The Last Letter From Your Lover (14 page)

Anthony had barely expected a response. He hadn’t even bothered to check his post until he left his house, late, and found two letters on the mat. He half walked, half ran along the baked, busy pavement, ducking in and out of the nurses and patients leaving the vast St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, his suitcase bashing against his legs. He was meant to be at Heathrow by half past two, was barely sure even now how he would make it in time. The sight of her handwriting had induced a kind of shock in him, followed by panic when he realized it was already ten to twelve, and he was at the wrong end of London.

Postman’s Park. Midday.

There had, of course, been no taxis. He had jumped on the Tube part of the way and run the rest. His shirt, neatly pressed, now stuck to his skin; his hair flopped over his sweaty forehead. “Excuse me,” he muttered, as a woman in high-heeled sandals tutted, forced to step out of his way. “Excuse me.” A bus stopped, belching purple fumes, and he heard the conductor ring the bell for it to move off again. He hesitated as the passengers poured across the pavement, trying to catch his wind, and checked his watch. It was a quarter past twelve. It was entirely possible she would already have given up on him.

What the hell was he doing? If he missed this flight, Don would personally see to it that he was on Golden Weddings and Other Anniversaries for the next ten years. They would view it as another example of his inability to cope, a reason to give the next good story to Murfett or Phipps.

He ducked down King Edward Street, gasping, and then he was in a tiny oasis of peace in the middle of the City. Postman’s Park was a small garden, created by a Victorian philanthropist to mark the lives of ordinary heroes. He walked, breathing hard, into the center.

It was blue, a gently moving swarm of blue. As his vision steadied, he saw postmen in their blue uniforms, some walking, some lying on the grass, a few lined up along the bench in front of the glazed Royal Doulton tablets that commemorated each act of bravery. The postmen of London, freed from their rounds and postbags, were enjoying the midday sun, in their shirtsleeves with their sandwich boxes, chatting, exchanging food, relaxing on the grass under the dappled shade of the trees.

His breathing had steadied. He dropped his suitcase and fished for a handkerchief, mopped his forehead, then turned in a slow circle, trying to see behind the large ferns, the wall of the church, and into the shadowed enclaves of the office buildings. He scanned the park for a jeweled emerald dress, the flash of pale gold hair that would mark her out.

She was not there.

He looked at his watch. Twenty past. She had come and gone. Perhaps she had changed her mind. Perhaps Stirling had found the ruddy letter. It was then that he remembered the second envelope, the one from Clarissa, which he had stuffed into his pocket as he left home. He pulled it out now and read it swiftly. He could never see her handwriting without hearing her tight, disappointed voice or seeing her neat blouses, always buttoned to the neck when she saw him, as if he might gain some advantage from a glimpse of her skin.

Dear Anthony,

This is to let you know as a matter of courtesy that I am to be married.

He felt a vague sense of proprietary shock at the idea that Clarissa might find happiness with someone else. He had thought her incapable of it with anybody.

I have met a decent man who owns a chain of drapery shops, and he is willing to take on me and Phillip. He is kind, and says he will treat him as his own. The wedding will be in September. This is difficult for me to broach, but you might want to think about how much contact you wish to maintain with the boy. I would like him to be able to live as a normal family, and it may well be that continued, erratic contact with you will make it harder for him to settle.

Please consider this, and let me know what you think.

We will not require further financial assistance from you, as Edgar can provide for us. I enclose our new address below.

Yours sincerely,

Clarissa

He read it twice, but it was not until the third time that he grasped what she was proposing: Phillip, his boy, should be brought up by some upright curtain merchant, free from his father’s “continued, erratic contact.” The day closed in on him. He felt a sudden urgent desire for alcohol, and saw an inn across the road through the park gates.

“Oh, Christ,” he said aloud, his hands dropping to his knees, his head sinking. He stayed there, bent double, for a minute, trying to collect his thoughts, to allow his pulse rate to return to normal. Then, with a sigh, he pushed himself upright.

She was in front of him. She wore a white dress, patterned with huge red roses, and a pair of oversize sunglasses. She pushed them to the top of her head. A great sigh forced itself from his chest at the sheer sight of her.

“I can’t stay,” he began, when he found his voice. “I’ve got to fly to Baghdad. My plane leaves in—I have no idea how—”

She was so beautiful, outshining the blooms in their neat borders, dazzling the postmen, who had stopped talking to look at her.

“I don’t . . .” He shook his head. “I can say it all in letters. Then when I see you I—”

“Anthony,” she said, as if she was affirming him to herself.

“I’ll be back in a week or so,” he said. “If you’ll meet me then, I’ll be able to explain. There’s so much—”

But she had stepped forward and, taking his face in her two gloved hands, pulled him to her. There was the briefest hesitation, and then her lips met his, her mouth warm, yielding, yet surprisingly demanding. Anthony forgot the flight. He forgot the park and his lost child and his ex-wife. He forgot the story that his boss believed should have consumed him. He forgot that emotions, in his experience, were more dangerous than munitions. He allowed himself to do as Jennifer demanded: to give himself to her, to do it freely.

“Anthony,” she had said, and with that one word, had given him not only herself but a new, better edited version of his future.

Chapter 8

DECEMBER 1960

Once again he wasn’t talking to her. For such an undemonstrative man, Laurence Stirling’s moods could be perversely mercurial. Jennifer eyed her husband silently over breakfast as he read his newspaper. Although she was downstairs before him, had laid out breakfast as he liked it, he had uttered, in the thirty-three minutes since he had first laid eyes on her that morning, not one word.

She glanced down at her dressing gown, checked her hair. Nothing out of place. Her scar, which she knew disgusted him, was covered with her sleeve. What had she done? Should she have waited up for him? He had returned home so late the previous evening that she had been only briefly roused by the sound of the front door. Had she said something in her sleep?

The clock ticked its melancholy way toward eight o’clock, interrupted only by the intermittent rustle of Laurence’s newspaper as it was opened and refolded. Outside, she heard footsteps on the front steps, the brief rattle as the postman pushed the mail through the letterbox, then a child’s voice, lifted querulously, as it passed the window.

She attempted to make some remark about the snow, a headline about the increasing cost of fuel, but Laurence merely sighed, as if in irritation, and she said no more.

My lover wouldn’t treat me like this, she told him silently, buttering a piece of toast. He would smile, touch my waist as he passed me in the kitchen. In fact, they probably wouldn’t even have breakfast in the kitchen: he would bring a tray of delicious things up to bed, handing her coffee as she awoke, when they would exchange joyous, crumby kisses. In one of the letters, he had written

When you eat, just for that moment you give yourself over entirely to the experience of it. I watched you that first time at dinner, and I wished you would give the same concentration to me.

Laurence’s voice broke into her reverie. “It’s drinks at the Moncrieffs’ tonight, before the company Christmas party. You do remember?”

“Yes.” She didn’t look up.

“I’ll be back at around half past six. Francis is expecting us then.” She felt his eyes linger on her, as if he was waiting for some further response, but she felt too mulish to try. And then he was gone, leaving Jennifer to a silent house, and dreams of an imaginary breakfast far preferable to her own.

Do you remember that first dinner? I was such a fool, and you knew it. And you were so utterly, utterly charming, darling J, even faced with my ungracious behavior.

I was so angry that night. Now I suspect I was in love with you even then, but we men are so thumpingly incapable of seeing what is before us. It was easier to pass off my discomfort as something else entirely.

She had now unearthed seven letters from their hiding places around her house; seven letters that laid out before her the kind of love she had known, the kind of person she had become as a result of it. In those handwritten words, she saw herself reflected in myriad ways: impulsive, passionate, quick to temper and to forgive.

He seemed her polar opposite. He challenged, proclaimed, promised. He was an acute observer; of her, of the things around him. He kept nothing hidden. She seemed to be the first woman he had ever truly loved. She wondered, when she read his words again, whether he was the first man she had truly loved in return.

When you looked at me with those limitless, deliquescent eyes of yours, I used to wonder what it was you could possibly see in me. Now I know that is a foolish view of love. You and I could no more not love each other than the earth could stop circling the sun.

Although the letters were not always dated, it was possible to place them in some kind of chronology: this one had come soon after they had first met, another after some kind of argument, a third after a passionate reunion. He had wanted her to leave Laurence. Several of them asked her to. She had apparently resisted. Why? She thought now of the cold man in the kitchen, the oppressive silence of her home.
Why did I not go?

She read the seven letters obsessively, trawling for clues, trying to work out the man’s identity. The last was dated September, a matter of weeks before her accident. Why had he not made contact? They had plainly never telephoned each other, nor had any specific meeting place. When she observed that some of the letters shared a PO box, she had gone to the post office to find out if there were any more. But the box had been reallocated, and there were no letters for her.

She became convinced that he would make himself known to her. How could the man who had written these letters, the man whose emotions were suffused with urgency, just sit and wait? She no longer believed it might be Bill; it was not that she couldn’t believe she’d had feelings for him, but the idea of deceiving Violet seemed beyond her, if not him. Which left Jack Amory and Reggie Carpenter. And Jack Amory had just announced his engagement to a Miss Victoria Nelson of Camberley, Surrey.

Mrs. Cordoza entered the room as Jennifer was finishing her hair. “Could you make sure my midnight blue silk is pressed for this evening?” she said. She held a string of diamonds against her pale neck. He loved her neck:

I have never yet been able to look at it without wanting to kiss the back of it.

“I’ve laid it out on the bed there. And would you mind fetching me a drink?”

Mrs. Cordoza walked past her to pick it up. “I’ll do it now, Mrs. Stirling,” she said.

Reggie Carpenter was flirting. There was no other word for it. Yvonne’s cousin was leaning up against Jenny’s chair, his eyes fixed on her mouth, which was twitching mischievously as if they had shared a private joke.

Yvonne watched them as she handed Francis a drink where he sat, a few feet away. She stooped to murmur into her husband’s ear, “Can’t you get Reggie over with the men? He’s been virtually sitting in Jennifer’s lap since she got here.”

“I tried, darling, but short of physically hauling him away, there wasn’t a lot I could do.”

“Then grab Maureen. She looks as if she’s going to cry.”

From the moment she had opened the door to the Stirlings—Jennifer in a mink coat and apparently already loaded, he grim-faced—her skin had prickled, as if in anticipation of something awful. There was tension between them, and then Jennifer and Reggie had latched on to each other in a way that was frankly exasperating.

“I do wish people would confine their quarrels to home,” she muttered.

“I’ll give Larry a large whiskey. He’ll warm up eventually. Probably a bad day at the office.” Francis stood up, touched her elbow, and was gone.

The cocktail sausages had hardly been tried. With a sigh, Yvonne picked up a plate of small eats and prepared to hand it around.

“Have one, Maureen.”

Reggie’s twenty-one-year-old girlfriend barely registered that she had spoken. Immaculate in her rust-colored wool dress, she was seated stiffly on a dining chair, casting dark looks at the two people to her right, both of whom seemed oblivious to her. Jennifer was leaning back in the armchair, while Reggie perched neatly on the arm. He whispered something, and they burst into peals of laughter.

“Reggie?” Maureen said. “Didn’t you say we were going into town to meet the others?”

“Oh, they can wait,” he said dismissively.

“They were going to meet us in the Green Rooms, Bear. Half past seven, you said.”

“Bear?” Jenny, her laughter silenced, was staring at Reggie.

“His nickname,” said Yvonne, offering her the plate. “He was the most ridiculously hairy baby. My aunt said at first she thought she had given birth to one.”

“Bear,” Jenny repeated.

“Yup. I’m irresistible. Soft. And never happier than when I’m tucked into bed . . .” He raised an eyebrow and leaned closer to her.

“Reggie, can I have a word?”

“Not when you wear that face, dear cousin. Yvonne thinks I’m flirting with you, Jenny.”

“Not just thinking it,” said Maureen, coldly.

“Oh, come on, Mo. Don’t be a bore.” His voice, while still joking, held a note of irritation. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Jenny for far too long. We’re just catching up.”

“Has it really been that long?” Jennifer said innocently.

“Oh, an age,” he said fervently.

Yvonne saw the girl’s face fall. “Maureen, darling, would you care to come and help me make some more drinks? Goodness only knows where my useless husband has gone.”

“He’s just there. He—”

“Come on, Maureen. Through here.”

The girl followed her into the dining room and took the bottle of crème de menthe Yvonne handed her. She radiated impotent fury. “What does that woman think she’s doing? She’s married, isn’t she?”

“Jennifer’s just . . . Oh, she doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“She’s all over him! Look at her! How would she like it if I mooned at her husband like that?”

Yvonne glanced into the living room where Larry, his face a mask of contained disapproval, was now sitting, only half listening to what Francis was saying. She probably wouldn’t notice, she thought.

“I know she’s your friend, Yvonne, but as far as I’m concerned she’s an absolute bitch.”

“Maureen, I know Reggie’s behaving badly, but you can’t speak like that about my friend. You have no idea what she’s gone through recently. Now, pass me that bottle, would you?”

“And what about what she’s putting me through? It’s humiliating. Everyone knows I’m with Reggie, and she’s got him wrapped around her little finger.”

“Jennifer had the most awful car crash. She’s not very long out of hospital. Like I said, she’s just letting her hair down a little.”

“And her knickers with it.”

“Mo . . .”

“She’s drunk. And she’s ancient. How old must she be? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? My Reggie’s at least three years younger than she is.”

Yvonne took a deep breath. She lit a cigarette, handed another to the girl, and pulled the double doors closed behind her. “Mo—”

“She’s a thief. She’s trying to steal him from me. I can see it, even if you can’t.”

Yvonne lowered her voice. “You have to understand, Mo, darling, that there’s flirting and then there’s flirting. Reggie and Jenny are having a high old time together out there, but neither of them would ever think of cheating. They’re flirting, yes, but they’re doing it in a roomful of people, not attempting to hide it. If there was the slightest seriousness in it, do you really think she’d be like that in front of Larry?” It sounded convincing, even to herself. “Darling girl, you will find, as you get older, that a bit of conversational parrying is part of life.” She popped a cashew into her mouth. “It’s one of the great consolations for having to be married to one man for years and years.”

The girl scowled, but deflated a little. “I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But I still don’t think it’s a nice way for a lady to behave.” She opened the doors and went back into the living room. Yvonne took a deep breath and followed her.

The cocktails slid down as the conversation grew louder and livelier. Francis returned to the dining room and made more Snowballs, while Yvonne deftly threaded cherries onto cocktail sticks to decorate them. She found now that she felt frankly dreadful if she had more than two proper drinks, so she had one made with blue curaçao, then limited herself to Jaffa Juice. The champagne was going down like no one’s business. Francis turned off the music in the hope that people might take the hint and leave, but Bill and Reggie turned it on again and tried to get everyone to dance. At one point both men had hold of Jennifer’s hands, while they danced around her. As Francis was busy with the drinks, Yvonne moved to where Laurence was sitting and planted herself next to him. She had sworn to herself that she would get a smile out of him.

He said nothing, but took a long swig of his drink, glanced at his wife, and looked away again. Dissatisfaction radiated from him. “She’s making a fool of herself,” he muttered, when the silence between them became too great.

She’s making a fool of you,
Yvonne thought. “She’s just merry. It’s been a strange time for her, Larry. She’s . . . trying to enjoy herself.”