The Last Letter from Your Lover

They didn’t travel far. The driver paused at the door of a Mayfair casino to let them out. She straightened her dress, then walked inside, taking off her wrap as she went.

Anthony waited until he was sure Stirling had gone in, then pulled his Hillman into the spot behind the black car. “Park that for me, will you?” he called to the incredulous doorman, threw him the keys, and pressed a ten-shilling note into his hand.

“Sir? Can I see your membership card?” He was hastening through the lobby when a man in a casino uniform stopped him. “Sir? Your membership card?”

The Stirlings were about to step into the elevator. He could just see her through the crowd. “I need to speak to someone. I’ll be two minutes.”

“Sir, I’m afraid I can’t let you in without—”

Anthony reached into his pocket and pulled out everything in it—wallet, house keys, passport—and dumped it into the man’s open hands. “Take it—take it all. I promise I’ll only be two minutes.” And as the man stared, openmouthed, he pushed his way through the crowd and edged into the lift as the doors closed.

Stirling was to the right, so Anthony pulled the brim of his hat low over his face, moved past him, and, confident that the man hadn’t seen him, edged backward until his own back was pressed to the wall.

Everyone faced the doors. Stirling, in front of him, was talking to someone he seemed to know. Anthony heard him murmur something about markets, a crisis in credit, the other man’s muttered agreement. His own pulse was thumping in his ears, and sweat trickled down his back. She held her bag in front of her with two gloved hands, her face composed, only a stray blond strand of hair creeping down from her chignon to confirm that she was human, not some heavenly apparition.

“Second floor.”

The doors opened, allowing two people out and one man in. The remaining passengers shuffled obligingly, making space for the new arrival. Stirling was still talking, his voice low and sonorous. It was a warm evening, and in the close confines of the lift, Anthony was acutely aware of the bodies around him, the smells of perfume, setting lotion, and Brylcreem that hung in the sticky air, the faint breeze as the doors closed.

He lifted his head a little and stared at Jennifer. She was less than a foot away, so close that he could detect the spice of her scent and each tiny freckle on her shoulders. He kept staring, until she turned her head a little—and saw him. Her eyes widened, her cheeks colored. Her husband was still deep in conversation.

She looked at the floor, then her eyes slid back to Anthony’s, the rise and fall of her chest revealing how much he’d shocked her. Their eyes met, and in those few silent moments, he told her everything. He told her that she was the most astonishing thing he had ever encountered. He told her that she haunted his waking hours, and that every feeling, every experience he had had in his life up to that point was flat and unimportant compared to the enormity of this.

He told her he loved her.

“Third floor.”

She blinked, and they moved apart as a man at the back excused himself, walked between them, and stepped out of the lift. As the gap closed behind him, Anthony reached into his pocket and retrieved the letter. He took a step to his right, and held it out to her behind the evening jacket of a man who coughed, making them jump a little. Her husband was shaking his head at something his companion had said. Both men laughed humorlessly. For a moment, Anthony thought she wouldn’t take it from him, but then her gloved hand shot out surreptitiously, and as he stood there, the envelope disappeared into her bag.

“Fourth floor,” said the bellboy. “Restaurant.”

Everyone except Anthony moved forward. Stirling glanced to his right, apparently remembering his wife’s presence, and reached out a hand—not in affection, Anthony observed, but to propel her forward. The doors closed behind her, and he was alone as, with the bellboy’s cry of “Ground floor,” the lift began to descend.

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.