The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (25 page)

Clary worked hard all afternoon. To begin with, she worked feverishly against time, because she knew that when Lydia and Nev had finished their rest they would rush out and want to do things and get in the way and do things wrong. But they didn’t come out; in fact, the nurses had taken them for a hot sulky walk up to the shop at Watlington, but as the time went by and they didn’t come, she felt able to take things more slowly, to stop and consider the next thing to do. The mirror was in place, sunk in the sand, it looked like water, and she edged it with moss which made it even better. She made a lovely hedge of tiny pieces of box stuck close together in the sand, had to do that twice, because she hadn’t made the sand firm enough to start with. Then she made a gravel path that ran beside the hedge to the lake, and then it seemed to need another hedge on its bare side, so she did that. Poor old Lydia’s daisies were drooping by now, so she pulled them out; it was no good putting flowers in, she needed plants. Also, she thought they ought to be planted in earth, very tiny fine earth, or they would die. She got some potting compost out of the potting shed and made a bed that started square and ended rather egg-shaped. She collected some scarlet pimpernel, and some speedwell – straggly, but it filled up the space – and some stone crop off the kitchen-garden wall and a very small fern. That helped, but there was still a lot of room, so she collected some heads of lavender and stuck them at the back in bunches. They looked like a plant if you put them like that, and they were dry things who wouldn’t mind just being stalks. They looked very good. It’ll take weeks to make the whole garden, she thought. It was one of the lovely things about it. She needed trees, and bushes, and perhaps a little seat for people to sit by the lake which she had constantly to polish with some spit, her finger and one of her socks, because it got sandy at the least little thing. There was the lawn to make, which would be tufts of grass planted close together and trimmed with Zoë’s nail scissors. The bell went for tea, and she didn’t want to go, but they’d be sure to come and find her if she didn’t. So she went, taking Neville’s shoe with her to please Ellen. Walking back to the house, she thought that perhaps she would like someone to see her garden: Dad, or Aunt Rach? Both of them, she decided.

After tea, all the children played the Seeing Game – one of the traditional holiday games devised by themselves. Teddy half felt that he had outgrown it, and Simon pretended to feel the same, but this was not true. It had been invented by Louise and was a kind of hide and seek, only you didn’t catch people; it counted if you saw them and could identify who they were, and involved constant mobility on the part of the hunted, who, when caught, were locked in an old dog kennel until rescued by a friend. The hunter won only if he succeeded in catching everybody and incarcerating them. Lydia and Neville, who spent most of the time in the kennel as they were easy to catch, enjoyed it most, because they were playing with the others, although they wailed that it was unfair to be caught so much, when Polly, for instance, was hardly caught at all. Hugh and Edward played tennis.

Villy and the Duchy played two pianos – Bach concerti – and Sybil and Rachel cut out the nightdresses on the table in the morning room. Nanny read bits of
Nursery World
aloud to Ellen while she did the ironing. The Brig sat in his study writing a chapter about Burma and its teak forests for his book. The day, which had been hot and golden with a sky of unbroken blue, was settling to longer shadows with midges and gnats and young rabbits coming out into the orchard.

Flossy, who allowed Mrs Cripps to own her because of Mrs Cripps’s connections with food, got up from her basket chair in the servants’ hall, stretched her totally rested body, and slipped out of the casement window for her evening’s hunting. She was a tortoiseshell, with hard-wearing fur and, as Rachel had once observed, like most well-fed English people she hunted merely for the sport and was very unsporting in her methods. She knew exactly when the rabbits went into the orchard, and one of them, at least, would not stand a chance against her formidable experience.

When Rupert and Zoë returned from their outing, she had said that she was going to get her bath in before all the children and tennis players used the hot water. Rupert, alone in their bedroom, wandered to the window from which he could see his sister and Sybil sewing under the monkey puzzle. They sat in basket chairs on the smooth green lawn backed by the green-black yew hedge against which their summer dresses – Rachel’s blue and Sybil’s green had a kind of aqueous delicacy. A wicker table was set between them, littered with a sewing basket, a tea tray with willow-patterned cups; a pile of creamy material completed the scene. He did not need even the corner of the herbaceous border on one side, nor the corner of the white gate to the drive at the other. He wanted to paint, but by the time he got his materials prepared, they might be gone: he wanted to draw them from the window where he stood, but Zoë would be back and that would not do. He rummaged in his canvas bag for his largest drawing block and packet of oil pastels and slipped down the smaller staircase to the front door.

Louise opened the kennel door.

‘We’re telling you now.’

‘We didn’t
know
till now. It’s not
fair
!’

‘Look, we’ve only just stopped,’ Polly said. ‘We couldn’t tell you before because we hadn’t.’

Lydia and Neville stumped out of the kennel. They had not wanted the game to stop and they hated it not being fair. Neither of them had had the chance to be the See-er.

‘Teddy and Simon are bored of it. They’ve gone on a hunt. There aren’t enough of us for a proper game.’ Clary joined them.

‘Anyway, it’s time for your baths. They’ll be coming for you any minute.’

‘God blast!’

‘Take no notice of him,’ Louise said in her most irritating voice.

‘Honestly, Louise, you are sickening! Too,
too
sickening!’

When Lydia said that she sounded exactly like Mummy’s friend, Hermione; Louise could not help admiring the mimicry, but she wasn’t going to say so. She didn’t want two actresses in the family, thank you very much. She gave Polly their secret signal and they ran – suddenly, and very fast – away from Lydia and Neville, who started to follow them, but were quickly out of sight. The wails of rage only drew Ellen’s and Nanny’s attention to their whereabouts and they got carried off for their baths.

When Clary went to find Dad and Aunt Rachel to show them her garden, she found she couldn’t have either of them. Dad was sitting on the large wooden table used for outdoor tea drawing Aunt Rach and Aunt Syb, alternatively staring at them, then making sudden irritable marks on his pad. She stood watching him for a bit: he was sort of frowning, and every now and then he drew a deep sighing breath. Sometimes he rubbed the marks he had made with his finger. In his left hand he held a small bunch of chalks, and sometimes he stuffed the one he had been using back and took another one. Clary thought that
she
could hold the bunch of chalks for him, but as she moved nearer to say this, Aunt Rach put her finger to her lips so she didn’t say anything. And she couldn’t go and ask Aunt Rach to come because then she would be in the picture, so she just sat down on the grass and watched her father. A lock of his hair kept falling forward across his bony forehead and he kept pushing or shaking it back. I could hold his hair back for him, she thought. Why can’t there be something like that I could do for him, so that he couldn’t do without me? ‘Clary is indispensable,’ he would say to people who came to admire his painting. By now, she was grown up, with her hair in a bun and skirts down her legs like the aunts, and her face was thin and interesting, like Dad’s, and people – in taxi cabs and orangeries like Kensington Gardens – proposed to her, but she would give them all up for Dad. She would never marry because of being so terrifically indispensable, and since Zoë had died from eating potted meat in a heatwave – known to kill you according to the Duchy – she was all that Dad had in the world. Dad would be famous, and she would be . . .

‘Rupert! Where did you put my book? Rupert!’

Clary looked up, and there was Zoë in her kimono shouting through the open bedroom window.

There was a pause as she watched his face change, and then change again into patient good humour.

‘You must have left it in the car.’

‘I thought you brought it in.’

‘I didn’t, darling.’ Turning to look at her, he spied Clary. ‘Clary’ll fetch it for you.’

‘What book?’ She got to her feet reluctantly. If Dad asked her she’d have to get it.

‘Gone With The Wind,’
called Zoë. ‘Bring it up to me, would you, Clary darling, there’s an angel.’

Clary trotted off. She’d never felt less like an angel in her life. Zoë had only said that to make it sound as though she was fond of her, and she jolly well wasn’t. And I’m not fond of her, she thought, not remotely, the tiniest bit fond. I hate her! One of the reasons she hated Zoë was feeling like that. She didn’t hate anyone else, which showed she wasn’t a hating person, but Zoë made her feel horrible, and sometimes wicked: things like potted meat would never occur to her about anyone else. But she’d thought of dozens of ways in which Zoë might die, and if Zoë died from any of them it would be her fault. She hoped there would be another way that she hadn’t thought of must be – people could die from nearly anything. A snake bite or a ghost frightening her to death, or something Ellen called a hernia that sounded pretty bad. There she went, making it more likely to be her fault. She shut her eyes and held her breath to stop her thoughts. Then she opened the car door, and found the book on the back seat.