‘Darling! It’s not my choice – you know that.’
‘Of course I know it. So why should your brothers boss you about like this? Why doesn’t one of them do it?’
‘Well, I haven’t talked about this because he doesn’t want people to know, but Hugh isn’t feeling so good these days – Edward doesn’t actually think he would be up to it.’
‘What about Edward, then?’
‘I did ask him about that. But he’s worried sick about Hugh’s management. He said he simply couldn’t leave him on his own in London. He told me he’d spent an evening with some banker chap who said we should aim to sell out – go public after we’ve got our bank loan down to acceptable proportions. He said the whole business could take at least two years, and that we should get on with it. Edward thoroughly agrees, but shifting Hugh is not easy. He still thinks that our father’s methods are the only right ones. He simply won’t accept that times have changed – are changing. Darling, you don’t want to hear all this.’
‘No, I don’t. All I can hear is two selfish old men wanting their own way, and expecting you to pay for it. You should stand up to them, Rupe! Stop being so amenable!’
The waiter arrived to remove the oyster plates, and stopped when he saw that she had eaten only four of hers.
‘I don’t want them,’ she said.
There was silence while their soles, Véronique and Colbert, were put before them and more wine poured.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve agreed to this.’
‘I said I’d think it over. And talk to you.’
‘Well, you have talked to me. And as you usually seem to agree with the last person you talked to, the thing should be settled, shouldn’t it?’
This last snipe really hurt him: it was nasty, and he also knew that it was uncomfortably true, but he could not bear it coming from her – his Zoë, his wife. ‘I know,’ he said, trying to smile. ‘I know I’m supposed to be an indecisive person. Well, I am one. I can’t help seeing the other person’s point of view. Hugh has never recovered from the wound in his head, still suffers from appalling headaches that lay him out. His loss of a hand is nothing to that. And Edward, well, I sometimes think that Edward knows he made a mistake with Diana, and Rachel says that he’s very unhappy about the rift with Hugh. I think he also misses the family life at Home Place. Rachel keeps trying to mend the rift, and Edward would be all for that, but he knows that Hugh disapproves of the marriage with Diana, which puts him on a sort of moral high ground that Edward can’t swallow.’
After a pause, she said, ‘But this is all about them. What about you?’ Then, she added, ‘That was a horrible thing to say. You have a much nicer character than I do. You worry about other people and all I care about is you and our children.’
The temperature had gone down a bit, he thought gratefully – and, after all, she had a point of view, which he absolutely had to take into account.
‘I think we’ve talked about it enough for now,’ he said. ‘Shall we make a great British effort to enjoy ourselves?’
So it wasn’t until they were driving home, and she was sleepy and content after her second rose-impregnated Ghul, which was the only liqueur that she really loved, that he said, in a carefully casual way, that perhaps while they were making up their minds, it might be useful – even fun – to pop down to Southampton and explore the villages nearby.
But she made no answer to this, and he realised that she was fast asleep.
SIMON AND NEVILLE
‘Well, all I can say is that you’re a fool.’
Neville was running through strips of negatives, holding them to the light, and every now and then chalking the possibles, with Simon standing awkwardly behind him. When Simon didn’t reply, he said, ‘As a matter of fact, I was on the point of arranging for you to go with me to Venice for a shoot, and now you’ll miss all that.’
‘I honestly don’t care. I’m not getting anywhere working for you.’
‘You’re training. If you bothered to learn—’
‘What? I’ve learned to be a dogsbody, if that’s what you mean. I don’t want to be a photographer, if that’s what you mean.’
Neville, who had so far conducted this conversation with his back to Simon, now turned round. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what do you want to be?’
And before he could think any more about it, Simon said, ‘A gardener. I want to be a gardener,’ and as he said this, he realised he had been saying it to himself for months. It was Neville’s look of extreme condescension that had goaded him to commit himself aloud to someone else. ‘A gardener,’ he repeated.
There was a short silence while Neville lit a cigarette, then said, ‘Oh, well, I suppose you know best.’
He sounded unconvinced, which made Simon say, ‘So I’ll be handing in my notice as from now. You owe me nine pounds,’ he added.
‘You ought to be giving me a month’s notice. It’s the least you could do.’
‘I’m sick of doing the least I could do. I’m leaving now. So cough up.’
‘It isn’t nine pounds because you borrowed a fiver off me last week. Remember?’
‘OK. Whatever it is, then.’ By now he was stuffing his few belongings into his rucksack – no more sleeping in a cupboard.
Neville had followed him to watch this, and now fumbled in his threadbare velvet jacket – the one he only wore in the flat – for a handful of notes. He counted them out and added two fivers. He was starting to feel rather a shit.
‘Bonus,’ he said. ‘A Golden Goodbye.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Simon was clearly pleased. They parted more comfortably than either of them had expected, shook hands and wished each other good luck.
With Simon gone, the flat seemed surprisingly desolate. He had no assignment until he was to go to Venice for the weekend. In the end he did what he often did when alone: made some proper coffee, settled into the sagging armchair that never stopped leaking feathers and looked at his pictures of Juliet. They were stunning. She was a natural model, difficult to take a bad picture of her, and since last Christmas he had accumulated quite a stack.
Their relationship – precarious at best – was at once kept alive and impeded by secrecy. He knew that the family would come down on him like a ton of bricks if they knew about it, and she would be badly affected. He managed to see her by making his arrangements with Rupert or Zoë, who simply thought how nice it was of him to ask her to the theatre or cinema, or for walks in Richmond Park. Twice he had taken her out to lunch after a shopping session, which she’d simply adored, never questioning him about his choice of clothes. Every time they met, he was struck by her beauty, sometimes trying other words to describe her: lovely, pretty, attractive, ravishing, perfect – all these descriptions fitted her appearance, and no single one seemed enough.
On the whole, his situation with her (she had no idea how serious he was) suited him. He would have to wait for her to be old enough for him – as he put it – to carry her off, but this would give her time to grow up and for him to get his life together.
He would give up this grotty little flat and get himself somewhere far better and more suited to their future life together, and meanwhile the romance, the sheer amazing chance that he should have met her before anyone else had staked a claim, was enough for him to be going on with. His energy, emotional, sexual, whatever it was, had to be largely spent upon his career. He was known, but he needed to be famous; he needed to be one of the half-dozen top photographers in his field.
He opened the last tin of baked beans and ate them with a spoon, while he imagined finding somewhere marvellous and unusual – a boat moored at Chelsea, or a wharf on the river with a roof garden – to live, eventually, with his radiant love.
For the rest of the day, while he was checking and packing his equipment for Venice, calling his editor to find a replacement for Simon, searching for a clean shirt and trying to remove some mysterious mark from his newest velvet jacket, these glinting thoughts of his future
began to make him feel isolated. He would drop in on Clary: she would give him supper, and she would help him with his blasted jacket.
He bought an evening paper, two gobstoppers and a small bunch of chrysanthemums before catching a bus up Edgware Road. Archie would have to do without a present.
The flat was the ground floor of a very large house, and its garden might once have been an orchard as it contained apple, plum and pear trees set in rarely mown grass and stalwart weeds such as loosestrife and dandelions. The studio looked onto the garden, which made the place seem like a piece of country. He had time to see all of this because the front door was not locked, and when he shouted for Clary, she shouted back that she was in the kitchen washing her hair.
‘I suppose you’ve come to supper,’ she said, after she’d given him a rather wet hug.
‘I think I have. These are for you.’ He proffered the chrysanthemums.
‘Goodness! Thank you.’ She looked wildly around for something to put them in, and settled on a jam jar stuffed with Archie’s paintbrushes.
‘Won’t he mind?’
She shrugged. ‘Not very much. There isn’t a great deal of room in this flat for things like flower vases.’
She had been towelling her hair and now gave it a shake, so that spots of water fell everywhere. ‘I’ve got a comb somewhere – oh, yes, I think it’s on the draining board. Please get it.’
He wanted her to clean his jacket so he did as he was told. She wrenched the comb through her tangled hair for a minute or two. ‘See if you can find an elastic band, unless you happen to have one on you. I must get the children in for their bath.’
The children turned out to be in the garden, and came plodding in carrying a heavy bag between them. ‘Here are your horrible pears. Please don’t make us eat them. They really are horrible.’
‘Say hello to Uncle Neville.’
‘Hello, Uncle Neville. Mum, I had a good idea about the pears.’
‘Actually, it was my idea.’ Bertie was a year younger than Harriet, and made the most of it.
‘OK. Tell us your idea, then go and have your bath.’
‘Oh, Mum! We had a bath yesterday!’
‘We simply aren’t dirty – except my knees. You can’t count knees as being dirty.’ They had dumped the bag on the floor, whereupon it fell sideways and a number of small green pears fell out. ‘She stews and stews them and then we have to have them as pudding,’ Bertie explained to Neville. ‘And there are millions of them.’
‘Anyway,’ Harriet said, ‘you know that story when an old woman builds her house of pear seeds? Well – that’s the idea. That would use up all the pears and we would have a proper house instead of the leaky old tent in the garden.’
‘It sounds an interesting idea, but quite difficult to do,’ Clary said.
‘Dad will help us,’ Harriet said. ‘You can, too, if you want to, but honestly I think it’s the kind of thing that Dad would be best at.’
‘Right. Up you go now.’
Neville said, ‘If you go now, I’ve got a present for you when you come back.’
‘What?’
‘It will be a surprise.’
They went, of course. When they had gone, Neville said, ‘You’re very good at being a mother, aren’t you?’
‘Am I?’ She looked surprised. ‘I don’t feel especially good at it. I get ratty sometimes and want to scream at them. It’s the going-on-ness of family life, you know – all the meals and washing clothes, clearing up whatever happened last and getting ready for the next thing.’
‘But you like it, really, don’t you? And you have Archie.’
‘I have Archie,’ she repeated, but for a moment her face clouded – something sad and determined occurred and went. ‘If you want to go on talking we must sit down. Also, it’s time you told me what you’ve come for.’
‘How do you know I’ve come for anything?’ He felt aggrieved that she was so sharp.
‘Because you always do. I don’t mind in the least. What is it?’
‘Well – I felt like seeing you. Your company.’ This, he discovered to his surprise, was completely true.
The kitchen was fairly tidy for Clary, he thought. The table had rather a lot of flour on it and there were vegetables waiting to be prepared on the draining board alongside a bottle of shampoo.
‘Darling Neville, what else?’
‘It’s a tiny thing, really. I’ve spilt something on my only good jacket and I’m off to Venice this weekend, and I thought you’d know how to get the mark off. You used to spill so many things on your clothes, I thought you’d be an expert.’ He smiled winningly.
This did not go down well. ‘When I spilled things they tended to stay there. It was Poll who showed me what to do.’ It was a tart reply. However, she looked at him, and then said, ‘Show me the jacket. What did you spill on it?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ He had pulled it out of the carrier bag. She took it to the draining board. ‘You should have had it dry-cleaned.’
‘I know. But it’s too late for that. I only noticed when I was packing.’
‘I’ll have a go, if you like, but I warn you, it may not work.’
While he watched her spread the stained cloth on the wood, put some washing-up liquid on her finger and rub it carefully round and round, he had a sudden mad desire to tell her about Juliet, to say, ‘I’m in love with my half-sister – no, it’s really serious – I know she isn’t old enough to marry me, but she will be and then I shall.’
‘When will Archie be back?’
She looked at her watch. ‘Any minute now. It isn’t one of his late nights.’
Not a good moment then. He knew she would protest, and he needed time to field any objections. His urgent secret withdrew, like a snail. ‘Tell me what’s been happening to you.’
He saw her shoulders stiffen for a second, then she turned to look at him (she had marvellous eyes, he noticed now, because he was not used to them). In a very calm, flat voice, she said, ‘The chief thing is that I’m writing a play.’ A very large tear dropped onto the black velvet.
At that moment, there were sounds of Archie’s arrival.
‘Please don’t mention the play,’ she said, then called out, ‘We’re in the kitchen. Neville’s here.’
Archie was pleased to see him. He looked awfully old, Neville thought. His hair was partly white and there was less of it. He seemed tired. He dumped the satchel he had been carrying and turned Clary from the sink to kiss her. ‘How’s Mrs Beeton been doing? Darling, your hair is soaking!’
‘Better not come near me, then.’
‘Clary’s very kindly cleaning my jacket.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve got a bit behind with supper.’
‘Never mind. I’ve brought a bottle of wine back. We can all have some while we’re waiting.’
‘It won’t be just waiting, I’m afraid. There’s the potatoes to peel and carrots to scrape. And the children to get out of the bath. I’ve made the fishcakes, though.’
‘Oh, good. She makes lovely fishcakes.’
‘I don’t. Either they’re too full of potato and don’t taste of anything, or they go all crumbly when I fry them.’
Archie, who had been fumbling in a kitchen drawer, said, ‘Where the devil has the corkscrew got to?’
‘It’ll be in the sink, concealed by suds. I was using it to try and open a bottle of hair stuff. Sorry.’
Neville became conscious of effort in the air, but other than not being there, he couldn’t think what he could do about it. ‘Are we going to have the wine now, or save it up for dinner?’
Clary, who had begun peeling potatoes, said irritably, ‘I don’t care. You do what you want.’
But that was his cue. ‘I meant to bring you some,’ he said. ‘Where’s the nearest off-licence? No, really, Archie, I want to.’
And Archie was persuaded.
During his walk, he reflected that he had not told Clary about the most important thing in
his life, and then – a sudden and perhaps tardy notion – that she had not told him either. The play she had said she was writing, the momentous tear that had fallen onto his jacket, her saying not to mention it when they heard Archie … Something was going on. She had not made the slightest effort to tidy herself, to change from the fraying green shirt, to don an apron not so spattered with previous cooking, and she had been distinctly ungracious about whatever Archie had said to her. They must have had some married couple’s tiff. Well, he certainly wouldn’t ever have any of those with beautiful darling Jules. In the end, he bought two bottles of champagne and walked quite briskly back, through the dusk turning to dark, and returned to a far more cheerful scene.
Archie was laying the table, Clary was frying fishcakes; they had not drunk the wine – ‘Waiting for you’ – and the children were showing their father a drawing Harriet had made for the pear-seed house. His jacket hung from the plate rack. ‘The best I could do,’ Clary said, and Archie added, ‘She used her own toothbrush to stroke up the nap.’
The champagne was greeted with delight and even some awe.
‘I thought people only had it at weddings,’ Bertie said. ‘Can we have some?’
‘You can have a sip,’ Archie said.
‘A very small sip,’ Clary amended. She began dishing out the food for them.
‘I should like a very large gulp, several gulps, because it might take me time to see if I like it.’
‘You’ll have exactly the same.’
Neville uncorked a bottle that fizzed, pouring the champagne quickly into the glass that Archie held out for him.
‘Smoke comes out!’ Harriet shouted.
When they had had their sips, she said it was too prickly whereupon Bertie said he loved it.
‘Aren’t you having supper with us?’
‘We’re going to have a drink first. You don’t usually have supper as late as this. Eat it up or you won’t get Uncle Neville’s surprise.’
‘Carrots as well, Bertie,’ Clary said, some minutes later.
‘Mum, I really have told you and told you I don’t actually care for carrots. I can’t see the point of them.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 217