Free The Last Summer by Judith Kinghorn Page B

Mama’s footsteps coming back towards the hallway and I quickly turned and hurried off up the stairs.
    Half an hour or so later, when I entered the drawing room, he was there, looking extraordinarily dapper, and sitting in front of the fire with Venetia and Jimmy. He glanced over at me, nervously, and I smiled. It was strange to see him there, in that room, dressed for dinner. There he was: one of us.
    I wandered over to the boys, gathered by the window around George. He’d received a telegram requesting him to be back at Aldershot by midnight. They were asking him questions, talking about the war. I glanced across at Tom, wondered what he andVenetia were discussing. I could hear her saying something about Paris. She loved talking about Paris, slipping into French here and there. I looked ahead, out of the window. Nothing stirred. Every blade of grass, each stem and flower and leaf and shrub appeared perfectly still, as though all of nature held her breath, waiting; and the sun, still above the trees, more achingly golden than ever before. I’m not sure how long I stood there, transfixed, lost in that halcyon moment, but as I turned away I wondered what tomorrow would bring. Would it all be the same?
Will it be the same?
    I walked over to Maude, Edina and Lucy, who sat playing cards next to another window.
    ‘Would you like to join us, dear?’
    ‘No thank you, Aunt. I’m a little bored of cards . . . or rather, bored of losing at cards,’ I replied, and she laughed.
    I moved on again, slowly, towards the fireplace. Above it hung the portrait of Mama by Philip de László. It had been commissioned by my father some years earlier, and was mesmerisingly beautiful. Venetia was speaking about Venice, another of her
most
favourite and yet-to-be-visited places. I caught Tom’s eye, smiled. He didn’t smile back at me, but I caught his gaze move from my face down over my body. And as I stood in front of the fireplace, running my finger over the contours of one of Mama’s precious Meissen figurines, I sensed him watching me.
    No fire had been lit that evening, which struck me as odd, because Mama usually insisted on a fire in that room each evening, even in summer. Lends the place atmosphere and warmth, she said. But the polished steel grate remained empty, and the carved marble surround – with its acanthus scrolls, swags of husk and little putti – felt colder than usual to the touch. When I turned, the sky beyond the windows was changing, the last of the sun’s rays shining low into the room, throwingpale mauve jets of light across the patterned carpet and silk furnishings.
    ‘Clarissa, darling,’ Venetia began, her cigarette holder in hand, ‘you’re such an ongoing distraction to these poor, poor boys . . . I’m surprised they can think of war – or anything else – with such a vision of beauty in their presence.’
    ‘Is there any news?’
    She smiled. ‘No, dear child, not yet. We shan’t know anything until much later tonight or perhaps tomorrow morning,’ she replied. ‘Do sit with us.’
    ‘You do look terribly beautiful tonight, Clarissa,’ Jimmy said, as I sat down next to him on the sofa.
    ‘And it may not be fashionable for a lady to have tanned skin, but it suits you, suits you very well,’ Venetia added. ‘Don’t you agree, Tom?’
    I looked at him. He was leaning forward in his chair, holding a glass of something. ‘Yes, it does,’ he replied, looking back at me, without any trace of a smile.
    ‘Clarissa is going to be a sensation in London, an absolute sensation,’ Venetia continued, with a little shiver, and a shrug of lace. She reminded me of a box of chocolates that night. Confection, sealed in tight, perfectly wrapped and tied up in ribbons. The previous evening she’d come down to dinner in a purple-plumed silver turban and opera cloak. Oh, is it fancy dress? Lucy had asked.
    ‘I’ve already warned your father, warned him that he’ll have to keep a gun by his bed,’ she