The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  ‘How did you stop her?’ Hugh had said, laughing. Everything his daughter did amused and delighted him.

  ‘I told her that it was very unkind to Riley. I said he had to have special food because of his fur. She stopped after that but, as usual, she had the last word.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Oh, that she wouldn’t at all mind growing fur all over her body and then she wouldn’t have to wear clothes.’

  ‘She’d make a wonderful cat.’

  ‘I told her you would be miserable if she turned into one.’

  Why are we having a light-hearted conversation? Jemima thought, as she removed the plates of fish and salad and fetched the raspberries. I know his head is bad, and he’s awfully upset about Edward and worried about Simon not wanting to be in the firm – not seeming to want anything – and, of course, and probably worst of all, his mother dying. For a moment she thought of the funeral – the church full of flowers, and practically all the family, and Myra Hess coming, quite unexpectedly, to play ‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring’ on the awful little upright piano. That was almost the best part; all the Duchy’s children had been so touched and delighted.

  Afterwards, they’d all gone back to Home Place where Mrs Tonbridge had made a wonderful spread before attending the service, and an atmosphere of wary jollity had been upheld. All three brothers had made little eulogies in the church. It had been a good send-off. The smaller grandchildren had been left at Home Place – in Polly’s case, at home with her husband. But Teddy and Simon, Louise, Clary and Archie, with Harriet and Bertie, who had had many happy holidays thanks to the Duchy, Zoë with Juliet, Lydia, who had managed a day off from her repertory company, had all come. Only Roland had been absent, as Villy had refused her invitation on the grounds that she didn’t want to see Edward, and she wouldn’t let Roland go without her. Really, Jemima now considered, she had been afraid of meeting Diana, who had mercifully stayed away.

  It was odd, she thought, how being content – no, happy – with her own life (Hugh was the most caring and loving husband anyone could have) made her anxious about everyone else. No, that wasn’t – as most things are not – entirely true: her boys (her twins) had accepted the new situation with astonishing ease, no jealousy of their new stepfather, no discomfort about no longer being the centre of her life. They had relished having a father, in fact, and he had been a very good one. They had also been resigned to Laura, first a boring baby and chronically a girl. ‘I suppose, Mum, there’s no hope that she might change – you know, grow into being a boy?’ But, disabused of this idea, they had settled down to her being endlessly rotten at catching a ball, having to be read the same soppy stories again and again, and not really understanding the rules of Monopoly or Racing Demon. They were certainly helped in this by her total, uncritical admiration for everything they did.

  No, it was Simon she worried about. He was thirty now, but in many ways he seemed older than that. He had always been withdrawn, silent most of the time, an onlooker. He seemed not to have made any friends at either of the schools Hugh had sent him to or after he had left, and his dutiful letters home told them nothing. Apparently his school reports had been blandly noncommittal, excepting for his music master, who said that he had a talent to which he should pay more attention. Recently he had expressed a wish to stay with Polly – the only person, she had noticed, at the funeral to whom he seemed visibly attached. So that had been arranged and he had stayed almost a month with her.

  Then he had asked if he might spend a week at Home Place, and Rachel had said of course he could. ‘After all, it has been his home for most of his life,’ she’d added. But he must have heard talk of the house being given up now and Jemima guessed that this must disturb him.

  She wouldn’t talk to Hugh about it this evening: it would only upset him even more. But when she had finally assembled the tray with the fruit and the cheese, Hugh said that he was getting bitten by midges or something, could they finish the meal indoors?

  He helped her as much as he could, clearing the supper table (it was astonishing what he could do with one hand), and they settled in the kitchen in a peaceable silence, broken by his suddenly asking whether she wanted another baby. At the same moment she became aware of the twins standing on the bottom step of the basement stairs.

  ‘We came down very quietly so as not to frighten you,’ Tom said, not meaning it at all.

  ‘It’s time you were in bed.’

  ‘We know that. The thing is we don’t think we’ll sleep much as we’re so hungry.’ Henry smiled engagingly.

  ‘You had an enormous supper.’

  ‘We had a perfectly ordinary supper ages ago. You shouldn’t exaggerate, Mum. Anyhow, now we’re both starving.’

  ‘It was only fish pie, and we don’t count fish much as food.’

  ‘And raspberries and cream are jolly nice, but you can’t count fruit as real food either.’

  ‘What would be real?’ Hugh had lit a cigarette, and the question was asked in a friendly non-combative manner.

  ‘Well, what we’d like now—’

  ‘Need now,’ his brother interrupted, ‘would be something like bacon and eggs.’

  ‘Or a smelly cheese sandwich, which would be less trouble.’ Tom had spotted the Brie on the table.

  ‘We could make it ourselves, Mum.’

  Hugh looked at Jemima, who shrugged. ‘OK. You win. Only bring me the bread and the bread board. You always make a mess of the loaf.’

  While the sandwiches were being made, Henry said, ‘You know, we actually need these because we’re growing so much. You need more food when you’re doing that.’

  This was true. They already topped her by a head.

  ‘If we feed you like this, about six meals a day,’ Hugh said, ‘you’ll end up being nine feet tall.’

  This delighted them. ‘We could be in a circus as the tallest people in England.’

  ‘The world, probably.’

  Practically all conversations were carried out with both of them at once.

  ‘Now take your food upstairs to your room, and don’t wake Laura.’

  ‘Wake Laura? You must be mad, Mum. We don’t want to start hearing about her soppy bear. Of course we won’t wake her.’

  ‘It’s good she goes to bed earlier than we do: it gives us a bit of grown-up time without her spoiling it.’

  Perfunctory hugs and they were gone.

  ‘Peace,’ she said. Hugh stretched out his good hand across the table. ‘You have such exceptionally nice children, I just thought you might want more of them.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I want what you want.’

  ‘Oh, but past that!’ He had such kind eyes that it was difficult to find the true person behind them. ‘I mean, are you secretly wishing for them, or longing for me to feel the same? You remember we had a pact not to conceal things from each other? Well, I feel that you’re beginning to do that. I want to know what you think, not what you think I want you to think.’

  There was what seemed to Jemima a very long silence. He had withdrawn his hand, rubbing it now across his head, and seeing this, she said, ‘Darling Hugh, let’s talk about it tomorrow.’

  ‘No. I wasn’t concealing anything from you. The truth is that I don’t know. Of course if we had another I would love it. But I’m not sure I could bear you going through all that again. When you had Laura, my chief fear was that I might lose you.’

  There was another silence during which they both remembered the prolonged and agonising labour into which she had gone so lightly. ‘I had the twins quite easily, darling, and we know there’s only one this time,’ she had said. She knew that Sybil had lost Wills’ twin and that it had left an enduring mark. But hours had passed, and he had had to watch her strength and courage ebbing away …

  Twenty-four hours later, Laura had joined them, bloodied, crying – and perfect. But it had been an ordeal for both of them. Custom had changed. He had not witnessed Sybil’s labour, but with J
emima he had been present throughout. During those hours he had been beset by the nightmare of her not surviving, of possibly being left with a new-born baby, and her own children orphaned. When they were alone, while the baby was being bathed, he had held her hand with a small rocking movement. Though he was smiling, tears had streamed from his eyes – the relief had overwhelmed him.

  ‘I think,’ he said now, with difficulty, ‘that I’m content to stay as we are. But only if you feel the same. Laura has enough cousins. She doesn’t need a sibling. There.’

  ‘There,’ she repeated. She got up from the table and began to clear it of food. ‘Better get on with this before they come down wanting another giant snack. You’re so sweet to them, Hugh. They’re nearly as lucky to have you as I am. No, you go on up, this won’t take me a minute.’

  ‘What does “there” mean?’

  ‘It means I agree with you.’

  ‘I thought it did. Just wanted to make sure.’

  SIMON, POLLY AND GERALD

  He’d got through absolutely awful homesickness at his prep school, but when he’d had to go on to Radley, his public school, it had started all over again. One got used to muffled sobbing in the dorms at night but, except for the inevitable bullying, nobody said anything. It wouldn’t have been good form – a mysterious state that seemed to involve a whole lot of things one didn’t do or say. At home (Home Place) he had early learned that his mother dying had upset his father, and Polly and Wills – but how could Wills be upset – he couldn’t remember her at all. Funnily enough, though, he’d told Simon he did remember feeling hopelessly sad – and you couldn’t talk to anyone about that because they would simply think you were odd. The one great thing Simon had learned from his schools was never to stand out. Be as much like everyone else as you possibly could. Now he wondered whether that applied to the rest of life, too. Because trying to be like everyone else was not only tiring but dull. He had noticed recently that he was bored nearly all the time. Dad and Jemima were quite kind – well, very kind, really – considering he was an outsider: the twins had their own life and Laura was just a small girl. The house in Ladbroke Grove had never been much like home, not like Home Place.

  The only house Simon liked to be in was Fakenham Hall because it had Polly in it. He loved her more than anyone else, and because of her, he had even felt quite good about Gerald, who had never asked him those awful stock questions like was he at university, and what did he want to be after that.

  He had spent a month with them: Neville didn’t need him and they were not going away anywhere because Polly had started another baby. They had decided to spruce up part of their huge, rambling garden, which meant rooting up a whole lot of half-dead shrubs and burning them. They hadn’t asked him to help, but he did, and found that he enjoyed it. When the weather was bad, he played the old Broadwood piano that lived in one of the unused rooms. It had a satinwood case and was badly out of tune, but he could play it without anyone being there. Polly got a piano tuner to come and tune it for him, and he had secretly started to compose a piano sonata, which he was going to dedicate to her when he had finished it. But mostly it was a hot, sunny August and he had found that he no longer wanted to stay in bed in the mornings because he wouldn’t know what on earth to do if he got up. Gerald had a book on gardening and together they started to take cuttings from the worn-out parterre of box, and then – more wildly – of various other shrubs. In between they had picnic lunches made by Polly and their old Nan – lovely food, cold sausage sandwiches and apple turnovers and figs and grapes from the crumbling greenhouses, with cider, and lemonade made by Polly. The children joined them for this, and once, afterwards, Eliza and Jane had insisted that they should all go and watch them practising for the gymkhana, their first.

  And Andrew had cried because he hadn’t got his own pony. ‘But it would be no good, Andrew,’ Jane said, and Eliza chimed in, ‘There simply isn’t a pony small enough for you to ride.’

  And Gerald had immediately said, ‘I’m a very small pony, you can ride me.’ He had cantered about the field with Andrew on his back – done the bending poles and even attempted one of the small jumps. By then he was the colour of a tomato and completely out of breath, and Andrew was laughing in triumph, and begged to do it again, but Polly had said that was enough, and that Gerald was closed until well after tea.

  ‘Closed? Like a shop, do you mean?’

  ‘Just like one.’

  ‘I don’t think people close like shops, Mummy.’

  She was sitting with her back against the shady oak, and Gerald had cast himself on the ground beside her. On inspiration, Simon had got his pen and written ‘CLOSED’ on a paper napkin and laid it on Gerald’s chest.

  ‘We can’t read that word,’ Jane said. ‘We only read short words.’

  ‘It says “Closed”, and you could read it if you tried.’

  ‘I can read it,’ Andrew said. ‘It says “Closed”. I can read any word if I want to.’

  In the end Simon offered to take the girls to unsaddle their fat, sweating ponies and turn them out into their paddock, and Andrew insisted on going with him. This earned him grateful smiles from the parents. ‘I think we’ll all knock off until five,’ Gerald had said. ‘It’ll be cooler then.’

  He had no sooner helped the little girls divest Buttercup and Bluebell of their saddles and opened the gate to the paddock, when Nan appeared, saying it was high time for the children’s nap. There was a token clamour about this, the twins saying that Andrew should go first – ‘He ought to have a longer rest than us.’

  ‘You get those bridles off quick and come into the house. I’m not standing for any more of that palaver again. You’ll do as you’re told.’ She watched while the tack was slipped off and the ponies trotted out of reach into the paddock. Then they all followed her meekly to the kitchen door – Andrew, whom he had prised off the paddock gate, firmly held by her hand. ‘You can tell her ladyship that I’ve got them, and she should go and put her feet up.’

  He said he would, but when he got back to them they were lying, hand in hand, asleep. He wanted to clear up the picnic, to start another bonfire, to root out another barrowload of weeds – he wanted, in fact, to astound them with his usefulness, to become someone they couldn’t do without, so that he could stay there for ever …

  Simon realised, then, that he wasn’t – hadn’t been – bored for weeks. He loved the gardening work but, above all, he loved being treated as an equal by Poll and Gerald. They had discussed their plans for turning the ugly old house into a place for weddings and other events with him, asking him what he thought, and thanking him if he had the smallest idea for their project. They treated him as a grown-up member of their family. Which, in a way, he was. And if they were really going to let parts of the house out for parties, there would surely be a lot of jobs that he could do. He decided to have a serious talk with Poll about it, and meanwhile he would try to get on with his piece of music. He thought then, suddenly, of the Duchy. She would have been interested in his music, although – naturally – she would have noticed that he was nowhere near as good as the Three Bs, as she called them. This had made him wonder whether you could only get really good at something if you did it to the exclusion of anything else. That knocked out his becoming a composer because he certainly didn’t want to spend his whole life glued to a piano and struggling with his awful hand on manuscript paper. Yes, he certainly must have a good talk with Poll, and see what she thought. Without Gerald there, though, he added to himself: he could only talk about something so serious as his whole future with one person at a time.

  EDWARD AND DIANA

  She had certainly pulled all the stops out. Once they were back from France, she had got in touch with a whole clutch of agents, and stuff about houses had poured through the letterbox every morning. He had only stipulated that the place must be within reasonable distance from London as he was going to have to commute.

  Hugh had suggested that he go to Southampton
to run the wharf there, but he suspected that this was simply Hugh trying to get him out of the way to avoid the ceaseless arguments about capital, income and, of course, the bank. The worsening relationship with his brother, to whom he had always been so close, cut him to the heart. He knew that Diana came into this: Hugh maintained (in Edward’s view) a totally unreasoning prejudice. He had made no effort with her at all, refused – with transparent excuses – to dine with them, and never invited them to Ladbroke Grove. Bang went their quiet evenings of chess or bridge. They met occasionally for lunch at one of their clubs, but chiefly in the office, where constant interruptions seemed to mean that they went over the old ground again and again, without ever venturing beyond it. Supposing the bank ceased to wear their steadily increasing overdraft (him); what a dangerous difference it would make to their books if Southampton was to go (Hugh), and if they were to hang on to Southampton, who should be put in to run it? He was of the opinion that McIver was the best candidate: he’d been with them for thirty years now – hadn’t been called up due to poor eyesight – and worked his way up from office boy in Great Uncle Walter’s time to managing one of the London sawmills. But Hugh had insisted that the place must be run by a Cazalet. Which would mean Rupert, who, bless his heart, was not cut out for running anything, or Teddy, who, though promising, was not really experienced enough.

  ‘We’re nearly there, darling. Slow down a bit, it’s a very small turning.’

  With a jolt, with relief, he was back in the present – always his best place. They were going to look at a house just outside Hawkhurst, and Diana had the agent’s instructions on her lap.

  ‘Now! This is it. There it is!’

  It stood on a small eminence above them, a rectangular stone house with a slate roof, and a portico with two stone pillars each side of the front door. It was in what might once have been its small park, but was now let to farmers for grazing. He stopped the car for a moment so that they could look at it from afar. A plain house that had a kind of mini-grandeur about it that he knew she would love.