Unclouded Summer

by Alec Waugh

  He left the light on in the bathroom, he left the door ajar. He sat on the bed beside her. “Please,” he said. It was said half as a question and she nodded. He raised his arm; he switched off the light above her head.

  “Dear one, if you only knew how I’ve been longing for this moment.”

  Through the thin silk of her nightgown, he was conscious, vividly conscious of her round, firm breasts. Slowly, he passed his hands along her shoulders, drawing her close against him.

  “Oh my dear, my dear,” he whispered.

  Softly as his hands caressed her, he whispered, close, close into her ears, the long slow sentences of adoration; sentences that mounted to his brain inflaming him like a slow-sipped wine. His hands tightened their hold. The room was warm and he pushed back the coverlet. He raised himself upon his elbow. It was across the far corner that the light from the bathroom fell. It was from a twilit dusk that she looked up at him. There was trust in her eyes and tenderness, unquestioning trust and overbrimming tenderness.

  “Please, darling,” he said. “I want to see you.”

  She made no answer, but of her own accord, raising her arms she helped him to draw off her nightgown.

  He gasped: he had not believed she could be so beautiful.

  With her eyes tight closed, the pillows pushed aside, the long line of her throat strained backwards, she lay motionless, her arms limp along her side, while his hands passed over her, his lips following his hands in long caresses. She spoke no word, she gave no sign of life except when every now and then a sudden involuntary shudder ran along her limbs. She seemed miles away. Her face was like a mask. He could not tell, he could not guess what thoughts were passing there. The movement of his hands grew more insistent, fiercer and at the same time tenderer. He must be gentle with her, gentle, very gentle.

  Close, closer into his arms he drew her. She lifted her arms, folding them about his neck. Her eyes were the tighter closed. Softly his lips murmured into her ear. She gave no sign of hearing him. Fondly, anxiously, he watched her face. She seemed miles away in this moment to which had led at last the long path of her girlhood’s curiosities – the doubts, the references half understood, the whispered confidences, the vague conjectures, the mingled anticipation and apprehension. She was far away.

  There was a moment when her lids seemed to close tighter on her cheekbones, a moment when her hands clenched upon his neck so that her nails were sharp against his skin, a moment when her teeth closed on her lower lip.

  “Darling,” he whispered, “darling, darling.”

  One with her at last, his pulses thudded. She was so soft, so white, so lovely. He had restrained himself so long. He had been gentle with her long enough. But her face wore still that unseeing mask. Her arms had loosened their hold upon his shoulder to fall again limp and motionless beside her. She was miles away. To achieve now, when she was in this mood, a rapture that she could not share, might be as fatal, might be as damaging, as the callous, the brutal selfishness that surely with part of herself she must have dreaded. The memory of that moonlit room returned to him. Inexperience had to be cajoled and wooed and won. A time would come. A time would surely come.

  He lifted his hand; he drew it softly along her cheek: stroking it gently as though the slow movement of his fingers from ear to chin was a soporific to his own strained nerves. Gently, gently he stroked the soft smooth surface, gently while the thudding of his own blood grew quiet, gently till at last un-assuaged that fierce need subsided.

  “Darling,” he whispered, “darling, darling.”

  Lifted upon his elbow he looked down at her. Come back, he thought. Please, please come back.

  From far away, from the depths of the vast liner came the first slow throb of revolving engines. The walls of the cabin quivered to their vibration.

  She blinked, she opened her eyes, she smiled.

  “Hullo,” she said.

  She raised her hand, she held it against his cheek and patted it, twice quickly. She stretched her arms above her head. “Let’s go on deck,” she said.

  As they hurried towards the companionway, she slipped her arm through his, pressing it against her side. It was the friendliest thing that had ever been done to him. She said nothing, he was grateful to her for saying nothing. But he had in that moment the sure certainty that she would trust him now until the day she died, that never again in all his life would he be really lonely.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Five days later leaning against the taffrail they saw the tall towers of Manhattan take shape spectrally against a light morning mist. His arm was through hers, his fingers were fondling her wrist. He was in a haze; a roseate haze.

  His fingers’ fondling of her wrist grew tenser. Her eyes were smiling. She moved close against him.

  “To think that it’s going to be ten whole hours before I’m really alone with you again,” he said.

  He had suggested that they should spend the second half of their honeymoon in New York. She had shaken her head, however. “I can’t wait to get down into the country. I’m a country girl, you know.” They caught the same afternoon train to Saybrook by which he had traveled a year ago. Now as then, his father was waiting for them in his long black coat. He embarked on a little speech of welcome as he came towards them.

  “It is a great pleasure, my dear daughter,” he began. But a yard away from them, he checked; broke off his speech. His expression changed. He blinked as though a light had shone on it; as though he had seen something in their faces counseling him that there was no need for speeches; some inner transfiguring glow, a window opening onto an enchanted landscape.

  His eyes were glistening as he raised his hands, laying them upon their shoulders.

  “My children,” he said, “my dear, dear children.”

  His voice was shaking and he turned away.

  “You take the wheel, son. I’ll sit behind,” he said.

  It was a silent drive through a countryside brilliant in red and umber as the mellowing autumn sunlight streamed in long level shafts between the birch and maple boughs. Leaned forward, peering through the windscreen, turning to left and right, terrified of missing anything, Marion was too absorbed to talk. The moment, however, that they were in his room alone, she turned to him throwing her arms about him in a hug that contained no trace of passion; that was rather a self-assurement, as a child’s is, when it comes back from school for the holidays, a telling itself that all is as it was, that it really is home again. She hugged him tightly, closely, then broke away, crossing to the window, leaning her arms upon the sill.

  “I hadn’t realized that it would be like this,” she said, “that it would be all so unlike, yet so familiar: those avenues and gardens and the white spired churches: so dignified and yet so friendly: and it all comes from the same stock, grown out of the same tradition. You needn’t worry about me, darling, I’m going to be all right here.”

  She leaned her head on her arms, watching a tug chunk slowly up the river.

  “I wonder,” she said, ‘if Shakespeare were to come back today, where he’d feel least at home; here or in modern London.”

  Dinner that evening was as lighthearted as the year before it had been constrained. Once again Mr. Oliver brought up one of his treasured bottles of champagne.

  “This is no treat to you,” he said, “but after a year in Prohibition America you’ll realize how much of a treat it is to us.”

  The wine tasted quite differently this time. And on his mother’s face there was no longer a look of anxiety and distrust. Marion was chattering away as easily as though she had known his parents all her life. She did not seem able to ask too many questions.

  Francis left them together after dinner. He went up to the room that was now “their room”. He stood at the window as he had stood so often in the past, looking out over the broad dark river. He remembered the last time that he had stood here, on the eve of his departure. How little he had guessed then, that when he stood here next it would
be as a bridegroom. Then he had had only one idea, one project. He had been on edge, taut, apprehensive. He was starting out on an adventure to which he could not foresee the outcome. He did not even know what outcome he had been hoping for. One thing alone had mattered, to put himself right with Judy.

  He remembered in what mood he had stood here a year ago with Judy’s letter in his pocket. He had had no thought, no existence then, apart from Judy. He had been bewitched, dazzled. It had been all wrong from the start, he saw it now. They had wanted different things of one another. They had never met on equal ground. They were not equal persons. It was the very fact that they had not been equal that had so be-glamoured him. There could never have been between himself and Judy, that sense of Tightness, of appropriateness, that there was between himself and Marion. He and Judy could never have belonged to one another as he and Marion did. Yes, but even so …

  He remembered Judy as he had seen her last on the steps of Charlton, a basket of rose leaves on her arm. There was still something to be said between them, something to be put right between them.

  He shrugged. There was no point in worrying about that now. There was time for that, time in plenty. Judy was Marion’s stepmother. The families were in touch, the time would come inevitably to clear up that unfinished business.

  He turned away from the window to go downstairs. There was no point now in bothering about himself and Judy. In its own due and proper season, the time for that would come, would surely come.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It didn’t though. And the years went by.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was seventeen years later, on a late July evening in 1944, that a major in the American Air Corps on leave in London was to walk up the steps of No. 2 Carlton House Terrace, to find himself in a large dark stone-flagged hall on the right of which was a boxed-in porter’s desk.

  He went across to it.

  “Is this the Savage Club?”

  “It is, sir, yes.”

  “I’m a member of the Players Club of New York. I believe that we have an exchange membership arrangement with you. Only I’ve nothing to prove that I’m a member of the Players.”

  “I see, sir. What did you say your name was?”

  “Francis Oliver.”

  “Francis Oliver. Right, I’ll check that up for you.”

  The porter turned and began to shuffle among some books and papers, then changed his mind.

  “That’ll be all right, sir. You don’t look the kind of person to pull a fast one. Just sign your name in that book and then you can walk straight through.”

  “I wanted to write a letter. Could you show me where the library is?”

  The porter chuckled. “This place has been so bombed that there’s nothing much left except the dining room and the bar. There are a couple of desks in that inner hall. That’s the best place to write.”

  They were small desks under a large stairway, facing a wall that was covered with the framed menu designs of old House dinners. Draughts blew at him from every angle. From above him on the first floor came the sound of voices, loud and cheerful voices. What was left of the bar was no longer large enough to contain all the members, several of whom as soon as they had been served had come out onto the landing.

  It was four hours since his plane had grounded. During these four hours he had seen twenty buzz bombs in the sky. He had heard five explode, two of them uncomfortably close. He had passed in the streets, block after block of shattered buildings. Yet in spite of danger, discomfort, and destruction the life of London was still going on. The half of this club was uninhabitable. Because there was no lounge, he had to write his letter in a draught; because the main sitting room was closed, members stood about with tankards on the landing. But the life of the club went on. Maybe, he thought, I shall get an answer to this letter.

  “Dear Judy” -he had written. -“For the first time in seventeen years I’m here in England and I’m wondering if there is any chance of seeing you. I’m in the Air Corps – no, not as a pilot I’m afraid. I’m too old for that. I give them advice on camouflage. I’m over from North Africa for a week on leave. If there is any possibility of our meeting, please do let’s.”

  He wrote to her at Charlton. But he had no idea where she might be living now. He did not even know if she was in England. Himself, he had been overseas for twenty months, and even before then he had been out of touch with her. Sir Henry had died in ’36. Charlton had gone to Richard. But the Villa at Mougins had been left to Judy, and she had gone down right away, planning to make her home there. When the war began she had stayed on in France to drive an ambulance for the French. On duty still, she had been too late for the last refugee ship home. For two years she had remained in Mougins; she had had some kind of mission there, he had suspected. She would have come back otherwise he was very sure. It was not till the Germans had invaded Vichy France that she had returned to England. By that time he was on his way to Africa.

  He had no idea what she was doing now. He did not even know what was happening to Charlton. As Marion had suggested all those years ago, Richard, on his father’s death, had decided not to go into residence. He had preferred his compact modern bungalow at Wentworth. He had sublet Charlton. That was the last that Francis had heard for certain. Richard had gone back into the Army, had been posted to the Middle East. Francis believed that the Government had taken over Charlton. But he knew no details. He was doubtful if his letter would reach Judy in time for him to get an answer.

  Two mornings later, however, the porter at the Savage Club handed him an envelope addressed in a round back-sloping unformed fist.

  At the sight of that familiar hand writing he had the sensation of something under his heart going round and over. It was eighteen years since he had seen it first: seventeen years since he had seen it last. How often during that five months of separation had he not turned over such envelopes impatiently, tearing at the flap, to get at the letters they contained. He examined the round back-sloping hand. It looked just the same. Seventeen years. So much could alter in that time, so much could vanish; the gold in the hair, the silver in the voice. Blue veins could lift between white knuckles. But the handwriting on an envelope, that remained.

  The letter was written on a sheet of cheap block notepaper, but to his surprise it was addressed from Chariton. “Darling, what lovely news,” it said, “you must come down and see me. As you’ll see, I’m still living here. The strangest business, but I’ll tell you all about that when you come. What about lunch next Friday? I’ll meet you at Basingstoke. The 11.30 from Waterloo.”

  Friday. It was a warm and a sunny morning, as warm and sunny as the September day on which he had taken this same train from London on his wedding day. Seventeen years – it all looked very much as he remembered it. The Thames flowing broad and brown past Westminster, the squalid slums along the tracks, the trim suburban villas, then open country; heather and pines and golf courses.

  Seventeen years. What was it that Judy had said on that last Sunday morning? “Aleck Moore waited twenty years for Lillian Russell.” How indignant he had been. How immeasurably remote on that May morning had seemed the year 1947. He smiled wryly. How quickly those years had passed. Forty sounded a great age when you were twenty. Himself he had been forty-three last month. He felt very little different, he did not know that he even looked so very different from the young painter who had sat over a copy of the Herald Tribune on the terrace of a beach hotel.

  Seventeen years, gone like an afternoon. Perhaps he had been very lucky not to have known on that May morning how quickly twenty years could pass.

  As he stepped out of the train at Basingstoke, he looked about him. That, too, looked just the same – the bookstall where he had bought The Times; the refreshment room where he attempted his first glass of English beer. There was a big notice board now, with R.T.O. on it; and on the benches khaki-clad figures were dozing beside their kit. Otherwise unaltered.

  From behind Mm came
a familiar voice, a deep contralto voice that had once set every nerve cell tingling. “Francis,” it said. He turned quickly, eagerly, to pause perplexed.

  From a short, trim, khaki-clad woman with junior subcommander’s stars upon her shoulders came a delighted chuckle. “I knew you wouldn’t recognize me. It’s the cap. I should have warned you. But I couldn’t resist seeing your surprise. It’s me all right though; come along.”

  A jeep was waiting in the station yard.

  “Thank heavens you’re in uniform,” she said. “I might have had trouble with the M.P.’s if you hadn’t been.”

  As the jeep bounced its way along the narrow high-hedged lanes, she rattled into a description and explanation of her present life.

  “It’s all been the strangest business. You knew, didn’t you, about my being cornered in the South of France. I had quite an amusing hush-hush job. Though I suppose I shouldn’t talk about it, even now. Anyhow, it was hush-hush enough to make me feel that I’d better get back here quick before the Germans came. I was at a loose end then of course. But through my old links with Henry I knew a good few of the big shots at the war house. When I heard that they were looking for a place to train A.T.S. cadets, I said, ‘Why not Charlton and me as the Welfare Officer?’ It meant pulling a few strings, of course, and in Heaven’s name why not? There couldn’t have been a better place. So that’s where I am now; in my old room too. I have the girls up there in the evenings for ‘heart-to-hearts’. I’ll show you.”

  As she rattled on with her old eagerness, her old vitality, something of her old spell was cast on him. Yes, she was Judy right enough. There was no one like her. As the car swung out of the narrow lane onto the common, turning to the right towards the house, he noticed that the wrought-iron gates guarding the drive were missing.