‘I don’t think there is anything to say.’
‘I shouldn’t have been so cross last night, but I was frightened about Jules, you see.’
Her mother took a sip of tea and then put the cup back in the saucer. ‘Do you know, Zoë, ever since you were a little girl, you hardly ever apologized for anything, and when you did, you always made an excuse for what you had done to show that it wasn’t your fault.’
All of that day, which seemed interminable, she struggled with this indictment. Was it fair, or true? If it was true, it must be fair. Whatever it was, it rankled bitterly inside her. She could not tell Rupert of her mother’s decision because she didn’t want to talk about it in front of Jules. She sent them out shopping while she tidied the flat and prepared lunch; she remembered to ask Rupert to get some batteries for her mother’s wireless. At least she had remembered that. But when Rupert returned with them and installed them of course it was he whom her mother thanked.
As a treat she had used the week’s meat ration for a Sunday joint. She had chosen pork, because Ellen, who was very good at that, had told her how to cook it. With it she had made apple sauce, mashed potatoes and cabbage, which always seemed to turn out rather watery but at that time of year there was not much choice of vegetable.
Rupert carved. ‘I say! This is a bit of all right!’ he said, in the cheery voice she noticed he seemed always to use when her mother was present.
‘No crackling for me,’ Mrs Headford said.
‘PLEASE DON’T CUT MY MEAT UP!’ Jules shouted.
‘It’s not yours, darling, it’s Gran’s.’
‘Oh. Can I have her crackling?’
‘No. You’ll have your own crackling.’
‘No cabbage! I hate it. I—’
‘Cabbage is good for your complexion,’ Mrs Headford observed.
‘What’s that?’
‘Your skin,’ Rupert said, putting her plate of food in front of her.
‘My skin? My skin? A funny thing, Mummy. You know how people sweat? When they have little blobs on their forehead when they get hot? Well, why don’t blobs of rain go in? Because Ellen says they don’t. She said skin’s waterproof, but if sweat comes out it can’t be, can it?’
‘I see what you mean,’ Rupert said. ‘Perhaps some does go in and you don’t notice.’
‘I don’t think we want to talk about that at lunch-time.’
‘I do, Gran.’ She seized a bit of her crackling in her fingers and bit into it with her sharp white teeth. ‘What would you like to talk about?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I know! Dad says that Polly is getting married. It’s in June. Can I be a bridesmaid, Mummy? It is my turn. Lydia was last time, and she’s far too old now. She’s marrying a man called Gerald Lord.’
‘No, darling, he is a lord. He’s called Gerald Fakenham.’
‘What’s a lord, Dad?’
‘It’s a title. You know, like Dr Ballater being called doctor.’
‘What are lords good at?’
‘A good question. Well, the same things as other peoople, really. Or not, as the case may be.’
‘I expect he has a very nice house and grounds,’ Mrs Headford said, ‘and plenty of money. Very nice for your niece.’
‘I don’t think he’s got any money at all, but Hugh says he’s a very good egg and they both seem very happy.’
‘A good egg, Dad? How can a person possibly be an egg?’
‘It’s just a phrase. It means a good person.’
‘Jules, darling, do eat your lunch.’
‘I am, Mummy, bit by bit.’ She speared a slice of meat with her fork and bit a piece of it.
‘Cut it up first, Jules.’
‘It sounds silly, marrying an egg.’
‘And don’t talk with your mouth full.’
‘Mummy, I can’t do both the things you say. I can’t eat my lunch and not talk with my mouth full.’
And so it went on, the atmosphere saved by Juliet’s prattle. At least Zoë’s mother didn’t bring up the subject of her going then.
Afterwards, they took Juliet to Kensington Gardens to see if there was ice on the Round Pond. Zoë had got some stale bread from the baker’s without coupons so that Juliet could feed the ducks – one of her favourite occupations. Mrs Headford, invited to come, said that she would have a little rest.
Home before it was dark. It had been freezing in the park, and standing about, while Juliet fed the ducks, she had nearly told Rupert about her mother, but each time she was about to start, Juliet claimed their attention.
‘What’s up, darling?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Something’s worrying you.’
‘I’ll tell you later.’
Tea and toast with Marmite to conceal the taste of the bright yellow margarine. Then they played games with Juliet: Rupert tried very hard to get his mother-in-law to join in, but she said she couldn’t play cards with one hand, and when he suggested Pelman Patience, she said she could never remember where any of the cards were. ‘Pegotty, then,’ Rupert said, and they played that, although Jules said she didn’t like it.
Eventually, and by what seemed tediously slow progression, Juliet was bathed and put to bed, supper, mostly left-overs, was laid on the table, eaten and washed up, and then Mrs Headford said that she was tired and would go straight to bed and listen to her wireless. So Zoë helped her mother undress, filled her hot-water bottle, waited while she went to the bathroom, and helped her into bed. During all this, nothing was said about the future, beyond that tomorrow she would have breakfast in bed and wait there until Zoë had returned from taking Juliet to school to give her her bath. Eventually she escaped upstairs to the sitting room, exhausted.
‘There’s a spot of brandy left. Would you like it with soda or neat?’
‘With soda, I think.’
‘Coming up.’
‘Now, then,’ he said, when he handed her her glass. ‘What’s going on? The atmosphere was pretty sticky at dinner, I thought.’
She told him.
‘Perhaps she doesn’t really mean it,’ he said. ‘It might just be because you were cross with her.’
‘She does. I mean, I’m sure it is to do with me being cross with her, but she does mean it.’
‘Do you think she can manage by herself?’
‘Well, she couldn’t before.’
‘I must say, I can’t see her cooking much, or that sort of thing. She didn’t do a thing to help you today.’
‘She can’t with no right arm. But she says, as soon as the plaster is off, she’s going to get in touch with Miss Fenwick – the friend who lives nearby – to get the cottage ready.’
‘I suppose she couldn’t just go back there for the summer when it would be easier for her, no fires etcetera, and spend the rest of the year with us?’
‘Oh, God – I don’t know. It’s just so awful, day after day. I don’t know what to do with her, and she doesn’t get on with Jules – or Ellen, come to that.’
‘Poor darling, I do realize how difficult you find it.’
‘Well, you do too, really. You’re much nicer about it than I am, but meals are awful just with her, and we’ve tried having people and we know that’s out. And it’s going to go on for years and years! She’s not sixty.’
‘It’s partly this flat,’ he said. ‘There’s not enough room. If she had her own sitting room it would be easier.’
‘I don’t think it would. She would be wanting to be with us all the time, so even when she wasn’t I’d feel guilty.’
There was a short silence while she watched him take a cigarette out of a bright blue packet and light it. Then she said, ‘If I’d been nicer to her when it was easier to be it – I mean, when I only had to see her sometimes – I wouldn’t feel so bad about her now. Goodness, that smells far better than your usual cigarettes. Could I have one?’
He offered her the packet and lit one for her. For a moment it reminded her of Jack’s cigarettes, but only for a moment: these did not have th
e slightly burnt-caramel taste of the Lucky Strikes.
‘How do you get French cigarettes?’
‘A place in Soho. I only smoke them occasionally.’ He sounded defensive.
‘I don’t mind what you smoke, darling.’
‘The fact is that you’ve never got on with her, and of course she must know that. I’m not blaming you,’ he added hastily. ‘I’m just saying that that’s what makes it so difficult. Perhaps it would be better if she did go.’
‘But, Rupert, that’s the problem. I feel I can’t let her go and I feel I can’t stop her from going.’
They talked in this way for some time. He offered to talk to her mother, but she refused. She was afraid of what her mother might say about her: she was in that state when every suggestion that he made seemed unavailing. Eventually, he gave up and she could sense that he was aggrieved at the lack of a solution.
‘I think you just feel everything is insoluble because you’re dead beat,’ he said. ‘Come on. Bed.’
As she followed him into the bedroom, she thought of all the different ways in which, long ago, he had made that suggestion.
A few days later, she took her mother to Dr Ballater to have the plaster taken off her arm. Yes, he said, she could use it normally; the muscle tone would soon return. ‘But don’t go hopping on and off buses in this weather,’ he had added, looking at Zoë as he spoke, as though, she felt, she had made her mother go in buses.
Mrs Headford spent the afternoon writing letters – or, rather, although she had described this activity in the plural, one rather long letter, which she asked Zoë to post when she went to fetch Juliet from her dancing class. The subject of her mother leaving was still not mentioned between them.
She took her shopping – to her favourite old-fashioned drapers, Gaylor and Pope, where when you paid the lady at the counter wherever you bought what you wanted, your money and bill were put into a small canister and whizzed away along wire to the cashier, returning with your receipted bill and any change required. Mrs Headford had made a list and they ploughed through it: knickers, warm stockings, bedroom slippers, some petersham ribbon to trim her summer hat, buttons for the cardigan she was now able to finish, bias binding, elastic, some hairnets, a bath-cap, and a bag to keep her knitting in. She was indefatigable, and kept remembering things that she wanted that she had not put on the list.
Zoë had resolved to be infinitely patient about the expedition, and to take her mother out to lunch after the shopping was done.
‘Oh, I should like that,’ she said, when this was proposed. Marylebone High Street also contained one of those places where chiefly women went, generally for elaborate cake and tea or coffee, but which also served simple, genteel luncheon dishes, such as omelettes or cauliflower cheese, and they went there, and sat at a very small round table so surrounded by carrier bags that the waitress could hardly reach them.
‘I seem to have bought the shop up,’ her mother said happily.
‘Shopping clearly does you good.’
‘And things are much better now, aren’t they, Zoë, now that you know I’m going.’
‘You know I’m worried about that.’
‘Yes, dear. But I shall be all right. Doris is very good to me, and she will help me with the cooking, and, as Maud always said, Avril is a brick. And I think I shall get a cat for the company.’ Later, she said, ‘And of course you must bring Juliet for a visit. As you know, we’re not far from the seaside.’
‘She’s absolutely determined,’ she told Rupert that night.
‘Perhaps you’d better take her down and make a point of seeing this friend of hers and asking her to get in touch with us if she’s worried.’
‘Oh, God! I suppose I’d better.’
‘I’m only pointing out that if you’re worried about her this would be something you could do about it.’
She sensed that they were nearly quarrelling and that it was because she was so full of conflicting feelings about it. She did not tell him that, in the taxi coming home after the shopping spree, her mother had said, ‘You know, Zoë, I don’t think you appreciate how lucky you are to have your husband back from the war. You’re not faced with being a widow at twenty-four as I was, with a little girl to bring up on my own. He’s a very nice man and you should do everything you can to make him happy.’
‘I think he is happy.’
‘Do you, dear? Well, I’m sure you know best.’
Nothing more was said, but again, this parting shot of her mother’s unnerved her. Was he happy? He was devoted to Juliet and when he was doing things with her he was the old Rupert she had married – kind and funny, full of small jokes and sweetness of temper. With her he was patient, gentle and, she now felt, somewhat bored: there was nothing light about their relationship – it seemed to be composed of myriad small duties, and whenever these seemed, temporarily, to come to an end, there was a kind of void, a feeling of tension and uncertainty. With Ellen back, there were fewer tasks for Zoë, and consequently more of the tension.
The letter from Avril Fenwick arrived promptly – she must have replied by return of post, Zoë thought, as she took it in on her mother’s breakfast tray.
When she went to fetch the tray, she found her mother still in bed, the letter spread before her and her breakfast untouched.
‘Oh Zoë!’ she cried. ‘Such news! Such a wonderful letter! I’ve never had such a letter in my life. Poor Avril! She didn’t want to tell me because she thought I would be so upset, but when,’ wrote to her she says she saw her way clear at once! And she was ninety-six, after all. As Avril says, it was a good age and she had a wonderful life. But it’s so kind of her! I can’t get over it!’
‘Mummy, perhaps I’d better read the letter.’
‘Do, dear. It’s such a wonderful letter, do.’
She did. She had gathered that old Mrs Fenwick had died, and read through the paragraph that enumerated her many – Zoë felt hitherto well-concealed – virtues. Her courage, the way she always spoke her mind, never mind to whom or the circumstances, her zest for life – and here there was a menu of the foods she had most enjoyed – her high standards about other people’s behaviour, her wonderful endurance of a difficult marriage, to a man who was always either working or obsessed by his collection of butterflies and whose early death had proved a blessing in disguise, Mother had never really seen the point of then … Zoë gave up at this point and went on to the next page. Here, Miss Fenwick suggested at some length that Mrs Headford might like to ‘team up’ with her, share her cottage and ‘stick it out’ together. She said how much she would enjoy looking after her, what a lot they had in common, how, if they pooled their resources, they would have more money, and all kinds of little trips might be arranged, and finally what a kindness it would be if Cicely were to accept, since she contemplated living alone, after all these happy years with mother, with such dread. Finally, she begged Cicely to think it over carefully without hurrying about her decision, and meanwhile she would be delighted to get Cotter’s End ready for her return. The letter ended ‘with ever so much love, Avril’.
‘Isn’t it wonderful of her? When she had her own grief to bear, to think of me.’ She was trembling with excitement. ‘If you don’t mind, Zoë, I shall send her a telegram. I should go at once. To think that she’s gone through the funeral weeks ago and I never knew! So the sooner I go the better.’
‘Would you like to speak to her? You could ring her up.’
‘I couldn’t, dear. She’s not on the telephone. Her mother didn’t like the idea. They had one for a bit, but her mother said that Avril talked on it too much.’
The telegram was sent, and in it she arranged to leave in two days’ time.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Oh, no, dear. Avril will meet me. Either at Ryde, or she will come over on the ferry and meet me at the station in Southampton.’
All day, she talked about Avril and her letter. She had no hesitation about her decision, she said. It w
as the most wonderful opportunity. And then came out – streamed out – how frightened she had been at the prospect of living alone: the long evenings, the noises at night, the absence of anyone to talk to, the fear that she might not manage if anything went wrong – the gas cylinders, for instance, they were so heavy and could be dangerous, they could leak without you knowing it – and the shopping when she didn’t have a car and could not drive and so on. All of it made Zoë feel she had felt so unwelcome in London with them – with her.
When Rupert got back from work and was informed, he made martinis and entered into her mother’s spirit of festivity. He listened to an account of the letter, was given it to read and then told its contents all over again; throughout, he was patient and charming to her, while she, Zoë, was virtually silent. When Ellen sent Juliet up to say goodnight, her grandmother said: ‘I’m going back home, Juliet. I’m going back to the Island. Will you come and visit me in the summer?’
‘Will there be other people on it?’
‘Oh, yes, dear. All my friends. It’s a big island. You’ve been there, you remember.’
‘I don’t because I was a baby.’ She shut her eyes tightly to kiss her grandmother and escaped.
‘Well!’ Rupert said, when Zoë’s mother had gone to bed and they were on their own in the drawing room. ‘All’s well that ends well. Are you taking her down?’
‘No. She wired her friend, and she’s coming here to escort her home. She seems to want to, and that’s it.’
‘Well, that seems to me a good thing,’ he said tiredly. ‘Obviously this Avril person is fond of your mother.’
‘She said – Mummy, I mean – how nice it would be for us to be on our own again.’
‘And will it?’
‘I don’t know, Rupert. Will it?’ She looked at him; there was a moment when they both seemed frozen. It came to her that that was how it had been for a very long time, and also that they could stay like that, or move on to something better or worse.
She said, ‘We’ve never talked about what it was like for either of us all those years that you were away. I want to now. I have to tell you something.’
He had been standing by the fireplace fiddling with the fire. Now he straightened up, looked quickly at her and then sat on the arm of the chair opposite: almost, she thought, as though he was poised for escape.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 184