Page 52 of Last Letter Home
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s just . . .’
‘It’s too soon. My apologies. I was overwhelmed.’
‘I think I must have been, too.’ She reached and stroked his face. He took her hand and held it against his lips and bit it gently, but not so it hurt. She laughed.
‘To be continued, maybe?’
‘Maybe.’ She let the word trail.
They said goodbye and Briony walked on up towards the Hall, her heart still racing, her lips swollen with his kisses. The whole episode had upset her. It must have been the close intimacy created by the darkness that had dissolved her natural reserve. She had felt, as Greg said he’d been, overwhelmed, not in control, that was the truth and that was unlike her. A great round moon the colour of old bone was rising over the Hall, illuminating the long brick wall of the kitchen garden to her right and the pale shape of its doorway, which drew her in. And as she stood under its arch looking out across the grassy patches of the sleeping garden, the wide arms of the trees whose fruit swelled in the silence, she knew suddenly and for certain that it hadn’t been his ex-wife’s name, Lara, that she’d heard Greg whisper, but ‘Sarah’, which didn’t make sense at all.
Robyn Clare. Such a pretty name, and the handwriting was beautiful, too, if shaky with age. Briony had got up late the next morning and found the envelope sticking in the letter box. The invitation to tea had been penned on a piece of good cream card with Westbury Hall, Norfolk embossed at the top. Nothing so vulgar as a postcode. Briony wondered whether its vintage was a time when Unwin Clare was alive and Mrs Clare still Lady of the Manor. Perhaps she believed she still was.
It was lovely to receive a handwritten card like this, and so rare now. She placed it on the mantelpiece and thought how much things had changed. Paul and Sarah would have taken great care writing letters, thinking about exactly what the right words might be, reading and rereading the ones they received from each other, considering the right response. People today could communicate in an instant, but that brought its own problems, as she well knew. They could be thoughtless about what they wrote, uncaring of how words can hurt. And it was sad that in the future the electronic generation would probably have no collections of letters to keep and cherish and reread when they were old.
This time when she was admitted to Mrs Clare’s ground-floor flat the fat pug simply sniffed at her sandals and withdrew to its basket, plumping itself down with a snort of dismissal and laying its head on its paws. Its mistress was safe, but it obviously intended to keep an eye on the plate of delicious-looking cakes and scones waiting on the coffee table.
From the direction of the kitchen came the sound of activity and soon a portly middle-aged country woman, introduced by Robyn via a ‘Bless you, Avril,’ came through with a rattling tea trolley. There were proper porcelain cups and saucers accompanied by silver teaspoons with decorated handles, Briony noted with delight. Briony selected a scone from the proffered selection and took a delicate tea plate. Enthroned in the armchair opposite, old Mrs Clare swallowed two pink pills from a foil packet and accepted a generous slice of Victoria sponge.
‘We always used to have to eat four triangles of bread and butter before cake in the nursery here,’ she said, her eyes twinkling. ‘The nice thing about getting old is that you can break all the rules.’
‘As long as you do what the doctor says, Mrs Clare,’ Avril said as she poured the tea, then smiling at them both, withdrew.
‘You said “we” when you mentioned the nursery.’ Briony bit into the scone and delicious buttery crumbs melted on her tongue.
‘I had an elder brother, but he died in a terrible accident when I was small. There’s a pond further along the path past your cottage. That’s where he drowned.’
‘How awful.’
‘It affected my parents very badly, and me, I suppose. I felt I was no use because I wasn’t a boy. It’s all a long long time ago now. You said in your letter that you’d like to ask me more about your grandfather.’
‘And Paul Hartmann,’ Briony added.
‘Yes, and Paul. I’m afraid I don’t have very much more to say. I wasn’t here for most of the war. This place became a convalescent home and my parents lived in London most of the time. Daddy worked at the Home Office, you see. And I became a Wren. Mummy liked the Wrens best because they had the nicest uniform. I had a very interesting time and became engaged to a lovely naval officer. Then he was killed in ’forty-three when his ship was torpedoed in the Bay of Biscay. That word heart-broken, it means precisely that. George’s death took the stuffing out of me for months.’
Briony nodded in sympathy and waited for her to go on. Mrs Clare brushed cake crumbs from her lips and continued.
‘Paul’s mother, Barbara, died – when was it? – quite early in the war, I think. Mummy was staying at the house in Chelsea and I was visiting her at the time. I didn’t come down to the funeral as I had to return to Dundee. Mummy said Paul wasn’t there, but I can’t remember why.’
‘From a letter I’ve read I think he was in an internment camp when it happened.’
‘Ah yes, of course, that would have been it. A letter, you say? What letter is that, may I ask?’
Briony explained about the letters she’d been given, which interested Mrs Clare greatly, but when the name Bailey came up, her wrinkled face clouded.
‘You must have known the Baileys if they lived in the village?’ Briony asked carefully, seeing that the reminder was not a welcome one.
‘I certainly did. Sarah was very pleasant. I liked her. She was our land girl and a good one, too. Her sister Diane I got to know a little because she was a Wren like me, but we weren’t close. We were together in Dundee for some months before I was transferred to Portsmouth. She was a strange one. Something had got to her, I’d say. Oh, it’s all so long ago. I can’t remember what happened now. Their mother, Belinda, was a different kettle of fish. A cold woman, I always thought, brittle, but considered herself very attractive to men.’ For a moment, Mrs Clare paused, before plunging on. ‘She was my father’s mistress for several years, do Sarah’s letters say that?’
‘No,’ Briony was taken aback. ‘I haven’t read that anywhere.’ She was struck by Robyn Clare’s bitter tone.
‘Well, she was and I could never forgive her for it. It nearly broke my mother. You can imagine the shame if it had come out at the time. I only discovered the affair by accident. I walked in on them once in our house in Belgravia.’
‘Your mother knew about it?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure of that. I was away for much of the war, but I came home to London on leave from time to time and I’d wish I hadn’t bothered. “Would you ask your father if he’s finished with the paper?” my mother would say at breakfast. Or he’d tell me, “Please inform your mother that I’m dining out tonight.” They were united only by one thing, which was that the servants shouldn’t know they were quarrelling, which was ridiculous as Cook was old and deaf and the daily woman too harassed about her family’s survival to care what her employers were up to. It’s sad to think of it all now . . .’
Robyn Clare’s words drifted away as though she’d forgotten Briony was there. She was staring out across the garden now with a faraway expression, her fingers plucking at a loose thread in the upholstery of her chair.
