Marking Time (53 page)

‘It’s a sewing table, early twentieth century, not very old,’ he said.

‘Now, Polly, what wood is it made of? Let’s see how much you know.’

Polly said she thought it was walnut.

‘That’s right!’ Mr Cracknell exclaimed. He was old, with steel-rimmed spectacles and greeny-white hair, and he stooped. He passed a splayed thumb over the wood: ‘A lovely
piece of veneer, that is. Laid as tight as a nut.’

‘Do you think Mummy would like it?’

It would only be good for small pieces of sewing: there wasn’t enough room in the bottom for things like the winter dressing gown she was making for Wills.

‘I should think she might,’ she said, and saw her father’s expression fade a little.

‘Well, we’d better go on looking,’ he said.

Mr Cracknell, who knew the Cazalet brothers from their many visits, said he had a rather nice chest on chest that he thought they might like to look at. ‘Seeing as you like walnut,’
he said. ‘Got its original handles too, it has.’ The place was so full of things, and so dark that he got a torch to shine on the piece.

Polly could see that Dad really loved it: stroking the wood, gently pulling out a drawer and admiring the craftsmanship. ‘See, Poll?’ he said. ‘They used wooden pegs and
dovetailing to make the drawers in those days.’ There was a spattering of tiny little round holes in one drawer.

‘Worm’s dead,’ Mr Cracknell remarked; he tapped the drawer smartly, and Hugh nodded.

‘If the worm was active, there’d be stuff like sawdust coming out,’ he said to Polly. ‘And what do you want for that, Mr Cracknell?’

‘Well, I could let it go at three hundred.’

Hugh whistled. ‘A bit out of my league, I’m afraid.’

In the end he bought the sewing table, and while Mr Cracknell was carrying it out to the car, Polly asked if he would ask how much the writing box was.

‘Do you want it, Poll? Would you use it?’

‘I want it to give to Clary.’

‘Of course. You said. I’ll find out.’

He’s rather forgetful, she thought; he never used to be like that.

He came back and said, how lucky – it was only twenty-five shillings.

‘An expensive present for you, though, darling,’ he said.

‘I know, but I want to give it to her.’

When they had finished putting everything into the car, she said, ‘Why are you smiling, Dad?’

‘I was thinking what a very nice daughter I’ve got.’

When he wasn’t smiling, she realised, he actually looked sad.

He said that they would look at the other shops as they were there. It was the old part of the town with narrow streets and seagulls and little whiffs of tar and fish and the sea. In the
jeweller’s shop, which was tiny and crammed with antique jewellery, he picked out a pair of garnet earrings – long drops.

‘Do you think Mummy would like these?’ he asked. ‘It would go with that necklace I bought her years ago.’

Polly knew that her mother did not like garnets as they did not go with the colour of her hair, and only wore the necklace occasionally, to please Dad.

‘You bought her some earrings in Edinburgh; she showed me,’ she said. ‘I should think she’d rather have something else.’ He seemed always to be buying her presents,
even though she’d had her birthday ages ago. ‘Also, she wouldn’t wear them much while there’s a war.’

‘Practical Poll.’ He began looking carefully through a tray of rings. Just as she was going to say that Mummy didn’t wear rings much either these days, he picked out a small
ring that had a flat green stone set in gold. The back was like a shell, the band was plain. ‘Pop it on,’ he said. It fitted her second finger exactly.

‘What do you think of that?’ he said.

‘I should think she would love it. I should think
anyone
would love it.’

‘Right. I’m going to give it to anyone, then. Take it off.’

‘How do you mean “anyone”?’ she asked, handing it to him. It sounded bonkers.

‘The first person I meet after I’ve bought it.’ He went to the back of the shop and she saw that he was writing a cheque. Supposing, she thought wildly, he met a
postman
outside the shop? Of course, the postman might have a wife, but then again, he might not.

When he came back, he said, ‘Hallo, Poll, fancy meeting you here,’ and gave her a little box. Inside, perched upon worn white satin, was the ring. ‘I knew you’d be the
first person I’d meet,’ he said.

She was overwhelmed. A ring! And it was
so
beautiful!

‘Oh, Dad! It’s my first ring.’

‘I wanted to be the first person to give you one.’

‘It’s completely perfect! Can I wear it now?’

‘I should be deeply hurt if you didn’t. Emeralds suit you, Poll,’ he observed when the ring was on and she turned her hand for him to see. ‘You have pretty hands –
like your mother.’

‘Is it really and truly an emerald?’

‘It is. It’s late sixteenth century – a bit early for paste, I think. Looks like an emerald to me, and the man in the shop said it was.’

‘Goodness!’

‘You have grown up,’ he said. ‘I can remember a time when you would much rather have had a cat than a ring.’

‘The back of it’s so beautiful,’ she said when they had got back into the car.

‘Yes. It’s like those drawers in the chest on chest. They just cared about making things beautifully, never mind whether it showed at once that they had.’

Before he started the car, she put her arms round him and gave him three kisses. ‘Thank you, Dad, it’s the best present I’ve ever had.’

They went to the front, and walked along past the fishermen’s tall thin black huts in which the nets were stored. It was a fine, breezy day with white horses on the empty sea. Barbed wire
and concrete pyramids were ranged along the beach making it impossible to reach the sea. They walked, without talking, in a companionable silence. She felt unusually, immensely happy. The double
glow of receiving her ring, and the thought of giving Clary her desk box prevailed. ‘Breathe deeply, Dad,’ she said, ‘the sea air will do you good,’ and he smiled his
gentle, affectionate smile at her and made a ridiculous noise breathing.

‘I’m done good to,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and find a nice pub on the way home.’

When they were seated under an apple tree in the pub garden and her cider and his beer had arrived he said abruptly, ‘Did Mummy ever talk to you about the possibility of her having to have
another operation?’

‘Not much. She did mention it, weeks ago, but then when I asked her if it was going to happen, she said they had changed their minds. That was before you went on your holiday.’

There was a silence while he stared into his glass. Mystified, and beginning to feel frightened, she said, ‘That was a relief, wasn’t it? She never said, but I knew she was dreading
another operation as the last one made her feel so rotten. It must have been a relief.’

‘Did she say it was a relief?’

‘She said—’ She thought: it seemed important to get it right. ‘
I
said, oh, what a good thing, you must be relieved, and she agreed. She agreed, Dad. And she was
terrifically pleased about the holiday. She said she was only tired when she got home because she hadn’t slept much on the train coming back. And she only asked me not to tell you that
because she didn’t want to worry you. It wasn’t important. She often has odd days in bed.’

‘Does she?’ He was lighting a cigarette and she noticed that his hands weren’t steady.

‘Oh, Dad! You worry so much about each other, but you always have. And I think the thing is she really wants to be in London with you. She misses you. I think you ought to let
her.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, in a tone which she knew meant he wouldn’t. ‘Bless you,’ he added; it was a kind of full stop.

As they got into the car, he said, ‘Are you looking forward to giving Clary her box?’

‘Like anything. She gave me a lovely birthday present. All kinds of butterflies in a glass case – for my house. But I think she’ll burst into tears of joy when she gets the
box. It may make her a bit happier for a change.’

‘Is she very unhappy?’

‘Oh,
Dad
, of course she is. She absolutely won’t consider Uncle Rupe being dead and never seeing him again. She makes up all kinds of stories about him, and she wrote to
General de Gaulle because she thought he might be a spy in France for us, and he didn’t answer for ages and then she got a letter back saying that enquiries had been made, but no one of that
name was known. I thought then that she might face up to the fact that he has died and she won’t see him, but somehow she
can’t
. She loves him too much to bear it.’

A shock. Her father, without any warning, suddenly broke into dry, almost shouting sobs – put his head on his arms on the steering wheel and sobbed and sobbed. She turned in her seat and
put her arms round him, but he didn’t stop.

‘Darling Dad. I’m sorry. Of course, he’s your brother and
you
must mind terribly as well. And I suppose you
have
faced up to it, and it must be awful.
It’s so final, isn’t it? Poor Dad.’

In the end she realised that talking didn’t help and simply held him, and finally the sobbing got less and he fumbled for his handkerchief and blew his nose. When he had wiped his face,
which he did as though he wasn’t used to it (but then, she supposed that he wasn’t used to crying), he said, ‘Sorry about that, Poll.’

‘Don’t be. I absolutely understand.’

When he had started the engine and they were on their way home, she said, ‘And I shan’t tell Clary. It would only distress her if she knew that you felt there was no hope.
Although,’ she finished tentatively – she did not want to upset him again, ‘there’s always a
shred
of hope, isn’t there, Dad? Don’t you
think?’

‘Must be,’ he answered, but so quietly that she hardly heard him.

She didn’t have Dad to herself for a long time after that, because of course, to be fair, he had to take Simon out for one morning and, anyway, he spent most of the weekends with Mummy and
Wills. Clary wasn’t much impressed with the emerald ring until Polly told her that it was Elizabethan, whereupon she asked to hold it. ‘
Anyone
might have worn it,’ she
said. ‘One of Mary Stuart’s ladies-in-waiting for instance. Think of it! It might have been there when the poor thing was executed! I must say, I think that
is
rather a
possession.’ But she was immediately and utterly thrilled by her writing box, opening and shutting it speechlessly, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It shows you must – like me quite
a bit,’ she said. ‘Oh, look! A secret drawer!’ Caressing it, she had touched a spring and a very shallow drawer flew open beneath the space for papers. There was a small, thin
piece of paper in it folded like an envelope. The paper, opened flat, was covered by spidery writing written in two directions. ‘Like letters in Jane Austen! Oh, Poll, what a joy! It’ll
take me years to read it. The ink’s gone all brown. But it might be a very important letter.’ They tried and tried to read it, but even with a magnifying glass they couldn’t make
it all out. ‘It seems to be mostly about the weather and how expensive muslins are,’ Clary said at last. ‘There must be other things, or it might be a
code
, but whenever
I get to what might be an important word it runs into the one going the other way and I can’t read it.’

Strangely, when they showed it to Miss Milliment, she was able to decipher it. ‘People wrote like that when I was a girl,’ she said. ‘Postage was expensive, and people did not
wish to waste the paper.’ It
was
all about the weather and the price not only of muslins, but lace, merino, and even a muff.

‘Anyway, it is a very
old
letter,’ Clary said as she folded it tenderly back into its envelope shape. ‘And I shall always keep it in its secret place. Polly, it is the
most exotic and amazing thing I’ve ever had. I’ll keep all my writing in it.’ She was writing a series of short stories that were linked to one another, by a character from each
one carrying on to the next, and sometimes read bits to Polly in the evenings which was far happier than her accounts of Uncle Rupe’s life in France, but she only read the bits she
wasn’t sure were good enough, so Polly never got the whole story. ‘You’re a
sounding
board,’ Clary said severely, ‘you’re not meant to enjoy the
story
.’

Now, as she hastily swept off all her other things that lay on her dressing table, in order that the desk should sit in state by itself, she said, ‘Thank you, Poll. It must mean –
you’re the most friendly friend.’ Then she added, ‘It must have cost you an awful lot of money,’ and Polly, knowing that this would make Clary feel more loved, replied,
‘Well, yes, it did a bit.’ She felt that she was getting to be quite good with
people
, which, as she had no other worthy gifts, was something.

‘What do you think Miss Milliment could possibly have looked like as a girl?’ she asked when they were getting ready for supper.

Clary thought. ‘A sort of pear, in pigtails?’ she suggested. ‘Do you think people ever said, “What a beautiful baby”?’

‘They can’t have. Unless they were trying to be kind to Mrs Milliment.’

‘I should think she must have needed people to be kind to her.’

‘Oh, I don’t agree. Mothers always think their babies are beautiful. Look at Zoë and Juliet.’

‘Jules
is
pretty,’ Clary said at once. ‘But, then, your mother thought Wills was lovely, and I know he’s your brother, but
honestly
nobody could have
enjoyed looking at him.’

They were taking an extra amount of trouble with their appearance, because the man who had been Uncle Rupert’s friend was arriving that evening in time for dinner. Clary was taking trouble
because he was her father’s friend, and Polly because she loved dressing up, and brushing her hair a hundred times, and pushing up her eyebrows with her finger and then smoothing them into a
fine line, and making sure that the seams of her stockings were straight, and putting on her jewellery. For Clary, taking trouble meant ironing her best blouse and trying to find a pair of
stockings that matched, and scrubbing her fingers in a vain effort to get the ink off them. Neither of them mentioned the fact that they were taking extra trouble although each knew that the other
one was.