The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (34 page)

‘I think we’re in for another war.’ Hugh was not looking at him, and spoke in the quiet casual way that meant he was serious.

‘My dear old boy! What makes you say that?’

‘Well, look at it! The Germans have occupied Austria. That feller Hitler making speeches about the might and power of the Third Reich all over the place. That stuff about all those German girls sent over as servants having been on propaganda courses. All those military displays. You don’t go on and on increasing your army if you don’t mean to fight. All these Jews coming here, most of them with nothing.’

‘Why do you think they’re doing that?’

‘I suppose they know he doesn’t want them.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I don’t hold
that
against him. We could do with a few less of them in our business.’ Edward maintained some fixed notion that any success in the business was due to him and the Old Man, and any failure was due to the nefarious business virtuosity of the Jews. It was a notion, rather than a thought, one of those maxims that gain veracity from repetition by their owner. Hugh did not agree with this or, rather, he thought that their Jewish counterparts were better at it without seeing any reason why they shouldn’t be. He remained silent.

‘Anyway, all Jews are perfectly capable of looking after themselves,’ Edward concluded. ‘We really don’t have to bother about them. I like some Jews, anyway – Sid, for instance, she’s a bloody good sort.’

‘And when you said that, she said she supposed it was because she was only half Jewish.’

‘Exactly! She’s got a sense of humour about it.’

‘Would you have one about people getting at you because you were English?’

‘Of course I would. The best thing about the English is the way they can laugh at themselves.’

They choose what to laugh at, though, Hugh thought. They choose things like their understatements and lack of emotion in an emergency (courage) and—

‘Listen, old boy. I know you’re really worried. But the Boche won’t dare
fight
us. Not again – not after the last time. And a feller at the club told me that the stuff they’re producing, tanks and armoured cars and so forth, is as shoddy as hell. It’s all show.’

They were sitting in the clubhouse at Rye after their round. Hugh, although he loved the game, would not play often as due to his being one-handed, his form was not up to much. But Edward insisted on them playing together, and made careful efforts, missing putts and so on, not to win too easily. Now, he said, ‘Anyway, me dear old boy, you’ve done more than your share in the last show,’ and instantly realised that he couldn’t have said anything worse.

There was a pause, and then Hugh said, ‘You don’t seriously think I’m worrying about my own skin?’ He had gone white around the mouth, a sign that he was very angry.

‘I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that I don’t think there’s a ghost of a chance that we shall have a war, but if I’m wrong, then it’s the young blokes’ turn. You won’t catch
me
volunteering.’

‘Liar,’ said Hugh, but he gave a faint smile. ‘Let’s have a spot of lunch.’

They ate large plates of the excellent scrambled eggs for which the club was famous, followed by cheese and celery with a pint of beer. They talked about the business, and whether the Old Man’s idea of inviting Rupert into the firm was a good one. Hugh thought it might be, Edward thought not; their father, with his inexhaustible energy – he was writing a paper on the technique of classifying hardwoods by photographing the grain, and having finished the building of a squash court at Home Place for family use – was now contemplating a swimming pool, as well as travelling up to town every day to the office, although his sight was failing and Tonbridge refused to let him drive himself any more which was just as well, Edward said, since he drove, as he rode a horse, on the right-hand side of the road, ‘Although people hereabouts are pretty used to him doing that.’

‘All the same, if his sight gets much worse, he oughtn’t to do that train journey alone.’

Hugh stopped lighting his cigarette and said, ‘But he could never retire, it’d kill him.’

‘I agree. But between us we can see that he never has to retire.’

On the way home, Hugh asked, ‘How’s Mill Farm?’

‘It seems fine to me. Villy says it will be freezing in winter but the children love it. Of course she has more to do than at Home Place. Housekeeping and so forth.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘She’s got Jessica and her brood coming today. And the old battleaxe some time next week. I think I shall absent myself for that.’

‘Do you want to stay with me? I’ll be on my own.’

‘Thanks, old boy, but I think I’ll stay put. Friday night’s Amami night, if you know what I mean. Not
on
Friday, of course.’

This – to some – mysterious reference to a well-known advertisement for shampoo meant that Edward was having an affair, never mentioned overtly between them, but known by Hugh as surely as if it was. Edward had always had affairs: when he married, Hugh had thought that that would be the end of them (he would not have dreamed of looking at another woman after he married Sybil) but not very long afterwards – perhaps a couple of years – he had noticed little things that had made him wonder. Edward would sometimes leave the office rather early, or Hugh would come into his room and find him telephoning and he would cut the call short in a clipped and businesslike voice, and once he had blown his nose on a handkerchief that had a large cyclamen smudge on it, and when Edward had seen him staring at it and noticed the smudge himself, he’d rolled the handkerchief into a small ball and dropped it into the wastepaper basket and made a self-consciously wry face. ‘Dear me, how careless,’ he had said. And Hugh, moving from anger on Villy’s behalf, felt sony for both of them.

Now, he said, ‘Well, I’ll come up with you on Monday, if I may, then lean leave the car for Sybil.’

‘Of course, old boy. I can give you a lift into the office in the mornings, anyway.’

Sybil and Hugh had moved, in the spring, to a larger house in Ladbroke Grove which was just around the corner from Edward and Villy. The new house had been rather an expense, cost nearly two thousand pounds and, of course, being larger, had required more furniture, so Hugh had not bought the little car for Sybil that they had once contemplated.

‘Do you remember when the Brig used to take us to Anglesey for our summer hols in that first motor he bought? And we used to sit in the back mending punctures the whole way?’

Edward laughed. ‘And we only just managed to keep up with them. Lucky there were two of us.’

‘And the Duchy always wore a green motoring veil.’

‘I love veils on women. Neat little hats with a veil tilted over their noses. Hermione used to wear them. It made her look so dazzling – and desirable. No wonder we all wanted to marry her. Did
you
ask her?’

Hugh smiled. ‘Of course I did. Did you?’

‘You bet. She said she married the twenty-first man who proposed. I’ve often wondered who the others were.’

‘I expect a good many of them are dead.’

Edward, who did not want the war to come back into their conversation making Hugh, as he described it, morbid, said quickly, ‘I shouldn’t think being married stopped people making propositions.’

‘Speak for yourself!’

‘Actually, I was, old boy. After she was divorced, of course.’ Hugh glanced at him ironically. ‘Of course.’

‘She could have come if she’d really wanted to.’

‘Do you think?’

‘I know so. Louise usually manages to do what she really wants. I’m afraid she’s just not . . .
serious
enough about the museum.’

Clary tried to look sorry about this but she wasn’t, really. Best of all she liked to have Polly to herself. Since she had been doing lessons with Miss Milliment, she spent nearly all her time with the other two, who had always been best friends, and she wanted Polly for her best friend, which meant, naturally, that Louise would have to stop being that. Now, she said, ‘She’s aged rapidly in the last year – getting all lumpy.’ She smoothed her own flat chest with pride.

‘She can’t help that!’ Polly was shocked.

‘I know. But it isn’t the lumps. It’s her attitude. She treats me like a child.’

‘She does me a bit, too,’ Polly admitted. ‘Well, I told her we’d have the museum meeting after tea. Her cousins are coming today, but they’ll probably play tennis and then we can go to the museum and have it.’

‘I still think you ought to be president. After all, you thought of it.’

‘Louise is the oldest.’

‘I can’t see that makes the slightest difference. It was your idea. I vote we vote. If I vote for you and you vote for you, she’ll have to resign!’

‘Mm, I’m not sure if that’s fair.’

They were at Camber, lying on the flat sand very near the shallow sea, so that when they dug their toes in, the water seeped out, faintly cool and delicious. It was after lunch: Rupert, in charge of the party (Zoë had a headache and had not come), had built a large and most elaborate castle with moat round it – ostensibly to amuse Neville and Lydia but they were quickly bored.

‘There’s not much we can do with it,’ Lydia explained to him.

‘No – it’s not a castle that’s much use to us,’ Neville echoed. ‘We really prefer to build our own.’

So they did. They built it too near the sea, so that it wouldn’t stay firm and kept subsiding and they quarrelled gently about it and then built one too far up the beach so although Neville kept getting pails of water for the moat it emptied faster than he could replenish it.

Rupert, who had immediately realised that in fact he had been building for his own pleasure, continued to cut crenellations with his pallet knife on the four corner towers. He looked entirely involved and he wanted to be that, wanted to recapture that marvellous single-minded absorption in the present matter so often to be seen in the children. ‘When I paint,’ he began, and was at once lost. He hadn’t produced a single picture. He was lazy, got too tired after a day at school, the children needed a good deal of his free time. And there was Zoë, of course. The fact was that Zoë resented him painting: she somehow managed to want to be married to a painter who didn’t actually
paint.
The first time he had discovered this had been last Christmas when he had wanted to spend ten days with a chap he had been at the Slade with – Colin had a decent studio and they were going to share a model and work – but Zoë had wanted to join Edward and Villy skiing at St Moritz, had wept and sulked about it so much that he had given in. There hadn’t been time or money for both. ‘I can’t see why you couldn’t paint in Switzerland if you really wanted to,’ she said, after she had got her own way.

It had been a curious holiday, good in unexpected ways. It was really far too expensive for him, and it was only afterwards he had realised how much, and how unobtrusively, Edward had paid for all of them: the drinks, dining out, buying the girls and all the children presents; ski lifts, hiring skates for Zoë who preferred skating, all kinds of things like that. And he had been very kind to Zoë as well, often staying at the rink with her while Rupert and Villy had gone skiing. Villy was a marvellous skier: brave and graceful and very fast. He could not really keep up with her, but he liked her company. Skiing clothes suited her boyish shape and she wore a scarlet woolly hat that made her look very young and dashing in spite of her brindled hair. Once, when they went up in the ski lifts, and he was gazing at the dazzling white and violet-shadowed slopes the cloudless blue azure sky and the ink-black trees in the valley below them, he turned to exclaim how beautiful it was but, seeing her face, he said nothing. She sat, with her elbow on the railing of the lift, one gloved hand against her face, her heavy eyebrows – so much darker than her hair – slightly drawn together, her eyelids half lowered over her eyes so that he could not tell their expression, her mouth – that he had always rather admired as an aesthetic, rather than a sensual, feature – compressed, the whole giving him the impression of trouble. ‘Villy?’ he said uncertainly. She turned to him.