The Last Letter From Your Lover (18 page)

“You don’t know where he is.” Laurence downed the whiskey. He stood laboriously and poured himself another.

“I can’t remember, you know I can’t. Things are coming back to me, and I don’t have it clear in my head yet, but I know now that this”—she gestured around the room—“feels wrong for a reason. It feels wrong because I’m in love with someone else. So I’m very sorry, but I have to go. It’s the right thing to do. For both of us.”

He nodded. “May I ask what this gentleman—your lover—has that I don’t?”

The streetlight outside the window sputtered.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just know that I love him. And that he loves me.”

“Oh, you do, do you? And what else do you know? Where he lives? What he does for a living? How he’s going to keep you, with your extravagant tastes? Will he buy you new frocks? Allow you a housekeeper? Jewelry?”

“I don’t care about any of that.”

“You certainly used to care about it.”

“I’m different now. I just know he loves me, and that’s what really matters. You can mock me all you want, Laurence, but you don’t know—”

He sprang up from his seat, and she shrank back. “Oh, I know all about your lover, Jenny,” he bellowed. He pulled a crumpled envelope from his inside pocket, brandishing it at her. “You really want to know what happened to you? You really want to know where your lover is?” Flecks of spittle flew, and his eyes were murderous.

She froze, her breath stalled in her chest.

“This isn’t the first time you’ve left me. Oh, no. I know, just like I know about him, because I found his letter in your bag after the accident.”

She saw the familiar handwriting on the envelope and was unable to tear her eyes from it.

“This is from him. In it, he asks you to meet him. He wants to run away with you. Just the two of you. Away from me. To start a new life together.” He grimaced, half in anger, half in grief. “Is it coming back to you now, darling?” He thrust it at her, and she took it with trembling fingers. She opened it and read,

My dearest and only love. I meant what I said. I have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is for one of us to make a bold decision.

I am not as strong as you. When I first met you, I thought you were a fragile little thing. Someone I had to protect. Now I realize I had us all wrong. You are the strong one, the one who can endure living with the possibility of a love like this, and the fact that we will never be allowed it.

I ask you not to judge me for my weakness. The only way I can endure is to be in a place where I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour. I cannot do that here.

I am going to take the job. I’ll be at Platform 4 Paddington at 7:15 on Monday evening, and there is nothing in the world that would make me happier than if you found the courage to come with me.

If you don’t come, I’ll know that whatever we might feel for each other, it isn’t quite enough. I won’t blame you, my darling. I know the past weeks have put an intolerable strain on you, and I feel the weight of that keenly. I hate the thought that I could cause you any unhappiness.

I’ll be waiting on the platform from a quarter to seven. Know that you hold my heart, my hopes, in your hands.

Your

B.

“Ring a bell, does it, Jenny?”

“Yes,” she whispered. Images flashed in her mind’s eye. Dark hair. A crumpled linen jacket. A little park, dotted with men in blue.

Boot.

“Yes, you know him? Yes, it’s all coming back to you?”

“Yes, it’s coming back to me . . .” She could almost see him. He was so close now.

“Obviously not all of it.”

“What do you—”

“He’s dead, Jennifer. He died in the car. You survived the crash, and your gentleman friend died. Dead at the scene, according to the police. So nobody’s out there waiting for you. There’s no one at Paddington Station. There’s nobody left for you to bloody remember.”

The room had started to move around her. She heard him speak, but the words refused to make sense, to take root in anything meaningful. “No,” she said, trembling now.

“Oh, I’m afraid so. I could probably dig out the newspaper reports, if you really wanted proof. We—your parents and I—kept your name out of the public eye, for obvious reasons. But they reported his death.”

“No.” She pushed at him, her arms swinging rhythmically at his torso.
No no no
. She wouldn’t hear what he was saying.

“He died at the scene.”

“Stop it! Stop saying that!” She launched herself at him now, wild, uncontrolled, shrieking. She heard her voice as if at a distance, was dimly aware of her fists coming into contact with his face, his chest, and then his stronger hands grabbing her wrists until she couldn’t move.

He was immovable. What he had said was immovable.

Dead
.

She sank onto the chair, and eventually he released her. She felt as if she had shrunk, as if the room had expanded and swallowed her.
My dearest and only love
. Her head lowered, so that she could see only the floor, and tears slid down her nose and onto the expensive rug.

A long time later she looked up at him. His eyes were closed, as if the scene was too unpleasant for him to contemplate. “If you knew,” she began, “if you could see I was beginning to remember, why . . . why didn’t you tell me the truth?”

He was no longer angry. He sat down in the chair opposite, suddenly defeated. “Because I hoped . . . when I realized you remembered nothing, that we could put it behind us. I hoped we might just carry on as if none of it had happened.”

My dearest and only love.

She had nowhere to go. Boot was dead. He had been dead the whole time. She felt foolish, bereft, as if she had imagined the whole thing in a fit of girlish indulgence.

“And,” Laurence’s voice broke the silence, “I didn’t want you to have to bear the guilt of knowing that, without you, this man might still be alive.”

And there it was. A pain so sharp she felt as if she had been impaled.

“Whatever you think of me, Jennifer, I believed you might be happier this way.”

Time passed. She couldn’t say afterward whether it had been hours or minutes. After a while Laurence stood up. He poured and drank another glass of whiskey, as easily as if it had been water. Then he placed his tumbler neatly on the silver tray.

“So, what happens now?” she said dully.

“I go to bed. I’m really very tired.” He turned and walked toward the door. “I suggest you do the same.”

After he had gone, she sat there for some time. She could hear him moving heavily on the floorboards upstairs, the wearied, drunken path of his footsteps, the creak of the bedstead as he climbed in. He was in the master bedroom. Her bedroom.

She read the letter again. Read of a future that wouldn’t be hers. A love she had not been able to live without. She read the words of the man who had loved her more than even he could convey, a man for whose death she had been unwittingly responsible. She finally saw his face: animated, hopeful, full of love.

Jennifer Stirling fell to the floor, curled up with the letter clutched to her chest, and silently began to cry.

Chapter 11

SEPTEMBER 1960

He saw them through the window of the coffee shop, half obscured by steam, even on this late-summer evening. His son was seated at the table nearest the window, his legs swinging as he read the menu. He paused on the pavement, taking in the longer limbs, the loss of the soft edges that had marked him out as a child. He could just make out the man he might become. Anthony felt his heart constrict. He tucked his parcel under his arm and walked in.

The café had been Clarissa’s choice, a large, bustling place where the waitresses wore old-fashioned uniforms and white pinafores. She had called it a tearoom, as if she was embarrassed by the word
café
.

“Phillip?”

“Daddy?”

He stopped beside the table, noting with pleasure the boy’s smile as he caught sight of him.

“Clarissa,” he added.

She was less angry, he thought immediately. There had been a tautness about her face for the past few years that had made him feel guilty whenever they met. Now she looked back at him with a kind of curiosity, as one might examine something that might turn around and snap: forensically, and from a distance.

“You look very well,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said.

“And you’ve grown,” he said, to his son. “Goodness, I think you’ve shot up six inches in two months.”

“Three months. And they do, at that age.” Clarissa’s mouth settled into the moue of mild disapproval he knew so well. It made him think briefly of Jennifer’s lips. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her do that thing with her mouth; perhaps the way she was designed forbade it.

“And you’re . . . well?” she said, pouring him a cup of tea and pushing it toward him.

“Very, thank you. I’ve been working hard.”

“As always.”

“Yes. How about you, Phillip? School all right?”

His son’s face was buried in the menu.

“Answer your father.”

“Fine.”

“Good. Keeping your marks up?”

“I have his report here. I thought you might want to see it.” She fished in her bag, and handed it to him.

Anthony noted, with unexpected pride, the repeated references to Phillip’s “decent character,” his “genuine efforts.”

“He’s captain of the football team.” She couldn’t quite keep the pleasure from her voice.

“You’ve done well.” He patted his son’s shoulder.

“He does his homework every night. I make sure of that.”

Phillip wouldn’t look at him now. Had Edgar already filled the father-shaped hole that he feared existed in Phillip’s life? Did he play cricket with him? Read stories to him? Anthony felt something in him cloud over and took a gulp of tea, trying to gather himself. He called over a waitress and ordered a plate of cakes. “The biggest you have. An early celebration,” he said.

“He’ll spoil his supper,” Clarissa said.

“It’s just one day.”

She turned away, as if she was struggling to bite her tongue.

Around them the clamor of the café seemed to increase. The cakes arrived on a tiered silver platter. He saw his son’s eyes slide toward them and gestured that he should help himself.

“I’ve been offered a new job,” he said, when the silence grew too weighty.

“With the
Nation
?”

“Yes, but in New York. Their man at the UN is retiring, and they’ve asked me if I’d like to take his place for a year. It comes with an apartment, right in the heart of the city.” He had barely believed Don when he’d told him. It showed their faith in him, Don had said. If he got this right, who knew? This time next year he might be on the road again.

“Very nice.”

“It’s come as a bit of a surprise, but it’s a good opportunity.”

“Yes. Well. You always did like traveling.”

“It’s not traveling. I’ll be working in the city.”

It had been almost a relief when Don had mentioned it. This would decide things. It gave him a better job and meant that Jennifer could come too, start a new life with him . . . and, although he tried not to think of this, he knew that if she said no, it would give him an escape route. London had already become inextricably tied up with her: landmarks everywhere were imprinted with their time together.

“Anyway, I’ll be over a few times a year, and I know what you said, but I would like to send letters.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“I’d like to tell Phillip a little of my life over there. Perhaps he could even come and visit when he’s a bit older.”

“Edgar thinks it will be better for all of us if things are kept simple. He doesn’t like . . . disruption.”

“Edgar is not Phillip’s father.”

“He’s as much of a father as you’ve ever been.”

They glared at each other.

Phillip’s cake was sitting in the middle of his plate; his hands were wedged under his thighs.

“Let’s not discuss this now, anyway. It’s Phillip’s birthday.” He brightened his voice. “I expect you’d like to see your present, wouldn’t you?”

His son said nothing. Christ, thought Anthony. What are we doing to him? He reached under the table and pulled out a large, rectangular parcel. “You can keep it for the big day, if you like, but your mother told me you were—you were all going out tomorrow, so I thought you might prefer it now.”

He handed it over. Phillip took it and glanced warily at his mother.

“I suppose you can open it, as you won’t have much time tomorrow,” she said, trying to smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to powder my nose.” She rose, and he watched her walk through the tables, wondering if she was as disheartened by these exchanges as he was. Perhaps she was off to find a public telephone from which she could ring Edgar and complain about how unreasonable her ex-husband was.

“Go on, then,” he said, to the boy. “Open it.”

Freed from the eye of his mother, Phillip became a little more animated. He ripped at the brown paper and stopped, in awe, when he saw what it had concealed.

“It’s a Hornby,” Anthony said. “The best you can get. And that’s the Flying Scotsman. You’ve heard of it?”

Phillip nodded.

“There’s a fair bit of track with it, and I got the man to throw in a little station and some men. They’re in this bag here. Think you can set it up?”

“I’ll ask Edgar to help me.”

It was like a sharp kick to the ribs. Anthony forced himself to ride the pain. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, after all.

“Yes,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m sure he would.”

They were quiet for a few moments. Then Phillip’s hand snaked out, snatched up his cake, and stuffed it into his mouth, an unthinking act conducted with greedy pleasure. Then he selected another, a chocolate fancy, and gave his father a conspiratorial wink before it followed the first.

“Still happy to see your old dad, then?”

Phillip reached over and laid his head against Anthony’s chest. Anthony looped his arms around him, holding him tightly, breathing in the smell of his hair, feeling the visceral pull that he tried so hard not to acknowledge.

“Are you better now?” the boy said, when he pulled back. He had lost a front tooth.

“I’m sorry?”

Phillip began to prize the engine from its box. “Mother said you weren’t yourself, that that was why you didn’t write.”

“I am better. Yes.”

“What happened?”

“There—were unpleasant things going on when I was in Africa. Things that upset me. I got ill, and then I was rather silly and drank too much.”

“That was rather silly.”

“Yes. Yes, it was. I shan’t do it again.”

Clarissa came back to the table. He saw, with a jolt, that her nose was pink, her eyes red-rimmed. He attempted a smile, and received a wan one in return.

“He likes his present,” Anthony said.

“Goodness. Well, that’s quite a present.” She gazed at the gleaming engine, at her child’s patent delight, and added, “I hope you said thank you, Phillip.”

Anthony put a cake on a plate and handed it to her, then took one for himself, and they sat there in some strained facsimile of family life.

“Let me write,” Anthony said, after a beat.

“I’m trying to start a new life, Anthony,” she whispered. “Trying to start afresh.” She was almost pleading.

“It’s just
letters
.”

They stared at each other across the Formica. Beside them, their son spun the wheels of his new train, humming with pleasure.

“A letter. How disruptive could it be?”

Jennifer unfolded the newspaper that Laurence had left, smoothed it open on the kitchen table, and turned a page. He was visible through the open door, checking his reflection in the hall mirror, straightening his tie.

“Don’t forget the dinner at Henley tonight. Wives are invited, so you might want to start thinking about what you’re going to wear.”

When she didn’t respond, he said testily, “Jennifer? It’s tonight. And it will be in a marquee.”

“I’m sure a whole day is quite enough time for me to sort out a dress,” she replied.

Now he was standing in the doorway. He frowned when he saw what she was doing. “What are you bothering with that for?”

“I’m reading the newspaper.”

“Hardly your thing, is it? Have your magazines not arrived?”

“I just . . . thought I might try to read up a little. See what’s going on in the world.”

“I can’t see that there’s anything in it that might concern you.”

She glanced at Mrs. Cordoza, who was pretending not to listen as she washed dishes at the sink.

“I was reading,” she said, with slow deliberation, “about the Lady Chatterley trial. It’s actually rather fascinating.”

She felt, rather than saw, his discomfort—her eyes were still on the newspaper. “I really don’t see what everyone’s making such a fuss about. It’s just a book. From what I understand it’s just a love story, between two people.”

“Well, you don’t understand very much, do you? It’s filth. Moncrieff has read it and said it’s subversive.”

Mrs. Cordoza was scrubbing a pan with intense vigor. She had begun to hum under her breath. Outside the wind picked up, sending a few ginger leaves skittering past the kitchen window.

“We should be allowed to judge these things for ourselves. We’re all adults. Those who think it would offend them needn’t read it.”

“Yes. Well. Don’t go offering your half-baked opinions on such matters at this dinner, will you? They’re not the type of crowd who want to hear a woman pontificating on things she knows nothing about.”

Jennifer took a breath before she responded. “Well, perhaps I’ll ask Francis if he can lend me his copy. Then I might know what I’m talking about. How would that suit you?” Her jaw set, a small muscle working in her cheek.

Laurence’s tone was dismissive. He reached for his briefcase. “You’ve been in an awful mood these last few mornings. I hope you can make yourself a little more agreeable this evening. If this is what reading the newspaper does for you, I might have it delivered to the office.”

She didn’t rise from her chair to kiss his cheek, as she might once have done. She bit her lip and continued to stare at the newspaper until the sound of the front door closing told her that her husband had left for the office.

For three days she had barely slept or eaten. Most nights now she lay awake through the small hours, waiting for something biblical to fall out of the dark above her head. All the time she was quietly furious with Laurence; she would see him suddenly through Anthony’s eyes, and find herself concurring with his damning assessment. Then she would hate Anthony for making her feel that way about her husband, and be even more furious that she couldn’t tell him so. At night she remembered Anthony’s hands on her, his mouth, pictured herself doing things to him that, in the light of morning, made her blush. On one occasion, desperate to quell her confusion, to weld herself back to her husband’s side, she woke him, slid one pale leg across him, kissed him into wakefulness. But he had been appalled, had asked her what on earth had got into her, and all but pushed her off. He had turned his back on her, leaving her to cry silent tears of humiliation into her pillow.

During those sleepless hours, along with the toxic conflagration of desire and guilt, she tossed around endless possibilities: she could leave, somehow survive the guilt, the loss of money, and her family’s anguish. She could have an affair, find some level on which she and Anthony could exist, parallel to their ordinary lives. It wasn’t just Lady Chatterley who did it, surely. Their social circle was rife with tales of who was having whom. She could break it off and be a good wife. If her marriage was not working, then it was her fault for not trying hard enough. And you could turn such things around: all the women’s magazines said so. She could be a little kinder, a little more loving, present herself more beautifully. She could stop, as her mother would say, looking at the greener grass beyond.