The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Love from Clary.

  Tuesday, 28 May. I couldn’t write yesterday because of going to Tunbridge Wells. We only drove to the station and then took the train because of not using too much petrol. They’ve taken all the names off the railway stations which must be awful if you didn’t know what they were in the first place, but of course I can see it would make things hopeless for the Germans. Only – surely they won’t be going about in our trains? I had two stoppings and Mr Alabone said I must come back in six months. Aunt Villy was very kind. She took me to tea in a teashop and we had scones and a rather small piece of chocolate cake. Then we went to Forrest Court which is where her mother, Lady Rydal, is kept. We bought her a bunch of flowers, very pretty pink and white striped tulips, and Aunt Villy bought her some peppermint creams. I asked if I could see her too, and Aunt Villy said no to begin with, but when I said I’d really like to (I didn’t say why) she said yes, but I might find it distressing. ‘She doesn’t always remember who people are,’ she said. We waited in a sort of sitting-waiting room on the ground floor, and then the Matron came and said we could go and see her now, and led us along a long passage that smelled of floor polish and disinfectant. Aunt Villy asked how she was, and Matron said much the same, it always took old people time to settle down.

  She was sitting in bed with a lot of pillows behind her and wearing a bedjacket and her hair, which always used to be done in a puffy bun, all straggling down her back and the room smelled stuffy and a bit of lavatories. She was talking when we came in, but there was nobody else there. When she saw Aunt Villy, she said, ‘What has become of Bryant? You’ve send Bryant away, haven’t you? It is most unkind.’ Aunt Villy said she was on holiday, but Lady Rydal retorted that she’d had Bryant for fifteen years and she’d never had a holiday. We showed her the tulips, but she didn’t seem to like them at all, so Aunt Villy unwrapped them and found a vase and got water from the wash basin and arranged them, and Lady Rydal, who kept picking at her bedclothes, stared at me and said where was my mother? I didn’t know what to say, except that she was dead, but Aunt Villy said quietly, I think she thinks you are Nora,’ and Lady Rydal burst out, ‘You have no right to speak unless you are spoken to! If only Jessica were here! She would not allow me to continue in this disgraceful place. I am no one’s dear! The tea is Indian and they have taken the silver. They keep Hubert away from me. They answer back! They keep all my friends away. I told them that I knew Lady Elgar was at the bottom of this – they could think of no reply to that! That woman has always disliked me – not content with ruining poor Hubert’s career, she has manoeuvred me into this dreadful place and left me to rot! I write to them – Lady Tadema, Lady Stanford, Lady Burne-Jones, but they do not reply – not one of them has replied and I cannot write to Jessica because she has changed her name …’ She went on, and she was throwing herself about in bed so that the pillows fell on the floor and Aunt Villy tried to put her arms round her, but Lady Rydal seemed surprisingly strong and flung her off crying, ‘And I do not wish to use the commode! Oh! That anyone should speak to me of such things!’ and then she began to cry – it was awful – a little high-pitched whiny cry, and this time Aunt Villy was able to comfort her, and she said, ‘If you would be so kind as to give me a lift, not far, I live in St John’s Wood, in Hamilton Terrace – the number escapes me but it has a blue front door and Bryant will give you a cup of tea in the kitchen and then we can telephone the police …’ And then she looked at Aunt Villy for the first time and said, ‘Do I know you?’ And Aunt Villy said who she was; ‘I’ve brought you some of your favourite peppermint creams,’ she said. And Lady Rydal took them, and opened the box and looked at them, then she said, ‘I have the most dreadful feeling that Hubert has died, and it is being kept from me. It is the only possible explanation for his not coming to my rescue.’ And Aunt Villy said, ‘Yes, he is dead, Mummy. That’s why he hasn’t come.’ Then nothing happened for a moment and then Lady Rydal said, ‘They do not understand! I must have Bryant back: Bryant gets me the numbers for the telephone. The telephone is useless without her! I ordered some cards to be made but I have no means of leaving them! People expect it. I cannot keep in touch! Some wicked person took me away and tricked me into this place and left me with nothing! A horrible dream that does not stop—’ She broke off and then looked at Aunt Villy, and said in a quite different voice, low and fearful, ‘Am I in hell? Is that what this is?’ And Aunt Villy put her arms round her and said no, no, it wasn’t that at all, and then there was a knock on the door and a nurse came in, and Aunt Villy told me to go back to the room where we were before so I don’t know what happened after that.

  In the cab going back to the station Aunt Villy smoked and didn’t say very much, but when we were in the train she said she shouldn’t have taken me, I must have found it very distressing, and I said it was but that that wasn’t a reason for not taking me. I asked why, as she seemed so very unhappy there, Lady Rydal couldn’t just come home with us and be in bed, and Aunt Villy said it was no good, she wouldn’t stay there, and she needed a lot of nursing because of incontinence. I think that means you can’t wait to go to the lavatory – an awful thought – but Aunt Villy said they had given her something to make her feel calmer, and they said that she would settle down in time. I wondered whether people go mad out of being bored with life, because Lady Rydal doesn’t ever seem to have enjoyed anything very much, but I didn’t like to ask Aunt Villy because she did look so upset. ‘She probably loved the peppermint creams after we went,’ I said, because it seemed awful to have spent your sweet ration on somebody who spurned the present, and Aunt Villy smiled and said she expected I was right. She asked me what Dad gave me for stoppings, and I said a shilling for each one, and she gave me two bob.

  When we got back they said that King Leopold had told the Belgians to surrender – so of course they had. He doesn’t seem to be coming to England like Queen Wilhelmina. The other thing that happened was that the Duchy was in a very agitated state about Aunt Syb, who she said had had such a bad pain that she had sent for Dr Carr who thought she had an ulcer and that she would have to go to hospital to have a barium meal. What on earth can that be? If you have to go to hospital to have it, it can’t be very nice. When Polly and I were doing our homework after supper, Aunt Villy came into our room and asked how much aspirin we had been buying for Aunt Syb. I thought one bottle that week, but Polly said she’d bought a second one. Aunt Villy said that explained it: apparently Aunt Syb had been taking about ten or twelve aspirin a day and that had given her an ulcer. Polly was awfully relieved, and of course we said we wouldn’t get any more now that she’d seen Dr Carr, but afterwards I wondered why Aunt Syb had wanted so many in the first place. But this I did not mention to Polly because what with the Fall of France and her father in London, she has enough to worry about.

  Wednesday, 29 May. It is so sunny and warm that Polly and I started to unpack our summer clothes. They aren’t up to much. We’ve both grown so that our cotton frocks look silly and there’s nothing left to let down because Ellen let them down last year. Also they don’t fit us in other places that I won’t mention here – I’ve never liked the idea of bulging anywhere, although Poll seemed quite calm about it. ‘It’s a step on the way,’ she said, ‘it happens to everybody.’ I’ve never seen the point of that: why, if it was the end of the world, would you feel better because it was the end for everyone else too? I do wish that Dad would write. It’s well over two weeks since even Zoë had a letter. She doesn’t seem to mind about that so much; she likes him to ring up – I do, too, but when he does of course Zoë gets the lion’s share.

  Aeroplanes go over such a lot now that we hardly notice them. Aunt Syb and Zoë said they’d make us two new frocks each if Aunt Villy would get the material and she took us to Hastings in the car – what a treat! and when we got out on the front to see the sea, we could hear a distant thundery rumbling and Aunt Villy said it was guns. There were quite a lot of people on the front, just leaning on railings
and staring out. Of course you can’t see France from there, and that made the guns feel worse. The sea was oily calm but we couldn’t see any ships. Then Aunt Villy said, ‘Well! It will all be the same a hundred years hence,’ which was the only annoying thing she said that day, and we walked to the shop to get material. Aunt Villy said we could choose within reason, which meant, I suppose, that if we chose something she didn’t approve of we wouldn’t be allowed to have it. Polly said she wanted pink, because Aunt Syb always dressed her in blues and greens because of her hair. ‘But I think pinks and reds are lovely together,’ she said. She chose a piqué the colour of strawberry ice and a lilac-coloured Tootal cotton with tiny little flowers all over it, but I couldn’t think what to choose because actually I don’t care very much about clothes except I hate them to be at all frilly and girly-wirly. I asked Poll to choose for me because she really enjoys that sort of thing. She chose something called gingham – a sort of greeny-grey or greyish-green checked in thin white squares and a white and yellow striped stuff. Aunt Villy said they were good choices, and she got four yards of each. ‘They may have to last you a long time,’ she said. Then we went to a chemist and Aunt Villy bought charcoal biscuits for Aunt Syb and a very nice torch for Miss Milliment to help her see her way back to the cottage because she slipped and fell last week and the blood all stuck to her stocking but she hadn’t noticed. Poll and I think this means she doesn’t take her stockings off at night, which is unusual. Then we went to a bookshop and kind Aunt Villy said one book each up to two bob and I got ghost stories by M. R. James and Polly got—

  Dad rang up! He spoke to me for a whole six minutes! He said never mind if the pips go, I really want to talk to you. He said he has almost stopped feeling seasick, but that might be because he has been at sea for quite a long time so he’d had a chance to get used to it. He said there had been a whole bundle of letters when he got in this time – even one from Neville. I said it was difficult to write interesting letters from a place where nothing happened, but he said I wrote extremely good letters that interested him, just keep doing it. He said quite all right about more pocket money – tell Aunt Rach. I asked him when he would get leave and he didn’t know. He was off again quite soon, but he’d ring up when he got back. I asked him whether he knew if being bored helped people to go mad and he didn’t know and asked me why I asked him, and I told him about Aunt Villy’s mother, and he said, oh, well, I might be right. Then he made the noise that destroyers make when they’re pleased about something – a kind of honking whoop which was very funny. I don’t know what they make it with. Me, of course, he said, and we both laughed all through the pips. Then he asked me to look after Zoë, as usual, and I said I was doing my best but he didn’t seem to hear because he went on about her having the baby when he wasn’t there and that was hard on her. I said she seemed placid and quite resigned to her fate which he seemed to find reassuring. I asked him how he thought the war was going, and he said he supposed not awfully well at the moment, but he was sure the tide would turn. It is quite frightening to think of the Germans as a tide, and I shan’t tell Polly that. Then he said he thought he should speak to the Duchy, and I asked Polly to get her, and while she was doing that, he said, ‘Remember I love you enormously,’ and I said I did too. And then the Duchy came and he said, ‘Sleep tight,’ which was idiotic of him as it was only half past six. It’s funny. I’ve wanted him to ring up or write for so long and now he has and it just makes me feel awfully sad: a bit frightened as well. I thought of a whole lot of things I hadn’t told him and each of them seemed trivial considered separately, but I still wanted to have told him all of them, because as the weeks go by there are more and more things and in about a year he might hardly know me at all. It’s different for him, because on the whole it seems to me that grownups don’t change. If that is true, I wonder when people get sort of finished and stay like whatever they have become. And whether they can choose when it is.

  I cried about Dad after he rang. I wasn’t going to put that in, but I did, so I have. I just do miss him so much and hearing his voice, and then not hearing his voice is well nigh unbearable. I think probably that sex makes love less of a strain. So when it’s a case of love, and sex is out of the question – not that I in the least want to sleep with Dad, but I can see that there might be something very tranquil about it if I did.

  Here the thought that there must be more to sleeping with a person than sleeping with them recurred as it often had, but try as she might she could not think exactly what. And who the hell could she ask? Miss Milliment did not seem very interested in sex on the only occasions when she had tried some gentle pumping of her on the subject. She had tended to say rather vague things like it was only an aspect and one which, except from a biological point of view – and she did not teach biology – was better left to experience at the proper time than to discussion, which, she felt, would serve no useful purpose. Clary was back to having to find someone to fall in love with in order to find out about it. This made her stop wanting to write her journal properly for several days.

  Friday 31 May. The aunts have gone to Tunbridge Wells. Aunt Syb is to have her barium meal which apparently is thick chalky stuff that you have to drink down in one go and then they X-ray your stomach and can see if you have an ulcer. Also poor Aunt Villy is going to see her mother again. They have taken Miss Milliment as her eyes are needing better spectacles. Zoë has made me the yellow striped dress: I quite like it although I look a bit silly. Zoë said I should have white sandals, but I’m perfectly happy with sandshoes. It is quite hot and aeroplanes seem to go over all the time. I know this is an extraordinary week, but I can’t think of anything to say about it. We go on having breakfast, lunch and supper and doing lessons and having free time (ha, ha) in the afternoons. They always think of something boring for us to do. Today it was carting logs that Tonbridge and McAlpine have sawed to be stacked in the garage. The logs have poor beetles and woodlice in them, and Polly wastes an awful lot of time getting them off and putting them somewhere else although they might easily die a natural death before the logs get used. They are getting people back from France now, but there are thousands to collect and quite a lot of them are wounded, which must make it terribly difficult. They are clearing out the people who are convalescent from Mill Farm in case the beds are wanted for soldiers. M. R. James is rather good: he writes as though he always wears a dark suit. One cannot imagine him in shirtsleeves. The stories frighten me just the right amount. Goodness, I hate knitting! Poll likes it which, of course, makes her much better at it than I am.

  The trouble about a journal is the feeling that you have to keep on keeping it. Polly has completely given up hers, on the other hand, she’s the one who reads bits of The Times every day – in a way, if she was writing her journal, she’d probably give a far better account of what is going on – only about seventy miles away she says – than I seem to do. She says she can hear the guns sometimes, but she listens for them, and it may be simply her imagination.

  Here she stopped again, defeated. It was all very well to say that we were living through history, a remark she had overheard Tonbridge making to Mrs Cripps when she went to fetch Miss Milliment’s mid-morning glass of hot water, but what, actually, was happening? And what was it all for? If one didn’t know these things, it was clearly impossible to have feelings about them interesting enough to put into a journal. The only feeling she knew was missing Dad and worrying about him getting torpedoed or shot or something. Perhaps everybody felt like that? Worried about the one thing they knew about and left the rest as a nasty mystery. She decided to do some investigating. She started with the servants because at least they stopped what they were doing and answered you. Dottie was turning down the beds and she only said that Mrs Cripps said that Hitler didn’t know where to stop. When asked what she felt about it, she looked confounded: in fact, nobody had ever asked her in her life what she felt about anything. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure,’ she said twitching off the count
erpane, as Eileen had taught her to do, and catching the corners neatly together. Ellen, who was bathing Wills, said she was sure that all the soldiers would come back and that it was best to look on the bright side of things. Eileen said we had to remember that we had a navy and people like Hitler always went too far. It was better to be safe than sorry. Mrs Cripps said that Hitler didn’t know where to stop and look at our air force – adding rather mysteriously that what went up must come down. The Brig told her not to worry her pretty little head about any of it. He was having his hair cut by Aunt Villy, jolly difficult as there wasn’t a lot of it. Aunt Villy said that we must put our faith in Mr Churchill. Aunt Rach said it was all pretty awful, but don’t you worry too much about your dad, my duck – and so it went on. It seemed as though none of them knew anything much, or were able or willing to tell her if they did. She gave up, having resolved to leave Polly out of it in case of distressing her, but that evening when they were very slowly setting about going to bed, Polly suddenly said: ‘What do you think it would actually be like if the Germans do invade us?’