The Last Summer (5 page)

And then I went inside, to the library, pulled out the book and took it up to my room.

I awoke early the following morning: catapulted back to my bed from Tom Cuthbert’s arms. We’d been lying in an exotically decorated open-sided tent, on the lawn, under the sycamore tree. ‘
Clarissa
. . .
Clarissa
,’ he’d repeated, holding me tightly, gazing into my eyes. Then he’d kissed me, and the passion of his kiss had woken me. I closed my eyes and returned there, to languish once more in his arms. But as I felt his hands move over my body, I realised my state of dishabille; for I was in nothing more than my flimsy summer nightgown, which he appeared to have unbuttoned. And I leapt from my bed, still breathless and hot from that imagined kiss.

I was distracted over breakfast, and Mama, too, was unusually silent. She liked to check the menu for dinner each morning and almost always read it out loud, but not today. I stood by the sideboard, staring down at my reflection in a polished silver lid. Perhaps I should wear my hair up . . . As I lifted the lid from a dish of devilled kidneys, my mother sighed, loudly, and then informed me that she was going out to make calls later that afternoon. Did I wish to accompany her?

‘Would you mind if I didn’t today? I’m quite lost in my book . . . and determined to finish it this afternoon.’

I sat down at the table next to her.

‘Very well, but I think you should stay inside, out of the sun. And please do something with your hair, Clarissa,’ she said, and then she rose to her feet and left the room.

I was relieved she appeared so preoccupied, and I presumed she must be tired, for she’d returned home from London very late the previous evening. I’d been in my bed, reading, but when I’d heard her arrive back I’d gone to see her, in her dressing room. She’d been in one of her dreamy moods, and told me that she’d seen the most beautiful painting she’d ever seen in her life,
at a gallery in London
.

‘But I thought you went to a horticultural exhibition . . .’

‘Oh . . . no,’ she said, turning to me ‘I left Broughton to do that. I met Venetia and we went to a gallery . . . and then out to dinner.’

Later that day, as I watched her disappear down the driveway, I thought how remarkably brave and independent she was. Unwavering and indefatigable in her commitment to her many causes, she was happy to travel about the locality on her own in the dogcart; visiting people, delivering food parcels – eggs, butter, fruit and vegetables and produce from the farm – ministering to those sick and needy, and attending to her many and various charitable causes. There seemed to be an inexhaustible list of charities with which she was affiliated, from the NSPCC to the League of Pity and the Mothers’ Union; she attended drawing-room meetings, and sat on the council of the Primrose League, in my mind something to do with gardening: her one true passion.

Mama was obsessed with her garden, and not only in summer, but all year round. There was
always
something to be done, always something requiring her attention. In early summer her roses and peonies, in particular, inevitably scooped her a few
first prizes at local flower shows. But sometimes she travelled further afield – to more out-of-the-way places, in order to exhibit a vividly coloured orchid from the hothouse, or a new hybrid tea rose. She’d return from these trips with a ribbon or rosette, reinvigorated, and quite obviously elated.

I wondered if I’d be like Mama one day: as poised and controlled, as elegant. She seemed to me to inhabit an aura of ineffable loveliness, gliding about the place in a cloud of tuberose, exuding a soporific maternal balm upon our senses. Taller than most other women, she held her head high, for good posture and manners were, she said, the surest and most important indicator of character. She abhorred raised voices, or aggression of any kind, and had no time for wanton displays of emotion, or – what she deemed – self-indulgent outbursts.

Papa often said that when he looked at me he saw
the perfect vision
of my mother. And I never quite knew what he meant by that. For how could anyone be more perfect than Mama? But I was like her, in appearance, at least: I had her colouring, eyes and hair. And, as I’d grown up, others had inevitably commented:
Ah, yes, Edina’s daughter through and through. Quite uncanny . . .

As a child, I’d basked in that air of perpetual calm enveloping her, mesmerised by her beauty, the luminosity of her pale skin against her dark chestnut hair, the way she sometimes closed her eyes as she spoke. In the evenings – whenever she and Papa were at home – she’d come to the night nursery and I’d gaze up at her as she read to me: her dark blue eyes following the words on the page; her perfect lips moving with mellifluous sound. She was to me the stuff of fairy tales, the embodiment of all that was good and fine.

The granddaughter of the diplomat and financier, Sir Montague Vincent, my mother’s formative years had been divided between the palatial drawing rooms of London and her grandfather’s vast estate in Hampshire. And there, waited on by liveried footmen
in powdered wigs, she had spent some of
the happiest days
of her life. Before her own coming out, her mother had taken her to Paris to be fitted with gowns, a habit she had never grown out of. Each season she returned there – to be fitted with the latest fashions from Worth. Her jewellery drawer, my childhood treasure trove, included cuffs, collars and combs of diamonds, and endless ropes of pearls. She changed three – sometimes even four – times each day, aided by Wilson, her maid, and bathed in rose-scented bathwater. And her bedroom and dressing room – in the French style, all toile de Jouy and soft fine lace, and scented with roses and orchids from the hothouse – were to me simply an extension of her.

But Mama had secrets. I could tell. For there was some unfathomable mystery lurking in those benevolent, smiling eyes; and tantalising but as yet unspoken words on the very edge of her soft tongue. Oh yes, Mama had secrets, and I had had a glimpse of one of them, once, many years before.

‘And what are my naughty cherubs up to?’ she’d asked, entering her dressing room.

We’d been playing with her jewels. And Georgie had spent a good hour dressing me up as the May Queen, with ropes of pearls around my head, tangled and fastened in my hair with brooches, diamonds galore about my neck and arms; and rings, slipping and sliding off my tiny fingers. He’d put powder and rouge on my face, though, and perhaps thankfully, I hadn’t yet had a chance to check my appearance in the looking glass.

She moved towards me, slowly, and bent down, levelling her face with my own. ‘This one,’ she said, her eyes staring back into mine as she removed a heavy gold ring from the middle finger of my left hand, ‘is
not
for playing with.’

‘But that’s the King’s ring!’ Georgie called out. ‘And she’s the Queen . . . and she looks so beautiful,’ he added, rather appealingly.

She moved away and I watched her slip the King’s ring back into the jewellery drawer, then lock it, and push the key into the top of her dress. It’s a secret, I thought: the King’s ring is Mama’s secret. And I wondered if she’d told Papa. And if she had not, what a perfect secret it was.

When she left us to continue our game, I turned to my brother and put my finger to my lips.

‘What?’ he whispered. ‘What is it?’

I shook my head, for if he didn’t know – I couldn’t possibly tell him.

And I never did.

Sometimes I had been allowed to sit quietly and watch my mother prepare for a party or a ball. As she sat at her dressing table, straight backed and head high, I’d looked on as Wilson brushed and then carefully pinned up Mama’s waist-length hair, Mama lifting and turning her head this way and that, checking her profile, tucking in a curl here and there. I’d watch her select her jewels for the evening, running her fingers over the dark red velvet-lined tray; and though I’d looked for the King’s ring, I’d never again seen it. I’d sat in silence and watched Wilson fasten my mother’s jewels in place, and occasionally my mother would glance at me, my reflection in the looking glass in front of her. She’d tilt her head, smile at me. ‘These will be yours one day,’ she’d say, raising her hand to the gems glinting upon her décolleté. She was to me, then, the personification of romance, a dazzling celebration, like Christmas, and a luxurious gift to us all. But there were so many things, rituals and habits, too plebeian for my mother; for it was not how things
were
that mattered, but how they appeared. And idolatry such as mine could never be sustained, nor survive what lay ahead.

That afternoon, I timed my arrival in the library with perfection. And I’d taken a little more time with myself. I’d had Wilson
pin up my hair, and wore a favourite blouse: one made from the softest white muslin with hand-stitched pin-tucks. ‘You’re a picture, Miss Clarissa, a perfect picture,’ Wilson said. ‘Such a shame there’s no young gentlemen here to admire you.’

He was already there, sitting in an armchair, his head bent, reading. And as soon as I entered, he closed his book and stood up.

‘I do hope I’m not disturbing you,’ I said, standing inside the doorway, unsure of what to do.

‘No, no of course not. I was hoping . . . hoping I might see you.’

He remained on his feet, watching me as I ambled my way across the library, glancing to the shelves on my left. I quite wanted him to notice my hair, make a comment, compliment me, but of course he didn’t.

‘What are you reading?’ I asked, standing opposite him, behind the other chair.

‘Something very dull . . . much more dull, I think, than
dear
Fanny Hill,’ he said and smiled.

I looked away.

‘It’s a book about the principles of company law, Clarissa. And I’m quite sure you’re not remotely interested in that.’

‘Hmm. Yes, that does sound awfully dull. Do you
have
to read it?’

His smile broadened. ‘I’m afraid I do, if I’m to pass my exams.’

‘Then I’m very pleased I shall never have to take exams.’

‘But now you’re here I have a most welcome distraction,’ he said, putting the book down on the table beside him.

‘Oh,’ I replied, not quite sure how to
be
a welcome distraction, and feeling the distinct pressure to be entertaining. ‘Well, I suppose we could have a game of cards . . .’ I suggested.

He laughed, and I think he thought I was being funny.

‘Are you allowed . . . I mean to say, would you care to take a stroll? Perhaps where we walked yesterday?’

I was a little shocked by his boldness, but it had turned into a glorious day and there was no harm in a walk.

We took a different direction to the one we’d taken the previous evening, this time venturing a little further from the house, down through the meadow known as ‘lower meadow’, towards the lake. It was my suggestion; I wanted to take him to my favourite place. He told me that he’d been helping out on the farm that morning, had woken early and been there by seven. I didn’t mention that he couldn’t possibly have been there at that hour, that we’d been lying on the lawn together, under the sycamore tree, kissing. But I imagined him walking to the farm in the early-morning sunshine as I’d been lying in my bed, and I wondered if he’d thought of me.

We stopped under the shade of the old chestnut tree.

‘There should be a seat here,’ he said, staring out towards the lake.

‘Exactly, and I’ve told Papa this so many times,’ I replied, staring in the same direction. ‘But he’s promised me faithfully that he’s going to find me an Arabian tent,’ I added.

He turned to me. ‘An Arabian tent?’

‘Yes, so that I can sleep outside, under the stars.’

‘Would you really like that? Would you not be afraid?’

‘Afraid? No, what’s there to be afraid of? An owl, a fox, a badger . . . or perhaps a deer? No, there’s nothing to be afraid of, other than the stars, the universe, and that sense of being infinitesimal . . .’

We stood side by side and the air hummed with the sound of summer. If I’d been on my own I’d have lain down upon the dry grass, as I’d done so many times before, squinting up at a mosaic sky through branches; searching for a cloud from which I would be able to see some far-off exotic country. When I was
young George had told me that those very wispy, celestial clouds, the ones which appeared to me to have faces, were not really above us, even though they seemed to be so. No, he’d explained, those ones, those particular clouds, floated in the atmosphere
hundreds of thousands
of miles above another country. ‘So . . . which country is that one above?’ I’d asked, pointing up to the blue yonder. ‘That one . . . that one,’ he’d said, scratching his head, and appearing to work out some immensely complicated mathematical equation, ‘That one, Issy, is above . . . the Sahara Desert.’ It was stupendous that he knew, that he was able to work this out at no more than ten years old; and the fact that I could see the cloud above the Sahara Desert enabled me to look down from it. I’d stare up at the white vapour and I was there. I could see the camels, the Arabian tents pitched next to a palm tree, an oasis.

I heard Tom’s voice. ‘So, is this where you like to come?’ But I was adrift; lost in a blissful trance and unable come back to now, unable to answer. As though the universe for a moment held me to it, and that feeling of oneness – complete connectedness – had locked me in.