The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  ‘I always thought that Adila’s sister was so much better than Adila. She was quieter – less flamboyant.’

  Sid, although she did not agree with the remark – that is to say that she had not the distaste for flamboyance that was so evident in the Duchy – was none the less pleased that the subject of violinists was proving to be the right distraction for her. They had progressed from a profound and mutual admiration for Szigeti and Hubermann to the D’Aranyi sisters. Now, she said that they were wonderful together, set each other off, were perfect with Bach, for instance. The Duchy’s eyes glowed with interest.

  ‘Did you hear that? They must have been marvellous.’

  ‘Not at the concert. At a friend’s house one evening. They suddenly decided to do it. It was unforgettable.’

  ‘But I don’t think Jelly should ever have performed that Schumann. He clearly did not want it performed, and it seems wrong to have gone against his wishes.’

  ‘Hard to resist, though, if you had uncovered the manuscript.’

  Sensing dangerous ground – the Duchy would never have considered that something hard to resist was a reason for resisting it – she added, ‘Of course, Somervell wrote his concerto for Adila which is one reason why she has been heard far more often in public than her sister. Those Brahms Hungarian dances for encores! Marvellous, don’t you think? Number five, for instance.’

  Sid agreed – nobody could play a Hungarian dance like a Hungarian.

  The Duchy patted her mouth with her napkin and rolled it into its silver holder. ‘Have you heard this new young boy – Menuhin?’

  ‘I went to his first concert at the Albert Hall. He played the Elgar. An amazing performance.’

  ‘I never felt it was right that there should be these child prodigies. It must be awfully hard on them – no real childhood and all the travelling.’

  Sid thought of Mozart, and remained silent. Then the Duchy added, ‘But I have heard him and he is wonderful – such a grasp of the music and, of course, he is not a child any more. But isn’t it interesting? All the people we have mentioned, not to speak of Kreisler and Jourchim, are Jews! One has to hand it to them. They really are remarkable fiddlers!’ Then she looked at Sid and went slightly pink. ‘Dear Sid, I hope you don’t …’

  And Sid, wearily used to the blanket anti-Semitism that seemed to envelop the English, answered with the practised good humour that she had needed to cultivate since she was a child, ‘Dear Duchy, they are! I wish I could say “we”, but I have no false notions about my talent – perhaps it is my gentile blood that has prevented me from getting to the top.’

  ‘I do not think that is important. The great thing is to enjoy it.’

  And make some sort of living from it, thought Sid, but she did not say this.

  The Duchy was still feeling unhappy about what she described to herself as her slip. ‘Dear Sid! We are so fond of you. Rachel is devoted to you, you know. You must stay a few days so that you can see more of each other. I do hope that you will have time for that.’

  She put out her hand to Sid, who took it as though it was full of a handful of rich crumbs that she could not resist. ‘You are very kind, Duchy dear. I should love to stay a day or two.’

  The Duchy’s frank and troubled eyes cleared and she gave Sid’s hand a little pat. ‘And perhaps we might play together – the amateur and the professional? Edward’s Gagliano is here.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’ Edward’s Gagliano was a darn sight better than her own fiddle. He never played it now; it lay in its case, still marked Cazalet Minor from his school days, and it was kept in the country.

  The Duchy rang for Eileen to clear lunch and got up from the table.

  ‘I think perhaps I will see whether they want anything upstairs. Will you keep an ear out for the beach party returning?’

  ‘I will.’

  When the Duchy had gone, she lit another cigarette and wandered outside to the basket chairs on the lawn. She could see the drive and the gate from there. The usual welter of ambivalent feelings was churning away inside her: offence rising at this frightful lumping of people into a category for reasons of race; a creeping, but irresistible gratitude for being classed as an exception to the rule – the mongrel’s view, she supposed, but she had other reasons for craving approval, if not affection, which neither the Duchy nor any of her family nor the people she worked with nor anyone at all, in fact, excepting possibly Evie would ever know anything about if she could help it – because of Rachel, her dear most precious and secret love. It had to be secret if she was to keep Rachel, and life without Rachel was not something she could bear to contemplate. Evie did not actually know, but she had some inkling and had already started to use her damnable intuition for manipulative purposes – like this deadly fortnight by the sea she said they must have. Evie always sensed the moment attention was not primarily on herself and depending on the occasion became more ingeniously demanding. And this occasion, the great occasion of her life, was dynamite. If only I were a man, she thought, none of this need be. But she did not want to be a man. Nothing is simple, she thought. Yes, one thing was: she loved Rachel with all her heart and nothing could be simpler than that.

  Sybil lay with her legs apart and her knees up, the mound of her belly obscuring all but the top of Dr Carr’s head, pale pink and shiny, as he bent to see how things were going. For a long time they hadn’t been at all: the pains had gone on, but the cervix had not continued to dilate; she seemed stuck. Dr Carr was wonderfully reassuring, but she was so tired and sick of the pain that she wanted it to stop more than anything else, and for the past hour – hours – whatever it had been – there seemed to be no reason why it ever should. In the middle of this examination, another splitting surge of pain began – enormous, like a freak wave – and she tried to writhe away from it, but could not because Dr Carr was holding her legs.

  ‘Push, Mrs Cazalet – bear down – push now.’ Sybil pushed, but this increased the agony. She shook her head weakly and stopped, felt the pain ebbing, taking all her strength away with it. Sweat stung her eyes and then tears. She whimpered – it wasn’t fair to hold her down to make things worse when she was too tired to bear any more. She looked weakly for Rachel, but Dr Carr was talking to Rachel who was too far away. She felt stranded, abandoned by both of them.

  ‘You’re doing very well now, Mrs Cazalet. When the next pain starts, take a deep breath, and really push.’

  She started to ask him if something was happening at last. ‘Yes, yes, your baby’s on its way, but you must help. Don’t fight the pains, ride them. Go with them, you’re nearly there.’ She did it twice more, and then, just before the third time, she felt the baby’s head, like a heavy round rock crammed in her, beginning to move again and she gave a cry not simply of pain but of excitement at her child coming to life out of her. And after that, the last two or three waves – although they seemed to be breaking her open with a new shriller agony – did not engulf her as before: her body’s attention was all focused upon the amazing sensation of the head moving down and out. She saw Rachel standing over her with a small white pad and shook her head – she did not want to lose track of this baby’s journey as had happened twice before with the others, and so she raised herself so that she could see its arrival. The doctor shook his head at Rachel, who put the pad away. Sybil let out a long sighing breath, and then the head was out – eyes tightly shut, wispy hair dark wet – the crumpled shoulders and then the rest of the tadpole body was lying on the bed. Dr Carr tied and cut the cord, picked up the baby by its ankles and slapped it gently on its slippery bloodstained back. The baby’s face screwed up as though in grief at leaving its watery element, and then its mouth opened and it expelled its first breath in a thin, wavering cry. ‘A beautiful boy,’ said Dr Carr. He was smiling. Sybil’s eyes were fixed upon his face with some mute appeal. He looked at her with tender kindness, almost as though they were lovers, and laid the baby in her arms. Rachel, watching Sybil’s face as she received this l
ittle bloodied creature – now crying fiercely – found herself in tears. The room was full of excitement and love.

  Then Dr Carr became briskly practical. Rachel was told to put warm water in a basin to bathe the baby while he attended to the afterbirth. Rachel tied a towel round her waist and gingerly took the baby from Sybil. She was terrified of hurting him. Dr Carr saw this and said brusquely, ‘He’s not made of glass, he won’t break,’ took the baby from her and laid him on his back in the basin. ‘You support his head and sponge him down. Like so,’ and went back to Sybil.

  The baby, who had stopped crying, lolled in the bath, his slaty eyes, now open, roving about the room, his fingers opening and closing into a fist, his knees turned out, his feet at right angles to his legs, a bubble of mucus coming out of one nostril. Dr Carr, who seemed to miss nothing, looked at him, then cleaned his nostrils with a twist of cotton wool. The baby frowned, arched his back so that all his tiny ribs showed, and cried again. His skin, the colour of the smallest pink shells, was as soft as a rose. He made slow random movements with an arm or a leg, and sometimes he seemed to look at Rachel, but his gaze was inscrutable. She sponged him carefully, even humbly: he looked at once so vulnerable and majestic.

  ‘You can take him out now and dry him, and then we’ll put him on the scales. Just over seven pounds, or I’m a Dutchman, but we need to be sure. There we go, Mrs Cazalet.’ The room was suddenly full of the smell of warm blood. It was a quarter to five.

  Hugh did not reach Home Place until twenty minutes after his son was born. He had had a puncture and had had trouble getting the tyre off the car. He arrived to find the Duchy feeding Rachel with ham sandwiches and tea. Mrs Pearson, the midwife, had arrived and Dr Carr, after a quick cup, was back with his patient for the delivery of the second baby – there were twins, after all – but he did not expect that to take long. Rachel came with him to fetch the baby clothes from the car.

  ‘I should like to see Sybil. Do you think it would be all right if I went up?’ he said as they walked back into the house.

  ‘Darling Hugh, I don’t know. What do you usually do?’

  ‘Well, Sybil doesn’t like me to until everything’s all shipshape, but it hasn’t been like this before.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got to take the clothes up, anyway. Your son is making do with a cashmere shawl.’

  ‘Is he fine?’

  ‘He’s wonderful!’ she said so fervently, that he looked at her with a little smile, and said, ‘I didn’t know that aunts could be so épris.’

  ‘Well, I was there, as a matter of fact. Mrs Pearson couldn’t come at once so I sort of helped.’

  ‘Did she have a bad time?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever exactly a picnic. She was marvellous, very brave and good. Dr Carr said that the second one would be quite quick, he thought,’ she added hurriedly, in case she had said too much of the other thing.

  ‘Oh, good, you’re a brick, Rach. I wonder if they’d let me see her – just for a second.’

  But when they got up to the room, Mrs Pearson came to the door, said something to Sybil, and then turned back to say that Mrs Cazalet sent her love but would rather see him later, and Hugh, sure that Mrs Pearson was needed by his wife, did not dare ask her to show him his son.

  Sybil, in the throes again of excruciating labour, longed for Hugh, but it was out of the question to submit him to even a brief sight of her like this. She was stuck, and the first baby had torn her, and in spite of Dr Carr’s assurances, she felt as though this would go on for ever, or until her strength gave out. In fact, it all went on for another hour and a half, at the end of which time it was clear that this baby was not coming out by the head – would be a breech. Dr Carr had to use forceps to hold the baby’s legs together and by then, Sybil was glad to have the chloroform, and so this time she did not see the bruised and battered little creature that came out with the cord round its neck and could not be got to breathe. They kept her under for the afterbirth, washed and stitched her and then Dr Carr sat by her until she was conscious enough to be told that the baby was dead. She asked to see it and was shown. She looked at the tiny limp white body, and then reached out and touched its head. ‘A girl. Hugh will be so sad.’ A tear slipped down her face: she was too exhausted to cry.

  There was a silence; then he said gently, ‘You have a beautiful son. Would you like your husband to come and see you both?’

  Half an hour later, Dr Carr climbed wearily into his old Ford. He had been called out the previous night, had taken morning surgery and done five calls before delivering Mrs Cazalet, and he was not as young as he used to be. In spite of forty years’ experience, the birth of a baby still moved him and he had a rapport with women in labour that he never felt about them at any other time. It was rotten luck that the second baby had been stillborn, but at least she had the other one. My God he had tried with that second baby, though – she would never know how much. He’d pressed and released that wee chest minutes after he’d known it was hopeless. Mrs Pearson had wanted to wrap it up, put it away out of sight, but he’d known the mother would want to see it. When he’d gone downstairs, they’d given him a fine drop of whisky, and he’d warned Mr Cazalet that his wife was very tired and not to stay with her long; all she needed was a nice cup of tea and a sleep, no emotional scenes, he had wanted to add, but looking at the father’s face, he thought there wouldn’t be any of that. He looked a decent, understanding man – not like some of them who became breezy and facetious and often drunk. Now he must get back to Margaret. In the old days, he used to come home full of tales about deliveries, excited, even exalted by having witnessed the same old miracle. But after they lost both their sons in the war, she couldn’t stand to hear about any of that and he kept it to himself. She had become a shadow, acquiescent, passive, full of humdrum little remarks about the house and the weather and how hard he was on his clothes, and then he’d bought her a puppy, and she talked endlessly about that. It had become a fat, spoiled dog, and still she talked about it as though it were a puppy. It was all he could think to do for her, as his grief had never been allowed to be on par with hers. He kept that to himself as well. But when he was alone in the car like this, and with a drop of whisky inside him, he thought about Ian and Donald who were never spoken of at home, who would, he felt, be entirely forgotten except for his own memory and their names on the village monument.

  ‘I did ask her, and she just said, never you mind.’ Louise looked across the glade resentfully at her mother who was smoking and laughing and talking with Uncle Rupert and someone called Margot Sidney. She and Polly and Clary had withdrawn from the main picnic – over in any case for some time now – in order to have a serious discussion about exactly how people had babies but they weren’t getting anywhere. Clary had pulled up her shirt, fingered her navel doubtfully and suggested that it might be the place, but Polly, secretly horrified, had immediately said that it wasn’t big enough. ‘Babies are quite large, you know, about like a medium doll.’

  ‘It’s got all sorts of wrinkles in it. It might stretch.’

  ‘It would be much better if they just laid eggs.’

  ‘People are too heavy for eggs. They’d break them sitting, and it would be scrambled baby all over the place.’

  ‘You’re revolting, Clary. No. I’m afraid it must be –’ she leant over Polly and mouthed, ‘between the legs.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘It’s the only place left.’

  ‘Who’s revolting now?’

  ‘It’s not me. I didn’t plan it. It’s common sense,’ she added loftily, trying to get used to the ghastly idea.

  ‘It’s certainly common,’ said Clary.

  ‘I think,’ Polly said dreamily, ‘that really all they have is a sort of pip, quite large compared to a grapefruit; and the doctor puts it in a basin of warm water and it sort of explodes – like a Japanese flower in those shells – into a baby.’

  ‘You’re an absolute idiot. Why do you think they get so fat if a
ll they have is a pip? Look at Aunt Syb. Can you honestly believe that all she has inside her is a pip?’

  ‘Also, it’s known to be dangerous,’ Clary said. She looked frightened.

  ‘It can’t be all that dangerous – look at all the people there are,’ Louise began, and then remembered Clary’s mother and said, ‘You might be right about the pip, Polly, I expect you are,’ and winked very largely at Polly to make her realise.

  Soon after that, Aunt Rachel came and found them and told them that Aunt Sybil had had a baby boy, and a little girl who had died, and was terribly tired so would they all go home quietly and not make a noise? Simon, who was up a tree at the time, said, ‘Good show,’ and went on hanging from a branch by his knees and asking people to look, but Polly rushed to Aunt Rachel and said she wanted to go and see her mother and the baby at once. Everybody was glad to be going home.

  Rachel and Sid slipped out at about six for a walk. They walked fast – almost furtively—round the drive to the gate into the wood in case any of the family saw them and suggested coming too. Once in the wood, they began to stroll along the narrow path through it that led to the fields beyond. Rachel was very tired; her back ached from leaning over Sybil’s bed, and the news of the stillborn baby had upset her very much. When they reached the stile into the meadow that slipped gently uphill before them, Sid proposed that they go only as far as the large single oak that stood by itself a few yards from the wood and sit for a bit, and Rachel gratefully agreed. Although, if I had suggested a five-mile walk, Sid thought, she would have agreed to that even though she is dead beat. The thought filled her with tender exasperation; Rachel’s unselfishness was formidable to her, and often made decisions a matter of strenuous perception.