When they lay together in the dark, holding hands as they often did, she said, ‘At least Simon isn’t old enough.’
And glad that she should end the day with this comfort, he said heartily, ‘Nothing like!’
‘… she is!’
‘Nonsense, darling, she simply had a headache.’
‘It wasn’t that. She’s in love with you.’
‘For God’s sake! She’s a sort of niece!’
‘If you’ve been painting her all this time, you must have noticed!’
Rupert hooked his arm in hers. ‘Well, I didn’t. You always say that men don’t notice things like that. I’m a man.’
They were walking up the hill back to Home Place. It was dark and overcast; a thin white mist veiled the ground of the large hop field that had once belonged to Mill Farm. After what felt to him like a companionable silence, he said, ‘Anyway, she’s a child. Only nineteen.’
‘How old was I when you married me?’
He stopped. ‘Oh, Zoë, my dear! All right. There is no earthly reason why I should not be in love with her. She is nineteen, very lovely to look at, and you have been absent far too long. But the fact is, I’m not. Anyway, how do I know what you’ve been up to in London?’
‘I told you – I only saw a girl I was at school with.’ She began to walk ahead of him up the drive.
Oh dear, she’s going to be cross with me and sulk, he thought, and caught up with her. ‘I was only teasing you,’ he said. ‘I know you’ve had a hard time with your mother. I really admire you for being so good and staying home so long. It must have been very dull. I’m glad you saw your friend.’
They had reached the little white gate that led onto the front lawn and main door. He pulled her towards him and saw that her eyes were glistening.
‘Such a beautiful girl,’ he began – but she stared at him as though for once she did not want to hear that.
‘It’s all I am,’ she said. ‘I’m nothing else!’ and turned and ran ahead of him into the house.
As he shut the gate and followed her – slowly – he thought that she was desperately overtired with all her unaccustomed nursing. Then he remembered that she’d slept the whole afternoon. It must be the time of the month for her, he thought. But she’d had her period just before she went to London – which meant that it wasn’t due for at least a week. It couldn’t be that.
Then he wondered whether she was right about Angela; pretty dim of him not to have noticed if she was. But what could he have done about it if he had known? He hadn’t led her on or anything like that. It was – if it was anything – just a phase in her life. Then he thought what cant that was. It was what older people always said about inconvenient feelings or behaviour of the young; as though they were not subject to phases – what a word for it, anyway! But she hadn’t asked him anything about his decision as to going into the firm or not, which had been a relief because he still hadn’t made up his mind and, if the Brig and Hugh were right, it would get made up. He’d be called up, or he might even get into one of the Services first.
By now he had reached the door of Clary’s room, intending to look in on her to make sure she was all right before he went to bed. But a notice on her door said ‘OSCAR IS HERE. PLEASE DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR AT NIGHT.’ Who the hell was Oscar? He didn’t know. He listened for a moment, but there was no sound from within. The whole house was quiet. If he did go away, who would look after Clary? She would stay here, and she would have Miss Milliment, who, it had become clear to him after dinner, was very fond of Clary. He went to the bathroom, had a pee, and then leant out of the open window. The white mist lay over the kitchen garden, the air smelled faintly of cold woodsmoke; an owl hooted like a spectral foghorn once, a silence, and then twice more. If he was on his own, he would have gone to look at his picture to see if he had finished it, pretty sure he had but sometimes it was difficult to know when to stop. Isobel would have come and looked at it with me, he thought, and buried her again because thoughts of her always seemed to connect with a kind of disloyalty that he could not afford. It was only when approaching their bedroom door at last and assembling excuses for her if she was sulking, or provocatively chatting and dawdling in half her clothes, that he was suddenly struck by what she had said when he had started to tell her she was beautiful. ‘I’m nothing else!’ A fearful and costly truth – was it? But he could not bear it for her. A surge of protective love encrusted his honesty; if she said anything more about that, he would deny it.
In the room, which was almost dark with only his small bedside lamp alight, she was in bed, so still and quiet that he thought she was asleep. When he got into bed and touched her shoulder, she turned and threw herself into his arms, without a word.
On Saturday morning, the Duchy woke as usual when the early-morning sun streamed through her white muslin curtains and fell in a wide stripe across her narrow hard little white bed. The moment she was awake, she got up: lolling about in bed was a modern (soft) habit that she deplored, just as she considered early-morning tea unnecessary, even decadent. She put on her blue dressing gown and slippers and padded off to the bathroom where she had an uncomfortably tepid bath: hot water was another thing she was chary of – she considered it to be bad for the system and in any case spent only enough time in the bath to wash properly. Back in her room, she unwound the plait of hair that she had pinned up for her bath, and brushed it out for fifty strokes. Like her daughter, she favoured blue and her clothes, summer and winter, were much the same: a dark blue jersey skirt, a paler blue cotton or silk shirt, and a cardigan-like jacket. She wore pale grey stockings and shoes with two straps and low heels. Then she sat at her dressing table – draped in white muslin, but with hardly anything upon it excepting her tortoiseshell brushes initialled in silver – a brush, a comb, a shoehorn and a buttonhook comprised the set – and put up her hair. She had a fine complexion, a broad brow, over which the hair was looped, and a heart-shaped face with no trace of a double chin. She had been a beauty, and at seventy-one was still an unusually good-looking woman, but seemed now, and in fact always had been, unconscious of her appearance, only looking in a glass to see whether her hair was neat. Her final touches were slipping on her gold wrist-watch, a wedding present from William, and tucking the tiny lace-trimmed handkerchief under the strap so that it concealed the small mulberry-coloured birthmark on her wrist. Then she took the mother-of-pearl and sapphire cross on its silver chain and hung it around her neck. She was ready for the day. During the half hour of her ablutions and toilet her mind had been full of embryonic lists of things that must be done that morning. She stripped back her bed to air it – she came from the feather-bed era when the airing of beds was a serious matter – opened the windows wide so that the room should also be thoroughly aired and went down to the morning room where she breakfasted earlier than the rest of the family on Indian tea and toast, one slice spread with butter, the other with marmalade – to have put both on one slice was, in her opinion, an absurd waste. With her second cup of tea she took a used envelope from her desk, and began to write the lists under different headings. With fifteen in the house – not counting five indoor servants, who, of course, had to be counted where food was concerned – the housekeeping had become quite a large matter. She would go into Battle with Tonbridge directly she had seen Mrs Cripps and discussed the weekend menus. Hugh and Edward would be ferrying the family to and fro to collect their gas masks, but she realised now that the servants would also have to be taken to Battle by him, and when on earth could Mrs Cripps be spared for such an outing? After lunch, she decided.
Then there was Sid’s sister to be collected from the station, some time in the morning. Sid and Rachel could be put to work. Either they could get the camp beds, now cluttering up the hall, into the squash court where at least they would be out of the way, or they could put the finishing touches to Tonbridge’s ex-cottage that she had been making ready for the overflow. She had finished machining the curtains yesterday. But before decid
ing about this, she really must make sure that William had not actually invited twenty-four people to sleep in the camp beds; she so much hoped not, but on the other hand what on earth had possessed him to buy them if he hadn’t? He did not seem to have considered bedding, pillows, blankets, and the like, but he was a man and that was to be expected. Buying bedding, however, would mean going to Hastings, and even if it was ordered, it would be unlikely to get delivered before next week. And next week, they might be at war. Again!
The Duchy was of a generation and sex whose opinions had never been sought for anything more serious than children’s ailments or other housewifely preoccupations, but this was not to say that she did not have them; they were simply part of the vast portmanteau of subjects never mentioned, let alone discussed, by women, not, as in the case of their bodily functions, because it was not seemly, but because, in the case of politics and the general administration of the human race, it was useless. Women knew that men ran the world, had the power and, corrupted by it, fought on the slightest provocation for more, while injustice permeated their lives like words through a stick of seaside rock. Take her unmarried sisters, for instance, educated, as she had been, only to marry, but even that career, the only one regarded by men as suitable, meant their dependence upon some man who might choose them, and in the cases of poor Dolly and Flo, nobody ever had. And then, if you did marry, would any woman in her right mind choose to have her sons go to France as Edward and Hugh had done, last time? She had never expected either of them to come back – had lived in an agony of secret tension through those four and a half years, when, it seemed, everybody else’s sons were killed or shattered. When she heard that Hugh had been wounded and was to be invalided home, she had locked herself where no one would find her in the spare room at Chester Terrace and cried with relief, with anguish for Edward still at the front, finally with rage at the horrible lunacy of it all – that she should be sobbing with relief because Hugh’s health might merely be wrecked for life. This time, surely, Edward was too old to go, but they would take Rupert and, if it went on long enough, Teddy, the eldest grandson. And she had always been supposed to be so lucky because William had been fifty-four in 1914 – deemed, in spite of his efforts, too old. His sons had called him the Brigadier as a kind of teasing recompense.
Her tea was cold and she was not getting on with things. She began another list. The shortages of all kinds of things the last time flooded her mind. She felt that hoarding was improper; nevertheless a few dozen extra Kilner jars for bottling fruit, isinglass for preserving eggs, and salt for runner beans, of which they had a bumper crop this year, was not exactly hoarding. After a pause she added ‘packet of sewing-machine needles’ to the list. Enough of that. The house was full of sounds now: children’s voices, the hall being laid for their breakfast, William’s wireless in his study, he must be back from his early-morning ride, Wills crying upstairs and, outside, McAlpine mowing the tennis court. It seemed impossible that they were on the brink of another war. She rang the bell for Eileen to bring fresh tea for William and her sisters whom she could hear coming slowly down the back stairs bickering gently with each other – a habit that drove William mad with boredom. She picked up her lists, went to the window and gazed longingly at her new rockery where she could easily spend the morning if there was not so much else to do. Rachel and Sid were walking slowly down the path beside it; she resisted the impulse to join them, but they saw her and started for the house. Rachel knew that her father could not be left to breakfast alone with her aunts, and Sid was a dear and read The Times to him to damp down Dolly’s and Flo’s sometimes quite frighteningly general conversation. Sid was a dear and she enormously enjoyed playing with her; she had been told that the sister was a bit of a wet blanket, but this wasn’t the time for picking and choosing guests. Rachel was walking as though her back hurt her – her slightly stooping, hesitant walk. It would not do at all for her to move the beds, but she could be useful in a dozen other ways, as indeed she always was. It was wonderful to have Rachel at home; of course she had not wanted to marry, was perfectly happy with her charity work and helping her father. She was completely free to do as she pleased, so there was no comparison with Dolly and Flo at all.
When Eileen arrived with fresh tea and toast, she realised that her sisters had mysteriously not appeared, which meant that they must have waylaid William in his study interrupting him from hearing the eight o’clock news. She went to the window and called to Rachel just as Dolly and Flo entered the room. Their progress, as always, was impeded by their gigantic work-bags filled with crochet and petit point, and their nearly as large battered handbags in which they kept their various patent medicines, scarves, spectacles, little white handkerchiefs reeking of lavender water and faded chiffon squares wrapped round a swansdown puff impregnated with peachy powder, frequently applied in Dolly’s case although this turned her complexion, naturally that of a mildewed strawberry, into an almost spectral mauve. They had been listening to the news, they said, but there wasn’t any really. ‘But dear William had his wireless facing the wrong way, so it was rather difficult to hear,’ Flo said. She was a little deaf and full of theories of this kind.
‘Is the dining-room breakfast in?’ the Duchy enquired of Eileen.
‘Mrs Cripps is dishing up now, m’m.’
Rachel and Sid arrived, and Dolly instantly asked Rachel to be mother, an invitation that if he had been there would have irritated William beyond measure, the Duchy knew, both the manner of it, and that it should be made at all. Naturally, in the absence of his wife, his daughter would pour out. She left them to it, gathered up her lists and went in search of Mrs Cripps.
When Hugh assembled the first batch of children for the collection of gas masks, Christopher and Teddy were nowhere to be found, but the car was full, anyway, with Sybil, Wills, Polly, Simon, Neville and Lydia. It was agreed with Edward, when Hugh collected the last two from Mill Farm, that he would bring another contingent consisting of Nora, Louise, Judy, Angela and the two missing boys. Villy said that she would take her mother, Jessica and Miss Milliment, Phyllis and Ellen with her when she went to collect the meat and other provisions. Hearing this, Edward felt he was getting off lightly.
Hugh patiently answered the barrage of questions when they were not scornfully answered for him by another child than the questioner.
‘What do they smell like?’
‘Silly. They won’t smell of anything – just air.’
‘How do you know? How would Polly know, Uncle Hugh?’
‘I know because Dad was gassed in the war and I’ve read about it.’
‘Did you have a gas mask, Uncle Hugh?’
‘Yes.’
‘How could you get gassed if you had one? They can’t be much good.’
‘Well, there was gas about for rather a long time. We had to take them off sometimes, to eat and so on.’
‘We can’t not eat!’
‘Yes, we could. We could choose between getting thinner and thinner or being gassed. Which would you rather, Uncle Hugh?’
‘Don’t be so stupid, Neville.’
‘The one thing I’m not is stupid. Only a very stupid person would think I was stupid. Only a very, very stupid—’
‘That will do, Neville,’ Sybil said firmly, and it did.
‘In any case, you won’t have to wear your masks, this is just a precaution.’
‘What’s a precaution?’
‘It’s being careful before you have to,’ Neville said at once. ‘I’ve never seen the point of it, myself,’ he added rather grandly; the idea that he was stupid still rankled.
‘You’re very silent, Poll,’ her father said, but precluded from any private confidence by all the others she just said, ‘No, I’m not.’
In the back of the car she exchanged glances with Simon, also silent: he was worried about something. Once, years ago, she would have known what it was without his saying a word, but he had been away so much and for so long at boarding schools t
hat she no longer knew and he would not now say a word.
Lydia and Neville were chattering on about poison gas – what it smelled like and whether you could see it, and her father said that one kind smelled of geraniums. ‘That’s lewisite,’ she said quickly before she could stop herself.
In the front of the car, Hugh raised his eyebrows and glanced at Sybil. Then he said, ‘I think that gas is most unlikely, you know, Polly. It wasn’t very economic last time. Weather conditions have to be right and so on. And, of course, if we all have masks, it will be less worthwhile than ever.’
‘What would be a good idea,’ said Neville, ‘would be if the Germans let down huge enormous fly papers about a quarter of a mile long, from their aeroplanes, and people would stick to them like bluebottles and they wouldn’t be able to get off it – would just be stuck waving their arms and legs until they were dead. I think that’s a very good idea,’ he added, as though someone else had thought of it.
‘If you don’t shut up,’ Simon said savagely, ‘I’ll knock your block off!’
And Neville, who wasn’t absolutely sure what his block was, became completely silent. In the front, Hugh and Sybil tacitly conspired to take no notice, but Hugh wondered whether he was dreading his new school, and Sybil whether he was sickening for chicken pox. He was usually such a gentle, easy-going child, she thought, as she cradled the sleeping Wills in her arms and began to dread waking him with the prospect of a gas mask.
Even after the fight, Teddy had remained so angry that he could hardly think about the whole business at all. The moment he tried, it was like opening the damper on a furnace: rage flared in him, he wanted to kill Christopher and he loathed Simon. He was used to being the leader of his enterprises and Simon, two years younger, had always been his faithful henchman, happy to do whatever Teddy thought up. Before, when Christopher had stayed in the summer, he’d had something wrong with him which meant that he couldn’t play games (which he was no good at, anyway), or, as his mother had said, ‘do too much’, whatever the hell that meant. So he had read books, and Teddy and Simon had played some token uneasy games of cards with him and spent their days playing bicycle polo, going for long rides, going to the beach, playing tennis, squash and some of the family games that the girls still wanted to play and that they secretly still enjoyed although they professed to scorn them. But this time Simon had sneaked off with Christopher, lied to Teddy about why he couldn’t do things with him, as Teddy could now see, and never even considered asking him to join in whatever it was. He had made efforts to find out from Simon what it was, but when Simon, nearly in tears, had persisted in saying that it was Christopher’s secret and he couldn’t tell, Teddy had sent him to Coventry, had refused to answer or speak to Simon at all. But the more Simon had refused to tell him, the more passionately curious he had become: it must be something quite large and serious for Simon to hold out. So he resolved to go back to the wood early in the morning to see what he could discover. He would be able to stiffen the terms when they had their meeting if he knew what he was making terms for. So he crept out of their room, leaving Simon asleep, coaxed one of the maids to give him thick marmalade sandwiches, and set off for the wood.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 38