Hugh said that that had been Edward’s leave. Miss Milliment put the second glass by the decanter and retired. As she left, she heard the Brig saying that in that case, Hugh would not know the story: he thought it had been a Mouton-Rothschild 1904, but it might have been ’05 – anyway, whenever he tried it, it had never seemed to come round …
Miss Milliment trotted across to the cottage over the garage that was still called Tonbridge’s cottage, although he and his family had only occupied it for a few weeks two years ago. Her room, one of the two upstairs, was small, but it looked onto the pine wood at the back of the house which smelled lovely after rain. For a while she had been at Pear Tree Cottage, but now that everybody had moved back into Home Place she was here again, and although it was a very bare little room, she liked it. Dear Viola – so thoughtful – had come to inspect it, had felt the blankets on the bed, only two and an eiderdown, and had said that she needed at least two more, which was true as the ones on the bed managed to be both thin and felty. She had also offered the wonderful luxury of a bedside lamp, and got her a small table at which she could write letters. Most thoughtful, but unfortunately there was nobody really for her to write to. She had had to write to her landlady in London to say that she was giving up her room there, and then she had had to make the journey to London to collect the remainder of her things. It had been rather unpleasant as well as extremely tiring. She had burned her boats where that lodging was concerned. And then she had suddenly felt, as she returned in the expensive taxi from Stoke Newington to Charing Cross station, that now she was homeless. The thought caused her moments of such overwhelming panic that she had had to speak quite severely to herself: ‘Now, Eleanor, you must cross that bridge when you come to it.’ But this had been succeeded by her wondering whether at some point one became too old to cross any bridge. She had tried, in the train, to read – she had come across a second-hand copy of minor eighteenth-century poets for a penny at the church bazaar last Christmas. But the panic, though it had subsided to anxiety, had not gone, and kept washing over her in irregular surging waves. She told herself that it was because the landlady had been rather unpleasant about everything: ‘It’s all right for some,’ she kept saying. No doubt she was upset at losing a long-term lodger, but it seemed sad that she had stayed so long there and ended by being so resented. Perhaps it had always been so, and she had stupidly not noticed. She had tried not to be a nuisance but, of course, that did not guarantee that she had succeeded. She had had no extras; no coffee for breakfast like Mrs Fast; no laundry done like Mr Marcus. All that was behind her, she told herself with repeated firmness. But what lay ahead? There would come a day when dear Polly and Clary and Lydia would not need her any more, and Roland and Wills would still be too young. She, on the other hand, might find that teaching anyone was beyond her. Her eyesight had become much worse: she knew that she needed new spectacles, but was so afraid that this would not make the difference that it used to do, that she had not made the effort to go to Hastings or Tunbridge Wells to procure any. Her knees had become painful: in the early mornings, if she stayed in one position for too long, if she was on her feet for more than a few minutes, in fact nearly all the time. ‘Really, Eleanor, I am getting rather tired of your troubles. What was that song? “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.”’ She tried to smile, and tears came to her eyes. She wiped them carefully with a handkerchief that rather needed to be washed, and went back to her poetry.
But when she arrived at Battle, and found dear Viola there to meet her, instead of having to take a cab or an uneasy drive with Tonbridge, she was overcome again. Miss Milliment sat in the front of Viola’s car while she and the porter stowed her suitcases in the boot, trying to quench this awful desire to break down.
‘There. All safely stowed.’ Viola got into the driving seat. ‘We’ll soon be home. Miss Milliment!’ For she had not been able to stop herself after all. It had all poured out. Her fear of becoming useless, of not knowing how to get through the remainder of her life. Of being a nuisance – she really didn’t want to be a nuisance, she kept saying as the tears ran down into the folds of her chins. And Viola’s kindness (she was so very kind!) seemed stupidly to make her cry more. Explanations, apologies, even excuses of which last, in her ordinary frame of mind she would deeply have disapproved, streamed out … She needed to feel useful, she had been useful to dear Papa, and by the time he died she had found teaching was the only thing she could do that fulfilled that need. She was afraid that she might be getting too old to be much more use. She did not want charity – to feel that people had to put up with her when she could do nothing. She was afraid that she was a little tired: the cab driver had refused to go upstairs in her lodging house to fetch the suitcases, and her landlady would not help. One of them had slipped from her hand on the staircase and fallen right to the bottom where it had burst open, and it had been very difficult to repack – so this was only the consequence of fatigue and Viola should not take it seriously. She had saved some money, of course, but she did not really know where she could go that would make it last. This last made her blush from her hot forehead downwards and she was instantly ashamed to have mentioned that part of the subject at all. And Viola listened, with an arm round her heaving shoulders, and gave her a handkerchief and actually said, ‘Dear Miss Milliment, you will never be abandoned. I promise you. We owe you so much.’ Blessed words! Comfort, affection, the restoration of some kind of dignity! Then Viola had asked her whether she would like to have a cup of tea at the Gateway Tea Rooms, an offer which, as she had not felt like the pastry she had bought on Charing Cross Station, that when opened, looked as though it was filled with a dead mouse, she most gratefully accepted. They had had tea and scones and Viola had said that of course she didn’t know exactly what the future held – clearly they would not stay in Sussex when the war was over – but that whatever they did, Miss Milliment must find a home with them. This last had endangered her equilibrium all over again; Viola had quickly stopped talking about it. Instead, she reminded her most delightfully of old times – when Sir Hubert had been alive and she had gone to Albert Place to teach dear Viola and Jessica, and how they always knew that it was nearly lunchtime because the housemaid came into the schoolroom to change the lace curtains, which, fresh that morning, would be grey with soot by noon – particularly in winter when there were the pea soup fogs.
‘Those fogs! Do you remember, Miss Milliment? We hardly ever have a fog like those were, do we?’ And so on. It was pleasant and soothing. Then she had got hiccups which was most embarrassing in a public place, but Viola had laughed and made her repeat the old saw: ‘Hiccup – ticcup – three drops in a teacup – stops hiccups,’ which she had taught both Viola and her sister all those years ago.
‘My aunt May taught me that,’ she said. ‘Oh dear! I’m afraid I shall have to do it all over again.’
‘It is very agreeable to talk about old times,’ she said as they went back to the car. ‘Oh dear! I am so sorry!’ One of the handles on her extremely battered and ancient handbag had broken, and as it was too full to shut properly, pencils, a leather purse that was held shut by a paper clip, spectacle case, a number of hairpins and an unspeakable comb fell onto the pavement. As Villy bent to retrieve these things, she resolved to buy her a new bag, but knew better than to say so.
In the car they talked about her present pupils, beginning with Lydia, whose concentration, Miss Milliment admitted, left something to be desired, but who had showed distinct improvement during the summer term. ‘I do try not to loom over them during the holidays,’ she added. ‘It must be most tiresome to have a governess who never goes away.’
‘I was wondering,’ she added a few moments later, ‘whether you would object to my teaching Lydia on her own in the afternoons. She could join the older girls in the mornings for our reading aloud, but I fear it is discouraging to do everything with the great girls, who naturally are far ahead of her in other subjects.’
/> Villy said that she thought this was a good idea.
When they reached Home Place, she carted Miss Milliment’s frighteningly heavy suitcases up the narrow stairs to her room and kissed the soft wrinkled cheek which was another extraordinarily pleasant (and unusual) experience for Miss Milliment.
Tonight, being a Friday, she would be dining with the family, which she did twice a week. The other evenings she ate early with Lydia and Neville. She had suggested this arrangement, as it released Ellen from having to preside over the children’s supper just when she was needed to bath Wills and Roly. As she struggled into her mustard and brown outfit, still described by her to herself as her best, she reflected that she had not bought any new clothes for about two years – had felt that she ought to save as much as possible against the rainy days. But since that most comforting talk with dear Viola, she had no excuse, and if they brought in clothes rationing, she would be rather in the soup, she thought, as she hunted through the pile of odd stockings to pick out the two shades of buff that most nearly matched. She would have to go to Hastings on the bus, and then find a shop that sold things for larger people, but she could hardly ask anyone to accompany her, as one could not buy things like underwear excepting by oneself. She had never been any good with her needle, and almost everything had by now got past mending, anyway: there were huge ladders in her lock-knit bloomers, holes of varying sizes in her two cardigans, and she often had to fasten things round her with safety pins, which occasionally burst open causing the most disagreeable sensations of pricking – not to mention the anticipation of worse embarrassment. ‘You must pull yourself together, Eleanor, and refurbish your wardrobe.’
It took her a long time to dress, partly because she kept stopping to look out of the window to see what the fading light was doing to the tops of the trees in the wood. The pines became smoky, and the oaks more livid in their watery bronze – she could not describe their hues, sere was a very useful word for poets, she thought: romantic and non-committal, but if one was painting the trees it would not do at all. And then below the wood was a steep grassy bank, in spring richly decorated with primroses and later, more delicate still, with wild strawberries and the dark purple vetch, stitchwort, scarlet pimpernel, all flowers she had grown up with in her youth. Now only the ferns and grass remained, but it had a different beauty – a natural dense border above which the trees rose with majestic grace. The courtyard in the foreground was full of warm, domestic colour: cobblestones, the slaty blocks so often laid outside stables (easy to wash down and how beautiful when they were wet – now, alas, only from rain!) and a mellow brick path that ran unaccountably across it and ended by the kitchen garden wall where once there had been a door, blocked off. The narrow rosy bricks were tufted with moss and weeds, but this simply added to their charm. She had spent what must have amounted to hours surveying this scene, originally in the hope that thereafter she would only have to shut her eyes to recall it, now simply from pleasurable habit. She had once – only once – unearthed her aunt May’s ancient box of watercolours and attempted to paint what she saw, but she was hampered by the state of the paints, all dry and cracked and unwilling to yield their colours, and the single paintbrush in the small black box had lost most of its hairs and was intent upon losing what remained. It had been absurd even to try, but in spite of her failure the attempt had absorbed and excited her to such an extent that Polly had been sent over to fetch her for supper.
‘And you will be late now, if you do not pull your socks up, Eleanor,’ she admonished herself. Socks would have been one thing; stockings were quite another. She had to sit on the bed, with one foot upon a chair to pull them on, and then she had the difficult business of easing the garters up her leg to the required height. Too low, and the stockings immediately formed lazy wrinkles round her ankles the moment she stood up; too far and the constriction was unpleasant and, she felt, probably not good for her. Sometimes she slept in them in order not to have the ordeal next day. But one could not wear grey stockings with dark brown and therefore the change on these evenings was necessary. The little bathroom was on the ground floor, so she washed her face and hands on her way out.
As she zig-zagged lightly across the courtyard with the delightful prospect of a warm room full of familiar people and the glass of sherry that was accorded her on these occasions, she thought how very fortunate she was: none of this would have happened in Lady Rydal’s day. And after dinner she could spend a happy evening with a hot-water bottle (the cottage was not very warm) searching through Evelyn for interesting references to trees that might prove useful to old Mr Cazalet. Really the only thing missing in her life were galleries and the pictures they had contained. But when one considered the dreadful things that were happening – she read The Times every day of her life when the family had finished with it – this was a small thing, and she felt ungrateful even to have thought of it.
Rachel sat on the shrouded unmade bed in her room at Chester Terrace looking at a photograph of herself with her brothers, taken soon after the first war when they were all together again. Edward was still in uniform, very debonair, smiling, with an arm round her shoulder. Hugh stood a little apart: his arm was in a sling, his Norfolk jacket hung loosely on him and he looked as though the sun hurt his eyes. Rupert, in an open-necked shirt and looking incredibly young, had just finished laughing at something. The photograph had been taken on the croquet lawn at the house they had had in Totteridge, before they all moved to London. The Brig had taken it: he had been an eager, not to say interminable photographer in those days and had, of course, taken five or six pictures on that occasion. This was the best, and it had sat, framed on her dressing table, for years. Now, like everything else in the room, it had been put away in the wardrobe wrapped in tissue paper. She wanted it for Clary. She shut up the wardrobe, which still contained a row of evening dresses and her ermine wrap given her by the Brig when she was twenty-one. There seemed to be no point in moving them to Sussex. The cupboard smelled of camphor, her dressing-table was bare and dusty.
She started to descend the flights of stairs – her bedroom was on the sixth floor – stopping at the drawing room to make sure that the furniture was still entirely covered with dust sheets, the smaller carpets rolled up, the very large one covered by an immense drugget, the shutters properly fastened. The chandelier hung safely in its huge linen bag like a gigantic pear waiting to ripen. The room, indeed the whole house, had the heavy, dull air characteristic of fully furnished houses that are uninhabited. She wondered if they would ever live there again. On the ground floor in the hall were the packing cases now full of books that she had been sent to London by the Brig to collect. Tonbridge would superintend their loading onto one of the firm’s lorries next week. She was tired, and longed for a cup of tea, but the water and gas were turned off and in any case there was no milk.
She decided to walk across the park to Baker Street and catch a bus that would take her nearly to Maida Vale, although there would be another walk after that to reach Sid’s house. A taxi would be extravagant, although she knew that Sid would scold her for not taking one …
‘You walked?’
‘I took a bus part of the way.’
‘My dear one, you’re incorrigible! I’ve put on the immersion heater. Would a hot bath be the ticket?’
‘A hot cup of tea is what I crave more than anything in the world.’
‘A cup of tea you shall have.’
She followed Sid down the dark little flight of stairs that led to the semi-basement where there was a kitchen, a larder, a pantry, a wine cellar and a WC. Everything was very clean, but there were great cracks in the kitchen walls, the green paint on them had split and was peeling, and the linoleum was worn through to the flagstones in places. Sid switched on the light, essential in this room whose heavily barred windows were further barricaded by a black brick wall. It was a Victorian kitchen uneasily adapted to modern life.
Rachel said, ‘I must go to your lav.’
‘The one down here is working: I had it mended last week. Do you want any toast or anything like that?’
‘Just tea.’
And then a bath, Sid thought, as she filled the kettle. She thought of Rachel in a bath with the kind of tender anguish that had become so familiar and yet still astonished her. And if she’d taken a cab we would have had another hour together, she also thought, as she warmed the pot. But considering that they had a whole weekend – until Sunday evening when she would be on duty again – and Rachel had consented to take the plunge of staying in London with her instead of going back to Sussex …
‘Did you find out what was on at the Academy?’
‘La Femme du Boulanger.’
‘Oh! Let’s go!’
‘You’re really not too tired?’
‘Heavens, no! This is our treat. We could have supper out.’
‘That would be wise. You know my cooking. Let’s drink this upstairs: it’s more cosy.’
‘I’ll carry the tray.’
‘You will not! You may turn off the light for me.’
They went upstairs to the little sitting room, which was crowded by the old Bechstein grand, and sat in the two armchairs with pieces of old flowered linen on the arms to hide the threadbare upholstery. Sid poured out the tea and produced Rachel’s favourite brand of Egyptian cigarettes.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 79