The Last Summer

by Judith Kinghorn

“I don’t want you to get better too soon . . . not if means you have to go back and fight. Not now,” I said, looking up at him.

  He stared up at the ornate cornicing on the ceiling. “And I don’t want to go back there. Ever.”

  I think I realized that night that he would never be the Charlie I’d known before. The witty quips, the jesting and teasing I’d always associated with him seemed to have gone from his character forever. There was a new intensity to him, which frightened and excited me at the same time. And he seemed so much older than the other Charlie.

  He said, “I want you to know I’m not a virgin, Clarissa.”

  I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure why he had told me this, what he expected me to say, but I didn’t want to ask questions, and I didn’t want him to ask me any. He reached over to his side, switched off the lamp, then he moved down the bed, alongside me, and took me in his arms. “I shall be very gentle with you, darling.”

  “Yes.”

  We kissed slowly, and as his hands moved over my body, following its lines and curves, I could hear his breathing, becoming heavier, quicker. “I love you . . . love you so much,” he murmured. He pulled up my nightgown, moved his hand up my leg to the inside of my thigh. I felt him against me, felt his hardness. He pushed my legs apart with his own, pulled my nightgown up further still. I was beginning a descent, slowly moving through the blackness to a memory. I wrapped my arms around his neck, placed my lips upon his shoulder. “I’ll be gentle,” he said again, in a whisper, and moving himself between my legs. I could hear the rumble of traffic in the distance, feel his lips upon my neck, his hands exploring . . . And then, as he entered me, and moaned loudly, I came back into the room.

  “I’m sorry, darling. I don’t think that was quite as pleasurable for you as it was for me,” he said, moments later. “It’ll get better though, I promise. First time’s never very enjoyable for the lady.”

  I felt a tear escape. “Don’t worry, it’s been a long day . . . we’re both tired.”

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  “No, no,” I said, “you were gentle, very gentle.”

  We lay in each other’s arms in silence, and as his breathing slowed I quietly moved away. I lay on my back, my eyes wide open to the darkness, and I pondered on that momentous day, my wedding day. None of it was as I’d once imagined. This is my new life, I thought, I am married: for I had said I do.

  I rewound the events of the preceding twelve hours: arriving at the church with my dashing elder brother; walking down the aisle on his arm, and seeing Charlie, standing there in his uniform, smiling nervously, leaning heavily on his stick; the small sea of ostentatious hats and plumage; the oversized arrangements of white roses, eucalyptus and ivy; Mama, turning to look at me with a queer, sad smile.

  I do . . .

  I whispered those words once more. I had married Charlie, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.

  I do . . .

  The following morning, after breakfast, Charlie delivered me back to my mother’s house, and then went to catch his train. He’d been in a strange mood that morning, distracted and monosyllabic. When he bid me good-bye, kissing me on my cheek, his manner was brusque. But I put this down to the fact that he didn’t wish to leave me, didn’t wish to go back to hospital.

  Venetia was already at the house that morning, and she and Mama both fussed over me. I was a new bride; I had just had my wedding night.

  “Aha! Well, you look radiant, dear. And you were an absolute vision yesterday . . . stunning, wasn’t she, Edina?”

  “Yes, beautiful, very beautiful,” Mama said, looking up at me from where she sat and taking hold of my hand. “Your father would have been so proud . . . so proud.”

  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 prewar 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 theater 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 practiced 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 traveled 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 color of their hearts. No village green would ever again see Frank’s white figure run forward, his arms encircling the air, spinning a ball toward the wickets.

  Good night, sweet boys, good night.

  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, while 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 demobilizing 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 demobilization of five million men was upon us, and as disoriented 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: traumatized, 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 disfigured, 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 forever.

  . . . 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 meager 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 . . .

  Chapter Twenty-one

  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.

  When we motored up the driveway that day we were
stunned by what we saw. The gardens, only five years before so lovingly tended and well kept, were lost, hidden under giant thistles and waist-high weeds; cows roamed about, grazing on what had once been the tennis lawn, and the whole place was littered with debris: dilapidated huts, piles of wood, rolls of barbed wire, abandoned wheels and oil drums. “Like a gypsy encampment,” Mama said, staring out of the car window as we approached the house. Tank tire tracks had slewed up the earth where manicured lawns and neatly arranged flower beds had been; and great clumps of grass, dandelions and rampant ivy clung to every ornamental wall and flagstone pathway. Without Mama, without the gardeners, the wilderness had finally marched in on the place, exactly as I’d once imagined.

  I wondered then if Tom Cuthbert might be about. I knew Mrs. Cuthbert still lived at Deyning, in the same cottage, but I’d never once heard Tom’s name mentioned. In fact, I had no idea where he was or what he was doing with his life. And though I still dreamed of him from time to time, I hadn’t actually thought of him in a while. I’d been busy, looking after Charlie and seeing to our new home. We’d recently moved into a house not far from Mama’s, and she and I had spent the preceding weeks selecting wallpapers, fabrics and new furnishings. The move had distracted me, and perhaps Mama too, from the impending loss of Deyning. And she seemed to have finally accepted that Deyning, like William and George and Papa, belonged to the past and not the future.

  As our car came to a standstill I felt a sense of dread, and wondered what awaited us inside. But my father had been right: the house had been wrecked. Spindles—and even some of the balusters—had disappeared from the staircase; shelves and paneling—gone; a number of doors were missing, others, hung splintered from shattered hinges; and broken windowpanes, crudely boarded over, made the place appear even more dark and gloomy. My mother quietly wept, shaking her head in dismay as she walked about the place, moving slowly from room to room, unable to comprehend the decimation.