The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  Today was Friday, and they were both going home, because Archie was coming, because on the Saturday it would be a year since her mother died—a fact that Dad didn’t mention, but that everybody else in the family was acutely aware of. A kind of opposite of a birthday, she thought, a deathday, but really it was no worse that her mother had been dead for three hundred and sixty-five days than three hundred and sixty-four, or -six. She was glad that Simon would still be at school. “But I’m only glad because it would be worse for him if he wasn’t, I’m not really glad. I’m not really glad about anything,” she said to Clary as they waited for the bus to go to Pitman’s.

  Clary agreed.

  “Nor am I. I think life is frightfully depressing. If nearly everybody is having a worse time than we are, I can hardly see the point of it.”

  “I suppose it is just the war?” she said.

  “How can we know? We haven’t the faintest idea of what it would be like if there wasn’t one.”

  “We can remember it. It is only three and a bit years since peace.”

  “Yes, but then we were children. Subject to all kinds of petty rules made by Them. And now that we’re becoming Them, there simply seem to be more rules.”

  “Like?”

  “Well,” Clary considered, “I mean, neither of us wants to get awfully good at typing and shorthand. We didn’t spend our childhood wishing we could type at sixty words a minute.”

  “It might be useful to you if you’re going to be a writer. Look at Bernard Shaw.”

  “He invents his own kind, I believe. And that was just because he wanted to. But generally men don’t have to learn typing.”

  “They have to join up and kill people,” she said sadly. “The trouble is that we haven’t worked out what we believe in. We just go on in a dreary unbelieving muddle.”

  The bus came then. When they were on it, Clary said, “Disbelieving is different from unbelieving. What don’t we believe in?”

  “War,” Polly said promptly. “I absolutely disbelieve in war.”

  “That doesn’t do any good, though, because we’ve got it.”

  “Well, you asked me. You think of something.”

  “God,” Clary said. “I don’t believe in God. Although, actually, it occurred to me that there might be a whole lot of them, and that’s why there’s such a mess—they don’t agree with one another about anything.”

  “I can’t be against war,” she said—she’d been thinking. “The fact that we’ve got it is neither here nor there. I’m against the idea of it. Like Christopher.”

  “He didn’t last. He went off to join up. It was only because there was something wrong with his eyesight that they didn’t take him.”

  “He went, not believing in it, because he thought it wasn’t right to let other people do the dirty work. He had principles.”

  “Ah now, do you believe in them? If so, which ones?”

  But they’d reached Lancaster Gate and the peeling, blistered pillars of the stuccoed house in which they were to spend the next six hours pounding their typewriters steadily to what Clary called Hastings pier music, learning to write “Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter of the 10th inst.” in a cabalistic scrawl, and struggling with double-entry book-keeping, which they both simply loathed. “It seems madness to me,” Clary had said after the first day of it. “Either one hasn’t got any money to put in the columns, or else one has masses, in which case there would be no need.”

  “It won’t be our money we’re putting in, stupid, it’ll be our rich powerful employer’s.”

  The day was punctuated by a lunch hour when they consumed Spam sandwiches and cups of pink-brown tea that tasted of the metal pot. There was a basement room in which students could spend the lunch hour and sandwiches were sold there for those who wanted them. So far they had not found any of their fellow students enlivening; they all seemed deeply earnest about the work, and as it was an intensive course there was in any case little time to fraternize. Usually, they managed to go out at lunch-time, taking their sandwiches to eat in the park. This morning, however, a new student had joined the classes who looked very different from the rest. To start with, she was very much older, but almost everything else about her was different too. She was immensely tall—she towered above everyone else—but she had long, narrow hands and feet and elegant ankles. Her iron grey hair was cut in a careless bob and cut shorter on one side of her forehead, and she wore a black cardigan rather carelessly embroidered with buttercups and poppies. But it was her face that entranced them both. Unlike everyone else, she wore no make-up at all, her skin was uniform olive with very fine, dark eyebrows that arched over eyes of an amazing colour that they could not agree about.

  “Sort of pale greyish green,” Clary said.

  “Bluer than that. Aquamarine, would you say?”

  “I might say it, but it would be no good if one wrote it. It wouldn’t really describe them.”

  “I’d know what it meant.”

  They decided to eat their sandwiches in the basement room in the hope of getting to know the new student, but she was not there. Her absence whetted their curiosity.

  “I think she’s foreign.”

  “We know that. We heard her say thank you to Miss Halton.”

  “Well, I think she’s minor royalty from some central European court.”

  “Or she could have been imported by some American general. I bet they’re allowed to bring their mistresses abroad with them. You know, like Stanley taking cases of port with him when he was exploring in Africa.”

  “Honestly, Clary, that’s not at all the same thing.”

  “She could be royal and someone’s mistress.”

  “I must say she doesn’t at all look like a wife.”

  “She was probably married off in her youth to some frightful Prussian brute. Then all her children died of TB because the castle was so cold and she ran away and escaped.” Clary had recently come upon a copy of Moths for a penny on a second-hand book stall and had become immersed in Ouida which had affected her observations of people. “She journeyed overland for weeks dressed as a peasant and then stowed away on a ship to come here.”

  “I don’t think she’d stow very well,” Polly said. “I mean, she’s a bit too remarkable to merge into any background. And large,” she added, after thinking about it.

  When they went back to the classroom for the second typing session, she still wasn’t there.

  “Next time we see her, let’s ask her to supper with us.”

  “All right. Do you think she’d get on with Dad?”

  “You said he said he would be out if we wanted to have our friends.”

  “I know—but—”

  “Oh, Poll, we have to start having our own lives.”

  “OK. But she is pretty old—his sort of age. If she’s really terrifically nice, she might make him a suitable wife.” And as Clary snorted with disagreeing despair, she added, “I don’t mean he should be at the first supper. I just mean if we think she’s OK we might introduce them.”

  “I don’t see much point in that. They’re both too old for sex, I should have thought.”

  “You don’t know that. Do you think Archie’s too old for sex, then?”

  There was a dead silence during which she noticed that Clary’s forehead had become pink before she answered, “Archie’s different.”

  He was, she thought, of course he was. He was the most different person she had ever met.

  13 March 1943

  This is Saturday afternoon, Dad, and it is raining and quite cold as well, so I’m sitting on my bed at Home Place with the eiderdown over me writing to you. It’s awful: I realize that I haven’t written anything since before Christmas. That is partly because of us moving to London—Poll and me to Uncle Hugh’s house which has meant such a change in our lives that I don’t seem to have had much time. That isn’t true: there has been time—only I haven’t felt like writing much at all. Christmas was OK, I suppose. Roly and Wills an
d Jules loved it and so did Lydia and Neville, but I think I am beginning to feel a bit bored of it. Neville tried to give me a rat he has got tired of at school. Who could possibly want a rat brought up by him? I said that. He gave Polly a jig-saw which we knew had five bits missing. He simply won’t use his pocket money on presents and all he wanted was money. Some people gave it to him, but there was quite a lot of disapproval in the air.

  Well, after Christmas we went to London as we have to go to an Intensive Course in Typing and Shorthand at Pitman’s so that we shall be of some use when we are called up. I was looking forward madly to us having our own flat, but in the end we had to go to Uncle Hugh because Poll said he was so wanting us to, and she feels he is frightfully lonely without Aunt Syb. I saw her point … If it had been you, Dad, I would have felt just as Poll did, so of course I had to agree. We have a room each on the top floor and our own bathroom, but we have to cook in the basement so by the time we have carried food up to our lairs everything is cold. But we can make tea in the bathroom which is something. Uncle Hugh was very kind about letting us paint the rooms and he had some bookcases made for me which go all along one wall which is a good thing because I got my room the wrong kind of yellow and can’t be bothered to paint it again. Aunt Rach said we could have some curtains from Chester Terrace as Aunt Syb never got around to having any on the top floor, and she took us to Chester Terrace to choose some. She said she would make them fit the windows which is jolly decent of her. It was odd going back there, Dad. Everything is covered up—all the furniture—and the shutters are down and there are hardly any lights to put on. When we went in there was a faint damp darkish smell, like wet prayer books. The curtains were all packed in tea chests in the Brig’s study with labels on them saying which they were, but of course I could only remember the drawing room ones—the huge white roses on dark green shiny chintz and the oatmeal ones with blue birds on them that were in my bedroom when I stayed there while you were marrying Zoë when I was nine. I didn’t tell you, Dad, but honestly that was the most miserable time of my life. I didn’t believe you were coming back to fetch me, you see: I thought they were simply trying to soften the blow when they said you were. I stole half a crown out of the Duchy’s bag to get bus tickets to go home, but then I remembered that Ellen had taken Neville to stay with her family and that there would be nobody to let me in. I thought all this in the hall just as I was going—and then I realized that there was nowhere to go to. That was the worst of all. I felt so furious I wanted to break everything up and I got the Brig’s swordstick out of its walking case and I bashed through the iron scroll grid at the glass on the front door to break it. I did break one bit, but I was crying and they came and found me. Aunt Rach came and I kicked her and shouted that I was trapped and there was nowhere to go and I wished I was dead. I can see now how good she was about it all. She didn’t punish me although I slightly wanted her to because I wanted everything to go on being simple and bad. She took me into the Brig’s study which was the nearest room and held me till I stopped crying and talked to me about you getting married and about people having honeymoons which meant being on their own for a bit, and then she gave me a calendar—I remember it had Timber Trades Journal at the top of it—and she marked the day it was on it, and then marked the day you were coming home and gave me a red chalk to mark off the days—ten more of them—and I couldn’t not believe her then. That afternoon she took me to a very grand tea at Gunter’s with ices and hot chocolate and she bought me a bag of their special lemon drops to take home. I remembered all this because the curtains we were to choose were in the Brig’s study, and all the glass had gone from the front door and there was wood instead. That evening—after the treat at Gunter’s—the Duchy cut out a piece of linen for me to embroider a pyjama case for you, but I was rotten at embroidery and it never got finished. Anyway, I certainly didn’t want the blue bird curtains and Poll, who chose the white roses, suggested that I have blue velvet ones. It’s funny, Dad, you were in France then, but you did come back. And in the end, of course, you’ll come back again. But it is a long time that you’ve been gone this time, isn’t it? It’s no good my having a calendar because it might easily be more than another year. I go on writing this just as much for me as for you, because it helps me to remember you—I mean more of you. One of the difficult things about it being so long since you went—two years and nine months now—is that although, of course, I do think about you a lot, I seem to remember fewer things about you. I go over them again and again, but I keep feeling that there are other things I no longer remember. It’s as though you were walking slowly backwards from me into the distance. I hate it. If this is what people mean about their grief getting less, I don’t want it. I want to remember you as completely and sharply as I did the evening the man rang up to say you were missing; as much as when Pipette brought the amazing note you wrote me which I keep in the secret drawer of the desk Poll gave me. Do you remember when you took the skin off my hot milk and ate it? I often think of that.

  This is Sunday. I don’t think I mentioned that Archie is here this weekend which is good because he seems to get on well with everyone and cheers people up, even poor Uncle Hugh who I think you would find awfully changed, Dad. He’s got rather quiet and fidgety—he’s always picking things up and putting them down again as though he’s surprised to find whatever it is in his hand, and even when he’s smiling or someone has made a joke, his eyes look shocked and a bit haunted. I think his heart is broken but Poll said the other day that she hoped he’d marry again. I should have thought at his age that this was very unlikely. The trouble is that with the war we don’t meet anyone much, and certainly nobody kind and faded which would be best for him I should think.

  Once, I didn’t go home—well, several times, actually—for the weekend but one time I spent the whole weekend with Archie. It wasn’t a plan; it just turned out like that. He asked me to go to a film with him on Saturday afternoon. He didn’t exactly ask me: it was when he came to supper with Uncle Hugh and Poll and me and I said I was going to see what a weekend in London would be like and I must admit I said it would be fun to go to a film with him, and he said righty-ho, Saturday afternoon. But then on Friday evening when I got back to the house on my own because Poll had gone to Charing Cross to meet Uncle Hugh it all felt rather silent. I was feeling a bit gloomy because I’d forgotten to buy any more bread and there was only a very stale bit to have with my cheese ration, and I was creeping about in the dark putting up the black-out because the air-raid wardens are devilish about anybody showing a light and shout, “Put out that light!” from the street and ring the bell to tell you again. Anyway, the telephone rang and I answered it and it was Archie. He said he supposed he’d interrupted me getting dressed for my party. What party? I said. He said, “I didn’t think you’d be staying up for the weekend unless you had a party.”

  I told him I didn’t know anybody so I couldn’t be going to one, and he said, “Come to a very small party indeed with me then. Get a taxi and come to my flat any time after seven.” Wasn’t that wonderfully kind and cheering of him? I missed Poll then because she’s so much better than I am at knowing what to wear for going out, but actually I’ve only got one decent dress that Zoë got me for Christmas which is bottle green velveteen, a bit of a change from the dark blue one that I had for ages and this one has a square neck and sleeves just to my elbows so it is a bit more adult than the old blue one. I cut my hair to get rid of a perm that just went on being frizzy whenever it rained and, anyway, I couldn’t bear sleeping on those awful iron curlers that dig into your head at night so now it’s just straight again like it always was and Polly gave me an old tortoiseshell slide she found in a junk shop for Christmas, which is much nicer than it sounds. Polly usually helps me with my make-up and I had to have several goes at it. In the end I just used some green eye shadow of Poll’s that doesn’t suit her so she wouldn’t mind, and her dark blue mascara which is very difficult to put on without getting the brush in
your eyes and lipstick called Signal Red which it jolly well is only it comes off if I even eat a biscuit. I gave up rouge because my face went so red from rubbing things off—in fact I had to put out the lights and hang my head out of the window to get my face back to its normal colour which is actually a sort of khaki-fool colour, I mean khaki mixed with cream, not really a good face colour at all. Poll is really lucky to be so beautifully pretty.