The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (17 page)

She decided to come and see them often: in the end they might get to know her, but they seemed a bit unearthly for people – more like ghosts or fairies – they didn’t
need
people, lucky things.

The kitchen garden, with walls all round it, was very hot and still. There was one long bed of flowers for picking, and the rest was vegetables. Plum and greengage trees were grown against the walls and a huge fig tree, whose leaves were quite rough to touch and smelled of slightly warm mackintosh. It had a lot of figs, and some had fallen to the ground, but they were still green and hard and shiny.

‘Come and see what I’ve got!’

She hadn’t noticed Lydia, who was squatting on the ground in the middle of two rows of cabbages.

‘What have you got?’ she said, copying a grown-up voice – not really wanting to know.

‘Caterpillars. I’m collecting them for pets. This is my box for them. I’m going to make holes in the lid with Nan’s smallest knitting needle ’cos they need some air, but they won’t be able to escape. You can have some if you like.’

Lydia was nice. Clary didn’t actually want any caterpillars, she was too old for them, but she felt pleased to be asked.

‘I’ll help you if you like,’ she said.

‘You can tell where they are because of the eaten bits of leaves. Only please pick them up carefully. As they haven’t got any bones you can’t tell what would hurt.’

‘All right.’

‘Do you want the very small ones?’ Clary asked, after finding a whole lot on one leaf.

‘Some, because they’ll last longer. The big ones will go into cocoons and stop being pets.’

‘Except for size they do look the same, though,’ she said after a bit. ‘Their little black faces are
just
the same, it’s no good giving them names. I’ll just have to call them them.’

‘Like sheep. Only not awfully like sheep.’

This made Lydia laugh and she said, ‘You don’t have caterpillar shepherds. Shepherds know sheep quite well. Mr York told me. He knows his pigs and they all have names.’

When Clary thought they’d got too many, and Lydia said there were enough, they went to see if there were any strawberries left because Lydia said she was thirsty and if she went into the house for some water, Nan would find her and make her have a bath. But the only strawberries they found were all half eaten by things. Clary told Lydia about wanting a cat, and how her dad had said they’d have to think about it.

‘What does your mother say?’

‘She’s not my mother.’

‘Oh!’ Then she said, ‘I know she’s not, really. Sorry.’

Clary said, ‘It’s all right,’ but it wasn’t.

‘Do you like her? Aunt Zoë, I mean?’

‘I don’t have any feelings about her.’

‘But even if you did, it couldn’t be the same, could it? I mean, nobody could be like a real mother. Oh, Clary, I feel awfully sad for you! You’re a tragic person, aren’t you? I think you’re terrifically brave!’

Clary felt extraordinary. Nobody had ever said anything like that to her before. It was funny; she felt lighter, someone
knowing
made it less of a hard secret, because Ellen always changed the subject in a brisk horrible way, and Dad never mentioned her – never once even said ‘your mother’, let alone telling her all the things she wanted to know. He couldn’t help it, it was too awful for him to talk about, and she loved him far too much to want to make anything worse for him, and so there was nobody . . . Lydia was crying. She wasn’t making any noise, but her lip was trembling and tears spurted out onto the strawberry straw.

‘I’d hate my mother to die,’ she said. ‘I’d
hate
it – too much.’

‘She’s not going to die,’ Clary said. ‘She’s the wellest person I’ve ever seen in my life!’

‘Is she? Really the wellest?’

‘Absolutely. You must believe me, Lyd – I’m far older than you and I know that sort of thing.’ She felt in her pocket for a handkerchief for Lydia, and remembered the tomatoes. ‘Look what I’ve got!’

Lydia ate the three tomatoes, and they cheered her up. Clary felt very old and kind. She offered Lydia the nectarine, and Lydia said, ‘No, you have it,’ and Clary said, ‘No, you’re to have it. You’ve got to.’ She wanted Lydia to have everything. Then they took the caterpillars and went to the potting shed to see if Mr McAlpine still had his ferrets.

Teddy and Simon rode their bicycles round the house and then round the stables, and finally down the road to Watlington and along the drive to the Mill House that their grandfather had bought and was rebuilding to be an extra holiday house for some of them. They did not talk much, both having to contend with the switch from Teddy being a prefect and Simon a junior at their school, to being ordinary holiday cousins who could rag each other. On the way back, Teddy said to Simon, ‘Shall we let them play Monopoly with us?’

And Simon, secretly pleased to have his opinion asked, answered as casually as he could, ‘We’d better, or they’ll make no end of a fuss.’

Sybil had a lovely peaceful time eating Marie biscuits – she kept feeling hungry in between meals – and reading
The Citadel
by A. J. Cronin, who had been a doctor, like Somerset Maugham.

Usually she read more seriously: she was somebody who read more to be enlightened and educated than for pleasure, but now she felt incapable of mental effort. She had brought T. S. Eliot’s play
Murder in the Cathedral
with her, which she and Villy had seen at the Mercury, and Auden and Isherwood’s
Ascent of F6,
but she didn’t feel at all like reading them. It was lovely to be in the country. She really wished that Hugh could stay down for the week with her, but he and Edward had to take turns to be at the office, and Hugh wanted to be free when the baby was born. Or babies: she was practically sure there were two of them judging by the activity inside her. After this, they really must make sure that they didn’t have any more. The trouble was that Hugh hated all forms of contraception; after seventeen years, she wouldn’t actually have
minded
terribly if they stopped all that sort of thing altogether, but Hugh obviously didn’t feel like that. She wondered idly what Villy did about it, because Edward wouldn’t be a very easy person to say no to, not that one ought to do that, anyway. When Polly was born they had sort of decided that two was enough; they had been much poorer then and Hugh had worried about school fees if they had more sons, so they’d battled on with her Dutch cap, and douches, and Volpargels, and Hugh not coming inside her, until the whole business had seemed so worrying that she had completely stopped enjoying it although, of course, she never let him know
that.
But last year, early in December, they’d had a divine skiing holiday at St Moritz and after the first day when they were aching from exercise, Hugh had ordered a bottle of champagne for them to drink while they took turns to soak in a hot bath. She’d made him go first, because he’d hurt his ankle, and then he sat and watched her. When she was ready to come out, he’d held an enormous white bath towel out and wrapped it round her, and then held her, and then unpinned her hair and pulled her gently down onto the bathroom mat. She’d started to say something, but he’d put his hand over her mouth and shook his head and kissed her and it had been like it was when they first married. After that, they’d made love every night, and sometimes in the afternoons as well and Hugh did not have a single one of his heads. So her present state was hardly surprising and she was glad, because
he
was so pleased and always so sweet to her. I’m very lucky, she thought. Rupert’s the funniest, and Edward the most handsome, but I wouldn’t swap Hugh for either of them.

‘I expected you to be fast asleep.’ He came into the room with a glass of sherry in his hand. ‘I’ve brought you this to buck you up.’

‘Oh,
thank
you, darling. I mustn’t drink too much or I’ll pass out at dinner.’

‘You drink what you want and I’ll finish it.’

‘But you don’t like sherry!’

‘I do sometimes. But I thought if you had this, you could skip the unknowns coming for a drink.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘I read for a bit, and then the Old Man called me in for a chat. He wants to build a squash court behind the stables. Apparently it was Edward’s idea, and he’s started to choose the site.’

‘It will be nice for Simon.’

‘And Polly. All of us, really.’

‘I can’t imagine
ever
being able to play any game again.’

‘You will, darling. It won’t be built until the Christmas hols. You’ll be as thin as a rake by then. Do you want a bath? Because if you do, you’d better get in quick before the tennis players and the children start.’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll have one in the morning.’

‘You’ll all have one, will you?’ He stroked her belly and got up from the bed. ‘I must get out of these shoes.’ All male Cazalets had long bony feet and were constantly changing their shoes.

Sybil held out the sherry glass. ‘I’ve had enough.’

He drained the glass – like medicine, she thought. ‘By the way, what are we going to call them?’

‘Or him or her, possibly.’

‘Well?’

‘Don’t you think Sebastian’s rather a nice name?’

‘A bit fancy for a boy, isn’t it? I thought it might be nice if we called him William after the Old Man.’

‘If they were twins we could call them both names.’

‘And girls? Or a girl?’

‘I thought perhaps Jessica.’

‘I don’t like that. I like plain names. Jane or Anne. Or Susan.’

‘Of course, there might be one of each. That would be best.’

They had had this conversation before, but before the possibility of twins had occurred. They did not agree about names, although they
had
agreed about Simon in the end, and Hugh had been allowed to choose Polly when she had wanted Antonia. Now, she said, ‘Anne is a nice name.’

‘I was thinking that Jess wouldn’t be too bad. Where did you put my socks?’

‘Top left-hand drawer.’

A car was heard in the drive.

‘That will be the mystery guests.’

‘I must say I’m jolly glad
you
don’t keep inviting everyone you meet back for drinks and meals.’

‘I don’t go in enough trains. Do you want me to do anything about getting Polly and Simon towards bed?’

‘It’s their first night, let them rip. They’ll come in when Louise and Teddy are made to.’

‘Okey-doke.’ He ran a comb through his hair, blew her a kiss and went.

Sybil got up from bed and went to the open window; the air smelled warmly of honeysuckle and roses, there were the metallic sounds of blackbirds settling down for the night and the sky was turning apricot streaked with little molten feathery clouds. ‘Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour,’ came into her mind. She leaned further out of the window and pulled a rose towards her to smell it. ‘And since to look at things in bloom, fifty springs are little room,’ – it was unlike Housman to allow anyone fifty springs, let alone three score years and ten. She was thirty-eight, and the thought that it might be a very hard labour and that she might die recurred now. The petals of the rose began to drop; and when she let go of it, it swung back with only the stamens left. She couldn’t die, she was needed. Dr Ledingham was marvellous, and Nurse Lamb a brick. It was just one of those times when the pain and what it was for balanced each other. She had never told Hugh how frightened she had been – the first time – with Polly, nor how much more she had dreaded having Simon, because the notion that one did not remember one’s labour was one of those sentimental old wives’ tales.