‘How do you mean, “just right”? How do you know what Germans feel about Jews?’
‘I don’t. But I know what people here feel about them, and this is a democracy without a power maniac in control. Anti-Semitism is rife here. It takes the form of jokes, patronage and exclusion and making exceptions to the rule. “I don’t usually like Jews, but you are an exception.” That’s what prejudice is made of. Oh, yes, and then accusing us of persecution mania when we notice and are hurt. We are the ideal scapegoats.’ She noticed that she had begun to say ‘we’ and felt better for it. ‘The views of a mongrel,’ she finished, ‘often noted for their acumen rather than their appearance.’
Rachel looked at her without speaking. In the end it was Sid who looked away, whereupon Rachel said, ‘I do love you. So very much.’
Sid brushed her fingers across her face. ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘among much else, for not arguing – protesting.’
‘I can’t. What you said is true. I can’t.’
When they left the tea shop and were out in the street Rachel put her arms round Sid and held her for a long time. People looked at them curiously – one couple nearly bumped into them – but Rachel did not relinquish her hold.
The Brig’s wireless had been moved from his study to the drawing room in order that there should be room for those who were to hear the Prime Minister’s broadcast. Opinion was divided about who they should be: the Duchy thought it might not be suitable for the children; Lady Rydal expressed the view that it might not be suitable for the girls. Neither grandmother considered it necessary for the servants to be present, but Rachel and Sid fetched the set that was at Mill Farm and connected it up in the servants’ hall at Home Place. Tonbridge was deputed to operate it, and dinner was arranged to suit the time for the broadcast. The chairs from the service (which had gone very well, until Nora had suggested that everybody present should pledge to give something they cared for in return for peace) were left in place in order that everybody, or nearly everybody, should have a seat. The children, except for the four youngest and, of course, Simon, were eventually allowed and sat on the floor, having been told by their mothers that they must be absolutely quiet and not talk at all while Mr Chamberlain was speaking. Everybody was quiet. Rupert – as concerned as any of them, he thought, since he was the only person in the room likely to have to go off and fight – found himself, none the less, so fascinated by seeing them all so quiet and so still that he could not help going from face to face, and wishing that they would not think it flippant of him to draw the scene. But they would: art had a strictly regulated place in the Cazalet scheme of things.
He looked first at his mother: the Duchy sat absolutely straight with her eyes fixed upon the radio as though Mr Chamberlain was in the room and speaking to her personally. ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing.’ He looked at his sister who was reclining on the sofa with Sid sitting on the arm at her feet. They seemed not to be looking at each other, but Sid suddenly handed an ash tray to Rachel to stub out her cigarette. ‘I would not hesitate to pay even a third visit to Germany if I thought it would do any good.’ He looked at Polly and Clary, side by side on the floor, arms around their knees: Polly was frowning and biting her bottom lip; Clary, his own daughter, was watching her and as he looked, she rocked her knees so that they touched Polly’s. Polly looked up and a tiny smile flitted across Clary’s face inhabiting it with such encouragement and love that he was struck by her beauty, felt dazzled and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, she was just his usual Clary staring at the floor. He’d missed the last bit of the speech. ‘I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul. Armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me …’ Lady Rydal, her aquiline nose thrown into sharp relief by the lamp, lay cast upon the best armchair, her right elbow upon its arm, her Elizabethan hand, studded with large and rather dirty diamond rings, resting upon her pale cheek. She wore an expression of tragedy that most people would be unable to sustain, but while he watched it remained unchanged. Villy, sitting on an uncomfortable dining-room chair beside her, had by contrast’ simply a natural look of utter exhaustion. She was like her mother only in the sense that a really bad portrait is like its subject, he thought – ‘life for people who believe in liberty would not be worth having …’ (oh, so he does want war, does he?) ‘but war is a fearful thing and we must be very clear, before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake.’ He looked across the room; Angela was staring at him. When she met his eye, she started to blush. Lord, he thought I wonder if Zoë was right after all! Zoë was sitting on the window-sill behind Angela. He blew her a kiss and her look of anxiety softened to unexpected gratitude – an expression he had only ever seen on her face when he gave her a present. He reached his father just as the broadcast came to an end.
‘All children to kiss their grandfather goodnight,’ he said, ‘and tomorrow everybody can start digging an air-raid shelter – it clean slipped my memory, that, till that feller reminded me.’
Edward and Diana listened to the broadcast in a pub. He had met her at her flat where, after a brief sojourn, they drank the bottle of champagne he had brought with him. Then she wanted to collect some things to take down with her, so that by the time they were ready to leave they were in a quandary about dinner. Edward was for having it in London first, but she was anxious about her baby and also felt that somehow they must hear the broadcast. They decided to try and find an hotel that would give them dinner on the way, but by the time they got to Sevenoaks the only place that served dinner had served it and not even Edward’s charm could persuade them to serve any more. In the end, they found a pub outside Tonbridge whose landlord said they could let them have some ham sandwiches. The landlord provided them with a small private room off the saloon bar where there was a wireless. Somehow, the evening was not going well. Edward was feeling guilty at the way he had treated Villy and half his mind was bent upon the fact that he was going back to Mill Farm that night as a surprise. The impending broadcast also weighed on him, as he felt it might produce news of one kind or another. Diana, on the other hand, seemed distrait, and not entirely sensible of the trouble he was going to to see her. She was still put out that he had not been able to lunch with her and she was secretly worried that Angus would ring up from Scotland and feel it odd that she was not at home. She had invented a dentist to account for her trip to London, plus her need to get some winter clothes (the cottage was very damp and she felt cold there), but she was now going to be much later than these ploys allowed. She had not wanted to stop at all. ‘It’ll be in all the morning papers,’ she had said of the broadcast. ‘You must have something to eat,’ he had replied. It was odd: all through her pregnancy, which had started a few weeks after she had met him, he had been so incredibly kind, and generous and thoughtful. But this one evening, when she was feeling really het up about Jamie being without her for so long and having to lie to her sister-in-law, he was steadfastly determined to make her even later.
She toyed with her sandwich, refused a second, and drank her gin and tonic rather quickly. Then she realised that she was irritating him, and she didn’t at all want to do that so she asked for another drink. ‘That’s the ticket,’ he said, and went to fetch it at once. She repaired her lipstick and powdered her nose. When he returned with the drinks she asked him what he would do if there was a war, and he said that he’d join any service that would take him. ‘Then you would go away! I should never see you!’
But he said that she’d probably see more of him since he would not be living at home. ‘My movements won’t be known in the same way as they are now.’
I could go on being his mistress for years, she thought. That’s what happens in wars and he might easily find someone younger. ‘What I hate,’ she said, ‘is all the lying and hiding we have to do. I do so believe in frankness abo
ut everything.’
‘I know you do,’ he said fondly. ‘It’s one of the things I love about you.’ He took her hand and kissed it. She saw the ball bouncing back into her court, and all she could do was pick it up and put it in her pocket.
Then it was the broadcast. At the end of it, Edward put out his cigarette and said, ‘Well, I’m damned if I know any more than I did before. What did you think?’
‘It sounded to me as though he was just trying to break the worst to us gently.’
‘By Jove! I think you’re probably right. I suppose we’d better be going. Get you back to your offspring.’
They parted in the car, at the gate outside the cottage as she didn’t want her sister-in-law to see him. They kissed, each feeling that the other required it to be passionate, but passion eluded them. This did not worry Edward in the least – after all, she was jolly passionate in bed, which is what counted – but it worried her, and she lay awake half the night afraid that she was losing him.
‘So, Dad, you do see, don’t you, that I had to tell you?’
Rupert looked down at her as she squatted before the gushing, mossy little pipe. They were filling bottles with drinking water from the spring down the hill just before Mill Farm. Her arms were wet, she wore a torn cotton shirt and one sandshoe had a hole where her big toe was coming through. She never has any pretty clothes, he thought with a pang. ‘Yes, of course I see,’ he said.
‘I mean, I can understand now why people write plays about loyalty and disloyalty. Polly told me because I’m her best best friend, she was so worried, and, of course, she told me not to tell anyone, but I think the situation is so serious that we have to ignore that. Don’t we?’
‘I think we do.’ She handed him a full bottle and he gave her another empty one from the box.
‘So, could you talk to Christopher, do you think? I mean, he’s got a mother and she’d go bonkers if he went. Polly thinks absolutely bonkers.’
‘I’ll give the matter a great deal of thought and then I’ll decide.’
‘Do you think I have to tell Polly that I’ve told you?’
‘Not yet,’ he replied, seeing her anxious face and remembering last night during the broadcast.
‘I mean, if she asks me of course I’ll have to, but I am afraid of her anger and contempt. She is the most truthful person I know.’
‘So are you.’
‘Am I? Nothing like Polly, though. Don’t you think she is the most awfully pretty person you’ve ever met? Except for Zoë, I suppose.’
This touched him so much that he had to laugh. ‘So are you. I’m simply hemmed in by pretty people. Except I don’t think you’re pretty, Clary, I think you’re beautiful.’
‘Don’t be idiotic, Dad! Beautiful!’ He could see her savouring it. ‘That’s a loony idea!’ She was blushing to the roots of her hair. ‘Me beautiful?’ she said again trying to conceal her enchantment with scorn. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so silly in all my life!’
When the Brig had said that everybody was to start digging an air-raid shelter, he had meant it. He had chosen a site between the tennis court and the kitchen garden, organised pegs and ropes to mark out its dimensions, had ordered McAlpine to produce every digging utensil in his possession, and sent Clary and Polly to round up the others. Rupert, Sybil, Zoë and Sid also joined in. Only the Duchy, Rachel, to whom he wished to dictate letters (and whose back was in no condition for digging), and Evie, who said that she had a weak shoulder, were exempted. Evie had found a niche for herself in any case: she spent hours mending linen quite beautifully – far better than Zoë who seemed to have given up – with the great-aunts whom she regaled with largely fictitious accounts of her life. The aunts thought her a most interesting, artistic person, and everybody else was relieved to be free of her. It soon transpired, however, that only a limited number of people could dig at one time, so Rupert organised shifts. The two who were supposed to be having lessons with Miss Milliment were sent back to them. Billy was deputed to chop away the roots that were early encountered, but quite soon he chopped his hand so badly that he was sent to Rachel to have his wound washed and dressed – a long job since his skin was deeply ingrained with dirt (McAlpine was not interested in whether he ever washed or not, and he never did).
‘Cheeky monkey!’ was all McAlpine said when he saw Billy pouring with blood. He had dug for about an hour, accomplishing twice as much as the rest of them put together, and then said that he’d be off, he had work to do. He regarded the whole enterprise as a gentleman’s jape.
Villy and Jessica also escaped digging duty – in the morning, at least, as there was an enormous shop to do in Battle for both houses. It was agreed that Jessica should get Lady Rydal up, and that Villy would go and collect the list from Home Place. This suited Villy, who was feeling sick in the mornings – the drive to London yesterday had been awful – and still felt tired from the exhausting day. She had realised at the lunch with Teddy that Edward really had not heard her announcement on the telephone of the impending baby – it seemed almost unbelievable but he really hadn’t. Before that, she had had one of those mornings when she couldn’t do efficiently what she planned, because the house was in such a mess – well, not mess, exactly, but with a lot of things needing to be done. She changed the sheets on their unmade bed, collected fourteen dirty shirts from the laundry basket in Edward’s dressing room to take to Sussex to be washed. There was a letter from Edna saying she couldn’t come back as her mother was still poorly and didn’t like her to be so far away. Just as well, Villy thought. She would not have felt happy about leaving the poor girl alone in the house if there were going to be air raids. Or one air raid: it might not take more than one. She got Teddy to help her cart silver, all the school books and music into the hall. Then she had to change for the lunch to which she had gone full of resentment at the way in which (she thought) Edward had received her news. Then, discovering that he hadn’t received it made her feel frustrated and angry at having been so angry because, of course, she couldn’t tell him in front of Teddy, and because she couldn’t tell him that, she found it difficult to say anything else. But Teddy seemed to enjoy himself and neither of them noticed anything.
Leaving them at the club, she drove slowly up from Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner, but just as she reached the small dark green hut where cabmen were reputed to gamble wildly when they went there for cups of tea and meals, she suddenly decided that she would go to Hermione’s shop – just to see what she had got. After all, she might never get another chance and, due to the Situation, Hermione might even be having one of her tempting sales.
She wasn’t but she was delighted to see Villy. ‘What a treat!’ she exclaimed in her seductive, drawling voice that made quite a lot of things she said sound amusing. ‘Just back from the most boring lunch in the world with Reggie Davenport, looking forward to the most boring afternoon, and now you’re here! What can I do for you, my darling?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve just come to browse and be cheered up.’
‘You’ve come at the perfect time. I’ve got the most divine autumn clothes, and people don’t seem to be coming back to town as they usually do. Skulking in the country because of Mr Schicklgruber.’
‘Who?’
‘Hitler, darling. That’s what his real name is, and he used to be a house painter. I mean one can’t take him seriously, can one? He seems to me to be quite without charm.’ She snapped her fingers and at once Miss MacDonald emerged from some recess in the shop. ‘Look who we have here! What do you think would really tempt Mrs Cazalet?’
‘I can only buy one thing, Hermione.’
‘Of course, darling. You shall buy half a thing if you like.’
An hour and a half later, Villy emerged from the shop possessing the most nifty little black woollen dress, the collar and cuffs of which were embroidered in jet, with a huge belt and jet buckle, a tweed suit the colour of dark blue hyacinths – very classic and exquisitely cut – a very dark grey flanne
l coat trimmed with mock black astrakhan fur, ‘It looks like a tent off, darling, but it does hang rather sweetly – try it,’ and a long-sleeved crêpe dress, cowl-necked, that was the colour of blackberry fool, Villy had said, and was much applauded for the description. ‘We must remember that, Miss MacDonald, mustn’t we? So much better than plum.’ She got into her car full of elation and guilt. She had spent nearly sixty guineas, but she adored everything that she had bought, and drove back to Lansdowne Road feeling slightly intoxicated. It wasn’t until she got back that she realised the only garment she would be able to wear throughout the winter was the coat, which would continue to be concealing until the end. The idea that she had earlier entertained – of consulting Hermione about doctors – had simply never entered her head. Impossible, anyway, with Miss MacDonald there. And she could wear the other things after the baby. She hadn’t bought a thing for months. That part of the day had been a pure pleasure, of a frivolous kind. Edward would not mind, he was always generous about her buying clothes, although she did wish he noticed them more. She reflected with some pleasure that she would be able to show them to Jessica, something she could never have done before, as Jessica would now be able to afford herself some decent clothes. And I didn’t buy a single evening frock, she concluded, to add a touch of virtue to the proceedings.
But the rest of the day had been absolute hell. She had packed and packed and loaded the car herself since Teddy was late because Edward had left him in Leicester Square and he’d made a mess of changing trains. It began to rain heavily when they left, and Teddy told her every single thing that had happened to Paul Muni throughout the film which, apart from being very boring, rendered it incomprehensible. They did not get to Mill Farm until eight, and there had barely been time for dinner before the broadcast. After it she felt impelled to unpack the car and then just as she was going up to bed, Edward turned up out of the blue presenting himself as a wonderful surprise. The bloke he had had to see, have dinner with, turned out to live half-way between London and here, he said, so he thought she would like him to come on.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 45
