‘Because Diana doesn’t like it?’
‘Well, I don’t think she takes much to the family as a whole.’
‘Mm. She has ugly hands,’ Rupert said absently. ‘The kind that rings only make worse. Don’t laugh, Archie – you must have noticed them. Time we got back to the fray,’ he said, as they finished their cigarettes.
‘Is there going to be a fray?’ Archie asked, as they strolled back across the tennis court to the house.
‘If marked differences of opinion surface, I think it’s likely.’
There were marked differences of opinion among the children. Laura wanted to sleep with her cousins, Harriet and Bertie, who had already determined that they would share with Georgie: ‘She’s hardly six, Mummy, we can’t possibly have her with us. She’s far too young – she’ll spoil everything.’
‘I’m more than six. It’s not fair!’
‘There you are, you see. Crying about the least little thing. Anyway, there isn’t a fourth bed.’
Jemima and Clary, who had battled with the children’s baths, looked at one another in despair.
‘And Rivers,’ Georgie now said. ‘That’s a fourth person anyway. He doesn’t like girls,’ he added triumphantly, to Laura. ‘He’ll probably bite you in the night.’
‘Couldn’t you stop him?’
‘Not if I was asleep. He only likes people who are at least …’ he paused, he was seven himself ‘… at least seven.’
‘If you sleep with Daddy and me, you can wear your pirate’s hat. How would that be?’ Jemima wiped the tears from Laura’s face. She could see that that was doing the trick: Laura adored her hat.
Meanwhile Clary had been enjoining her two to be nicer to their young cousin. ‘When you were six, you wouldn’t have liked being left out.’
‘That was ages ago,’ Bertie said uneasily, and Harriet echoed him: ‘Ages.’
‘Well,’ Clary said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, ‘I can remember being let down by my cousins and it felt awful. They didn’t want me to share a room with them.’
‘What did you do?’ Georgie had a soft heart and was beginning to feel guilty.
‘I went and slept in Aunt Rachel’s room.’
This impressed them. ‘Of course, I was older than Laura, but the feeling is the same. Don’t gargle with your milk, Bertie, drink it.’
Bertie made the double effort of swallowing his milk and twisting in his chair to hug his mother. Milk went everywhere.
‘You can’t help your age,’ Georgie said to Laura, when things were cleared up. ‘You can stroke Rivers, if you like. He won’t mind at all.’
But Rivers felt differently. He endured Laura’s nervous stroke, but when Harriet and Bertie joined in, he fled to the safety of Georgie’s dressing-gown pocket.
Archie, having persuaded Clary to have a bath with a promise to ‘settle the monsters’, found them all in one bed arguing about which book they wanted to have read to them, but the moment he appeared Harriet rushed to him. ‘Be a dinosaur, Dad. Just for a bit, please, be one.’
‘If I do, it means no reading. Anyway, you can all read.’
‘We can, if we want to. But we prefer you to read to us.’
‘Shut up, Bertie. Let him be a dinosaur – he’s awfully good at it.’
‘My father is often a monkey or a sea lion,’ Georgie said. Archie admired his loyalty.
‘Go on, Dad!’
Archie straightened himself up, then made his arms long, arched his back and took enormous strides towards his daughter, uttering huge cries that began as an unearthly croak and ended with a trumpet-like squeal. He scooped her up with his claws and dropped her – shrieking with pleasurable fear – onto her bed. Then he turned his – surely by now – bloodshot eyes on Bertie and repeated the manoeuvre. Fear made Bertie giggle with relief after he was dropped onto the bed.
That left Georgie, whom he could see was really frightened. He became Archie again and sat on Georgie’s bed. ‘Don’t want to frighten Rivers,’ he said.
Georgie stopped trembling and gave Archie a look of gratitude: his face had been saved.
He kissed all three of them, ignoring the routine protests: ‘It’s perfectly good daylight outside, so why can’t we be in it?’ ‘Why should I go to bed at the same time as much younger people of six?’ Injustice stalked the room, and he escaped, leaving them to Zoë, who had come to see that Rivers was safely in his cage.
When Archie got back to their bedroom, he found Clary, wrapped in a bath towel, asleep on their bed. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up, one hand cupping her cheek; she looked, he thought, like an exhausted thirteen-year-old. He sat beside her and gently stroked her hair until she stirred, opened her eyes and smiled at him. ‘It was the gorgeous hot bath. I just passed out.’
‘We must dry your hair, my darling.’
‘Are the children all right?’
‘They’re fine. I left them with Zoë. I did my dinosaur – they’re bottled.’
‘I heard your dinosaur. You never do him for me.’ Her voice was muffled because he was towelling her hair.
‘You’re over age. I don’t ever do him for people of thirty. Have you brought a dress?’
‘Of course I’ve brought a dress. The Duchy didn’t like us to wear trousers in the evening. It’s my blue linen one. It probably got a bit crumpled in my case and, oh, gosh, I forgot to sew up that bit of hem. Never mind. I’ve got lots of safety pins – it won’t show. I think I left my bra and knickers on the floor somewhere.’
‘Here. You look so nice, so lovely without clothes.’ Her skin was pearly, translucent, almost white, very difficult to paint, he had discovered over the years, but lovely in every other way, as he told her now. She still found it difficult to accept compliments, unless he made a joke of it. ‘I’m so vulgar and depraved that I like people with skin that looks as though they have been kept under a paving stone.’
Clary now seized her comb and wrenched it through her hair, which she fastened with an elastic band that snapped at the last moment. ‘Oh, bother! Oh, damn! I didn’t bring a spare.’
‘You’ll have to make do with a girly ribbon. Bunch your hair and I’ll do it for you.’
‘Have you talked to Rachel?’
‘Haven’t had a chance. She’s being rather guarded by Sid. I think she feels she’s the only person to look after Rachel just now.’
‘At least they won’t have the strain of concealing anything from the Duchy.’
‘At least that.’
But several times during that evening Archie wondered whether there might be other, less definable strains.
After remarkably stiff drinks made by Edward, they assembled in the dining room for poached chicken with vegetables followed by strawberry shortcake and cream.
Neither Rachel nor Sid ate much in spite of urging each other to eat more.
After some abortive efforts, the safest subjects turned out to be politics (the men) and the children (their mothers). The unrest at the local docks was embarking on its sixth week, which was beginning to affect the family firm as it depended largely upon imports of hardwoods. Hugh, as chairman, was very exercised by this and irritated when Rupert said that their men had a point. Edward said he doubted whether Eden had the right cabinet to deal effectively with a national strike of any kind. It was uncomfortably agreed that he had not been in office very long, and he had been good in the Foreign Office. Rachel sat through all this, gaunt with grief but smiling if anyone caught her eye. Stories about the children were a relief. Georgie and Rivers and the rest of his menagerie, Laura sleeping in her pirate’s hat, Harriet and Bertie trying to divide a lone banana with a ruler …
Archie became aware that something was terribly wrong with Sid, who was sitting next to him. He had thought she wasn’t looking well – she’d had some bug, she’d told him at the beginning of dinner, but she was fine now. She didn’t look it, her usually rather sunburned face sallow with mauve smudges under her eyes. She had picked at her chicke
n but, except for urging Rachel to eat more, she had remained silent. Now, when Eileen put the strawberry shortbread before her, he heard her being suddenly horribly sick into her napkin. She got unsteadily to her feet, and as he rose to help her there was Jemima, quick as a flash putting an arm round her, adding her napkin to the soiled one, and making soothing noises as she took her out of the room. Rachel made to follow, but Sid called – almost shouted – ‘No. Please leave me alone.’
And Rachel stayed. ‘She isn’t at all well. She should never have come.’ Then she pressed her knuckles to her eyes to stop any more tears.
Hugh, who was sitting next to her, leaned across to take her hand with his good one. ‘Rach, darling, she came because she loves you, as we all do so much.’
And Zoë, who had been swallowing hard – the one thing that made her want to be sick was being present when other people were – said, ‘The more I loved someone, the less I’d want them round me if I was sick. I’d just want to be on my own.’
‘Jemima will look after her,’ Hugh said.
Edward looked at his brother. He couldn’t help remembering that Villy had always been the one who had looked after everyone when they were ill, fell off a pony or got their fingers slammed in a car door. Of course, she knew about first aid because she’d gone in for it before the war, but she also had a most practical compassion for anyone in trouble. The thought that Diana was not like that crossed his mind: she certainly had not liked him being ill, but on the other hand she was good with her sons. She would certainly look after them.
Lately Diana had been suggesting that they should sell the house in West Hampstead and buy one in the country. A nice Georgian house within commuting distance of London. He had the feeling that she was pretty determined on this, in which case there would be absolutely no point in his taking a share in Home Place, where Diana, in spite of protestations to the contrary, had never felt comfortable. He would have to talk to Hugh about it. The trouble with the family was not property but lack of cash. Too much of the firm’s capital was tied up in property. They not only owned Home Place and his parents’ house in Regent’s Park, on a long and expensive lease, but two valuable wharves in London, one in Southampton and very expensive offices in Westminster. The overheads on all this were not being earned by the sale of enough timber. He had tried several times to discuss this with Hugh, but he had refused to consider selling off anything and, as head of the firm, he had the ultimate say. And Rupe, bless his heart, would always agree with the last person he’d talked to.
These thoughts now made him feel queasy. He was prone to indigestion these days, and the condition was not helped by the faint but unmistakable stench of vomit. He remembered a trick he had learned in the trenches in the first war, and picked up a box of matches lying on the table for lighting the candles, struck one and let it burn itself out. Hugh noticed this at once, and a small but infinitely comforting look passed between them. He handed the box to his brother who repeated the action. The air cleared, and some of those round the table set about the strawberry shortcake, and soon Zoë was explaining Juliet’s absence, staying with a best friend and shopping for jeans.
Clary said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? When I was Juliet’s age, I never minded what I wore.’
‘It’s a good thing you didn’t. Apart from clothes coupons, there weren’t any clothes.’
‘I remember you made me two frocks. You made them even after I was so horrible to you. It must have been awful being a stepmother.’
These remarks engendered a good deal of affection – from Rupert and Zoë and Archie, who said, ‘She still doesn’t mind much. So I choose her clothes.’
Rachel, making a valiant effort, said, ‘When I was young, the Duchy always made me wear pinafores. And if I was going to a party, and was dressed in lots of white petticoats under my party dress, she made me sit on a table until it was time to go.’
‘I remember you doing that,’ Hugh said. ‘But at least you weren’t dolled up in sailor suits, like Edward and me. Rupert escaped all that.’
Rupert, who immediately thought of what else he had escaped – the nightmare of trench warfare that his older brothers had endured – spoke quietly: ‘It’s a pity, really, because I simply loved dressing up. You remember that old black tin trunk we had full of dressing-up clothes? Well, once, when our parents were giving a garden party, I dressed up as a girl in a heavily beaded pink dress – you know, one of those tubes that flappers used to wear – with a silver lamé turban and an ostrich fan. I went out onto the lawn and the Brig was furious, but the Duchy simply laughed and told me to go back into the house, change, then come back and help hand round the cucumber sandwiches.’
There was a short silence before Rachel said that, if they would forgive her, she would see how Sid was, and then she would go to bed. The men all rose and Archie, who was nearest, opened the door for her, then closed it.
‘Ring for Eileen to fetch the plates, Rupe.’
‘Hugh, it’s nearest to you.’
Hugh fumbled under the table where Rachel had been sitting. Edward went to the sideboard to get the port. Clary said, ‘If the ladies are meant to withdraw at this point, I think I’ll withdraw to bed. Goodnight, all.’
Zoë said, ‘I’ll wait in the drawing room until Jemima returns and then I’ll be off as well.’
Eileen, having removed the pudding plates, asked if the gentlemen would like their coffee in the dining room.
‘Anyone for coffee?’ Hugh asked, but nobody seemed to want it. Eileen was told to take the tray to the drawing room and, yes, that would be all. There was a faint, but unmistakable feeling of tension in the air.
The port went round and all four men filled their glasses.
Hugh said: ‘Before we start on things that have to be done, I suggest we all drink a toast to our dear mother and,’ looking at Archie, ‘friend.’
So they all stood and did that.
This seemed to lighten things a little. When they sat down, cigarettes were lit, in Edward’s case a cigar.
‘With Rachel’s agreement,’ Hugh began, ‘I went to see the vicar to organise a date for the funeral, and we agreed on Monday week. I asked for next Saturday, but it was not convenient, so it will be at eleven thirty on the twenty-fifth. I have also drafted announcements for The Times and the Telegraph to appear this Monday. I have included the time and place of the funeral for people who may want to attend it. That’s as far as I got.’
Rupert said, ‘Did Rachel say anything about where she wants to live?’
‘Nothing. Only that she didn’t want to keep the London house.’
‘It belongs to the firm anyway,’ Edward said. ‘That’s something we can sell, at least.’
‘I can’t understand why you’re so keen on selling anything. The Brig always said that property was the best investment of capital and, as chairman of the firm, I have every intention of following his advice.’
‘Well, perhaps you’ve forgotten that the firm also owns Home Place. Rachel surely won’t want to live here on her own, and it’s worth a hell of a lot more than when the Brig bought it. If we sold that, we could buy Rachel a nice little house or flat in London.’
‘You surely don’t want to get rid of the place where we’ve all spent so much of our lives, where our children grew up, which was our home during the last war? You cannot want to do that!’
Oh dear, Archie thought, as he looked helplessly at Rupert. I feel just like Hugh, only I can’t do anything about it.
But Rupert came to the rescue. ‘I agree with Hugh,’ he said. ‘I feel that even if Rachel doesn’t want to live here we could all chip in and keep the house, for her, for the children and, speaking for myself, for me.’
At this point they all looked at Edward.
He stirred uncomfortably in his chair. ‘For goodness’ sake, don’t think that I don’t care about the house. The fact is that Diana wants to live in the country, and that will mean my selling the lease on Ranulf Road, for which I s
han’t get much as it has only ten years to run, and buying somewhere. I’m fairly strapped for cash as it is, really not in a position to pay for a second property.’
Hugh began to say that that left three of them, and almost at the same time Archie, very tentatively, suggested that perhaps they should wait until Rachel had been consulted. And also, was it possible that the Duchy had expressed some wishes about it in her will?
This seemed to lower the temperature a bit. Rupert agreed that there was not much point in pursuing the subject any further, and they fell back on reminiscing about the early days of Home Place, the Brig facing the Duchy with all manner of stray and unknown guests, and how the Duchy had comforted the young Jewish nurses from the Babies’ Hotel when it was evacuated to Home Place during the war by inviting them in the evening for tea and biscuits and Beethoven on the gramophone. Affection slowly replaced sibling differences.
Then Jemima came down to tell them that Sid had settled for the night, and had been asleep when Rachel came to see her, and they all decided to call it a day.
Zoë undressed in the familiar room with its wallpaper of peacocks and chrysanthemums, then sat in front of her dressing-table mirror, cleansing her face and remembering the first time she had come here, how nervous she had felt. Her clothes had seemed all wrong, and though she had been welcomed as Rupert’s wife, she had felt that she would never fit in, would never withstand Clary’s hostility, could never be a stepmother. Well, to be honest, she had never wanted to be a mother at all, and was both bored and defeated at the prospect of Clary and Neville watching and criticising her. And then that awful incident in London, when she had played – had overplayed – the flirt and paid the price of the disastrous sad child that had mercifully, from her point of view, died. What a heartless little bitch I was, she thought, thinking of nothing but my appearance and wanting Rupert to admire me from morning till night. But I did love him in the end.
She remembered now how incredibly tactful and kind the Duchy had been when she had fallen in love with Jack Greenfeldt, leaving them alone for what proved to be their last meeting. The anguish she had felt about him had changed her life entirely. She had believed that Rupert was dead, and when Jack, unable to bear what he had seen in the German camps, had shot himself, there seemed nothing to live for – excepting Juliet. She had been going to the small temporary hospital that had been set up for badly wounded men who were nursed between operations to repair what could be saved of their ravaged bodies. Most of them had faced a life of dependence, and most of them were under twenty-five, but it was only after Jack’s death that she had begun to imagine what it would be like to be another person, a person infinitely less fortunate than herself, and to take a great deal less for granted.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 205