The Last Summer (40 page)

I looked up at him. ‘Thank you, Tom.’

He smiled. ‘I’d better get back now. But I look forward to seeing you both in a little while,’ he said and disappeared out of the door.

‘Nice chap, eh?’ Charlie said, testing one of the twin beds.

‘Yes, charming,’ I replied, returning to the window.

I looked down to the terrace below. I could see Davina, in full flow, and a crowd of people I didn’t know. I wondered which one of them was Nancy, but I saw no female who particularly caught my eye, and I heard myself sigh. I saw him emerge. I watched him stride over to a group sitting at a table; watched him run his hands
through his hair as he listened to one of them speak, then throw back his head and laugh.

Tom.

He looked so at ease, so confident, and so casual too: dressed in pale trousers, a white open-necked shirt with a dark blue paisley silk cravat. I watched him speaking, wondered what it was he was saying. I lifted my fingers to the pane, ran them down over his shape.

‘Right-o then, I think we should go down and be sociable now, don’t you?’ Charlie said.

‘You go. I’ll freshen up and follow you down.’

He came over to where I stood, and I felt myself freeze. ‘I do realise that this must be very, very difficult for you. To be back here, I mean; very strange . . . can’t imagine.’ He tried to put his arm around me.

‘I’m fine, really I am,’ I said, moving away from him and looking about the room for my vanity case.

‘You don’t mind then . . . if I go down?’

‘No, Charlie, you go down,’ I said, placing the small case upon a bed, and wishing he’d leave the room.

‘So, how long will you be?’ he asked.

‘Not long,’ I said, without looking up at him.

As soon as he left the room I sat down upon the bed. I was going to have to share a room with my husband – for two nights. Oh, he was fine now, perfectly civil, but what about later? I closed my eyes. What was I doing here? Why had I come back?

I rose from the bed, walked over to the window and looked down again. I saw Charlie on the terrace now, leaning on his stick, standing with Tom; and I could almost hear him telling Tom that I was
taking a moment
to myself. Then I saw Tom look up to the window and I quickly moved away.

When I eventually left the room and went downstairs, outside on to the terrace, Tom was nowhere in sight.

‘He had to make an important telephone call,’ Charlie said, by way of explanation, and I immediately felt the light grow dimmer.

I helped myself to a cup of tea and sat down next to Charlie, who was talking to an Austrian couple. He introduced me to them, but I was distracted and uncomfortable, more uncomfortable than I’d anticipated. I looked about for Davina, who was standing by the steps talking to a man. She saw me, raised her hand, but made no attempt to move, and so I sat in silence sipping my tea, smiling from time to time at a stranger, and wishing I were back at home. I wished Tom would reappear and take me off to the lake; wished he’d row us across to the island where we could be alone. And I lost myself in a daydream, remembering that time at the end of the War, when we’d spent so many afternoons there on our own.

It was Davina who interrupted my reverie, standing in front of me with another woman.

I stood up. ‘Clarissa, this is Nancy, Tom’s fiancée,’ she said.

She was not at all as I’d imagined: handsome rather than pretty, with a strong masculine jaw, and tall and dark, like me. She told me she’d heard a lot about me, but it later transpired that this was from Davina, and not Tom. ‘How very odd
Tam
never mentioned to me that you once lived here too,’ she said in her New York drawl.

I shrugged. ‘Well, perhaps he forgot,’ I suggested, smiling.

‘It’s not like him to forget anything,’ she said, and laughed. ‘Anyway, I better go see where he’s gotten to.’ She leant towards me. ‘He’s hopeless,’ she whispered. ‘No good at small talk, you know.’

I smiled.
Yes, I know, and neither am I.

Tom never reappeared on the terrace that afternoon and it wasn’t until a few hours later, over cocktails in the ballroom, that he emerged, looking more handsome than I’d ever seen him, and with an altogether different demeanour. He was in an irreverent mood, playful and witty. As I watched him with his assembled guests, I tried to remember the shy young man I’d been introduced to in that very same room, so many years earlier. But there was no trace of him, he’d gone, and in his place was someone quite sure of himself, and of his position in the world. Handsome, rich and charming, in control of everything, he enthralled us: each and every one of us.

I was standing by the open casement doors, listening to an unfeasibly tall, good-looking American with one of those ridiculous names: Hudson D. Weiner Junior. He asked me to call him Hud, which struck me as a little familiar at the time, but Americans were very friendly in that way, still are. We were all drinking champagne cocktails and a gramophone was playing some new American jazz music. It was Hud who told me it was American, I really wouldn’t have known. When he asked me to dance, I laughed.

‘As a rule, Hud, we don’t normally dance before dinner,’ I said. ‘But perhaps later.’

‘I bet you say that to all the guys,’ he replied, leaning over me, his arm against the wall.

‘Only the Americans,’ I said, smiling.

I saw Tom looking over, watching us, and I smiled back at him, but he turned away.

I could hear Charlie on the other side of the room, his voice already a little too loud. And I could see Davina, a cigarette dangling from her painted lips, gesticulating wildly in over-animated enthusiasm. Hud was regaling me with a long and overly detailed story about a bear he’d once shot, and moving closer all the time. I could see Marcus, Davina’s husband, sitting at the grand piano with a petite, dizzy-looking blonde – flirting, threatening to play. I glanced back at Tom, leaning against the mantelpiece, smoking, talking to a couple I couldn’t recall having seen earlier. He saw me look at him, threw his cigarette down into the fireplace, said something to the couple and walked towards me.

‘Weiner!’ he called out, stemming the flow. ‘I hope you’re not boring the beautiful Clarissa . . . and not another of your bear stories, eh?’

‘Ha! Cuthbert, you old rogue. I thought I was doing rather well there.’

Tom looked at me. ‘I’m afraid I have to steal her away from you now, Weiner.’ And before the American could say anything, Tom took hold of my hand and led me out through the open doors behind us.

Outside, on the terrace, a few people sat about smoking, and I wondered if he was going to introduce me to one of them.

Someone called out, ‘Aha! Tom!’

‘Back in a jiffy,’ he replied, without pausing to look at them. So I smiled at them, shrugged as he led me past them. I wasn’t sure where he was taking me or why, and I wasn’t sure who
was watching us. But he must have sensed my apprehension because he said, ‘Don’t panic, Clarissa. I shall return you to your rightful owner in due course.’

We descended the stone steps and proceeded across the lawn, then through the parterre. He kept hold of my hand, marching so quickly that I had to run with every few steps. Then I saw something, at the end of the pathway, and I stopped, pulling my hand from his.

I turned towards him, my hands over my mouth, incredulous.

‘A tent . . . an Arabian tent . . .’

I looked back at the tent, began to walk towards it, slowly. The sides of the canvas were pinned back, a dozen or so flickering lanterns encircling it upon the grass. Standing to one side was the solemn-looking older man I’d seen earlier; Tom’s
man
, I presumed, his valet. I noted the bottle of champagne in an ice bucket on a stand to his side.

‘Good evening, sir . . . ma’am,’ the man said, nodding at Tom and then at me.

‘Good evening Walter,’ Tom replied, and then the man picked up the bottle and released the cork.

I turned to Tom.

‘Go on . . .’ he said, smiling back at me, ‘take a look.’

I stepped inside the tent, running my hand down the richly coloured tapestries draping its interior walls. A vividly coloured rug and large cushions lay about the floor, and in the centre a brass-topped table with a lantern and two champagne glasses set upon it. I sat down on a cushion and looked up. Above me were hundreds of minuscule, glinting gold stars, sewn into the richest, deepest blue.

I shook my head. ‘It’s beautiful, Tom,’ I said, staring up at the stars as he stepped inside the tent, holding the bottle. ‘But what’s it for?’

He laughed. ‘It’s for you, of course. I told you, it’s all for you.’

I turned to him. ‘Tom . . .’

I was speechless, didn’t know what to say. And really, it was all too much.

‘But it’s perfect . . . perfect, and so beautiful,’ I said again. ‘And exactly like the one . . . the one I’d imagined.’

He said nothing but glanced over at me as he poured champagne into a glass, smiling. I lay back against a pile of cushions, propped myself on one arm and watched him. How could I not love him? His ingenuity, the romance of him. I took a sip of champagne and stared back at him, unable to stop smiling.

‘I can’t believe you did this for me . . . can’t believe you remembered.’

‘Of course I remembered. You never did get your Arabian tent, did you? Anyway, it’s for you, it’s yours.’

I laughed. ‘But, Tom, I have
nowhere
to put a tent. I live in a town house – with a garden not much bigger than this,’ I said, gesturing. ‘It would be pointless . . . impossible. But I love it. I love it and I want to sleep here, under these stars.’ I put down my glass, lay back once again to look up at the stars glistening in the fabric above our heads, and for a few minutes neither one of us spoke.

Then he said, ‘You didn’t come.’

And I knew what it was he referred to.

I closed my eyes. ‘I couldn’t . . . I couldn’t come, it was impossible,’ I said.

‘I waited for you. I waited all night.’

I turned my head, looked up at him. ‘It wasn’t meant to be, Tom.’

He shook his head. ‘It could have been.’

And then I saw myself: saw my deranged self, hurling china figurines, scent bottles, silver-framed photographs and brocade cushions at my locked bedroom door. He has no idea, I thought, no idea. ‘I wanted to come, I wanted to . . .’

‘Then please, come here later . . . later tonight,’ he said.

I’d been no more than a foolish girl when I’d told him I wanted to sleep in an Arabian tent on the lawn, and here we were, so many summers later. He was sitting cross-legged, close to me, staring down at me, and without thinking I reached out to him. He took my hand to his mouth, kissed it. ‘Tell me you’ll come here later . . . please.’

‘I’ll try,’ I said, my eyes fixed on his. ‘I’ll try.’

He kissed my hand again, ran his nose over my wrist. ‘You smell of my dreams, Clarissa Granville.’

Tom.

I had left my moorings, was already adrift, floating out across a lake with him, and nothing else mattered, no one else mattered, to either of us. They were the reeds beneath the water, hampering our crossing to that place where we could be together, and alone.

When we walked back up the steps on to the terrace everyone had disappeared and all was silent.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, with affected solemnity, and we walked on, quickly, through the ballroom, into the lobby and towards the dining room, where people were filing through the doorway in a noisy huddle of smoke and laughter.

‘I say! Here they are!’ Davina called out. ‘Darlings! We did rather wonder where you’d disappeared to . . . were about to send out a search party.’

Davina, as unsubtle as ever.

‘Ha! I was showing Clarissa the new tennis court. Do you play, Davina?’ Tom said, moving swiftly ahead of us, with smiles and nods. ‘We should have a game, tomorrow . . .’ he called back to her.

Nancy, standing at the doorway to the dining room, smiled at me as I passed her, but it was a queer sort of smile, and it made me feel guilty. More than guilty, it made me feel wicked.

I was placed next to him, on his right, with Davina directly opposite me, on his left. The meal was an ordeal for me, and I suspect for him too. We’d begun our subterfuge and each time I caught his eye I felt a mix of guilt and longing. I took another glass of champagne rather than wine, and I could feel its effects. Any resolve I’d had was melting fast, and in its place was a yearning; a yearning I’d not known since I was sixteen years old. I watched him as he spoke with Davina, smiling and laughing; I watched him as he stood up and made a toast, and then sat back down and looked immediately to me. Yes, yes, I was proud of him, and yes, I loved him and wanted him. I knew I’d risk my marriage for him. I knew I’d risk everything for him.

Thankfully, Davina was as verbose as ever, but I was aware of her scrutiny, not of one of us, but of us both. And each time Tom turned and spoke to me, no matter how mundane the words, he looked at me in such a way that though I couldn’t take my eyes away from his, and though I couldn’t see Davina’s expression, I could feel her watching us and I knew she’d see that something had passed between us. From time to time I caught Charlie’s eye, sitting at the opposite end of the table, a few places away from Nancy, and I tried to smile back at him. He looked happy enough, I thought; he was enjoying himself. And Nancy? I’m not sure what she saw, or what she thought. In his toast Tom had thanked her for her help and complimented her on her ‘exceptional’ organisational skills, but he could have been speaking of an employee, I thought, not the woman he was about to marry.