‘You are clever! Where did you get them from?’
‘Found them in a shop in Soho.’ She did not mention the exhaustive search this had entailed.
‘Wonderful. I must say I miss them. Passing Clouds are not at all the same.’
They smoked and looked at each other with small excited smiles, and exchanged desultory pieces of news of a kind that did not interfere with their intense happiness at being together – and alone. Sid produced a half-bottle of gin and the dregs of a bottle of Dubonnet that had been in the house for years, and they drank. Rachel told Sid about the photograph which of course Sid immediately wanted to see. She gazed a long time at the ravishing picture of Rachel – her hair piled on top of her head, her white high-necked blouse and neatly belted long dark skirt and face that looked out with an expression both so innocent and so frank that she had to resort to a kind of levity to conceal how much it moved her.
‘My word, you were a tearing beauty!’ she said.
‘Nonsense!’
‘Of course, still are.’ But this did not go down well either. Rachel’s utter lack of vanity and unselfconsciousness about her appearance became disturbed by any reference to it. Like her mother, Sid thought, their beauty had to remain silently in the eye of the beholder. Now she had gone faintly pink and was screwing up her eyes with little frowns of disapproval and embarrassment.
‘Darling, I don’t love you for your appearance,’ she said now, ‘although I might be forgiven if I did.’
Rachel was wrapping up the picture again.
Sid said, ‘I suppose I couldn’t have a copy?’
‘I’m sure the negative is lost. The Brig took so many, and the Duchy cleared out a lot of stuff like that when we moved to London. I got it for poor little Clary. She is so deeply unhappy about her father.’
‘No news at all?’
‘None. Honestly, Sid, I’ve given up hope. I think even the Duchy has, at last.’
‘But Clary hasn’t?’
‘I don’t think so. She doesn’t talk about him so much, but she never talks about him as though – as though …’ Her words trailed away and there was a silence. Then, her voice high and trembling she said, ‘It must be happening to so many people! So much grief and shock and agonised patience and dying hopes! Sometimes I think we are mad! What good will it all do?’
‘What evil may it avert?’
‘Oh, Sid! I find that hard to believe. That it could all possibly be much worse!’
‘I know you do. It’s easier for me to believe that.’
‘Why is it?’
Sid said steadily, ‘I don’t have anything to lose. You will not have to go to war. So. I don’t have anything to lose.’
But she realised that Rachel did not, or did not want to, understand her and dropped the subject.
They drove, in Sid’s dirty old Morris, to Oxford Street and saw their film and then dined at McWhirter’s, a basement restaurant of a block of flats in Abbey Road – tomato soup and poached cod – and Sid told Rachel about the ambulance station (she was now a driver). Rachel, an excellent listener, loved hearing about the people who worked there: ‘… an ex-chiropodist – well, I suppose everyone is ex really excepting our taxi driver with flat feet. He’s invaluable, but of course he hardly has to use his “knowledge” as he calls it because we only operate in one district. Then there’s a gym teacher who terrifies the nurses she drives because she so enjoys going through red lights and driving on the wrong side of the road—’
‘How do you know he has flat feet?’
‘He tells everybody. He wanted to join up and they wouldn’t have him. He never stops complaining about it. Then we have a pacifist who gets drunk, God knows what on, and tells us all the ghastly things he’d like to do to “warmongers” which, we feel, includes all of us. This is during the interminable evenings when we all drink tea – well, all of us excepting him.’
‘It all sounds rather fun,’ Rachel said; there was an element of wistfulness in her voice. She had never learned to drive or had a real job.
‘Most of the time it is extremely boring. Nothing happens. Of course, we do have the odd case of appendicitis or strokes or heart attacks, but the regular lot see to most of that. We’re sort of emergency extra, and so far, there hasn’t been an emergency.’
‘Thank God.’
‘I know. Shall we go home? I can make a much better coffee than they’ll give us here.’
As she pushed in her latch key to open the front door, she thought this was how it ought always to be. She and Rachel going home together. When they had shut the door, she felt for the light switch, then changed her mind, and put her arms round Rachel, who returned her embrace. They kissed. Rachel said, ‘It was a lovely evening.’
‘Wasn’t it! Exactly the right kind of film. I wonder why films as touching and funny and charming as that are always French?’
‘I always enjoy everything I do with you.’
A little nugget to store away, Sid thought, as she turned on the light.
She made the coffee and they drank it sitting on the battered chairs in front of the ancient gas fire that Sid lit. Then she remembered that there was a little cherry brandy left, which had been given to Evie as a present, but it had not agreed with her, ‘So we may finish it with impunity.’
They had said all that needed to be said about Evie earlier on: she was away, working for a pianist of international renown and seemed to enjoy her position. It was wonderful, Sid said, not to have to worry about her. Much later, and having finished the cherry brandy (there was more there than Sid had thought) they began their favourite conversation about what they would do after the war: a long holiday – but where? Sid was in favour of Italy, if it was practicable; Rachel inclined towards Scotland where she had never been. It was midnight before they retired.
When Sid had installed Rachel in Evie’s room, which was actually far the nicest of the two bedrooms, and had left her to unpack and bath, she went down to make her a hot-water bottle. She was aware of a faint tension that had sprung up between them – almost occurring on the climb upstairs. She knew why she felt tense: she had stayed many times now at Home Place, and occasionally even in Rachel’s room – in separate beds – if the house was full, and they had fallen into the habit of her lying in bed with Rachel for a short, sweet, and usually agonising time, when, with Rachel settled in the crook of her arm, she was unable not to imagine further intimate delight. But this was the first time that they had spent a night in a house alone together, where they need not think of other people. This should have made for greater ease, but did not: it simply highlighted the disparity of feeling between them. To Sid, it somehow implied a dishonesty in Rachel; if, in the other circumstances, Rachel had always worried about other people and what they might feel or think, what could she say now, when there were no people? But, of course, she also knew that that was not the point at all. Rachel had (unwittingly) made it painfully clear that any kind of sexual intimacy revolted her. It is I who am dishonest, she thought; how often, how many thousands of times had she told herself that she had conquered those feelings, that they were useless and possibly worse, since if divulged they would almost certainly drive Rachel away, and then she would have nothing? But tonight, the first opportunity that had ever arisen in their lives together, she knew that she had not overcome anything at all. When Rachel was absent, she could simply long for her presence: when she was present, she longed for her responsive body.
She struggled with this hopeless dilemma as she went upstairs again, but when she arrived at Rachel’s room, could not resist saying: ‘As you will not have your love to keep you warm, here is a hot-water bottle.’
‘Sid!’ She had undressed and stood in her petticoat, sponge bag in hand. ‘Sid! What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing at all. Let me get you a dressing gown – you’ll be cold.’
‘That would be angelic: there wasn’t room in this case for mine.’ She followed Sid to her far smaller bedroom and rece
ived the old plaid man’s dressing gown, thrust tenderly round her shoulders. The bath was running and thin clouds of steam had reached the passage.
Rachel said, ‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you going to come and talk to me in bed?’
‘You have your bath. Of course I am.’
Rachel fell asleep quite soon after her bath, relaxed, her head upon Sid’s shoulder.
‘… wouldn’t it, my darling?’ Sid was saying, and then, looking down, she saw that there would be no reply. She lay, hopelessly awake until the luminous dial on Rachel’s travelling clock said half past two, and then, knowing that if she had no sleep she would spoil the next day, she gently disentangled herself and went to her own bed where sleep continued to elude her.
On the Saturday afternoon there was to be a tennis tournament in which all the children, down to Neville and Lydia, were allowed to take part. It had been organised by Edward and Hugh. Lots had been drawn for partners and each match was the best of three games. They had been playing since two o’clock, beginning with a children’s match. ‘The little beggars just get stoked up by food,’ Edward had said, and Neville, playing with Simon, had been beaten by Clary and Polly. ‘I loathe tennis, anyway,’ he had said, scarlet with distress, ‘and if I hadn’t had to play with Simon who kept hitting all the balls out, I would probably have won.’
‘You would not,’ Simon said, whose disappointment was if anything more intense. ‘You didn’t hit the balls at all. You simply missed them. I can’t think why you entered the tournament.’
‘You must learn to lose politely,’ Clary scolded Neville.
‘Why should I? I’m not going to spend my life losing things. Either I shall win everything I go in for, or I shan’t do the thing.’
‘Someone has to lose, Neville,’ Lydia said maddeningly.
‘There are lots of people to do that. I’m just not going to be one of them.’
‘Well, you two can be ball boys.’
‘Oh, thanks very much.’
‘That will do, Simon,’ Villy said sharply.
‘In any case, all teams are to get two chances,’ Edward said. ‘It was pretty bad luck on Simon drawing Neville,’ he added to Villy.
‘Anyway, nobody is to spoil a lovely afternoon,’ somebody else said, and the next match began.
It was an exceptionally beautiful afternoon: mellow, balmy and sunlit, the sky above a pale but piercing blue, the sun just hot enough for the spectators to watch in comfort, but not too hot for the players. Zoë brought Juliet in her pram, and Hugh had Wills struggling off and on his knee. The Duchy came and went with her trugful of dead heads; only the Brig was absent, working in his study with Miss Milliment. Jessica, who was a poor player, was teamed with Christopher: they lost their first match. By four o’clock everyone was very thirsty, and the Duchy had tea brought out to the terrace above the tennis court.
‘We really should have lemonade,’ she said. ‘Such a pity there are no lemons.’
‘Wills and Roly and Juliet won’t know what a lemon is, will they?’ Lydia remarked: she very much enjoyed not being in the youngest echelon. ‘“The answer is a lemon” won’t mean anything to them, will it?’
‘It will mean more,’ Neville said. ‘Because it will mean nothing.’ There were cucumber sandwiches and flapjacks for tea: Simon counted the flapjacks and worked out that he’d be lucky if he got two. At the appropriate moment, he started going round, asking people very gently if they were going to want their flapjack. This paid off, because Zoë didn’t want hers; on the other hand, his aunt had given a piece to Wills, who having tried it, was now busily burying it in a flower bed – a ghastly waste. Babies were so stupid sometimes that he was ashamed of ever having been one, although he was sure he’d never been as idiotic as that. Polly lay on the lawn beside her father. ‘What are piles?’ she was asking. ‘They’re things Ellen keeps on saying you have to be careful not to get, but she won’t say what they are.’
‘They’re rude – that’s why.’ Neville said at once. When nobody denied this, he improvised, ‘They’re little pointed lumps you get on your bottom so that when you sit down they dig into you. They may have ants inside them. Yes. Kind of ant heaps in people.’ He turned to Lydia. ‘You know all about bottoms. Tell them.’
‘I don’t.’ Lydia wriggled uncomfortably.
‘You do. I told you.’
There was a short silence. Then Lydia, unable to resist being appealed to for information, said, ‘BUGGER. You mean that?’
‘I don’t think we want to hear anything about that, Lydia,’ Villy said as severely as she could manage. She resolved to discover what went on in the blue room in the evenings: perhaps Neville was getting a bit old to share a room with a girl.
Another match finished. ‘Your backhand’s got much better, Teddy,’ his father said, and Teddy glowed and looked casual.
‘Has it?’ he said, as though this had happened unknown to him.
‘White chrysanths,’ the Duchy said, ‘a lovely early variety. I do adore them.’
‘They smell of bonfires, foreign bonfires,’ Clary said after sniffing them.
‘I think they smell of frightened mice,’ Neville said to crush her.
‘He’s missing his father,’ Villy murmured to Jessica.
The air-raid warning sounded, but nobody took much notice. The players just coming off the court wanted tea, and there was no hot water left.
‘Come on, Poll,’ Hugh said, getting to his feet. ‘Let’s you and I go and get it.’
Almost before they reached the house, they heard the droning of planes – it sounded like a great many of them.
Polly said, ‘I expect they’re ours?’ but her father did not seem to have heard her. Coming out of the house again with the jugs of hot water, they saw the planes, wave upon wave of them, flying very high, and glinting in the sun, all heading purposefully in the same direction. Polly, watching her father watch them, said, ‘Are they Germans?’
And Hugh, without taking his eyes off them, said: ‘Bombers.’
‘Well, they’re not going to bomb us, are they?’
‘No, not here.’
The noise had increased – the whole sky seemed to be vibrating – but the planes were so high that it was a distant, rather than a deafening sound.
Hugh said, ‘You take the water, Poll,’ and went into the house.
She met Uncle Edward on her way back to the terrace.
‘Where’s your father?’
‘He went back into the house.’
When she reached the others she heard Teddy saying, ‘Well, if they are heading for London, I should think they’ll flatten the whole place – there must be thousands of them.’
‘Not thousands, Teddy.’
‘Oh, well, Mum, you know what I mean. There’s still more coming over. A wizard number. Where’s Dad gone? He’s got the list of who’s to play next.’
Villy said a trifle wearily, ‘He’s probably gone to telephone Hendon to see if they want him back.’
He had, of course, but they said, no, no need, it didn’t look as though they were the target. But Hugh, desperately trying to reach the hospital, simply could not get through.
The day had been an extraordinary mixture: certainly a day of the kind that neither of them had ever spent before. It had begun with an affectionate quarrel about Sid using her entire bacon ration for their breakfast – two rashers each – but she won, and they had tomatoes and fried bread as well.
‘I should have brought my ration book,’ Rachel said as they lit their first cigarettes of the day.
‘Nonsense! I mostly eat at the canteen anyway. I’d never be bothered to do bacon for myself.’ She felt her tiredness from lack of sleep dissolving from the pure happiness at the prospect of their day together. ‘The great question. What would you like to do?’
‘National Gallery concert?’
‘I’m afraid they don’t have them on Saturdays.’
‘Well, I have to do some shopping. I need a war
m suit – tweed or something. And I wanted to buy you your birthday shirt. And I ought to go and see Sybil. She doesn’t have Hugh at weekends.’
That was the first – then – very small cloud. She said, ‘I don’t have you in the week or at weekends. This is our time, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Let’s go out to lunch somewhere posh after shopping and it is going to be my lunch after eating all your bacon. Then we can see what we feel like.’
Unsure whether this meant that the visit to Sybil was off, or at the least, unlikely, she dropped the subject.
Ordinarily she hated shopping, but not with Rachel. The pleasure of helping her choose, of sitting on a small gilt chair at Debenham and Freebody while Rachel paraded in various suits was intense. Eventually with a blue-grey Donegal tweed long jacket and box-pleated skirt packed in a beautiful box, they returned to the car and drove to Jermyn Street and Rachel chose her shirt to give Sid, brown and coffee-coloured striped silk, and then Rachel found the perfect tobacco silk tie to go with it.
‘Darling, it’s a very expensive place. I don’t think you should give me a tie as well.’
‘Of course I shall. The Brig gives me such a generous dress allowance, and I haven’t spent any money for ages.’
The thought that it was the Brig who was indirectly responsible for these things was faintly depressing. Ideas like ‘They pay her to stay at home. They’ve made her utterly dependent’ occurred. She dismissed them quickly as unfair and nonsense. Of course Rachel had to have some money: nobody could exist without any at all; she was unreasonable to have such a qualm. ‘Let’s buy you things now,’ she said. But getting Rachel to spend money on herself, beyond the most extreme necessities, proved almost impossible. Rachel refused to buy herself a shirt: she really did not need one, she said. She agreed to get a jumper to go with the suit, and they walked up Burlington Arcade for that. Then she would not buy a cashmere, ‘Oh, no, darling, I’ve never had one of those – they’re fearfully expensive,’ and chose instead a lambswool twin set, jumper and cardigan, in a clear forget-me-not blue. ‘Do you think it will go with my suit?’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 80