And then the awful uncertainty of what to do next—where to live and how to find the place; she was nearly in her eighth month and would have to get on with that. It all seemed too much. She seemed to be surrounded by discretion and loneliness and lies … This would not do; she must not give up; she decided to be confident and sanguine, but just a touch helpless over practical matters. She gave her nose a final admonishing dab of powder and went to rejoin him.
“I was thinking,” she said brightly, “that the best thing would be for me to find a flat in London. Or possibly, even, a small house. I don’t quite know how to go about it but I’m sure that it would be the solution. Where do you think I should look?”
They discussed this with animation while he drove her to Vigo Street, where he parked outside Harvey and Gore and took her in to buy her a present.
“Amethysts,” he said. “I’m sure you could find us some nice amethysts, Mr. Green.” And Mr. Green, who thought the only thing wrong with Mr. Cazalet was his not having a title, rubbed his hands and produced an array of battered leather cases, inside the bruised velvet of which lay various brooches, pendants, necklaces and bracelets of amethyst set in gold, sometimes with pearls or diamonds, and one with tiny turquoises that Edward particularly liked. “Try it on,” he said.
She did not want a necklace—when on earth would she wear it?—but she unbuttoned her coat and the top of her blouse and bared her neck, which fortunately, humiliatingly, turned out to be too large for the necklace. Mr. Green said that some chain could be put at the back to enlarge it, but Edward said no, try something else. What she wanted was a ring, but she sensed that this would be the wrong thing to ask for. The time he had driven her from Lansdowne Road and dumped Villy’s jewel box on her lap and, because it was not locked, all the jewellery spilled out, came suddenly into her mind, and she felt envious and desolate. For a moment she wondered quite madly whether he had strings of women who had had his children—whether the unctuous Mr. Green was utterly used to visit upon visit with different women …
“Darling? Look! What about this?”
It was a collar of graduated oval stones set and backed in gold, heavy and simple and handsome. She sat, and it was fastened on her and admired and he asked her whether she liked it and she agreed that she did.
“If Madam is not absolutely sure …” Mr. Green had years of experience of ladies being bought things that they did not like or want, or being bought one thing when they would much rather have something else.
“The only thing is that I don’t know when I would wear it.”
But he simply said, “Nonsense, darling, of course you’ll wear it.” And when Mr. Green retired to wrap it up, he leaned over her and whispered, “You can wear it in bed with me,” and his moustache brushed her ear.
“Well, it certainly makes a glamorous alternative to Utility nightgowns,” she managed to say.
“Darling, you don’t have Utility nightgowns!”
“No, but I soon shall have. The government has said no more embroidery on lingerie.”
“Rotten bastards. Perhaps we’d better buy you some of that before the shops run out.”
“They need coupons, darling, and everybody’s short of them.”
He had finished writing the cheque and Mr. Green returned with a carefully sealed white package. “I hope Madam has much pleasure wearing it,” he said.
Outside the shop she said, “Darling, thank you so much. It’s a marvellous present.”
“Glad you like it. Now, I’m afraid, I’d better take you to your train.”
They drove down Bond Street to Piccadilly past the bombed church, round the boarded-up statue of Eros and into Haymarket. “MALTA GETS THE GEORGE CROSS!” was the main headline on the billboards. The buildings round Trafalgar Square had sandbags piled against their lower windows. Outside Charing Cross station an old man was walking slowly up and down with a board strapped to his back that said: “The End of the World is Nigh.” Starlings intermittently clouded the air. They arranged for her to come up the following week and he would give her lunch and help her to find a flat.
“Darling, I wish I could take you down myself. But Hugh expects to go with me on Fridays—you know how it is.”
“That’s all right, darling. Of course I understand.”
She understood, but it didn’t stop her minding.
“You’re the most understanding girl in the world,” he said, as he put her in the train and handed her the paper he had bought for her. “Afraid there wasn’t a Country Life.”
“Never mind, I can read all about Malta getting the George Cross.”
He bent to kiss her and then, as he straightened up, began fumbling in his pocket. “I nearly forgot.” He put three half crowns onto her lap.
“Darling! What’s this for?”
“For your taxi because I can’t take you home.”
“It’s far too much. It won’t be more than five bob.”
“The third one is the Edward medal for bravery,” he said. “For enduring that really ghastly lunch—and everything. I must fly, I’m late for Hugh already.”
Her eyes filled. “Fly,” she said.
After he had gone and the train had begun to lumber slowly over the river, she sat looking out of the window (there were other people in the carriage by then) trying to sort out the confusion she felt about him. Resentment, anger, even, that she should have to have this baby without his public support, that she should have so much financial anxiety, all the business of having to find somewhere to live, setting up there by herself with four children to worry about—she didn’t know how on earth she would be able to pay the school fees for the three boys, let alone this new one. Angus’s parents had offered a small sum for the eldest, but they had no money either, simply the same ideas as Angus had had about Eton being the only suitable school. Frustration: here she was after a four-year affair—more than four years, actually—and no nearer getting him to leave his wife and marry her, although I didn’t always want that, she thought. When she had first met him she had simply fallen head over heels; he had seemed the most attractive man she had ever met, and Angus, she had recognized then (how funny that it hadn’t occurred to her before), was absolutely no good in bed at all. He had been rigidly romantic, had taken up with her because she had reminded him of an actress he had seen and adored in a play by Barrie, but when it came to sex he embarked upon it seldom, apologetically and as speedily as possible in the dark, as one displaying an unfortunate but undeniable weakness which he wished to involve her with as little as he could contrive. Edward also seemed to consider that sex was largely for men, but, when the first-time rapture had worn off, although she had had to admit that he did not seem to apprehend her feelings with the attention to detail that would have been satisfying, he enjoyed himself so openly and so much that she had fallen back upon a kind of maternal indulgence with him. He undressed and admired her, he never failed to say afterwards how marvellous it had been for him and how wonderful, in every way, she was, that she had found it quite easy to lie back and think not of England but of him. And he had given her a very good time in other ways. Apart from the restaurants, the dancing, the presents, and the feeling that being with him was like one of the birthdays he always claimed to be having, she was attracted by his desire for her—by the obvious fact that he was attractive to nearly every woman he met but had stayed with her, which gave her a sensation of power and identity. Of course there had been times when she had wondered how faithful he was, but here her slowly growing long-term ambitions about him intervened. To be broadminded about any possible—although unconfirmed—lapse seemed the best policy. Since Angus had died the reasons for wanting to be married to Edward had become so diffused and so uncomfortably complex that, when any of them arose, she bundled them up into dark corners beneath the protective umbrella of what she evolved to herself as her undying love for him. Of course he was her great love: she had had one if not two of his children; she had spent four years patiently be
ing available for him whenever he wanted her; her entire life had revolved round his presence, his absences, his needs and his restrictions. She had never looked at anyone else, and she was forty-two and so, she felt, was unlikely to start now. She was deeply, irrecoverably devoted to him. When, as now, some demonic shred of doubt tried to voice itself—that there was something, somehow, not quite right about the affair—she banished it: if there was anything wrong she was determined not to find out what it was. She loved him, that was all that she was prepared to know.
“Did you tell her?”
“I couldn’t, old boy—I really couldn’t. I fully intended to, but for various very good reasons, it simply wasn’t practicable.” Then seeing his brother’s face, which was full of accusing incredulity, he said, “She’s having a baby any minute, for God’s sake—”
“You never told me that!”
“Well, I’m telling you now. I simply can’t upset her. Anyway,” he said, moments later, “she knows the form. I’ve never lied to her.”
There was a silence. He had managed to get as far as Lea Green without having this conversation by talking feverishly about an office matter where they were not in agreement, but he had known that Hugh would ask him. Just as he knew that any minute now he’d ask the next question.
“Is it yours?”
“Yes.”
“God! What a mess!” Then he noticed that his brother, extracting a cigarette from the packet with one hand while gripping the steering wheel with the other, was shaking and, with an effort, he added. “Poor old boy! It must be a nightmare!” and with a further effort, for he could not imagine that one would have someone’s baby if it was not so, he said, “You must be very much in love with her.”
And Edward answered gratefully, “You bet! I have been for a long time.”
After that, as they drove back to the house that did not have Sybil in it, Hugh said no more on the subject.
“My dear Miss Milliment! When did this happen?”
“Oh—a little before Christmas, I think. I know there was still quite a remarkable display of berries on the holly, and those snowdrops outside the table door were not out, so I think it must have been about then. I used my suitcase as a prop and it seemed to serve quite well for a while, until, as you can see, it has unfortunately given way under the strain.”
It had indeed. The moment Villy had entered Miss Milliment’s room in the stables’ cottage, she had realized that it was not only her bed (the breakdown of which was the reason for her visit) that needed attention, it was all the furnishings, indeed, practically everything that Miss Milliment possessed. The wardrobe door hung drunkenly on one hinge and was open to reveal Miss Milliment’s clothes, the same clothes that she had arrived with two years ago and that were not only palpably in need of cleaning but that she expected were, in many cases, beyond repair. The room had been hurriedly furnished then: the Duchy had arranged it, but her Victorian attitude about the bedrooms that were occupied either by grandchildren or servants meant that it had never contained more than the barest necessities and they had been composed of furniture that would, in any other circumstances, have been thrown out. Villy remembered that she had asked Miss Milliment whether she had a bedside lamp and a table to write at, and, when Miss Milliment had admitted that she had neither, had had these things sent over to the cottage. But she had never come to see for herself. She was ashamed.
“I am so sorry, Viola dear, to be such a nuisance.”
“You aren’t at all. It is my fault.” She was kneeling by the bed trying to prise the jagged broken leg out of the suitcase whose lid it had penetrated, leaving the mattress sloping uncomfortably almost to the ground. “It must have been most dreadfully uncomfortable: I can’t imagine how you slept a wink.” She was unable to shift the broken leg and guilt about the whole situation made her say: “You really should have told me before!”
“I expect I should. In any case, it is not your fault, Viola. I cannot allow you to feel that.”
And Villy experienced the fleeting sensation of being back in the schoolroom on those occasions when she had said one thing and felt another, and it had always been perceived.
She spent the rest of that day reorganizing Miss Milliment’s room. This entailed first tackling the Duchy. There was plenty of furniture stored from Pear Tree Cottage that she could easily have taken without saying anything to her mother-in-law, but for another most embarrassing fact that had gradually emerged, which was that the servants had not been cleaning Miss Milliment’s room, had done no more for her than place clean sheets at the bottom of the narrow cottage stairs each week. Her other laundry had been ignored, and Villy found the dank little bathroom full of stubbornly damp bloomers, vests and stockings that had been washed by Miss Milliment in the bath, but her capacity for housework, due to her age, bulk, short-sightedness and inexperience, had been negligible: the room was extremely dirty and smelt of old clothes.
“I’ll clean out the room, Duchy dear, but I really think one of the maids ought to make her bed and dust, et cetera.”
The Duchy was angry and rang for Eileen. “Servants have always been naughty about governesses,” she said.
“I shouldn’t have thought that either Dottie or Bertha was old enough to have experienced a governess before.”
“No, but it is tradition. They will have heard about them from Mrs. Cripps or Eileen. But don’t you bother, darling. The maids can spring clean the room.”
“As a matter of fact, I’d rather do it myself.” She did not say that she couldn’t bear Miss Milliment’s pathetic squalor to be exposed to them, but the Duchy understood.
“Perhaps that would be best,” she said. “Ah, Eileen, would you send Dottie and Bertha to me, please?”
Dinner-time that day in the kitchen was a tense affair. Dottie and Bertha were full of defiant and martyred excuses: nobody had told them to clean in the cottage, how were they to know? Nobody had told her to cook for a governess, either, Mrs. Cripps retaliated, but it stood to reason that anyone living in had to be catered to. Eileen said a number of times that it was nothing to do with her and she believed in minding her own business, but she couldn’t help feeling sorry for the poor old lady. Bertha burst into tears and said whatever happened it was always her fault. Tonbridge reminded them that there was a war on, as a consequence of which, although moving furniture was not his place, he had naturally lent a hand with it when asked. Edie said nothing at all. If she so much as opened her mouth these days, Mrs. Cripps snapped her head off or made sarcastic remarks about people who left other people in the lurch simply for a bit of excitement and to doll themselves up in a uniform. She’d be gone in four weeks, she said to herself, and then they wouldn’t see her for dust. Apart from Madam’s plate, she’d broken a pudding basin, two cups and a jug that Madam used for flowers, as she jumped every time Mrs. Cripps called her and things just slipped from her hand. Tea was drunk and very few remarks were passed.
By lunch-time Villy had emptied the room of everything; Miss Milliment’s possessions were laid upon a dust sheet on the floor of the small neighbouring bedroom, and she procured a bar of soap, a scrubbing brush and a pail. It was then that she discovered that the electric water heater in the bathroom had broken down and realized that poor Miss Milliment had been doing without hot water for goodness knows how long. She went back to the house and rang the builder for an electrician, borrowed Ellen’s electric kettle from the nursery and set about the fairly unpleasant business of sweeping and then scrubbing the floor. The state of Miss Milliment’s wardrobe appalled her, and she resolved to take her to Hastings or Tunbridge Wells to replenish it. She must have accumulated a number of clothes coupons by now, and if shops no longer contained garments that would fit her, they could buy some material and get it made up. Sybil would have helped in this, she thought, recognizing yet again how much she missed her. She had never been able to have much of a relationship with Zoë, and of course she was fond of both the Duchy and Rachel, but with Sybil s
he had been able to gossip, discuss their children and their own youth, their early married days and sometimes reminiscences that stretched back to before they had become Cazalets. Sybil’s brother had been killed in the war; her mother had died in India when Sybil was three and she had been brought up almost entirely by a devoted ayah and her father’s household servants until she reached the age of ten, when their father took her and Hubert back to England and left them there in the charge of his married sister, who despatched them both to boarding schools, where both were profoundly homesick. The holidays had only been better because they had each other, never getting on with their cousins: “We have our secret language, Urdu, which, of course, they couldn’t understand, and so they hated us and my aunt blamed us for not getting on with them.” She remembered Sybil’s rather flat, very English voice when she said this, and had added that they spoke it far more than they did English, which they regarded as a foreign, boring grown-ups’ language. But when she asked if Sybil could still speak it, she had said no—never since her brother died. He had died just before the Armistice: she had been in the throes of her grief when she had met Hugh.
She had become very close to Sybil in the last weeks, ever since the morning when she had gone into her room to see if she wanted breakfast in bed and found her sobbing.
“Shut the door!” she had cried. “I don’t want anyone to hear.” Villy did so and sat on Sybil’s bed holding her until she had finished and said: “I thought I was getting better—but I’m not.” There was a silence, and then, with eyes fixed upon Villy in such a way that she could not look away, she said: “I’m not, am I?” Before Villy could bring herself to reply, she said suddenly: “No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I promised Hugh that—just because I’ve had a couple of bad nights … for goodness’ sake, Villy, don’t tell him I’ve been so low. Don’t say anything—to anyone.” And she, who knew that Hugh knew but had had a similar promise exacted from him, could only acquiesce in the marital labyrinth. She had talked to Dr. Carr—trying to get him to get them to talk to each other, to face reality, she remembered she had said because he had instantly replied: “Oh, Mrs. Cazalet, they’re each facing reality. But they each think they are doing that for the other one. I wouldn’t dream of interfering in that. They each think it’s the last thing they can do for the other, you see.” She was silenced. He had added that he could see she was doing a good job with the nursing.
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