The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Wren fussing about the drains made William think. The new premises would need their own water. Perhaps he’d better sink another well. Then the garden and stables could share their water supply – instead of the garden using water from the house – and – yes! He’d do a spot of divining after lunch. He’d speak to Sampson about it, but Sampson didn’t really know the first thing about wells – he couldn’t find water to save his life. Cheered by the thought of yet another enterprise, he stumped over to the garages.

  Tonbridge held the car door open for Madam, and the Duchy climbed gratefully into the back of the old Daimler. It was cool after the heat of the high street and smelled faintly of prayer books. The boot was full of the large grocery order; her new trug and secateurs from Till’s lay on the seat beside her, a case of Malvern water on the seat in front.

  ‘We just have to collect my order from the butcher’s, Tonbridge.’

  ‘Very good, m’m.’

  She eased a hat pin that seemed to be working its way through her hat into her head. It would be too hot now to pick the roses; she would have to wait until evening. She would have a short rest after luncheon, and then go out into the garden. In weather like this she begrudged every minute she could not spend there.

  The butcher came out with her lamb in a parcel. He had been most apologetic about the last order having been unsatisfactory. He raised his boater to her as the car moved on.

  Tonbridge got the sweets wrong. ‘I want mixed fruits – not just gooseberries. I’m afraid you must take them back.’

  Tonbridge went slowly back into the shop. He didn’t like having to buy sweets, and he hated taking them back because the woman who kept the shop was sharp with him and reminded him of Ethyl. But he did it, of course. It was all part of the job.

  He drove the Duchy home at a lugubrious twenty miles an hour – the pace he usually reserved for Mrs Edward or Mrs Hugh when they were pregnant. The Duchy did not notice this; driving was for men, and they might go at what pace they pleased. The only driving she had ever done was in a pony cart when she was a great deal younger. But she sensed that the sweet business had upset him, so when they got home and he was helping her out of the car, she said, ‘I expect you will be most relieved when the garages are finished, and you have a nice flat for your family.’

  He looked at her – his mournful brown eyes with the bloodshot lower lids did not change – and said, ‘Yes, m’m. I expect I shall be,’ and shut the car door after her. As he drove the car round to the back door to unload it, he reflected gloomily that his only chance of getting away from Ethyl was shortly to be lost. She’d be down here, nagging him, complaining about how quiet it was, with that kid of hers whining all the time, and his life would be just as bad as it was when the family were in town. There must be a way out of it somehow, but he couldn’t see what it was.

  Eileen had been behind herself all morning. It had started all right: she’d got her housework – the reception rooms – done before breakfast. But when she was washing the breakfast things, she discovered that all the china for the nursery meals hadn’t been touched since Christmas: the whole lot needed washing, and of course Mrs Cripps hadn’t been able to spare Dottie, and Peggy and Bertha had all the rooms upstairs to get ready. Eileen didn’t like to say anything, but she did think that Mrs Cripps might have spoken to the girls about it and got it done earlier. It wasn’t all done now, but there was an early dining room lunch, which meant that the kitchen wouldn’t get theirs until nearly two. She was in the pantry, rolling water-beaded butter balls and setting them in glass dishes for lunch and dinner that evening.

  The door was open and she could hear Mrs Cripps shouting at Dottie, who scuttled back and forth down the passage with the kitchen washing-up. Smells of new cake and flapjacks wafted from the kitchen, reminding her that she was starving: she never could fancy much breakfast and there’d only been a rock cake with middle mornings. In London, Mrs Norfolk provided a real sit-down meal for elevenses – tinned salmon or a nice piece of Cheddar – but, then, she wasn’t having to cook for the numbers expected of Mrs Cripps. Eileen always came to the country with the family for Christmas and the summer holidays. At Easter she had her fortnight’s holiday and Lillian, the housemaid at Chester Terrace, came down instead of her. Eileen had been with the family seven years; she was fond of them, but she adored Miss Rachel – one of the sweetest ladies she’d ever met. She couldn’t think why Miss Rachel had never got married, but supposed she’d had a Disappointment in the war, like so many. But the summer was going to be hard work all the way, and that was a fact. Still, she liked to see the children enjoying themselves and Mrs Hugh would soon be having another and there’d be a baby again at Christmas. That was the butter done. She took the small tray of dishes to put in the larder and nearly ran into Dottie – that girl never looked where she was going. Poor girl, she had a summer cold and a very nasty cold sore on her lip in spite of all the vanishing cream that Eileen had kindly lent her. She was carrying a huge great tray piled with the kitchen china for laying up in the hall.

  ‘You shouldn’t put so much on a tray, Dottie. You might have a nasty accident.’

  But it didn’t matter how kindly you spoke to her, she still looked scared. Eileen guessed that she was homesick because she remembered how she’d felt when she first went into service: cried her eyes out every night, and spent all the afternoons writing letters home, but Mum had never answered them. She didn’t like to think of those days. Still, we all have to go through them, she thought. It’s all for the best in the end. She went to the kitchen to look at the time. Half past twelve – and she must get a move on.

  Mrs Cripps was in a frenzy – stirring things, popping things in and out of ovens. The kitchen table was half covered with basins, saucepans, pastry-making apparatus and the mincer and empty jugs, all waiting to be washed up.

  ‘Where is that girl? Dottie! Dottie!’ There were huge dark patches under her arms, and her ankles bulged over the straps of her black shoes. She lifted a wooden spoon from a double saucepan, placed her forefinger flat upon it, tasted and seized the salt. ‘See if you can find her, would you, Eileen, for me? There’s all this to be cleared up, and the stove wants a good riddle – I don’t know what they put in the coke nowadays, I really don’t. Tell her to hurry, if she knows what the word means.’

  Dottie was moonily laying a fork and then a knife, and then a spoon round the table. She paused between each of these gestures, snuffling and staring into space.

  ‘Mrs Cripps wants you. I’ll finish the table.’ Dottie gave her a hunted look, wiped her nose on her sleeve and scuttled away.

  Eileen could hear the girls laughing and talking with Mr Tonbridge, who was bringing in the shopping from Battle. They could lay the table and she would help Mr Tonbridge. She knew where things had to go, which was more than you could say for either Peggy or Bertha. But she had hardly got the butter and cream and the meat stowed in the larder and the Malvern water into her pantry before the word was passed that Mrs Cripps was dishing up. So she sped back through the kitchen, across the hall to the dining room to light the spirit lamps under the warmer on the sideboard, back to the hall where she rang the gong for luncheon, and back to the kitchen where dishes and plates were already piled upon the large wooden tray. She just had time to get across the hall with this and set plates and dishes in position when the family came in for lunch.

  Four hours later nearly all of them had arrived: the grownups were having tea in the garden, and the children in the hall with Nanny and Ellen. They had arrived in three cars: Edward unloaded the suitcases and Louise carried hers – it was extremely heavy – into the hall. Aunt Rach had come with them to tell them which rooms. She tried to help Louise with her case, but Louise wouldn’t let her: everybody knew Aunt Rach had a bad back – whatever that might mean. She was delighted to be in the Pink Room and bagged the bed by the window as she was first. She saw the camp bed and realised that Clary would be sleeping with her and Polly. This was a bore, b
ecause Clary, although she was twelve (like Polly), seemed much younger, and anyway, she was not much fun, and they had to be nice to her because her mother was dead. Never mind, it was heavenly to be here. She unpacked her case enough to get out her jodhpurs so that she could ride immediately after tea. She’d better unpack altogether or they would find her when she was in the middle of something and make her stop and go and do it. She hung up her three cotton frocks that Mummy had made her bring, and bundled everything else into a drawer, except her books, which she arranged carefully on the table by her bed. Great Expectations, because Miss Milliment had set it for their holiday book, Sense and Sensibility, because she hadn’t read it for at least a year, a funny old book called The Wide, Wide World, because Miss Milliment had said that she used to have bets with a friend when she was a girl that whatever page they opened it at the heroine would be crying, and, of course, her Shakespeare. She heard a car arriving and prayed it would be Polly. She needed someone to talk to: Teddy was aloof – he didn’t answer any questions about his school properly and he wouldn’t even play car numbers with her on the way down. Let it be Polly. Please, God, let it be Polly!

  Polly was thankful to arrive. She always felt car-sick, although she never actually was. They stopped for her twice, once on the hill outside Sevenoaks and once the other side of Lamberhurst. Each time she had stumbled out and stood retching, but nothing happened. She had quarrelled with Simon on the way down as well. It was about Pompey. Simon said that cats didn’t notice if people went away – which was an arrant lie. Pompey had watched her packing and tried to get into the case. He simply concealed his feelings in front of other people. He’d even tried to make her feel better about it, by going away and sitting in the kitchen – the furthest possible amount away from her that he could manage. Mummy had kept saying wasn’t she excited about going to Home Place, and she was, but everybody knew you could feel two things at once – probably more than that. She didn’t trust Inge to be kind to him although she’d given her a pot of Wonder Cream as a sort of bribe, but Daddy said that he would be back on Monday and she knew he was trustworthy. But then she’d miss Daddy. Life was nothing but swings and roundabouts. What with crying in London and feeling sick in the car, she had a headache. Never mind. As soon as they’d had tea, she and Louise would go off together to their best tree – an old apple that could be made into a kind of house with the branches being different rooms. It was her and Louise’s tree; horrible Simon wouldn’t be allowed up it. He had been told to carry her case up to her room, but as soon as they were out of sight of the grown-ups, he dropped it and said, ‘Carry your own case.’ ‘Cad!’ She picked it up and began on the stairs. ‘Swine!’ she added. They were the newest worst words she could think of: what Dad had said about a bus driver, and a man in a sports car on the way down. Oh dear! What with Pompey and Simon, things weren’t too good. But there was darling Louise at the top of the stairs, down in a flash to help her with the case. But she was wearing her riding clothes which meant no tree after tea, so it was swings and roundabouts again.

  Zoë and Rupert had an awful journey; Zoë had suggested that Clary should go by train with Ellen and Neville, but Clary had made such a fuss that Rupert had given in, and said she’d better come with them. Their car, a small Morris, was not large enough for the whole family, and as it was, Clary had luggage crammed round her in the back. Quite soon she said she felt sick and wanted to be in front. Zoë said that Clary shouldn’t have come in the car if she was going to feel sick and she couldn’t be in front. So Clary was sick – just to show her. They had to stop, and Dad tried to clean it up, but it smelled awful and everybody was cross with her. Then they had a puncture, and Dad had to change the wheel while Zoë sat smoking and not saying a word. Clary got out of the car and apologised to Dad, who was nice and said he supposed she couldn’t help it. They were still in horrible awful old London when this happened. Dad had to unpack the boot to get at his tools and Clary tried to help him, but he said she couldn’t really. He spoke in his patient voice that meant, she felt, he was awfully unhappy only he couldn’t say. He must be – the most terrible thing had happened to him in the world and he had to go on living and pretending it hadn’t and so, of course, she tried to copy his braveness about it because she knew it was so much worse for him. It didn’t matter how much she loved him, it wouldn’t make it up. The rest of the journey, they didn’t talk, so she sang to cheer him up. She sang ‘Early One Morning’, and ‘The Nine Days of Christmas’, and an area it was called, by Mozart – she only knew the first three words and then it had to be la la la, but it was a lovely tune, one of his favourites – and the ‘Raggle Taggle Gypsies O’, but when she got to ‘Ten Green Bottles’, Zoë asked her to shut up for a bit – so, of course, she had to. But Dad thanked her for the lovely singing, so it was sucks to Zoë, and that was something. She spent the rest of the journey wanting to go to the lav, but not wanting to ask Dad to stop again.

  Lydia and Neville had a lovely time in the train. Neville liked trains more than anything, which was quite reasonable as he was going to be an engine driver. Lydia thought he was a very nice boy. They played noughts and crosses, but that wasn’t much fun because they were too equal for anyone to win. Neville wanted to climb into the luggage rack above the seats – he said a boy he knew always travelled like that – but Nan and Ellen wouldn’t let them. They did let them stand in the corridor, which was very exciting when they went through tunnels and they could see red sparks in the smoky dark and there was a lovely exciting smell. ‘The only thing is,’ Lydia said after thinking about it when they were told to come back into the carriage, ‘that when you are an engine driver, where will you have your house? Because wherever it is, you’ll keep on going to somewhere else, won’t you?’

  ‘I’ll take a tent with me. I’ll put it up in places like Scotland or Cornwall – or Wales or Iceland. Anywhere,’ he finished grandly.

  ‘You can’t drive a train to Iceland. Trains don’t go over the sea.’

  ‘They do. Dad and Zoë go to Paris in a train. They get into it at Victoria Station, and have dinner and go to sleep and when they wake up they’re in France. So they do go across sea. So there.’

  Lydia was silent. She didn’t like arguments, so she decided not to have one. ‘I’m sure you’ll be a very good driver.’

  ‘I’ll take you free whenever you want to go. I’ll go at two hundred miles an hour.’

  There he went again. Nothing went at two hundred miles an hour.

  ‘What are you looking forward to most when we get there?’ She asked politely – she didn’t particularly want to know.

  ‘My bike. And strawberries. And the Walls’ Ice Man.’

  ‘Strawberries are over, Neville. It will be raspberries now.’

  ‘I don’t mind which they are. I can eat any old berry. I very-very-very-like ber-rys-ber-rys-ber-rys.’ He began laughing, his face became bright pink and he nearly fell off his seat. This made Ellen say that he was getting silly; he was quenched by being told to put out his tongue and having the lower half of his face rubbed with a handkerchief and his spit. Lydia watched with distaste, but just as she was feeling rather superior Nan did exactly the same to her.

  ‘Nasty smuts you got out in the corridor, I told you!’ But it must mean they were nearly there and she was longing for that.

  The Cazalets were a kissing family. As the first lot (Edward and Villy) arrived, they kissed the Duchy and Rachel (the children kissed the Duchy and hugged Aunt Rach); when the second lot (Sybil and Hugh) arrived they did the same, and then the brothers and sisters-in-law kissed each other, ‘How are you, darling?’; when Rupert and Zoë arrived he kissed everyone, and Zoë imprinted her brothers-in-law’s faces with her light, scarlet lipstick and lent a creamy cheek to her sisters-in-law’s mouths. The Duchy sat in an upright deck-chair on the front lawn under the monkey puzzle boiling the silver kettle for strong Indian tea. As each one kissed her she made her silent, lightning review of their health: Villy looked r
ather thin, Edward looked in the pink as he always seemed to; Louise was growing too fast, Teddy was reaching the awkward age; Sybil looked done up, and Hugh looked as though he was recovering from one of his heads; Polly was becoming a pretty child so nothing must ever be said about her appearance; Simon looked far too pale – some sea air would do him good; Rupert looked positively haggard and needed feeding up; and Zoë – but here her thoughts failed her. Incurably honest, she admitted to herself that she did not – like – Zoë and could not get past her appearance which, she felt, was a trifle showy, a little like an actress. The Duchy did not have anything against actresses in general, it was simply that one did not expect to have one in the family. None of the observations were apparent to anyone except Rachel, who quickly admired Zoë’s tussore suit with white crocheted jumper and long string of corals. Clary had not come to kiss, and had rushed straight into the house.

  ‘She was sick in the car,’ Zoë explained in neutral tones.

  ‘She’s perfectly all right now,’ Rupert said sharply.

  Rachel got to her feet. ‘I’ll go and see.’

  ‘Do, darling. I don’t think she should have raspberries and cream, it would be too rich for her.’

  Rachel pretended not to hear her mother. She found Clary coming out of the downstairs lavatory.