The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (30 page)

It took him precisely an hour. She had all Sybil’s clothes strewn about the room, her shoes, her jewellery – everything. He told her to get dressed in her own things, pack and leave. She must be out of the house in half an hour and, first of all, she was to give him the keys. She stuck out her bottom lip and swore under her breath in German, but she didn’t argue. He waited outside the room until she had changed into her own cotton frock and then waited in the bedroom while she was upstairs packing. It reeked of Sybil’s scent, Tweed, that he always gave her on her birthday. He attempted to tidy the room, hang a few things back in the wardrobe, but it was all such a mess he despaired. His heart was pounding with anger, and a headache was starting – all he needed for the long drive. ‘Hurry up!’ he shouted up the stairs. She seemed to be a long time, but eventually appeared carrying two obviously immensely heavy cases. ‘The keys,’ he said. She looked at him with pure hatred and thrust them painfully into his hand.

Then quite slowly, and with horrible accuracy, she spat on him. ‘
Schweinhund
!’ she said.

He stared back at her pale protracted eyes that were full of cold malice. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. The hatred he felt for her frightened him. ‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Get out before I call the police.’ He followed her down, watched her open the door and slam it with ferocity behind her.

He went into the bathroom and washed his face and hand, laving them again and again in cold water. Then he took a couple of his pills, and then he thought he’d better be sure that the house was properly locked up. It wasn’t. The back door from the kitchen was ajar. After that he went round the basement and ground floor making sure that every window was secure. Then he remembered Pompey, but when he eventually found the poor cat he was on Polly’s bed and he was dead – strangled with Polly’s winter dressing-gown cord. Polly’s beloved cat, the creature she loved most in the world. It was too much. He sat on his daughter’s bed and put his face in his hand. For a few seconds he sobbed until some early upbringing message told him that this would not do, so he stopped and blew his nose. He looked at Pompey, who lay rigidly stretched out the cord still strained round his neck. His half-open eyes were still bright; his fur was warm. When he undid the cord, he saw that it had been expertly knotted. It struck him then that strangling a cat without a sound was not an easy thing to do, unless you had practice – the thought caused a shiver of revulsion. But he had to get on. He wrapped Pompey in a bath towel and carried him downstairs, with the notion that he would bury him in the back garden, but one look at the baking soil covered with iris roots changed his mind. He would take Pompey to Sussex, find the right time to tell Polly and help her to bury him – the Duchy would provide a good spot for a grave. He must, in any case,
tell
Polly that Pompey had died, but not how. She must never know how cruelly malevolent people could be – let her have the pure grief, I’ll get her another cat, he thought, as he packed the car, putting Pompey in the back of the boot. I’ll get her
twenty
cats – any cat she wants in the world.

‘I always thought that Adila’s sister was so much better than Adila. She was quieter – less flamboyant.’

Sid, although she did not agree with the remark – that is to say that she had not the distaste for flamboyance that was so evident in the Duchy – was none the less pleased that the subject of violinists was proving to be the right distraction for her. They had progressed from a profound and mutual admiration for Szigeti and Hubermann to the D’Aranyi sisters. Now, she said that they were wonderful together, set each other off, were perfect with Bach, for instance. The Duchy’s eyes glowed with interest.

‘Did you hear that? They must have been marvellous.’

‘Not at the concert. At a friend’s house one evening. They suddenly decided to do it. It was unforgettable.’

‘But I don’t think
Jelly
should ever have performed that Schumann. He clearly did not want it performed, and it seems wrong to have gone against his wishes.’

‘Hard to resist though, if you had uncovered the manuscript.’

Sensing dangerous ground – the Duchy would never have considered that something hard to resist was a reason for resisting it – she added, ‘Of course, Somervell wrote his concerto for Adila which is one reason why she has been heard far more often in public than her sister. Those Brahms Hungarian dances for encores! Marvellous, don’t you think? Number five, for instance.’

Sid agreed – nobody could play a Hungarian dance like a Hungarian.

The Duchy patted her mouth with her napkin and rolled it into its silver holder. ‘Have you heard this new young boy – Menuhin?’

‘I went to his first concert at the Albert Hall. He played the Elgar. An amazing performance.’

‘I never felt it was right that there should be these child prodigies. It must be awfully hard on them – no real childhood and all the travelling.’

Sid thought of Mozart, and remained silent. Then the Duchy added, ‘But I have heard him and he is wonderful – such a grasp of the music and, of course, he is not a child any more. But isn’t it interesting? All the people we have mentioned, not to speak of Kreisler and Jourchim, are Jews! One has to hand it to them. They really are remarkable fiddlers!’ Then she looked at Sid and went slightly pink. ‘Dear Sid, I hope you don’t . . .’

And Sid, wearily used to the blanket anti-Semitism that seemed to envelop the English, answered with the practised good humour that she had needed to cultivate since she was a child, ‘Dear Duchy, they
are
! I wish I could say “we”, but I have no false notions about my talent – perhaps it is my gentile blood that has prevented me from getting to the top.’

‘I do not think that is important. The great thing is to enjoy it.’

And make some sort of living from it, thought Sid, but she did not say this.

The Duchy was still feeling unhappy about what she described to herself as her slip. ‘Dear Sid! We are so fond of you. Rachel is devoted to you, you know. You must stay a few days so that you can see more of each other. I do hope that you will have time for that.’

She put out her hand to Sid, who took it as though it was full of a handful of rich crumbs that she could not resist. ‘You are very kind, Duchy dear. I should love to stay a day or two.’

The Duchy’s frank and troubled eyes cleared and she gave Sid’s hand a little pat. ‘And perhaps we might play together – the amateur and the professional? Edward’s Gagliano is here.’

‘That would be lovely.’ Edward’s Gagliano was a darn sight better than her own fiddle. He never played it now: it lay in its case, still marked Cazalet Minor from his school days, and it was kept in the country.

The Duchy rang for Eileen to clear lunch and got up from the table.

‘I think perhaps I will see whether they want anything upstairs. Will you keep an ear out for the beach party returning?’

‘I will.’

When the Duchy had gone, she lit another cigarette and wandered outside to the basket chairs on the lawn. She could see the drive and the gate from there. The usual welter of ambivalent feelings was churning away inside her: offence rising at this frightful lumping of people into a category for reasons of race; a creeping, but irresistible gratitude for being classed as an exception to the rule – the mongrel’s view, she supposed, but she had other reasons for craving approval, if not affection, which neither the Duchy nor any of her family nor the people she worked with nor anyone at all, in fact, excepting possibly Evie would ever know anything about if she could help it – because of Rachel, her dear most precious and secret love. It had to be secret if she was to keep Rachel, and life without Rachel was not something she could bear to contemplate. Evie did not actually
know
, but she had some inkling and had already started to use her damnable intuition for manipulative purposes – like this deadly fortnight by the sea she said they must have. Evie always sensed the moment attention was not primarily on herself and depending on the occasion became more ingeniously demanding. And this occasion, the great occasion of her life, was dynamite. If only I were a man, she thought, none of this need be. But she did not want to be a man. Nothing is simple, she thought. Yes, one thing was: she loved Rachel with all her heart and nothing could be simpler than that.

Sybil lay with her legs apart and her knees up, the mound of her belly obscuring all but the top of Dr Carr’s head, pale pink and shiny, as he bent to see how things were going. For a long time they hadn’t been at all: the pains had gone on, but the cervix had not continued to dilate; she seemed stuck. Dr Carr was wonderfully reassuring, but she was so tired and sick of the pain that she wanted it to stop more than anything else, and for the past hour – hours – whatever it had been – there seemed to be no reason why it ever should. In the middle of this examination, another splitting surge of pain began – enormous, like a freak wave, and she tried to writhe away from it, but could not because Dr Carr was holding her legs.

‘Push, Mrs Cazalet – bear down – push now.’ Sybil pushed, but this increased the agony. She shook her head weakly and stopped, felt the pain ebbing, taking all her strength away with it. Sweat stung her eyes and then tears. She whimpered – it wasn’t fair to hold her down to make things worse when she was too tired to bear any more. She looked weakly for Rachel, but Dr Carr was talking to Rachel who was too far away. She felt stranded, abandoned by both of them.

‘You’re doing very well now, Mrs Cazalet. When the next pain starts, take a deep breath, and really push.’

She started to ask him if something was happening at last. ‘Yes, yes, your baby’s on its way, but you must help. Don’t fight the pains, ride them. Go with them, you’re nearly there.’ She did it twice more, and then, just before the third time, she felt the baby’s head, like a heavy round rock crammed in her, beginning to move again and she gave a cry not simply of pain but of excitement at her child coming to life out of her. And after that, the last two or three waves – although they seemed to be breaking her open with a new shriller agony – did not engulf her as before: her body’s attention was all focused upon the amazing sensation of the head moving down and out. She saw Rachel standing over her with a small white pad and shook her head – she did not want to lose track of this baby’s journey as had happened twice before with the others, and so she raised herself so that she could see its arrival. The doctor shook his head at Rachel, who put the pad away. Sybil let out a long sighing breath, and then the head was out – eyes tightly shut, wispy hair dark wet – the crumpled shoulders and then the rest of the tadpole body was lying on the bed. Dr Carr tied and cut the cord, picked up the baby by its ankles and slapped it gently on its slippery bloodstained back. The baby’s face screwed up as though in grief at leaving its watery element, and then its mouth opened and it expelled its first breath in a thin, wavering cry. ‘A beautiful boy,’ said Dr Carr. He was smiling. Sybil’s eyes were fixed upon his face with some mute appeal. He looked at her with tender kindness, almost as though they were lovers, and laid the baby in her arms. Rachel, watching Sybil’s face as she received this little bloodied creature – now crying fiercely – found herself in tears. The room was full of excitement and love.

Then Dr Carr became briskly practical. Rachel was told to put warm water in a basin to bathe the baby while he attended to the afterbirth. Rachel tied a towel round her waist and gingerly took the baby from Sybil. She was terrified of hurting him. Dr Carr saw this and said brusquely, ‘He’s not made of glass, he won’t break,’ took the baby from her and laid him on his back in the basin. ‘You support his head and sponge him down. Like so,’ and went back to Sybil.