‘Well, let me in and wake her up. In that order,’ he added.
‘OK.’ The voice sounded resigned now. While he waited, he looked at his watch as though he didn’t know the time. Well, he didn’t, exactly, but it was well after twelve. In bed at noon? Good God!
The girl who opened the door to him was young with straight brown hair and small brown eyes. ‘It’s quite a long way up,’ she said as soon as she perceived his limp.
He followed her up two flights of stairs that were covered with worn linoleum and smelled faintly of cats, and finally into a room that contained, among much else, an unmade bed, a tray on the floor in front of the gas fire that held the remnants of a meal, a small sink with a dripping tap, a sea-green carpet covered with stains and a small sagging armchair in which crouched a large marmalade cat. ‘Get off, Orlando. Do sit down,’ she added. The gas fire, filled with broken and blackened elements, was roaring. ‘I was making toast,’ the girl said. She looked at him doubtfully, not supposing that he would want any. ‘It’s all right. I’ve woken her. We went to a party last night and were jolly late, only I got up early because we hadn’t any milk, and, anyway, I was starving.’
There was quite a long silence.
‘Do go on with your meal,’ he said.
At once she began hacking at the sloping loaf of bread. Then, without looking up, she said, ‘You really are her father, aren’t you? I recognise you now. Sorry,’ she added. For what? he wondered. For the incredulous laugh? For Angela, having this old crock of a father who turned up without warning?
‘Do a lot of mock fathers come flocking to the door?’
‘Not exactly flocking—’ she began, but was interrupted by Angela, miraculously – it seemed to him – made up and with her hair elaborately done. She wore a dressing gown and her feet were bare.
‘I’ve come to take you out to lunch,’ he said, trying to sound assured and festive about it.
She allowed him to kiss her, then, looking at the room with a certain distaste, said she would just get dressed and they could go.
In the street, he said, ‘Where shall we go?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t want any lunch. Anywhere you like.’
In the end they walked down Percy Street and along Tottenham Court Road to Lyons Corner House, where he worked his way through a plate of roast lamb, potatoes and carrots, while she sipped coffee.
‘Sure you couldn’t fall for a Knickerbocker Glory?’ he asked. When she had been goodness knew how much younger, these fearful concoctions had been her greatest treat. But she simply looked at him as though he was mad, and said no thank you. After that, he chatted feverishly, telling her about collecting her grandmother and Miss Milliment, and it was when her face cleared at the mention of this last name, that he realised how angry she had been throughout the meal. ‘I did like Miss Milliment,’ she said, and some indefinable expression crossed her face and was gone almost before he saw it. It was then that he apologised for turning up without warning.
‘Why did you come, anyway?’ she said. It was some sort of faint acknowledgement of the apology, and he launched into it having been on the spur of the moment, and thence to his wanting to get her out of London. Now they were about to go, and the whole meeting had been a wash-out. When they reached his car, parked outside her house, he said, ‘Well, perhaps you’d ring Mummy up, would you? She’s at the new house. Watlington three four.’
‘We’re not on the phone, but I’ll try. Thanks for the coffee.’ She presented him with her cheek, turned and ran up the steps to her house, turning in the doorway only, he felt, to be sure that he was really going to get into his car and leave. Which he did.
During the rest of that arduous day – which he mismanaged in a number of stupid ways: fetching his mother-in-law before Miss Milliment was the first, Lady Rydal seemed to feel that even being driven in a motor car to Stoke Newington was some kind of insult, and getting Miss Milliment, whose luggage was singularly difficult to pack into the car with Lady Rydal’s (he had to fix up the roof rack which took ages), and then running out of petrol before he even got through the Blackwall Tunnel, and then getting a puncture on the hill just before Sevenoaks (not his fault this, but regarded by Lady Rydal who was an authority on them, as the last straw) – during all this awful, cumbersome day, he ruminated on the miserable encounter with his eldest daughter. In her behaviour to him he saw a reflection of himself that he could neither bear nor discountenance: a middle-aged man, irascible and disappointed, good for nothing that interested him, bullying people in order to infect them with his discomfort – particularly, he knew, his own children. Jessica he did not bully; he lost his temper with her, but he did not bully. He loved her – adored her. He was always contrite on those occasions, would spend the ensuing hours, or even days, paying her small, devoted attentions, castigating himself to her about his wretched temperament and luck, and she, bless her angelic heart, would always forgive him. Always … How like these occasions were to one another now struck him; there had become something ritual about them. If either had forgotten the next line the other could have prompted. And had he not noticed, in the last year or so, that there was something mechanical about her responses to him? Did she really care? Had he, perhaps, become something of a bore? All his life he had been afraid of not being liked: he hadn’t been brainy enough for his father, and his mother had only adored Robert, his older brother, killed in the war. But when he had met Jessica, fallen instantly and wildly in love with her, and she had returned his love, he had not cared at all about whether other people liked him or not: he had been entirely fulfilled and overwhelmed by this beautiful, desirable creature’s love. Dozens of people would have wanted to marry Jessica, but she had become his. How full of dreams and ardour to succeed for her sake he had been then! What schemes he had had to make money, to give her a life of luxury and romantic ease! There was nothing he would not have done for her but, somehow, nothing had worked out as he had planned. The guest house, the chicken farm, growing mushrooms, a crammer for dull little boys, the kennels venture: each plan had become smaller and wilder as it succeeded the previous failure. He was no good at business – simply hadn’t been brought up to it – and, he had to admit, he was not very good with people, with anyone, excepting Jessica. When the children had come along he had been jealous of them for the time they took away from him. When Angela was born, only a year after he was invalided out of the army, Jessica seemed unable to think of anything else; she had been a difficult baby, never sleeping for more than an hour or two at a stretch throughout, which meant that neither of them got a proper night’s sleep, and then when Nora arrived, Angela resented her so much that Jessica could not leave them alone together for a minute, and of course they’d never been able to afford a nurse, or more than a bit of daily help. When Christopher was born, he thought, at least he had a son, but he’d turned out the worst of the lot – always something wrong with him, bad eyesight, a weak stomach and he’d nearly died of a mastoid when he was five, and Jessica had spoiled him so he’d become more namby-pamby than ever, afraid of everything – and nothing he did made any difference. He remembered how he’d staged a fireworks show for them when they were small, and Christopher had howled because he didn’t like the bangs, and how he’d taken them to the zoo and for a ride on an elephant, and Christopher had refused to get on the animal, made a frightful scene – in public. Jessica kept saying he was sensitive, but he was simply a milksop, which brought out the worst in Raymond. Somewhere, in the depths, he knew that he had bullied Christopher, and hated them both for it. The boy asked for it: his shaking hands, his clumsiness, his white-faced silences when gibed at provoked Raymond to irresistible fury that he could only temper to irritation. When his father had got at him, for hot being brainy, he’d just gone off and done something else – damn well. He’d got his blue for rugger and for rowing; he’d been a first-class shot, the best diver in his school, so there had been plenty of things for his pater to be proud of if he’d cared to
. He never had, of course, had simply continued to make him feel a fool about not knowing things he hadn’t cared about. The army had been a wonderful way out for him. He’d done jolly well, had become a captain by the outbreak of the war, then become a major, got decorated, married Jessica and had a heavenly fortnight’s leave in Cornwall with her – and then Ypres, the third battle, which was when he lost his leg. That had felt like the end of the world, it had certainly been the end of his career. He’d fought endless battles about not being sorry for himself and, on the whole, he thought he had won, although he supposed it had made him harder on other people – all those fortunate chaps with two legs who could do what they liked; he had never felt that any of them had the slightest notion what it was like to be him. They hadn’t meant to have Judy at all: he’d had to take a job in the school to bring down the school fees, schoolmasters got very reduced rates, and it had helped with Christopher, at least. Aunt Lena had helped a bit with the girls from time to time; the only trouble about that had been that she never told him in advance what she was going to do, so he and Jessica never knew where they were. At least now, with Aunt Lena dead, they’d got some money and a far nicer house, but it was a bit late in the day to make the difference it would once have made. His children who, when younger he realised now, had been afraid of him, were becoming indifferent.
They did not behave in the same way about this: Angela snubbed him, made it clear that he bored her; Christopher avoided him whenever possible and was studiously polite when he could not; Nora and Judy both had special voices for talking to him, bright accommodating voices – he suspected Judy of copying Nora, and both of them of imitating Jessica, who employed a kind of determined serenity whenever he became at all touchy. The effect was to make him feel isolated from the family life that they had with each other, and which he seemed excluded from sharing. By now he had changed the tyre and wedged the punctured one into the overcrowded boot and got back into the car with its silent occupants. Miss Milliment smiled at him and murmured something about being sorry not to have been of any use, and Lady Rydal, to whom the idea of being of use to anyone had never occurred in her life, said crushingly, ‘Really, Miss Milliment! I do not think that mending the puncture of a car can be said to be part of a governess’s repertory.’ After a pause, she added, ‘A puncture is nothing to what we must expect to put up with.’ All the remaining journey he wished, with savage hopelessness, that he was on his own, driving to Aunt Lena’s house in Frensham, where Jessica (and no one else) would be waiting with tea for him on the lawn, instead of chauffeuring the old trout and a governess back to the Cazalet Holiday Camp.
By four o’clock on Saturday afternoon, Sybil and Villy had to stop their blackout activities as they had run out of material. Sybil said she was dying for a cup of tea, and Villy said she would brave the kitchen to make some.
‘Brave was the right word,’ she said some minutes later as she brought a tray out onto the lawn where Sybil had put two deck chairs for them. ‘Louise and Nora are cooking a vast supper for the nurses and Emily is simply sitting in her basket chair pretending they aren’t there. They’re really very courageous; I don’t think I could stand it. I’ve already told her it was an emergency, but she simply looks at me as though I make it up.’
‘Do you think she’ll give notice?’
Villy shrugged. ‘Quite possible. She’s done it before. But she adores Edward so she’s always changed her mind. But, of course, Edward won’t be here, and I doubt if a combination of the country and cooking for a whole lot of women and children will have much lasting appeal.’
‘Edward really will go?’
‘If he possibly can. That is to say if they’ll take him. They won’t take Hugh,’ she added as she saw her sister-in-law’s face. ‘I’m sure they will say he’s needed to run the firm.’
‘He says he will be living in London, though,’ Sybil said. ‘I’ve told him I won’t let him live in that house alone. I should go mad worrying about him.’
‘But you couldn’t have Wills in London!’
‘I know. But Ellen could look after Wills and Roland, couldn’t she? And you’ll be here, won’t you? Because of Roland?’ The idea that anyone could leave a six months’ baby seemed out of the question to her.
Villy lit a cigarette. ‘I honestly haven’t thought,’ she said. Which was not true. She had thought, constantly, during the last weeks, that if only she hadn’t saddled herself with a baby, she could now do all kinds of useful – and interesting – things. She loved him, of course she loved him, but he was perfectly happy with Ellen who was delighted to have babies to look after, instead of Neville and Lydia who were becoming too much for her in some ways and nothing like enough in others. To spend the war being a grass widow and ordering a household seemed both dreary and absurd to her. With all her Red Cross experience, she could easily nurse, or train VADs, or run a convalescent home or work in a canteen … It would be far better if Sybil held the domestic fort: she had no ambitions beyond looking after her husband and her children. Villy looked across the tea table at Sybil, who sat, with the blue socks she was knitting on her lap, twisting a small white handkerchief in her fingers.
‘I can’t leave Hugh in London by himself,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t like clubs and parties like Edward, and he can’t manage in the house on his own, but when I try to talk to him about it, he just gets shirty and says I think he’s useless.’ Her rather faded blue eyes met Villy’s and then looked away as they filled with tears. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’m about to make a fool of myself.’ She stabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief, blew her nose, and drank some tea. ‘It’s all so beastly! We’ve almost never had a row about anything. He almost accused me of not minding enough about Wills!’ She shook her head violently to negate such an idea, and her untidy hair started to fall down.
‘Darling, I’m sure there will be a solution. Let’s wait and see what happens.’
‘There’s not much else we can do, is there?’ She picked some hairpins from her lap and out of her head and began twisting the tail of her hair into a bun.
‘What makes it worse,’ she said, through a mouthful of hairpins, ‘is that I can perfectly well see that it’s a trivial problem compared to what most people are going to have to endure.’
‘Thinking of people worse off than oneself only makes one feel worse,’ Villy said: she was familiar with this situation. ‘I mean, you simply feel bad about feeling bad, which doesn’t help at all.’
Louise came out of the house with a plate on which were two steaming Bath buns.
‘I thought you might like to try my buns,’ she said. ‘The first batch has just come out of the oven.’
‘I won’t thank you, darling,’ Villy said at once. Since Roland, she had put on weight.
‘I’d love one,’ Sybil said: she had seen Louise’s face when her mother refused. She should have taken one, she thought.
She shouldn’t eat buns, Villy thought. Sybil had also put on weight after Wills, but she did not seem to mind – just laughed when she couldn’t get into her frocks and bought larger ones.
‘Goodness! How delicious! Just like the shop ones, but better.’
‘You can have them both if you like. I’m making masses for the nurses. Emily wouldn’t have one either,’ she added, putting her mother firmly into Emily’s category which she hoped would annoy her. ‘She can’t bear me being able to make them. She’s being horrible to Nora about her shepherd’s pies, but Nora has the back of a duck. I wish I did. She doesn’t notice people being horrible to her at all.’
‘You will clear up properly, won’t you?’
‘We’ve said we would.’ Louise answered with the exaggerated patience that she hoped was withering and went back into the house, her long, glossy hair bouncing against her thin shoulders.
‘She has shot up in the last year, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes, she’s outgrown practically everything. I’m afraid she’s going to be too tall. She’s dreadfully clums
y. Apparently she broke the record for smashing crockery at the domestic-science place.’
‘That’s part of shooting up so fast, isn’t it? They aren’t used to the size they have suddenly become. It’s different for you, Villy, you’ve always been so small – and neat. Simon is just the same: accident prone.’
‘Oh, well, boys! One expects them to knock things about. Even Teddy breaks things a bit. But Louise is simply careless. She’s always been difficult with me, but she’s even rude to Edward now. It was quite a relief to get her away to school, although whether that place will be much use to her, I don’t know.’
‘Well, the Bath buns are a triumph.’
‘Yes, darling, but when have you ever been expected to make Bath buns? At least they teach them how to interview a servant, but things like goffering a surplice – I mean, really! When could that be said to be a useful accomplishment?’
‘Invaluable if you married a clergyman.’
‘I feel that Nora is the most likely to do that.’
‘She would be wonderful, wouldn’t she? Kind and good and so sensible.’ They could at least be in agreement about all other virtues being accorded to plain girls.
‘But Louise would be far too selfish,’ Villy finished. ‘Where do you think those children can have got to? I told them to be back for tea.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Lydia and Neville. They seem to spend all their time at Home Place: they’re hardly here at all.’
‘Well, they were furious at being put here with the babies—’ Sybil began, but Villy interrupted, ‘Yes, I know. But I didn’t want there to be room for Zoë and Rupert because I thought being with our babies would be so hard on Zoë.’
‘You’re quite right. Poor little Zoë. I must say having the Babies’ Hotel evacuated onto us isn’t exactly going to help though, is it?’
‘No. But perhaps she’s—’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I don’t know. But Edward told Rupert that the best thing would be to get on with having another one, and Rupert seemed to agree, so it’s possible.’
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 54
