The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  On duty that night, Angela, among her other tasks, spent her shift reading the hourly news bulletins from which more and more information about the Pearl Harbor attack emerged. Five battleships seriously damaged, over two thousand dead, two hundred aircraft destroyed. There had also been attacks upon the American base in the Philippines and two islands in the Pacific. Japan had declared war upon the United States and Britain. It seemed very odd to sit alone in the tiny room with the heavy glass panel separating her from the JPEs so that they could not speak to one another, and to read aloud these violent and distant events in much the same calm and professional manner that she would have used to announce an increase in the price of potatoes. In between, when she was not logging the records played or announcing them – when, in fact, there was a concert running that gave her some free time – she made lists of all kinds of things. Qualities that she thought most important in men: ‘honesty,’ she put; ‘kindness. Straightforwardness,’ (but that was like honesty). ‘Loving,’ she put. Then she made a list of what she wanted most in her life. ‘A more interesting job. Travelling. Someone to love.’ Then she got stuck. She thought of a list of what she wanted for Christmas, but nearly everything was unavailable; things she wanted to happen next year. ‘The war to be over.’ Fat chance of that: it was simply getting to be a bigger and bigger war; it would be all over China and Africa and India soon – like a plague. Perhaps people whom she might love and who might love her, whom she had never known, were being killed at this minute. Everything she thought of – even different kinds of lists – always seemed to come back to the same thing. It’s all I want, she thought sadly. I don’t want anything else.

  Christopher lay on his narrow camp bed in the attic with Oliver using up most of the space. If he tried to move, Oliver gave a deep sigh and shifted his bulk as though he was giving way to Christopher, but he always ended up by taking more of the bed. Tonight, however, Christopher wasn’t noticing Oliver as much as usual. The news had appalled him. The behaviour of the Japanese had not only shocked him, it had brought up new and distinctly alarming questions of conscience. How would he feel, as an American, if this had happened? People who could attack in that way were capable of anything. So, if he was an American, would he not feel that he should rush to defend his country from more of the same thing? More than that: did he need to be an American to feel that? He had been against war because he didn’t want anyone to kill anyone else, but the fact was that that was what they were doing. Perhaps one could not adopt a superior attitude to nearly everyone else while at least a number of them, who also disapproved, were mucking in and doing the dirty work. In all his conflicts and misery during the last year or so it had never once occurred to him that he might be wrong, not wrong in an intellectual sense, but wrong to separate himself from his own species. He thought now of his father’s jibes; at the way the other youths levelling the runway where he had been for so many weary months, had scoffed, and argued with him and eventually left him alone, so that sometimes days passed when nobody spoke to him except his sour-faced landlady with some complaint. She had cheated about his rations, taking his book and giving him bread and marge for breakfast, so that practically all of what he earned went on sandwiches in the only pub within reach of work. Through all that he had sustained himself with being right – which, of course, had meant that practically all the others were wrong. But now, as he thought of all those sailors who had not been fighting but had simply been suddenly bombed to death, he began to feel that even if he had been right, it was wrong to be right in that kind of way. It implied a kind of moral superiority that he secretly knew now did not belong to his nature. Look at how he had fought Teddy years ago when Teddy had wanted to join the camp he had made in the wood. And if he was no better than anyone else, he had no business behaving as though he was.

  After the really bad time – when that landlady had turned him out of the house without warning because she claimed to have been told he was a nancy boy, and he had said it was nonsense because it was, she’d said, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ and he felt he had to say yes. That had been it. She’d summoned her husband out and he’d sort of elbowed him out and down the steps into the street. He hadn’t even fetched his things. It had been very cold and it must have been Friday because he had money. He’d gone to a pub and drunk two whiskies to stop him shaking. Then he’d walked – he had a vague notion of catching a train and he must have caught one but he couldn’t remember anything more at all – until two men in uniform, wearing armbands, were shaking him on a bench by the sea, and asking him a whole lot of questions he simply couldn’t answer, and each time they asked a question, he went on finding out more things that he didn’t know. He knew he was alive because he was frightened of the men, and something else that lurked just out of the reach of his mind. They kept asking very strange things about regiments and leave and stations, and also much less strange things like what was his name, but he didn’t seem to have one, or at least he couldn’t remember it then. They took him off and shut him in a very small room. Someone brought him a cup of tea – the first kind thing that happened, it seemed to him, in this new life where he wasn’t anyone. He’d started to cry and then he couldn’t stop. He didn’t want to be anybody at all: he wanted just to pass out, stop, not feel anything. Then he was in a hospital, and they told him who he was, and it was no better knowing. His parents came and the fear that had seemed out of reach was suddenly all around him. They’d given him the electric shock treatments. The first time hadn’t been so bad, because he hadn’t known what they were going to do when they strapped him down on the high table. He’d come round after the first time with a splitting headache, but also a great sense of relief. But he had begun to dread the shocks. In between them, lying on his bed, he’d still felt anonymous and utterly alone – and once the line from a song came into his mind: ‘I care for nobody, no not I, and nobody cares for me.’ How could anyone sing that? It must mean that they didn’t know what it felt like.

  Home Place, which he had thought of with faint interest, had seemed no good at first. People were kind, but kindness made him cry. Then Oliver. Oliver accepted him without caring who the hell he was or what he’d done or not done. Oliver had been through a bad time; he whimpered in his sleep and sometimes growled, but he trusted Christopher from the first moment they met. He put out his fingers now to stroke him, and Oliver twisted his head and thrust a long cold nose into his hand. Polly would look after him if I joined up, he thought, as the awfulness of having to leave Oliver started in his mind. I suppose everyone has to leave someone they love in a war. I shall be just the same as everyone else.

  Hugh made love to Sybil that evening – something they hadn’t done for a very long time. They had a long, tender, gentle time of it, and afterwards, lying in his arms, she said, ‘My darling Hugh. I’m so happy loving you so much. Aren’t we lucky?’

  And almost before he had time to say, yes, they were, she had slipped into sleep.

  ‘I think he only kissed mine out of politeness, because he’d kissed yours.’

  ‘No, Poll, he thought you were beautiful. Besides, you’ve got the right kind of hands for kissing, mine must be one of those hazards that I suppose Frenchmen have to face.’ She held out her rough, nail-bitten hand critically. ‘I should think I’d better not marry a Frenchman.’

  ‘If you marry one, they’d kiss you in other places, silly. It’s only strangers’ hands they kiss, instead of shaking them.’

  They were in the bathroom at Home Place, cleaning their teeth and washing before repairing to the squash court. Clary, sitting on the side of the bath, said, ‘I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘It’s the excitement. Have an aspirin. I won’t tell the Duchy.’ She looked in the bathroom cupboard but there weren’t any. ‘I’ll get one from Mummy’s room.’

  But she came back a minute or two later and said, ‘Sorry, Clary. The light’s out and there’s not a sound. They must have gone to sleep.’

  ‘It doesn
’t matter. I expect the cold air will make me better. Anyway, I don’t mind. I don’t mind anything.’ She put her hand in her jacket pocket, and Polly knew she was touching the piece of paper.

  ‘Clary, I want to tell you something. I didn’t want to talk about it before, because you were so worried. I didn’t want to make it worse.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, in the autumn, and quite a bit of this winter, I thought Mum was dying—’

  ‘Poll! Did you? Why did you think that?’

  ‘Well, I sort of overheard Dad and Aunt Villy, and that’s what it sounded like. It was so awful! You see Dad didn’t know what I’d heard, and he didn’t tell me. People ought to tell you really important things like that, oughtn’t they?’

  ‘Yes,’ Clary said slowly, ‘they always should. As a matter of fact, I got pretty worried about her too. I didn’t hear anything,’ she added hastily, ‘it was just that she seemed so awfully ill, and getting worse not better. But she has now.’

  ‘Yes, thank goodness.’

  ‘You should have told me, Poll. After all, I’m your best friend. Aren’t I?’

  ‘Of course you are, but you didn’t tell me.’

  ‘I see what you mean. There’s a sort of trap, isn’t there? You don’t tell people things out of love. But actually, I think, the more you love people, the more you should tell them – even the difficult things. I think it is the best sign of love to tell them.’ She put her arms round Polly. ‘You’re never to bear things by yourself. Promise!’

  ‘OK. You promise as well,’ said Polly.

  ‘I do. Any not telling is a sign of not love.’

  And Polly answered in the Duchy’s voice ‘I do agree my dear.’

  By the time Edward and Villy had helped Archie up to his room, and he had collected his crutches and limped down the passage for a pee and back again, he felt exhausted. Apart from the emotions involved, hours of translating and spending an evening with so many – albeit now well-known and much-loved – people had been unexpectedly tiring. And then the news about the Japs, who would really spread this war, he thought, so that in many places the British were going to be pretty thin on the ground, or at sea, let alone the air.

  Dear old Rupe! I hope you’re all right, wherever you are, he thought, as he eased himself carefully into bed. What a piece of luck it was Rupert! None of the others would have got by on their French if this evening was anything to go by. He’d allowed himself to be infected by the family’s optimism but, alone now, and privy to far more of Pipette’s information and views than anyone else, he recognised that Rupert’s chances, at best, were no more than even. It must have been very lonely, lying in that field with his friend going away. Pipette had said that they had early made a pact that they would not emulate the three musketeers – the all-for-one-and-one-for-all principle. Pipette was entirely professional: it was his duty to get away so that he could fight the Germans from England. Rupert, although he was only ‘wavy Navy’, had felt the same. So of course, when it came to one of them going and the other staying, neither felt they had a serious choice, although Pipette said he had felt so bad about it that he had tried to stay.

  Then he thought of the whole family sitting round the dinner table: with Pipette on one side of him, he had found Rachel on the other. When toasts were being drunk, to Rupert, to Pipette, and Pipette’s reply, ‘To the family,’ and people were turning to one another to clink glasses, he had turned to Rachel. Touching her glass with his, he had said, very quietly below the general family jollity: ‘Here’s to you, dear Rachel – and to Sid,’ Her eyes had widened a moment as though with shock, and softened. Then she had given him a wholly enchanting, slightly anxious smile and said, ‘Bless you Archie.’ It was the very pleasant, very end of falling out of love.

  Love: Clary immediately came into his mind’s eye. What an extraordinary, intense and changeable face she had, that was always such a mirror of her heart! He went again over the moment after he had stopped Pipette, and she had looked down at her piece of paper for comfort and then back to him, and he had seen that resolute resumption of faith that her love had for so long and so painfully exacted, and again, felt moved, and humble and untried. She knows about love, he thought again, she knows more about it than anyone else. And beside his feelings of respect and affection for her, he felt the stirring of jealousy – of Rupert, her father, and of any future, unknown subject that there might be of her affection.

  Confusion

  Elizabeth Jane Howard

  For my brothers,

  Robin and Colin Howard

  Contents

  The Cazalet Family Tree

  The Cazalets and Their Households

  Foreword

  Part One

  Polly: March, 1942

  The Family: Spring, 1942

  Clary: Summer, 1942

  The Family: Late Summer–Autumn, 1942

  Louise: Winter, 1942

  Part Two

  The Family: New Year, 1943

  Polly and Clary: Spring, 1943

  The Family: Summer, 1943

  Louise: October, 1943

  The Family: December, 1943

  Part Three

  The Family: January, 1944

  Clary: May–June, 1944

  The Family: April–August, 1944

  Louise: Winter, 1944/5

  Polly: 1945

  The Family: April–May, 1945

  THE

  CAZALET

  FAMILY TREE

  The Cazalets and Their Households

  William Cazalet (the Brig)

  Kitty (the Duchy), his wife

  Rachel, their unmarried

  daughter

  Hugh Cazalet, eldest son

  Sybil, his wife

  Polly

  Simon

  William (Wills)

  }

  their

  children

  Edward Cazalet, second son

  Villy, his wife

  Louise

  Teddy

  Lydia

  Roland (Roly)

  }

  their

  children

  Rupert Cazalet, third son

  Zoë (second wife: Isobel died having Neville)

  Clarissa (Clary)

  Neville

  }

  their

  Rupert’s

  children

  by Isobel

  Juliet, child of Rupert and Zoë

  Mrs. Cripps (cook)

  Ellen (nurse)

  Eileen (parlormaid)

  Peggy and Bertha (housemaids)

  Dottie and Edie (kitchen maids)

  Tonbridge (chauffeur)

  McAlpine (gardener)

  Wren (groom)

  Billy (gardener’s boy)

  Emily (cook)

  Bracken (Edward’s chauffeur)

  Foreword

  The following background is intended for those readers who have not read The Light Years and Marking Time, the two previous volumes of this Chronicle.

  William and Kitty Cazalet, known to their family as the Brig and the Duchy, are spending the war in Home Place, their country house in Sussex. The Brig is now virtually blind and hardly goes to London any more to preside over the family timber firm. They have three sons and an unmarried daughter, Rachel.

  The eldest son, Hugh, married to Sybil, has three children, Polly, Simon and William (Wills). Polly does lessons at home, Simon is at public school, and Wills is four. Sybil has been very ill for some months.

  Edward is married to Villy and has four children. Louise is succumbing to love—with Michael Hadleigh, a successful portrait painter, older than she, now in the Navy—rather than an acting career. Teddy is about to go into the RAF. Lydia does lessons at home and Roland (Roly) is a baby.

  Rupert, the third son, has been missing in France since Dunkirk in 1940. He was married to Isobel, by whom he had two children; Clary, who does lessons with her cousin, Polly, but she and Polly are eager to get to London and s
tart grown-up life; and Neville, who goes to a prep school. Isobel died having Neville, and subsequently Rupert married Zoë, who is far younger than he. She had a daughter, Juliet, shortly after he disappeared, whom he has never seen.

  Rachel lives for others, which her great friend, Margot Sidney (Sid), who is a violin teacher in London, often finds hard.

  Edward’s wife Villy has a sister, Jessica Castle, who is married to Raymond. They have four children. Angela, the eldest, lives in London and is prone to unhappy love affairs; Christopher has fragile health and now lives a reclusive life in a caravan with his dog. He works on a farm. Nora is nursing and Judy is away at school. The Castles have inherited some money and a home in Surrey.

  Miss Milliment is the very old family governess: she began with Villy and Jessica, and now teaches Clary, Polly and Lydia.

  Diana Mackintosh, a widow, is the most serious of Edward’s affairs. She is expecting a child. Both Edward and Hugh have houses in London but Hugh’s in Ladbroke Grove is the only home being inhabited at present.

  Marking Time ended with the news that Rupert was still alive, and with the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. Confusion opens in March, 1942, just after Sybil has died.