‘It isn’t.’ Simon, really shocked at Teddy’s awful lie, came out of the tent. ‘The Brig gave it to all of us. It’s mine as much as it is yours.’
‘It isn’t at all Christopher’s, though.’
‘There isn’t room in it for three.’
‘That doesn’t matter in the least. You can sleep outside. You’re only the men, after all.’
‘You’re changing the whole game!’
‘Ah! Am I? Well, what is it I’m changing it from?’
Christopher, who had gone very quiet, now said, ‘You state what your terms are. Then I’ll consider them and tell you tomorrow whether I can accept them or not. You’d better write them down.’
‘You’re not prepared to tell me what you were going to do now?’
‘No. And if you tell anybody at all about this place, I won’t ever tell you.’
Teddy looked at him. ‘Do you want a fight?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘Not particularly. And what does that mean, may I ask? That you’re afraid? I bet you are. You’re not only a sneak, you’re a coward.’
‘I am not!’
Simon crawled out of the tent; they were glaring at each other. Teddy was bright red, and Christopher was white with rage. Then Teddy took out his penknife and opened the largest blade. Oh, God! Simon thought. He can’t use a knife when Christopher hasn’t got one. He can’t be as horrible as that!
But what he did was walk over to the tent and stab the roof and then make a large gash in it. With an inarticulate cry of fury, Christopher went for him.
It was a pretty even fight, Simon thought. In spite of Christopher being a year older than Teddy, he was nothing like so sturdily built and, besides, Teddy was learning to box at school. But Christopher had longer arms, and he was wrestling, trying to catch Teddy off balance and throw him to the ground, so that whenever Teddy got near enough to punch, he was in danger of being grabbed and thrown. Fury made them both reckless, however, and two of Teddy’s punches landed on Christopher’s face. His nose started to bleed and one of his eyes began to look funny.
It ended because Christopher managed to grab Teddy’s right shoulder; he gave it a heave and a twist and threw him so violently to the ground that Teddy was winded. He stood over his adversary panting for a second, then turned and went to the stream to wash his face. When Teddy could speak, he said, ‘Right, I’ve told you my terms. I’m blasted well not writing them down. If you don’t agree to them by eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, I declare war.’ He got up, rubbing his right shoulder, and walked away. He did not look at Simon.
There was a silence. Simon picked up Teddy’s knife and then went to look at the tent. The gash was not very big: they ought to be able to sew it up or put the ground-sheet inside the tent under it, so that rain, if there was any, didn’t ruin the things inside. Then he went over to Christopher who was kneeling by the stream. He had taken off his shirt, and was mopping his face with it; he had a knobbly white back and didn’t look at all like a person who would win a fight.
‘You were jolly good,’ he said. ‘You won, really.’
Christopher stopped mopping his face and Simon saw that apart from his puffed-up eye and the red trickle that was starting again from his nose, he was crying. He squatted down beside him. The great thing when people cried was to cheer them up to stop them. ‘It was frightful bad luck, him finding us,’ he said. ‘But he won’t tell anyone, you bet. He wants to be in on it himself. And we can mend the tent.’
But Christopher, brushing his nose with his hand and looking at the smear on his knuckles, said, ‘But I’m supposed to be against fighting. And I started it!’ His good eye looked so desperate it was almost worse than his bad one.
‘He started it, really. But at least we’ve got the terms to consider.’
‘Yes. We must negotiate.’
Simon did not reply. He thought that negotiate would turn out to mean doing what Teddy wanted.
They were eleven for dinner at Mill Farm, because Villy had invited Rupert and Zoë, feeling that poor Edward was otherwise going to be swamped by her female relations and Miss Milliment. She had also asked Teddy, as she thought it would be nice for Christopher, but Christopher had forgotten to give him the message until it was too late. Judy, Neville and Lydia were ostensibly in bed, but with Ellen comfortably in the kitchen helping Emily dish up, they were playing a rather quarrelsome game of hospital with Lydia as patient (chicken pox), Judy the nurse and Neville, only because he was the boy, being the doctor. Even so, eleven round the table in the long narrow room, made it difficult to hand round the vegetables, as Phyllis – who had come down on the afternoon train – discovered.
Villy put her mother between herself and Jessica; Lady Rydal had behaved all day as though the death of Aunt Lena – whom she had never met – was a personal tragedy that made her coming down to dinner (appearing in public in deep black) a courageous concession that required constant sympathy and support. Jessica was very good about this, adopting the muted, slightly religious tone that was expected of her and that so infuriated her son and her daughter for different reasons – Christopher because he loathed humbug, and Nora because it seemed sacrilegious to pretend anything about God. Villy had also contrived that Edward sat between Zoë and Angela, which she thought would mitigate against the elderly elements of the party, but Angela, who was wearing a shapeless pale grey dress and who had not bothered to make up her face, was quite silent, and looked so washed out that her mother remarked upon it. ‘Darling, I do hope that you are not the next chicken pox victim.’ But she said no, she merely had a splitting headache. Zoë, who usually flirted with Edward (in a perfectly acceptable way, of course), seemed rather off-colour, and Edward had to resort to Christopher’s black eye. ‘I say, old boy, you’ve got a real stunner there? How did you get it?’ And Christopher, for the fourteenth time, said that he had fallen out of a tree. Nora knew this was a lie, and wondered what had happened. Had a quarrel with someone, she thought. Chris had a temper although it never lasted for long. The most successful part of the party – unexpectedly to Villy – was Rupert and Miss Milliment, who talked with great admiration about French painting and from thence to painting of all kinds. Rupert, who had only met Miss Milliment once when Clary had started lessons with her, was enchanted by this surprising lady, dressed in colours that resembled a ripe banana, who adored so many of his favourite painters. But Louise, who sat opposite them, became obsessed by the mounting fragments of spinach and fish that were accumulating in the various folds between Miss Milliment’s chins. She made discreet little wiping gestures, having tried to catch her governess’s eye, which, of course, at that distance, was impossible. It was Nora who dived under the table, came up with Miss Milliment’s napkin and presented it to her saying, ‘I’d dropped my napkin and I seem to have found yours as well; one does so need them with the fish, don’t you find?’
And Miss Milliment immediately took the hint and wiped a lot of her face and, after some thought, her tiny, steel-rimmed spectacles as well. ‘Thank you, Nora,’ she said.
And Louise, who felt furious that she had not thought of such a tactful and impressive ploy, immediately said, ‘But you love Chinese painting as well, don’t you, Miss Milliment? Do you remember the marvellous drawing of the three fishes in the exhibition you took us to?’
‘Yes, indeed, Louise. That was one of your favourites, wasn’t it? An exquisite pen drawing – so simple and perfect. Do you think’, she continued, lowering her voice, ‘that they will be removing some of the great works from our London galleries to a place of safety? I should be grateful to know that.’
‘You mean, if there’s a war?’ said Rupert. ‘I should think they could put a lot of stuff in their basements. Unless, of course, they turn them into air-raid shelters.’
Edward frowned at his brother. He felt it was not on to talk about the Situation in front of old ladies and children. ‘It doesn’t matter what you do as long as it doesn’t frighten the h
orses,’ he said – Cazalet expression for shut up.
But Louise, who did not know, chipped in at once, ‘Mrs Patrick Campbell said that, but I think it was about something rather rude. Not war, anyway.’
‘Who was Mrs Patrick Campbell?’ asked Zoë, and Rupert glanced at her in surprise – not at her not knowing, but her admitting this in public.
‘An actress, but years ago. You can tell that, because it was before motor cars.’
Plates were being cleared, and Phyllis brought two large summer puddings on a tray that was set before Villy.
‘Hooray!’ said Edward. ‘My favourite pudding. You ought to put some raw steak on that eye of yours,’ he added, reverting to Christopher who, Nora saw, turned faintly green at the suggestion.
‘What a disgusting idea!’ she exclaimed. ‘Anyway, we’ve had fish, and I shouldn’t think that would be much good.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Louise pensively. ‘Better than a slap in the eye with an old fish, I should think.’
‘A thoroughly foolish remark,’ said Miss Milliment, who had drunk a glass of wine and was feeling not at all herself, which meant better. ‘Naturally anything would be nicer than that.’
‘A slap in the eye with a wet jellyfish would be worse,’ said Nora and started to giggle.
‘What an absolutely beastly idea!’ Angela turned to her grandmother for support, but Lady Rydal, whose double dangling row of rock-crystal beads swung perilously over the summer pudding, drew herself up and said, ‘Angela darling, girls do not use words like beastly or nasty. You should say horrid, if that is what you mean.’
‘Have some cream,’ Edward said, and winked at her, but she was so full of chagrin that she did not meet his eye.
Polly and Clary were having an uneasy supper in their room. Clary was much better, although some spots still itched, but she was bored. She’d written five short stories that day – there were to be seven, each about a deadly sin – and now she was bored because she was too tired to do anything interesting. Polly was making such an effort not to talk to Clary about the war that she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Oscar dominated the room. In spite of an enormous supper of giblets and milk, he made it plain that their supper would probably have been much better for him. He felt the same about his bed, which Polly had lifted him into several times whereupon, refusing to sit let alone lie down in it, he had waited until she had stopped holding him before jumping out. He then sat washing his white-tipped paws, occasionally passing his tongue, the colour of fresh pink ham, over the rich grey fur on his flanks – not that there was the slightest thing wrong with his appearance. When Polly said his name, he stopped and glared at her with his Siberian topaz eyes and jumped up onto Clary’s bed where he settled cracklingly onto her exercise book.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Clary. ‘I like him, really.’
‘But if he won’t use his bed, do you think he’ll use his lav?’ She had made him a box, with newspaper and a pile of cinders from the greenhouse boiler, which lay in a discreet corner of the room. He hadn’t taken to that, either.
‘I’m sure he will. Cats are awfully clean.’ There was a silence while they both watched Oscar gradually settle down to sleep. Polly found Clary looking at her with a kind of embarrassed appeal. She knows something, Polly thought. If she knows anything, it would be fair to talk about it.
‘Are we thinking about the same thing?’ she said.
‘Why should we be? What are you thinking about?’
‘You first.’
‘Well,’ Clary began. She started to get pink. ‘It’s about lust, really. I sort of know what it is, but not entirely. I wouldn’t bother with it at all, only that it’s one of the deadly sins and I’ve done all the others except for gluttony and that’s going to be about a pig who turns into a boy – or a boy who turns into a pig, I haven’t decided yet. And that.’
‘What?’
‘What I just told you. Lust. What’s your opinion of lust?’
‘Well,’ said Polly slowly. ‘It makes me think of the Old Testament – and tigers. You know, a tiger lusting after his prey.’
‘Really, Poll, I can’t see that a tiger simply trying to get a meal is a deadly sinner. It can’t be that. What I mean is, how do you have it? What does it feel like? Writers have to know these things. I know what all the other ones feel like—’
‘Bet you don’t!’
‘You bet wrong. I bet you know as well.’ She searched in an exercise book for her list. ‘Listen. Pride. When I wrote that story about Jesus being born from the innkeeper’s point of view I thought it was the best story that had ever been written in the world. Gluttony. I took out all the violet and rose creams from the box of chocolates I gave Zoë for Christmas last year and put nasty old coconut crunches from an old box in before I gave it to her. Course I ate the creams. Envy. I envy you and Louise having mothers. Often. Nearly all the time. Avarice. I was too mean to buy a larger box of Glitterwax for Neville for his birthday. I kept the rest of the money to buy my cactus. Sloth—’
‘OK,’ said Polly. ‘You needn’t go on, I’ve done all that sort of thing myself.’
‘But not lust?’
‘Unless one can do it without knowing. And considering how easy it is to do the others, I suppose it’s quite possible. It’s funny, isn’t it? You’d think deadly would mean more difficult.’
‘No wonder there are murders and wars and things,’ Clary said, ‘with everyone sinning away like mad in ordinary life. I think lust’s to do with bodies, and honestly I couldn’t be less interested in those.’
‘Except animals,’ said Polly fondly stroking her love. ‘Does war worry you?’ she added as casually as possible.
‘Is that why you got your dad to bring Oscar down?’
Polly stared at her cousin, confounded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I beseech you not to tell anyone, though.’
‘Oh, well! If there was one we’d stay here for ever – long after chicken pox. It could be quite nice!’
‘It couldn’t! You don’t understand! It will be ten times worse than the last war. You don’t know about that. You don’t know about poison gas and this time there will be far more bombs and everyone will live in trenches with barbed wire and rats – it won’t be like it all happening in France somewhere, it will be everywhere – even here! It will go on until everyone’s dead, I know it will!’ She was crying – past caring whether she frightened Clary or not, almost wanting to frighten her so that some of her own anguish could be shared with someone, at least. But Clary did not seem frightened at all.
‘You’re imagining,’ she said. ‘I often do that.’ She knelt up in bed and hugged Polly. ‘You’ve got me,’ she said ‘and Oscar. There’s not going to be a war. And even if there is, think of history. We always win.’
And although none of this should have been comforting, Polly felt, it actually was. She blew her nose, and it was agreed that she should look up lust in the Brig’s dictionary and/or Miss Milliment could be consulted.
‘She knows everything. She’s bound to know all about lust,’ Clary said. And Polly, as she took their supper tray down to Eileen, felt – compared to the last twenty-four hours – quite hopeful.
After dinner, when the Duchy and Sid were still playing Brahms sonatas, Hugh gave a signal to his wife that meant he would like to retire with her. Outside the drawing room, he took her hand, and they went upstairs, first to the little dressing room where Wills lay in voluptuous sleep, his covers thrown off, one leg in the air. Sybil gently put it down and tucked him up. His eyelids fluttered and he sighed. She picked up the small golliwog that lay on the floor and put it beside him.
‘Where did he get that?’
‘Lydia gave it to him. It was hers. He’s called Golly Amazement. It’s his favourite thing.’
‘A very good name for someone with that expression.’
‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’ She turned off the light and they went next door. ‘What is it, darling? Something’s on your mind
?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Edward would say I’m a scaremonger, but London is quite full of them at present. They’re issuing everybody with gas masks. I’m going to take people tomorrow to get them.’
‘Oh, darling! Where?’
‘Battle probably. The Church Hall, the Brig thinks. He’s going to find out in the morning. He agrees with me.’
‘Will they have them for babies?’ She began to look frightened. ‘Because I won’t if—’
‘Of course they will.’
‘He won’t like it – terribly frightening for a baby.’
‘It will be all right. But we must do all the other children first. I don’t want them frightened. I think Polly is already.’
‘Why?’
‘She wouldn’t have asked me to bring Oscar down if she wasn’t. Has she said anything to you?’
‘No. Hugh …’ she sat on the side of the bed. ‘Oh, God! Hugh, do you really think—’
‘I don’t know, but I think we’ve got to consider that it might.’
‘But nobody wants it! It’s ridiculous! A nightmare! Why on earth should we go to war about Czechoslovakia?’
He tried to tell her why he thought they might have to, but he could see that the reasons were meaningless to her. Eventually, having gone through the motions of accepting his argument, she said, ‘Well, if it does happen, what do you want me to do?’
‘Stay here with the children. We’ll have to see.’
‘But what will you do? I can’t let you stay in London all by yourself.’
‘Darling, I don’t know where I’ll be.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I might be wanted for something or other. Don’t worry. It would probably be a desk job.’ He looked down at his stump. ‘The days of Nelson are over. Or, if Edward goes, I may have to help the Brig run the firm. Wood is going to be needed.’
‘You talk as though you know its going to happen!’
‘For God’s sake! You asked me what I’d do if it did. I’m trying to tell you.’
She looked so stricken that he went to her, and lifted her to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, sweeting. I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 37