The Very Thought of You (32 page)

How could she possibly think it would be over now – just because Miss Weir was so long dead? He was shaking with
emotion over Ascrap of paper she had withheld all these years – yet all she wanted was for him to reach out to her.

He finally looked up. She was brushing some imaginary dust from her skirt, keeping her hand busy. But she felt his gaze and glanced over.

In that moment, Thomas sensed that he was not the only one locked in with his own phantoms. He felt her need – that she wanted to be something more than just a conduit for fresh memories of Ruth.

“Thank you for this, my dear. Thank you so much. But is there – something else you came to talk to me about?” He asked gently, his eyes steady on her face.

“Yes,” she yielded.

“Tell me, then,” he said.

he waited, shifted his gaze, patient. She moved her hands, rolled them in the air as if the gesture would set her talking.

“I wanted to see you because I have thought about you over the years—”

She stopped dead, tilted her head. Then the words spilled out.

“I still have – feelings for you,” she said. “I think perhaps I fell... in love with you as a child and I’ve been carrying the thought of you hidden inside me all these years. I’ve been reaching out to strangers and wishing it was you – because I always loved everything about you, every detail—”

Thomas found himself staring at her. Had she been nurturing these feelings for so long even though they had not even seen each other? He did not flinch, but it was unnerving.

“All that was a long time ago,” He replied, hesitating. “you’ve grown into a lovely woman with a husband, and children.”

The compliment thrilled Anna – she had never felt herself to be lovely, but even as he said it, she hoped that it really was what he saw.

Emboldened, she thought of those letters he had written to her so long ago. How she had treasured them for years. Slept with them under her pillow, until they had grown worn at the crease.

“When you wrote to me all those years ago and signed off ‘with my love’, I spent so many evenings wondering if ‘with my love’ meant something – or if it was just what you always put on your letters?”

“I’m sure I meant it – in the right way,” He answered carefully, but she wanted more.

“I do remember that I wanted to help you,” He went on. “you were in a sorry state after you had lost your mother. You needed... someone to watch over you.”

“Yes,” she said, almost overlapping his words.

He looked at her and saw a smooth woman’s face in place of the skinny freckled child he had once known. But her eyes spoke right back to the past: that searching gaze asking, inexplicably, to be close to him.

She waited, longing for him to say more – to open up. She wanted him to look at her, and say,
I have thought about you all these years, and waited to tell you how much I cared about you.
of course he did not, would not. He was closing, retreating, while she slid into her quicksand.

“That night – the night when I fetched your letters – I fell asleep on your knee – and I can still remember the tenderness I saw in your face when I woke up—”

She wanted to say,
I have been searching for that look in your eyes ever since –
but she could no longer speak. She shuddered, until at last her tears spilled over.

He was embarrassed, and sat there waiting in silence. But as her tears went on, he was stirred by a distant memory of the child crying in his arms so many years before.

He thought he did remember looking down into the girl’s eyes on that terrible night. Of what had he been thinking? Of the woman he had loved and lost – of the child he had lost. Yet it must have been that moment which had enslaved Anna.

He was moved, somehow, by this young woman’s sorrow, seeping through the deep walls of his own private grief. He wheeled himself forwards and looked into her eyes as she raised her face towards him. Then he reached out to her with his arms and she fell against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her. Until she lifted her head once more to face him.

He could see the purity of her love, and he looked at her with a tenderness he did not know he could still find in himself. He had given her nothing, and yet – the long years of her waiting had released something in him.

He wanted to set her free.

“You did mean something to me,” He said. Even as he spoke he was unsure whether he was talking to Anna or to the ghost of Ruth, resurrected in this strange afternoon through a scrap of paper and the love-struck eyes of another woman.

“You meant a great deal to me, and I was very unhappy when you left. I have thought about you often. And I am very, very happy to see you again.”

There are many kinds of consummation in this world, Anna realized later. It might be a letter, or a conversation, or even just a look. He just said the words she wanted to hear. And then he kissed her lightly on the cheek.

She returned to London knowing that a door of sorts had been closed. Theirs was a definable relationship now, with boundaries, and she had reached as far as she could with Thomas. She knew she must let him go now.

54

In the months which followed Anna’s unexpected visit, Thomas sometimes wondered if he should have told her what a difference she had made to his spirits. But decided he could not; because he knew it was the chance message from Ruth which had rejuvenated him, not Anna.

Think what you have meant to me—

He could not look at Ruth’s handwritten note enough. It was as if his patience had been rewarded with a sign.
A forget-me-not to remember you.

Her memory could sustain him now. More than twenty years after her death, she had come back to him in a scrap of paper, releasing him back into the present. And by some strange alchemy, he began to see himself in a new way, as somebody connected to life by love.

He did not forget Anna. It surprised and puzzled him to think that he had unwittingly existed in anyone’s heart or mind for so long, but he felt moved and honoured that she had found the courage to talk to him; it was her visit which had triggered this strange and unexpected reconciliation in him.

He continued a gentle correspondence with Anna. Christmas cards, and careful readings of the novels she occasionally sent him, with considered letters. More, he took to praying for her on Sundays, in his local church. He did sometimes wonder if he should have done more for her, but knew that would have been inappropriate; there was too little he could offer her, beyond prayers from a distance. But he hoped that his warmth would somehow reach through to her.

One breath of life is better than none at all.
Thomas could remember trying to rally himself with that mantra when he was recovering from polio in hospital, forty years before.
That was what he had wanted to believe then. But as he grew older, he really did feel it. Every morning he was glad to see the sky. And whenever spring came around once more, he found himself surprised all over again by the cherry tree flowering outside his window, whose pale mauve blossom was always lighter and more profuse than he had ever remembered.

The passing years never diminished the force of his feeling for Ruth. Whenever the sun broke through the clouds, or wind shook the trees, her face was there, even in the rain. And every day was eased by this contemplation, right until the end.

He’s always so serene
, Mary Smithie used to say to her husband. The year before he died, she could remember firetting about leaving him alone on Christmas Day. She had to visit her ageing mother, not far, in Harrogate, but she did worry whether he would be too lonely by himself, and kept trying to suggest people he might visit for the day.

“Please, Mary,” He said gently, “you really don’t have to worry about me.”

“Are you sure you’re not just being brave, sir?”

“More than sure.”

“But Christmas is a time to celebrate, with other people—”

“I don’t lack for anything here, please don’t worry.”

Mary could remember pausing, and looking at him doubtfully. And it was then that he had confided in her – for the first time in all their years together.

“Let me tell you my secret, Mary,” he said, tilting his head. “When I was younger, I met a wonderful woman, the right woman, and she loved me. We loved each other, and we both knew that. Isn’t that what everyone wants, Mary? Mutual love? The memory still sustains me, every day. So I may seem like an old wreck to you – but inside I’m still dancing, as they say.”

As he spoke, she knew he meant it. That was the secret of his eyes, then – they were filled with private joy, because he had known proper love with his wife. She felt her tears rising, and had to pinch her palm to stop herself from crying as she left him that day.

55

Thomas continued to hold his place in Anna’s heart, but for many years his presence there was dormant. Until one morning she saw his name in
The Times
deaths notices, and felt instantly winded.

The small piece announced the death of Thomas Arthur Ashton “after a short illness” on 29th December 1979. Christmas was still in the air, and the papers were overfilled with New Year quizzes, so only two of the broadsheets carried obituaries. These were inadequately sketched with notes of his Foreign Office career, and snatches of information which excited and saddened Anna in equal measure: the little she had known of his life. Thomas Ashton was noted for his service as a young diplomat in “Sir Robert Vansittart’s group of anti-appeasers” in the 1930s. In
The Telegraph
he was remembered as a classicist of distinction, and the last of a certain kind of Englishman, though the obituarist did not say quite why. The school at Ashton Park was mentioned, and his wife too.

... He and his beloved wife Elizabeth were childless, but at the outbreak of war they opened up Ashton Park as a home for evacuees. Tragically, Elizabeth was killed in a car crash, but her husband was determined to carry on his wife’s work, and after the war Ashton became a full-time
boarding school for girls. Pupils have fond memories of Ashton’s genial presence as a teacher, and he was extremely proud of the school...

Anna read the obituaries several times over, then put them away in a drawer. Who had written these generalized fictions about him? Nothing was said which caught his spirit.

Her final exclusion from his life now struck her with deep force; there had been nothing more than Christmas cards by the end. She did not even know the date of his funeral, nor was there any mention of a memorial service. She did not know who to write to, but assumed, with a pang, that other family members close to him would deal with his death.

What Anna could not have guessed was that there was no family. No children, no brothers or sisters, no nephews or nieces. Just polite friendships. Sir Clifford Norton was wheelchair-bound after breaking both his hips, frail and fearful of travel, so he stayed at home in Chelsea, hoping others would turn up for Thomas’s service instead. He spent the day wondering how his old friend could have vanished so thoroughly from his life. His own wife Peter had died several years earlier, after complications from a fall in orly Airport. With her gone, Norton never ventured far from Carlyle Square any more.

It was left to Thomas’s Housekeeper, Mary Smithie, to ensure that his passing was accorded some respect. She was the one who visited him in hospital when he came down with pneumonia. And when the doctor rang to say that he had passed away, it was she who cried for him, and worried about his funeral flowers. She tidied up the papers on his desk, and opened the letters which still arrived for him. She put away his pen and ink – but then took them home with
her, as a memento of the man she had watched writing his translations for over twenty years.

Two months after the funeral, the daughter of Thomas’s first cousin arrived from South Africa to view her inheritance. Mrs De Groot had grown up in Cape Town, and her visit to Ashton Park was her first trip to Europe. Her children were unhappy about her journey, and begged her to come home soon.

“I’ll be back in ten days,” she promised them at the airport.

She arrived in York on a wet afternoon, and struggled to find a taxi to Ashton Park. The driver dropped her at the lodge by the park gates, so she had to walk up the apparently endless drive to the House in the rain. When at last she reached the great front doors, she was breathless and wet.

Mr Tyler, long-term caretaker, was standing by to let her in, but was too shy to shake her hand or meet her face. Led by this awkward guide, Mrs De Groot was given a rapid tour of the House. They began with the stone hall before venturing down linoleum-lined corridors which led to empty classrooms. When they stopped briefly in the old school lavatories, she was appalled by their primitive plumbing.

Afterwards they toured the upper floors, passing through deserted school dormitories of iron bedsteads and stained horsehair mattresses. There were washstands and old-fashioned water pans, and unlined curtains with broken hooks hanging at odd angles. The girls’ boarding school had finally been closed down after years of dwindling admissions, but its ageing apparatus remained.

The whole House echoed with emptiness. As the sky outside dimmed towards darkness, Mrs De Groot was chilled by the sense of other people’s past. The place reeked of ghosts and
lost history, and the dusty portraits of her unknown cousins unnerved her.

Under the bare strip-lighting of the kitchens she met Mr Tyler’s wife, a stout woman with a cheery face marred by exceptionally stained teeth. Mrs Tyler had prepared a simple meal of sausages for Mrs De Groot to eat in the old parlour, a room with a fire stoked for the occasion. Then she was led for the night to the Ashtons’ old master bedroom.

There was a stately four-poster bed, and a misted dressing table with a triptych of mirrors. The Tylers did not tell her whose room it had been, and she did not ask. But when she awoke in the morning, chilly and stiff, she resolved to return home as soon as possible, back to the swimming pools and sunshine and hygienic plumbing of Constantia.