“Yes, but they’re not meant to tell, Flora,” I said.
“I think those days are well and truly gone, darling. We’re all exposed now. Anyway, Mrs. Wade says there’ve been quite a few big arguments and rather a lot of door-slamming going on at Deyning, not that he’s there much. But when he is . . .”
“But I thought . . . I’d heard that she was . . . that a baby was due?”
She shook her head, shrugged. “No . . . no babies. We saw them only a month ago, and she certainly isn’t expecting anything . . . other than perhaps a letter from his lawyers,” she added, raising her eyebrows. “I think divorce is imminent, dear. And he’ll no doubt have his pick for Mrs. Cuthbert number two . . . all that money and those looks, really.”
So, as we sat outside after lunch, replete, and enjoying one of those blissful lazy Sundays, rustling newspapers and watching clouds roll across the sky, I said, “I think I might take a drive.”
“Oh really? Where to? I might come with you,” Flora said.
“I don’t know . . . perhaps to Midhurst.”
“Darling, there’ll be absolutely no one about, nothing at all happening . . . you know it’s really terribly dull there.”
I managed to get away on my own and took the road back toward Deyning. I had no intention of motoring up the main driveway, but I knew the road that led to the farm, and the track from there toward the woods by the lake. There’d be no one about; no one would see me. I turned off the London road and drove down the narrow lane toward the farm. I drove past two children, waving to them as I crossed in front of the red-brick farmhouse, and then I picked up the track toward the lake, and stopped the car at the gate before the woods.
I stepped out of the car, onto the track where Papa and I had sat and listened to the sounds of guns so many years earlier, and, for a second or two, I thought I could hear them once more. I moved on, opened the gate, and walked into the dappled light of overhanging branches, lifting them up out of my path. The track had narrowed, was overgrown with weeds and thistles, and I caught my skirt on them more than once. I hoisted it up, tucking it into my belt, and walked on again until I came to a clearing and another gate, beyond which was the lower path around the lake; the one Papa had taken me to when I was a child. I wondered if the bench was still there. It was a warm spring day, not hot, and not entirely sunny, but clear and bright. I took off my shoes and my stockings, left them by the gate and headed down toward the lake.
I found the bench, collapsed and rotting; no more than an ancient piece of timber lying on the edge of an overgrown pathway, and I walked on slowly as the house came into view. I couldn’t be sure if anyone was there, but there were no obvious signs of life, and it was too tempting not to continue. I kept to the pathway, my head down, picking my way through sharp twigs and the shells of acorns beneath my feet. Then I glanced up and saw the chestnut tree in the lower meadow, the empty bench beneath its branches. When I reached the boathouse I looked up again, toward the house. A number of trees had disappeared, cut down to make the view from the windows on the southeast side of the house more picturesque, I assumed. I could clearly see the gate to the stable yard, but there was no one about, not a sound, so I moved on, along the jetty, and sat down. I dangled my legs over the side, my toes skimming the water, and then leaned back; lifting my face up to a blink of sun between shadows. Home.
Was he there? I wondered. Was he sitting yards away, at his desk, staring out toward the water my feet now touched? I remembered Flora’s words of the previous evening . . . no babies . . . an affair . . . a separate life. I closed my eyes, and for a moment I fancied I could hear his voice in the distance; a memory held and carried back amid the rustling of trees.
“Have you not read the signs, miss? This is private property . . . trespassers will be prosecuted.”
I turned. A man I’d never seen before was standing at the other end of the jetty.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said, quickly rising to my feet, rearranging my skirt. “I used to live here . . . I grew up here.”
He said nothing, didn’t move.
“Actually, I happen to know the present owner, Tom Cuthbert, Mr. Cuthbert . . . and I’m quite sure, quite sure that he wouldn’t be in the least bothered by my being here . . .”
“That may be, miss, but I have my job to do. And Mr. Cuthbert’ll no doubt already have been informed we have an intruder. You came through the farmyard, didn’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right, I did. But, as I’m sure you can see, I’m not a poacher . . . not an intruder. I simply wanted to take a walk . . .” I said, moving back along the jetty. “I can go now.”
“I’m sure you mean no harm, miss, but I have my job to do,” he repeated, as I scurried past him. And as I quickened my pace, back along the path, I could hear voices somewhere. And they were not the voices of ghosts from my past: these voices were male and very much alive. Oh God, I didn’t want to be caught looking like a snoop, a spy, and I picked up my skirt and ran.
I ran along the path in agony as my feet crunched on acorn shells, pebbles and holly; my hair tugged and pulled at by newly hostile branches. I stopped by Papa’s rotting bench, breathless, and glanced back; I could see three figures, all of them looking in my direction, and I took off again, up the pathway toward the woods, and the gate where I’d left my shoes. When I reached the gate, my shoes and stockings had gone and I yelled out, because I couldn’t possibly drive in bare feet. But there was nothing for it, I’d have to try. I passed through the gate, breaking a nail and ripping my blouse on its latch, and shouting out again, “No!” I continued back along the track toward the car, in tears, in physical as well as mental anguish. And then I stopped. Why was I running? I’d done nothing wrong . . . I’d simply gone to look at my old home. My home. I stood still for a moment, collecting my thoughts, calming my breath. I needed my shoes; I couldn’t drive without them. And so I turned and walked back toward the gate I’d just passed through and left ajar. I saw the man from the jetty walking up the bank toward me, carrying something, and I stopped by the gate and waited for him.
“Mi-iss! Miss Larissa!” he called out. And I thought, oh God, he may have my name wrong but he knows who I am, and that meant only one thing: one of the men by the boathouse had been Tom.
“Yes, hello . . . hello again,” I answered, closing my eyes as he came toward me, carrying my shoes and stockings.
“I’m sorry, Miss Larissa,” he said, huffing and puffing, “but you know how it is . . . we get all sorts here . . . can’t be too careful. And being as Mr. Cuthbert has some very valuable antiquities up at the house . . .”
“Oh really,” I said, snatching my shoes and stockings from his arms. “It’s Clarissa, by the way.”
He looked confused.
“My name, it’s Clarissa—not Larissa.”
He smiled at me. “A very pretty name too, miss,” he said. “And Mr. Cuthbert would like you to know that you’re very welcome to . . . to have a paddle in the lake.”
I laughed. “I was not paddling, I simply dipped my feet into the water,” I replied and then I realized how I sounded, and added, “and I know, you’re just doing your job.”
I glanced toward the boathouse, but could see no one, and so I looked back at him and said, “And do thank Mr. Cuthbert for his very kind offer of a paddle, but I must get back to . . . to London.” And I turned and began to walk back toward the car, knowing full well how I must have looked to the old gamekeeper, with my torn blouse, bare feet and disheveled hair.
Oh God, how I wished I hadn’t gone there. To be caught trespassing, and then to have run off like that! I pictured him, Tom, standing with his gamekeeper, as the old man explained that he’d chased off a rogue paddler. And I could see him, see his smile. I leaned against the bonnet, rolled up my stockings, one by one, and put on my shoes. I got into the car, slammed the door shut and as I started the engine, put the car into reverse, I saw him, Tom, in front of me, hurriedly marching through the grass toward the
gate. I saw him raise his hand, shout something, but I pushed my foot down on the accelerator and turned away; and I kept my head turned away until I reached the entrance to the farm, and then I quickly turned the car back toward the main road and my sister-in-law’s house.
Why did I rush away from him that day? I suppose because I was embarrassed to have been caught there, trespassing; trespassing on his life. And it only made me feel more desperate, because I wasn’t altogether sure whether I’d returned to Deyning to look at the place, or whether I’d gone there in search of him. And so I drove back to Flora’s at a ridiculous speed, chastising myself all the way, and crying. When I arrived back at the cottage I went straight to my room, cleaned myself up and changed. Then I went outside into the garden. Charlie and David were both asleep in their deckchairs. Flora glanced up at me. “Nice drive, dear?”
“Yes, heavenly,” I said, and I picked up a magazine and sat down.
Chapter Thirty-six
Mama moved from her house in Berkeley Square to a flat in Kensington in the summer of 1928. Still proud, she told people that the house was much too large for her now, on her own, but in truth it was simply too costly for her to run. She’d grown weary of struggling on with too few servants, was tired of meetings with sympathetic, overly keen young bankers and their talk of economies. What did they know? she’d said to me: they had no idea, no idea at all of how things were, before the war. “It was a different world.”
And my mother belonged to that different world; Berkeley Square belonged to that different world: a world slowly fading. Like the Chinese painted silk upon Mama’s walls, now discolored and watermarked by damp; like the chipped paintwork on the doors and staircase, and the unseen cobwebs, floating listlessly, clinging to the ornate cornicing of once-busy rooms. The house exuded an ennui reflected in Mama’s own lassitude, and even Wilson’s devotion to my mother seemed to have taken on a lazy, apathetic air. For Mama herself looked not quite right, as though she and her maid had forgotten all about Edina Granville, the woman who’d once presided over so much, and with such innate confidence. Her glossy chestnut hair had faded to a dull, flat gray, its texture altered with its color, and the once-delicate fine curls carefully arranged about her face now replaced by an unruly frizz. Without her garden, without access to that fresh country air, her cheeks, too, had lost their bloom: that luminosity I recalled from my youth. And, perhaps in a bid to restore that vibrancy, she’d taken to wearing makeup. But her powder was a little too pale, her rouge a tad too vivid, and the whole effect, somehow, altogether wrong.
There was a strange shrinking down of my mother at that time. Not just a shrinking down of her material world, but of her, her substance. Her life, once commanded on such a grand scale, distilled itself once more, and she seemed to fold herself into that small place; a place of dusty treasures, no longer fashionable antiques, and sun-bleached silk brocades.
And something happened to me, too, around this time. I began to change, or perhaps I didn’t change so much as begin to know at last who I was, what I wanted and didn’t want in my life. For a while I’d contemplated finding a job. I’d looked at advertisements in the newspaper, wondering what, if anything, I could do. I’d gone to an employment bureau on Oxford Street, where I spent ten minutes in a poky upstairs office, in front of a bespectacled middle-aged man who’d glanced at my wedding ring and asked me if my husband knew where I was. He sat behind a desk, his hands clasped in front of him, smiling at me, and then told me that it really was advisable for me to have my husband’s permission before embarking upon a career. He’d recently had quite a few young ladies like me through his door, he said, and laughed. “Emboldened by the times, I suppose,” he added. But really, why would someone like me want to work? What about charity work? he asked. I told him I already helped my mother with her district and various charitable causes, but that I wanted something more. He suggested I take up a new hobby, so I thanked him for his time and left.
At home, I continued to play a part, for I wasn’t a wife, not in the real sense, nor had I been for many years. And I was lonely, desperately so. My house was immaculate, my life a tidy, ordered affair. But I was bored of arranging flowers that only I looked upon; bored of approving menus for what I knew would be a solitary supper; bored of shop windows, parks and teas; bored of afternoon card games and matinees, and bored of climbing into my bed each night alone. I’d contemplated an affair, and more than once, but of course there was only ever one man in my dreams: only one man and one fantasy.
And I continued to hear about him . . .
I was in Liberty’s, looking at material for a new dress, when Rose tapped me on the shoulder. We tried to remember when we’d last seen each other; had it been at Venetia’s New Year’s party five years ago? No, I told her, it had been longer than that. And it had. I hadn’t seen Rose in almost ten years, not since shortly after the end of the war. I realize now that it was probably a conscious decision on both our parts—to move on, to try to leave those we’d shared a kind of darkness with behind, to be happy. I’d heard that she’d married a major in the army and had moved to Oxfordshire, and she confirmed this that day, telling me she’d been living in the country, raising her own brood.
“I simply can’t believe it!” she said, as we sat down together in the tearoom.
She looked more or less the same, a little fuller of face, rounder of figure, and had dyed her short bobbed hair to the Titian red it always promised to be. She talked me through her wedding—“A very quiet affair in the country,” she said, looking at me sheepishly—and the births of her children; and she told me how blissfully happy she was. Then she produced a photograph of her three girls from her purse.
“They’re beautiful, Rose,” I said.
“And you? No babies?”
“No,” I replied, with an impeccably rehearsed smile. “I’m afraid not.”
“Such a shame. But I suppose we can’t have it all, can we? And let’s face it, darling, you were blessed with more than your fair share of good looks. I remember all those boys, so besotted by you, so in love . . .”
I laughed.
“Strange to think of that time now,” she said wistfully, picking up her cup and staring at it. Then, perhaps inevitably, we began the grim roll call of those missing.
“But what about Henry? I heard, of course, through my parents. Still no word?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing.”
She stared at me, as though perhaps I knew something more. Then she sighed in an exaggerated fashion. “Well, it’s a strange thing, that’s for certain, to just disappear—into thin air.”
“I don’t suppose for one minute that Henry has actually disappeared into thin air, Rose,” I said, perhaps a little tartly. “He’s somewhere, I know that, and I’ve no doubt we’ll hear from him, eventually.”
“Yes, yes of course you will, dear. But it must be simply horrendous for you and your poor mama, simply horrendous.” She sighed again, shook her head. “And when I remember poor dear William and George . . . and all the others—seems like only yesterday they were all here.”
“Do you really think so? Seems like a lifetime ago to me.”
She reached out and placed her gloved hand over mine. “Yes, darling, I imagine it does. You and your family have certainly suffered.”
At that moment I didn’t want Rose’s sympathy. And I didn’t want to think about my family. I looked at my wristwatch. “Gracious, I hadn’t realized the time, Rose. I’m afraid I’ll have to be off in a minute. I have to call in on Mama on the way home.”
“And how is she? How is your mama?”
“Oh, she’s fine,” I said. “Yes, really quite fine.”
But I wasn’t convinced.
The previous week, I’d called on my mother unexpectedly. It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d found her sitting at her dining room table, surrounded by papers, her traveling jewelry case directly in front of her. She seemed unusually flustered, and had quickly gathered up the
papers laying about the table.
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you,” I said.
“Not at all, I was sorting through old paperwork—to do with Deyning, that’s all,” she replied, looking up at me, smiling. But I knew this to be a lie; I could see perfectly well that they were letters and postcards: handwritten, personal. And I could tell she’d been crying. I stepped back from her, walked about the room as she finished collecting up the cards and papers, folding pages with trembling hands, placing them back inside the jewelry case.
“There!” she said, closing the lid of the case.
I sat down next to her at the table. She asked me about my day, where I’d been, and I thought her words seemed a little slurred. She’s upset, I thought, quite obviously upset. In her hands, resting on the table, she fiddled with the small tasseled key to the case, and I immediately noticed the ring on her wedding finger. It was a ring I vaguely remembered having seen once before, a gentleman’s signet ring: gold, and rather heavy looking, but unlike the signet rings of my father and brothers, this one had no crest. It had, instead, initials engraved upon it, overlapping and entwined. Was that an S and an E, or was it a B, and perhaps a D? I couldn’t make it out. But she must have seen me staring at it because she swiftly covered it with her other hand. And at that very same moment, as I glanced up and caught her eye, I heard Georgie whisper in my ear. Of course: it was the King’s ring, the one not for playing with.
Rose frowned. “Oh, but what a shame. I could sit and talk with you for hours and hours. We have so much to catch up on, dear. And I haven’t even asked you—how is dear Charlie? And what about the Astley girls? Do you ever see them?”
I opened my mouth, about to tell her that yes, Charlie was well, and that I hadn’t seen either Flavia or Lily Astley in some time when she began again. “And what about Tom Cuthbert then?”
I hesitated, wondering what on earth she meant. “What about him?”
The Last Summer Page 33