The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (36 page)

By now, she had checked up on the girls’ room. Except for getting flowers, Louise had at last – at least – done what she had been told. The room was as tidy as a small dormitory in a school, the beds made up and clean towels on the towel-horse, the dressing-table now bare and Louise’s books stacked along the mantelpiece. She looked out of the window just at the moment her sister’s car turned into the drive and went down to meet them.

After she had tidied the room, Louise had taken her book to the hammock, but could not settle down to reading it. This was yet another new, odd and uncomfortable feature of her life: last summer her only worries would have been sharing something like a hammock fairly with Polly, but when it came to her turn for whatever it was, she would, at once plunge into it as though she had not any other existence. Now, her existence seemed always to be intruding upon any activity; she seemed to herself a larger, more disparate person, who was never wholeheartedly engaged – whatever she did, some bit of her sat on the sideline, jeering, making insidious alternative suggestions: ‘You’re far too old for that book – anyway, you’ve read it before.’ Age came into it a great deal; she seemed to be too young or too old for most things.

Last summer it hadn’t felt at all like that. Then, she had
believed
in the Wonder Cream she and Polly had made. Then, she had been seriously involved in Pompey’s funeral, had organised the whole thing – even the Duchy playing the Funeral March with the drawing-room windows wide open. She had made a wreath of deadly nightshade; Pompey had been wrapped in an old black velvet jacket belonging to Aunt Rachel and the funeral tea had consisted of blackberries and Marmite sandwiches which, Polly had agreed, showed more respect than strawberry jam. Then, she and Polly had spent hours in their apple tree and lying on their beds dying with laughter over their ‘Knock, knock, who’s there?’ jokes, and playing bicycle polo with the boys, and Ogres and the Seeing Game with all the others.
Now
, when these ploys were suggested – by Lydia and Neville, and often Polly and Clary – she never really wanted to play them. She did sometimes, because she
had
wanted to, but then she often left in the middle because she wasn’t honestly enjoying it. She still liked going to the beach and playing tennis, but she wanted to play with the grown-ups and
they
usually expected her to play with the children.

She’d thought at first that the trouble was being at Mill Farm instead of Home Place. She didn’t like Mill Farm. It seemed poky and rather dark after the other house. But it wasn’t just that. It wasn’t just the summer holidays, either. It might have begun last autumn term when Clary had started having lessons with her and Polly. She had quickly realised that Miss Milliment especially liked Clary. Clary worked hard, and was surprisingly good at writing things. She’d written a long poem and nearly a whole play, which was very funny and a good idea – about grown-ups having to spend a whole day as children whether they liked it or not. Louise had pointed out that it wasn’t an original idea – look at
Vice Versa
– but Miss Milliment had said that originality did not depend upon an idea so much as it depended upon treatment, and Louise, not for the first time, had felt snubbed. She also quickly recognised that Polly and Clary were becoming best friends and had half minded this and half felt relieved by it. Polly didn’t seem to be getting older at the same speed she was. This was partly because of her getting the Curse, which had been a horrible shock because nobody had said one word about it until one day when she had an unusual pain and gone to the lavatory and thought she might be bleeding to death. Mummy had been having tea with a Red Cross person in the drawing room, and Louise had had to find Phyllis to go and ask her to come. And then although, of course, it was a great relief when Mummy said that she wasn’t going to die, it somehow wasn’t all right in any other way. Mummy said it was a horrid thing that happened to girls once a month for years and years; it was a disgusting, but quite ordinary, thing to do with having babies, but when Louise tried to find out some more about it (how could a quite ordinary thing be disgusting?) her mother, who certainly looked disgusted, said that she did not wish to discuss it now and would Louise please take her knickers off the floor and go and wash them? And put on a clean pair, she had added, as though Louise was so disgusting she wouldn’t do that unless she was told. Thereafter, when she had a headache and stomach cramps, her mother would ask, in a particular way that she came to hate, whether she was unwell. Which is what it came to be called. She had discovered that it was called the Curse at Christmas when she had suddenly got it and had to ask Aunt Zoë for a napkin and Aunt Zoë had given her an extraordinarily neat thing out of a box which, it turned out, you could throw away instead of having to keep in an awful bag for the laundry. ‘You mean to say you have those ghastly bits of cloth you have to fold up with cotton wool like one had at school? That’s positively Victorian! It’s not so awful – you poor old thing! It’s just the Curse! We all get it,’ she said in a friendly, light-hearted way that made Louise feel much better. ‘I get spots,’ Louise had said, longing to talk about it. ‘That’s bad luck, but you probably won’t go on getting them. Just leave them alone, don’t do anything to them,’ and she had given Louise some marvellous expensive cream out of a little pot for a Christmas present and Louise felt tremendously grateful to her – not so much for the cream as for talking about it. It seemed very strange that nobody ever did. The only thing her mother
had
said was that one never, never talked about it – particularly not to the boys, or even Polly. But the next time she asked whether Louise was unwell, Louise said, ‘I’m not unwell, I’ve simply got the Curse. Aunt Zoë calls it that, and I’m going to.’ Watching her mother, she knew she was annoyed but couldn’t say anything back. But when she told Polly about it, because she didn’t see why Polly should be as frightened as she had been, Polly simply said, ‘I know. Mummy told me. I just hope I won’t get it for ages and ages.’ This had made her mother not warning her about it worse – very nearly, Louise thought, as though she had
meant
her to be frightened. From then on, she watched her mother for signs of affection and the opposite, wrote them down in her secret diary and added them up each month. So far the opposite was winning easily, except in March, when she had come home from Polly’s house and found her mother on the sofa in the drawing room, crying, something that she had never seen before in her life. She had rushed to the sofa, knelt by it, asked her again and again what was the matter. Her mother took her hands away from her face, and Louise saw that it was all puffy and bruised and she had wet, frightened eyes. ‘They’ve taken out all my teeth,’ she said. She touched the sides of her face and began to cry again.

‘Oh,
darling
Mummy—’ She felt overwhelmed with pity – and love. Tears rushed to
her
eyes, and she wanted to hold her mother, to take the pain away, have it herself instead, only she was afraid that hugging her might make it hurt more, but her mother was treating her as an equal, something that she recognised as never having happened before, and she wanted passionately to be the right friend.

Her mother was searching in her pocket for a handkerchief and trying to smile. ‘Darling, I don’t want to worry you—’ she seemed to have teeth, after all. Her mother saw Louise seeing this, and said, ‘He made me put them in at once. But oh, Louise! They do hurt! Rather.’

‘Would it be better if you took them out. Just for a little while?’

‘He said to keep them in.’

‘Shall I get you some aspirin?’

‘I’ve taken some, but it doesn’t seem to have done much good.’ After a moment she added, ‘Do you think it would be all right if I took some more?’ Again, it was the appeal to an equal.

‘Yes, I do. And I think it would be better if I put you to bed with a hot water bottle.’ She sprang to her feet to ring the bell. ‘I’ll tell Phyllis to bring up
two
bottles.’

‘I don’t want the servants to see me like this.’

‘No, of course not, darling. I’ll look after you. I’ll see to everything.’

And she had. She had helped Villy upstairs, helped her to undress, found bedsocks and her lacy jacket: her mother was very cold. She had lit the gas fire, drawn the curtains, rushed to the door when Phyllis knocked and taken the hot water bottles blocking her view of the invalid. She had administered the aspirin and arranged the pillows, drawn up the eiderdown and throughout her mother had seemed acquiescent and grateful.

‘You’re a good little nurse,’ she said; she was obviously in pain.

‘Would you like me to stay with you?’

‘No, darling. I’ll try and sleep. Tell Daddy, will you? When he gets back?’

‘Of course I will.’ She stooped, and kissed Villy’s soft clammy forehead. ‘I’ll leave your door ajar, and then you can call if you want anything.’

She sat on the stairs for ages, on the curve so that she could hear if her mother called and see when her father returned, wondering whether perhaps she ought not to sacrifice her career to become a nurse. She was gliding about darkened wards at night with a lamp, relieving the agonised sufferings of wounded soldiers with a touch of her delicate but experienced hands, soothing their last moments with her gentle voice . . . ‘Given up everything – wanted in Hollywood – the Duke of Hungary mad for her . . . ’

‘Lou? What on earth are you doing sitting there?’ She had rushed downstairs and told him. ‘Lord! Of course!’ It almost sounded as though he had forgotten. ‘Where is she?’ Louise explained what she had done, and her father had said jolly good, what a sensible girl she was, but he said it so admiringly that being sensible sounded almost glamorous. She followed him upstairs, warning him to be quiet.

‘I won’t wake her, just pop my head around the door.’

She was asleep. He put a finger on his lips and went into his dressing room. Then he beckoned her.

‘I wonder whether you would care to dine with me tonight, Miss Cazalet? If you have no previous engagement?’

‘I do happen to be free.’

‘Run along and change, then. I’ll meet you in the drawing room in twenty minutes.’

So she changed, into the dress that Hermione had suddenly given her for Christmas, that her mother disapproved of on the grounds that it was far too grown-up. It was a heavenly pale blue chiffon, and you couldn’t wear a bra or a vest or anything but a pair of knickers under it as it was backless, with tiny shoulder straps and a deep V neck – a totally grown-up dress. She had put up her hair with a lot of combs – it didn’t feel awfully safe, but as long as she didn’t shake her head or laugh too much it would probably stay up – and with it she wore her Christmas present jewellery, an opal and seed pearl necklace given to her by Uncle Hugh, her godfather. She had her Tangee lipstick and some whitish face powder and a tiny little bottle of scent called Evening in Paris that Aunt Zoë had given her. She put a good dab behind each ear, and then she longed to look at herself, but the only full-length mirror was in her mother’s bedroom. ‘Oh, poor Mummy!’ she thought, but she couldn’t help rather hoping that her mother was asleep, because she somehow knew that her mother would not approve of this kind of changing. When she was ready, she listened outside the bedroom door and then peeped in; her mother was still asleep. So then she gathered up her skirts and sailed downstairs.

Phyllis had brought in the drinks, and her father was making himself a cocktail.

‘I say! You do look smart!’

‘Do I?’ She felt smart wasn’t quite the right word but, after all, he was only her father. And then he made it all right by offering her a sherry, so he was taking her seriously, she felt.

They had a lovely evening: a fish soufflé and roast pheasant and then angels on horseback, and her father gave her a glass of both wines – a hock and a claret – and afterwards he played the gramophone – Tchaikovsky, who was his favourite, and he told Louise about how he used to bicycle up to London from Hertfordshire to go to the Proms, which was when he had first heard that symphony, twenty miles of bicycling each way, but worth it. He played the gramophone rather quietly, because of the invalid, and when Phyllis brought the coffee, he ordered some consommé for her. ’Bring it here and Miss Louise will take it up.’

But she got him to take it, because she was afraid of what her mother would say about the dress. Then that seemed frivolous and hard-hearted, and she planned to go and say good night when she’d got into her dressing gown. When her father came down, he said, ‘She’s feeling better, and she says it’s time you went to bed, and she’d like to say good night to you.’