Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 (52 page)

Mrs Greenacre duly arrived with a tray of tea and lit the gas fire. She also shut a window – Edward insisted on sleeping in a draught. Diana asked for her handbag and, when she was alone, found her dry rouge and dabbed a bit on her cheekbones. Edward would be sure to come and say goodbye to her before he left for the office.

‘You look better already, darling,’ he said, when he did so. ‘Better warn you – the government’s latest decree is that we can’t have any fires from now until September.’

‘Oh, Lord! Turn it out, then.’

‘Nonsense! You’re ill. I’m not having you cold. Get better, sweetie. I’ll be back a bit later because I’m going to the doc.’

‘Oh, yes.’

He bent to kiss her and she smelt lavender water and hair oil – scents that used to excite her about him. ‘Look after yourself.’

‘I’m sorry I look so awful.’

‘You don’t look awful! You look beautiful. I love you – remember? – as always.’

‘I love you.’

He was gone. She heard him talking to Mrs Greenacre, and then the front door slam. As she drank some of the tea she reflected how often they said this to one another these days. It was a kind of ritual refrain, not so much a declaration as a staunching process; without it, everything might leak away. This thought frightened her: it seemed extraordinary, almost inconceivable, that something she had wanted for so long was not making her deliriously happy. It was more that
not
having it would be so terrifying that she could not contemplate it. She had thought that her discontent was due to uncertainty: first, that he would not ever leave Villy and live with her and then he had, and then that even if he lived with her, he would never press for a divorce, and then he had. But the feeling of – disappointment persisted, compounded now by the moral obligation to be desperately in love with someone who had done all that for her. And somewhere, buried, because she did not want it to be a certainty, she was afraid that he felt the same – had the same disappointment, felt the same necessity to reiterate his tremendous love for her to justify what he had done. So every day, often several times a day – or, rather, evening – this ritual of love was declared aloud between them, although she derived less and less comfort from it.

It was not even as though they lived a life of sweetness and light, artificial or no. There had been ructions . . . Now, because she was feeling rotten and there was nothing else she had the energy to do, she must lie and contemplate them.

There had been the awful half-term when Ian and Fergus had come to them. They were at the same boarding school, and spent most, if not all, of their holidays with their grandparents in Scotland. The moment they arrived at the house, she had sensed their hostility, not only to Edward but to her. With Ian, the eldest, nearly seventeen, it had taken the form of taciturnity, and the determination not to be impressed by anything. With Fergus, two years younger, it had been rather senseless boasting, accounts of how he had beaten people at games or exams, or simply by some clever remark. When Edward spoke to them, they barely answered. He had been good to them, had taken them all to
Nicholas Nickleby
and out to dinner afterwards. He asked them what else they would like to do, and they had said they would rather go off on their own. Which they did, for nearly the whole of Saturday, and were uncommunicative about where they had been. Jamie, who had got very excited about their visit, was also snubbed.

She had prepared a large room for them on the top floor of the house and when she showed it to them, had said, ‘This is to be your room, so you can keep things in it for when you come.’

And Ian had answered, ‘There’s no need, Mum. We won’t be coming. We’d rather be in Scotland.’

When she had taken them to the station in the car with Edward and seen them off, she had cried. He had been very nice to her about that, said that she couldn’t help the fact that due to the war and everything of course it had been better for them to be in Scotland. But she’d lost them, and somewhere, because she felt so guilty about it, she had wanted to blame Edward.

Then, and far more recently, they had had an actual
row
about the nights he spent in Southampton. He went once a week, and two weeks ago, had rung to say he would have to spend an extra night there. Instantly, pictures of his wartime deception of Villy occurred to her. He had used to ring
her
up, or tell her he’d rung Villy up, with some story that he said had ‘made things perfectly all right’. Perhaps that was what he was doing now, with
her
, she had thought, and once she had thought it, she could not get it out of her mind. She knew, better than most, how susceptible he was; she also knew, better than anyone, that he was not going to bed with her with the same enthusiasm and frequency. So, surely it was obvious – or at least very likely – that he was going to bed with someone else. She tried ringing the hotel where he said he was staying, and they said he was out. When he came home she confronted him with this. ‘I was in the dining room!’ he exclaimed. ‘Silly buggers, why didn’t they look for me there – or page me or something? Why did you want to get hold of me anyway?’ he asked a moment later.

‘I wondered where you were.’

‘I told you where I was.’

‘Yes, but then I couldn’t get hold of you.’

‘Not
my
fault,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to them about that next week.’

‘Where did you
think
I’d be?’ he then asked.

‘I didn’t
know
. Well, of course I thought you’d be at the hotel, or I wouldn’t have rung it.’

‘I meant when you didn’t get me there.’ His eyes had become quite hard, which she knew they did when he was beginning to get angry.

‘I had no idea, darling. I was worried.’ If only, at this point, she had said something like, ‘After all, I am rather attached to you’ or ‘I was really worried about your poor tum’ (his indigestion, though intermittent, was sometimes acute), things might have calmed down, but she didn’t. There had been a brief pause while Mrs Greenacre brought in the cheese and celery and then he had continued to press her: where did she
think
he might be?

‘I suppose I thought you might have gone off with some bright young thing . . .’

He was outraged, not in the least flattered, simply angry. His anger had all the exaggerated resentment that she had associated with people accused when they were innocent of something they habitually did. In the end, she apologised – abjectly, with tears in her eyes – and he forgave her. Afterwards, she reflected wearily, all she had done was put the idea into his head.

There had been brighter moments – or, rather, better times. Easter at Home Place, for instance. The Duchy was spending a few weeks there during the holidays, and she and Edward were invited down for a long weekend.

‘Who will be there?’ she had asked. She felt both nervous and excited at the prospect.

‘Rupe and Zoë, and my sister Rachel and poor old Flo – that’s the Duchy’s sister – and Archie Lestrange, an old friend of Rupe’s, well, of the whole family, really. And Teddy and Bernadine – I don’t think she’s been before, either, and she’ll be far more of a fish out of water than you’ll ever be, darling.’

‘It’s a lot of people to meet at once for the first time.’

‘You know Rupe and Zoë.’

‘Will Hugh be there?’

His face clouded. ‘No. He’s taken Wills off on some boating holiday with friends.’

And so, on a Friday evening, they drove down. It poured with rain until the last few miles when the sun came out suddenly, making all the fresh wet greens of trees and fields glisten, and bluebells were like wood-smoke on the ground in the woods. ‘It is the most lovely time of year,’ she said. She associated the country with being cold and lonely; now she was going with Edward to be received into his family. She had some minutes of pure happiness.

Edward smiled, and laid a hand on her knee. ‘This is rather different from those times when I used to drive you down to Isla’s cottage,’ he said, ‘isn’t it, sweetie? This is a bit of all right.’ He had stopped at Tonbridge and spent all their sweet coupons on expensive chocolates, two boxes. ‘Violet and rose creams for the Duchy,’ he said, ‘she does love them, and truffles for the rest of us.’

They were driving now down a hill with high banks each side of the road, and woods on their right. White gates appeared on the right and they went in.

The house, rambling and rather shabby, was larger than she had expected. A small man with bandy legs met them and carried their luggage.

‘Evening, Tonbridge. How’s Mrs Tonbridge?’

‘Keeping very nicely, sir, thank you. Good evening, madam.’

They followed him through the wicket gate to the front door.

In the large hall Edward led her straight to the Duchy, who was arranging daffodils on a long table. She was greeted kindly; Edward had said that his mother was nearly eighty, but she did not look it, and her eyes, the same colour as Edward’s, looked straight at and, Diana felt, through her with a direct simplicity that was unnerving. ‘I think Rachel has put you in Hugh’s room,’ she said. She had wondered whether they would be allowed to share a room, and was relieved as well as surprised.

They met Rachel on the stairs. Like her mother, she was dressed in blue but she was taller and extremely thin. Her hair was shingled in a very old-fashioned manner – nowadays one associated that kind of hair-do with lesbians, she thought.

‘Darling! You’ve cut your hair off! When did you do that?’

‘Oh, not very long ago. You know you’re in Hugh’s room, don’t you? We’ve put Teddy and Bernadine in your old one.’

She had gone faintly pink – the hidden allusion to Villy, Diana supposed.

‘I’m so glad you could come,’ Rachel was saying; her smile was warm, her gaze like her mother’s.

Diana followed Edward along the gallery landing to the end where there were two doors and the passage turned to the left.

‘Here we are!’ The room looked out on to the front lawn where there was a monkey puzzle tree with daffodils under it. ‘The bathroom’s along the passage, down two steps and turn left,’ Edward said. ‘And the lavatory’s next door to it.’

She went along the passage to the lavatory. Clouds of steam were creeping out from under the bathroom door and there was a smell of expensive bath essence. As she returned, she heard peals of laughter coming from the room next to theirs. Then the door opened and there was Rupert in white shorts and a shirt. ‘Oh, hello, Diana! You didn’t by any chance notice whether the bathroom is free, did you? I’ve just had a rather humiliating game of squash with Teddy, and Zoë says I smell like a very expensive horse.’

‘How I imagine an expensive horse would smell,’ Zoë said as she appeared behind him.

‘Hello.’ She smiled at Diana. She was wearing a pale green bath towel like a sarong; her hair hung down her back and she looked extremely beautiful. When she said that someone was having a bath, Rupert said, ‘It’s Bernadine. She’s been in there for hours.’

‘I expect Teddy’s in there with her.’

‘Oh, is he, indeed?’ He stalked along the passage and banged on the door. ‘Are you in there, Teddy? Well, hurry up. I need a bath.’

‘Although I expect the hot water will have run out,’ Zoë said. ‘I hope you don’t want one.’

No, she didn’t.

Back in the room, she asked, ‘Do we change for dinner?’

‘Only a bit, not much. We change more on Saturdays.’ He was mixing up some white stuff in a glass of water. ‘I thought I’d be on the safe side,’ he said. ‘I’d rather knock this back and not worry about what I eat.’

The room was quite cold. She unpacked and put on her petrol-blue woollen dress with long sleeves and settled at the dressing table to do her face.

‘Darling, I’ll leave you. They’ll want me to make drinks.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘The drawing room. Bottom of the stairs and then opposite you on the left. Don’t be long.’

While she combed her hair, powdered her face, and added a discreet touch of blue mascara to her eyelashes, she thought how extraordinary, in fact, it was to be there, the place where she had miserably imagined Edward weekend after weekend during the war. When Rupert and Zoë had come to dinner with them she had thought how unlike Edward Rupert had been, and that although Edward had said how pretty Zoë was, she had seemed rather lifeless. This evening, draped in that peppermint towel, she had looked like a film star, effortlessly fresh and glamorous with that wonderful creamy magnolia skin and those clear green eyes. Of course, she was years older than Zoë, and one’s hair when it was permed and tinted, never looked quite the same. She tied a mauve chiffon scarf loosely round her neck to conceal it and went down to find Edward.

In the drawing room she found him talking to a very tall dark man, who rose from his chair when she came in.

‘Archie, this is Diana,’ Edward said. ‘I’ve just made a splendid Martini.’

‘How do you do?’ He had a limp, she noticed, and a domed forehead from which his dark hair was receding, and very heavy curved eyelids. He looked at her in a manner that was both penetrating and impassive, and she felt wary of him. It was clear, though, that he was much appreciated by the family. The Duchy made him sit next to her at dinner, during which there was a good deal of general conversation. They ate roast lamb, which reminded someone of the frightful floods – ‘two
million
sheep were drowned,’ Rachel was saying, ‘poor dears.’

‘I don’t suppose it was any worse for them than being killed any other way,’ Teddy said. He was sitting next to Bernadine, who wore what could only be described as a cocktail dress, of turquoise crêpe with bands of gold sequins round the sleeves and neck. She kept putting pieces of skin and fat on his plate and he obediently ate them. On her other side was Edward, with whom she was flirting in a worn, girlish manner that made him dull and breezy. They talked – briefly – about the violence and uncertainty in India: Archie said it looked as though we were going to divide and
not
rule for a change, and Edward made his usual remark about what a damn shame it was that we were casting off the Empire as fast as we could. But what could you expect, considering the government we had?