‘It looks marvellous. I can’t wait to see inside.’
She had been very excited ever since she had been sent the particulars, and this had made her more affectionate to him than she had been since before they’d gone to France. He squeezed her knee. ‘Off we go, then.’
It was a balmy September morning – the trees turning but still well leafed. They pulled into a narrow drive that had an open gate marked ‘Park House’. Mr Armitage, the agent, was already there, his bicycle propped against the porch. He was happy to show them round, he said, but most clients liked a first viewing on their own. Just give him a shout if they wanted him. He unlocked the front door and went to sit on the shallow stone steps that led up to it.
‘He looks as though he’s got a hell of a hangover,’ Edward said, and Diana answered, ‘He probably hates working on Saturday mornings.’
The house was empty, which Diana said she liked. The wallpaper was marked where pictures had hung, soot had fallen in the grates of the pretty fireplaces and paint had blistered on the shutters; there were a large number of prosperous spiders’ webs everywhere, the bathrooms both had green stains from dripping taps and the kitchen showed signs of mice. They saw it all: the bedrooms that were graded from the front of the house – grand then gradually becoming more and more spartan as they reached the back – the drawing room that had a double aspect, its large bow window looking out onto a walled garden, the dining room, with its serving hatch to the kitchen, the stone-floored larder, with its marble slabs and ancient flypapers studded with bluebottles, the ice-cold scullery and store room, and, at the very back, a dank little lavatory for servants.
‘Oh, darling! It’s perfect! Don’t you think so? And a walled garden. All my life I’ve yearned for one.’ She turned to him, her lovely hyacinth eyes glowing with excitement and pleasure.
‘If you’re sure you want it, darling.’
‘Oh, I do. And you do too, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do. And if you want it, it’s yours.’
She flung her arms round his neck. ‘Our house! Our first real house.’ She kissed him, and all his earliest feelings for her returned. He’d got the old Diana back.
PART FOUR
DECEMBER 1956–JANUARY 1957
HOME PLACE
‘“O Pears” indeed! I can’t think for the life of me why they call them that. More trouble than they’re worth if you ask me.’
The trouble was, Tonbridge thought, that nobody was asking her. If you asked Mabel for anything, she would give it to you, whether it was a rock cake or a piece of advice – her mind, she called the latter. He wondered whether he might be so bold as to bring up the subject with Miss Rachel, and decided that he would have to wait until the right occasion presented itself. Which meant, he secretly knew, that nothing would induce him to bring it up at all.
He did his best to help. This morning, he had brought in the wood for the fires – the small ration of coal had gone by Boxing Day, if not the coke for the kitchen range. He had gone to Battle to fetch the meat and groceries, brought in the potatoes and onions that McAlpine had dug up, and fetched Miss Sidney’s prescription from the chemist. Then it was time for a break before the family’s lunch, which had been laid by Eileen – the dining room for the grown-ups, and the hall for the children and O Pears, two foreign girls, who had washed up breakfast, breaking two cups and a jug, and were now rather sulkily making the beds. It was Miss Rachel who had hired them; and she said it had been explained to them that they were required to lend a hand to anything that was needed. But they had to have a lot of time off, to learn English, and they seemed to spend most of that washing their hair, painting their nails and complaining of being cold.
The house was overflowing. In the old days one family, at least, would have been in Manor Farm, the place down the road, but it had been let. He counted them now. Mr and Mrs Hugh, with her two boys, the little girl and, of course, young Mr William. Mr and Mrs Rupert with Miss Juliet and the little boy with that rat. Mr Lestrange and Miss Clary, with their two children. And, of course, Miss Rachel and her friend Miss Sidney. It was a good thing that Mr Edward and the new Mrs Edward were staying in their own house with their lot, and Lady Fakenham likewise. Well, there simply wasn’t room for them, although Mr Edward had brought some of the family over for Boxing Day tea. Mabel was a wonder, the way she went on producing meals for everyone, but her feet were something awful in the evenings now. He had to admit that the ladies all helped, though. Not like the old days. You’d never have caught Mrs Senior or Miss Rachel with a Hoover. Then there had been a proper staff, and ladies had simply sewed or gone for walks, played tennis and had afternoon rests – except for Mrs Senior, who couldn’t keep out of the garden.
Better get going. He swallowed the last piece of cheese tart, brushed the crumbs off his trousers, and passed some wind before leaving the snug little room adjoining the kitchen that had always been Mabel’s (many a nervous snack he’d had there, with him explaining the state of the world about which she, being a woman, knew very little …).
In the kitchen he found Mr Rupert’s little boy asking what was for lunch.
Macaroni cheese and treacle sponge, she told him. She was beating up the sponge mixture in an enormous bowl.
‘Oh, good! I love treacle sponge. The thing is,’ he had climbed onto a kitchen chair next to her, ‘I wonder if it would be all right for me to have a bit of cheese without the macaroni? Just a small bit?’ He was stroking her arm. ‘It’s not for me. I love macaroni cheese – it’s for Rivers.’
‘And who is he when he’s at home?’
‘He’s my friend. Actually, he’s a rat, but he’s not like most rats.’
‘Don’t you dare bring him into my kitchen.’
‘I won’t.’ He quietly thrust his hand down into the deep pocket inside which Rivers usually travelled and kept it there. ‘Just a small bit, and he doesn’t mind rind.’
He had got one knee on the table, and was holding her arm and looking up into her face. It was too much for her. She put down her spoon and went to the larder. While she was getting the cheese, he put his finger into the mixing bowl and scraped out a finger-load, which he quickly ate. It was delicious, almost nicer than when it was cooked.
She came back with a generous piece of Cheddar. ‘Now be off with you, and don’t you dare bring that creature anywhere near me.’
‘I promise. Thank you very much.’ He scrambled off the table and was gone.
‘Young monkey. The spitting image of Mr Rupert,’ she added, to excuse her softness with him.
‘You’d give anyone anything,’ he said fondly, which provoked her.
‘There are some things I can’t abide, and one of them is you standing over me when I’m working.’ A huge kirby-grip fell into the bowl. ‘Drat it! Now look what you’ve made me do!’
Injustice on this level was a serious warning sign. ‘I’m off to clean the car,’ he said, trying to sound offhand.
She sniffed. ‘You and your cars,’ she said. ‘Just don’t be late for your dinner. I don’t want to send one of them O Pears to get you.’ She had early ascertained that they posed no threat: he didn’t like women with no flesh on their bones.
THE FAMILY
Christmas had been a success, although it had begun with the smaller children in tears because they had woken much earlier than seven, which was the hour when they were permitted to open their stockings. This was worst in the large room called the linen cupboard room because it had an airing cupboard, faintly heated by the kitchen range, although beds were observed steaming on the rare occasions when a hot-water bottle was put into them. This room now contained the twins, Henry and Tom, in sleeping-bags on the floor, Harriet and Bertie – Clary’s two – Georgie, and, after much wrangling, Laura, on the understanding that it was for Christmas Eve only. She was told to do everything that Tom or Henry told her and, awed by having actually got her way, she solemnly agreed. The moment all the parents had left, Henry pulled his Monopo
ly board out from under the bed, switched on his and Tom’s torches and they started playing. No, the others couldn’t join in: there weren’t enough torches and, anyway, they were in the middle of a game. Laura started sobbing, but they threatened her with shouting for Jemima and her being returned to her bed in the parents’ room. Georgie was preoccupied with getting Rivers out of the cage and into his bed, but poor Harriet felt dreadfully left out. ‘I am eight,’ she kept saying, ‘and I’m perfectly able to play that game.’ Eventually she felt so tired with sadness that she pulled the bedclothes over her head and went to sleep.
Downstairs they were all dying to go to bed. Rachel had already gone up, followed by Sid. They had spent most of the day decorating the large tree. Long ago, the Brig had decreed that the tree should be live, and the Duchy that there should be real candles, ‘none of that vulgar nonsense with electric lights’. Zoë had carefully arranged presents around it, and the stockings – the long, thick ones used by the men for shooting and golf – were piled on one of the sofas, including a very small sock that she said was for Rivers. ‘Georgie specially asked,’ she said, blushing slightly. She was dotty about her son but didn’t want anyone to think she was. Rupert put his arm round her, and Archie said jolly good idea. It was decided that everyone should help in carting the stockings upstairs, but only two people were needed to put them at the ends of beds.
Clary had gone to sleep on the sofa. When Archie woke her, she said how much nicer it was being a child than a grown-up. ‘I used to lie in bed with my eyes tightly shut pretending to be asleep while you or Dad creaked about with my stocking.’
‘I bet you opened them the minute my back was turned.’
‘Certainly not! We were on our honour not to. So the only person who did was Neville. He said that when he promised his fingers were crossed so it didn’t count. He slithered out of everything.’
‘Bed,’ said Archie, so firmly that everyone got to their feet and picked up their share of stockings.
‘As the drawing room is out of bounds until after lunch, we’d better lock up.’ Hugh turned the key and gave it to Jemima.
I’ll do the big nursery,’ Zoë whispered. She wanted to make sure that Rivers’s sock was in a prominent position.
Jemima did her boys and Rupert did Juliet and Louise, and that, for the night, was that.
It was a short night for Jemima, because Laura was crying and had woken all the others.
‘She wants her stocking, but she can’t have it for another fifty-nine minutes. We’ve put it in the cupboard where she can’t get at it, and I’m timing her for seven, Mum.’ Henry and Tom were maddeningly self-righteous.
‘It won’t ever never be seven.’ Laura wept.
‘And now she’s woken up when I was having a nice good sleep,’ cried seven-year-old Bertie – only a year older than poor Laura.
‘How about you come to Mummy and Daddy’s room and have your stocking there?’
But this was no good at all. ‘I want my stocking with the grown-up children.’
‘Well, actually,’ Henry said, as kindly as he could, ‘we don’t really want you here at all.’
This upset Harriet. ‘But you’re her brothers! You can’t—’
‘Yes, of course we’re her brothers. But she’s very, very small. When she’s older, we’ll take her to the zoo and nightclubs—’
Laura had stopped crying. ‘What are nightclubs?’
‘Clubs that go on at night, of course, stupid.’
‘Don’t call your sister stupid.’
‘But, Mum, she is S-T-U-P-I-D.’
‘Anyway, it’s forty-nine minutes now.’
‘Well, Laura, you have the choice of coming with me or staying and not crying any more. I strongly advise you come with me.’
‘I strongly advise no.’
‘All right. Boys, you behave yourselves.’
The silence after she had gone was momentary, and then the twins collapsed in fits of laughter. ‘Behave ourselves. We can’t behave other people. Honestly!’
Georgie, who had remained silent during the fracas, now beckoned silently to Laura to get into his bed. He had piled up his daytime clothes under the eiderdown to make a tent. The tent housed Rivers, who was busy unwrapping a very small parcel that he knew was cheese. His Christmas sock lay beside him. Georgie, whose kind heart extended well beyond rats, knew that watching Rivers having a lovely time would cheer Laura up and it did. By the time Rivers had explored – and in many cases eaten – the contents of the sock, cleaned his whiskers and paws and finally gone to sleep in his favourite position round Georgie’s neck, Henry and Tom had announced that it was seven o’clock.
Everybody scrambled for their stockings, but Laura wanted to have hers in bed with Georgie. ‘Just this once,’ he said. He didn’t want to be stuck with her the whole day. The presents were received with whoops of joy, but there were one or two disappointments. ‘A clockwork frog,’ Georgie exclaimed in disgust. ‘Surely they must have known I meant a real one!’
I’m really too old for this sort of thing.’ Juliet was sitting upright in bed, trying to look bored at the prospect of a stocking.
‘Are you? Well, I love them. Haven’t had one for ages.’ Louise was also sitting up and pulled her stocking towards her. She was wearing a white nightdress trimmed with blue chiffon. She looked like a film star, Juliet thought, with her long, golden hair streaming over her shoulders.
Juliet, who had insisted on pyjamas because her best friend wore them, now wished she had opted for a nightdress, too. But even that wouldn’t have changed her hair from reddish brown to golden. Her breasts, she could see, were larger than Louise’s: she wondered whether they were too large.
Louise was well into her stocking: tablets of Morny soap, a pretty silk scarf, a red leather pocket diary, a clutch of coloured linen handkerchiefs, a Mason Pearson hairbrush and a tube of hand cream had so far come to light.
‘Come on, Jules. If you don’t open your stocking, I will.’
Enough of adult indifference. She had been waiting to be told and, actually, she was longing to start. The beginning was not promising. ‘Pond’s Cold Cream! A pot of vanishing cream! And a tablet of boring old soap. Honestly! I’m not a baby!’
‘You’re bound to get some duds. I sort mine into two piles – good and no good.’
Things got better. A long, narrow box filled with neatly coiled silk-velvet hair ribbons in lovely unusual colours. A marcasite brooch in the shape of a butterfly.
‘Aunt Zoë’s got very good taste,’ Louise said. ‘Which is more than can be said of my mother.’
‘Has she got bad taste?’ Juliet was interested: she was not at all sure what bad taste actually was.
‘She hasn’t got any taste at all. You know, cream paint everywhere and wood-veneer pictures on the wall – that sort of thing.’ She was remembering Lansdowne Road. She hadn’t minded any of that at the time, but there had been other things … ‘Awful clothes. She used to make me wear bottle-green silk when I was eight and everyone else had pink and blue taffeta. And bronze stockings.’
‘Goodness! Poor you.’ She was longing to ask Louise all sorts of questions about her life, which, from what she had been told, was both tragic and exciting. She had been married (she remembered that); she had had a baby that lived with its father and stepmother. She had been divorced and now lived in a rackety flat with her best friend. She was a clothes model, which, next to being a film star, was the height of glamour – Juliet had boasted about it at school. Sharing a room with her was simply wonderful, but she had been told not to bother her with questions so she tried not to ask too many. ‘What shall we do with the no-good piles?’
‘Wrap them up and give them to the au pair girls. And perhaps the soaps to Mrs Tonbridge and Eileen.’
‘That’s a wizard idea.’
They dressed, and Louise very kindly tied back Juliet’s hair with one of her Christmas velvet ribbons.
NEVILLE AND SIMON
Nevil
le had very nearly not gone down to Sussex at all. Having escaped Christmas Day on the grounds of work, he could easily have said that he had to work on Boxing Day as well. It was Simon who had stopped him.
‘You said that if I worked on Christmas Day you’d give me a lift to Home Place today.’
‘What’s to stop you going by train like other people?’
‘I don’t have any money.’
‘What happened to the bonus I gave you?’
‘I spent it on presents. It wasn’t nearly enough. Ten pounds! Anyway, you promised. And your dad will be very sad if you don’t go. So will Clary … Think of the lovely free meals,’ he urged, a moment later. ‘There’s always smoked salmon on Boxing Day, and fried Christmas pudding.’
Neville thought for a moment. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘To please you.’
Simon, who knew that Neville never did anything to please anyone but himself, avoided pointing this out. They were going; that was the thing.
It had turned much colder, with fitful sun, and when they got to Sevenoaks, it had begun to rain. By the time they reached Home Place there was a steady downpour. Most of the children were engrossed in an enormous jigsaw puzzle laid out on the hall floor. ‘It’s the Changing of the Guard. Awfully difficult, all red coats and black horses and masses of sky. Hello, Simon and Neville.’
‘I’m Uncle Neville to you. And to you, Harriet.’
‘Hello, then, Uncle Neville.’ She said it in a silly singsong voice, and the others joined in.
Just then Eileen, who had been picking her way round the puzzle on her journeys from kitchen to dining room, announced to the people in the drawing room that lunch was ready, and they filed out, locking the door behind them. They seemed both pleased and surprised to see Simon and Neville. ‘What about our presents?’ Simon said, after he had been kissed a good many times.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 210