“I feel it. I really want your advice. I simply don’t know what to do!”
“What is it, darling? Of course I’ll help in any way that I can.”
“It’s Angela. She rang me last week and told me that she was going to get married.”
“Well, darling, isn’t that rather—”
“Wait! He’s American!”
“Well, that seems to me perfectly—”
“And he’s nearly twenty years older than she is, and he’s been married before. He’s got a daughter nearly the same age as Angela who is a tap dancer! And when I asked what he does in peace time, she said he was psychiatrist!”
“Have you met him?”
“She brought him here last week for a drink. He’s a funny little square man with a face like a pug and very hirsute. He calls her Hon.”
“You mean, as though she was German?”
“No, short for honey. And she calls him Earl.”
“Why does she do that?”
“It’s his name! Earl C. Black. She wants to become Mrs. Earl C. Black. The Second.”
Her distress was so operatic and she reminded Villy so much of their mother that she nearly burst out laughing.
“Darling! Don’t you think you are being a tiny bit narrow-minded?” (Snobbish, she wanted to say.) “Does Angela love him?”
“She says so,” Jessica replied, as though this did not make it more likely to be true.
“Well, then, I can’t see what you are worrying about. I mean, of course, it will be sad that she will be so far away, but you will go and visit her. And you’ve always worried that she wouldn’t get married at all.”
“Oh, but, Villy, you know what I mean! She was such a lovely girl and I must confess that I had pinned my hopes on her making what Mummy would have called ‘a good marriage.’ You know, as your Louise has done. It does seem such a fearful waste. Mummy would have been appalled!”
“Darling, we can’t choose who our children marry, and Mummy was simply appalled at both of our husbands, don’t you remember? I think you should stop worrying, and be glad for Angela. When is it to be?”
“She wants it to be at once, but he wants to wait and see whether when the war here is over, he gets sent to the Pacific to finish off the Japanese.”
“Well, that seems very thoughtful of him.” She continued in this vein until Jessica seemed to have run out of objections. Privately she thought that Jessica should thank her lucky stars. There had been rumours about Angela—Edward said that a friend of his in the RAF had actually picked her up in a bar, but on seeing her uncle Edward, she’d beaten a hasty retreat. It was clear that she had been leading a rather rackety life, and although naturally Villy did not dream of telling Jessica any of this, it made her more robust in her advice than she might otherwise have been.
“I’m sure it will all turn out well,” she said, as she left after lunch to do some shopping before she met Edward at the club for dinner. “Thank you for a lovely lunch. Do keep in touch. And do look on the bright side about Angela, darling.”
She had reason to remember this last admonition with some bitterness when she met Edward in the coffee room for a drink before dinner. She could tell at once that something was up, that he had something—not good—to tell her and for one frightful moment she thought it might be Teddy …
“It’s Teddy,” he said. “No, no, he’s quite all right—oh, darling, sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. But he sent this.” He produced an air mail letter and held it out. “Have a swig of your gin before you read it,” he said.
Dear Mummy and Dad,
This is rather a serious letter and I do hope it won’t be a shock to you, but I have met the most marvellous girl and we want to be married. Her name is Bernadine Heavens and she had to give up her career in Hollywood to marry some brute but he left her quite soon with two children and she had an awful time till we met. She is a really wonderful person, very funny and gay, but also extremely deep and a serious person underneath. You would like her if you saw her. The thing is because of my age we have to have your permission to marry. She wanted me to write to you the moment we got engaged which was the second time that we met, but I felt it might be too much of a shock. She is the most wonderful person I’ve ever met in my life. I honestly never thought of being married until I met her and then—bang! I just fell for her, and she for me. She has had a really sad life as her father left her mother when she was quite small and her mother made her live with an aunt as she couldn’t be bothered. But Bernadine has come through it all in the most wonderful way: she bears no malice to anyone she says. She would write to you only she says she is not much of a hand at letter-writing.
The thing is that actually we did get married last week, only Bernadine can’t get a passport until we’ve been married again with your permission. Isn’t it amazing? If I hadn’t been asked to stay on helping to train other pilots, I wouldn’t have met her. She works in the canteen here, but she only started a month ago so I might have come back to England and we would never have met. It gives us the shivers to think about it, but as she says, it must have been Meant … You see what I mean about her? She is actually frightfully thinking and deep—not a shallow person at all. I do hope you will be understanding and write back to me quickly.
Your loving son, Teddy.
“Good God!”
“I know.” His eyes were like blue marbles, and she could see that he was very angry. “What was his commanding officer up to, for God’s sake? He must have had to give permission.”
“I suppose he may not even have known. They may just have slipped off somewhere. It’s far easier to get married in America, isn’t it? I mean people in films are always waking up Justices of the Peace or getting married in drawing rooms. Oh, Teddy! How could he do it!”
“Completely irresponsible. He’s old enough to know better.”
“I bet it was the girl. I bet she trapped him. She’s clearly older than he is.”
“How much older, I wonder?”
“He doesn’t say how old the children are.”
“I expect he went on about Home Place and the house in London and she thinks she’s on to a thoroughly good thing. Well—she’ll soon find out. She won’t find it fun living on his pay, and when the war’s over, and he does go into the firm, he’ll have to work his passage—like anyone else.”
She had been reading the letter again while he was talking. “He’s completely infatuated. And even so, he manages to make her sound awful.”
“I expect she is awful. Supposing we simply refuse to give permission?”
“He’ll be twenty-one in October. He’s only got to wait until then.”
He snapped his fingers at the waiter.
“Two large martinis, George, if you would. Really large.”
When they were having dinner, she said, “Was that what you said you wanted to talk to me about this morning?”
“What? Oh—yes—yes, it was.”
“I can’t think how you managed not to tell me on the telephone.”
“Oh, well,” he said. “I wanted you to see the letter. And it would only have spoiled your day. How was Jessica, by the way?”
“It’s quite funny, really. She was worried about Angela marrying an American, and I was telling her to look on the bright side of things. It serves me right. I think I’d rather have Earl C. Black than Bernadine Heavens.”
“Good Lord! Is that what he’s called? What a pity we can’t pair them off.”
“Although, darling, she may be very nice. One can’t go on names.”
“We aren’t going on names. I’m going on the fact that although she’s older—probably a good deal older—she married a mere boy behind his parents’ back. At best, she’s a baby snatcher. At worst a gold digger. Probably both,” he ended gloomily.
“It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? We don’t actually know a single American. At least, I don’t. Perhaps you do.” Then she thought of Captain Greenfeldt, whom she had thought ra
ther charming in a haunted way, but decided not to mention him.
During coffee he reverted to the question of moving house. He thought she should come to London for a few days to start looking for something smaller and more suitable. “We can store the furniture at the Wharf and put the house on the market,” he said.
“All right, I will.” For some reason the whole idea filled her with a vague dread, but she did not say so. “It isn’t,” she said as she poured them a second cup of coffee, “it isn’t at all her being American. It’s his marrying the first girl he has anything to do with.”
“It’s funny you should say that. I was just wondering how many parents are sitting over coffee in America reading letters from their twenty-year-old sons saying that they’ve fallen in love with Grizelda Wickham-Painswick-Wickham or Queenie Bloggs and how much they are looking forward to introducing them to the family. I’m sure we’re not alone, if that’s any comfort.”
She smiled at him. He did not often indulge in such flights of fancy: the remark was much the kind that dear Rupert would once have made …
“Now. Whereabouts are you going to look?”
“Look?”
“For your house. This would be a good time to buy, although we’ll need a bloody good surveyor—I should think at least a third of the houses in London have suffered some sort of war damage.”
“Edward, I can’t see that we have to move at all. Lansdowne Road isn’t all that big. Lydia could have Louise’s old room, and Roly and a nanny—I’ll have to get one—can share the top floor with the servants. And Teddy’s room can be a spare.”
But he was adamant and in the end she gave way, and then a friend of Edward’s came to offer them a drink to celebrate Hitler having shot himself, a piece of news that in any other circumstances would have dominated their evening.
Michael took Louise to the hospital on Sunday evening, before catching his train back to Portsmouth. It meant leaving her there rather earlier than originally planned, but he wanted to see her in, and he had to catch the train.
“Shall we go out to lunch?” he said to her that morning.
“If you like.” She did not seem exactly enthusiastic, but, then, she did not seem to be that about anything these days. Mummy had written two immensely long letters about Louise running away in the middle of the weekend at Hatton, and had said in both of them that, of course, she had had no idea that Louise had not known about Hugo’s death, and he was sure that Mummy would not say that if it was not true, although Louise said, “She hates me and she knew perfectly well that I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have gone to stay at all if I’d known,” she had added, but he put all that down to hysteria on Louise’s part. Of course it had upset her; the death of anyone one had known was upsetting. He felt sad about it—in a complicated sort of way. Indeed, whenever he thought of Hugo, which was more often than he liked because it aroused a whole lot of conflicting feelings that he didn’t want to go into, he felt this clash of jealousy, and sadness, nostalgia for a halcyon time of his life before the war when Hugo came to stay in the vac for weeks on end and Mummy treated him like another son, encouraging them to do everything together. They had played tennis and racquets, and shot and gone hacking and taken a boat out on the lake and he’d done one of the best portraits of his life of him. And Mummy had been so sweet—never interfering, only every week or so she seemed to have to have various daughters of friends of hers for lunch or the weekend, and there had been a family joke about how desperately plain/dull they invariably were. It quite put him off girls, but Mummy, kind as always, had said that one must be sorry for them, poor things. She called him and Hugo Ancient Greeks. She had been very kind to Hugo’s poor mother, sending her money quite regularly and Hugo had been very touched by that: he, too, was fond of his mother. He had, actually, fallen a bit in love with Hugo and for a long time he had said nothing about it to anyone, but eventually, it came out. Hugo hadn’t felt as he did, which at the time seemed awful and they’d almost had a row. Of course Mummy knew: she seemed to know everything that mattered to him. “Oh, darling, what rotten bad luck,” she had said: she was wonderfully broad-minded; most mothers would have got tremendously worked up, but Mummy was not like that. After that, Hugo hadn’t come at all to Hatton for a bit, and by the time he had found Rowena and was a bit in love with her he didn’t mind Hugo being there at all. But it had never been the same with him again. But then, Hugo had ensconced himself in his house and seduced his wife—a really dirty trick. And she wouldn’t have another child, although Mummy said really she ought to—a son and a brother for Sebastian. But lately, Louise had even been difficult about bed, said she didn’t want it and she was tired. He thought that that was probably because, poor little thing, her throat had made her really run down. After her operation, he was going to see to it that she had a proper holiday—he thought the Scilly Isles might be good for her. Sea air and a quiet life, if her friend Stella could go with her. He so wanted her to get well and happy again.
Meanwhile, he had his problems. They were very likely to offer him the command of one of the newer destroyers to take to the Pacific which was a pretty exciting thought. It would make a triumphant culmination of his career in the Navy. Not many Wavy Navy officers had got that far. But Mummy, who said she had given the matter a good deal of thought (and, of course, she had discussed this with the Judge), said that this was the moment for him to go into politics. There would be an election once the war was over here, and Mummy said the PM was keen on getting Conservative candidates from the Services, and obviously, with a bit of a name already, he stood a good chance of getting in. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to become a Member of Parliament, but it might be a bit of a lark to go for it and see what happened. He’d told Louise about all this over dinner, which had been rather a dreary affair as so many restaurants were closed on Sunday evenings. But they’d gone to the Savoy.
“If you stayed in the Navy, how long would you be away?” she had asked.
“Darling, I don’t know. Until the Japanese surrender. We’re doing quite well out there now, taking Rangoon and all that, but it could be anything up to eighteen months or so, I should think.”
“And if you went into politics?”
“I’d come out of the Navy, we’d buy a nice house in London and, with any luck, you’d become an MP’s wife.”
“Oh.”
“What do you think?”
“I thought you wanted to be a painter.”
“Darling, I shall never stop painting. But, as you know, I’m a vulgar sort of chap who likes to make his mark in other ways as well.”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to decide. After all, it’s your life.”
“It’s both our lives,” he said, wishing that this had already occurred to her. “The first thing is to get you well again.”
In the train he could minutely recall her face, although, funnily enough, he couldn’t draw her from memory. But he knew how the creases in her eyelids made a pretty curve over her eyes (but also how they were different from one another), how her cheekbones ran into the top of her ears so that her face was almost pointed, how her eyebrows had a sharp angle on them so that they were almost like shallow roots over her eyes, how her hair sprang from a widow’s peak which to her chagrin, was just off centre but, as he had pointed out, would only matter if she had happened to live in the sixteenth century, how she would bite the inside of her bottom lip when she was thinking, and, above all, what an extraordinary contrast her face presented full face, from her profile when her large rather beaky nose predominated. Full face, one had no idea of its prominence (she hated her profile), but this made her most interesting to draw from a three-quarters angle. He loved her appearance, and although she was turning out to be a more complicated creature than he had first thought her, he was glad that he had married her.
When he had left her at the hospital, Louise had felt pretty nervous. The last time he had done that everybody had been horrible, which had been almost as bad as
the pain. But the hospital was quite different. She was taken to a bare little room that contained nothing but a high bed, a washstand basin, a small table beside it, a chair and a small wardrobe for her clothes. She was invited to undress and get into bed. Thereafter a series of people came to see her: a nurse to take her temperature and blood pressure, the anaesthetist who asked her if she had any false teeth and finally the Sister, who was both formidable and reassuring. “Sorry we have to starve you this evening,” she said. “But Mr. Farquhar’s operating at eight o’clock. What I should like you to do now is to get a good night’s sleep. There’s a bell there if you want anything.”
“Does the operation take a long time?”
“Oh, no. It’s very quick. You will have rather a sore throat afterwards, but that will soon wear off.”
When she had gone, Louise lay, listening to the distant traffic in Tottenham Court Road. She did not feel nervous any more. These nurses seemed kind and efficient and as for the operation—she did not care about that. She would not, she felt, even care very much if she died from it. Ever since she had learned of Hugo’s death she had felt a little mad: as though it simply wasn’t possible to be responsible for herself, so if a very expensive doctor killed her by mistake she would merely be relieved of the seemingly endless efforts of pretending to be somebody who had interests, opinions and feelings. She was quite good at the pretence; it was, after all, simply acting, something that was becoming second nature to her, and it didn’t matter very much, but it was an effort and she felt tired all the time.
She had not forgiven Michael for destroying Hugo’s letter, but as the weeks had gone by in the Station Hotel, she had come to see that he, Michael, had absolutely no idea about how much it had mattered to her, and although he had done this awful thing, he had not at all known how awful it was, which somehow exonerated him—and made her feel that her resentment was irrational. But when she knew that she would never see him again, that there never could be another letter, then, locked in the impotence of her grief, she raged at Michael, attributing actual malice to his destruction. None of this was apparent: it was her secret life; he did not tell her things—he had not told her about Hugo and it transpired that he had seen the newspaper, though not when it came out. She had been sickened by his attempts to exonerate Zee, and when, one day, he had started to say he was sorry he hadn’t told her about Hugo, she had cut him short saying that she never wished to speak of Hugo with him again in her life. She would not go to Hatton either, she said. He had accepted these strictures with surprising meekness, but he had gone on in bed as though everything was the same.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 143
