The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (18 page)

Polly and Louise had not ridden Joey in the end. He was still out, Mr Wren had said. He hadn’t had the time to catch him but they could try if they liked, and he’d given them the halter. They could catch him and bring him in for the night, and then they could ride him in the morning. He looked rather cross, so they didn’t argue with him. Louise pinched a handful of oats which she put into her pocket with the sugar lumps Polly had secreted at tea. Nan had seen her, but they had both known that she wouldn’t like to say anything as Polly wasn’t in her charge. They had walked along the damp, shady path in the field, and Polly had got stung by nettles and had held things up by needing dock leaves.

‘Do hurry up,’ Louise had said. ‘Because if we catch him quickly, there will be time for a ride.’

But they hadn’t caught him at all. He was standing in a corner of the field, looking very fat and glossy, eating the rich green grass. He raised his head when they called him and watched them approach. There was a small cloud of flies round his head and his tail swished regularly. Whistler stood head to tail beside him, also grazing. When he saw the girls he started to walk towards them in case they were bringing anything nice.

‘We’ll have to give Whistler some oats, to be fair.’

‘All right – you get the halter ready and I’ll do the feeding.’

But this was the wrong way round, Louise thought. She was sure Polly would muff the halter, and she did. Whistler plunged his soft nose into the handful of oats, spilling a lot of them. Joey saw this and came up for his share. She shut her hand and held it out to Joey who made an expert grab, but the moment Polly tried to put an arm around his neck, he tossed his head and cantered away – an insultingly short distance – where he stood daring them to try again. Whistler nearly knocked Louise over when he nudged her hand for more.

‘Blast! You take the sugar, and I’ll have the halter.’

‘Sorry,’ Polly said meekly. She knew she wasn’t much good at this sort of thing. She was – only a bit – afraid of Joey.

They had another go with the sugar and the same thing happened, only this time Joey laid his ears back and looked quite wicked. When the sugar was gone, Joey wouldn’t come near them, and even Whistler lost interest in the end.

‘I bet Mr Wren
knew
he wouldn’t let himself be caught,’ Louise said crossly. ‘He might have jolly well done it himself.’

‘Let’s go back and tell him.’

They climbed the gate in silence, and Polly felt Louise was on the verge of being cross. But then she suddenly said, ‘It wasn’t your fault about the halter. Let’s not go and talk to Mr Wren. He’s never nice to us when his face is so red.’

‘Beetroot.’

‘Doesn’t it look awful with his stony blue eyes?’

‘No one would put beetroot and blue together on purpose,’ Polly agreed. ‘What shall we do? Shall we go and see our tree?’

And to her joy, Louise agreed at once. The piece of rope, which they used to get up the first straight hard part, hung just where they had left it at Christmas. They collected bunches of daisies and Louise put them in her pocket for the climb, and when they were comfortably ensconced in the best branch that went up at one end so that they could sit facing each other, leaning their backs against the branch and the trunk respectively, Louise divided the daisies and they both made chains to decorate the branches.

Louise, who bit her nails, had to bite the holes in the stalks for threading, but Polly did hers with her longest nail. They discussed the holidays, and what they most wanted to do in them. Louise wanted the beach, and especially to swim in the St Leonards swimming pool. Polly wanted to have a picnic at Bodiam. Both she and Simon had birthdays in August, so they would be allowed to choose one day. ‘But
he’
ll choose the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, said Polly sadly. Then she said, ‘Clary has a birthday, too remember?’

‘Oh, God! What will she choose?’

‘We could bend her to our will.’

‘Only by telling her how much we don’t want to do something that we really want.’

‘That’s not bending. That’s . . . ’ she searched for the word, ‘that’s
conspiring
.’

‘Why does she have to share a room with us? I don’t actually
like
her much. But Mummy says I ought to because of her not having a mother. I do see that. It must be rotten for her.’

‘She has Aunt Zoë’ Polly said.

‘She doesn’t strike me as a particularly good mother. Awfully glam, but not a mother. Some people aren’t cut out for that sort of thing, you know. I mean look at Lady Macbeth.’

‘I don’t think Aunt Zoë’s terribly like Lady Macbeth. I know you think Shakespeare is wonderful but, honestly, people now aren’t much like his people.’

‘They jolly well are!’

They had a bit of an argument about that, which Louise won by saying nature imitated art and that that wasn’t what
she
thought, but someone who really knew about that sort of thing. The sun sank, and the orchard, from being a gilded green, turned misty and sage with violet shadows, and it wasn’t hot any more. They began to think about milk and biscuits and their mothers saying good night to them.

‘Why don’t you and Rupert have the first bath? I’m quite happy to wait, and I’ve got to go and see that Nan is settling in, anyway. Coming, darling?’

And Edward, who had been winding down the net, joined her. Zoë watched them walk up the steps to the terrace. Edward put his arm round
Villy
’
s
shoulders and said something to her that made her laugh. They had won quite easily – would have won all three sets if Edward, the best player, hadn’t had a run of double faults and lost his service. She had to admit that Villy was good, too, not showy, but a steady player with a reliable backhand; she hardly missed a shot. Zoë, who minded losing, felt that it was because Rupert didn’t take the game seriously enough; he was good at volleying, but sometimes, at the net, he had simply left balls for her that she was sure he should have taken, and so, of course, she had often missed them. At least they hadn’t had Sybil playing; she served
underarm
and simply laughed when she missed things and asked people not to send such fast balls. The worst of playing with her was that everybody pretended she was just as good as everyone else. They were all so
nice
to one another. They were nice to her as well, but she knew that that was simply because she had become part of the family by marrying Rupert. She did not feel that they really
liked her.

‘I’m off for a bath,’ she called to Rupert, who was collecting the tennis balls. ‘I’ll leave the water for you.’ And she ran lightly up the steps before he could reply.

At least the water was hot. She had been wondering how she could decently go ahead and bag the first bath, and then Villy had, confoundingly, simply presented her with it. But it was a ghastly bathroom – freezing cold, and so
ugly,
with the pitch-pine walls and the window-sill always covered with dead bluebottles. She made the bath so hot she could hardly get into it and lay down for a good soak. These family holidays! You’d think if the Cazalets were so keen on their grandchildren that they’d look after Clarissa and Neville, and let her and Rupert go off and have a proper holiday alone together. But every year – except the first one when they’d been married and Rupert had taken her to Cassis – they had to come here for weeks and weeks and she hardly ever had Rupert to herself, except in bed. Otherwise all the days were spent in doing things with all these kids, everybody worrying about
them
having a good time, which they would, anyway, with the others to play with. She wasn’t used to all this clannishness; it wasn’t at all her idea of a holiday.

Zoë’s father had died at the battle of the Somme when she was two. She couldn’t remember him at all, although Mummy said that he’d played ride-a-cock-horse with her when she was eighteen months old. Mummy had had to take a job with Elizabeth Arden doing people’s faces all day, so she had been sent to boarding school when she was five – a place called Elmhurst near Camberley. She’d been easily the youngest boarder and everybody had spoiled her. She had quite liked school; it was the holidays that she had hated in the peachy little flat in West Kensington, with her mother out all day and a succession of boring mother’s helps to look after her. Buses and walks in Kensington Gardens, and tea in a tea shop was their idea of a treat. By the time she was ten she was determined to get away from home as soon as possible. As she grew older, she was given the heroine’s parts in the school plays – not because she was any good at acting, but because of her looks. She decided that she would go on the stage as soon as she left school. She certainly wasn’t going to end up like her mother, who had had, apart from her ghastly job, a succession of dreary old men, one of whom she even seemed to want to marry, but not after Zoë told her what he’d tried to do to her when Mother was out one day. There’d been a fearful scene and after that her mother had stopped dyeing her hair, and talked a lot about what a hard life she had.

The only subject upon which she and her mother were in animated agreement was Zoë’s appearance. Zoë evolved from being a pretty baby to an unusually attractive child, and even managed to avoid the common eclipse of adolescence. She never lost her lithe figure, nor had spots or greasy hair, and her mother, who had made herself some authority on appearance, realised early on that her daughter was going to be a beauty, and gradually, all the hopes she had had for her own security and comfort – a nice man who would look after her and obviate the need to work so hard – were transferred to Zoë. Zoë was going to be such a stunner that she could marry anyone she liked, which meant, to Mrs Headford, someone who was so rich that providing for his mother-in-law would be nothing to him. So she taught Zoë to look after herself: to treat her fine thick hair with henna and yolk of egg, to brush her lashes nightly with Vaseline, to bathe her eyes with hot and cold water, to walk across rooms with books on her head, to sleep in cotton gloves with her hands soaked in almond oil – and much else. Although they had no help, Zoë was never expected to do housework, nor to cook; her mother bought a second-hand sewing machine and made her pretty frocks and knitted her jumpers, and when Zoë was sixteen and had passed her School Certificate and said she was sick of school and wanted to go on the stage, Mrs Headford, who was by now a little afraid of her, at once agreed. Dukes had been known to marry people from the theatre, and as she was in no position to bring her daughter out, with a Season and all that, this seemed a viable alternative. She told Zoë that on no account should she marry an actor, made her a simple but exquisitely fitting green dress that matched her eyes for auditions and waited for her daughter’s fame and fortune. But Zoë’s lack of acting ability was masked by her lack of experience, and after two managers had advised her to go to an acting school, Mrs Headford realised that she was back to paying school fees. For two years Zoë attended Elsie Fogerty’s Academy and learned to enunciate, learned mime, learned to walk and some dancing and even a little singing. Nothing availed. She looked so ravishing, and tried so hard, that her teachers went on attempting to turn her into an actress far longer than they might have done had she been plainer. She remained wooden, self-conscious and altogether unable to make any lines that she spoke seem her own. Her only talent seemed to lie in movement; she liked dancing and in the end it was mutually agreed that perhaps she had better concentrate upon that. She left the school and took lessons in tap and modern dance. The only thing to be said for the acting school was that although a number of students had fallen in love with her, Zoë had remained aloof. Disregarding the obvious reason for this, Mrs Headford rashly assumed that Zoë was ‘sensible’ and knew what she was to achieve.