‘Perhaps we could.’ And, more likely, perhaps we couldn’t, he thought. She was so pretty, and she still had her rather imperious optimism.
‘Well, I think it’s exciting.’ She took the brush from him and began peeling off her pale green petticoat. Most of her underclothes were green as she had decided years ago that they not only matched her eyes but set off her charmingly white skin. She did not have the same vanity now but some of the earlier rules had stuck. ‘A painter’s wife,’ she finished, stepping out of her knickers.
‘Come here, I’ll do your bra.’ He unhooked it and cupped her breasts in his hands. ‘You’re not to start dressing again. Join me just as you are.’
Edward went to sleep on the drive home: the shock of the morning meeting was still with him. He was sixty-one and, in a matter of months, he would be out of a job. He had no other source of income, he was in debt to his bank and he hadn’t the faintest idea what he could do to earn his living (and Diana’s). All the painful retrenchments he had discussed with her might have worked if money was coming in, but it wasn’t; you can’t cut down if you’ve nothing to cut down from. Susan would have to leave her expensive school; he would have to stop Jamie’s allowance and the boy would have to start earning his living. He could resign from both his clubs, and there were a few things he could sell – his Purdey guns, for instance: a very fine pair inherited from his father; they would be worth a bob or two. At this point he began to feel sick: everything seemed so black, just a long tunnel with no light at the end of it. When the same hopeless horror came back to him in the car, he had taken the only way out – sleep. I’m not even afraid of tackling Diana about it all any more – she’ll simply have to lump it, he thought, as he drifted off.
‘Darling, do stop blaming yourself. If you tell me once more that everything is your fault I shall scream. You’re much too keen on blame. It never does anyone the slightest good.’ She was glad to see that this shocked him.
‘But it is. It is my fault for being so pig-headed and not listening to anyone – especially Edward.’
‘All right. Supposing it is. The question is, what are we going to do now? I think it’s rather exciting. I know quite a lot about not having much money. We’ll manage.’ She stretched out her hand to his good one and shook it firmly. She was wearing her round horn-rimmed glasses, and looked, he thought, like an angry little owl. It made him smile.
‘Let’s talk properly about it tomorrow.’ She’d started her period that morning – the flat iron dropping down her stomach – and had a splitting headache, and it was nearly midnight.
When they were in bed, and he had started up again about what was to become of Rachel, she asked about Sid’s house. ‘What is it like? Have you ever seen it?’
‘Only once. It’s a detached early-Victorian villa. The kind that rich men bought to install a mistress in. A pretty little house, but it looked run down when I went there. If it really has been empty for a year, I should think it will need quite a lot doing to it. In any case, she’ll have to sell it to get some income.’
‘No more now,’ she said quickly. ‘We’re going to sleep, but if you want a change of worry, worry about me. I’ve got a horrible headache and my monthly tum.’
That worked. He turned to her at once, took her in his arms, murmuring endearments, comforting her with his love and concern, repeating his private words for her until she felt small and young again.
The next morning it was agreed that he and she, with Laura, should propose themselves for the weekend at Home Place, when Hugh would break the news to Rachel about having to sell the house.
She realised, as the day wore on, that not only did she not want to live in Sid’s house, she did not want to spend a single night there. Quite apart from the extreme discomfort of the place, the idea of getting into the bed they had both slept in frightened her: she felt that she would sink under a weight of grief she would be unable to bear. She rang Home Place and arranged for Tonbridge to meet her train, then set about packing a suitcase with Sid’s most private possessions. In the desk she found that Sid had kept every single one of her letters, tied in a bundle with a piece of blue ribbon. There was also another bundle, of heartless self-absorbed postcards from Sid’s awful sister Evie, who had emigrated to America several years before in pursuit of some music conductor or other. ‘Having a wonderful time’; ‘Another 4-star hotel! This is the life!’ She never asked Sid anything about herself and never gave an address.
She would throw away that bundle. There was also a little photograph album that contained sepia pictures of Sid’s parents and her attenuated childhood. She would keep that because Sid had treasured it. She packed Sid’s jersey, which she could wear, and one or two other things – some ties, and a favourite woolly scarf that had been attacked by moths but that she had refused to discard. It was enough for one day. Downstairs, she remembered a framed picture of Sid playing a violin sonata with Myra Hess and managed to cram it into the top of the suitcase. Home. She just wanted to go home.
‘There’s nothing to do in a car.’
‘You can look out of the window.’
‘I’ve tried, Mummy, but it goes too fast for me to see anything properly.’
‘Well, have a little nap.’
‘Oh, all right.’
Jemima looked to see if Laura was lying down and she was. The car was passing Lamberhurst. Hugh said, under his breath, ‘To think Edward does this journey five days a week! I couldn’t.’
‘You don’t have to, darling. Just the trek to Ladbroke Grove.’
After a short silence, Laura said, ‘Mummy! Going away for the weekend is quite grown-up, isn’t it? Children don’t mostly go away for weekends.’
‘No, they don’t.’
‘That’s what Miss Pendleton said at school. I could see it displeased her.’
Hugh said, ‘Well, now you’re going on such a grownup venture, you must be grown-up. No Miss Ghastly for you this weekend.’
‘All right. But, Dad, I shut my eyes just now and it didn’t make me sleep at all.’
‘And promise to be especially nice to Aunt Rachel.’
‘I promised last night. I can’t keep promising about the same thing – it just makes it weaker.’
‘How about you sing us a song?’
Laura loved singing and set about one man mowing a meadow immediately. The meadow was followed by the interminable green bottles and then a medley of Christmas carols, until they reached Home Place.
‘It will do Miss Rachel a world of good to have some company,’ Eileen said, when they arrived. ‘You’re in your usual room, madam, and I’ve put Miss Laura in the dressing room next door. Miss Rachel’s in the morning room. The fire went out while she was having her rest …’
‘I’ll go and help her,’ Hugh said.
When he had gone, Laura took Eileen’s hand and said, ‘I want to have tea with you and Mrs Tonbridge. In the kitchen. Now?’
Eileen looked gratified. ‘What does your mother say about that?’
Jemima said it would be lovely, if they didn’t mind. ‘And, really, it’s not just tea, it should be her supper.’
‘I shall drink tea at it. I shall drink a lot of tea with my supper.’
Eileen bore her off wreathed in indulgent smiles. ‘I could give her her bath, Mrs Hugh, if you cared for me to do it.’
Her usual room. It was not Hugh’s old room – the one in which Wills had been born and, later, where Sybil had died – but a room that had been Edward’s when he had been married to Villy. Like all the bedrooms it still had the wallpaper the Duchy had chosen for it when the house was bought – a trellis entwined with honeysuckle and a few rather improbable butterflies. The floor was covered with coconut matting – coffee-coloured but interwoven with black and scarlet stripes. The paintwork, once white, had aged to a musky cream that reminded her of the twins’ cricket flannels. The bed was flanked by four posts topped with brass balls, and boasted a rather splendid patchwork quilt that had taken Villy
two winters to make. The large mahogany wardrobe emitted a blast of mothball so strong that she decided not to hang her dress in it. The dressing table had its pretty Georgian mirror set at a rakish angle, plus a pincushion. ‘Darling Mummy’, it said, in shaky letters of alternate red and blue. She always looked forward to seeing it. In fact, Jemima loved the whole room, the way that things that were needed had gradually accumulated with no thought of design, no anxiety about colours clashing or periods of furniture rubbing together, no need to change anything unless it wore out, nothing new except the webs that spiders spun every year.
By now she had unpacked and went next door to inspect Laura’s room, where a large stuffed tiger was tucked up in her bed.
She should go down. She tried for one last time to imagine what it must be like to be Rachel – and failed.
The morning room was not warm exactly, but noticeably warmer than the rest of the house. The only lighting, apart from the fire, came from an ancient standard lamp whose parchment shade was so discoloured by smoke that it cast a mere foggy glow.
Hugh had been talking as she entered the room but he stopped when he saw her. Rachel sat bolt upright in a chair beside the fire. Jemima went at once to kiss her. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’
‘It’s so good of you to come.’ Her face was very cold. ‘I’m afraid I made rather a mess of the fire, but Hugh has revived it.’
‘I have other uses as well. Rachel and I have been drinking whisky, but you’d rather have gin, wouldn’t you, darling? You sit next to Rachel and get warm.’ She sat. Her sister-in-law’s face had become gaunt: she had dark circles under her eyes, almost the colour of the heavy dark blue jersey she was wearing. She had cut her hair very short, which might have made her look younger, but didn’t.
‘I’ve been trying to explain to Rachel what’s happening about the firm. I’m afraid it’s all rather difficult to take in.’
Jemima said, ‘I don’t think what is happening, or going to happen, is complicated. It’s more what we all do about it afterwards.’ She turned to Rachel, and said, ‘Cazalets’ owes the bank a great deal of money, and since they cannot repay it, the bank are calling in receivers before declaring the firm bankrupt. That means the end of the firm. There’s a chance that whoever takes it over may keep on some of the people who work in it now, and that includes your brothers, but it’s only a chance, and in any case we won’t know about that for some time.’ Her quiet, practical voice made everything clear.
‘Does that mean the whole family is bankrupt?’
‘No, it seems not. The extremely clever family lawyer advised us to put our houses in the wives’ names.’ Here she stopped because she didn’t know whether Hugh had yet broken the news to Rachel about Home Place. They exchanged glances. He handed her her drink and sat in the third chair.
‘Hugh, darling, I wonder if you would get me my cigarettes. On the table by the Torture Couch.’ This hard little day-bed had been the Duchy’s only concession to comfort; she had always urged Rachel to rest upon it. ‘Torture Couch’ had been Sid’s name for it. Hugh collected her smoking gear, a packet of Passing Clouds, an ashtray and her silver lighter.
‘Thank you, darling. Well, at least it’s good news about the houses. I know you all love this house as much as I do—’
Jemima interrupted: ‘We thought you might want to live in the house that Sid left you.’
‘Oh, no! I couldn’t bear to do that! No, I shall sell it. I went up to London to see it, and I knew almost at once that it was not for me. She told me to sell up if I wanted to. No. I would far rather stay here. This is my home.’ She took a sip of her whisky, and at that moment Eileen poked her head round the door to say that Miss Laura was ready for her bedtime story.
‘Oh dear! I haven’t even said hello to her.’
‘Tomorrow,’ Jemima replied, as she got up to go.
She gave Hugh a bracing look as she left the room. It was up to him now.
‘Rachel,’ he began, ‘it’s more difficult than that. Like us, you held a great many shares in the firm.’
‘Oh, yes! Far more than I needed, really, because the Duchy left me all hers. It has enabled me to buy a television set for the servants, which they simply adore, and I’m paying for Mrs Tonbridge to have her poor bunions done by a really good man in London—’
‘Have you saved any of it, darling?’
‘I suppose I have. Yes, of course I have – several thousand pounds, I should think.’
‘Because, you see, from the moment we’re declared bankrupt, all our shares will be worthless. There will be no more money coming in. You will have no income.’
He could see that this news shocked her.
There was a pause, during which she drank some more whisky.
‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘it simply means that I must learn how to economise. The Duchy taught me a great deal about that – especially in the war. I’m sure I can live on the income from selling the Abbey Road house. You mustn’t worry about me – you have far more important people to worry about.’
She looks her most grief-stricken when she tries to smile, he thought. ‘My dear, I’m afraid I have even more bad news. But I have to tell you. This house will no longer be ours. The Brig bought it after the first war, in the name of the firm. Cazalets’ owns the freehold, which means that we don’t. And even supposing the bank was prepared to sell it to us, we simply haven’t got enough money to pay for it. I know that this is worse for you than for any of us, and I promise I’ll sort something out for you—’
But here he was interrupted as she gave one small cry of anguish – then clapped her hand over her mouth to silence herself.
‘I didn’t know. I had no idea.’
He went to her, knelt before her and took both of her hands in his. The agony in her eyes became blurred by tears. ‘Bit of a shock,’ she said; she was scarcely audible.
‘Oh, darling, of course it is, and you do not deserve it. You of all people.’
‘Oh, no. Think if it was any of you with children and everything. And I do deserve it. I’ve never done a hand’s turn in my life.’ She fumbled for the handkerchief that she kept – as the Duchy had – tucked into her wristwatch band.
‘That is completely untrue. You looked after our parents wonderfully, you ran your charity, the Babies’ Hotel, you made this house a place where the whole family loved to come.’
At dinner – parsnip soup and shepherd’s pie, with salsify and spinach, then a damson tart – there was a tacit agreement not to talk about the situation; instead they fell back on less painful subjects. Jemima remarked that President de Gaulle’s – she thought rather peevish – question as to how one could govern a country that produced two hundred and sixty-five cheeses was both silly and irrelevant.
‘I’m sure he simply said that to make people think he had a sense of humour,’ Hugh retorted, and Rachel wondered aloud how they could need so many cheeses. Anyway, ‘Vive la différence’ was a much better remark.
‘Think how awful it must be,’ Jemima said, ‘to have people, newspaper people especially, hanging about waiting for you to produce some pearl of wisdom.’
‘I agree with that,’ Hugh said. ‘Dropping cultured pearls before real swine.’ At least Rachel’s listening, he thought, but she’s hardly eaten a thing.
‘Where did you get that phrase from?’
He thought for a moment. ‘From Rupe, when he was teaching at that boarding school.’
And then they fell back on Laura stories. Jemima told the first. ‘She came to me one day and asked why Hugh had said he was going to a board meeting. Why? To meet the other board members. She burst out laughing. “But, Dad, if you’re bored, meeting a whole lot of other bored people, won’t make it any better. You’ll simply be more bored than ever.” She got quite sulky when Hugh tried to explain to her.’ Rachel smiled and murmured that children could be quite killing sometimes.
They had their coffee in the morning room, where it was decided that both Sid�
�s house and Home Place must be valued immediately. Jemima offered to arrange the one in London, and Hugh said he would go to the estate agents in Battle – he knew one of them slightly as they had played golf together at Rye.
‘I don’t want the servants to know,’ Rachel said quietly.
They were all very tired by now, and longing not to have to talk about any of it any more. Hugh and Jemima each gave Rachel a hug, which she received with patient courtesy. She had gone beyond their reach.
TEDDY AND SABRINA
‘I’m afraid you’re not enjoying yourself.’
‘Not exactly enjoying, but it is quite interesting.’
They had been left alone, at last, in ‘the library’, a room whose walls were lined with leather-bound sets of books that showed no signs of ever having been read, with leather armchairs and an immense desk on which were stacked copies of Horse and Hound and Vogue.
Everything in the mock-Georgian house was like that. The Frankensteins had said that early bed was necessary: they were going hunting in the morning. At dinner he had been subject to cross-examination by Sabrina’s mother whom he had discovered was called Pearl. Her father was Reggie. ‘Do you hunt, Mr Cazalet?’ When he said that he didn’t ride, Pearl seemed astonished. ‘Did your family not keep horses?’
He said that his grandfather had, and one of his aunts had ridden, but the rest of the family hadn’t been interested. ‘My father preferred shooting.’
‘Ah, yes, shooting,’ Reggie had said, with some relief. ‘Might do a bit of that tomorrow.’
Pearl persevered. What did his father do for a living? And what did he do? She supposed that he had met Sabrina during the Season? No? ‘We met at a party, Mummy, and as it was during the Season we met then.’
‘I fail to see, m’dear, that it matters how they met. They met.’
They had finished their dressed crab and were being served roast partridge; he was extremely hungry and didn’t let the questioning interfere with the delicious food. His examiner didn’t do so well, he noticed. She was very small and bony, and wore half a dozen gold bracelets, some with charms attached, that slid noisily up and down her left arm whenever she raised her fork to eat. But when she got it near her mouth, she thought of something else to ask him and the fork remained suspended in the air, and often the food dripped off it. Sabrina looked from the parent who was speaking to the person replying as though she was at a tennis match. She hardly spoke a word during the meal, which ended with chocolate mousse, followed by angels on horseback. The moment everything had been consumed, Pearl got to her feet and motioned Sabrina to follow her. Teddy got to his feet, too, but she cried, ‘No, no, Mr Cazalet, you may not join the ladies yet!’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 233