The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  ‘Give me ten minutes and then I’ll see Hoskins.’

  ‘Very good, Mr Edward.’

  God! I must be getting senile! Edward thought. Lunch with Teddy meant that he couldn’t go to the wharf afterwards, as Teddy would expect a matinée or a film, preferably followed by tea at Gunter’s. And he had meant to go to the wharf early and then, since it was the right side of London, slip down to Wadhurst to take Diana out to dinner. He’d managed to fob Villy off, although it had clearly not been popular, but now he’d got himself into a real mess. He pushed his chair back from the desk and rested his feet upon it, a position in which he always thought better. ‘At least I don’t play the fiddle,’ he said to himself, referring to an eccentric younger brother of the Brig’s who had asked to join the firm and then spent his time in his office doing just that. When the Brig had pointed out that this was not conducive to business, he replied that his wife had not liked him doing it at home. He had become a sort of remittance man, living up north somewhere. This had been his office, and alongside the large, dull photographs of men in white overalls standing proud but puny beside enormous logs, there was still a foggy photograph that Edward was secretly fond of, of Szigeti standing with his violin.

  Now, then. Supposing he took Teddy to the wharf? No good, he couldn’t catch a train from there. Supposing he went to the wharf the moment he’d seen Hoskins? Better. Must ring Diana first.

  That didn’t go well. She said she had managed to get someone to look after the baby all day and was coming to town and could they have lunch? Well, could he meet her at her flat later, but not too late as she had to get back? Eventually, it was agreed that he’d get there around six, they would have an early dinner, and he would drive her down. He could go on to Mill Farm for the night and that would please Villy. He rang for Miss Seafang, who ushered in Hoskins.

  When Mr York brought the milk up to the house that morning, he also brought a letter. He hadn’t written one since his mother had died – there’d been no call to – so, of course, when he got out his writing things, his pen nib was rusty and the ink in the bottle had dried to nothing. He’d had to lend some ink from Enid who was always writing – wrote one letter a week, a terrible expense in stamps since she had to send them through the post to Broadstairs; fifty-two pence a year that was, as he’d more than once told her. Then he had to think what he wanted to say, and it beat him how the paper got dirty while he was thinking, but it did. Several sheets, it took. In the end, he’d got the milk pencil, the one he used to count up the pints they used up at the house, and wrote it out in that first.

  Enid’s ink turned out to be women’s ink – violet-coloured – so he made the letter as businesslike as he could to make up for it.

  ‘Dear Sir,’ he wrote, avoiding the difficult and fancy name, ‘With respect to the land at back of cottages. I could sell one acre for sixty pounds. Sale of cottages as agreed. Total £560. Yours truly, Albert York.’

  He hadn’t put a date. It was near as nothing 27th, which he knew as Arthur was coming over to fetch the red calf that day, so he put that at the end of the letter on the bottom line of the paper. The envelopes had gummed themselves up. He had to use the kettle on one of them, and they didn’t fit the paper so he folded it up quite small and dainty and put it in. Then he had to think about addressing it, which there was no call for if he was taking it up himself, so he put Mr William on it. It was nearly ten when he’d finished. Still ten pound was ten pound whichever way you looked.

  He paid a visit to the privy, out at the back door and down a rank little bricked path. It smelled of hogweed and urine and Jeyes fluid, but at night there were no flies. When he came out he sniffed the air: the wind had shifted to the west and there would be rain. He’d best get Dick Cramp – one of Edie Cramp’s brothers – up to help get the last of the hay off the south field in case a storm broke. Then he turned out the big oil lamp in the kitchen and found his way to his bedroom in the dark. Working Dick cost less than losing the hay. Five hundred and sixty pound! He’d fooled the old man. He’d have let the cottages go for much less, but if he didn’t ask more for the land the old man might know he’d been fooled. He was a foreigner, after all, wasn’t born in these parts, fair game, but he wasn’t close with his money – he would say that for him.

  So next morning, he took the letter, tucked in his waistcoat pocket, up to the house, and handed it over to Mrs Cripps, who gave it to Eileen to put on Mr Cazalet’s plate at breakfast.

  Teddy sat bolt upright between his parents in the Visitors’ Dining Room at the club with a beautiful menu that had the Yacht Club burgee embossed at the top. There was an agonising choice of all three courses: potted shrimps or smoked salmon to start with (and boring old soup – he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting that), and then lamb cutlets, steak or game pie, and a choice of boring old vegetables, and then treacle sponge, blackberry and apple tart with cream, or an ice. In the end, he decided on potted shrimps and game pie because saying to other boys that the game pie at his father’s club was not half bad, sounded more worldly than saying the same thing about cutlets or steak. He needn’t mention treacle sponge which he simply loved – he could invent a pudding he had had (on the first night of term after lights out there was a prolonged discussion of the food consumed in the holidays ending invariably with ribald comment on the fare to come). It was a lovely lunch. For once his parents took more notice of him and didn’t have long, boring conversations about things he couldn’t possibly be interested in, although he wouldn’t have minded because the food was so good. The potted shrimps came encrusted in yellow butter with thin triangles of toast under a white napkin on a plate just for him. The game pie was a slice like a cake: crisp, shiny brown pastry on the outside, then about half an inch of white not-very-cooked pastry – absolutely delicious – then a layer of stiff pale brown jelly, and then wedges of pink gamy meat, very juicy and tasting as though it was nearly too old but not quite. He had two glasses of cider as well. The conversation, as usual with grown-ups, mostly consisted of them asking rather pointless questions. ‘And what did you do with yourself all morning?’ his father was now saying.

  ‘Helped Mum cart things into the car. If a bomb drops actually on our house, would it be flattened?’

  ‘I should think it might be, if it was a direct hit.’

  ‘I got my collection of cigarette cards just in case,’ he said. ‘But, I say, it’s jolly exciting, isn’t it? Mum and I saw them building air-raid shelters, and they were digging trenches in Hyde Park. They don’t expect the war to be fought in the Park, do they? If you could join up, if you weren’t so old, what service would you go into? I’d go into the Air Force. There’s a wizard new aeroplane called a Spitfire that can go at two hundred miles an hour—’ He stopped. ‘It might have been four hundred – anyway, it’s the fastest plane in the world. Would you join the Air Force, Dad, if you weren’t too old?’

  ‘I’d join the Navy. I’m not too old for that, old boy.’

  ‘And I suppose Mum could be a nurse,’ he said, anxious to include her (she’d been jolly decent not making a fuss about the socks).

  ‘I might join the Wrens,’ said Villy.

  ‘What’s that? Oh, thanks.’ A waitress had brought him some more cream.

  ‘It’s the women’s navy.’

  ‘Oh. I think it would be better if you were a nurse,’ he added kindly. ‘I don’t think women should go on ships, Dad, do you? I mean skirts in submarines would be idiotic—’ He spread his hands out and knocked over his cider glass. ‘Sorry!’

  ‘That’s all right.’ A waitress came to mop up the cider, and seeing that Teddy was rather dashed, Edward went on, ‘As a matter of fact, a bloke who works for us came in this morning to tell me he’d joined the Air Force. A very useful bloke – we shall miss him.’

  ‘Still, it’s what people ought to do, isn’t it? Dad, if there is a war, do you think it will last long enough for me to fight in it?’

  ‘Not a chance,’ Edward said at once,
and met Villy’s eye.

  ‘Can we have our coffee next door?’ she asked. ‘I’d rather like to smoke.’

  ‘It’s after two o’clock, you can here if you like. Or we’ll go next door. Have you finished, Teddy?’

  ‘It looks as though I have.’ But as this did not procure a second helping of treacle sponge, he got up when they did and followed them back into the room where they had had drinks before lunch. As they walked through, a very old man with a purple face and white hair called to Edward, ‘I see we’re getting a broadcast from Chamberlain tonight. Put us in the picture – and high time, too. That your boy?’

  Teddy was introduced and called him sir as he was so awfully old.

  ‘And your lady wife. How do you do, my dear? Let me offer you some port. I owe that husband of yours some port – he trounced me at billiards last week.’

  Mum didn’t want port, but Dad had some and let him taste it. ‘I had port,’ he’d be able to say. ‘It wasn’t bad at all.’

  They had rather grey coffee in little cups with yellow roses on them, and he began to want to go to the film, but suddenly Mum and Dad did start one of those talks that were all about plans that they didn’t seem to agree about. It transpired that Mum couldn’t go to Scarface after all, as she said she had a lot of things to do, and Dad had to work immediately it finished, so then they went on and on and on about how he was going to get back to Sussex. He could easily catch a train by himself but Mum said that if Dad drove him home, she could load the car up with a whole lot more things she wanted to take down to Sussex. Dad didn’t seem to want to do that and in the end it was decided that he should take the Underground from Oxford Circus or somewhere like that to Holland Park and be with Mum by six o’clock, which meant there would hardly be time for tea. He pointed this out and all she said was, ‘But you’ve just had the most enormous lunch!’ as if that had anything to do with it. He left them at it while he went to the lavatory, and when he came back they weren’t talking about anything else. When she went, Mum gave that cheery smile that didn’t feel like a smile at all, and said, ‘Have a good time,’ and kissed him, which he’d been trying to train her for years not to do in front of strangers – there were several other lots of people in the room. When she had gone, he rubbed the place where there might have been lipstick, and Dad said, ‘Right! I’m just going to do what nobody else can do for me, and I’ll be with you,’ and things felt much easier again.

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s Sunday or not. We must go on praying.’

  ‘But couldn’t we just do it in our own room?’

  Nora shook her head. ‘I think it would count more if we had a service. Also, I think we should be as many as possible.’

  ‘Neville and Lydia and Judy will be having lessons.’

  ‘Yes, that can’t be helped. But Polly would come. And Clary, and Christopher. And Teddy, I suppose.’

  ‘He’s in London.’

  ‘Oh, so he is. Well, the maids.’

  ‘The maids?’

  ‘Everyone is the same in the sight of God,’ Nora said severely.

  ‘That must make things terribly boring for him.’

  ‘Louise, if you are going to be flippant about something as serious as this, I shall never speak to you again!’

  ‘I won’t be. I have a great many sides to my nature – it goes with being a serious actress – and you can’t expect them all to be acceptable.’

  ‘If we had the service after tea, then the children could come. And Miss Milliment.’

  ‘You’ll be asking the grandmothers next. And Bully and Cracks.’ These were the private names for the great-aunts based upon their appearance – Dolly a bloodhound and Flo nutcrackers respectively.

  ‘Why not? I think everybody should be given the chance. Also, the Duchy might let us have the drawing room, and then we could use the piano for hymns.’

  They spent the whole afternoon arranging things, roping in Polly and Clary to help. The Duchy said that of course they could have the drawing room, but they would have to collect chairs from the dining room and put them back afterwards. Polly wrote beautiful cards to invite people and Clary delivered them. ‘Does everybody include Mr Wren?’ she asked rather fearfully. There were stories about Mr Wren going bright red in the face and shouting if disturbed in the afternoon when he usually had a rest in the hayloft. ‘Leave it on top of the oats bin. He’s bound to see that,’ Louise advised.

  ‘But I do not believe in God,’ Evie said when Clary found her in the hammock.

  ‘Oh, well. I don’t think everybody who is coming does, but you believe in peace, don’t you?’ And as Evie looked uncertain of this, she added, ‘Anyway, you don’t like Hitler, do you? And he’s the person who wants there to be a war.’

  ‘No, I certainly don’t like Hitler. All right, you win. I will come.’

  Mrs Cripps said, well she never, and she couldn’t leave her kitchen but thank you all the same, Clary reported. Aunt Jessica said she would bring Grania up in the car. Dad was giving Zoë a driving lesson but when she stopped in the drive he said yes, of course, they’d both come. Aunt Sybil said she’d love to, but she might have to bring William. The only people they couldn’t find were Aunt Rachel and Sid, who had gone to St Leonards to the swimming-bath – a bit mean, Clary thought, not even asking a single child whether they wanted to go, which, of course, they would have – and Christopher, whom nobody had seen all day. McAlpine, who was planting leeks, stopped planting them to take his card which he looked at for some time with no expression, so Clary told him what it said, and he shook his head and handed it back to her, but he was smiling, so he didn’t mind being asked. On the whole, the idea seemed to be a success.

  It rained a lot in the afternoon, which was awful for Christopher but good for the leeks. It spoiled the swim that the man in Tunbridge Wells had told Rachel would be good for her back, but it enabled Sid to spend a whole afternoon alone with her with no danger of Evie suddenly appearing. Sid drove Rupert’s car and, with Rachel beside her, she could have driven to Land’s End, as she said. ‘You are so good at it,’ Rachel said. ‘I do wish you’d let me give you a car,’ but she knew that Sid would not. ‘I’ll pick one up one day,’ she would say, her pride making her sound as though she could have done so already but had simply not had the time. I should have just given it to her – not talked about it, Rachel thought again, watching Sid’s earnest profile: the high, rather bulging forehead, her fine, beaky nose (like a Red Indian, Sid had said when Rachel had first remarked upon it), the wide, narrow, well-delineated mouth, and her throat erect above her collar and tie. Sid drove carefully, trying not to jolt. There was a large open-air pool in St Leonards; Rachel did not want to stumble over cruel pebbles at Cooden. However, as they drove, the sky darkened from a cool soft grey to indigo and it suddenly poured. So in the end they went to The Private Life of Henry VIII and had tea in a tea shop – a lovely afternoon, Rachel had said, although she didn’t think much of the film, except for Merle Oberon as Anne Boleyn at the beginning, but Sid thought that Charles Laughton was pretty good.

  ‘Doesn’t it feel very odd to you? Every day we seem to be creeping, slipping into this ghastly nightmare, but we all go on as though nothing much is happening?’ She took the cigarette offered her and leant towards her for a light. ‘I mean a tea shop! Here we sit with toast and Banbury cakes …’

  ‘Well, darling, what else can we do? It isn’t as though we any of us have the slightest power to do anything else.’

  ‘Do you mean we’ve never had it? Or that we had some, and simply elected the wrong people?’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve particularly elected the wrong people. I think the general climate is bad: opinion, ignorance, prejudice, complacency …’

  ‘Us, or the Germans, or both?’

  ‘Oh, the Germans are in a different position. Things have been bad enough for them to want change at any price.’

  ‘You think they want a war?’

  ‘I think they expe
ct it. I don’t think people leave their country and everything they have for nothing.’

  ‘What people?’ said Rachel, startled.

  ‘The Jews,’ Sid said, watching her intently for the faintest sign of dismissal or contempt and willing there to be none.

  ‘But they aren’t, are they? I’ve never heard that!’

  ‘They’ve been leaving since 1936 to come here, or to go to America.’

  ‘Just because you happen to know one or two—’

  ‘Oh, I agree, it’s a very small number in comparison to how many are left. But it’s a sign. If I had to worry about whether the balloon was going up, that’s the factor I should have taken most notice of.’

  ‘But, Sid darling, that’s because you—’ she searched for the best way of saying it, ‘because you—’

  ‘Because I’m half Jewish?’ Sid finished. ‘You’re probably right. It may not be my pure intelligence, it may simply be fear.’

  ‘Now I’ve lost you.’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind.’ She suddenly wished she had never started this; it felt a nervous, risky conversation that she might turn out not to be able to afford with this person she loved so much.

  But Rachel leant forward, and took her hand. ‘Sid! I don’t understand, but I’m listening. I want to know what you – feel.’

  Right, Sid thought, here goes. She took a deep breath.

  ‘The Germans had just as bad a war as we did. But after it they were weakened, humiliated, prevented from being able to defend themselves and endured an economy which resulted in hysterical inflation. Then along comes somebody who says he can give them back their national pride and sense of identity. He’s a leader, a power maniac as most leaders are, and he sets about constructing an autocracy. He rearms them, sets them to work; everything swings his way and his notions of what can be done enlarge. He is no longer just an inspired leader, he acquires absolute power, and the only way he can keep that is to make conquests, to bring home the bacon – Sudetenland, Austria. But another thing that tyrants usually need to keep their subjects united for them, is something for them to be against. And there’s always a convenient minority contained within the general population, defined by their race or their creed: Slavs, Catholics, you know what I mean. This time, I think it is the Jews – two birds with one stone you might say. The climate is just right for that.’