The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Anyway, to get back to Zoë – no, I don’t want to do that, except that I will just say that if Dad hadn’t married her it would be me he would be writing to … if he hadn’t married someone else, that is.

  But as all the old men she knew were married, this seemed probable. So she would still just be getting postscripts and the two letters of her own that he had sent.

  ‘Lord Beaverbrook’, she wrote, ‘has become Minister of Aircraft Production.’ It was a wonderful name. She wondered if there was a Lady Beaverbrook. ‘Clarissa Beaverbrook’ she wrote on a separate piece of paper. It looked very grand. Although to people she knew well, she’d have to put ‘Clary Beaverbrook’.

  The news that week did not seem at all good. The Maginot Line, which Miss Milliment had made them trace onto their map, and which she had imagined as a huge kind of long mountain covered with guns and tanks with the soldiers living in tunnels underneath didn’t seem to count at all. The Germans simply went north round it, which as it hadn’t got as far as the sea by a long chalk, anyway, was not really surprising, but it seemed to surprise the grown-ups.

  Wednesday 15 May. There was an awful air raid on a place called Rotterdam yesterday. Thirty thousand civilian casualties. No wonder Holland had to surrender. Now everything seems to be pretty bad in Belgium. Polly says it is all getting like the last war, with the Germans fighting us and the French in France. She says any minute now they will dig trenches and put up masses of barbed wire and it will go on for years just like last time. I must say it is a ghastly prospect. What will become of Polly and me? We can’t simply go on having lessons with Miss Milliment for ever, getting older and older and completely cut off from the world. Polly says that ought to be the least of our worries, but one can never be the least of one’s worries, can one? However selfish it is, there you are with yourself day after day – a situation that cannot be ignored, in my opinion. I feel boredom may overwhelm me. Louise is so lucky having her acting school to go to which means they let her be in London. Of course she has a friend to be with. I couldn’t be at Brook Green by myself – or, anyway, they would think I couldn’t be …

  She began to imagine herself in their house at Brook Green on her own. She could have Grape Nuts for breakfast (no cooking) and then she would put on her coat and go off and sit on the seats in buses near the door so that she could watch everyone. In the afternoons she would go to the cinema, and in the evening she would go home and fry a chop – she had never actually done this but she thought she could buy a few extra chops to start with until she got it right. Money: she’d probably have to sell things. The house was full of stuff in cupboards and in the attic, that nobody would notice. If she particularly liked anyone – like a bus conductor or someone she sat next to at the cinema – she would invite them back to chops and a gin and It, which she knew how to mix from Dad’s drink cupboard. And if they were suitable, she would fall in love with them. That would all be what Aunt Villy called grist to the mill.

  Because the other drawback I have to contend with is that writing isn’t a thing people seem to teach. You can’t go to a writing school like an art school or Louise’s school, and the word school seems to be the key to grown-up approval. So they won’t send me anywhere unless I changed my profession to something that they would count. And Polly, who could probably get them to send her to an art school, says she doesn’t want to leave home at all while the war is on. And I’m running out of books to read. This place is becoming like a desert island, only not nearly so exciting as any of them would be.

  She stopped here, and began gloomily to review the grown-ups round her. She couldn’t think of one of them that she would want to be. Not Aunt Rach – taking the Brig to London on the train every day, and having to type letters for him, although she’d never learned to type so she kept making mistakes and did it very slowly. And then getting back and being told about the six o’clock news by the Duchy and Aunt Syb, and having a rest before dinner because her back was hurting, and then spending the evening knitting socks for seamen with foul-smelling wool and listening to the nine o’clock news and going to bed. Occasionally someone rang her up in the evenings which always seemed to make her more animated, but it must always be a toll call, because she never talked to them for long. ‘God bless,’ Clary sometimes heard her say if she happened to be in the hall outside the Brig’s study where the telephone was. One couldn’t possibly want to be the Duchy because she was so very old, at the end of her life almost, although that was a tremendously sad thought, and she lived such a quiet one that it might easily go on longer than most. Aunt Syb – no definitely not. At the weekends she seemed more or less how she’d always been – except for this last one when Uncle Hugh had said after the six o’clock news that he really wanted to shut their house in London because anyway he needed to be on fire duty quite a lot of nights at the wharf. Aunt Syb had completely broken down, had burst into racking sobs and then rushed out of the drawing room, and Uncle Hugh had gone after her and not come down again for a long time, and then he had come down to get Aunt Rach, and when she got back she said that Aunt Syb had been rather sick because she’d eaten something that had disagreed with her, and that she would spend the week in the country, and they would discuss the house when she was better. She’d spent a lot of Monday in bed, and when she did reappear she looked rotten. She had asked Polly to buy her a bottle of aspirin at the shop, and she’d said please don’t tell the Duchy who was known to disapprove of aspirin. Aunt Rach wanted Dr Carr to come and see her, but Aunt Syb got awfully worked up and said she wouldn’t hear of it. The Duchy made her have arrowroot and Benger’s Food and also tried to make her have Parrish’s Food, but Aunt Syb put that down the wash basin in the bathroom. Polly said, and one couldn’t blame her, it tasted like old iron railings. Neville had once drunk a whole bottle of it (you were meant to have about a dessertspoon in water) and gone about all red in the face and charged up for days – he hadn’t been sick although everyone said he would be. Poor Aunt Syb! Her hair looked awfully dull – like unpolished old brown shoes – and her getting thinner had somehow made her more shapeless, sort of baggy, and she had quite deep marks on her forehead. There was something called change of life that neither she nor Polly had properly fathomed, but it got mentioned that week about the house – not to them, of course, but she heard Ellen and Eileen when they were changing the sheets. Change of life. Just what she wanted, she thought, but not, of course, if it meant you felt rotten. It sounded as though it could be the most marvellous thing, put just like that. No, she certainly wouldn’t want to be Aunt Syb. And of course not Zoë, who now played clock patience all day, when she wasn’t eating or sewing.

  The following weekend Uncle Hugh had come down, of course, bringing Aunt Villy and Louise. Louise looked extremely glamorous: she wore terracotta linen trousers and an emerald green Aertex shirt and a creamy cardigan slung over her shoulders and sandals. She had green eyeshadow and scarlet lipstick and very long hair, and she did exercises every morning that she said was writing the alphabet with her body – one wouldn’t have known, Clary thought. Louise seemed quite prepared to spend time with her and Polly, largely, Clary immediately discovered, because she only wanted to talk about acting and her school, and the grown-ups talked about nothing much but how the war was going, which seemed to be worse and worse.

  ‘I’m absolutely bloody fed up with war talk,’ Louise declared. She took a very small packet of cigarettes out of her pocket and they watched, fascinated, as she proceeded to light one.

  ‘When did you start doing that?’ Polly asked.

  ‘Weeks ago. Everybody smokes at school.’ She blew the smoke out very quickly after each puff. ‘They’re only de Reszke Minors: I can’t afford ordinary-sized cigarettes – none of us can. A lot of people smoke because they can’t afford food,’ she added. This was pounced upon.

  ‘How much are de Minors or whatever they are?’

  ‘Only sixpence for ten.’

  ‘You can buy a chop for fourp
ence. And that would leave you twopence for vegetables and bread, et cetera.’

  Louise looked cross. ‘We haven’t time for stupid things like cooking,’ she said. ‘If you are seriously trying to be an artist, you simply don’t do that sort of thing. One person I know – a boy called Roy Prowse – just has mustard sandwiches for lunch, He’s a brilliant actor – he did the most arresting Lear last week.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Much older than I am, nearly nineteen, but he’s more like someone of twenty – he’s frightfully sophisticated – he’s working as a waiter and been abroad on his own.’

  ‘I should have thought he was a bit young for Lear.’

  She turned on Clary. ‘Honestly, how dim can you get? Do you seriously think there are old men of seventy at an acting school? Anyway, we have to do character parts – in make-up we learn all about how to put ageing lines all over the place on top of our five and nine.’

  Clary deliberately didn’t ask what five and nine was to pay her back for being called dim.

  ‘Louise is insufferable!’ she exclaimed to Polly when they were having their baths.

  ‘She’s certainly changed a lot. I think seventeen is probably a difficult age – you know, you’re not quite one thing or the other.’

  ‘I thought that that’s what we were.’

  ‘We are, but I think it gets steadily worse until – we’re sort of … finished.’

  ‘Mm. Personally, I think it’s got something to do with her being so mad on acting. It is a pretty affected profession, don’t you think? I mean, that friend of hers, Stella, wasn’t at all like that. She wanted to know all about us, whereas Louise didn’t ask a single thing. How can she say she’s fed up with war talk? We’re in a war, that’s what we’ve got, her as well as us.’

  ‘Well, if she comes down to dinner in trousers, the Duchy will be furious.’

  But she didn’t. Apparently she tried, but was sent back by Aunt Villy and returned rather sulky and subdued in her green woollen dress – too late for the glass of sherry that Uncle Hugh had poured for her.

  Clary knew that the news must be particularly bad, because nobody talked about it at dinner. They kept to small things like the price of petrol having gone up: at one and elevenpence a gallon, the Duchy said they ought to lay up the big car and only use the small one. Uncle Hugh said how marvellous everyone was being at the wharf and Aunt Villy was actually quite funny about training to be an air raid warden, after trying to get all sorts of war jobs and nobody wanting her. ‘The language is all like filling in forms,’ she said, ‘so pedantic as to be almost incomprehensible. You never start anything, you commence. You don’t go, you proceed, and so on.’ And they talked about music because the Duchy always enjoyed that and Aunt Villy said she’d been to a marvellous concert that week, of baroque music that one hardly ever heard. Somebody asked who had been conducting, and she said, ‘Oh – that friend of Jessica, Laurence Clutterworth. He really is most awfully good,’ and she saw Louise suddenly look at her mother with an expression that was either wary, or hostile or frightened, or perhaps all three – she could not determine.

  ‘You would have loved it, Duchy darling,’ Villy was saying, ‘and you, too, Syb. Next time he does a concert in London we must go. And I thought possibly, if he gets a bit of time off, he might come down here and we could have an impromptu concert?’ She was back to the Duchy again, who said how nice that would be and, perhaps, if she got leave at any point, Sid could come too.

  ‘She gets leave, but never with any warning!’ Aunt Rach said. ‘And last time she couldn’t come because Evie had come up to London to collect her summer clothes and go to the doctor, and she insisted on Sid going with her.’

  After dinner, however, they did listen to the news, and as Polly wanted to, she stayed. There had been a German attack, and the Belgian army had got cut off from the Allies. ‘Bang goes gallant little Belgium,’ Uncle Hugh said. He looked bitter. The news ended with something about someone called Trotsky being injured in his home in Mexico, but nobody seemed much concerned about that, and when she asked who he was, Uncle Hugh just said, ‘A bloody little Red.’ Then the telephone rang, and it was Uncle Edward. Villy had a long talk with him, and then came and fetched Uncle Hugh, who was also ages. When he came back, he said, ‘It’s time all the young were in bed.’ Everybody concurred in this with such firmness that they simply had to go, and Louise, combining with them in resenting this treatment, became quite human, and they all played racing demon turning up their cards in ones to make the game faster.

  The next morning, however, it was clear that there had been major arguments. Uncle Edward and Uncle Hugh had decreed that Aunt Villy, Aunt Sybil and Louise were to remain in the country, although Louise fought for and obtained permission to go up to London each day to her school, provided she caught the four-twenty from Charing Cross like the Brig and Aunt Rach. But she would have to stop doing that if Uncle Hugh told her to. Any protests about all this died away during Sunday, as the Allies continued to retreat towards the coast, and in the evening they heard that the British forces were to withdraw to Britain. ‘If they can,’ Uncle Hugh said, and she saw the tic at the side of his forehead working away. ‘Get me an aspirin, Poll,’ he said. And Polly came back and said she couldn’t find any. And then Aunt Syb said they were finished.

  ‘But I bought you an enormous bottle on Monday!’ Polly exclaimed which seemed to have been the worst thing she could have said all round. Uncle Hugh began asking questions, and Aunt Syb became tearful and cross, and Aunt Villy went and got some of her own aspirin for Uncle Hugh. There was an atmosphere of tension all over the house, she thought; it could be just that the war was going so badly, but it could be other things. What was so horrible was feeling that everything – every single thing – was or might be going wrong, and not only was there nothing she could do about it, but on some levels they didn’t even say what was wrong. I have no hand in it, she thought angrily, although I’m just as much alive as everyone else. You bet the consequences will come my way.

  Polly joined her when she was in bed, just starting to write to Dad. She looked miserable, and she got out of her clothes very quickly and left them all over the floor instead of putting them neatly on the back of a chair as she usually did.

  ‘What’s up?’ Clary said.

  ‘When I went to say goodnight to them, Mummy nearly shouted at me and said why didn’t I knock. And then Dad snapped at her, and then they just went through the motions of kissing me, and then there was a kind of silence and I left.’

  ‘What were they doing when you went in?’ Her curiosity – always pretty bad – was thoroughly roused. Perhaps they had been in the middle of sleeping together. There seemed to be two kinds of that. But Polly said, nothing: Dad was standing by the window with his back to Mum who was just sitting on the bed taking off her stockings.

  ‘I’m afraid they were having some sort of row,’ she said. ‘Which they never do normally.’

  ‘It isn’t normally any more.’

  ‘No,’ Polly said sadly. ‘It isn’t – at all.’

  26 May

  Darling Dad,

  Actually it’s the 27th, Monday morning, a marvellously beautiful day – the kind that you like, Dad, with little drops of dew sparkling on the grass and interfering with spiders’ webs, and no wind and a sky like delphiniums without any of the pink bits. I’m sitting in the comfortable apple tree that Polly and I often use when we want to get away from things. The orchard has buttercups and ladies smocks in it; I think it is rather a pre-Raphaelite scene, but actually the things they painted are lovely, aren’t they? It is the soppy expressions on all the ladies wearing thin nightdresses much too big for them that spoil it, if you ask me. But the actual nature bits are frightfully good, aren’t they? I should be glad to know what you think about this. Miss Milliment doesn’t like them much – she seems to like impressions of nature, but it is probably because her eyesight is so bad, poor thing.

  The ne
ws is bad, but I expect you know that. I don’t really understand what has gone wrong: one minute the Allies seemed to be perfectly all right, and then in a few days they are surrounded by the Germans. It does seem extraordinary, when it is so peaceful here. Peaceful, my foot! About fifty aeroplanes went over just after I wrote that – the most enormous droning sound. I think they were bombers as they looked so huge, and they were going towards the sea. I do wonder where you are, Dad: at least you aren’t trapped in France and ships can move about and escape, I should think. Uncle Hugh says Belgium will give in any minute, if they haven’t already. [She stopped for a minute here, wondering whether to tell him about how odd people had seemed to be the previous evening. There was nothing he could do about it, she decided, and therefore it would only worry him. Instead, she wrote:] Mrs Cripps has taken to perming her hair. You know how it used to be, very straight and greasy – and she had those huge kirby grips that you said you were afraid of finding in the Christmas pudding – well, now it’s madly fluffy and stands out all over her head except when she goes to Battle once a week it comes out in the sort of waves you get on the sand after the tide’s gone out, with little flat curls like snails at the ends. It is not an improvement, which is true, I suppose, of many changes but that does not stop people from wanting them. Food has changed here. Mrs Cripps makes meat loaves – rightly named as they seem to have more breadcrumbs in them than anything else. And one day we had stuffed sheep’s hearts that were absolutely disgusting. But I expect you are living on ship’s biscuit and pemmican (What is that, Dad? It sounds like dried pelicans.) and condensed milk because I don’t suppose they can get cows onto destroyers and just as well because feeling seasick with four stomachs would be no joke. We are keeping chickens now which makes McAlpine very cross, but the Duchy says extra eggs are essential for Zoë and Wills and Roly. Naturally I come into the band where I am not supposed to need them. The hens are called Flossie, Beryl, Queenie, Ruby and Brenda, the Duchy’s least favourite names, which brings me to Zoë and the names for the baby. The latest are Roberta or Dermot. Honestly, Dad, you will have to put your foot down. Some smaller aeroplanes have just gone over. I wish I was in one of them, flying to you. I really miss you Dad. [She crossed that out very thoroughly.] I regret your absence. This afternoon I am going to the dentist in Tunbridge Wells with Aunt Villy who is going to see her mother who is batty there. I very much hope I will go to see her too, as I have never met a mad person. You haven’t answered about the pocket money, but I’ll have to assume it will be all right or get Aunt Rach to lend me stamps. It is breakfast time – I heard the bell, so I’d better go and have it, although I hate Force and that’s what we usually seem to have these days, the shop always seems short of Grape Nuts. Aunt Rach measured me against the dining-room door, and I have grown half an inch since last time which was just before Christmas. Do look after yourself, Dad. Don’t get scurvy which I read is a real hazard for sailors; if you see anybody with it do tell me what they look like because although it is frequently mentioned in history, nobody says exactly what it is. Limes are supposed to be good for it, so all you have to do is to keep a bottle of Rose’s Lime Juice handy. But it is probably an outdated disease, like the Plague.