The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (22 page)
Read The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) Online
Authors: Elizabeth Jane Howard
‘ . . . I
do
try but she simply doesn’t like me!’
‘I think she feels that you don’t like her.’
‘Anyway, it’s Ellen’s job to know where she is. I mean – surely she’s not meant to
just
look after Neville? She’s meant to be the children’s nurse, isn’t she?’
‘Clary is twelve, a bit too old for a nanny. Still, I agree with you, she should have seen that Clary went to bed.’
Zoë didn’t reply. She felt she had shifted the balance of blame, felt consequently less guilty – able to be softer.
Rupert was cleaning his teeth and spitting into the slop pail. He said, ‘I’ll have a talk with Ellen tomorrow. And Clary, too, of course.’
‘All right, darling.’ It sounded, irritatingly, like a concession (about what?). I don’t want to row about it, he reminded himself. He glanced at her to see how she was getting on with the interminable business of cleaning her face. She was using the transparent stuff from a bottle; it was nearly over. She caught his eye in the dressing-table glass and began one of her slow confiding smiles; he watched the beguiling dimple below her right cheekbone appear, and went over to her, pulling the kimono off her shoulders. Her skin was cool as alabaster, as lustrous as pearls, the warm white of a rose. He thought, but did not say these things; his deepest adoration of her could not be shared; somewhere he knew that her image and herself were not the same, and he could only cling to the image through secrecy.
‘It’s high time I took you to bed,’ he said.
‘All right, darling.’
When he had made love to her, and she had turned, with a sigh of content, onto her side, she said, ‘I will try harder with Clary, I truly promise you I will.’
He remembered, irresistibly, the last time she had said that and answered as he had before, ‘I know that you will.’
My darling, I wonder if you will ever know how much you are that? I don’t know how long this will be, because I am writing this in the common room, where, as you know, everybody resting between bouts of teaching comes for a fag and a cup of coffee, and, unfortunately, a chat. So I get interrupted, and in twelve minutes’ time Jenkins minor will loom to murder a perfectly harmless little piece of Bach. Last Wednesday was lovely, wasn’t it? I sometimes think, or perhaps I
have
to think, that we get more out of our precious times together than people who do not have our difficulties, who can meet and be affectionate openly and when they please. But oh! How I miss you! You are the most rare, miraculous creature – a much better person than I in every imaginable way. Sometimes I wish you were not so entirely
good
– so unselfish, so generous and untiring in your attention and kindness to all. I am greedy; I want you to myself. It’s all right; I know that this isn’t possible; I shall never repeat my unspeakable behaviour of the night we went to the Prom – I shall never hear any Elgar again in my life without shame. I know that you are right; my sister depends upon me in all sorts of ways, the blasted finances as you call them, and you have your parents, who have both come to depend on you. But sometimes I dream of us both becoming free to be alone together. You are all I want. I would live in a wigwam with you or a seaside hotel – the kind with paper carnations on the dinner tables and people with half-bottles of wine with their initials on the label. Or a Tudor bijou gem on the Great West Road, with a pink cherry and a laburnum tree and a crazy-paving path – anywhere, my dearest Ahry, would be transformed by you. If wishes were horses . . . I thought perhaps that I might—Oh, Jenkins minor! The dandruff rained down upon his fiddle from which came the most dreadful sounds – like some small animal caught in a trap. I sound cruel, but he lied to me about his practising – he is not a winning child. What I had been going to say was that
if
I rang early next week, perhaps the dear Duchy would have me for a night? Or failing that, to luncheon? Or – most bold of all – perhaps you could meet me at the station, and we could lunch somewhere in Battle and go for a walk? These are only wild suggestions; you need only say when I ring that it wouldn’t do for it not to do. Just to hear your voice will be wonderful. Write to me, my dear heart, write to me I beg—
‘Aunt Rach?’
Instinctively, she folded the letter and put it out of sight. ‘Yes, my dude. I’m here.’
‘Is it all right? You aren’t cross?’
Rachel got out of her bed and knelt on the floor beside her niece. ‘I was most honoured to be chosen.’ She stroked Clary’s fringe back from her forehead. ‘We’ll have a lovely talk tomorrow. Go to sleep now. Are you warm enough?’
Clary looked surprised. ‘
I
don’t know. How do I feel?
‘Warm enough.’ Rachel leaned down and kissed her.
‘If I’d really got rabies, you wouldn’t be able to kiss me ’cos I’d bite, wouldn’t I?’
‘What
have
you been reading?’
‘Nothing. Someone told me about it at school. A horrible girl from South America. You wouldn’t like her, she’s
so
horrible.’
‘Good night, Clary, Off you go.’
‘Are you going to sleep now?’
‘Yes.’
So then, of course, she had to put the letter away and turn out the light.
On Saturday, Villy went riding with her father-in-law, Edward and Hugh played tennis with Simon and Teddy, Rupert took Zoë out to lunch in Rye, Polly and Louise took turns to have riding lessons on Joey, who, caught by Wren and doomed to an hour’s trotting and cantering pointlessly round the same old field, got his own back by puffing himself up when he was saddled so that the girths would hardly go round his huge grass-fed belly and then deflating so that the saddle slipped sideways and decanted Polly onto the ground. With Louise, he only managed to switch his tail so sharply that he stung her eyes when she was trying to mount him.
Clary took Lydia to see butterflies and then they found a heap of sand left by the builders and Clary had an idea. It’s quite a long idea,’ she said, sternly, because Neville was tagging along and she wanted to put him off, but it didn’t work. ‘I want to be
in
the idea, he said, so in the end she let him. Under her direction, they set about moving nearly all the sand to a secret place behind the potting shed.
Rachel picked more raspberries, and black and red currants for Mrs Cripps to make summer puddings, typed excerpts from John Evelyn’s
Diaries
for her father’s book, and finally joined Sybil under the monkey puzzle to tack yards of rufflette onto dark green chintz for the Duchy to machine after luncheon.
The Duchy had her morning interview with Mrs Cripps. The wreck of the salmon was inspected; it would not stretch to being served cold again with salad – was to be turned into croquettes for dinner to be followed by a Charlotte Russe (this was a compromise between them; Mrs Cripps did not like making croquettes, and the Duchy thought that Charlotte Russe was too rich in the evening). For Sunday lunch they would have the roast lamb and summer pudding. That settled, she was free to spend the morning in her garden; dead-heading, clipping the four pyramids of box that were stationed at the end of the herbaceous borders guarding the sundial with Billy to sweep up and clear away the clippings.
By noon, everybody was too hot to go on doing all these things. The fathers felt that they had worked long enough on Teddy’s serve and Simon’s backhand and the boys were both frantic for lunch – still an hour away – and went on their traditional and lightning raid upon the tins of biscuits by their parents’ beds. Today, it was easy; they swiped the lot from Uncle Rupert’s room, knowing he was out, and ate them in the downstairs lavatory.
Villy, after the ride, had to be taken by William round the new buildings. She was longing to change out of her riding clothes, but her father-in-law, fully dressed in flannel shirt, lemon gaberdine waistcoat and tweed jacket with gaberdine breeches and leather boots, seemed impervious to the heat, and spent a good hour explaining not only what they had done but the alternative plans that had been rejected.
Louise and Polly, abandoned by Wren who said he had to get back and see the other horses, had one more turn each on Joey, who was sweating a lot and less and less inclined to co-operate; he had taken to ambling and stopping to snatch mouthfuls of grass. ‘He smells lovely, but he’s not very faithful,’ Polly said, as she dismounted. ‘Want another turn?’
Louise shook her head. ‘If only there were two of him we could go for a proper ride. Hold him while I take the saddle off.’ Polly, who secretly did not like riding nearly as much as Louise, agreed. What she was thinking was that now they could have the rest of the day doing much nicer things. She stroked Joey’s tender nose, but he nudged her impatiently – it was sugar not sentiment he was after. When Louise had heaved the saddle off his back, she unstrapped his bridle and slipped it over his face. He stood for a moment, and then, tossing his head with a theatrical gesture, cantered a few paces until he was out of reach. ‘I’m afraid he really doesn’t like us much,’ Louise said. She felt that she had the reputation for being marvellous with animals and Joey did not behave at all as though he agreed with this.
‘He likes you better than me,’ said loyal Polly; although it had never been mentioned, she knew how Louise felt. They trudged on down the cart track from the field to the stables taking turns with the saddle.
Clary had had a good morning. The sand had all been heaped into an old cold frame in the kitchen garden. The glass lid had long since gone and the bottom made an ideal boundary for her idea. First of all the sand had to be patted completely smooth: they tried with bare feet, but hands turned out to be better. Clary was best at this, and in order to have the peace and quiet to do it properly she sent the others to fetch things.
‘What sort of things?’ Neville was getting fractious: ‘What are we trying to do? Why don’t we get some water and make mud?’ he complained.
‘Shut up. If you don’t want to play with us, you can just go away. Or you can do what Clary says. She’s the oldest.’
‘I don’t want to go away. I do want to play. I want to know what we’re supposed to be doing. I don’t want to waste my time,’ he added rather grandly.
‘Your time!’ Lydia scoffed, trying to think of the smallest thing she knew. ‘It’s not worth a hundred or a thousand.’
Clary said, ‘We’re making a garden. We need hedges, and gravel for paths, and – yes – and a lake! And trees, and flowers – we need everything! One of you collect the gravel, only the tiniest gravel. You do that, Neville. Get a seed box out of the greenhouse for it.’
‘What shall I do?’
‘I want you to guard the sand. And scrape moss off the wall at the bottom there,’ she added, as Lydia began to look disappointed.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’ll be back soon.’
On her way back from her successful and unnoticed raid in the house – Zoë’s nail scissors out of her manicure set and the small round mirror out of the maid’s lavatory – she came upon a trug full of box clippings (Billy had been called to his dinner). Her mind was a riot of possibilities: with the scissors, she could plant grass and cut it short so that it would be a lawn, and the box would make a tiny hedge to edge the gravel path – or it could be in a pattern for flower beds. There was no end to what she might do to make the most beautiful garden in the world. For once, she was glad that Polly and Louise weren’t about; they might have had ideas, and she wanted it to be entirely her own.
When she got back, she found that Lydia had tired of collecting moss, had picked some daisies, was sticking them just anywhere into the sand. ‘I’m putting in the flowers for you,’ she said. Clary let her do it at one end of the sand. Lydia was small and you couldn’t expect too much and she knew that if you were too small you didn’t like being made to feel it.
Just as Neville came back with hardly any gravel, but a whole lot of other things that wouldn’t have been the slightest use, they heard Ellen calling them to come in to get ready for lunch.
‘It’s a deadly secret,’ Clary warned. ‘You mustn’t say a word to them. Say we’ve been playing in the orchard. We’ll come out after lunch and do all the proper making.’
‘
We
have to have blasted rests,’ Neville reminded her. ‘For a whole blasted hour.’
‘It isn’t fair!’
‘
I
used to have to,’ Clary said quickly before Lydia could work herself up. ‘When you’re twelve, you won’t have to.’