Rachel arranged her back against the oak, accepted a gasper from Sid, who lit it for her with the little silver lighter that had been an early present on her first birthday after they had met, nearly two years ago. They smoked for a while in silence. Rachel’s eyes seemed fixed upon the green and golden meadow starred with poppies and oxeye daisies and buttercups, but not as though she saw these things, and Sid watched Rachel’s face. Her fine complexion was pale and drawn, her blue eyes clouded, smudged above her high cheekbones with fatigue, her mouth trembling, making small movements of compression and resolution as though she was afraid of crying. Sid reached out and took one of her hands. ‘Easier if you tell,’ she said.
‘It seems so cruel! All that agony and effort and then that poor little thing born dead! Such ghastly, frightful bad luck!’
‘There is one baby, though. That’s a great deal better than if there had only been one in the first place.’
‘Of course it is. But do you think it will always miss its twin? Aren’t they specially devoted?’
‘Only if they’re identical, I believe.’
‘Yes, that’s right, I’d forgotten. The awful thing is that I can’t help being glad I wasn’t there for the second part. I should have blubbed.’
‘Darling, you weren’t, and if you had been you probably wouldn’t have blubbed out of consideration for Sybil, but if you had it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, you know. Crying isn’t a crime.’
‘No, but it’s unsuitable when you get to be my age.’
‘Is it?’
Looking at Sid’s tender, ironical expression, Rachel said slowly, ‘Well, we were brought up to think that part of growing up was learning not to cry at things. Except music and being patriotic and things like that.’
‘Elgar would be a hole-in-one, you mean?’
This made Rachel laugh. ‘Dead right. I wonder what the Cazalets did for tears before Elgar!’
‘We don’t have to consider the Dark Ages of the Cazalets.’
‘We do not.’ She took the little white handkerchief from her wrist and wiped her eyes. ‘How absurd one is!’
Then they began to talk about themselves. Rachel asked about the seaside holiday that Evie wanted to go on, and Sid said how much she did not want to go, leaving out only the fact that it was going to be very difficult to afford – Rachel’s affluence and Sid’s lack of it embarrassed them both – and Rachel said did she feel she had to go because Evie really needed it, in which case, why not go to Hastings, and then they could both come to Home Place for lunch, etc. But Sid said that she was afraid of Evie finding out about them – her and Rachel.
‘But, darling, there’s nothing really for her to find out!’
This was both true and untrue, Sid knew. She said. ‘Well, she’s a very jealous person. Possessive.’
‘You are all she has in the world. I think that’s understandable.’
She makes me all she has in the world, Sid thought, but did not say so. Like many people who criticised and urged others to be more open, she preserved thickets of secrecy for herself. In this case, she called it loyalty to Evie; Rachel, incapable of manipulative practices, would not in the least understand them in anyone else. Then Rachel sighed with contentment, and said, ‘It is so lovely that you’re here now,’ with such heartfelt affection, that Sid was able to put her arms round her and kiss her for the first time that day, an exquisite but different pleasure for each of them.
Hugh, although he hoped he had concealed it, had been shocked by the sight of Sybil. She lay under a clean sheet flat on her back with her hair loose on the square white pillow and beside all this white her face had a grey, waxy appearance and her eyes were closed. He thought she looked as though she was dying but Mrs Pearson, who had answered the door, said cheerfully, ‘Here’s your husband to see you, Mrs Cazalet,’ as though nothing very much was the matter. ‘I’ll just pop down and see to some tea for her,’ she added and rustled out.
Hugh sought a chair, and drew it up to the bed.
Her eyes had opened when she heard Mrs Pearson, and now she looked at him without expression. He took her hand and kissed it; she frowned slightly, shut her eyes again, and two tears rolled slowly out. ‘Sorry. It was twins. I slipped. Sorry.’ She made some small movement in the bed and flinched.
‘Darling girl, it’s all right.’
‘No! He tried to make her breathe. She never breathed. All that and she never lived.’
‘I know, darling. But what about the lovely boy? May I see him?’
‘He’s over there.’
As Hugh gazed at the profile of his son, lying on his side and sternly asleep, she said, ‘He’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with him!’ Then she added, ‘But I know you wanted a daughter.’
He came back to her. ‘He looks marvellous. And I have a very nice daughter.’
‘She was so much smaller! So tiny – pitiful. When I touched her, her head was still warm. No one will ever have known her – but me. Do you know what I wanted?’
‘No.’ He found it difficult to speak.
‘I wanted her back inside me – to keep her safe.’ She looked at him with streaming eyes. ‘I really wanted that.’
‘I want to take you in my arms,’ he said, ‘but it’s difficult when you’re flat on your back.’ Then, unable to stop himself, he gave one dry sob, and held her hand to his face.
At once, she raised herself and was holding him. ‘It’s all right. I wanted you to know, but not to – don’t be sad! It isn’t as though – when he wakes, you’ll see how beautiful he is – you mustn’t be sad – remember Polly – darling …’ And as she held him, comforting him about her own grief, he began to recognise the extent of it and his pity for her was dissolved by her love. He took her in his arms and laid her carefully back on the pillow, smoothing her hair, softly kissing her mouth, telling her that she was right, that they had Polly, and that he loved her and his new son. When Mrs Pearson came back with the tea they were holding hands.
Hearing that Polly and Simon were going to see their new brother, who had been put in his basket in Hugh’s dressing room for the purpose, the other children clamoured to be allowed to go, too. Afterwards, when Villy went to say goodnight to Lydia she overheard her and Neville discussing the baby.
‘I simply didn’t like him,’ Neville was saying. I can’t see why anyone would like him.’
‘He did look a bit – red and wrinkly – like a tiny old person.’
‘If he starts like that, what do you think he’ll turn into?’
‘I tremble to think.’
‘You tremble to think,’ he scoffed. ‘I don’t tremble. I just think he’s horrible. I’d rather have a Labrador than him—’
‘Neville! After all, he is a human bean.’
‘He may be. He may not.’
At this point, Villy, straightening her face, interrupted them.
After Polly had seen her new brother, Hugh said that he wanted to talk to her.
‘Now?’ She had planned to play Monopoly with Louise and Clary.
‘Yes.’
‘Here?’
‘I thought we’d take a turn in the garden.’
‘All right, Dad. I must just tell the others. I’ll meet you in the hall in five secs.’
He took her to the seat by the tennis court and they both sat on it. There was a short silence, and Polly began to feel anxious.
‘What is it, Dad?’ His face was looking very craggy which it did when he was tired. ‘Nothing bad?’
‘Well, it is, rather.’
She caught the sleeve of his coat. ‘It’s nothing about Mummy, is it? You wouldn’t let me see her! She’s – perfectly – all right, isn’t she?’
‘No, no,’ he said, stricken by her face. ‘No. Mummy is simply very, very tired. She went to sleep and I didn’t want us to wake her. You’ll see her in the morning. No, it’s—’ and then he told his carefully prepared tale. How he had had to go home to collect the baby’s things, and how,
coming down from the nursery floor, he had seen Pompey lying on the bed and had gone to give him a stroke, and found that he was dead – had obviously just quietly died in his sleep, which was terribly sad, but from his point of view was the best way for a cat to die. ‘He wouldn’t have known anything, Poll – just gone to sleep and not woken up. Which is,’ he said, looking at her earnestly, ‘of course, much worse for you than for him.’
‘Which is, of course, the best way round,’ she said. She had gone white, and her mouth was trembling. ‘How simply awful for you! To just go in and find him like that! Poor Dad!’ She threw her arms around him, weeping bitterly. ‘Oh, poor Pompey to be dead! He wasn’t awfully old – why would he die like that? Do you think he thought I wasn’t coming back, and—’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t that. And we don’t know how old he was. He was probably much older than he looked.’ He had been acquired in a carrier bag from Selfridge’s – a present from her godmother, Rachel, for her ninth birthday. ‘He was grown up when you got him.’
‘Yes. It must have been a frightful horrible shock for you.’
‘It was. Want a hanky?’
She took it, and blew her nose twice. ‘He must have used up his nine lives. Dad! You didn’t – just throw him away, did you?’
‘Good Lord, no! As a matter of fact, I brought him down here. I thought you might like to give him a proper funeral.’
She shot him a look of such radiant gratitude, that his heart lurched. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I might quite like to do that.’
On their way back to the house, they discussed Pompey’s remarkable life – or lives: run over three times, marooned at the top of a tree for two days until the fire brigade got him down, shut in the wine cellar for nobody knew how long … ‘But that’s only five of them,’ Polly said sadly.
‘He probably used some of them up before you knew him.’
‘That must be it.’
As they neared the house, she said, ‘Dad! I’ve been thinking. It might not mean that he had nine lives as the same cat; it might mean that he’s simply going to be nine different cats. Well, eight more.’
‘It might. Well,’ he finished, ‘if you come across a kitten who looks as though he might be Pompey having another life, let me know, and I’ll get him for you.’
‘Oh, Dad, would you? I’ll keep a strict look out.’
That was the beginning of that summer, which merged in many of their minds with other summers, but was remembered chiefly as the summer that young William was born, and there was that sad matter of the other baby; but remembered by Polly as the summer that Pompey died and his splendid funeral; remembered by old William Cazalet as the summer he clinched the deal over buying the Mill Farm down the road; remembered by Edward as the summer when, offering to stand in for Hugh at the office, he met Diana for the first time; remembered by Louise as the summer she got the Curse; remembered by Teddy as the summer when he shot his first rabbit and his voice started going funny; remembered by Lydia as the summer she got locked in the fruit cage by the boys who forgot her, went off to play bicycle hockey and then to lunch and nobody found her until half-way through lunch (it was Nan’s day off) and she’d worked out that when gooseberries were over, she’d die of nothing to eat; remembered by Sid as the summer when she finally understood that Rachel would never leave her parents, but that she, Sid, could never leave Rachel; remembered by Neville as the time his loose tooth came out when he was on his fairy cycle which he could only dismount by running into something so he swallowed the tooth and didn’t dare tell anyone, but waited in terror for it to bite him inside; remembered by Rupert as the summer when he realised that in marrying Zoë he had lost the chance of being a serious painter, would have to stick to school-mastering to provide her even with what she thought of as the bare necessities; remembered by Villy as the summer when she got so bored that she started to teach herself to play the violin and made a scale model of the Cutty Sark which was too large to put into a bottle, something she had done with a smaller ship the previous summer; remembered by Simon as the holidays Dad taught him to drive, up and down the drive in the Buick; remembered by Zoë as the frightful summer when she was three weeks late and thought that she was pregnant; remembered by the Duchy as the summer that the tree paeony first flowered; remembered by Clary as the summer she broke her arm falling off Joey when Louise was giving her a riding lesson and when she sleepwalked into the dining room when they were all having dinner and she thought it was a dream and Dad picked her up and carried her to bed; remembered by Rachel as the summer she actually saw a baby being born, but also the summer when her back really started to go wrong, was only intermittently right for the rest of her life. And remembered by Will, whose first summer it was, not at all.
PART TWO
HOME PLACE
Late Summer 1938
‘I wonder why,’ Jessica asked herself yet again, ‘he’s so particularly awful before we go away?’ It wasn’t that he hadn’t been asked. Edward and Villy were always charming to him, but he wouldn’t come with them. Worse, he didn’t altogether stay away either: usually, as now, he said he would probably turn up for the last weekend of the fortnight, which somehow seemed like a threat, and at the same time didn’t stop him from making her feel that she was wilfully abandoning him. But a free country holiday for the children was not to be rejected and, if she was honest with herself (which of course she thought she invariably was) she could do with some country air, not having to cook, to worry about stretching the housekeeping money with all four children at home needing quantities of food that it made her exhausted even to think about – let alone the washing and ironing. Oh, the bliss of sitting on a lawn sipping a gin and lime while somebody else cooked dinner!
He was back again, standing in the bedroom doorway, waiting with exaggerated patience for her to shut her suitcase. He always insisted upon loading the car for her, which was a sort of coals-of-fire kindness. As a matter of fact, even with the roof rack it took a bit of doing for five of them, but he made a regimented meal of it – insisting upon everybody’s luggage being stacked on the pavement beside the car before he would begin.
‘Sorry, darling,’ she said as brightly as she could.
He picked up the case and raised his eyebrows. ‘Anybody would think you were going away for six months,’ but he said it every time she ever went away, and she’d long ago stopped explaining that one needed as much for two weeks as for six months. Watching him limp heavily down the stairs with the case she felt familiar urges of guilt and pity. Poor Raymond! He hated his job – bursar at a large local school – he was a man who needed physical action to feel good-humoured and his leg precluded that entirely. He had been brought up with money and now had none, excepting for uncertain expectations from a fractious aunt, who at regular intervals implied that she might have changed her mind and would leave him her art collection – one Watts, a Landseer and over five hundred queasy watercolours painted by her late husband – instead of her money. But if he had the money it wouldn’t last: he’d use it up on some hopeless, mad idea. He was not much good at working with people – things got on his nerves and he flew off the handle at unexpected moments – but on the other hand he had no business sense whatsoever and therefore needed a partner. Any minute now he would give up his present job, she knew, in favour of some new scheme, but any money for that would have to come out of selling this house to go somewhere even less congenial and cheaper. Not that she liked the house (a semi-detached Tudor bijou gem, as she described it when she had wanted to make Edward laugh), erected soon after the war by speculative builders as part of the growing ribbon development along a main road to East Finchley. It had mean little rooms, passages so narrow that it was difficult to walk along them carrying a tray without barking your knuckles, and already there were long slanting cracks in the walls, the casement windows had warped and let in the rain, and the kitchen always smelled of damp. It had a long, narrow back garden at the end of which was a shed that Raymond h
ad built when he had his mushroom-growing venture. It was now used by Judy as a house in which she could have her friends – a mercy, really, because being the youngest she had the smallest room, which was so small that there was no room for anything else besides her bed and her chest of drawers.
‘Jessica! Jessica!’
‘Daddy wants you, Mummy!’
‘It’s the milkman, Mummy. He wants to be paid.’
She paid the milkman, sent Christopher to hurry the older girls, went into the drawing room to make sure she had shut the piano and covered it with the paisley shawl against the sun, told Judy to go to the lavatory and finally, when she could think of nothing else to do, went out of the front door, down the crazy-paving path to join the jigsaw front gate – now open, with Nora sitting upon it – to watch the final packing arrangements.
‘The object of the enterprise, Christopher, in case you hadn’t realised, is to stop the cases slipping.’
‘I know, Dad.’
‘You know, you know? How absolutely extraordinary that it didn’t occur to you to put some rope through the handles, then! I suppose I have to conclude that you simply aren’t very bright.’
Christopher went scarlet, climbed onto the running board and began to thread the rope through the handles. Watching his thin paper-white arms below his rolled-up sleeves and his shirt tail hanging out from his trousers as he stretched up, Jessica felt love and hatred converge in her at the spectacle of her son and her husband doing respectively their best and worst. She looked up at the sky: the earlier blue had faded to a milky pale grey, there was not a breath of wind, and she wondered whether they’d reach Sussex before a thunderstorm.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 21