“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m so very sorry.”
He looked up at me, his face contorted. “No . . . No,” he shook his head. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry that you went through all of this alone, without me. I’m sorry that I was not there for you—for her. I’m sorry that you’ve carried this with you for so long. That I . . .” and he began to pull at his hair. “That I quizzed you on why you’d never had children.” He stared at me, his face crumpled; defeated. “And that’s who Emily was . . .” he said. “There was no imaginary friend . . . Emily’s our child.”
I nodded.
That night we lay awake, frozen in each other’s arms; each of us searching for that inaccessible moment in our past; the point to which we could return and then perhaps somehow change our now. The point to which we could return, reclaim our child, and from there rewrite our story, her story. How it could have been . . . how it should have been. Unlike me, Tom had lived his life without ever knowing he had a child. By withholding that information I’d spared him from the slow and steady stream of loss, a meandering trickle of dates and reminders, only to submerge him in the deluge of one almighty torrent.
The next morning, each of us weakened and spent by grief, he told me that he was going to find her. And it became his consuming passion for the next few weeks. But it proved more difficult than he’d anticipated.
“Perhaps she doesn’t want us to find her,” I said to him one evening.
“No, we’ll find her,” he said, turning to me and smiling. “I’ve already put Goddard onto it.”
“But we might not find her, Tom. We might not . . .”
He stared at me, ran a finger across my forehead, down my cheek. “I’ll find her, my darling,” he repeated. “I’ll find her,” he said again.
. . . Yesterday I sat alone and reread all of your notes & letters to me. I put them all in chronological order, & then jumbled them up again . . . so that one day, they might be a treasure trail of clues—should anyone be interested! We did have such a perfect, heavenly time, didn’t we, that last summer?
Chapter Forty-four
There’s an old white gate at the end of the avenue of my dreams. It’s where I sit and watch the world pass by. From there I see my brothers go off to war. From there I see my daughter, playing in a distant field. And from there I see my love, walking back to me.
Unbeknown to me, Tom hadn’t just put Goddard onto it: he’d put quite a few people onto the task of tracing our daughter. But it was Oliver Goddard who later told me the pieces of the story Tom couldn’t bring himself to tell me. It was Oliver who told me that he and Tom had driven down to Plymouth, to speak with the sisters at St. Anne’s. And it was Oliver who’d tell me so many parts of the story Tom would never speak of.
They’d been gone overnight. Tom had told me he had business in Bristol, but he’d telephoned me late in the evening. I’d missed him, and told him so. And he said, “But it’s only one night, darling. I think we can cope with one night apart . . .”
It’s strange to me, even now, the thought of him retracing my steps; moving through the silent passageways of St. Anne’s; glancing out of those narrow windows, so many years after I’d been there. For that time seems more than a lifetime ago, and my recollection of it—and the place itself—is hazy. Like the remembrance of a dream, there are gaps I know I shall never be able to fill. Oh, I can still see a girl, the girl I once was, sitting in a room, staring out through a window, but somehow it’s not me, for I was never really there. I was always with him.
Oliver told me that St. Anne’s had kept records on everyone who’d passed through their doors: the date of arrival, due date of baby, and room assigned. There were no medical notes of course, only the most basic of information. And apparently the place was quite empty of fallen women. Different than during the war, one of the sisters had said, by way of explanation. Tom had asked to see my room, and then asked if he could have a moment there on his own. So Oliver and the young sister had waited outside the closed door, in the hallway, in silence. By the time they left St. Anne’s they had the name and address of an adoption agency. Mission accomplished, Oliver said. They’d returned to London without stopping, and when Tom came into the flat that evening he’d rushed over to me, to where I was standing in the kitchen, taken me into his arms and said, “I’m never going to leave you again, not even for one night.” He pulled me tighter. “I want to see your face each night before I fall asleep, and every morning when I awake. And one day, one day when I take my last breath,” he whispered, “I want to be looking into your eyes.”
We received a reply from the adoption agency almost one month after Tom’s letter to them. They told him that yes, Emily Cuthbert Granville had been adopted, five months after she’d left me, and by a couple from London. At that stage it seemed as though they couldn’t or wouldn’t give any further information. And all I could think of was those five months . . . those five months she’d been on her own; those five months I’d been tucked up in Berkeley Square, unraveling and in agony. Five months.
And I realized that’s when it started, the lie that became my life, for I hadn’t been whole, hadn’t been complete, since that time. Something of me—a piece of my soul, a sliver of light—had quietly been extinguished at Plymouth in 1917, without any ceremony, mourning, or fuss. And I’d kept it a secret for so long that I’d become the secret: unspoken, unsaid, denied. Not-quite-but-almost Clarissa: haunted by nothing more sinister than the truth.
For so many years I’d tried not to think of her. I’d purposefully blurred and blotted out those early years, when she was still a baby, still a small child; when I’d been married to Charlie. I’d celebrated her precious birthdays in oblivion, and when no babies came, I’d accepted it as my punishment. It made sense. And I’d felt relief. The thought of another chance, another child, terrified me. For how could I, a mother already, a mother who had given away a beautiful healthy baby, be expected to love and look after another? I was not worthy of motherhood. And through my self-hatred I’d almost destroyed myself. And for a while I’d hated my own mother too: the person who’d made me give up my right to motherhood.
Of course no amount of drugs or alcohol had been able to assuage my guilt, or extinguish my love for my child, Tom’s child. I’d thought of her each and every day of my life since the day we’d parted. I’d tried to imagine her, what she looked like, how she spoke, where she lived: who she’d become. Twelve years had passed since I’d handed her into the outstretched arms of a nameless woman in a brown coat at St. Anne’s. Did she even know I existed? And if she did, if her adoptive parents had told her the pathetic details of her birth, had she ever thought about me, her mother?
Despite the passing of years, in my dreams she remained a baby. The memory of her soft, clean skin, her tiny fingernails, her bright blue eyes, her smell; all of her, preserved and held there. But occasionally, every so often, she’d come to me as a child: a miniature version of Tom. She’d speak my name, “Clarissa”: a sweet voice, so familiar to me. She’d reach out to me, smiling, and I’d take her into my arms. Emily. “But where have you been? I’ve been waiting,” she’d say.
“I’m here . . . I’m here now.”
So many years had passed, but I needed to know. And not to absolve myself: for there could be no absolution. All I needed to know was that my daughter was alive and well, and happy; yes, happy.
My heart wobbled as he stood in front of me. And I watched him as he pulled the pages from a large brown envelope. He knew what was coming, of course; he’d already read every word in that envelope, but he had to tell me, had to deliver the news. He dismissed the flimsy covering note, and then looked at me with a strange serious face. And I for some reason laughed. “Yes . . .” I said, extending my hand, “come along then.”
He said nothing, handed me the sheet of paper: a certified copy of an entry of death.
“Oh, well, this isn’t right,” I said. “No, no, this isn’t right . . .”
&n
bsp; I looked at the name: Elizabeth Rachel Healey . . . Date of death, December the twenty-first, 1919 . . . Cause of death, Influenza . . .
“No, this is wrong . . . this is definitely wrong. That’s not her. That’s not her name,” I said. “They’ve obviously made a mistake.”
I didn’t want to look at it anymore. I put down the sheet of paper and walked about the room. It was a mistake, I said again. Bloody useless people. I lit a cigarette, looked out of the window. “It’s not her,” I said. “It’s not her, Tom. They’ve made a mistake . . . it’s the wrong person. That’s not her . . . it’s not her.”
There was no mistake. The people named Healey had adopted our daughter. They’d given her a new name, a life and an identity we could never give her. And for almost eighteen months she’d lived with them, as their child. And then, one night before Christmas, not long after her second birthday, and in the middle of the Spanish flu epidemic, Emily had died.
She had never celebrated a third, fifth, sixth, or even a tenth birthday; and there would never be any meeting between us. I would never know what she had become, because she had not become. I would never hear her voice or know what she looked like, because she had never grown up. My remembrance of her would only ever be as a three-week-old baby.
Grief can be held off for a lifetime, and mine, for the baby I’d given away, took over twelve years to arrive. When it came, it came with the same force of any held-back torrent. It flooded my senses, drowned my perspective. And, though submerged, I occasionally caught my breath long enough to see the debris and driftwood of my life float past me, all pinned with one word: waste; the waste of time; the unnecessary waste of love. And the only thing I could hold on to was him, Tom.
Later, he called the number Oliver Goddard had given him, and asked for more information, and someone eventually called him back. Because the child was dead, they said, they were prepared to give a little more information than was usual. They told him that Albert Healey had been a greengrocer, and the family—his wife, and our daughter, Emily—had lived above the shop, in Battersea, London.
And he found her eventually too: in a cemetery at Wandsworth. We drove there together, late one afternoon. The day after he told me of his discovery.
That day, at the cemetery, he seemed to know exactly where to go. And he was remarkably calm, surprisingly in control. He held on to my hand tightly as he led me through row upon row of tombstones, down a pathway to a dank corner, and the name we now knew, chiselled into a lopsided stone: Elizabeth Rachel Healey, 1917–1919.
Emily Cuthbert.
We stood there together in silence, staring at that name. Then I stepped forward and placed the arrangement of white roses I’d had a Sloane Street florist prepare next to the stone. It looked extravagant, expensive, and incongruous: too big for a baby, too pathetic for the circumstances. She’d lain there for over a decade, serenaded only by the rumble of London traffic. Had anyone visited her? I wondered. Had anyone mourned her? Did others come to that place bestowed with memories I would never have? There were no signs of anyone having been, certainly not recently. No fresh or dying flowers; no plants in pots; nothing. And here we were, her parents, standing side by side under an umbrella as a smoky drizzle descended: too late to hold her, too late to know her, too late to explain.
He didn’t weep, didn’t shed a tear. And even then, through my own tears, I noticed this. How strong and in control he was. But he had been through a war, seen so much, and he was a businessman, I thought. It wasn’t until later, much later, that I learned Tom had been on his own to visit Emily’s grave before he ever took me.
As I stood in the rain that day, all I could think of was the tiny baby I’d held and nursed; the baby I’d given away: my baby. And I didn’t want to leave. Even when the rain became heavier and he pulled on my arm, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave her again, you see.
Eventually, he led me back through the tombstones, up the wet path toward the gate, and I could feel my chest tightening: that wrench, still there. He helped me into our waiting car, carefully tucking in my coat, closing the door, and then he moved to the other side of the vehicle and climbed in himself. And as we pulled away he turned to me, took hold of my hand and said something. Numb, and immersed in my grief, I couldn’t hear his words. But as we headed out through the sprawling southern suburbs I realized what he’d said: I’m taking you home now.
I turned to him. “Home?”
“Yes, home . . . we’re going home, Clarissa.”
And as we passed through the old white gate I looked up out of the car window. A pale gray-blue sky stretched out above us, stretched further and illuminated by elongated wavy pink clouds: evensong clouds. And in a split second of déjà vu I finally grasped something: that there is no such thing as the passing of time, only the arc of seasons: a circle and not a line.
Moments can and do come back to us.
Epilogue
London,
May the fifth, 1930
Dearest Ted,
I hope this letter finds you well and that Devonshire is basking in the same blissful sunshine we have been fortunate enough to enjoy here in London these past few weeks. There really is no better time of year, is there? The light, which for some reason I always forget, is altogether different and truly quite heavenly, and the air fresh, & fragrant with new blossom.
I must apologize to you for the tardiness of this letter, but we have had a busy & eventful time of late. C and T were married three weeks ago, on April the fourteenth (six days after her divorce was made final) at the Register Office here in Kensington. It was a very simple, quiet affair, with Venetia Cooper and a business associate of T’s—a Mr. Goddard—acting as “witnesses,” and afterward, a small luncheon party—including V & the aforementioned Mr. G, Jimmy C (V’s son), H and myself—at a favorite restaurant of C & T’s on the Fulham Road, all terribly informal—and MODERN.
Unfortunately I was forced to miss the nuptials in order to meet H from the boat train. T had arranged his passage (as a surprise for C) and I had anticipated him being home the day before, but the crossing was delayed due to storms in the mid-Atlantic. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was rather a shock to dear C when I walked in to the restaurant with H on my arm, but the perfect surprise for her on her wedding day. All of us, including me, shed a tear when she rushed into his arms. It was such a happy day, one of the happiest of my life, and I think you would have been very proud.
They are expecting a baby, due early October I think, and so, though T had had all sorts of wonderful ideas & exotic sounding locations planned for their honeymoon, the doctor quite rightly advised against any foreign travel.
She is so happy, Teddy, radiantly happy, and they’re quite inseparable, like a couple of children, & utterly content to spend all of their time at Deyning—with T now running & managing the farm, & C the house and gardens. Edna is with them, back as housekeeper and cook, but I have no idea how they manage without servants—& just the one gardener! However, C assures me that this is how they want it.
And I too am to move back there, into the place that was once yours, & ours, at the end of the summer. Oh I can see you smiling now, and yes, it will be queer to be back there—living in THAT cottage. Do you remember, all those years ago, when that was our dream? They are knocking the two cottages (yrs & what was, in yr time, Mrs. C’s) into one, so it will be plenty big enough for me now.
I enclose a photograph for you—taken on the day, on the steps of the Register Office. She does look beautiful, and so happy—doesn’t she? I know it will make your heart sing to see that face once more. And they make such a handsome couple, don’t they? I have no doubt they’ll produce rather dashing offspring, and I’m simply longing to be “Grandma.”
Do write to me soon and send me your news. In the meantime, & as always, I remain . . .
Yours,
Dina
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Ellen Edwards and to Deborah Schneider, to th
e teams at New American Library in New York and Headline Publishing in London. Thanks to Sheila Crowley at Curtis Brown, and to Ali Gunn for her passion and faith in me. Special thanks as always to Max, Bella, and Jeremy.
Judith Kinghorn was born in Northumberland, educated in the Lake District, and is a graduate in English and History of Art. She lives in Hampshire with her husband and two children.
* * *
CONNECT ONLINE
www.judithkinghornwriter.com
facebook/writerjudithkinghorn
* * *
READERS GUIDE
THE
Last
Summer
JUDITH KINGHORN
READERS GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH JUDITH KINGHORN
Q: Where did your idea to write The Last Summer come from? Were you inspired by anything in particular?
A: I’ve always enjoyed historical novels, and biographies of unusual and pioneering Victorian and Edwardian women, particularly those who broke rules and pushed boundaries. And I’ve always been fascinated by old houses and their stories. I live in an old house in the country, and some years ago I researched its history, and discovered some very interesting characters—all women—and quite a few secrets. I think all of these things came together and inspired The Last Summer.
The Last Summer Page 39