“Thirty shillings,” Zoë said.
“So that will be—” She wrote and her lips moved as she counted and Zoë noticed the little lines of lipstick that ran upwards into her top lip, while Maud said in an operatic aside that they really ought to be off.
“Two pounds fifteen and sixpence! Maud! Can you manage the change for that?”
“Mummy, I’ll have to go. I really mustn’t miss the ferry.”
“I’ll give it to her at the station, Cicely.”
“But I’m coming with you. I’ll just change my shoes.”
“We’ve got to go,” Zoë cried. “There isn’t time to change your shoes.”
So in the end she stayed behind, and Zoë kissed the resigned powdery face.
“I shall have, as they say at the cinema, to step on it,” Maud remarked, as she manoeuvred the Austin out of the shed. “Perhaps you had better take the money out of my purse. Cicely will never forgive me if I don’t give it to you.”
“I didn’t want it, you know.”
“I don’t suppose you did, my dear. But we mustn’t upset her—her heart’s a bit dicky, you know.”
“Why didn’t she tell us earlier that she wanted to come?”
“I think it was just a sudden notion she had. She always hates it when you go, you know. She’ll be all right after I get back. We’ll have a nice cup of Horlick’s for a treat, and play Pegotty, and go over all the events of your visit, and then I’ll make her have a little rest—the last few days have been quite exciting for her. She’s so proud of you, you know.”
In the train, practically empty, and the ferry, which was only half full, these words came back to her, replayed themselves over and over in her mind. She had thought that a weight would be lifted once she had got into the train with the visit behind her, but the pall of boredom and irritation was quenched now only by guilt, as she thought of all the ways in which she might have given her mother more pleasure, been kinder, nicer, more patient. Why was it that, in spite of all these years during which she felt that she had grown from being a spoiled and selfish girl into a thoroughly grown-up wife and mother and responsible member of a large family, she had only to be with her mother for a few minutes to revert to her earlier, disagreeable self? It was her behaviour, after all, that made her mother so timid and conciliatory, made her, in fact, everything that she, Zoë, found most exasperating. Waiting in her empty carriage for the train to start for London she suddenly thought, Supposing Jules when she is grownup feels like that about me? The idea brought tears to her eyes. She opened Anna Karenina, but she had reached the scene where Anna sees her son after he has stolen a peach and decides to take him away with her to Moscow. But she knew that Anna was not going to be allowed to have Vronsky and her son, and the mere thought of such a choice filled her eyes again and one splashed onto her book. She searched for and found a handkerchief in her bag. The train began to move, and as it did so, the carriage door was wrenched open and an army officer got in. He seated himself diagonally opposite to her having put one small, very smart bag with his cap on the rack. Now she wouldn’t even be able to finish her cry in peace, she thought. A second later, he had taken out a packet of cigarettes and was offering one to her.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Do you mind if I do?”
She shook her head. “Not at all.”
“You sound as though you have a cold coming,” he said with a kind of sympathetic familiarity that confounded her. But he was American, she knew that—not only from his voice but from his uniform which was a much prettier, palish green, version of English khaki.
“I haven’t. I just read a rather sad bit in my book, that’s all.” This excuse, which she had thought would sound lofty, sounded nothing of the kind when she said it.
“Is that so?”
“Not really.”
“Perhaps you read a bit that reminded you of something in your own life and that’s what did it.”
She looked up from her handkerchief to find him regarding her. He had very dark, almost black eyes. He lit his cigarette with a large, rather battered metal lighter. Then he said: “Do you see yourself as a Russian heroine? As Anna?”
“How did you know—”
“I’m so well educated, I can read upside down.”
She was not sure whether he was laughing at her, and said quickly, “Have you read it?”
“A long time ago. When I was at college. I remember enough to warn you that Anna comes to a sad end.”
“I know that. I’ve read it before.”
“Is that so? What is it like to read a novel when you know what is going to happen?”
“Once you know the story, you can notice other things.”
A short silence. Then he said, “My name’s Jack, Jack Greenfeldt. I was wondering whether you would have lunch with me when we get to London?”
“I’m afraid I’m already lunching with someone.”
“Your husband?”
“Oh, no. A friend.” She looked at her wedding ring. He asks a lot of questions, she thought, but that was probably because he was American—she had never met one before. If he does, I can.
“Are you married?”
“I have been … I’m divorced. How many children do you have?”
“How do you know I have any?”
“Well, if you’ll pardon me, I can see that you are over eighteen and you’re not wearing uniform: the chances are that you have children. Of course, you might also be some very senior or rare kind of civil servant as you call them here, but somehow you don’t look the type to me.”
“I have one child; a daughter.”
“Show me a picture of her.”
It seemed odd to her that he wanted to see a picture of the child of a total stranger, but why not? She took the leather folder out of her bag that contained her two favourite pictures: Juliet standing on the mounting block in the courtyard wearing one of the Duchy’s garden hats (she adored hats) and Juliet sitting in the long grass beside the tennis court in her best white muslin summer frock. In the first picture she was laughing, in the second she looked very serious.
He looked at them intently for quite a long time. Then, shutting the folder and handing it back, he said; “She’s very like you. I appreciate you showing me. Where is she?”
“In the country.”
“So you don’t live in London?” His disappointment was transparent. It made her feel kindly and old.
“No. Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“I don’t think I’m in a position to mind. What do you want to know?”
“Well, is it because you are American that you ask so many questions of a total stranger?”
He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I’ve always been inquisitive—more curious, about people, anyway. As you can see, I have the kind of nose that fits very easily into other people’s business.” This made her glance at his face. He smiled: his teeth looked very white against his sallow complexion. “I was hoping that you’d ask something more personal,” he said.
There was a nervous silence. Once, she would have thought that he was flirting with her, and she would have known exactly what to do, or not do, could have chosen the next move. Now she felt utterly unsure—she had no idea what game it was, she had only the uneasy feeling that he knew more than she about whatever it might be.
“It is very difficult to be happy in a war.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I sense that you are guilty about not being happy. Why on earth should you be? With people being killed all the time, slaughtered, murdered and sometimes tortured first, and then families being broken up, everybody without their partner, shortages of everything that makes life easier, a monotonous routine and a general absence of anything resembling a good time, why should you—or anyone else in this island—be happy? You may endure—the British seem to me to have gotten very good at that—but why should you enjoy it? I know the stiff upper lip is deeply embedded in
the British creed, but you try and smile with one!”
He was generalizing; she felt safer.
“We’ve trained our lips,” she said. “We’re used to it now.”
“I’ve found that it is very dangerous to get used to things.”
“Anything?”
“Yes—anything. You cease to notice whatever it is, and, worse, you get the illusion that you’ve arrived somewhere.”
“I don’t feel that at all,” she said, discovering this.
“Don’t you?”
“Well, I suppose it depends what you mean by not noticing things or getting used to them—”
“Nothing about your life depends upon what I mean,” he said, but it was not a harsh interruption.
“I think one can get used to some things and still notice it,” she said. She was thinking of Rupert.
“That would make it a very serious thing.”
“Yes. It would. It does.” She was immediately afraid that he would ask her what would—would press her past that involuntary confidence—but he didn’t. He got up and moved to sit in the seat immediately opposite her.
“I still don’t know your name.”
She told him.
“Zoë Cazalet. Would you have dinner with me tonight? I can see you’re about to turn me down. Don’t. This is a very serious invitation.”
Reasons why she shouldn’t do this crowded in. What should she tell the family? “I am having dinner with an American I met on the train”? Where should she stay in London, since she would be unlikely to get a train late enough afterwards? Where could she go between lunch and dinner? Why on earth was she even considering it?
“I’ve nothing to wear,” she said.
Louise
October, 1943
“Hasn’t he finished yet?”
“He keeps falling asleep.”
Mary, the new, very young, highly trained nanny looked disapproving. “Pinch his cheeks,” she said.
Louise gave a gentle tweak. The baby squirmed, pushed his head against her breast and found her nipple once more, but after sucking once or twice, he gave up.
“I don’t think I’ve got any milk left on that side.”
“Oh, well. Have you winded him?”
“I tried, but nothing much happened, I’m afraid.”
Mary leaned down, and took the baby from her. “Come to Mary, then,” she said in a different, far kinder voice. She put the baby over her shoulder and patted the small of his back. He belched several times.
“That’s a good boy. Your cup of tea’s on the side there.”
“Thank you, Mary.”
“Say goodbye to Mummy, then.” She levered the baby down so that Louise could kiss his face. He was pale, excepting for two blotches of bright pink on his cheeks; his mouth was pink and damp and pouting with a bead of milk on the protuberant lower lip. He smelled of milk and his eyes were shut. When they had gone, Louise buttoned up her nursing bra, putting fresh pads over her nipples. They were sore, but nothing like as bad as they had been. She reached for the cup of tea and drank it gratefully. The early morning feed was the worst. She was wakened from deep sleep by Mary, sometimes not until six o’clock, but sometimes even earlier, and the feed which, if only the baby would drink properly, need not take more than half an hour, always took twice as long. By the end of it she felt tired, but horribly awake. It took her ages to get to sleep again, and by the time she did, she had to get up for breakfast. At home, she would have stayed in bed, but at Hatton, where she now was, this was out of the question. She would have to get up, have her bath, dress and have breakfast with Zee and Pete, and soon after that it would be time for the next feed.
Michael had brought her down a week ago, and it had been made clear to her that, although, of course, he could not stay, Zee wanted to see her grandson, “really get to know him.” So they were to stay three weeks, of which only one was nearly over. Michael had not been sure when he would be able to get down again, and Zee had begun to say that it would surely be best if Louise and the baby continued to stay until he was able to fetch them. This, she felt, might be weeks, even months hence. It was twenty to seven: she had better try and sleep. She turned off the bedside light but, as usual, the dark seemed simply to accelerate everything that had to be suppressed with people and the daytime. Sometimes, as now, she thought that if she abandoned herself to it she would understand it better.
It always began with a litany of her good fortune: she was married to a famous man who had chosen her when he might, according to Zee, have married anybody he pleased; she had had a healthy son which was what everyone had expected. She had her own house in London (Lady Rydal’s in St. John’s Wood, as her aunt Jessica was going back to live in Frensham when Nora was married). She had a nanny, which most young women with babies could neither procure nor afford these days. What more could she ask? She was twenty and she had been married for exactly thirteen months, and so far Michael had not been killed or even wounded. She had everything to be grateful for. She turned on her side, so that if her tears became sobs she could suppress them in her pillow. Zee, she had discovered, sometimes walked about at night and had on more than one occasion opened the door of her bedroom and stood there, once when Michael was in bed with her, and twice when she had been on her own. These visits were never mentioned, but apart from being rather frightening they invaded the privacy which her extreme sense of isolation made essential. She could only even consider her unnatural feelings when she was completely alone; the rest of the time, she had to play the part of happy young wife and mother—anxious about Michael being in the war, of course, but otherwise existing in a cloudless atmosphere. Because the awful thing was that she didn’t have any of the feelings that they assumed to be the natural feelings that everybody was supposed to have. She knew that this was somehow her fault, but although she was sincerely ashamed and sorry to be such a person, she did not know at all how to change things for the better. She had tried once or twice, during the months of her pregnancy, to talk to Michael about how fearful she felt about having a baby. Not the labour of having him (he was always assumed to be male), but the fact of his existence. Michael, when he had listened, had brushed her anxieties aside, and told her that she would feel quite different the moment he was born. In the end she had clung to this. But she had—ever since his sorties in bombers over Germany (there had been several of them)—become more and more afraid when he went to sea and had his battles with E-boats. Other officers she met in Coastal Forces were killed, including very experienced ones, and there seemed to be less and less reason why Michael should not become one of them. Once, after they had taken a furnished house in Seaford and had been there for a few weeks, with him coming home to sleep when he was not at sea, he had returned one evening to say that the flotilla was being moved the next morning. She had burst into tears: “Then we’ll have to give up the house!” she had sobbed, unable to voice her worst fears.
“It’s not a very nice house,” he had said. “We never really cared for it. We’ll get another far nicer one, one day. Now, come on, darling, be a brave girl.”
But she couldn’t stop.
“We never have any time together: we never have a proper married life. We never have time to talk.”
“Of course we do,” he had replied. “Anyway, I can’t talk to you if you’re crying—you won’t hear a word I say. This is what happens in wars. People aren’t together. It’s the same for everybody.” Then the telephone had rung and he had answered it, and it was his Number One asking when he would be back on board. “They’re loading the torpedoes,” he said. “I must be there to be sure they are properly stowed. When you’ve shut up the house, I should go home to your family for a bit, darling. That would be best, until I know more what my lot will be on about.”
“Can’t you even stay for supper?”
“No, I’ve told you, I’ve got to go. I’d better pack my stuff now. Cheer up, darling, and give me a hand with it. Sparky is sending a car in half an
hour.”
So he had gone, and she packed, and tried to empty the larder in which there wasn’t very much, and rang up Home Place and said she would be coming. And then she had eaten the remains of some corned beef that had got left over somehow, and spent the whole night being sick and having diarrhoea. She thought she was going to die. In the morning she rang home and told her mother, who said she would come in the car to fetch her home. After that, she didn’t try to talk to Michael about things that she was afraid of, or that made her anxious, or that she didn’t understand. She clung to the notion that when she had had the baby everything would be different. She had stayed at home until about a month before the baby was to be born and then she and her mother had moved her into Hamilton Terrace. That had been exciting: there was a certain amount of furniture that had belonged to her grandparents, but the house was dingy, and needed redecorating. Also, she was able to unpack the wedding presents, and bring her own things, her books, from Home Place. She was in a fever to get everything arranged before the baby came, and Stella, who miraculously had a week’s leave, arrived to help her paint the walls of the sitting room and the nursery. After a week, her mother had to go back to Home Place and Stella to Bletchley, where she worked at some job too secret to mention. It had been wonderful having her. Then Michael had arrived for a week’s leave. They had gone to a film and had dinner out and then when they went to bed, he began making love to her. “I’m too fat!” she had said—she really didn’t want him to—she didn’t just not feel like it as usual, she positively couldn’t bear the idea of it.
“Nonsense, you silly little thing, I don’t mind how fat you are!” And he had gone ahead, and it had been extremely uncomfortable. The next morning he had had to go to the Admiralty, but said he would be back in the evening. Her labour had begun at lunch-time, when her mother was to arrive with some professor from the Royal College of Music who was to take away what remained in the house of her grandfather’s manuscripts. She had prepared lunch for them—a great effort, but Michael had brought his ration book so she got a tin of Spam which she stuck with cloves, sprinkled with sugar and roasted in the oven. This, with boiled potatoes and a salad would have to do. After lunch, while the old man was sorting through the piles of paper in her grandfather’s study, she told her mother that she thought something might be happening, although it didn’t hurt at all and the stirrings, as she described them, only seemed to happen occasionally. Her mother said that, as the baby was not due for at least three weeks, she thought it very unlikely that labour had begun. “Anyway, Michael will be back quite soon—otherwise I would stay.”
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 123