The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  It was Richard who shocked him. Outwardly, he looked much as he had at the wedding – a bit puffier in the face and his hair was thinner – but it was the rest of him, his frightful unhappiness, which it took time to perceive. To begin with, he thought that Richard was rather spoiled and peevish; he also seemed to take an almost infantile delight in irritating Nora. His main objects in life were to get cigarettes and smoke them when she was absent and to drink anything he could lay his hands on. He recruited Christopher to help him in both these ploys. ‘You don’t have to tell her. I only want a bit of fun, which, God knows, is in short supply in this place.’ When Nora discovered that he had been enlisted, she gave him a tremendous talking to. ‘It’s bad for Richard,’ she said. ‘People who can hardly move have trouble enough with their lungs anyway – and smoking would be the last straw.’ And ‘We simply cannot afford drink here. And it would really be most unfair if Richard had some and the others didn’t. I do want to be fair.’

  So the next time that Richard asked him to buy cigarettes, he said he thought he should not, and explained why. He was naïve enough to think that that would be that, but, of course, it wasn’t.

  It was winter, and he spent a good part of the day sawing wood into logs for the communal day-room fire. One late afternoon, he went into the small sitting room that Nora kept for her and Richard’s use, with a basket of logs, and found him slumped sideways in his chair. It was in its usual position in a corner of the room so that he could look out of the window, which Nora said that he liked to do. When he went to help him upright, Richard said, ‘Been trying … no bloody good … not a thing I can do.’

  Tears of frustration were rolling down his face, and mucus from his nose. Christopher got a paper handkerchief to mop him up.

  ‘Blow my nose,’ he said as, at the same time, they both heard Nora coming.

  ‘Goodness, it’s cold in here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Christopher, you might have kept the fire up. We don’t want poor Richard getting pneumonia.’ (He had just sneezed.)

  ‘I’ve only just got in,’ he said, as he knelt to make up the fire.

  ‘Soon it will be tea-time,’ Nora was saying. ‘Mrs Brown has made some lovely scones and there’s that rhubarb jam you like so much.’ Richard sneezed again. ‘Oh, darling! Are you getting one of your colds?’

  ‘Oh, I think I’m aiming at pneumonia,’ he answered, in the special tone, both childish and sardonic, that he used so often with her, and to which, Christopher had noticed, she seemed impervious.

  ‘Well,’ she said comfortably, ‘we’ll do everything we can to prevent that, but if you should get a touch, even of bronchitis, the doctor says there is a brilliant new drug that kills the bug off. So, there’s no need to worry. I’ll go and get the tea.’

  When she had gone, Richard, without any expression, said, ‘I don’t want the bug killed off. I want to die. It’s about the only thing I do want.’ He had met Christopher’s eye at the end of saying this. There was no doubt that he meant exactly what he said, and Christopher was appalled.

  He went and sat by him. ‘Isn’t there anything I can do?’

  ‘Well, you could help me to drink myself to death, which would be marginally more pleasant than pneumonia. I don’t think that Dr Gorley has a new drug to cure one of that. And I think there’s a fag left behind the books up there. You could light that for me. There’s just time before the Angel of Life returns with the exhilarating scones.’

  He fetched the cigarette. It was the last in the small packet. He lit it for Richard and put it between his lips. He inhaled deeply and nodded for Christopher to remove it. Then he smiled. ‘You’re a good sort of chap, I know you are. One of the worst things about being me is other people knowing all the time what’s best for me. They don’t. I’ll be the judge of that. Another drag, please.

  ‘I begin to see what polar bears must feel like in a zoo,’ he said, after the second inhalation. ‘Trapped. Unable to do any of the things that normal polar bears would do if they weren’t kept prisoner. Of course, I’m supposed to have resources unavailable to bears so far as we know. Intellectual, spiritual resources – or so Father Lancing would say. But unfortunately,’ he smiled again and, for a second, Christopher saw how charming he must once have been, ‘they seem to have passed me by. I can’t even read. I’d be better off if I was a dog.’

  At once he thought of Oliver’s death, of holding him while the fatal injection was delivered.

  ‘I think I see what you mean,’ he said, as he administered the cigarette for the third time. ‘She does mean well,’ he added: he felt sorry for Nora too.

  ‘Oh, yes. I don’t think,’ he said wearily, ‘that I ever forget that. One more drag. She’ll be back in a minute. And then put it in your mouth if you wouldn’t mind. She always smells the smoke, and she’ll think it’s you. Do you believe in God?’ he asked, after his last drag.

  ‘I’m – wondering about that.’

  ‘You’re an honest sort of chap, aren’t you?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I do my damnedest not to. If he exists, and therefore is responsible for my condition, the implications are too bloody terrifying—’

  ‘Here we are!’ Nora barged open the door with the tray. ‘Oh, Christopher! It’s not very kind of you to smoke in front of Richard.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He threw the butt into the fire and caught Richard’s eye: he had been watching Christopher, and winked.

  The next time he saw Father Lancing – he had taken to visiting him after supper sometimes – he told him about this occasion. ‘He is so desperately unhappy. When he told me he wanted to die, I could quite see why.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And while I can see that Nora is wonderfully selfless, I do sometimes feel that she is wrong.’

  ‘Not incompatible.’ Father Lancing was packing his small black pipe.

  ‘And I can see why he doesn’t want to believe in God.’

  ‘So can I.’

  ‘Nora does. She once told me that her greatest comfort was being able to talk to God.’

  There was a short silence. ‘You know, talk’s a fine thing but, when it comes to God, listening is probably more important.’ He was lighting his pipe. ‘That is partly what prayer is for. To indicate that you want to listen.’ Then he added ruminatively, ‘People are often dubbed selfless when they do things that we wouldn’t want to do. To be selfless is a high state. Most of us only manage it for a few minutes at a time.’

  ‘What can I do for them?’

  ‘Do you love them?’

  He thought. ‘No, I don’t think I do. I just feel awfully sorry for them.’

  ‘Try to love them. Then you will have a far clearer idea of what to do.’

  By the time this conversation took place, he knew Father Lancing quite well. Father Lancing brought communion to some of the inmates of the house, and there were one or two people who were able to be taken to church; Christopher was assigned this task by Nora soon after his arrival. He had been confirmed at school, but he had not gone to church – except for that one time in Sussex – since the end of his education. After a few weeks, Father Lancing suddenly asked him to tea, and he went. The priest lived in a large dank house with a small, silent housekeeper, who was like a wispy little ghost, he thought, since when she spoke, which was seldom, it was in a tiny high-pitched whisper. Father Lancing worked extremely hard: Christopher did not at first recognize that the invitation was squeezed between parish duties, and it did not occur to him to wonder why he had been asked; he innocently thought that his host must be lonely, living alone as he did, but he slowly became aware that this was not so: when he was not conducting services, he was visiting, going to meetings; he loved children and music and much of his energy was spent upon promoting his choir and helping the local elementary school with their outings and festivities. He was High Anglican and some people in the village did not like this, and journeyed to another church on Sundays, but his church was comfortably full and he heard confessi
ons there twice a week. The first time that Christopher went to see him, Father Lancing asked what had brought him to Frensham, and he had explained about feeling useless after Oliver’s death, and wanting to be of some use to somebody. During those sessions, he was always encouraged to talk about himself, and quite soon he felt that Father Lancing knew more about him than anyone else and, soon after that, than he knew about himself.

  Their conversations always graduated to philosophy – or, rather, Christian philosophy. For instance, after Christopher had told him about Polly and the blow of discovering that, after her unhappy love affair, she had found someone else who was not him and she was to be married – ‘So she would never have loved me’ – Father Lancing had said, ‘But you loved her, and that was a gift.’

  ‘A gift?’

  ‘Surely. Love is a great gift.’

  ‘Like faith, you mean?’

  ‘Well, you could say that faith was another kind of love, couldn’t you? How does that strike you?’

  And so on.

  After the conversation about Richard and Nora, he went back to the house full of determination to love them. It was easier to love Richard, he discovered, than his sister. He tried talking to her about Richard, saying that it might be good for him to be allowed some pleasures even if they were not particularly good for him, but she had talked him down at once. ‘I know you mean well, Christopher,’ she had finished, ‘but, unfortunately, meaning well isn’t the whole story. I’ve worked with these people for years now, and I really do know best what is good for them.’

  ‘You mean well, then,’ he had not been able to resist saying and she had answered blithely: ‘Of course I do! How could you think anything else?’

  By now, he was going to church because he wanted to. He also suggested to Father Lancing that he go to Confession, and the priest said that it was on Tuesdays and Fridays, and gave him a book. ‘That will give you some idea of the form,’ he said.

  He went. He had thought to begin with that he had not a great deal to confess but, when it came to the point, there seemed to be a surprising amount. He was also surprised that Father Lancing did not make any moral comment, but confined himself to asking quite practical questions like ‘How many times?’ After it, when he had been given his absolution and penance, he went into the church and prayed, incandescent with good intentions.

  He quickly found that they did not last or, rather, that in the wear and tear of daily life, he forgot them. He seemed to be surrounded by sad and unhappy people, and when he found how hard it was to make anything better for them, he resented their unhappiness.

  Then one day, when he was in the woodshed, sawing away at a particularly intractable piece of elm, it came to him that he wanted a quite different kind of life, and something that Father Lancing had said that a monk had told him came back. ‘You can put yourself in the centre of the universe, or you can put God. You cannot put another person there.’ At the time, though he had listened politely, he had not thought he agreed, but now, suddenly, it was clear to him. He most certainly did not want to be the centre of his universe – and that left God.

  He rushed to Father Lancing with this news. It was received calmly; he was almost piqued by how calm the priest was about it.

  ‘But what do you want to do about that?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought I should go into some community. I thought I should become a monk.’

  ‘Did you, now?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t seem to be much good in the world. I think I’d be better out of it.’

  Father Lancing did not reply at once. He was engaged upon knocking out his evil-smelling pipe. Then he said, ‘Well. I don’t think anyone will want to receive you if you’re running away from the world. It’s more a question of running towards something than running away.’

  Towards God? Yes – that’s what I mean!’

  Father Lancing put his hands on Christopher’s shoulders.

  ‘I could send you to someone who would talk to you,’ he said. ‘It might clarify things for you and it will do no harm.’

  So he had gone to Nashtun Abbey. He spent two days there, and had several long sessions about his possible vocation. The place both enchanted and charged him. There he discovered, as well as much else, that if he was accepted, he would spend two to three years as a postulant and eventually become a novice during which he would be free to leave at any time.

  He returned to Frensham in an exalted state of mind; he had no doubts, no fears, he knew. It only remained for him to be accepted.

  Weeks passed, and he heard nothing. He went to Father Lancing.

  ‘Father Gregory has written to me about you,’ he said. ‘He feels that you need time and instruction to understand more about what you want to do – to know whether you have a vocation. I see your face fall. Do you think you know everything? Well, people do think that. Spiritual fantasy is much like any other kind. Repetition and you always come out on top. Is that it?’

  It was a bull’s eye. He felt himself going red.

  ‘If you want further instruction, I have been asked to give it to you, so don’t despair, St Christopher.’ But he smiled so sweetly when he said this that Christopher was able to laugh with him.

  ‘You and Father Lancing. What are you up to?’ Nora asked, when Christopher asked for time to go and see him.

  ‘He’s teaching me things.’

  ‘Oh, good. He’s a wonderful man, I think. And it makes me very happy that you’ve started going to church.’

  Richard was not so happy. ‘I can see you’re getting sucked in. You’ll soon have first-class reasons for denying yourself – and me, come to that.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ He’d decided to collude about the cigarettes and he bought half a bottle of whisky every month which he pretended to share with Richard – actually, he cunningly drank cold tea.

  He told Father Lancing that he did not want to tell anyone yet of his intention. By now he was having arguments with him, and once, when he had an appointment to see him and he was not there, he felt furiously angry – which, when they next met, Father Lancing knew at once.

  ‘You’re angry with me because I had to do something else. Why? Are you more important than the next person?’

  ‘I thought you could have let me know.’

  ‘Perhaps I could have done that. I was at the hospital, and I didn’t want to leave the person I was with. That’s about the colour of it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t see, but you will.’

  There was the turning to Polly’s street. He looked down it as the bus passed, but he was not sure if he could see her house.

  He had not wanted to go to the wedding, and when Father Lancing asked him why not, he said because he was afraid of how it might make him feel.

  ‘If that is the reason, you’d certainly better go. Anyway, what about your cousin? Didn’t you say she was very fond of you and won’t that mean that she would want you to be there?’

  ‘Well, yes, but I didn’t think that was the most important thing.’

  ‘The most important thing is you, is it? Your spiritual state?’

  He looked at his friend dumbly, trapped, because he did think so and realized that Father Lancing didn’t.

  ‘I’m trying to give things up,’ he said at last.

  ‘Ah, that’s it. The problem with that is that it’s when your spiritual pride gets a real look in – has a field day, you might say. God can do without you congratulating yourself for loving Him.’ But he said it with such kindness that Christopher found he could bear it.

  ‘I do see,’ he said. ‘I’ll go.’

  It had been a very strange occasion for him. He had knelt in the church, praying that she would be happy – had chosen the right person. It seemed odd that she would have children whom he would never see, that he would know nothing of her from this day on. She had arrived, and was being led up the aisle by her father, followed, he could see, by Lydia and, he thought, Uncle Rupert’s youngest
daughter. Her face, covered by a veil, was not visible. But her voice, as she made her vows, was absolutely clear. After they had been into the vestry and she was walking back down the aisle with her husband, her veil was thrown from her face and he saw her and how happy she was.

  When, at the reception, he eventually reached the end of the line waiting to congratulate her, her face lit up, and she stepped forward to kiss him saying, ‘Gerald, this is Christopher – my most dear cousin.’

  Whether it was the glistening white satin, the veil, the pearls round her throat, her radiant dark blue eyes or all of these things he did not know, but light seemed to stream from her – he felt struck, and speechless from it, and for a second he was afraid that he still loved her. And then he was simply glad that he loved her and this was accompanied by a feeling of living peace.

  ‘… and you must come and stay,’ she was saying. And her husband was smiling and saying of course he must.

  He wanted to tell her then, but it was neither the time nor the place. For the rest of the party, during the speeches, the toasts, the general rejoicing, he tried to see as many of the family as possible – say his silent farewells. Clary, thin and with long hair and wearing a green dress, was the only one who regarded him steadily (he had never noticed before how lovely her eyes were), was the only one who noticed that he had changed. ‘I don’t know exactly how, but you have. You look as though you’ve found something good,’ she said.

  ‘I have.’

  Then she had grinned at him and looked more like the girl he remembered – whose face was smudged and whose clothes seemed always to be torn or spattered with fruit juice. The Duchy, who seemed a little smaller but otherwise just the same. And Uncle Hugh, who looked so different he seemed almost jolly – ‘The last wedding we met at you were wearing my trousers, do you remember?’ he said – and more cousins. Simon and Teddy, resplendent in morning dress, pleased to see him, and both mentioned that camp in the wood. He’d been trying to get away from things then – he’d always been trying to get away because he had not found what to go towards …