‘I don’t know.’
‘I mean – I’ve looked and there is only one place. Do you think Davenport got it wrong?’
‘Why don’t you ask him if you’re so keen?’
‘He wasn’t talking to me, he was telling Travers. I can’t ask him – he’s a prefect. As if you didn’t know,’ he added.
‘Well, it wasn’t any of your business, then, was it? Why don’t you just shut up?’
‘Why don’t you just boil your head? Why don’t you just tie two rocks round your feet and jump in the swimming pool? Why don’t you …’ He was on to a good vein now and would go on for hours, thinking of things that Simon might just do, if Simon didn’t stop him.
‘Psst!’ he said. ‘Someone’s coming!’
They weren’t, but it shut him up because what Galbraith had said he’d do to both of them if Matron came and found he wasn’t there (cut off very small – unnoticeable to Matron – bits of them with his penknife to feed to his rat was the latest) had cowed them into perfect loyalty: Clarkson had bored (and frightened) Simon the whole term with his ruminations about what bits would hurt most and how long it would take them to die. So they both lay and waited a bit and Simon had just begun to have a lovely think about what he’d do the moment he got home – undo the crane he’d made with his Meccano last hols and start on the swing bridge like Dawson said he’d made (he’d let Polly help him undo the crane but not actually make the bridge), eat chocolate cake for tea with walnuts and crystallised violets on it and Mum would see to it that he got a walnut with his slice …
‘You know the other thing Galbraith said?’
‘What?’
‘He said he’s got an aunt who’s a witch. And he could get her to cast a spell on us if we sneak on him. Do you think she could? I mean, could she actually turn us into something? I mean, look at Macbeth …’ They were going to do Macbeth as the play next term so everyone had been reading it in English. There was a pause while they both contemplated this possibility – much more frightening, Simon thought, than cutting bits off them which would be bound to show in the end. Then Clarkson said nervously, ‘What would you most like not to be turned into?’
‘An owl,’ said Simon promptly, ‘because then I’d have Galbraith watching me every night.’ Then as Clarkson let out a hoot of laughter, he added, ‘Look out. You’re beginning to sound like one!’ This reduced Clarkson to helpless giggles and Simon had to get up and hit him quite a lot with his pillow to get him to shut up. After Clarkson had pleaded pax a good many times, Simon let him go on condition that he shut up for the night. He wouldn’t have, but they heard Galbraith coming back up the drainpipe and at once both feigned sleep. Simon, however, lay awake for hours, wondering about Galbraith’s aunt …
In a much larger dormitory at the other end of the house, Teddy Cazalet lay on his back praying, ‘Please, God, let her not come to the station to meet me. But if she does come, at least let her not kiss me in front of everyone. At least let her not do that. And don’t let her be wearing that awful silly hat she wore for Sports’ Day. Please, God. Best of all – just let her not come.’
‘Comfy?’
‘Mm.’ She felt his moustache feeling for her face in the dark. He made no attempt to kiss her mouth, but to be on the safe side she added, ‘Awfully sleepy. Delicious dinner Mary gave us, didn’t she? Didn’t she look lovely?’
‘She looked all right. Play was a bit wordy, I thought.’
‘Interesting, though.’
‘Oh, yes. He’s a clever chap, Shaw. Mark you, I don’t agree with him. If he had his way, we’d probably all be murdered in our beds.’
She turned on her side. ‘Darling, I warn you, I’m off.’ But after a moment she said, ‘You haven’t forgotten about Bracken fetching Teddy? I mean, I’ll go, of course, but it does help to have Bracken with the trunk.’
‘Better if you don’t. I told Hugh we’d pick up Simon as well and that means twice the clobber.’
‘Teddy’ll be frightfully disappointed if I don’t meet him. I always do.’
‘He’ll be all right.’ He put his arm round her, stroking the tender skin on her shoulder.
‘Eddie – I am tired – truly.’
‘Course you are.’ He gave her shoulder a little pat and turned the other way. He shut his eyes and fell asleep almost at once, but relief, and guilt at her relief, kept Villy awake for some time.
Miss Milliment sat in bed in her small back room in Stoke Newington. She wore a huge bolster-shaped nightdress of flannel and over it one of her father’s pyjama jackets. She was sipping her usual glass of hot water, made by boiling a saucepan on the small gas ring her landlady had grudgingly allowed her to install for this purpose only, and reading Tennyson. The forty-watt bulb that hung from the ceiling was shadeless to afford her more light. Her hair hung in two oyster-shell coloured plaits each side of her soft meandering chins. Every now and then she had to remove her glasses to wipe the mist from them: Tennyson and the hot water combined to occlude. It was years since she had read the Laureate, as she still thought of him, but he had cropped up in her mind in the middle of supper. Why had stuffed sheep’s heart, or, come to that, stewed apples and custard, made her think of Tennyson? Of course, it hadn’t been the food, it had been the eating alone in Mrs Timpson’s front room, a room so hushed and swathed against use that chewing and swallowing, even breathing the dead-cabbage air, seemed daringly disruptive. She ate there every evening, a relentless rota of menus that recurred every two weeks, but this evening, as she sought to cheer herself with thoughts of tomorrow’s lunch at Lansdowne Road, the thought that next week there would be no Friday lunch, nor for six weeks after that, had assailed her. Panic – as sudden and painful as wind on the heart, from which she also suffered – occurred, and quickly, before it could take hold, she smothered it. Those summer holidays when she had been Polly’s age – at Hastings, had it been? (Nostalgia was comforting, but slippery as an old eiderdown.) Or was it Broadstairs? What she remembered was a walled garden and going into a fruit cage with Jack and eating raspberries, only she had not eaten many because there was a bird trapped in the cage and she had spent most of the time trying to shoo it out … but what had the fruit cage to do with Tennyson? Oh, yes, she had left the door of the cage open for the bird and when this was discovered her brother – he was five years older and concise – had told them that it had been she. The punishment had been learning a hundred lines of Idylls of the King by heart. It had been the first time that she had realised the amazing gap between people and the results. Tennyson had been a revelation; the punishment had been Jack’s betrayal. Trying not to recall the miseries that Jack had caused her – he would remain a benignly neutral, even amiable, companion for weeks and then, without warning, abandon her – she wondered why betrayals seemed to stick more in the memory than revelations. Because, after all, she had Tennyson still – and Jack was dead. How she had adored him! It was for him that she had prayed to become prettier – ‘Or pretty at all, God, as a matter of fact.’ It was for him that she slowed down her wits, knowing somehow from the earliest moment that he could not bear to be second. But it was years before she had realised that he was actually ashamed of her, did not want her to be evident when his friends came to the vicarage and excluded her from any outside social arrangements that he made.
The first time that she heard herself described as no oil painting had been when she was twelve, trapped reading up an apple tree while her brother and his friend Rodney strolled beneath. She had started by thinking it would be a lark to hide from them, but almost at once it would have been unbearable not to stay hidden. They had not said much, but they had laughed – Jack had laughed, until Rodney made some remark about her face being shaped like a pear and Jack had said, ‘She can’t help it. She’s quite a good sort, really, it just means that nobody will marry her.’ Why was she going back over this painful wasteland? It was the sort of behaviour that she would advise any of the young people who had been in her charge aga
inst. It was, she supposed, because (when she was tired, of course) she could not help wondering (sometimes) whether there had been any other way for her – anything she could have done that might have changed her life. She had begged Papa to send her to university, for instance, but what money that was left after sending Jack had been kept for setting him up in some profession. So she had had to abandon any idea of a serious teaching career. Then, when Aunt May had died, naturally she had had to stay at home to look after Papa. This, of course, was years after she had lost Eustace, one of Papa’s curates who had enlisted and died an army chaplain in the Transvaal. She had never understood how he had got accepted into the Army since he was even more short-sighted than herself. But he had, and Papa had refused to allow an engagement between them on the grounds that Eustace was to be absent for an unknown amount of time. It would not make any difference, she had promised Eustace, but, of course, in the end it had: she was not sent his ‘things’, she had not even the dignity of having been engaged; no ring – just a few letters and a lock of his hair, sandy red … The letters had aged, the ink turning a rusty brown on the thin, yellowing paper, but the lock of hair had remained exactly the same sandy red colour, unnaturally bright. Papa had been actually glad that Eustace had died, remarking, as though conferring a great accolade, that he would not have liked to share her with anybody. Well, he had been spared that difficulty, had had her to himself well into his late eighties when he became hypochondriac, tyrannical and intermittently senile. Kind friends had described his death as a merciful release, but from her point of view, the mercy came rather late. His pension had died with him, and Eleanor Milliment had discovered freedom a good many years after it could have much practical value to her. Advised by her father’s lawyer, she sold the contents of the cottage since many friends of Papa’s – who were most kind – pointed out to her that she could not possibly afford to live in it. His collections of stamps and butterflies proved unexpectedly valuable, but some watercolours – of northern Italy by Edward Lear – fetched little more than the price of their frames.
Mr Snodgrass had been, he said, deeply disappointed that the sale had realised so little. However, by the time he and other kind advisors had been paid, the remaining capital was invested to bring her in an income of nearly sixty pounds a year which old Brigadier Harcourt-Skeynes had pointed out – unanswerably – was far better than a smack in the eye with a wet fish. So many things, she had thought, would be better than that, that it was hard to see it as a helpful remark, but the Brigadier was famous for his sense of humour. ‘And you, Eleanor, are famous for rambling and going to bed too late,’ she said aloud. She knew nobody now left who used her Christian name and so she used it whenever she needed admonishing. She must pay a visit along the passage, say her prayers and then it would be lights out.
Sybil and Hugh sat in their candlelit dining room eating cold supper (slices of pork pie obtained from Bellamy’s in the Earl’s Court Road and a salad of lettuce, tomato and beetroot, with a bottle of hock – Sybil preferred white wine). The room, in the basement, was dark, and rather hot due to the kitchen range next door; it was also rather small for the quantity of furniture it contained – a two-pedestal oval table, eight Hepplewhite chairs and a long, narrow, serpentine sideboard. In spite of the French windows left ajar for air, the candle flames were motionless.
‘Well, if he’s right, I suppose we will have to.’
‘He couldn’t actually hear a second heart.’
‘But we have to consider the possibility. The likelihood,’ he corrected himself.
‘Darling, you know I don’t want to move – terrible upheaval – anyway, you know I love this house.’ Now that he seemed to be accepting the idea of a move at last she was anxious that he should think she wanted it as little as he.
‘I think it will be rather exciting.’
This duel of consideration for one another that they had conducted for the last sixteen years involved shifting the truth about between them or withholding it altogether and was called good manners or affection, supposed to smooth the humdrum or prickly path of everyday married life. Its tyranny was apparent to neither. Hugh pushed his plate away: he longed to smoke.
‘Do smoke, darling.’
‘Sure you don’t mind?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ll have some gooseberries, though.’
When he had fetched them for her and lit his Gold Flake, she said, ‘Of course, one solution would be to send Polly to boarding school.’
He turned sharply to look at her, and his head stabbed. ‘No – I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he said at last, with exaggerated mildness and as though he had given a trivial point his courteous consideration. To forestall any argument he added, ‘I’ve wanted a study for years. It will give me something interesting to do with my summer evenings while you’re in the country.’
‘I want to choose with you!’
‘Of course, I’ll only sound out the ground. Are we going to have coffee?’
‘If you would like some?’
‘Only if you would …’
In the end they decided against coffee in favour of bed. While Hugh locked the doors Sybil lumbered up the stairs carrying her shoes in one hand. Her feet had swollen so much that she was constantly taking off shoes and then being unable to put them on again.
‘Will you have a look at Polly, darling? I really can’t face more stairs.’
Polly lay on her side facing the door, which was ajar. Her bedside table had been moved so that without turning she would be able to see the tall candlesticks and pottery plate that was propped on it against her bedside lamp. There was a little smear of toothpaste at the side of her mouth. Pompey lay in the crook of her drawn-up knees. He heard Hugh (or noticed the extra light from the opened door), opened his eyes and then shut them at once, as though he’d never seen anyone so boring before in his life.
Phyllis dreamed: she dreamed that she was standing wearing ever such a lovely velvet gown and a ruby necklace, but she knew she wasn’t going to the ball or anything because they were going to cut off her head, which wasn’t fair, really, because all she’d done was say how nice he looked in his pyjamas, but His Majesty said it was adult something and she must die. She had never really liked Charles Laughton – he was nothing like such a gentleman as the Duke of Windsor – and just because she was wearing Merle Oberon’s clothes didn’t mean she was her. It was all a terrible mistake, but when she tried to tell them, she found she couldn’t speak at all – she was screaming inside and no words came out and someone was pushing her and if she didn’t manage to scream they would do it and someone was pushing her on …
‘Phyl! Wake up!’
‘Oh! Oh, I haven’t half had a nightmare!’
But Edna didn’t want to hear about it. ‘You woke me up. You always do that when you have cheese last thing,’ and she got back into her bed and pulled the bedclothes over her.
Having said she was ever so sorry (even the sound of her own voice was reassuring), Phyllis lay with her eyes open, just glad to be her and not wanting to go to sleep in case she changed again into someone else. She knew she should have had the ham and tongue paste on her bread instead of the cheese. She thought about the green cotton with roses on it; it would be nice with a white piqué and white gloves to match; she turned over on her side and in no time she was lying back on one of those basket chairs they had for the garden, and Mr Cazalet was bending over her with a cocktail and saying, ‘You look so pretty, Phyllis, in green. Has anyone ever told you that?’ But they never had, because Ted never said anything like that … Mr Cazalet had a moustache exactly like Melvyn Douglas, which must feel funny when he kissed people but it was the kind of thing one could get used to – give her half a chance, and she would … get used …
Zoë Cazalet adored the Gargoyle Club – adored it. She made Rupert take her on her birthday, at the end of every term, if Rupert sold a picture, on their wedding anniversary, and always before she was going to be stuck in
the country for weeks with the children like now. She loved dressing up: she had two Gargoyle dresses, both backless, one black and one white, and with either she wore her bright green dancing shoes and long dangling white paste earrings that anyone might think were diamonds. She loved going to Soho at night, looking at all the tarts eyeing Rupert and the restaurants lit up with taxis arriving all the time, and then diving down the narrow side road off Dean Street and going up in the stern little lift and hearing the band the moment the doors opened – straight into the bar, with the Matisse drawings; she didn’t think they were frightfully good, though, which shocked Rupert, who said they were. They would have a drink at the bar, gin and it. There would always be one or two handsome, clever-looking men drinking alone and she enjoyed the experienced way in which they looked at her; they knew at a glance she was worth something. Then a waiter would tell them their table was ready, and they’d take a second drink with them into the large room whose walls were lined with little panes of mirror glass. The leader of the band always smiled at her and greeted her as though they went every night, which, of course, they didn’t – couldn’t – by a long chalk. They always chose their dinner and danced until the first course was served and the band played ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ because they knew she loved it. When she’d married him, Rupert hadn’t been much of a dancer, but he’d got good enough – at a quickstep, anyway – for it to be fun.
Now the evening was nearly over; they were sitting with cups of black coffee and Rupert was asking her if she’d like some brandy. She shook her head. ‘Two brandies.’ He caught her eye. ‘You’ll change your mind.’
‘How do you know?’
‘You always do.’
There was a pause; then she said distantly, ‘I don’t like being known for always doing things.’
Damn! he thought. She was set to sulk: only two moves away from flying off the handle.
‘Sweetie! You are full of surprises, but after three years, you must expect me to know some things about you. Zoë!’ He took her hand; it lay passively in his. After a moment, he picked it up and kissed it. She pretended to ignore this, but he knew it pleased her.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 7