The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Everyone was summoned to hear the King broadcast at six o’clock, and remained motionless and silent listening to his strained and halting speech as he battled with his stammer. ‘Poor King!’ Lydia said. ‘To have to speak when you hardly can!’ And Louise said how lucky it was that he hadn’t wanted to be an actor, because that would have been a tragedy; he would just have to walk on in plays carrying a spear. Then there was someone called J.B. Priestley who read from something he’d written, and just as there was wonderful Sandy Macpherson on the cinema organ, the maids were told to get on with laying dinner which they felt was very bad luck, and the children were told to go off and have their baths, whereas the grown-ups, who didn’t have to do anything, switched off the wireless and didn’t even listen to him.

  ‘They won’t let us listen to what they don’t even want,’ Clary complained. She had once seen Sandy Macpherson coming up out of a pit playing his organ in a large cinema in London and had been looking forward to boasting about it. ‘And we have to listen to them playing for hours. Sometimes,’ she added, as she recognised that this was not quite true.

  ‘Anyway, France has come into the war,’ Teddy remarked cheerfully. ‘Oh – sorry, Christopher, but you know what I mean. It makes it all more friendly.’ They were watching Christopher, who was kneeling on the floor wrapping small pieces of liver round bits of rabbit fur. The owl, a tawny, sat on the top of the wardrobe watching him. Christopher had found him as a baby on Hampstead Heath: he had a broken leg and had been in a poor way. Christopher had put the leg into splints and nursed him back to health and now he was very tame. Simon longed for one, but he knew that he wouldn’t be allowed to keep it at his school. The owl suddenly flew down and landed on Christopher’s shoulder with a papery thud. Christopher held up a piece of food on the palm of his hand, the owl took it and flew back with it to the wardrobe: its expression of inscrutable outrage did not change.

  ‘Do you ever let him out?’ Teddy asked.

  ‘I tried once, but he just flew into a tree and stayed there all day. And in the evening, when I brought him his food, he flew down and came back into the house with me.’ He did not add that he had only done that once, as a token towards the owl’s freedom; secretly he wanted him to stay for ever. But now, he’d been boarding at his school ever since they moved to Frensham, and his school might be evacuated into another school, and he knew that this might make keeping an owl difficult, although somehow he’d have to manage it. The owl flew down for another piece: this time he nearly lost his balance, and dug his talons in to get a firmer hold on Christopher’s shoulder. Christopher had permanent claw marks, Simon had noticed, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  The first evening of the war was spent like so many other evenings: the succession of bedtimes mechanically contested by each child as a matter of pride. ‘Any minute now we’ll be going to bed before Wills and Roland,’ Lydia grumbled, ‘and Wills is only two, and Roland is nought.’

  ‘Yes,’ Judy said, ‘and at Berkeley Court Monica and I didn’t have our baths until after supper which made it about nine o’clock.’

  She had been fetched by her father that afternoon from staying with a school friend, and had been insufferable, the other two thought, about how grand and wonderful it had been. They’d already heard about how Monica had two ponies, and there were éclairs for tea, and a fridge that made ice and a swimming pool, and a lake with a rowing boat, and Monica had had her hair permed and possessed a necklace of real pearls.

  ‘Swank, swank, swank,’ Neville muttered. He was sitting on the floor of the room they shared seeing whether he could have sucked out the thorn from his foot himself. He could.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ Judy cried.

  ‘Just biting my toenails. To make a change.’

  ‘How repellent! Lydia, don’t you think that is simply repellent?’

  ‘They’re Neville’s feet – he can do what he likes with them,’ Lydia said loftily. She did privately think it both clever and disgusting of Neville, but they were now united in their dislike of and boredom with Judy’s treat.

  ‘Monica had her very own bathroom,’ Judy went on, as Ellen appeared to say their bath was ready and hurry up.

  ‘Yes, and I suppose she had her very own head and nose and teeth—’

  ‘And bottom,’ Lydia finished and Neville burst into hoots of laughter.

  At Home Place, the older children had supper in the hall, as they were too old to have milk and biscuits upstairs, and the grown-ups wanted the dining room to themselves, so there was a sense of grievance that no two of them were to have the usual privilege. They were eating mince and mashed potato and runner beans and the sky in the domes above them turned from violet to indigo segmented like a melon by the struts between the glass which, Clary noticed, were dark when the sky was light and seemed pale when the dusky dark began. Upstairs they could hear baths running, doors being opened and shut, general sounds of the grown-ups getting ready for their dinner. Bessie, the Brig’s large black Labrador, lay at Christopher’s feet, her brandy-snap eyes fixed on his face with a terrible greed that she thought she concealed by sentiment. He stroked but did not feed her. A year ago, he thought, he had his camp in the woods, a dream of adventure and escape. It now seemed impracticable, and therefore childish to him, but there also seemed nothing to take its place. The reality of being a pacifist had been brought home at school to him during this last year: the teasing, the downright bullying contempt in which he was held by almost everyone.

  Only Mr Milner seemed to understand. Mr Milner was the classics master, and Christopher, who had started by not liking Greek very much, had found he was liking it because he liked Mr Milner, and the way in which he talked about what he thought, so much. Christopher was always drawing things, mostly birds and sometimes animals, and he often did it in his exercise books that were meant for homework. When Mr Milner came upon a portrait of Tawny, with some sketches of simply his talons, or an unfurled wing, he hadn’t been sarcastic or condemning about it, had just exclaimed, ‘I say, that’s awfully good, you know, really awfully good! Do you do much of that sort of thing?’ And when Christopher had mumbled, quite a bit, he’d said, ‘Absolutely right. If you want to be an artist of any kind the great thing is to practise all the time – that’s what being a practising artist means. I’ve never been able to abide those slim volumes, that single cello concerto. However good they are, one knows perfectly well that if the chap had done more he’d be better.’ And then, just before the summer holidays and after the exams, he’d suddenly given him a block of the most beautiful paper, very thick and white with a lovely feel to it. ‘I just happened to have it,’ he had said, ‘and you could make far better use of it than I.’ Mr Milner knew he was a pacifist, and was literally the only person who behaved as though that was a perfectly natural thing to be – had simply asked him why he was one, and listened to the reply. Then he had said, ‘Well, Christopher,’ (Christopher had noticed that he only called people by their Christian names if he liked them, otherwise he would have been Castle) ‘principles are very expensive things – or can be …’ He was fat and rather bald, which made his eyebrows look even bushier, and had a sort of wheezy voice that cracked when he got excited, which he did about a lot of things. He always wore the same tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and the sort of boots that were for going up mountains, and his ties were never very clean, and when he laughed it was ‘Ho ho ho!’ followed by more wheezing. Boarding had meant being free from Dad getting at him, but certainly not good in other ways, except for Mr Milner.

  My being against it won’t make the slightest difference to it happening, he thought, because I don’t really count, and then he heard Mr Milner’s voice saying, ‘Everybody counts, dear boy, if only to himself. Don’t turn yourself into an abject exception.’

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ Neville asked.

  ‘Nothing much,’ he said, and then he thought, That’s a lie and I hardly noticed. He decided to count them up all
the next day just to see how often it happened. Only, of course, he thought, if I know I’m counting them up there won’t be so many of them, It was a bit like what Mr Milner had said that somebody had said about the state of mind in which people wrote diaries.

  Polly was abstracted: she left a lot of her mince, and when it came to apple amber, she said she didn’t want any. She, too, was thinking of last year, when Oscar had been alive and got lost, and then found, just in time for peace. But Oscar had been found stretched out, stiff as a board at the end of the back garden. He had been run over, the vet had said: his back was broken. Another serious funeral, and after that, she had decided that she had better not have another cat until she had her house and everything. Now, she was glad of that decision. At least she did not have to contemplate whoever she might have had being gassed to death. Dad had wanted to give her another for her birthday, but she said she was too old for a cat. ‘At least, I’ve reached a middle age when it wouldn’t be advisable,’ she had said, and he had said, ‘Well, Poll, you know best,’ and she had wondered afterwards why people always said that when they disagreed with one. Actually, she felt sad about not wanting a cat, but now, she thought, perhaps she had always known that the war wouldn’t go away, had been simply waiting, and looming all the time. And here it was, and everything, on the face of it, seemed to be much the same. If only Dad wasn’t going to be in London, she thought. If only they could all stay together, then whatever happened couldn’t be so awful. At least she didn’t have to go on trying to believe in God.

  Bessie was between her and Christopher. She had quickly realised that Polly had food on her plate and had leaned her bulk against Polly’s knee and chair. Christopher had turned to her and smiled and said, ‘Don’t give in to her, she’s far too fat for her age. It wouldn’t be a kindness.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. Bessie wouldn’t have a gas mask. Human beings were only kind to them up to a point, she thought, they weren’t really kind. Teddy and Simon were talking about cricket. They talked more and more about things that didn’t interest her. If she had children, she’d have them all educated in the same place, then they’d go on knowing each other and doing the same things. This idea cheered her up and she asked Christopher if he agreed, and he did, and then Nora, who had heard them, chipped in saying there was a frightfully modern school like that in Devon called Darlington Hall where the children were all terribly spoiled.

  ‘What do you mean, spoiled?’ Clary asked.

  ‘Well, you know, allowed to do what they like all the time. And they do crafts, things like woodwork which doesn’t strike me as an educational subject at all.’

  Clary said, ‘I can’t see that doing what you like would spoil you. It makes me far nicer when I do.’

  ‘Everybody needs discipline,’ Nora said. ‘I know I do.’

  ‘Well, we can’t all be the same,’ Clary said. Christopher suddenly choked with laughter, but Nora just went rather red.

  An evening, just like any other evening, Polly thought, as Aunt Rach came downstairs dressed in her blue moiré dress with a little cape round her shoulders. ‘Hallo, darlings! Having a nice supper?’

  Simon said, ‘What would you say if we told you it was horrible?’

  ‘I should say, “Serve you right, silly old aunt, for asking such a daft question.”’

  She was on her way to the drawing room, but the Brig had heard her voice and now called to her: ‘Rachel! The very person I wanted to see,’ and she turned and went to his study.

  ‘Poor Brig,’ Clary said. ‘Think of not being able to read.’

  ‘Or ride. Or drive,’ Teddy said, which seemed far worse to him.

  ‘He hasn’t driven for ages. Tonbridge won’t let him. But he goes on the train all by himself.’

  ‘Bracken meets him at Charing Cross.’

  ‘Bracken is getting so huge that Dad says he’ll have to buy a larger car to fit him into. And in the end he’ll only fit into a lorry. I expect he’ll be called up and they’ll have to put him in a tank to drive. Come on, Simon, let’s finish our game.’ They went off to the billiard room.

  ‘Let’s play cards,’ Clary said, not because she specially wanted to, but she wanted to get Polly’s mind off the war. She looked at her now. ‘Pelmanism?’ she coaxed: she was particularly good at that game. Polly wrinkled her white forehead. ‘Racing demon?’

  Louise, who also realised about Polly, said what a good idea, so they went up to the old nursery, where Polly and Clary now slept, and got out the packs of cards and made Christopher join them, but he never won, and so he left, saying that he was going to read.

  At dinner, in the dining room, nobody talked about the future; all general ruminations had been exhausted and everyone had withdrawn into their own personal uncertainties which most of them felt, for various reasons, it would sound both selfish and pusillanimous to discuss. They ate their asparagus soup, made from the last pickings from the beds for that year, the Duchy remarked, and oxtail with beetroot in a white sauce and carrots chopped up with peas and mashed potato, followed by charlotte russe, a pudding dear to Mrs Cripps’s heart – she loved arranging all the little upright sponge fingers in the pudding mould – but Edward called it wet cake and thought he would wait for cheese. Even he was at a loss for conversation; the precious hardwood logs had been dumped in the river again, but the men never talked about the business except when they were alone together. He wondered how Diana was doing, and whether she had been joined by Angus, and if she had, whether she would let him sleep with her or not. He hadn’t got a leg to stand on there because, after all, he and Villy … but he didn’t exactly relish the idea. He looked at Villy, who was wearing a plum-coloured dress with a sort of draped neck that didn’t suit her at all. They had had the beginnings of a row at Pear Tree Cottage when they were getting ready for dinner because she had said that she wasn’t prepared to spend the entire war tucked away in the country looking after one small baby; she would go mad, she said. If there was to be one London house kept open, she thought it should be Lansdowne Road. ‘Hugh could live in it during the week, and the rest of the family could come up whenever they needed to.’

  This had silenced him: he knew that the chances of seeing Diana would be halved if Villy was in London, but he could hardly raise that as an objection. ‘We’ll have to see how things turn out,’ he had said.

  He noticed that his father wanted some port, which stood at his right hand, but that he was unsure where his glass was. He got up and went round to pour it for him, and then pushed the decanter round the table to the next person.

  ‘Zoë, the port is with you,’ he said, and she gave a little start, and moved it on to Hugh. How attractive she looked. She was wearing some sort of housecoat affair, long, pale greeny-blue brocade woven with little apricot flowers, with her hair swept smoothly back from her face into some kind of net so that it looked like a huge bun – a sort of Victorian effect. And she had a complexion that made all the other women look weather-beaten or faded, although these days she was very pale. He wondered whether Rupe had taken his advice about starting another baby as soon as possible.

  The Duchy knew perfectly well that the men wanted to talk on their own so as soon as the pudding was eaten (the Duchy disapproved of cheese at night), she suggested that the women withdraw. When they were settled, and Eileen had brought the coffee, Rachel said, ‘Before you start any music, Duchy dear, I think I’d better distribute these. The Brig wants them put on every bedroom door.’ She handed them round.

  ‘“Instructions in case of an Air Raid”,’ Sybil read aloud. ‘Goodness! Who did all this?’

  ‘I did. Matron said she must have them for the nurses, and the Brig said they should be for everyone. I’m sorry that my typing is so bad – I type like a two-toed sloth.’

  It must have taken her hours, Sid thought, and Villy obviously thought the same, because she said, ‘Wasn’t there even any carbon paper?’

  ‘There was, but it was frightfully old and, anyway, if
you make as many mistakes as I do, it isn’t actually much quicker.’ The instructions were very sensible, and told people what to do either during the day or night. ‘Although, of course, they won’t have air raids in the dark. They won’t be able to see where they are,’ Villy said.

  ‘As long as we all do the blackout properly.’

  They spent a little time deciding which children they would be responsible for, and then there was a silence.

  The evening, filled, as in a way it was, by small domestic activity – by Sid and the Duchy playing Mozart sonatas, by the men coming out from the dining room – was, none the less, punctuated by these small, dead moments, when the minute sound of Sybil’s knitting, or a log subsiding in the fireplace, or sugar being stirred into a coffee cup only accentuated those times when each person was engulfed by their private anxieties.

  As she was shutting the piano, the Duchy remarked, ‘Do you remember how, in the last war, it became unpatriotic to play German music? Such a ridiculous notion.’

  ‘Not everybody thought that, surely?’ Sid was putting her fiddle away, but Rachel could hear that she was shocked.

  ‘Only the sort of people who gave white feathers to men with flat feet or bad eyesight, Duchy dear,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure the Germans will be worse about that sort of thing,’ Hugh said.

  ‘But, then, they will have far less to lose. Composers aren’t our strong point, compared to them,’ Rachel said, then put her hand over her mouth and looked at Villy whose father had been a composer, after all. How lucky, she thought, that Lady Rydal had opted for dinner in bed that night.