking down at myself in mock horror.

  We took the back stairs down to the kitchen, grabbing at the cold chicken as we passed by the table, and then we headed through to the garden room. He was still in his dinner suit, minus his tie, and as he bent down to help me into a pair of Wellington boots, he said, “I always said I’d be a rather good lady’s maid to you.” And I giggled.

  We walked down through the meadow hand in hand, and as we passed the chestnut tree he glanced over at it. “You know, I often see you there.”

  “You mean like a ghost?”

  “Yes, I suppose so . . .”

  At the lake, he brought out two deck chairs from the boathouse, and we sat in silence, side by side, looking across the water—opalescent and vast, and stretching all the way up to the stars. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have spoken; I was in some blissful state beyond words, beyond a here and now. And being there, back there with him, all my years of pain and loneliness evaporated. You see, he was my world, my life: he was my universe.

  When he rose from his chair and began to strip off his clothes, I laughed. I watched him run naked along the jetty and dive into the water, and for a few minutes I remained where I was, seated. Then I stood up, pulled off my ridiculous ensemble, all of it, and walked to the end of the jetty.

  He called out from the water. “It’s perfect. Not cold at all.”

  I remember the coolness of the water as I dived into it, under it. And I remember emerging, looking up at the stars, and shrieking. As we swam, never too close, we laughed at the memory of that day, after the war, when he’d swum over to me on the island. But there was an almost embarrassed self-consciousness to us both, an invisible barrier, and one that seemed hard to cross. As though we’d both become more aware of the passing of time, the distance between then and now; as if those days which had bound us had slipped further, creating a space, a void.

  He climbed out of the water, walked along the jetty to the boathouse, then reappeared, wrapped in a towel, holding another out to me.

  “Gosh, such luxury,” I said, as I climbed out of the water and grabbed the towel from his hand. “We never kept towels down here in our day.”

  I went to the boathouse, dried myself and put on my clothes, or rather his clothes. “Wasn’t that glorious?” I said, when I emerged. But he didn’t speak, and suddenly I felt apprehensive. Perhaps he’d regretted bringing me back. I moved over to him, placed my hand upon his bare shoulder. “Don’t feel guilty,” I said.

  “I don’t feel guilty, Clarissa . . . I feel sad.”

  He took my hand, pulled me to him, onto his lap, and I laid my head against his cheek, closed my eyes, and once more wished away the life I’d been born into. For even then, it seemed, so many years had passed us by, swallowing up our lives; gulping up our love. I wrapped my arms around his neck, pressed my lips against his skin. I was lost, I was found; I was with him once more.

  “I think I owe you an apology,” he began, “about my behavior . . . that last night you were here, with Charlie. I was angry, and, I think, quite vile to you.” He moved his head closer. “Forgive me.”

  I ran a finger down the side of his face. “Forgive you? I forgave you that very night.”

  He took hold of my hand. “And I need to tell you something,” he said, closing his eyes, turning away. “Nancy . . .” He paused: “We’re having a baby, Clarissa.”

  We’re having a baby . . .

  “A baby . . . But how wonderful. Congratulations.”

  I felt my head begin to spin; the carousel begin to move once more.

  A baby . . .

  He turned to me, frowning. “I’m sorry.”

  “Good gracious, don’t be sorry,” I said, rising to my feet. “It’s happy news . . . lovely news.”

  He shook his head. “You know what I wish? Shall I tell you what I wish?”

  “No. Don’t tell me,” I said quickly.

  I moved toward the water, stood with my back to him as I heard him go inside the boathouse to dress. “It’s good news . . . happy news,” I whispered. “Be happy for him.” I closed my eyes. He deserves some happiness.

  We walked back through the meadow—past our tree—in silence. And as we passed his mother’s cottage, I saw him look up at a light still shining from an upstairs window. Inside the house, he took hold of my hand and led me up the stairs, and I said, “I’m tired . . . so tired.” In his bedroom, he undressed me, pulled back the covers and helped me into his bed. He got down onto his knees, kissed my forehead and said, “I never, ever want to let you go.”

  “No, don’t let me go. Never let me go.”

  I’m not sure what woke me, but the room was still quite dark, the house deathly quiet. And for a moment I thought I was at home, in London; thought it was Charlie in my bed, lying next to me with his arms around me. And I was confused. I turned over, and as I did so I remembered where I was: I was with him; I was at Deyning. I reached out, ran my hand over his bare flesh. He sighed, turned onto his back, and I moved with him, wrapping myself into him. I held on to him, listening to his breathing. And I lay there, wide awake, until dawn.

  And then I fell asleep.

  When I opened my eyes, he was there, watching me; his head propped on one hand. “You’ve been talking in your sleep.”

  I reached up to his face. “Oh really, and what was I saying?”

  “You w
ere speaking of your little friend . . .”

  “My little friend?” I had no idea what he meant.

  “Emily . . . your imaginary friend.”

  “Ah . . . yes, Emily.”

  “She’s still with you, isn’t she?”

  “Yes . . . I suppose she must be. What was I saying?”

  He ran a finger along my brow. “I’m not sure . . . couldn’t make it out. But you were calling for her.” He smiled, shook his head, then lifted my hair, moved his lips slowly down my neck, onto my shoulder. I closed my eyes. I wanted to cry. I wanted to tell him not to take me back to London, to Charlie, to that house, to let me stay there with him. Forever. I pushed my hands through his hair, pulled him to me.

  By the time we had breakfast it was almost ten o’clock. And still I didn’t think of Charlie: what I would say, what I would tell him. I wanted to walk through the grounds, see the gardens before I left. So we strolled to the bench by the ha-ha, looking out toward the lake, the South Downs in the distance.

  “Do you remember when we first sat together here?” he asked, looking straight ahead. “It’s when I fell in love with you. You were so beautiful, so innocent.”

  “Were?” I repeated.

  “Well, you’re certainly no longer innocent . . .” he said, glancing at me with that half-smile. “You were a child then. You believed that everything and everyone was good. Your world was perfect, and I longed to be part of it. Part of the Granville world . . . Clarissa’s world.”

  He leaned forward and lowered his eyes, smiling at a memory.

  “What?” I asked, watching him, smiling too.

  He shook his head. “I was so consumed by you, so intoxicated . . .” He paused for a moment. “But I’ve learned to live without you, had to live without you, and yet . . . it never feels right . . . nothing ever feels right. Bit like wearing clothes that don’t fit, I’d imagine,” he added, looking sideways at me.

  I reached out, took hold of his hand.

  “Do you ever wish we could go back?” I asked.