‘A cold drink. There’s toast in my bed scratching me.’
She picked him up and put him in a chair wrapped in an eiderdown with a thermometer in his mouth while she tidied his bed which, apart from undeniable crumbs of something, contained his two bears, a dismantled torch, his favourite tin tip-up lorry and some sticking plaster that had come off his knee. ‘You’ve got so many things in your bed, no wonder it’s not comfy. Now. Let’s see.’ His temperature was a hundred and one, in spite of the aspirin.
He began crying again. ‘I don’t want you to go!’
‘I won’t be a minute, my darling. Let’s put you back in your nice tidy bed, with Tedward and Grizzly.’
When she came back with the drink, he said, ‘Why can’t we go back to living with Ellen and Wills and Jules and everyone? Why do we have to live in a house by ourselves?’
She explained – not for the first time – about all the family returning to London because the war was over, and coaxed him to drink a little. He was snuffling now, and she helped him to blow his nose. But when she started to tuck him up, he became frantic again. ‘I don’t want you to go!’
‘How would it be if you slept with me tonight? With Tedward and Grizzly in my bed? I’ll get you a night-light, and then when you wake up I’ll be with you.’ That seemed to go down well. She carried him to her room, went downstairs again and found a night-light, which she put in a saucer. When she got back to him, he was lying quite peacefully in her bed. She kissed him and he received her kiss with a dignified satisfaction. As she was leaving the room, he said, ‘Mum! I know why Dad doesn’t come here.’
‘Oh?’
‘The ceilings are too low for his head. It might be better if we got a taller house.’
‘I’ll think about it. Sleep tight.’
She went to tell Miss Milliment that she was now going to get supper, but in the kitchen discovered that the potatoes had boiled dry, had begun to catch on the bottom of the pan. She tipped them out, and cut the burned pieces off them. There was neither milk nor margarine to mash them. She put them on a tray with the remains of a meat loaf she had made. It would have to do. She was too exhausted to flunk about any other vegetable. She finished her gin: she wasn’t hungry, but luckily Miss Milliment wouldn’t see if she hardly ate any supper.
But Miss Milliment seemed to know some things whether she could see or not. After they had discussed Roland – she would ring the doctor in the morning – the current strike of the road hauliers, and the food shortages, the desirability or not of using the Army to distribute food supplies and the imminent shortage of potatoes, she said, ‘Viola, my dear, there is something I wanted to discuss with you—’ but then the telephone rang.
It was Lydia. Polly had asked her to stay the night, was that okay? She’d be back after breakfast. ‘Well, for lunch anyway,’ she said.
‘You haven’t got anything with you,’ she heard herself weakly (and pointlessly) saying.
‘It’s okay. Polly will lend me a nightdress and I took my toothbrush just in case she asked me.’
‘All right. Have a good time.’
‘I am! It’s lovely here.’
And horrible here, she thought, as she went back to the sitting room. ‘That was Lydia,’ she said, as she sat down at the small gate-legged table. ‘She’s staying the night with Polly,’ and then, without any warning, she burst into tears.
Up until now, she had preserved a tight-lipped silence on the subject of being abandoned: she had had, of course, to tell Miss Milliment that Edward was leaving her and going to live with someone else, but she had done it in such a way as to preclude any discussion – or, indeed, any further mention of it. Miss Milliment had listened, had said quietly how very, very sorry she was and that had been that. But now, it all poured out – she could not stop herself: the need to confide her terrible sense of humiliation and failure, her anger at being lied to and betrayed, her resentment that, having been, as she felt, a good wife for all these years and having therefore, in a sense, earned the peace and security of old age in the married state, she should now be faced with the anxiety and fear of ending her life alone – not that she felt she had any life to speak of anyway, but now, she felt, she was going to have to be grateful and obliged to people for any stray consideration or kindness, neither of which could, in any case, even assuage her loneliness because nobody would ever know or care about her desperately unhappy she was … She had stopped there for a moment, staring at Miss Milliment with streaming eyes. They could neither of them see each other, but Miss Milliment groped with her hand across the table until she found Villy’s and held it. And now, she said, Edward wanted her to divorce him so that he could marry this woman who had destroyed her life. And people seemed to think that this was perfectly reasonable. She should not only lose her husband, but virtually give him to someone else! Jessica, her own sister, thought something of the kind. And the friend she’d had lunch with today had seemed to think that divorce would stimulate her into starting some sort of career in ballet again – and teaching – since having given up her real career entirely for Edward she was, of course, too old to resume it. Think what Mama would have said about divorce! She stopped here, feeling that this was the cue for Miss Milliment’s shocked agreement. But it wasn’t. ‘I do not feel,’ she said, ‘that Lady Rydal’s views upon such matters can be of much use to you now, Viola. A very great deal has changed since her day. Had changed, in fact, long before her death. Divorce no longer carries the stigma that once it did. It cannot, since there are now so many – nearly a hundred thousand in the last two years, I remember reading in the newspaper. No. I am concerned for your unhappiness. I am acutely aware of that. It is what I wanted to talk to you about.’
Lydia saying ‘it’s horrible here’ recurred, and she said, almost angrily, ‘Oh! You mean I’ve been going about with a long face making everybody feel miserable! Well, I don’t see what I can do about that. I can’t change what has happened.’
‘No, you cannot.’
‘So?’
‘You have to think about what you can change.’
She was silent. She did not know – did not particularly want to know – what her old governess meant: she was almost back to sulking in the schoolroom, remembering how Miss Milliment used to lead, coax, invite her to arrive at conclusions, as it were by her own volition.
‘Responses?’ Miss Milliment said, after the pause. ‘It is possible to change those, and sometimes this can lead to a better understanding.’ She waited a moment. ‘I think of you as having so much generosity of spirit. I know of no one who takes the trouble to be so constantly and unobtrusively kind as you, my dear Viola. And I have admired this all the more because, ever since you took me in during the war, I have been conscious that your life has disappointed you or, perhaps I should say, has not presented you with the opportunities to realize to the full your considerable gifts. Is that not right?’
It was. It had always been true, but it was a bit late now to change that. ‘I’m nearly fifty!’
‘My father did not die until I was fifty-three and it was not until his death that I started to earn my living.’
It was different for her. She had had to – there was no money – but Villy did not like to say this.
‘Of course, it was necessary for financial reasons. But there are other kinds of necessity, aren’t there?’
‘You think I should find some work – get a job?’
‘I think you might enjoy having something to do that interested you beyond the domestic round. It is worth thinking about.’
‘But even if I did – find something – what has that to do with divorcing Edward? Do you mean I should shake that dust off my feet and say good riddance?’
‘Oh, I don’t think you would ever do or say that. It is not in your nature. No: presumably that is what he wants and it would be in keeping with your character if you made that gesture towards him.’ She was silent for a moment, and then she said: ‘I fear you may think that a
monstrous suggestion. But whatever you do now will be difficult. Since Edward has gone, and you could not prevent that, remaining married to him in name will keep you trapped, as much as it will him. You will not be able to rid yourself of the idea – however unlikely – that he will return to you, and I fear you may come to hate him because he does not. It is extraordinarily difficult not to hate someone when one feels powerless with them.’ A small smile eddied its way from her mouth down into her chins. ‘Goodness! How I used to hate my father sometimes! And how miserable and wretched that made me feel! My dear Viola, I am afraid I have fallen into the trap of being wise after my own events, as it were. It was so clear to me afterwards – after he died – that I had never made my own wishes known to him, so how could he know that I had any? I saw myself as the dutiful, unmarried daughter, sacrificing my life to his comfort. It came to me afterwards that martyrs are not really good domestic company. Poor Papa! How dull it must have been for him.’
Villy became conscious of her hand being stroked. ‘I have great love and admiration for you,’ Miss Milliment was saying. ‘You were always my favourite pupil in those days. Such a good mind! So quick to apprehend and then apply yourself, as I remember telling your dear father. You were his favourite as well.’
Lying in bed beside Roland, with the night-light burning in case he woke (his fever seemed to have broken – his forehead was damp with sweat), she felt the same kind of feverish relief. For the first time in months she could feel the weight of her own body – a welcome lassitude, a fatigue that was certain to be recompensed by sleep. She turned on her side so that she could face her son: the sight of him made her feel weak with love.
‘I’m afraid I spilled a teeny drop or two, but I think it only went on to the sheet. Not the blankets.’ She smiled reassuringly at her daughter and dabbed her mouth with her napkin still in its napkin ring. She was having breakfast in bed, her pink bed-jacket draped round her shoulders. She could not put it on as she had broken her right arm when she slipped getting off a bus some weeks back; it was still in plaster and she had to wear a sling. This had meant, of course, that she was unable to dress or undress herself, had to be helped in and out of the bath, have her food cut up for her and, worst of all, was unable to knit – a pastime that she had so come to rely upon that Zoë recognized its impossibility as a real hardship.
‘I’ll go and get a cloth.’
‘I think it’s too late for that, dear. I did it just after you brought my tray, but I didn’t call you as I didn’t want to be a trouble.’
This remark or, rather, refrain – since it occurred at least half a dozen times a day – had almost, but not quite, ceased to irritate her. There were variations – a burden, a nuisance were two of the other things her mother said she didn’t want to be – but in this respect, her wishes seemed doomed. She had been living with them now for nearly three months, and there was no doubt at all that she was quietly, persistently, sometimes unobtrusively one or all of these things.
‘I’ll take your tray out now and come back later to help you get up.’
‘No hurry, dear. At your convenience.’
While she washed the breakfast things, Zoë thought despairingly of the sort of day she would once have had, before her mother came, and the sort of day she would have now. She had known it would be difficult, but the difficulties had been of a different kind from those she had envisaged. She knew now that her mother had changed a great deal since the days in the Earl’s Court flat. Years with Maud in the Isle of Wight had accustomed her to being the centre of unremitting attention. She had been treated as a semi-invalid, Maud had made all the dull or difficult decisions for her and, while allowing her to think that she was sharing the chores, had taken on the bulk of them.
When Zoë had brought her mother back to London in November, she had indeed been pathetic, sad, thin, tired, extremely anxious and also – particularly to Rupert – touchingly grateful for being taken in, as she put it. But as she became used to the situation she had gradually encroached upon Zoë’s time. She was always talking about Maud – in relation to herself. ‘She was such a one for little treats,’ she would say. ‘She would ask somebody to tea and not tell me till the last moment, or I would guess because I could smell her flapjacks in the oven.’ Or: ‘She loved surprises. She was always thinking up little ways to cheer me up. Once she drove me all the way to Cowes to have tea in Coffee Ann’s. And then we went to such a good shop to spend our sweet ration. In summer, she would sometimes make us lunch in the garden! She had a sort of rustic bower and a seat – not very comfortable, I must say, but she had an air cushion, which made all the difference. “If you don’t mind the earwigs, Cicely,” she would say, “we’ll have lunch al fresco – if you’re game.” Of course I always was. She took me to the hairdresser once a week. “We must keep up appearances,” she would say, “war or no war.”’ It had been going to the hairdresser that had resulted in her fall. She had, of course, gone on her own, not wanting to be a burden.
The worst of all this was that Zoë felt her exasperation and, indeed, boredom mounting, and hated herself for it. She would tell Rupert this when they were alone, and his responses had changed from defending her mother – ‘She’s really rather pathetic’ – to a wry acceptance that she was, in fact, a bit of a killjoy. Yesterday – the weekend – they had all been having tea, and Juliet had been explaining how at school they fed the birds, but the bread got all hard and frosty for their poor beaks, and then she had said: ‘I’ve got a very good wonderful kind idea for birds, Mummy. I shall spend the whole of next summer collecting worms and keep them in a box and then in winter I’ll give the birds one or two at a time – like rations.’
Mrs Headford had said, ‘I don’t think that worms are very nice for a little girl.’
‘I’m not going to eat them, Gran.’
‘I mean to talk about, dear.’
‘I think they’re very nice. I often talk about them. I talk about anything I think of.’ And seeing her grandmother’s head shaking at her with a maddening smile, Jules had added, ‘You needn’t talk about them if they frighten you.’
Rupert had caught her eye and winked.
They had tried very hard in the early days. Had taken her to the cinema – Anna Neagle and Michael Wilding. That had been a success: she had remarked that Maud had used to say how like she was to Anna Neagle. But when they had anyone to dinner she managed to infest the evening with gentility, with clichés, with a kind of trivial egocentricity that reduced everyone to dull compliance. After a particularly unfortunate evening when they had invited Villy and Hugh and she had held forth on her own (and Maud’s) views about divorce and refused to be deflected by any attempts on Rupert’s part to change the subject, they decided that dinner parties at home were temporarily out. ‘It’s not just that she puts her foot in it,’ Rupert said gloomily, ‘she keeps it there.’
‘I should have told her more about Villy,’ Zoë said. ‘I did tell her that Edward had left her, but I didn’t say that there was going to be a divorce.’
‘Well, I think that if we want to see people in the evening, we’d better take them out.’
‘But that’s terribly expensive, and anyway, Rupe, it’s not fair on you.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Hugh seemed in good form, though.’
‘Yes, he’s very pleased about Poll’s engagement. He really likes the chap.’
After Mrs Headford broke her arm things got better about that, because she announced that if there were guests, she would rather have dinner in bed as she found having her food cut up for her embarrassing.
But then first Juliet and then Ellen were ill: influenza, the doctor said – it was raging, people were suffering from being cold nearly all the time since fuel shortages made it impossible to keep either houses or offices warm and the weather continued to be raw. It was the coldest February since 1881. Mrs Headford had knitted her granddaughter a thick cardigan for Christmas, but, unfortunately, she
had chosen a pale pink wool, and Juliet hated pink. She stood miserably in the middle of the room while her grandmother admired her.
‘Aren’t you going to thank your Gran with a kiss?’
She walked over to the armchair, shut her eyes tightly, and gave her a quick peck.
‘You look so pretty in pink.’
‘I don’t want to look pretty, Gran.’
Mrs Headford thought this was a joke. At tea, Juliet reappeared minus the cardigan, wearing her father’s tweed cap the wrong way round, and a large charcoal moustache. ‘This is how I want to look,’ she said. She flatly refused to wear the cardigan at all, although every day, without fail, her grandmother asked why she wasn’t wearing it, until, in desperation, Zoë embroidered red poppies all round the cuffs and edge.
But now she could not knit, and the problem was how she should pass her time. Zoë offered books – novels that she thought light enough – but Mrs Headford simply opened and shut them and said she really only liked library books. This mysterious distinction involved regular trips to the library to select books which, in some cases, they already possessed. Rupert bought her a wireless for Christmas, and this certainly helped, although she remarked plaintively of this – as of reading – that one could not do it all the time. What she liked were little chats about her life in the Isle of Wight and little outings – rendered difficult because of the weather, and when influenza struck, impossible through lack of time. It seemed to Zoë that she spent all her time on freezing excursions to buy food, and then long hours preparing it, followed by exhaustive efforts to get the invalids – and her mother – to eat whatever it was. ‘I know I’m a rotten cook,’ she wailed to Rupert in the evenings, ‘but they all don’t like different things. Jules hates fish and milk puddings, and Mummy says stews give her indigestion, and Ellen won’t eat anything except Bovril made with powdered milk.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 182