The Cazalet Chronicles Collection

by Elizabeth Jane Howard

  His decision to visit Southampton twice a week turned out to be far more taxing than he had thought it would be. To begin with, it forced him to recognise that times had indeed changed. His father had bought the site just before the war. It had been cheap, as the company that had owned it had gone bankrupt. He had built the sawmill, and it had thrived, until Southampton was badly bombed during the war, and a great many of the businesses round the mill had been razed to the ground. The docks were a sea of rubble, of broken glass, of burned-out buildings, of boarded-up shops and houses. Very little of the port remained intact, but the main hotel, the Polygon, had survived and so, miraculously, had the Cazalets’ wharf and sawmill. They had taken the precaution of putting the most valuable hardwoods into the river, and so, apart from one or two minor fires, the wharf had been able to continue trading. It had fared better than London, in fact, where the business had been badly damaged by the Blitz. Then – timber being regarded as an essential commodity – the War Damage Commission had coughed up, and they were able to rebuild. So, over the years, everyone had been preoccupied with London and had not paid much attention to Southampton. Much had changed there. Rebuilding the docks had gone ahead, and the Cazalets’ monopoly had dwindled. In particular, their arch rival, Penton and Ward, had started up after the war and taken a good deal of business off them. Added to that, it had proved disastrous putting Teddy in charge. He simply didn’t have the experience, although he had inherited Edward’s talent for selling.

  When Hugh first started going down, he had found much more of a mess than he had expected. The order book was chaotic, morale was low, and orders constantly went astray. Several firms had written saying that in view of the delays in delivery and ‘other matters’ they were moving their custom. This appalled him. There seemed to be no loyalty, no sense of tradition left.

  He discovered that there was a split between the sawmill and the office: an atmosphere of non-cooperation and blame prevailed. ‘The manager just doesn’t like me,’ Teddy said. ‘I’m no good at figures.’

  A little later, he saw McIver, who admitted to him, ‘With respect, he doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time. The men don’t trust him, Mr Hugh, and that’s a fact.’

  He got back home to Jemima at half past eight.

  ‘I don’t think this is a good idea. Wouldn’t it be better if you stayed down one night and did two days running?’

  In the old days he would have stuck to his guns and argued, but that evening he felt he had no guns left and agreed. While she got him a whisky, a horrible fear assaulted him: that it was all no good, that he had made a mess of everything, let his father down, the whole family. He feared, too, that Edward had been right, that they should have sold out years ago. Now, when there was a serious crisis and a need for bold, energetic leadership, he felt drained of all ideas and energy to do anything.

  ‘I’m making scallops and bacon for us. You just sit and have your drink in peace. You’ll feel much better when you’ve got some food inside you.’

  Like most women, he thought, Jemima was a firm believer in food as the answer to almost anything. As he sipped his drink, he had a sudden vivid memory of lying in the hospital in France, just after his hand had been amputated, and Edward appearing in the ward like magic – the only person in the world whom he wanted to be with. Edward had made a joke about how he’d got into the ward, and he’d wanted to laugh, but he’d cried instead. Edward had sat with him and mopped his brow with one of his wonderful silk handkerchiefs, and when he’d got up to go he’d actually kissed him, and told him to look after himself. ‘You too,’ he had muttered, and Edward had winked and said, ‘You bet.’

  Matron had arrived, and now stood implacably by. ‘Look after him especially well, won’t you?’ Edward had said. ‘Because he’s my brother.’ She had actually smiled and replied that of course she would, Major.

  Then he had stood up and strode away down the ward, and Hugh had watched the doors gently swinging after he had gone. He remembered being afraid that he would never see him again.

  Of course this feud must stop. He must tell Edward that he had been wrong, and the only way to put things right was for them to work together in perfect agreement. He had not been good about Edward’s marriage, either. He had felt very much for poor Villy, but it had helped no one to take sides about it. Perhaps he could beg more time from the bank. Perhaps they should sell Southampton. That should produce enough money to keep the bank quiet about the rest of the loan.

  These random thoughts circulated at increasing speed until he could feel one of his really bad heads coming on. He got out his pills and took two.

  Jemima called him from the kitchen, and he hoisted himself up to walk through.

  She knew at once about his head, helped him off with his jacket, loosened his tie and massaged his neck with her wonderful cool, searching fingers. As always on these occasions he took one of her hands and kissed it.

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Much better. Thank you, darling.’

  So at supper he felt able to tell her some of his worries, and about his plan to talk to Edward about selling Southampton. When he came to admit that he hadn’t been nice about Diana, she agreed. ‘One way and another, we have none of us been nice about her. I should think she must feel fairly prickly about the family. It will take time for her to trust us. Supposing I ask her to lunch with me and go shopping afterwards. I have a feeling that she likes shopping …’

  ‘But you hate it!’

  ‘Well, it’s not a very serious thing to hate. And I don’t hate it all that much. Actually, I think I only say that to sound high-minded. Do you think I should have a go?’

  ‘Yes. And now are you too high-minded to come to bed?’

  ‘Well, I am, actually, but I’m prepared to make an exception just for you.’

  As they went upstairs hand in hand, she said, ‘Hugh! I’ve just thought. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to have your accountant there when you and Edward have your talk? He’ll know all the figures and that could be helpful.’

  ‘It would. You’re a genius. I can’t think why I didn’t think that myself.’

  You wouldn’t, my darling, she thought, and smiled. Because it’s the kind of practical thing you never do think.

  TEDDY AND SABRINA

  ‘I was only ringing to say don’t call me on Thursday because my boss is coming down and he doesn’t approve of private calls in office time.’

  ‘Was I meant to be calling you on Thursday?’

  ‘No – not especially. I just thought you might.’

  ‘Well, now, is that all you rang up to say?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve got some good news for us.’

  ‘Do tell, do.’ Immediately she sounded less bored.

  ‘Well, it looks as though I may be transferred to London. Anyway, I’m coming up on Friday night for the weekend.’

  ‘Oh dear! What a grim pity. I’ve promised to go down to the Frankensteins for the weekend.’

  ‘The Frankensteins’ was the nickname she had given her parents.

  ‘Surely you can get out of that.’

  ‘I simply absolutely can’t. I’ve overspent my allowance, and the only way I can get Daddy to produce more money is by being around for a bit. You can’t imagine how ghastly they can be about money. And being a deb does cost a bomb. It was nearly the last Season and Mummy kept saying how lucky I was to do it, but if I’d known what it was going to be like I’d have refused. I had to keep taking taxis everywhere, always leaving at least one glove behind, and having to buy new ones – you couldn’t go to a deb lunch without them – then dances nearly every night with the same old boring chinless titled twits …’

  ‘They can’t all have been like that.’

  ‘Of course they weren’t – not absolutely all – but don’t stop me, Teddy, when I’m trying to be amusing. Anyway, the worst part was pretending to enjoy myself with Lady Frankenstein yawning in her chair against a wall with a string of other old women keeping
beady eyes out for earls or at least eldest sons of earls. And then in the taxi home wanting to know who I danced with, and I could never remember and took to making them up. The whole thing was a ghastly failure from the parentals’ point of view, and now they’re moaning about the expense.’

  She had run out of breath at last. He imagined her with her long blonde hair that kept getting into her eyes, her long narrow nose – too big, people said, for real beauty – signed off by a wide, wandering mouth, also narrow, but relieved at each end by turning up at the corners. She was not pretty, he had decided, from the moment he had spotted her standing alone at the crowded party Louise had taken him to, but she was alone and he didn’t know anyone, so he’d made his way across the room to talk to her.

  She was wearing a sheath dress in some dusky pink material, and the first thing that struck him was her breasts: they seemed to him the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life. The discreet neckline meant, of course, that they were only partly visible, but they surged upwards, smooth and perfectly rounded each side of her fascinating cleavage.

  ‘As you’re here, you’d better tell me your name.’

  ‘Teddy Cazalet.’

  ‘I’m Sabrina Browne Fanshawe. Have you got any small-talk handy?’

  ‘Do you mean, “Do you know many people here?”’

  ‘That sort of thing. I’ve run out of it myself, and I never was much good at the other kind. Most of the people here have careers, so it’s easy for them. They can just take it in turns to talk about themselves.’

  ‘Well, I suppose,’ Teddy said, trying hard (and, he thought, successfully) not to look too much at her breasts, ‘I could talk about you, and you could talk about me.’

  ‘As long as it’s not about my breasts, I don’t mind.’

  Three things happened at once: he felt himself go painfully red in the face (it was like being caught out at school), he was staggered by her perception (incredible intelligence) and he knew he was going to fall in love with her. He was speechless.

  ‘I’m starving, why don’t we go out to dinner?’

  This was a brilliant idea, except he had only a five-pound note on him. ‘Must just tell my cousin. I came with her – but she won’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll meet you where the coats are.’

  He found Louise talking to an attractive man, older than her, wearing an overcoat.

  ‘This is my brother, Teddy Cazalet, Joseph Waring.’

  ‘I just want a word with my sister.’

  ‘I’ll wait outside, Louise, but don’t be long or I shall boil to death.’

  ‘I know you, Teddy. You’ve found some beautiful model, you want to take her out to dinner and you haven’t any money. Here.’ She fished in her purse and pulled out a ten-pound note. ‘It’s my emergency taxi money, but I’m OK with Joseph. Have a good time.’

  ‘Bless you, Louise. I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

  ‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked Sabrina, when he got back to her. ‘The Berkeley, or somewhere like that?’

  ‘Nowhere like that. I’d like a small, dark place with intensely foreign food.’

  So he took her to a Turkish restaurant he used to go to where they ordered a huge plate of mezze with a bottle of house wine (red). Their waiter lit a candle, then brought a plate of flat bread wrapped in a napkin, filled their glasses to the brim and said if they wanted anything they had only to call and he would be instantly with them. ‘My name is Johnnie,’ he added, as he melted away into the dimly lit background.

  ‘I wasn’t joking when I said I was starving. I’ve got so sick of cold chicken and cold salmon that I’ve practically stopped eating anything except Bendicks Bittermints, which are tremendously nourishing.’

  ‘My grandmother told me that in Scotland the servants had a clause in their contracts that they wouldn’t have to eat salmon more than three times a week.’

  ‘Gosh! My grandmother’s never told me anything except to talk more quietly and not touch anything. My family really are a dead loss. The only good thing about them is their horses.’

  ‘Do they have a lot?’

  She had split open a flat bread and was stuffing it with aubergine and tomato and two kinds of olive. ‘A sort of sandwich,’ she said. ‘I adore sandwiches. My mother thinks they’re common except for picnics. She is a truly wondrous snob. You know, most people have areas they’re snobby about – of course they don’t admit it but they do – but she has it about absolutely everything. You aren’t eating!’

  ‘I’m going to copy you. What are you a snob about?’

  She thought for a moment, licking her fingers carefully. ‘Shoes,’ she said at last. ‘And novels. Really pretty shoes that are also comfortable are always very expensive.’

  He would give her a pair for her birthday whenever that might be. ‘How expensive?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps fifty pounds. But some cost a lot more than that.’

  He would not be giving her a pair for her birthday. A worrying thought struck him. ‘Are you frightfully rich?’

  ‘My parents are quite rich. I wouldn’t say frightfully. I haven’t got a bean. And what’s more, I haven’t been brought up to earn any money. The Frankensteins think the only career for a girl is marriage. You haven’t asked me about the novels yet.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about novels, so I wouldn’t know what to ask.’

  ‘Well, I had one good teacher at the ghastly boarding school I was sent to, and she got me interested. She told me to read the best ones first, then go on to the rest. So I did. I wanted to go to university, but Daddy wouldn’t hear of it. He said men didn’t like brainy girls. As though I had to be just what men would like. So here I am – utterly useless. I failed to make a “good marriage” after doing the Season and now none of us knows what on earth to do with me.’

  She said all this as though it was a bit of a joke, but when she pushed her hair out of her eyes, he saw that she didn’t feel it was a joke at all.

  ‘Time to talk about you.’

  So he told her some things about himself. About being a Spitfire pilot and the war ending before he’d had a chance to fight; about his marriage with an American he’d met in a nightclub in Phoenix and how she had mercifully left him and filed for divorce. Then he told her about working in the family firm, about being sent to Southampton and not making a very good fist of it. He didn’t mention any affairs.

  That was the beginning of it. He made the mistake of telling her on that first evening that he had fallen in love with her, and she became querulous and distant. She did not utterly discard him, however, seemed to want his company, was soon treating him like an old friend (or a brother, he sometimes bitterly thought). All through that spring and summer he escaped to London at weekends to spend time with her. He listened and sympathised with her attempts to find a job, getting one, getting fired and trying something else. Her parents allowed her to live in their Berkeley Square flat when they were not using it, on condition that she did a cookery course with Cordon Bleu. But doing this, however half-heartedly, effectively ruled out keeping any other job. She did not seem to understand that her various employers would not take kindly either to unpunctuality or, worse, her failure to turn up at all. Her parents had been harsh or spoiling in all the wrong ways. She was an only child, and he suspected that they had not wanted children at all.

  The curious thing about it, he thought, was that none of this stopped him loving her. Love, he was beginning to understand, was an unconditional state – you didn’t need to judge the beloved, give them marks out of ten for good points and black marks for bad. You accepted the whole package, and with Sabrina he felt pity for her awful background. It was a bit like trying to tame a wild animal who had been ill-treated and could never forget it. It became a matter neither for lust nor sentiment. He would argue with her, disagree, sometimes lose his temper, finding that it was no good pretending to be patient and gentle when he felt nothing of the kind.

  She would sometimes allow him
to kiss her, to hold her in his arms if they were sitting on a sofa, or put one arm round her shoulders in a cinema – indeed, she sometimes seemed to long for these affections – but if for one second he overstepped the fine and, to him, initially invisible line, she would freeze, sulk or, worse, rant at him until she burst into tears. And how do you comfort someone in tears if you may not touch them?

  Back to the telephone: he had an idea.

  ‘Couldn’t I come with you to meet the Frankensteins? You never know, they might have unexpected good taste and take to me.’

  Almost before he finished saying the last bit, she started to reject the idea. ‘Oh, no, Teddy! I couldn’t stand Mummy being rude to you – I’d hit her.’

  ‘I’m deeply touched that you would even think such a thing. But don’t worry, I’m tough, I can take it. You’ve got two options. Either you ring them up and ask them or you just turn up with me as a surprise.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Sabrina, darling, Friday is in two days. Don’t think, just do. And ring me back about which you’ve done.’

  ‘Goodness! You are being masterful,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stop talking to you before you think of more awful things for me to do.’ She rang off.

  He spent the rest of the day trying to find out why an order placed by some builders in Portsmouth six weeks ago had not reached them. It turned out that the wood had been delivered to the wrong builders, a firm with a vaguely similar name. There wasn’t a lorry free to collect it and redeliver the order to the right firm until late next week. McIver, who had imparted this information, stood stolidly by while Teddy raged at everyone’s incompetence, then asked if he might see the order book. He looked at it for what seemed a long time, and then, as he handed it back to Teddy, said, ‘It seems that the error was made in the office. If you’d care to look, Mr Teddy?’

  He looked. It was entirely his fault. Without thinking, he had written the name of the wrong builders. It was true that Cazalets’ dealt with both firms, but that was no excuse. He had been hopelessly careless and one minute’s lack of concentration had caused this mess: a bad mark for the firm. Word would get around and the workforce would rightly sneer at his incompetence. And Uncle Hugh was coming on Thursday and would have to be told about it. He became conscious of McIver watching him, but refused to meet his eye.