The Last Summer (7 page)

He turned, presumably to check my expression. I raised my eyebrows, expectantly.

‘What I mean is . . . you know who you are, what you are; how your life will be. It makes it hard for someone like me. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said, emphatically, but I had not a clue.

‘I’m not really worthy of your attention or interest. And I have to remind myself of this all the time. I have to remember who I am and who you are. I have to remember that we will both be moving on . . . in quite different directions.’

He stopped there, and I waited a moment before I spoke.

‘Well then, let’s be friends again,’ I said, and, instinctively, I reached out and placed my hand upon his arm.

He pulled his arm away. ‘But this is the crux; this is the problem. I’m not sure that I can be friends with you.’

‘Oh.’

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You see, I find myself . . . I find myself . . .’ he went on, falteringly, then sighed.

‘Tom, please. Can’t we be friends? I promise that I shan’t invite you on another walk,’ I said. And he laughed.

‘Yes. Yes, let’s be friends again.’ He tilted his head, looking at me sideways through a wave of almost black hair.

‘Good, then it’s settled, and you have nothing to fret about – and neither do I.’

He pulled out his packet of cigarettes and lit one.

‘I’ve missed seeing you,’ he said, leaning forward once more. ‘You weren’t at the last croquet game, and I’ve not seen you for . . .’ he paused, ‘for a while. Are you well?’

‘Yes, quite well.’

He turned to me. ‘You do look well.’

‘Yes, I’m very well.’

‘Perhaps later, if you’d like, we can take a walk – down by the lake.’

I smiled. It wasn’t exactly begging for forgiveness, but it was enough.

I had never known my mother to look fretful or to frown. I’d grown up with her telling me ‘girls who frown shall never wear a crown’, and it was enough, when I was small, for me to run my finger between my eyebrows to check my expression. That summer, whenever I came across my mother standing in contemplative pose, looking out through open windows, I took her hand in mine, assured her that all would be well . . . her roses would survive. But there was a new look in her eyes, the clear line of a frown between her brows, and when she smiled back at me I could see she didn’t quite believe me. At mealtimes, whenever the conversation turned to events taking place in Europe, she’d look at me and give me that same smile. Of course, I’d seen the newspapers, and I’d heard my brothers and my father talking, but the crisis unfolding on another continent was so far from Deyning, so far from our lives.

Weeks before, the day after Henry returned home from
Cambridge, the Archduke had been assassinated, and I’d heard him say to Papa, ‘This’ll surely mean war.’ At that time I had no notion of war, or death. God, I believed, created life, all of nature and beauty, and I had faith in Him. I loved Him. My father and brother were speaking of a strange-sounding, almost unpronounceable place, far away from us. These were modern times, civilised times; and wars – at least in my mind – belonged to history.

But events in Europe and talk of war began to take over
all
mealtime conversation. I tried to ignore these discussions, for I didn’t understand them, didn’t want to understand them, and they did not belong to summer. Instead, I continued to luxuriate in the reverie of the season. I walked through the walled garden, where even the curls of peeling paint upon the greenhouse door seemed unusually perfect to my eye. And where, inside, the heady aroma of ripening tomatoes and cucumbers fed my senses. I inhabited a profoundly fragrant world, where the scents of jasmine and honeysuckle mixed with sweet geranium, verbena and mint; where the incessant hum of bumblebees serenaded my thoughts and only butterflies caught my eye; where peaches and nectarines grew fat and ripe under a warm English sun. And when I looked out towards the cornfields in the distance, I saw only the glinting colour of my future. There would be no war. How could there be? Certainly not in the midst of that summer.

But the cuckoo had already begun to change his tune, and a sudden, cruel westerly wind had scattered rose heads and petals about the lawns and pathways – like snow in summer. And I began to have the queerest feeling, a slipping away sort of feeling. As though my material world was as ephemeral as the colours of that season, as though nothing was quite fixed any more. You see, I wanted time to stand still; I wanted to fasten down those days and harness every colour and shape in them.

I met Tom every evening, on what Mama referred to as my ‘solitary amble’. And though we now spoke easily with each other, and had learned much of one another’s characters in the preceding weeks, he seemed reluctant to move beyond a certain point. His reticence had made me bolder than I should have been, I knew this, and sometimes, alone in my room, replaying a conversation we’d had in my head, I’d find myself aghast at my own unscripted lines. There had been so many moments when he could have, should have, almost kissed me, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps he had some sort of problem – with me, or with girls. My cousin Edina (named after my mother) had explained to me the previous summer that some men simply
aren’t that way inclined
. There are some men who
prefer
men, she’d told me. At that time I’d remained unconvinced; I needed evidence, I said. She’d picked on Broughton as an example, simply because he was, she estimated, over forty, and remained so very unmarried and unattached. And the idea of Broughton falling in love with another man had reduced me to a fit of giggles. But now I wondered if Tom fell into Edina’s
disinclined
category, for he certainly seemed troubled.

It had been Edina who, four summers earlier, had educated me on
other matters
too. Sitting on our own in the summerhouse one afternoon she’d informed me, in her own inimitable way, how babies were conceived and born. We’d both sat in silence for a moment, each of us distracted by the image of any future husband attempting such a gross act upon us. Then, with immeasurable horror, I realised that Papa had done this to Mama – and not once, but four times!

‘Oh my God! Papa . . . Mama . . .’

‘I know. It’s beyond belief, but I had to tell you, Issa. You need to know.’

‘And the baby?’ I asked, my hands still over my mouth.

‘The baby grows inside its mother until it’s ready to be born
and then . . . are you ready for this? Prepare yourself, please dear . . . it comes out of her bottom, ripping her in two!’

‘Ugh! No . . . but it can’t be so . . . Mama . . . she looks fine.’

‘I know. Mine too. But this is why so many women die, dear. And they bleed for up to ten years afterwards. Can you imagine?’

‘No! And I don’t want to.’

It had been a bittersweet moment in my life, for I’d made up my mind then that I – like Edina – would never have children. But four years had passed since that particular revelation, and now I merely smiled at my remembrance of it. And that twelfth summer, once the best and most cherished, had faded and blurred, fusing with all previous summers into a montage of shapes and colours, scents and sounds: the hot sun upon the unmoving sycamore, the dark coolness of the lawn beneath; the hum and grind of the mowing machine; the glistening water of the lake in the distance; white butterflies on lavender, sweet peas on wicker; sun-bleached red stripes, white lines painted upon green; the hearty clank of a croquet mallet, the soft bounce of a tennis ball upon the grass.

But summer hadn’t yet ended.

I sat on the bank, alone, watching them play: Henry and George against Will and Tom. It was always towards the close of day that Henry took his competitive spirit out on to the tennis lawn, and one evening he inadvertently appropriated my rendezvous with Tom by inviting him to make up the numbers for
all-male
doubles. It was another sweet-smelling, balmy evening, the brightness of the day diffused to a liquid gold and poured out across the trees; everything languid and perfectly still, but for those white-clad figures in front of me. And in that soft westering light, a light tinged with the iridescence of early evening sun, they shone: dazzling, youthful beauty, immortal vigour and vitality.

Too perfect . . . too perfect.

Then, as though hearing my doubt, the chime of the church bell in the distance, calling out across the countryside, reverberating through that palette of overlapping colour and texture and lullaby sounds. But this time interrupting, discordant, like a call to arms, stirring a sudden pang within me and reminding me once again how fleeting the moment of rapture. I lay back, flat against the earth’s warm surface, listening to its rhythm, the bounce of the ball upon the grass, and those young male voices. I stared up at the empty sky and imagined myself floating up into it, higher and higher, and all the time looking down upon myself and Deyning: smaller and smaller. I could still hear the church bell, hear birds calling out from the tops of the trees, but I could no longer hear the voices from the tennis lawn. They had gone. Evaporated.

‘Were you dozing?’ he asked, standing over me.

I sat up. ‘No, I don’t think so . . . I’m not sure . . . who won?’

‘Henry, of course.’

‘Henry
and
George,’ I corrected him.

He sat down on the bank next to me, swatting at the grass with his racquet. He’d wanted to win, I thought.

‘Henry – as I think you already know – rather likes winning. It makes him feel . . . complete.’

He turned to me, smiling. ‘We all like to win.’

‘I’ve never won anything, ever,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t really matter.’

‘It’s different for you,’ he said, looking away and pulling out his packet of cigarettes. ‘You don’t need to win at anything.’

‘Oh, and you do?’

He shook his head, raised one side of his mouth. ‘No, I don’t
need
to . . . but I want to. All men like to compete, I think, and win. And if I’m to make anything of my life . . .’

He didn’t finish his sentence and we sat in silence for a few minutes, watching George and William knocking balls about on the tennis lawn below us.

‘The Granvilles . . . all destined for greatness,’ he said, wistfully, still staring ahead at my brothers. I said nothing. I watched him once more from the corner of my eye. On the side of his clean-shaven face he’d missed a patch: a few dark hairs, a newly discovered imperfection, lending a perfect vulnerability.

‘No . . . I think you’re the one destined for greatness, Tom.’

He turned to me, looking into my eyes with that now so familiar solemn, searching gaze. And reflected in those eyes the setting sun, picking out small flecks of gold in brown.

‘I see it in you . . . I see it in you quite clearly,’ I added, staring back at him, anchored.

He glanced down at my hand, resting on the grass. ‘And of all people . . . of everyone, you’re the one I’d most like to have believe that.’

My Dearest T, did you really wait ALL night? I feel utterly wretched at the thought, but we are filled to the brim here & it’s quite impossible for me to escape. Please tell me that you understand . . . Yr D

On August the first we enjoyed a heavenly day of croquet, and we had almost a full house. Papa was in London once again, and Mama’s dear friend, and my godmother, Venetia Cooper, had come down for a few days with her son, Jimmy, and Charlie Boyd, another old friend of Henry’s from his school days. All four of my cousins – Edina, Lucy, Archie and Johnnie – were with us for the week, along with their mama, my mother’s sister, Maude. And William, too, had a couple of friends staying. For me, everything was as it had always been, only better, because Tom was now with us. If only Henry and some of the others hadn’t been so determined to talk about the possibility of war.

It was towards the end of the day when I yelled across the croquet lawn at Henry and Tom, ‘Please do stop discussing politics! You’re spoiling our game!’ And when I shouted that line at them for a second time, Henry immediately threw down his mallet and said, ‘Someone please help me throw my baby sister into the lake and then we can all have some peace!’

I saw him striding across the lawn towards me and I screamed, dropped my mallet and took off towards the woods. I heard
Edina and Lucy shrieking, the boys cheering, and as I raced through the ferns, with Henry hot on my tail, I lost my shoe, tripped and fell.