The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (27 page)

Villy took a book about Nijinsky and his wife in a beach bag that also contained a jar of Pomade Divine and Elastoplast and a spare bathing costume – she hated sitting about in a wet one. Edward, Villy, and Rupert were to drive the cars, which were slowly crammed with occupants, who, by the time they got moving, were already sticky and, in some cases, tearful from the heat and the conviction that they had been put in the wrong car.

Mrs Cripps watched them go from her kitchen window. Apart from all the cooked breakfasts, she had been hard at it since seven o’clock, making sandwiches with hard-boiled eggs, sardines, cheese and her own potted ham, with seed cake and flapjacks and bananas for pudding. There was now time for a nice cup of tea before Madam came with her orders.

For reasons she did not wish to define, Rachel found it difficult to inform the Duchy of her arrangements. She decided against asking for the car; the bicycle – in spite of the heat – would leave her much freer. However, when the Duchy came upon her at breakfast and asked her, she felt bound to divulge them, saying that she and Sid would enjoy lunch at the Gateway Tearooms, but the Duchy, who regarded meals in hotels or restaurants, or even tearooms as an absurd waste of money as well as being an unbecoming practice, insisted that she bring Sid back for lunch and had rung the bell for Eileen to tell Tonbridge to have the car round in half an hour before Rachel could protest at all. We can go for a walk after lunch, she thought. It will be just as good, really. Nearly as good. She had been deflected from any argument by Sybil, who limped into the morning room, apologising for being late, and sank into a chair with evident relief. She had lost her balance getting out of the bath, she explained, she seemed to have twisted her ankle. Rachel, who had been a VAD in the last years of the war, insisted on seeing it. It was badly swollen and was clearly extremely painful. The Duchy fetched witch hazel and Rachel procured a crêpe bandage and some lint, and the ankle was bound up.

‘You really ought to keep it up,’ Rachel said, and moved a second chair in front of Sybil, carefully putting the bruised foot on a cushion. This meant Sybil was sitting at an angle that was not at all comfortable and, almost at once, her back started to ache. It had taken her ages to dress because of her ankle and she felt tired already – at the beginning of the day. Rachel left to go to Battle, and the Duchy, having poured some tea and ordered Sybil some fresh toast, repaired to the kitchen to see Mrs Cripps. When Eileen appeared with the toast, Sybil asked her for a cushion for her back, and while this was being fetched she looked at the morning paper that had been left open at the foreign news page. Someone called Pastor Niemoller had been arrested after a large service in a place called Dahlem – she had never heard of it. She decided that she didn’t want to read the paper, and actually she didn’t want to eat anything either. She leant forward for Eileen to put the cushion behind her and, as she did so, felt as though a hand was slowly gripping her spine in the small of her back. She scarcely had time to notice this before the grip loosened and was completely gone. How odd, she began to think, and then without warning she was sucked into a whirlpool of paralysing, mindless panic. That, too, receded and little fragments of coherent fear reached the surface of her mind. Polly and Simon had been
late
– Polly eleven days and Simon three. She was between three and four weeks before her time, the fall couldn’t have hurt it – or them – Hugh would be in London by now, the fall had been a shock, that’s all it was . . . Ridiculous! She began to assess her body for reassurance. She was sweating, it was pricking under her arms, and when she touched her forehead it was damp. Her back –
that
was all right now, nothing except the mild ache that came when she was in the wrong position or stayed in one for too long.

She moved her foot, and was almost relieved by the sudden twinge of pain. Ankles could be agony, but that was all it was. Her mouth was dry, and she drank some tea. It was simply bad luck, when she’d planned to go for a little walk in the garden that she hadn’t seen properly this year. She imagined herself walking barefoot on the well-kept lawn, cool still from dew, and soft and springy: she really wanted to walk about
now.
The frustration made her feel irritably restless – What was Eileen doing hanging about—

‘Are you all right, Mrs Hugh?’

‘Quite all right. I twisted my ankle, that’s all.’

‘Oh, that’s what it is.’ Eileen seemed reassured. ‘Ever so painful, that can be.’ She picked up her tray. ‘You’ll ring if you want anything, won’t you, madam?’ She leant over the table and moved the little brass bell within Sybil’s reach. Then she went.

Perhaps I ought to be in London, not to be so far away, thought Sybil. I could have gone back with Hugh – got a taxi from the office. She really couldn’t go on sitting like this, it was too uncomfortable. She would like to ring up Hugh and see what he thought, but it would only worry him so she wouldn’t do that. If she got up and got one of the walking sticks out of Brig’s study – only across the passage – she could then go into the garden. It might be quite possible to walk if she had a stick. She turned and heaved her leg off the chair; her ankle responded with such a stab of agony that her eyes filled with tears. Perhaps she had better ring for Eileen to get it . . . but then she became aware of the hand on her spine again, not painful, but menacing, with the promise of pain. She remembered it now. It was the mere beginning – the grip would become a vice, and then a knife that would slowly surge downwards cleaving her spine and stopping seconds after it became intolerable, then apparently vanish but, in reality, lie in wait for another, more murderous assault . . . She must get up – get to – Supporting herself by the table, she rose to her feet, then remembered the bell – now out of reach – and as she leant over the table to get it, felt the warm flood of her waters breaking, It’s gone all
wrong
! she thought, as tears began to stream down her face, but she reached the bell and rang it and rang it for ever for someone to come.

Which they did, of course, much sooner than it felt to Sybil. They sat her back in the chair, and the Duchy sent Eileen for either Wren or McAlpine, whoever could be found first, while she telephoned Dr Carr. He was out on his rounds, but could be reached, they said, and would come at once. She did not tell her daughter-in-law that he was out, said calmly that he was on his way, and that Eileen and one of the men would carry her up to her room, and that she, the Duchy, would not leave her until the doctor came. ‘And everything will be all right,’ she said, with all the reassurance she could muster, but she was afraid, and wished that Rachel was there. Rachel was always wonderful when things were difficult. It was not good that the waters had broken so soon; she could see no sign of blood, and did not want to alarm Sybil by asking about it. If
only
Rachel was here, she thought almost angrily, she who is always here
would
be away at a time like this. Sybil was biting her lips trying neither to scream nor to cry. The Duchy took one of her hands in both of hers and held it hard; she remembered that it was good to be grasped so and she upheld the conspiracy of silence in childbirth that was naturally proper for women like themselves. Pain was to be endured and forgotten, but it was never really forgotten, and looking at Sybil’s mute distress she could remember it too well. ‘There there, my duck,’ she said. ‘It’ll be a lovely baby – you’ll see.’

Rachel would have liked more time to get ready to meet Sid. She would also have liked them to be able to have lunch at the White Hart alone together, but she would not have dreamed of going against the Duchy’s wishes in that matter, or, indeed, any other – a state of affairs that had applied all her life. There had, twenty years ago, been the excuse that she was too young – eighteen, in fact – the young man in question had urged her to greater freedom, but really, of course, she had not wanted to be in the least bit free with
him.
As she grew older, the reason for her obedience became her parents’ age rather than her own, and the notion that at thirty-eight she could still not order her own time to suit herself, or in this case, her and Sid, did not seriously impinge. It was a pity, but to dwell upon one’s own wishes would be morbid, a Cazalet term that implied the uttermost condemnation.

So she sat in the back of the car and looked on the bright side. It was a beautiful hot shimmering day, and she and Sid would have a perfectly lovely walk after luncheon together – might even take some Osborne biscuits and a Thermos with them and thus legitimately skip family tea.

Tonbridge drove at his usual twenty-eight miles an hour, and she longed to ask him to go faster, but he had never been known to be late for a train and asking him to hurry would look ridiculous.

In fact, they were early as she had already known they would be. She would wait on the platform, she told Tonbridge, who then mentioned that he had something to collect from Till’s for McAlpine.

‘Do that now, and we’ll meet you outside Till’s,’ Rachel ordered, pleased to have recognised the opportunity in time.

The station was very quiet. The one porter was watering the station flower beds, scarlet geraniums, dark blue lobelia and white alyssum, remnants of the decorative fervour inspired by the Coronation. There was one passenger with a child on the far side waiting to go to Hastings for a day at the sea, judging by the bucket and wooden spade and picnic bulging from a carrier bag. Rachel walked over the bridge to where they sat, then decided that she didn’t want to get involved with anyone – wanted to meet Sid in silence – but she was glad when the train puffed slowly towards them as she felt she was being unfriendly. Then it stopped and doors flapped open and there were people and then there was Sid walking towards her smiling, wearing her brown tussore suit with the belted jacket, bareheaded, cropped hair and a nut-brown face.

‘What ho!’ said Sid, and they embraced.

‘I’ll carry it.’

‘You will not.’ Sid picked up the businesslike little case which she had relinquished to greet Rachel, and tucked Rachel’s arm in her own.

‘I imagined you bicycling to meet me, but I suppose the bridge defeated you. You look tired, darling. Are you?’

‘No. And I didn’t bicycle. I’m afraid we’ve got Tonbridge and lunch at home.’

‘Ah!’

‘But a lovely walk afterwards, and I thought we’d take tea with us so we wouldn’t have to come back for it.’

‘That sounds a splendid idea.’ It was resolutely said, and Rachel glanced at her in search of irony, but there was none. Sid met her eye, winked and said, ‘Bless you, my angel, for always wanting everybody to be happy. I meant it. It
is
a splendid idea.

They walked out of the station in a silence that for Rachel was blissfully companionable, for Sid so full of wild happiness that she was unable to speak. But, eventually, as they passed the Abbey gates, she said, ‘If we take a picnic, won’t the children want to come too?’

‘They’re all at the beach. They won’t be back until tea-time.’

‘Ah! The plot thins, in the most admirable manner.’

‘And I thought you might stay the night. There’s a camp bed we could put in my room.’

‘Is there really, darling? I must wait for the Duchy to ask me, though.’

‘She will. She’s very fond of you. It’s a pity you haven’t brought your fiddle. But you could borrow Edward’s. You know she loves playing sonatas with you. How’s Evie?’

‘I can tell you about that in the car.’ Evie was Sid’s sister, renowned for minor and often wilful ill health. She did part-time secretarial work for a well-known musician and relied upon Sid, with whom she lived, to manage their slender resources and to look after her whenever she needed or felt like it.

And so, in the car, with Sid holding her hand, Rachel asked about Evie, and was told about her hay fever, the possibility of an ulcer, although the doctor didn’t think it was that, and her plan that Sid should take her away for a seaside holiday some time in August, and preserving the proprieties in the presence of Tonbridge had a certain charm, making them both want to laugh because in a way it was so silly – they didn’t really want to talk about Evie in the least. They looked at each other or, rather, Sid would glance at Rachel and be unable to look away, and Rachel would find herself transfixed by those small, brownish, eloquent, wide-apart eyes, and would feel herself beginning to blush when Sid would chuckle and produce some idiotic cliché such as ‘every silver lining has a cloud’, in the voice she would use for reading a motto from a cracker, adding ‘or so they say,’ which broke the tension until the next time. Tonbridge, driving slightly faster – he was looking forward to his dinner – couldn’t make head or tail of what they were on about.