She rolled them up and stuffed them between her legs. She was sitting up now, and held out her hand for her diminutive white knickers, and he helped her pull them up. Then she sat on the edge of the bank while they tried to scrub her legs with the rug. This was not really successful as the blood had dried, and the result merely looked rusty. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about anything but you.’
Somehow, he finished dressing her, hooking up the bra, pulling on her small black skirt and the green shirt, whose buttons he fumbled with. ‘I didn’t know bleeding was involved,’ she said. ‘People don’t tell you anything where I come from except it’s wicked, unless …’ Her voice tailed off, until, in a quite different tone, she said, ‘Oh, Ted, will I be having a baby?’ Terror. She was terrified, he could feel.
‘Of course not, darling. Of course you won’t.’ But this lie frightened him.
‘Anyway, it would have happened when you kissed me on the boat, yes? It would have happened then?’
He was able to reassure her: no, that was not possible. Desperately not wanting her to pursue the matter, he looked at his watch and said they must be getting back so as not to miss the ferry.
He picked up her shoes, but she said she didn’t want them until they got back. ‘They kill me,’ she said, ‘but I don’t have another pair.’
The journey back was more or less silent. He attended to her – got her a cup of tea on the boat and brought it to the same bench on deck that they had used before. He found that if he sat with his arm round her, she seemed content and, burdened with the lie he had told her, he didn’t really want to talk at all.
They parted on the quay where he wrapped her in her mac. Silently, she held up her face and he kissed her trembling lips. She was trying not to cry. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It’s been a wonderful day.’
‘All the best,’ she said, then went bravely stumbling in her shoes down the quay and out of sight.
Alone, he sat in the car for a while, trying to sort out his feelings, but he couldn’t and felt suddenly too tired to try. Better get the car back but, no, he would have to take the car rug to the cleaners and they would be shut now. He went to his lodgings, needing to wash and find a fresh shirt.
But when he got back, he was confronted by his landlady in a state of high excitement.
‘There’s two gentlemen been calling for you. I told them where you work, but they told me to pass on the message that they’ll be expecting you at the Polygon Hotel before eight o’clock. It’s ever so nice at the Polygon. My late husband’s niece had her wedding reception there. She married an accountant, you know – they went to live in Canada so, of course, I don’t see much of them. Two little girls they had, Sally Ann and Marylyn. I’ve ironed your best shirt and pressed those suit trousers for you.’
He thanked her, with a sinking heart. Somehow he knew that the appearance of uncles and/or his father boded no good.
It did. They were waiting for him at the bar and beckoned him to a table in a far corner.
Uneasy greetings.
‘I wish you’d told me you were coming.’ It felt the wrong thing to have said the moment he’d said it.
‘McIver told us that you’d gone out for the day.’
‘Yes – yes, I did. I felt I needed a day off.’
Hugh said, ‘He told us you’d gone to see a sick relative on the Isle of Wight. He apparently lent you his car.’
‘It was very kind of him.’
His father said, ‘You know perfectly well that is not on. This is a weekday, and you’re supposed to be running the wharf and sawmill. So your grandmother’s funeral ploy won’t wash.’ He beckoned a waiter and ordered a second round.
That was just the beginning of it. They had been looking at the books – the correspondence, the lack of sales, the muddles and complaints. Did he know that a large order for teak had been transferred by the vendors to Maxwell Perkins, well known to be a highly competitive rival? And what had possessed him to order a large quantity of softwood to be dumped in the river?
When he said there hadn’t been enough room on the land his father had exploded. ‘Balls! You know perfectly well that soaking softwoods renders them unsaleable for weeks – even months – after you’ve taken them out.’
At this point a waiter said their table was ready in the dining room.
They chose their meal – at least, his father and uncle did – and he said he would have whatever they had chosen, which turned out to be lobster. He drank some of the wine, which was waiting for them in a misty bucket, and wondered how on earth he was going to get through the evening without blubbing or throwing up. At one moment, when his uncle went to answer a telephone call, his father leaned towards him and said, ‘Listen, Teddy. You took some girl off with you for the day, didn’t you? Hugh won’t understand that, but I do. It’s all very well for you to have some fun sometimes, but you really should be more sensible about how you go about it. And the one thing I won’t stand for is you lying – to me or anyone else. You let the whole family down when you do that.’
His eyes filled with scalding tears and Edward whipped out one of his immense silk paisley handkerchiefs and proffered it. ‘Blow your nose, and pull yourself together.’
‘Sorry, Dad. I truly am. You see, I don’t know if I can do this job – if I’m up to it.’
‘Nonsense. You just need to learn more, work a bit harder at it. It’s time you got married again, Teddy. I know you made a bit of mess with whatsername—’
‘Bernadine.’
‘Her. You need to find a nice girl, settle down and start a family. Lots of people don’t have a good job they can walk into as you do.’
There was a pause while Teddy watched him put mayonnaise onto a mouthful of lobster. He looked then at his own plate, and pictures of the sunlit lunch with Ellen flickered and went out. He had lied to her, too. Well, a kind of lie. He supposed time – nerve-rackingly inexorable – would tell about that.
‘Could I have some more wine?’
‘Help yourself, and give me some. Hugh doesn’t seem to drink much these days.’
A sudden passionate wish to confide in his father about Ellen invaded him. He would feel better if he could tell someone – especially if he could get some advice. But at that moment Hugh came back. ‘Sorry, chaps. It was Jem. Her boys have got measles, and she feels she ought to send Laura away until they’re out of quarantine.’
He looked only mildly worried; the ghost of a tender smile was there, as it always seemed to be whenever he spoke about his wife. He adored her – and it was mutual.
Edward suffered a twinge of jealousy as he thought that. Not, of course, for Jemima but for their situation.
‘I told Jem we were gorging on lobster, and she said you know it gives you gyp, but from time to time it’s worth it. I’ve ordered another bottle of Sancerre, so let’s not talk shop for a bit and enjoy ourselves. You’re not much of a trencherman, Teddy, are you?’ But he said it kindly.
He listened while they talked about the state of the country – about what a good thing it was to have Macmillan rather than poor, worn-out Eden. Hugh didn’t like the way ‘we seem to be giving away our empire’, but Edward said it would be a relief: there was always going to be trouble all over the place and we would be far better off keeping out of it. ‘After all, he says we’ve never had it so good, and he’s right.’
Trying to do his bit – he sensed that the brothers were on the edge of some argument that could turn acrid – Teddy said, ‘But people are going to fight about things anyway, aren’t they? They said that your war was the one to end all wars, and wars broke out all over the place.’ He had speared a piece of lobster on his fork in the hope that if he concentrated on the conversation he might not notice eating it. Not so: he swallowed it whole, and it stuck in his throat precluding any further traffic, excepting wine, which he gulped in an effort to clear the way.
Eventually the meal was over, with coffee and a glass of port each on the table. A c
igar for Edward and gaspers – as Hugh called them – for himself and Teddy.
They were both staying at the hotel, but Edward saw him off in McIver’s Vauxhall.
‘We’ll expect you in the office at nine sharp. Don’t be late. We have things to go through and discuss. Good night, old boy.’ He clapped him on the shoulder and went back inside.
Teddy dragged the car rug out of the back seat and crammed it into the boot. It occurred to him with a kind of dull fear that the cleaners might not be open before nine in which case he would be in further trouble. It’s as if I’d committed a murder, he thought. He felt rather drunk and really tired.
He crept into bed with the last thought that if the worst came to the worst, which it seemed to be bent on doing, he could chuck the wretched rug into the river. He set his alarm for seven thirty in the hope that there would be some warmish water for a bath. Then he tried to work out what he actually felt about sweet Ellen – a jolly romp? Love? Marriage? But somehow he was unable to feel anything. He was a creep, a liar; he could find nothing to justify his behaviour – to her or anyone else, come to that. Sleep rescued him from having to be alone with someone he could not like.
RUPERT AND FAMILY
‘The thing is, Mum, now that I’ve got to eight, I’d rather stop getting old. I don’t want to be like the rest of you. I just want Rivers and my zoo. So there’s no point in my going to school.’
He was sitting on the kitchen table and Zoë, who was ironing, looked up. ‘Georgie, I’ve told you dozens of times that you can’t choose your age. You simply get older every time you have a birthday. And you wouldn’t like not having them, would you?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Georgie conceded. ‘But you could still make a non-birthday cake and give me the same presents.’
‘But eventually you’re going to need some money to buy food and things. You have to work to earn that.’
‘I don’t. I’ll charge for the tickets to my zoo.’
‘But where will you have the zoo?’
‘There’s plenty of room in the garden if you give up growing flowers.’
She spat on the iron before saying, ‘But you won’t be living here when you’re grown-up. You’ll have your own house and family.’
This shook him. ‘But, Mum, I don’t want to live anywhere without you! You, and Rivers. Dad could live with Juliet. I don’t mind at all living without her.’
‘And what about poor Dad?’
‘If I have the zoo in the whole garden he can stay.’ He had been chopping up the outside leaves of a lettuce for his tortoises with a very large knife, and now cut himself.
‘Oh, Mum, look!’ He held out a dirty hand on which a row of beady red blood was neatly ranged.
‘I told you not to use that knife. Go and wash your hand – both hands.’
‘It won’t stop the blood, Mum. It needs a plaster.’ But he jumped off the table and went to the sink.
‘Use the soap, Georgie.’
‘Now will you bandage it up?’
He loved Elastoplast and practically always had one or two plasters stuck on arms and legs. Some of them stayed for weeks after they were needed and she could only remove them by stealth – in the bath, or when he was seriously occupied with Rivers.
It was Saturday morning, and Rupert had been asked to meet Edward and Hugh at Hugh’s house. There was no sign of Juliet, who alternated endless conversations on the telephone to her friend Chrissie with long sessions in bed, or trying on and discarding heaps of clothes that she claimed had become unwearable. She had really become a nuisance, Zoë thought, sulky, remote, sarcastic and wanting always to go shopping at weekends.
In spite of her tiresome manners, or lack of them, she continued to become prettier – had none of the teenage disadvantages, only the compulsion to play her pop music at full blast. Rupert had given her a cheap gramophone, so at least the music was confined to her room. Was I like that when I was her age? Zoë wondered rather uneasily – she felt guilty whenever she thought about her mother. She would never forget her on the telephone, when the cancer was killing her, saying that the last few years with her friend on the Isle of Wight had been the happiest of her life. Even that had upset her: those years should have been with me, she often began to think, then made herself stop, because that was simply further selfishness on her part.
So, Juliet’s behaviour was almost a way of making her pay for how she had been.
As Rupert was out, she would make sandwiches for herself and the children and they could have toad-in-the-hole for supper.
The telephone rang, and when she picked it up, Juliet was already on. ‘It’s Dad, for you,’ she shouted – her bored shout: what could be duller than Dad ringing up Mum?
After confirming that he wouldn’t be back until late afternoon, there was a pause, and then Rupert said, ‘Could you get Jules to babysit Georgie tonight? I want to take you out to dinner.’ He was using what she knew was his casual voice, which meant he was serious.
‘I think she has a plan to stay with her friend Chrissie.’
‘Tell her to have Chrissie over to us, then. Or I will, if you like.’
‘I think I would like. What’s up, darling?’
But he simply said, ‘Put Jules on the phone, please.’
So she shouted and finally went up the stairs to attract Jules from the daily clamour of her music. ‘You can take it in our room,’ she yelled, above the din.
Georgie had gone into the garden with his tortoise food. The house, bathed in sunlight, seemed worryingly shabby: the stair carpet badly worn, the tiles on the kitchen floor chipped; even the pots of herbs on the windowsill were dusty. Her cleaner, who came two mornings a week, simply banged the Hoover about and then had a prolonged middle-mornings snack. She found herself thinking with nostalgia of the comfortable flat they had had in London, where everything had been well built and easy to maintain. This old and romantic house, with its ancient boiler and endless draughts, had fewer charms for her than it had for Rupert, who blithely ignored or dismissed the drawbacks. Its wonderful view of the river, its lovely eighteenth-century windows and panelled doors, its wide-boarded elm flooring and its pretty staircase were the things he loved. Oh, well: she knew that he had never wanted to stop being a painter and go into the family firm, and the house was his consolidation. And, of course, it was nice to have more money. It was only that there now seemed to be so many more dull things to spend it on.
Still, it would be lovely to be taken out, not to have to cook dinner and play Racing Demon, Jules being bored and impatient with Georgie, who was rather slow at getting the hang of it. On Sunday, Clary and Archie were coming to lunch with their children and she decided to make a lemon meringue tart for pudding. While setting out the ingredients, she began to think what she would wear for the coming evening.
Juliet came down in her pyjamas to hack a piece of bread off the loaf and spread it liberally with Marmite. ‘Dad said he’d collect Chrissie on his way back to pick you up. Half past seven, he said.’ She seemed mollified at the prospect.
‘Jules, it’s nearly lunchtime – don’t eat any more bread.’
‘Lunch! I don’t want lunch.’
And Zoë decided not to pursue the subject.
Nearly eight hours later, after a trip to the pet shop with Georgie for him to gaze at the budgerigars and grass snakes, an early supper (Chrissie and Juliet were going to eat later), after bathing him, reading a story from The Jungle Book, after asking Juliet’s advice about which dress she would wear (this in order to be able to implore her to be nice to her brother – she loved her mother asking advice and gave it freely: ‘You can’t possibly wear that, Mummy, you look awful in it’), after settling in the end for the old Hardy Amies that never let her down, after showing Juliet where the supper was in the fridge (she had had to buy things – ‘Toad-in-the-hole is disgusting, Mummy. Chrissie couldn’t possibly eat it’), after combing out her newly washed hair and putting on the old paste earrings she’d had for yea
rs – the first present she’d had from Rupert – after waiting only a few moments for him to arrive, after the pleasant drive into town, they were ensconced on the first floor of Wheeler’s restaurant in Old Compton Street, sipping white wine with two large platters of oysters between them.
‘So how was your meeting?’ she asked. Get that out of the way and then we can talk about serious things, was how she secretly put it to herself.
He took a deep swig of his wine, then stretched out his hand on the table to touch hers. ‘Sweetie, prepare yourself for a bit of a shock.’
She looked into his anxious eyes and her heart sank. ‘Do they not want you in the firm any more? Darling, is that it? You know I support you in whatever you want to do.’
‘It’s nothing like that. It’s—Well, apparently, Teddy isn’t really up to running Southampton—’
‘Well, surely it’s a very good position. Hundreds of people would jump at the chance.’
‘Yes, but unfortunately hardly any of them are called Cazalet.’
‘You mean Hugh wants you to do it.’
‘They both want me to.’
She stared at him for a moment, then said, ‘But you can’t. No, really, you cannot possibly do it. Commuting from Mortlake every day – you’d spend half your life travelling, you’d be utterly exhausted. Oh, darling, and you never wanted to do any of it in the first place.’
‘We’d better get on with our oysters or our sole will be spoiled …
‘The thing is,’ he said, moments later, ‘that of course it wouldn’t work if I commuted. What it does mean is that I would have to live there – that we would have to move.’
‘Leave Bank House? When you love it so much? What about the children? What about their schools?’
‘We’d have to find new schools. We needn’t live in the city. We could find some lovely village outside but not too far away. We could let Bank House, and rent the village one. It wouldn’t be for ever, sweetheart, a couple of years perhaps …’ But her face had resumed the expression that it had so often worn in the early years of their marriage. She had been years younger and it no longer became her.
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