The Last Summer (28 page)

My mother had never once asked me if I loved Charlie. And, to be honest, the idea of marrying for love, per se, seemed . . . indulgent, outdated, and unrealistic, like another pre-war luxury that didn’t fit with the times; didn’t fit with austerity. Marrying for love belonged to another era, an era when there had been enough time to dream. For now it was enough to be married; to have someone still alive and in one piece to claim as one’s own. And I imagine that Mama was relieved. Relieved to have me married, respectable, and in safe hands.

In the weeks that followed, the weeks between my marriage and the end of the war, I tried to focus on my new life, on being healthy and happy. I told myself it was a new beginning, and when I began to tremble and shake, I repeated the phrase Mama had used –
a fresh start
– in my head, and sometimes out loud.

For a while I avoided seeing Rose. I continued my work, and I played bridge – with girls who liked playing bridge; I went to matinees at the Gaiety cinema and to the theatre with Mama and Venetia, and for dinner to Kettners, Scotts and the Carlton Grill. Of course it felt no different to be married. I was still living with Mama, still sleeping in my rosebudded sanctuary; only my name had changed. I was now Clarissa Boyd, and I practised my new signature endlessly. I found myself talking about ‘my husband’ and planning a future, our future. And soon, I’d have my own home. The plan was for us to live with Mama once Charlie had been discharged, or when the war was over, and from there, to look for something of our own.

There was an end and a beginning in sight, and I sensed it within every pore of my being. There was a future, a future without a war.

On November the eleventh, the day we’d all prayed for finally arrived. At 11 a.m. the maroons sounded across London – and this time for the armistice and not an air raid. The war was over. Within minutes celebrations erupted across the city, and I heard
the shouting, the jubilant crowds making their way to Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly, but it was a bittersweet moment, tinged with the most profound sadness. For Mama and I, like so many others, could only think of those we’d lost, those unable to share in that victory and national euphoria.

Mama appeared quite calm, almost subdued as she poured us each a glass of sherry, and then, with a shaky hand and tears in her eyes, she made a toast: ‘To our long-awaited victory . . . and to my brave, brave boys, William and George, and all the others who can’t be here today.’

The war is over.

I held the tiny glass out, clinked it against Mama’s, and as I raised it to my lips I thought of Tom. Was he on his way home? Or was he already back, and in London? I knew he had to be alive, had to have survived, otherwise I’d have heard; I’d have sensed something. I’d have known.

As Mama disappeared from the room, to go below stairs and tell the servants they could all have the day off, I walked over to the window and looked down on to the square. Already there were crowds of people, shouting, dancing, linking arms, and some even kissing. One young chap had managed to climb up one of the trees and waved a flag there; another, immediately below him, stood on a bench, his hat clutched to his chest, singing; and in the midst of this riotous frenzy were cars and taxicabs, spilling over with people, hooting loudly as they headed through the square.

And I began to laugh. ‘The war is over,’ I said out loud, and then I unlocked and opened the door on to the balcony.

‘The war is over! The war is over!’ I shouted out across Berkeley Square.

A uniformed man shouted back up to me, ‘God save the King!’

‘God save the King!’

‘And to France!’ another called up.

‘Vive la France!’ I called back, laughing.

And another voice: ‘To victory!’

‘To victory!’

Then Rose and Flavia and Lily Astley appeared below me.

‘Come down! Come down! We’re going to celebrate, come down now!’ Rose shouted up.

Minutes later, I was on the top of a bus, crammed to capacity with girls and soldiers, everyone shouting and singing, and crowds cheering back at us as we passed by. We got off the bus at the Ritz and drank champagne with friends in the packed bar, and then we headed on – to the Carlton – to meet more friends. From there, and with an opened bottle of
free
champagne, we travelled on the roof of a taxicab to Trafalgar Square, where it seemed to me the entire country had gathered, and where we sang songs, made toasts, and vowed eternal loyalty and love to everyone we saw. And later still, we followed the throng to Buckingham Palace, and there, with aching throats and ragged voices, and linking arms with those around us, we cheered our King and Queen. That night and all through the night London continued to celebrate. Out on the streets people sang, laughed and wept; cars, buses and taxicabs hooted, and we all waved, blew kisses and shouted back. Each and every house opened its doors, welcoming strangers like long-lost relatives.

It seemed to me as though order had been restored and then rapidly magnified; the world was once again a place of peace and goodwill, and love. How could we
ever
have been at war? People like us, so reasonable, so just; so magnanimous? And walking home down Curzon Street, with my heart fit to burst, I noticed the moon, winking and blinking at me between clouds. That sweet heavenly face, still promising light and dawn. And I whispered to her once again.

You see, it was a moment; one of those moments you never, ever forget.

‘The war is
over
,’ I said, as I climbed into my bed, elated, exhausted.

The war is over . . .

Then, at the very edge of wakefulness, it hit me: the sheer magnitude and permanence of our loss. How could we forget them – those missing from the party? How could we dance and sing and celebrate? And as I lay there, I tried to count up all the boys I’d known who’d been killed in the war: my brothers, their schoolmates and friends, the brothers of my own friends, my cousins, all three of the Hamilton boys from Monkswood, so many of the men from the estate, and Frank and John.

‘Frank and John,’ I said out loud.

I hadn’t thought of them in such a long time, and at that moment they came to me so clearly, so vividly – those two young under-gardeners – as though I’d seen them both only days before. But Frank had been killed in the very early days of the war, his nimble cricketer’s feet stepping on a mine within days of arriving at the front. John had survived almost two years, been invalided home, only to return to the trenches to be killed. No garden would ever again know their toiling hands, no girls the colour of their hearts. No village green would ever again see Frank’s white figure run forward, his arms encircling the air, spinning a ball towards the wickets.

Goodnight, sweet boys, goodnight.

The following morning Mama handed me the newspaper, saying, ‘You may well see yourself in one of those photographs.’ And as I glanced over the front page I noticed the date, November the twelfth. Emily’s first birthday. Amidst the Forgotten, she’d been forgotten too.

A few days after the armistice we received a letter from Henry. He told us that there were no celebrations at the front. Many there believed that the armistice was temporary and that the war would soon resume. After so many months and years of living under intense strain, in mortal danger and thinking only in terms of war and the enemy, the abrupt release was physical and psychological agony. Some, he said, suffered total collapse, and some could only think of their dead friends, whilst others fell into an exhausted sleep. All of them were stunned by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers; their minds numbed by the sudden silence, the shock of peace. Those of us back at home continued to read about death in the newspapers: the soldiers killed by stray bullets after the ceasefire; and those already in oblivion, unaware of peace, who’d later died from their wounds.

It would be weeks before Henry could return home. He had to see to it that arrangements for the transportation of his men and others were in place and then managed. It was ‘chaos’, he told us in another letter. The logistics of demobilising our troops – trying to get them all back home in time for Christmas – was nigh on impossible, and, as an officer, he would have to stay until all of the men under his command were on their way. He wasn’t sure when he’d be back, but soon, he hoped.

Those days, the days immediately after the armistice, were strange for us too. For once the euphoria of victory slowly ebbed, I sensed a queer sort of atmosphere and awkwardness about the city, and with people I knew. How did we begin to pick up the pieces of our lives? And what were we left with? How could we look each other in the eye again, smile, and say, ‘How do you do!’ in that cheery, universally acknowledged British way? And how
did
we do? Those of us who had not been in the trenches, who’d not lived in squalor – with mud and rats, discarded limbs and rotting bodies, that deafening barrage and
stench of death – could never pretend to know or understand. We had no visible injuries, no scars, no tattered uniform or medal, but we too were damaged: damaged by grief and loss, damaged through association; and associated through guilt.

The demobilisation of five million men was upon us, and as disorienated men in mud-caked uniforms began to appear on the streets – unsure of what to do or where to go – the mood in London changed, and we seemed to be grappling with a new dilemma. For suddenly the horror of the war was there, on display in front of us, as hundreds of thousands of men arrived back from the trenches. Delivered back into the bright lights of normality, they flooded the city’s streets, stations and squares, and assembled in parks, where temporary camps had been set up as holding stations for them. They loitered by tube stations, and on the corners of Oxford Street, Regent Street, in Leicester Square and Piccadilly: traumatised, bewildered souls, often drunk, and sometimes begging. So very different to those pristine uniformed young men I’d seen there years before. And those wretched scraps of men, the ones who’d been dis figured, their bodies chewed up and spat out for their country, were there too: limbless, and in freakishly painted tin masks to hide their missing faces. There was no escape, we had to see what we had done, had to confront the consequence of our actions. And here they were: our valiant young heroes.

There could be no return. None of us, no matter our situation or circumstances, could pick up the pieces of life as it had once been, before the war. We had all been changed, and our lives as we’d known them had gone, and gone for ever.

. . . We will undoubtedly have to sell off the land, but I am praying we might somehow be able to save the house (and the garden), despite the rather desperate need for funds, and so I try to be optimistic for H’s
sake, for this is all such a dreadful worry to him, & he is in no fit state to deal with it. Everything seems adrift, unstable, and I feel as though with each passing day we are nearing another calamity – not another war, God forbid, but an exhausted collapse of our ragged economy. It is inevitable, I believe. And what a life for those who fought for their country! What meagre life their reward. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t have been better for the Germans to have arrived on these shores . . . for perhaps then the men would have work, a sense of pride, & my boys still here . . .

I finally returned to Deyning late in the spring of 1919. Some weeks before, Henry had had a lawyer come to the house in London to explain things to Mama, and to me. It was impossible, financially impossible, for us to keep it. The entire estate – the house, the land and the farm – would have to be sold, he said. It would be divided up and auctioned as separate lots, allowing interested parties to buy some or all of the estate, and ensuring, he hoped, that we got the best price.

My mother had been stoical, nodding her head as she cast her eyes over the pages of numbers laid out upon the dining-room table. But I couldn’t believe it. Those numbers meant nothing to me, and Deyning – everything.

Henry was already at the house when Mama and I arrived. He’d gone down a couple of weeks before, taking two friends with him for company, and was supposed to be working through the inventory, making a list of repairs to submit to the army. Mama and I were to oversee the packing up before the auction, which was to be held the following month. He had telephoned the week before, warning me, and telling me to prepare Mama
about the state of the place. But nothing could have prepared us.