Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 (72 page)

Events converge at Christmas; as a new generation of Cazalets descend on Home Place. Only one thing is certain: nothing will ever be the same again . . .

All Change
is available now in hardback.

An extract follows here . . .

THE FAMILY

‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t explore all the possibilities. I just don’t think we should do it behind Rachel’s back.’

‘Archie, you sound as though you think I don’t mind about her.’

They were sitting on the bench by the tennis court where they had gone for some privacy – difficult to find in the overcrowded house.

‘Of course I don’t think that. You love her. We all do. What I meant was that it would be a good idea to iron out any of the disagreements before we talk to her. She’s exhausted – she doesn’t want to have to deal with a lot of bickering relations.’

‘What on earth do you mean by that?’

‘Come off it, Rupe. You know Hugh thinks that at all costs we should keep the house, and Edward thinks we should get rid of it. And, by the way, I’m not clear what you think.’

‘That’s because I haven’t made up my mind.’ He pulled out a battered packet of Gauloises and offered it before taking one himself. ‘I mean,’ he said, after a short silence while he tried to think what he did actually want, ‘it all depends on what Rachel wants. She won’t want the Regent’s Park house, that’s for sure. The Duchy hated it – said it was far too grand for her. This was her home, and Rachel may feel that as well. I really think it’s for her to decide. And the children all love it here.’

‘I know they do. My lot look forward to it every holiday. But who is to pay for it?’

‘I suppose we could split the costs of upkeep between us.’

He had been dreading this. ‘Rupe, I have to tell you now that I’m afraid you’d have to count me out on that. I simply don’t have the dough to promise anything on a regular basis. Money has been rather tight lately.’ His voice tailed off to an apologetic smile. It was Rupert’s beloved daughter he had married, and he was hardly keeping her in a state to which she had been accustomed.

‘My dear old boy, I wasn’t expecting you to chip in. It ought to be Hugh and Edward and me and Rachel – if she wants to live here.’ Even this kindness was humiliating. ‘And we would always want you and Clary and the family to come – just as you always have done. The Duchy would have wanted that.’ Mentioning his mother made Rupert’s eyes fill with tears. ‘She always regarded you as family,’ he said, rubbing his face furiously.

‘Why do you think Edward is so keen to get rid of Home Place?’ Archie asked, to distract him.

‘Because Diana doesn’t like it?’

‘Well, I don’t think she takes much to the family as a whole.’

‘Mm. She has ugly hands,’ Rupert said absently. ‘The kind that rings only make worse. Don’t laugh, Archie – you must have noticed them. Time we got back to the fray,’ he said, as they finished their cigarettes.

‘Is there going to be a fray?’ Archie asked, as they strolled back across the tennis court to the house.

‘If marked differences of opinion surface, I think it’s likely.’

There were marked differences of opinion among the children. Laura wanted to sleep with her cousins, Harriet and Bertie, who had already determined that they would share with Georgie: ‘She’s hardly six, Mummy, we can’t possibly have her with us. She’s far too young – she’ll spoil everything.’

‘I’m more than six. It’s not fair!’

‘There you are, you see. Crying about the least little thing. Anyway, there isn’t a fourth bed.’

Jemima and Clary, who had battled with the children’s baths, looked at one another in despair.

‘And Rivers,’ Georgie now said. ‘That’s a fourth person anyway. He doesn’t like girls,’ he added triumphantly, to Laura. ‘He’ll probably bite you in the night.’

‘Couldn’t you stop him?’

‘Not if
I
was asleep. He only likes people who are at least . . .’ he paused, he was seven himself ‘. . . at least seven.’

‘If you sleep with Daddy and me, you can wear your pirate’s hat. How would that be?’ Jemima wiped the tears from Laura’s face. She could see that that was doing the trick: Laura adored her hat.

Meanwhile Clary had been enjoining her two to be nicer to their young cousin. ‘When you were six, you wouldn’t have liked being left out.’

‘That was ages ago,’ Bertie said uneasily, and Harriet echoed him: ‘Ages.’

‘Well,’ Clary said, loudly enough for everyone to hear, ‘I can remember being let down by my cousins and it felt awful. They didn’t want me to share a room with them.’

‘What did you do?’ Georgie had a soft heart and was beginning to feel guilty.

‘I went and slept in Aunt Rachel’s room.’

This impressed them. ‘Of course, I was older than Laura, but the feeling is the same. Don’t gargle with your milk, Bertie, drink it.’

Bertie made the double effort of swallowing his milk and twisting in his chair to hug his mother. Milk went everywhere.

‘You can’t help your age,’ Georgie said to Laura, when things were cleared up. ‘You can stroke Rivers, if you like. He won’t mind at all.’

But Rivers felt differently. He endured Laura’s nervous stroke, but when Harriet and Bertie joined in, he fled to the safety of Georgie’s dressing-gown pocket.

Archie, having persuaded Clary to have a bath with a promise to ‘settle the monsters’, found them all in one bed arguing about which book they wanted to have read to them, but the moment he appeared Harriet rushed to him. ‘Be a dinosaur, Dad. Just for a bit, please, be one.’

‘If I do, it means no reading. Anyway, you can all read.’

‘We can, if we want to. But we prefer you to read to us.’

‘Shut up, Bertie. Let him be a dinosaur – he’s awfully good at it.’

‘My father is often a monkey or a sea lion,’ Georgie said. Archie admired his loyalty.

‘Go on, Dad!’

Archie straightened himself up, then made his arms long, arched his back and took enormous strides towards his daughter, uttering huge cries that began as an unearthly croak and ended with a trumpet-like squeal. He scooped her up with his claws and dropped her – shrieking with pleasurable fear – onto her bed. Then he turned his – surely by now – bloodshot eyes on Bertie and repeated the manoeuvre. Fear made Bertie giggle with relief after he was dropped onto the bed.

That left Georgie, whom he could see was really frightened. He became Archie again and sat on Georgie’s bed. ‘Don’t want to frighten Rivers,’ he said.

Georgie stopped trembling and gave Archie a look of gratitude: his face had been saved.

He kissed all three of them, ignoring the routine protests: ‘It’s perfectly good daylight outside, so why can’t we be in it?’ ‘Why should I go to bed at the same time as much younger people of six?’ Injustice stalked the room, and he escaped, leaving them to Zoë, who had come to see that Rivers was safely in his cage.

When Archie got back to their bedroom, he found Clary, wrapped in a bath towel, asleep on their bed. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up, one hand cupping her cheek; she looked, he thought, like an exhausted thirteen-year-old. He sat beside her and gently stroked her hair until she stirred, opened her eyes and smiled at him. ‘It was the gorgeous hot bath. I just passed out.’

‘We must dry your hair, my darling.’

‘Are the children all right?’

‘They’re fine. I left them with Zoë. I did my dinosaur – they’re bottled.’

‘I heard your dinosaur. You never do him for me.’ Her voice was muffled because he was towelling her hair.

‘You’re over age. I don’t ever do him for people of thirty. Have you brought a dress?’

‘Of course I’ve brought a dress. The Duchy didn’t like us to wear trousers in the evening. It’s my blue linen one. It probably got a bit crumpled in my case and, oh, gosh, I forgot to sew up that bit of hem. Never mind. I’ve got lots of safety pins – it won’t show. I think I left my bra and knickers on the floor somewhere.’

‘Here. You look so nice, so lovely without clothes.’ Her skin was pearly, translucent, almost white, very difficult to paint, he had discovered over the years, but lovely in every other way, as he told her now. She still found it difficult to accept compliments, unless he made a joke of it. ‘I’m so vulgar and depraved that I like people with skin that looks as though they have been kept under a paving stone.’

Clary now seized her comb and wrenched it through her hair, which she fastened with an elastic band that snapped at the last moment. ‘Oh, bother! Oh, damn! I didn’t bring a spare.’

‘You’ll have to make do with a girly ribbon. Bunch your hair and I’ll do it for you.’

‘Have you talked to Rachel?’

‘Haven’t had a chance. She’s being rather guarded by Sid. I think she feels she’s the only person to look after Rachel just now.’

‘At least they won’t have the strain of concealing anything from the Duchy.’

‘At least that.’

But several times during that evening Archie wondered whether there might be other, less definable strains.

After remarkably stiff drinks made by Edward, they assembled in the dining room for poached chicken with vegetables followed by strawberry shortcake and cream.

Neither Rachel nor Sid ate much in spite of urging each other to eat more.

After some abortive efforts, the safest subjects turned out to be politics (the men) and the children (their mothers). The unrest at the local docks was embarking on its sixth week, which was beginning to affect the family firm as it depended largely upon imports of hardwoods. Hugh, as chairman, was very exercised by this and irritated when Rupert said that their men had a point. Edward said he doubted whether Eden had the right cabinet to deal effectively with a national strike of any kind. It was uncomfortably agreed that he had not been in office very long, and he had been good in the Foreign Office. Rachel sat through all this, gaunt with grief but smiling if anyone caught her eye. Stories about the children were a relief. Georgie and Rivers and the rest of his menagerie, Laura sleeping in her pirate’s hat, Harriet and Bertie trying to divide a lone banana with a ruler . . .

Archie became aware that something was terribly wrong with Sid, who was sitting next to him. He had thought she wasn’t looking well – she’d had some bug, she’d told him at the beginning of dinner, but she was fine now. She didn’t look it, her usually rather sunburned face sallow with mauve smudges under her eyes. She had picked at her chicken but, except for urging Rachel to eat more, she had remained silent. Now, when Eileen put the strawberry shortbread before her, he heard her being suddenly horribly sick into her napkin. She got unsteadily to her feet, and as he rose to help her there was Jemima, quick as a flash putting an arm round her, adding her napkin to the soiled one, and making soothing noises as she took her out of the room. Rachel made to follow, but Sid called – almost shouted – ‘No. Please leave me alone.’

And Rachel stayed. ‘She isn’t at all well. She should never have come.’ Then she pressed her knuckles to her eyes to stop any more tears.

Hugh, who was sitting next to her, leaned across to take her hand with his good one. ‘Rach, darling, she came because she loves you, as we all do so much.’

And Zoë, who had been swallowing hard – the one thing that made her want to be sick was being present when other people were – said, ‘The more I loved someone, the less I’d want them round me if I was sick. I’d just want to be on my own.’