Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 (61 page)

When she went down again (which she found quite difficult – her dignity felt dangerously precarious, but she was bloody well not going to break down and ‘snivel’, as he called it), he looked up from mashing the potatoes and said quietly, ‘Clary. I would never do something like make plans to go away behind your back. If you thought that, then I apologise.’ And he looked at her and seemed quite friendly again.

For weeks after that she worked and worked – or rather re-worked. She had become a perfectionist: nothing she wrote seemed quite right or good enough, and she became obsessed with getting at least the first chapter right.

And then, in April, he announced that he was going to Home Place for the weekend. He had come back from one of his visits to London, which he made most weeks, and he told her during supper.

‘Why?’

‘Because the Duchy asked me. Edward and his new lady are being invited together for the first time, and she asked me to be there.’

‘Oh.’

‘You could invite Poll for the weekend. I’m sure she’d like to come.’

‘I could if I wanted to, of course.’ She thought about it: having anyone, any outsider, would mean that she couldn’t work.

‘It would do you good to have a couple of days off,’ he said, as though he knew what she was thinking.

‘It wouldn’t. I’ll ask her when I’ve finished the book.’

So he had gone, and it felt very strange. She spent one morning reading all that she had written, and then decided to copy out the first chapter on the second-hand typewriter that he had given her for Christmas. If it was typed, she felt, she might be able to see it better. But when she had done that, it still didn’t seem right. She felt despair, and on Sunday evening she decided that she would show it to Archie – get him to read it and see how it struck him. If he says it’s absolutely no good, I’ll have to stop, she thought. But at least I’ll know.

He came back in good spirits. Yes, he had had a very nice time. Her father had been there, and Teddy with his incredible wife. She asked about Uncle Edward’s new lady, and he said that she seemed anxious to please, and he supposed she was all right as far as she went. ‘Which wouldn’t be far enough for me,’ he had added.

After supper she gave him the typed chapter. ‘I really want to know what you honestly think,’ she said. ‘Because if you don’t think it’s any good, I’d rather know and I’ll stop.’

He had looked up suddenly from the papers she had put into his hand and said, ‘Of course I will be honest with you, Clary, but
you
must remember that it will only be my opinion – not some cosmic edict. You mustn’t take
too
much notice.’

She could not bear to be in the room with him while he was reading it, so she went and washed her hair. When she came back to dry it in front of the fire, he had finished.

‘Well?’

‘Well, there’s some very good writing in it. Some of it almost felt
too
good.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘As though you are more concerned with how you are doing something than what it is you are doing. I like the simpler bits best. Tell me what you wanted to have in this bit. I mean, what you wanted me – the reader – to end up knowing.’

She told him. It didn’t take long, seemed quite small and clear.

‘Yes, well, that all seems quite right. But sometimes you have obscured that by getting too elaborate about it. Take the bit where Mary Anne realises that her father isn’t interested in her. That’s a shock. I don’t think she would think about what the room looked like and her earliest memories of everything else just then. I think she would be too upset by what her father had said. But, that’s only a minor criticism. It reads as though you have had a number of second thoughts and so the feeling has got a bit lost. I think.’

‘In the first draft I just said: “So she was not loved.” That was it.’

‘You see? That’s far better. The feeling is there. Goodness, I’m no literary critic. Could I see your first draft?’

‘You won’t be able to read my writing.’

‘I think I can just about manage it.’

But she said she would type it out for him.

When he had read it and said he thought it was better, and why, she felt enormous relief.

‘Oh, Archie! That does cheer me! I was afraid you were just going to say it was bad in a different way.’

‘And what would you have done then?’

‘Don’t know. Given up, I expect.’

‘Don’t let me ever hear you say that. If you’re going to make writing your life, you’ve got to start depending on your own judgement. You may take notice of other people, but ultimately, it’s what you think is right that’s right.’

‘You often ask me what I think of your painting.’

‘Yes, but I’d still go on doing it whatever you said.’

She thought of all the times when he had shown her paintings and drawings accompanied by his own disparaging remarks about them, about the innumerable, often absurd, alternative careers that he then devised for himself when he said that he would throw in the sponge.

‘What are you smiling at?’

‘Nothing. I think in some ways we’re rather the same.’

Archie was painting a lot now. He took some pictures to London to show to galleries and came back rather gloomy. Only one had been at all interested, he said; it was the one where he had had a show before the war, and they wouldn’t give him one although they said they would take a couple of landscapes to put in a mixed show.

‘Well, that’s a start,’ she said.

‘I can hardly live on it, though, can I?’

‘We
are
living,’ she pointed out.

‘Just. But, of course, I’m expecting you to be a combination of Agatha Christie and Jane Austen and make thousands, while I shall simply be frightfully good – like van Gogh – and hardly make a penny.’

‘Funny. I was planning for you to be Mabel Lucie Attwell or Burne-Jones while I was Virginia Woolf.’

This became a game she enjoyed where insults – elaborate and oblique – could be exchanged.

Then, at the beginning of June, everything went wrong. Afterwards, when she tried to think what had started it, she could only come up with rather petty things, like it being a heat wave and Archie saying he hadn’t been sleeping well. What happened was that she’d put the kettle on for breakfast before having a bath and then she’d forgotten about it. Archie was out painting a picture he worked at before breakfast on fine days, so he didn’t smell the burning. Anyway, she finally smelt it, and tying her bath towel round her, ran down to the kitchen to find black smoke. She turned off the stove, and then, without thinking, she tried to pick up the kettle and, of course, burned herself. She cried out with the pain and went to the kitchen sink to put her hand under water and in doing this, her bath towel slipped and fell on the ground. So when Archie, who had heard her cry of pain, came into the kitchen, she was naked. He found the tube of tannic acid and made her pat her hand dry while he tucked the bath towel round her and then dressed her hand. It was quite a bad burn: the skin was going to come off. In spite of this, he seemed almost cross with her, saying she was bloody careless and – not quite saying it – implying that it served her right. He put on a saucepan for boiling water – the kettle was ruined – and said for goodness’ sake go up and put some clothes on. Not at all the way that
she
would have behaved if he had burned himself getting their breakfast. But when she pointed this out to him, he snapped at her again, saying that they didn’t feel the same about a lot of things, although he absolutely refused to say what.

That evening he announced that he was going to go away for a bit. ‘I want to sort things out,’ he said, ‘and I think you should too.’

And while she was wondering what he meant, he said, ‘Well, we can’t go on like this for ever.’

‘Why can’t we?’

‘Clary, for God’s sake, grow up! I’ve got to make a decision about my flat in London – and France. I can’t possibly afford both, which is more or less what I’m doing now. And you’ve got to learn to cope with your own life and not depend on another person for everything.’

‘I
can
cope.’

‘Good. Well, you won’t have any trouble while I’m away, then.’

‘Are you going to stay in France?’

‘I might. Haven’t decided. But part of the deal is that I don’t have to tell you where I am. Nor you me.’

‘I don’t mind telling you. In the least.’

‘I know that.’

‘How long is this going on for?’

‘I’ll be back for Polly’s wedding.’

‘That’s not until half-way through July. That’s six weeks!’

‘Just about.’

‘I can’t see the point of it at all.’ Then she said, ‘You said you’d help me to choose the clothes to wear for the wedding!’

‘Supposing the cottage catches fire? Or I get awfully ill?’ were some of the other things she said at intervals. But he only looked at her, shrugged, smiled, and said, ‘Well, if the worst comes to the worst, you’ve always got your dad in London. I agree that you’re no good at clothes, but Zoë will help you and she’s much better at that sort of thing than I am. And forgetting about kettles is the sort of thing that people of seventy-two do rather than twenty-two. You must take any advantage that can be found in being so pathetically
young
.’

He was so calm and maddening and unsympathetic that she felt more angry with him than sad, and when he left the following morning, she kissed him quite coldly on the cheek.

THE OUTSIDERS

Summer 1947

She felt quite fagged and no wonder. She had been up half the night as, apart from little journeys to the bathroom, she had had to repack her cases. She had started packing the moment Kitty said they were to go, but by the time she had taken everything off the mantelpiece and out of her two top drawers, the case was full. ‘But how do I know what I shall need?’ she had exclaimed, as she watched hopelessly while Rachel unpacked the case and started again.

‘You’re only going for a fortnight or possibly three weeks, darling, you won’t need
all
the photographs, and I think the china dogs might get broken so we’d better leave them. Shall we just put in the nice one of Flo?’

She had nodded. Flo had gone, she knew that now – and all she had was this picture taken of her in the summer frock that she, Dolly, had never really liked, with her amber beads that, she remembered having pointed out at the time, were really better as
winter
jewellery.

She had had to let Rachel pack things – and even she had recognised the need for more than one case – but after she had had her supper and they had said goodnight to her, she had got out of bed and started to deal with everything. She was
not
going for a mere fortnight, she was going for much longer – longer, it seemed, than they knew. So she had to take everything she possibly could.

It was very late by the time she had repacked the cases and she was quite unable to shut them. The servants would have to do it, although they hardly ever came near her nowadays, she had noticed. When she finally got back to bed, her hot-water bottle was cold and she had to dispense with it. She had once tried refilling it from the bathroom tap, but there had been something wrong with the stopper because it had leaked very badly in the night.

Rachel had said that sometimes one did not remember things when one got older, and the remark had both incensed her and hurt her feelings. It simply wasn’t true. She might not always remember every single little thing, but what she did remember was always sharp and in great detail. Tonight, she was too fagged to think about anything, and for a long time she seemed too tired even to go to sleep, although in the end she must have dropped off because there was Rachel with her breakfast tray saying what a beautiful day it was.

When she came back to her room after washing, her cases were shut, so that was all right. She felt nervous because she was not absolutely sure whether they were going to Stanmore or to Home Place – or, possibly, to somewhere else. This became so worrying that she had to find out.

‘I suppose the garden at Stanmore has suffered from our absence?’ she said to Kitty, as they sat in the drawing room downstairs while the chauffeur put the luggage in the motor.

‘Oh, darling, I don’t know. I expect the new people will have looked after it. I don’t think we’d want to go back there to see, do you?’

‘Oh, no. Of course we wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be at all like Home Place. The garden, I mean.’

‘Oh, I’m really looking forward to my roses there. They will be out, or better still, just starting. Won’t that be nice?’

So it was Home Place. She had been to visit there, with Flo, and they had shared a room and Flo had had the bed by the window because she was such a demon about fresh air.

When they got into the car, she discovered that Rachel was not coming with them. ‘She is going to have a holiday with Sid,’ Kitty said, when they were both safely ensconced in the back. It seemed odd of Rachel to want to have a holiday at all.
She
had never had a holiday in her life – unless one counted the seaside visit to Rottingdean after she and Flo had had the measles. ‘It was really a convalescence,’ she said aloud, and Kitty answered, ‘Well, poor Sid
has
been very ill.’

She didn’t reply to this. It was not her fault if Kitty muddled things up, although she ought not to – she was a good two years younger than herself.

But she enjoyed the drive. Tonbridge did not drive too fast, and once they were out in the country there were meadows with buttercups and Queen Anne’s lace and country-cottage gardens full of flowers. Kitty looked out of her window and kept pointing things out to her but, of course, she could not see them because by then they had passed – they were on to something else. But she
pretended
to see them, as she did not want to spoil Kitty’s happiness. Her husband had died, some time ago, but it did not seem to have upset her unduly; another reason, she felt, for being thankful that she had adhered to the single state. It was odd, she thought, how much she had to pretend these days: to hear what people said, to understand (sometimes) what on earth they were talking about, to feel a great deal more well than she did a great deal of the time, that she hardly needed her spectacles (she could never find them and got quite sick of asking people where they were), that she had slept quite beautifully when this was hardly ever the case, to know who a large quantity of people who came to see Kitty, or stayed with her, were.