She said, “When I told you about Rupert that first evening, you seemed to understand—exactly what it was like—the situation I was in. What has changed?”
He turned and seized her hands in a painful grip. “I’ll tell you what has changed. Or what I thought has changed. We’ve fallen in love. I thought. Really in love. That means not just now, today, it concerns the whole of our lives. I thought. I want to marry you. I want your children. I want to live with you, for you to be mine. I can’t bear the idea of anyone else touching you. You’re not a child, Zoë. You’re a grown woman—you can make your own choices—you don’t have to go through life doing what other people expect of you. Or isn’t any of this true for you? I really need to know.”
She was so confounded by his anger and these resentments so suddenly and savagely presented and so confused at being attacked about a future that, she realized, she had most carefully never considered that, for a moment, she simply stared at him, unable to speak.
“I do love you,” she said at last. “You must know that perfectly well. And it’s true that I haven’t thought about the future—at all. It isn’t true—” Her voice was shaking and she tried again: “I haven’t had secret options as you call them. I do love you. I’m not sure about anything else at all. I suppose I’ve been living on a kind of island with you—I haven’t thought about anyone else.” She was silent a moment, and then, but hardly audibly, she said, “I shall—now.”
He released her hands and she covered her face with them to cry as though she was with a stranger. She wept and wept, as though all the years of pent-up grief and uncertainty and downright anguish were suddenly released in her, as though one world had come to an end and there was now no other to take its place. He put his arms round her and held her through it. At the end of it he was gentle and tender—and contrite—taking her hands from her face, stroking the tears with his fingers, kissing her, asking her to forgive him. They made it up: forgiveness was the easy part, but the pure, unalloyed happiness she had known became fugitive, uncertain, its present leaking into the past, infected by the future. The row made her understand both how much she loved and how little she knew him.
At Christmas she felt especially divided, unable to leave the family, and knowing that he would be alone. “Haven’t you got some Army friends you could be with?” she asked, and he said, yes, he had, but he didn’t want to be with them. “Christmas doesn’t mean all that much to me anyway.” But he bought a present for Juliet—a little turquoise heart on a chain. They had the New Year together and he showered her with presents—stockings and a black evening bag sent from New York, and a scent called “Beige” from Hattie Carnegie, and a bunch of red roses and a man’s silk dressing gown that she thought must have cost a fortune and two novels by Scott Fitzgerald. She had spent weeks making him a shirt: it took a very long time partly because she had to make it more or less in secret from the family. “You made it?” he said, in amazement. “You actually sewed this yourself?” He was deeply touched and put it on at once.
That seemed to be the right moment to suggest to him that they might go and see Archie. She told herself that she wanted this in order to defuse any jealousy of Jack’s about him, but there was also the desire to show her lover to someone, and Archie was trustworthy and discreet, and, anyway, the only person who knew of Jack’s existence.
And so, later that day, there they were in Archie’s flat (where she had only been once before to change for her first meeting with Jack—years ago, it seemed) and Jack and Archie were getting on perfectly well. She didn’t listen to what they were saying because it all sounded like the usual war talk. Instead, she examined Archie’s room—the dead white walls, the large picture of a half-naked woman lying on a sofa beside a bowl of roses, an ugly person, but the colours were marvelous. There was a table with a pot of hyacinths on it and also a lamp made out of some old black glass bottle. The shelves each side of the fireplace sagged from the weight of the books: one short wall by the door was filled by the worm-eaten oak chest in which he’d told her the spare bedclothes were kept. Its top was covered by a piece of silk, purple and green, with embroidery and pieces of glass sewn into it. Opposite, the rather dirty, widely striped curtains of red and cream hung each side of his window with its balcony that looked out onto the square gardens. That evening when she had changed into her black dress, she had noticed none of this.
The meeting broke up because Archie was going out to lunch in Chelsea, “a very late lunch as my hostess is Spanish, but even with her, it is possible to be late.”
He had kissed her cheek and thanked them for coming, and she noticed then how he had never, once, alluded to Cazalet family life or Home Place, or, indeed anything that might have made Jack feel left out.
In the street, Jack took her arm and said: “I’m glad to have met him. It’s good to see something of your family.”
“He’s not actually family.”
“He feels like it. Anyway, he’s a good friend for you to have.”
It was a mild new year, dry and bright, it never seemed to rain. Afterwards, she could never remember when they had the first conversation about it—they did not often talk about the war, but the impending invasion of France, the Second Front, was constantly referred to at Home Place, in newspapers and people talking in the train. “When do you think it will happen?” she asked him idly one day.
“Soon, I hope. We shall need good weather, though. And over here that seems to mean summer. Don’t worry, darling, it won’t be just yet.”
“Worry? Why? Will you be going?”
“Yes,” he said.
“To France?”
“Darling, yes.”
“For how long?” she foolishly asked.
“For as long as it takes,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’m just a reporter—only a kind of witness. I shan’t be fighting.”
“But you might—” Terror possessed her: she couldn’t go on.
“I went to Italy in January. To take pictures of the landings.”
“You never told me!”
“No. But I came back safe and sound. It’s my job. We should never have met if I hadn’t had this job.” He gave her shoulders a little shake. “That’s enough of that.”
“But will you tell me—warn me—before you go?”
He was silent.
“Jack! Will you—please?”
“No,” he said shortly, “I won’t.”
Then he said, “We shall have a row about this if we’re not careful. So let’s not talk about it.”
Two months passed, then three and the summer began. There were wild roses in the country, the willowherb growing out of bombed masonry in the city started to flower. As the train crossed the river before coming into the station, it slowed down on the bridge as it often did and she watched the silver barrage balloons swinging abruptly in the sky, which was also crowded with long banks of scudding clouds casting hasty shadows on the pewter-coloured river below. The train got in at six in the evening; she had time to catch the number 9 bus to Knightsbridge and still get to the studio before him. It was Monday, not a day that she usually came up but their plans for the weekend had gone wrong: he was working longer hours and making frequent trips to the south coast—and the weekend that they had had a fortnight before had been interrupted by a call for him to report for duty. But this Monday she was coming up in order to go to an early appointment next day with the dentist, and when he spoke to her in the week they had made the plan that she should spend the previous night with him.
There was the usual queue at the bus stop, and when the bus did come and the old lady ahead of her lost her hat in a sudden gust of wind she had to get off the bus to chase it, but the conductor waited for her. “Can’t have you without your titfer,” he said, and while she was wondering what on earth he meant, a fat old man sitting opposite her said, “Tat. Hat. Rhyming slang—very amusing, what?” and gave her a smile that showed his glossy apricot artificial gums, and then lowered his eyes to h
er legs where they remained for the rest of the journey.
The studio smelt dusty. The big window would not open; she had to open the small ones in the kitchen and in the bathroom to get any air. Jack never opened them: he liked hot houses, he said, and cold drinks—he couldn’t get over the lack of ice and refrigerators. She opened the windows now to air the place. Everything was very neat, the bed made, no dirty coffee cups, although there was a half bottle of milk that had turned in the small meatsafe that served as a larder. She made herself a cup of weak tea. Then she decided to have a bath and change before he got home. Home it had become, she thought. It had become less bare, with books that he had accumulated, the clothes she kept there, a couple of Shell posters that he had bought—a Ted McKnight Kauffer and a Barnet Friedmann.
By the time she was changed it was nearly half past seven, and she left the door ajar so that she would hear him on the stairs. There was a pile of New Yorker magazines that he had sent to him, and she tried to settle down with them, but she had begun to feel anxious. She waited until eight o’clock and then tried his number where he worked. It was a direct line, she did not have to go through a switchboard, but she let it ring and ring and there was no reply. He was on his way, she told herself, but already she had begun not to believe this.
She waited and waited and he did not come. At half past eight she poured herself a stiff bourbon and water, found his battered packet of Lucky Strikes that he kept always in his dressing gown pocket and smoked one because the smell of it was comforting. He must have got called away—he wasn’t going to turn up. The sky became lavender and the wind seemed to have dropped although there were still clouds. She sat by the window and watched the light drain away until it was dark. It wasn’t until she heard the—very distant—sound of Big Ben on somebody’s radio from the kitchen window when she was getting herself a second drink that the idea occurred that it might be the invasion. The thought that this might be so, that he might have gone without even saying goodbye to her, gone for an unknown amount of time to God knew what danger—she had no illusions about that. How could thousands of men get out of boats and walk up beaches where Germans must be waiting for them without fearful loss of life? And whatever he said about just being a witness, if he was there they would shoot at him just as much as at anyone else. She knew that she couldn’t just sit alone in the studio all night not knowing. She would go to the pub at the end of the mews and buy herself a drink, and ask about the news: someone there would be sure to know. She had never been alone to a pub in her life, and ordinarily it would have been an ordeal, but now she was too desperate to care, and when every man in the small smoke-ridden bar looked at her with that mixture of curiosity and disapproval reserved for women who came to such a place without a partner, she ignored them, went straight to the bar, ordered a small whisky and, when she had paid for it, asked the barman if there had been any news. Not what he would call news, he said, of course she knew that we were into Rome. King Victor Emmanuel, whoever he may be when he’s at home, has abdicated in favour of someone whose name he couldn’t remember. “I can’t say I care. Foreign royalty’s a closed book as far as I’m concerned.”
No news. She could have kissed him. She swallowed her drink, and left. When she got back to the studio, she undressed, wrapped herself in Jack’s dressing gown and slept.
It wasn’t until she was in the dentist’s chair with her mouth full of cotton wads that she learned that the invasion had indeed begun that morning. She shut her eyes to try to keep her tears from escaping, but in vain.
“Now, now, Mrs. Cazalet, this isn’t going to hurt, and I haven’t even begun yet. Just a little injection and you won’t feel anything at all.”
Louise
Winter, 1944/5
“You stay put. There’s absolutely no point in you getting up. I’ll just shave, dress and be gone.”
“Don’t you want me to see you off?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. There might be other people on the train.”
He disappeared and she heard water running: it was a flat that had been made out of one huge room and the partition walls were very thin. His alarm clock went off: it was half past five—he was taking no chances about catching the train. She fumbled to silence it. I will wait till he’s gone, she thought, and then I will get up, wash and put my clothes on—and go.
When he returned, half dressed—his black socks had holes at the toe and his trousers were shiny with wear—she said: “When shall I see you again?”
“Not for some time, I’m afraid. I rather think it’s going to be madly war for a bit now.” He seized his not very clean white shirt, thrust his arms into it and began buttoning it up. “And I suppose it depends a bit on your husband.”
“Does it? Why?”
“He’s my boss. For the next few months, anyway. There’s a certain irony in that, isn’t there? Where the hell’s my tie?”
“On the floor.” It was a greasy black affair, worn with being tied in the same place for too long. He scraped a bit of it with his thumbnail. “Damn! I seemed to have got something on it. Funny, isn’t it, how it always looks like egg when there isn’t an egg in sight.” He came over to the bed. “Darling! I hope you will always look at me like that—especially when there are other people present.” They frequently used lines from the play that had been the subject of the first conversation they had had.
“Well,” she said, trying to respond, “the suspense is terrible and I hope it won’t last.”
He was putting on his jacket now, worn and shiny like the rest of his uniform, his left breast heavily sewn with ribbons. He had a DSC and bar, and had been five times mentioned in despatches. He opened his battered attaché case, disappeared and returned with a sponge bag, which he crammed into it with a jar of Brylcreem.
“Your alarm clock.”
“Well done.” He felt in his top pocket and withdrew a broken comb which he scraped through his heavily creamed hair. She hated the smell of it, but had not liked to say so. Then he came over to the bed, sat on the edge of it to kiss her. He had cut himself shaving—she said there were little beads of blood on his cheekbone like a curved dotted line.
“Shaving in cold water,” he replied. “And my razor blade’s had it, anyway.” He put his hands on her bare shoulders, stroking her long hair off them and gazed at her with his beautiful large intelligent grey eyes.
“It was good, wasn’t it? Look after yourself.”
“Do you—”
“Of course I do. I should have thought after last night you would have noticed that.” He kissed her again. His mouth smelled now of peppermint instead of whisky. “I’m afraid I really must go and win the war.”
“Win it,” she said; she felt a sudden danger of her crying, but it passed.
“In the train I shall think of you lying there—all voluptuous, like a thin Renoir. Very nice.” He straightened, ran a hand through his hair that had flopped forward, picked up the briefcase and went.
She had thought she might cry after he had left, but now found that she didn’t want to. She simply felt sad and flat. Last night after Rory had rung she had got ready to go and meet him, full of excitement: she had felt reckless, daring, stirred by the whole idea of going to meet her lover and spending the night with him in some unknown flat. In spite of trying she still didn’t enjoy being made love to, but she had decided that that was simply one more thing that was wrong with her to add to the mounting others: rotten mother, ungrateful wife, failed actress, undomestic altogether useless person that she seemed in the last two years to have turned into. She seemed to herself to spend all her energies acting the same old part of Mrs. Michael Hadleigh, having sore throats (they seemed to get worse and worse), and generally going through the motions of being a happy, successfully married young woman. But privately, with Michael, things had been going wrong for ages.
She had begun to notice that it had all started, she supposed, quite soon after the day that the door bell rang at home in London an
d she had answered it to find a very lanky, dark young man in army uniform.
“Excuse me. Does Michael Hadleigh live here?”
“Well, when he’s on leave, he does.”
“When’s he coming on leave?”
“I’m not quite sure—”
“Oh well, I’ll wait,” he said, stepped into the house and put his bag on the floor. “You must be Louise Hadleigh. I saw a picture of you getting married in The Times. I was overseas when you got married, or I’d have been there like a shot.” He smiled engagingly, as he added, “Rather an overworked analogy, these days, don’t you think? I say! Have you got anything to eat? I had a sort of poison pie in the train and I thought I could fancy it, but could I keep it down? I’m a kind of cousin, by the way—my name’s Hugo Wentworth.”
By now, she was delighted. She took him down to the kitchen and made him toast with Bovril on it and cups of tea. He chattered away, seeming able to have about three conversations at once, telling her about his journey from what he described as a Catholic stronghold in the north, interspersed with mock news bulletins about the war and extremely personal remarks about herself. “Trains are either boiling hot or icy cold these days, have you noticed? I say, you really are distractingly beautiful—I suppose if I had a larger frame I could have contained that poison pie,” and here he made a hideously funny face saying, “Goering: with just a touch of indigestion. It’s funny about Bovril, isn’t it? I mean do you think it’s the whole bull, or just that intensely reliable face you see on the jars? You don’t look at all as though you’ve had a baby, I must say, perhaps you just had a very small one … Is there any more toast? Although what I should really like would be a lobster. Life in Yorkshire with my dear mama was one long wartime scone and as she’s never cooked until the war they were like small hand grenades. You won’t mind my staying for a bit, will you? I can doss down on the floor, I’m lamentably used to discomfort. I can’t tell you how glad I am that Michael has married you. I was afraid he never would marry anyone …”
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 136