Jemima had a very different afternoon. She found, as she had so often found before, that it was perfectly possible to look after a lively and demanding child while continuing to worry about grown-up problems. Hugh would need to get something to do, but what? It was becoming more difficult to get any sort of job when you were over sixty. And, besides, his health was not good although he would never admit it. He had never worked for anybody else in his life – he had gone out to France in the Great War as an officer, and come back to be a director, and ultimately chairman, of the firm. A firm that had now gone bust.
‘Well, I do think you should ring Georgie.’
‘I want him to have a surprise.’
‘So you have said several times.’
‘Because I seriously do want it to be one.’
‘You’re not thinking of the poor goldfish at all. How would you like to be stuffed back in a polythene bag for a very long journey, taken out again for a few days and then stuffed back again for the journey to Georgie’s home?’
There was a long, thick silence while Laura battled with her nature. Virtue won. ‘It’s only because I don’t actually know whether goldfish get car sick.’
Jemima offered to do the telephoning.
‘Only don’t tell anyone what it is. Then at least it can be a surprise here and I can see him being surprised.’
It turned out that Archie was taking a load of stuff from their flat over to Rupert and Zoë; he would pick Laura up and bring her back.
Jemima helped her take half the water out of the fish tank and then balanced it carefully between Laura’s knees as she sat in the front of the car.
She saw them off quite thankfully; it would give her time to finish the packing. But as soon as they were gone, there were the twins back from skating, raging for tea.
‘You can have hot buttered toast and finish the ginger cake, but don’t, I implore you, eat anything else.’
‘She implores us.’ Henry turned to Tom.
‘It’s just hysteria. All right, Mum, we’ll only have what you say. What’s for supper?’
‘Cold ham, salad and baked potatoes. I’ve scrubbed them so you can put them in the oven for me now, before your tea.’
She went upstairs with some relief. There should be time to do practically everyone’s packing in peace. Hugh was still fast asleep.
TEDDY
‘I quite see that you have to go, but why can’t I come with you?’
‘I’ve told you, darling, it’s only family, and, anyway, there are so many of us there wouldn’t be room.’
‘I took you to see my family.’
‘That was different. And it wasn’t exactly a howling success, was it?’
‘How long will you be away?’
‘I don’t know. Four or five days, I should think.’
He pushed her hair away from her face. ‘Darling, do stop being difficult about it. You’ve got your family to go to. Don’t spoil our last evening together.’
‘What do you mean “our last evening”?’
‘Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I have to be down for that.’
‘Oh,’ she said, in a very small voice. ‘I thought you meant for good.’
No, she didn’t. He had come to know all her tricks by now, and he didn’t like them. It wasn’t what she was feeling, it was what she wanted him to think she was feeling. It flashed through his mind that perhaps he would prefer it to be for good, but that was mad: he was in love with her, wasn’t he?
‘I’ll take you out for dinner.’
ARRIVALS
‘That’s all the flowers for the bedrooms – mostly berries, but the sprig of wintersweet in each vase will provide enough scent. If you take them up, I’ll start on the bedrooms.’
But the bedrooms were proving tricky. There were not enough of them for a start, but the children liked sharing. The snag was that she had forgotten how many children were now grown-up. She started to make a list.
Polly, who had not been here since her marriage, should have Hugh’s old room. And presumably Spencer would be with them in the old cot that had been kept for babies. Zoë and Rupert could have their usual room – the one with peacocks on the wallpaper. Hugh and Jemima could have Edward’s old room. Archie and Clary could have the Duchy’s room. Juliet and Louise could share the small room they’d had last year. The day nursery, which was large, could just about take Teddy, Simon, Henry and Tom. That would use up all the camp beds. Harriet, Bertie, Andrew and Polly’s twins could share the night nursery and she could put Polly’s nanny in the Brig’s old dressing room. That left Georgie and Laura. She’d had a surprising postcard that morning: ‘Plese arnt Rachel I want to sleep with Georgie, because I unnerstan him and I love him very MUCH. And I love Rivers. Love from Laura.’
She had left out Villy! And Roland. Well, he could go in with the other boys, but Villy must have a nice room. She had better have mine, she thought, and I will sleep in Sid’s. She had not been able to do this since Sid’s death, but now it was simply something that had to be faced, like so much else.
At five o’clock the house had been quiet, still, encased in the frost that had arrived with the dark. She had wandered restlessly through the rooms, drawing curtains, putting logs on the fires. But after a few minutes she’d heard a car and, wrapping a shawl round her, she went out to meet the first arrivals. It was Polly and her family. The three children scrambled out. ‘Eliza and Jane were both sick in the car, but I wasn’t,’ the boy declared. ‘I was definitely not sick at all.’
Polly hugged her aunt. ‘Oh, Aunt Rach, it’s lovely to be here. This is Gerald,’ and Gerald unexpectedly kissed her.
‘It is,’ he said shyly. ‘Eliza, Jane, Andrew, come and say hello to your great-aunt.’
‘Hello, Aunt Rachel,’ they murmured.
Gerald took Spencer from Nan, and helped her out of the car. She looked like a tiny bird in her nest of warm, sensible clothes. Eileen appeared and offered to help.
‘Come in, children.’
After that there was a steady stream of family arrivals. Laura rushed up and, in a kind of shouted whisper, asked whether her postcard had arrived. Rachel said, yes, it had, but she must talk to Georgie and his parents first, whereupon Laura gave her a very black look. Rupert and Zoë set about unpacking sleeping-bags, and Georgie brought in Rivers’s belongings and allowed Laura to give him some of his supper.
Then Clary, Archie and their two arrived. ‘It’s like coming home,’ Archie said, as he hugged her.
Juliet, who had just extricated her case from the pile in the boot, said, ‘Where am I sleeping, Aunt Rachel?’ No greeting, and she had developed a new drawly voice, as though addressing everyone from a pinnacle of indifference.
‘Hello, Juliet. You’re in the same room as before and you’re sharing it with Louise.’ She was wearing a thick sweater embroidered with white sheep and one black one. She looked stunning – and sulky.
‘Come on, Jules! Help me with the car,’ Rupert called, but she took no notice, simply stalked into the house.
Minutes later, Teddy, Simon and Louise arrived, packed rather tightly into Teddy’s small car. They all seemed pleased to see Rachel.
Clary felt touched to have been given the Duchy’s bedroom. It looked as it always had – white walls, white muslin-covered dressing table, the two Brabazon water-colours of Venice and two sepia photographs of the Duchy’s parents in their late eighties, sitting on a bench in their garden at Stanmore. The blue linen curtains were ragged, and the patchwork quilt that had always covered the bed since Rachel had made it – of blue and white silks – now had gaping holes where some of the blues had rotted. Clary looked at it all, and tears pricked her eyes. It seemed an honour to be there; eddies of grief for the Duchy came and went. It would be awful for her if she was still here, with her whole world crashing round her, she thought.
Villy and Roland arrived: Tonbridge had fetched them off the train at Battle. Villy was clutching a large tin, and Roland carried a sleeping-
bag and two cases.
‘You’re having my old room, darling. I’m so glad you’ve come. Hello, Roland, I haven’t seen you for ages. You’re sleeping in the day nursery with the other boys.’
He looked bewildered. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know where that is.’
‘I’ll show him. Are we sharing?’ Villy asked.
‘No, no. You’re in my room. I’m in Sid’s.’ It was awful, she thought, that Roland didn’t know his brothers or cousins. He was much taller than his mother, and did not look like Edward at all. He was of an age when he was practically always in the way, with a great anxiety to get out of it.
She went down to see that the drinks were in the drawing room and met Andrew on the stairs.
‘I’ve explored the house,’ he said. ‘It didn’t take me long. Not much good for hide-and-seek, I shouldn’t think. Everybody would be found in a minute.’
‘Perhaps you’d go and tell the girls that supper will be in the hall any minute now.’
‘Oh, good! I will.’ And he sped happily back upstairs.
Supper in the hall, beneath the glass dome that largely lighted it, was for Bertie and Harriet, Jane and Eliza, Georgie, Laura and Andrew, and consisted of scrambled eggs on fried bread with one rasher of bacon per child followed by jam sandwiches and a Victoria sponge. Eliza and Jane got their orange squash, which meant that everyone else wanted it too, so it ran out. The meal was presided over by Nan, who kept order with miraculous ease. Georgie asked people to save their bacon rind for Rivers. When Andrew picked the top half off a sandwich, Nan was after him at once. ‘That’s no way to behave, your lordship – just for that you’ll get no sandwich at all. Hand me your plate. You’ll wait to have your cake with the others.’
‘Why does she call you “lordship”?’ Laura asked.
‘She only does it when she’s cross. I am a lord, actually.’
‘He’s got a horrible name,’ Eliza said, and Jane added, ‘He’s Lord Holt. He wanted to be Lisle like us, but Daddy said he couldn’t be. He has to stay Lord Holt until Daddy dies when he will be Lord Fakenham, like Daddy is now. Me and Jane are called “Lady”,’ she finished smugly.
‘That’s enough of that. You’re no better than the next person, any of you. We’re all the same,’ Nan finished sternly, although she thought nothing of the sort.
In the drawing room the fire blazed, giving such a convincing impression of warmth that nearly everyone felt they must be, and this was aided by the strong Martinis that the older set were drinking. There was a divide here that required tact. Roland, as Villy now saw, seemed very shy and his large Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat like mercury in a thermometer. Rachel had tried with him – asking what he was most interested in, and he had said something that clearly floored her. Villy watched him anxiously until Archie came up to give her a hug, and said, ‘Don’t worry about him, he’ll be fine,’ and filled her glass from the jug he was taking round.
The Christmas tree, potted by McAlpine, stood gaunt and majestic in the bay window, its decorations stacked in tatty old cardboard boxes round it.
The children were all in bed, but audibly not asleep. Rachel clapped her hands, and everyone became silent. ‘I just want to say two things. One, wouldn’t it be a good idea not to discuss our – difficulties, until after Christmas? Let’s just enjoy it.’ There was a murmur of agreement. ‘Second, this room must be out of bounds until Christmas morning – for the children, I mean.’
‘Well,’ Archie said briskly, ‘Rupe and I have always done the tree, and since we’re both rotten at the lights system, it would be good to have Roland: he knows all about electrical things, don’t you?’
‘I could certainly install the lights on the tree,’ Roland said, then blushed, so that his acne stood out even more fiercely, like little pilot lights in a sunset sky.
Rupert said that that would be a great help, and Villy glowed.
Clary slipped out of the room to see if she could help Eileen.
The kitchen was an inferno. Even Mrs Tonbridge’s sallow complexion was suffused to a more classic red, and kirby-grips clattered – like dwarfs’ ninepins – onto the stove. Eileen was draining beet spinach; only Nan sat quietly, knitting a shawl. She and Mrs Tonbridge approved of one another, and Nan had had a good day, as far as her memory went, and she was reminiscing about her long service with the Fakenham family, while Mrs Tonbridge was able to contribute a few things about Polly’s early life. Eileen was so entranced by this that Mrs Tonbridge had to keep shouting at her to get on with the vegetables, while she removed a large dish of stewed pheasants from the oven. ‘And you’re to take them pies one at a time into the dining room.’ Clary, who had turned up to help, said she would carry one. She was still wearing the clothes she had arrived in – jeans and a fisherman’s sweater.
‘In my day, they all changed for dinner. Even if his lordship dined alone, it was always in his dinner jacket.’
‘Times have changed, Miss Smallcott,’ Mrs Tonbridge offered uneasily. Changing like that in this household had only been for celebrations, and had meant a four-course dinner, although since the war they had made do with two.
Clary and Eileen now returned to take the vegetables. ‘Come back for the sauce, Eileen.’ Mrs Tonbridge had been stirring it in its saucepan. Her vigour made the kirby-grips even more precarious.
‘Everybody help themselves,’ Rachel said. Even so, it took a long time. We shall have to have two rooms for Christmas lunch, she thought, as she looked round the room with pleasure. And another leaf in the hall table. How her parents would have liked this!
‘I hardly eat pheasant,’ Juliet said to Teddy, when he exclaimed over her tiny helping. ‘And I never eat potatoes.’ But when the sauce came round she poured a selfish amount onto her plate.
Gerald was enjoying everything immensely. Originally, he had not wanted to come, but he had known that Polly was really keen, and it was a joy for him to please her about anything. He looked at her now, talking to Archie Lestrange, who’d married her best friend, and whom, she had told him, she had had a crush on when she was very young. ‘He was so kind to us – treating us as grown-ups when we weren’t quite. We both loved him because he listened to us seriously, and he was a very good tease. And nearly as funny as Uncle Rupert,’ she’d added.
They were a good-looking lot, but no one was a patch on Poll. Her copper hair was not as burnished as once it had been, and she was no longer the slip of a girl he had married, but maturity became her, and whatever she was doing, feeding babies, cleaning the house, looking after dear old Nan, her beauty was always apparent. She caught his eye across the table and blew him a kiss. Her clothes became glamorous because she was wearing them: tonight it was a long woollen skirt with a scarlet silk shirt. He was grateful for her mere presence. He was very good at gratitude.
‘Perhaps, Miss Smallcott, you’d care to partake of some supper in my sitting room. I’ve fed Tonbridge, because of his ulcer, so it will be just the two of us.’
They repaired to her room where Tonbridge had made a nice fire. There was a small fish pie for them, and the supper was such a success that by the end of it (with a nice strong cup of tea), they had progressed to Christian names, Mabel and Edith. Mabel had been able to say that ordinarily she would not dream of working in her carpet slippers, but she was due an operation and could not possibly do her present work in her shoes. Edith had told her then of her memory lapses which her ladyship had said did not matter in the least, and were simply due to age. ‘Not that I’ve ever told her my age. I don’t tell anyone my age.’ She did not add that this was chiefly because, most of the time, she had no idea what it was. The evening ended because Edith said she must go and listen for Spencer. She wondered whether Eileen would show her up to her ladyship’s room as its whereabouts had slipped her mind. Eileen, who had had a lonely dinner at the kitchen table, and had now been washing up for a good hour, escorted her. Spencer had woken up, and Lord Fakenham was walking up and down with him in his arms. �
��If you’ll take him, Nan, I’ll get his mother.’
Nan took the baby, who gave her a token smile of recognition, and then got down to the serious business of yelling for food.
Polly’s appearance excited him to operatic strength, but as she sank gratefully into an armchair and took him, his cries ceased in midstream as he found what he wanted.
‘Nan, dear, you go to bed. It’s long past your bedtime.’ And as she hesitated, Polly said, ‘Gerald will take you there. It’s the fourth door on your left.’
‘And show Nan where the bathroom is,’ she called after them as they left the room.
Alone with her baby, she could indulge in a passionate adoration that she imagined she concealed from everyone. His eyes, that had turned from slate-blue to brown like his father, were fixed trustfully on hers, his copper-gold hair was damp from his exertions, and she gently smoothed his curls from his forehead. ‘You are the most perfect, beautiful baby in the world,’ she told him. ‘I love you – passionately.’
She knew that she was taking far too long to wean him, but she clung to this special intimacy: this was her last baby, so it was an intimacy she would never have again.
‘The thing is,’ Harriet said, ‘we’re more likely to get snow if we all want it. Couldn’t we just say, “Let there be snow” – like God – and there will be?’ You had to hold your own against the twins, since there were two of them and they always agreed with each other.
The Cazalet Chronicles Collection Page 239
