The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (58 page)

‘If you don’t shut up,’ Simon said savagely, ‘I’ll knock your block off!’

And Neville, who wasn’t absolutely sure what his block was, became completely silent. In the front, Hugh and Sybil tacitly conspired to take no notice, but Hugh wondered whether he was dreading his new school, and Sybil whether he was sickening for chicken pox. He was usually such a gentle, easy-going child, she thought, as she cradled the sleeping Wills in her arms and began to dread waking him with the prospect of a gas mask.

Even after the fight, Teddy had remained so angry that he could hardly think about the whole business at all. The moment he tried, it was like opening the damper on a furnace: rage flared in him, he wanted to kill Christopher and he loathed Simon. He was used to being the leader of his enterprises and Simon, two years younger, had always been his faithful henchman, happy to do whatever Teddy thought up. Before, when Christopher had stayed in the summer, he’d had something wrong with him which meant that he couldn’t play games (which he was no good at, anyway), or, as his mother had said, ‘do too much’, whatever the hell that meant. So he had read books, and Teddy and Simon had played some token uneasy games of cards with him and spent their days playing bicycle polo, going for long rides, going to the beach, tennis, squash and some of the family games that the girls still wanted to play and that they secretly still enjoyed although they professed to scorn them. But this time Simon had sneaked off with Christopher, lied to Teddy about why he couldn’t do things with him, as Teddy could now see, and never even considered asking him to join in whatever it was. He had made efforts to find out from Simon what it was, but when Simon, nearly in tears, had persisted in saying that it was Christopher’s secret and he
couldn’t
tell, Teddy had sent him to Coventry, had refused to answer or speak to Simon at all. But the more Simon had refused to tell him, the more passionately curious he had become: it must be something quite large and serious for Simon to hold out. So he resolved to go back to the wood early in the morning to see what he could discover. He would be able to stiffen the terms when they had their meeting if he knew what he was making terms for. So he crept out of their room, leaving Simon asleep, coaxed one of the maids to give him thick marmalade sandwiches, and set off for the wood.

There had been a heavy dew and the long meadow was full of rabbits. He wished that he had brought his gun, but Dad had said no shooting when he was on his own. Then he remembered that he’d seen a bow and arrows in the tent –
his
tent, he thought defiantly and feeling angrier because deep down he knew this wasn’t true, it
had
been given to all of them. Stupid, to give something that was only any good for two people to dozens of people. It had
become
his tent because only he and Simon had ever used it, and it was more his than Simon’s because he was the eldest.

He found the bow and arrows. There didn’t seem to be very many of them; Christopher must have made them because Simon wouldn’t know how to do that sort of thing, and he had to admit that the arrows looked quite good, tipped with goose feathers neatly trimmed, and the points had been slightly charred and then sharpened. He decided to practise before he went after the rabbits, and that turned out to be a good idea as it was far harder to aim right than he had thought. The trouble was that he kept losing the arrows. To begin with, he didn’t bother too much if he couldn’t find one, but when he was down to the last two he hunted more seriously, but in the wood, with all the bracken and dead leaves and stuff growing, the arrows were hard to find. When he couldn’t find even the last one, he went back to the glade and opened up the tent to see if there were more but he couldn’t find any. So he rummaged for more food – the marmalade sandwiches seemed hours ago. He found some eggs and a frying pan, and decided to make a fire. There was a site where they had had fires. So he collected twigs, and he used some sheets from an exercise book in the tent for paper. In the middle of getting the fire going Christopher arrived, before he’d even had time to go through the tent properly. It was nothing like eleven o’clock, which was the time they were supposed to meet.

Christopher had not been able to eat much dinner the previous night – apart from his head aching, two of his front teeth were wobbly and when he tried to bite anything they sort of waved about his mouth making him feel slightly sick. He excused himself immediately after the meal, and crept upstairs to his room. He’d gone in and flung himself on the bed before he realised that there was a hat on it, which by then he had crushed rather. He leapt up and tried to unsquash it but it didn’t seem to want to, kept collapsing back into a squashed position. In the end he put it on a chair in a dark corner of the room where the owner might not notice it till morning, and went along the passage to the little box room where a bed had been made up for him. But then he couldn’t sleep. Being a conscientious objector obviously involved never losing your temper, since the moment that happened he had simply gone for Teddy without thinking, which was awful. How could one guarantee never to lose one’s temper? And what on earth was he going to do about Teddy? Tell him? But he sensed that Teddy would not be sympathetic to the idea of running away and, if he wasn’t he would almost certainly tell people where they had gone. But now that Teddy knew their hideout, he’d tell them, anyway, wouldn’t he? Could they move the camp? That seemed almost impossible: it had taken two weeks to assemble all the stuff there and it was the perfect site. It would be no good making one where the stream wasn’t, which meant that even if he moved it would be easy for Teddy to track and find him. Him – what about Simon? From the moment of the chicken pox meeting, he had realised that Simon’s heart was not a hundred per cent in their adventure. He hadn’t wanted to go to school, but due to the chicken pox that was postponed and, then, if there was a war, Simon seemed to think that schools might stop and he’d never have to go to one. So although he had carried on as though they were both in it together, he’d started not counting Simon. He might find another stream in another wood . . . but he was running out of time, and really he knew that there wasn’t such a place within striking distance.

He seemed to wrestle with these hopeless possibilities all night, but he must have slept because he came to with the early-morning sun and it was half past seven, much later than he usually woke, and when he went downstairs he could hear the servants having breakfast. He took a handful of Grape Nuts from the cereal packet and set off for the wood.

When he woke, he had suddenly felt that there
was
a solution – there must be. Peaceful people always won in the end: all they had to do was be appeasing and persuasive, to stick to their guns. What a funny way of saying it, he thought. Guns were the last thing he wanted to have anything to do with, and in any case he hadn’t got any. It was Teddy who used a gun.

He would try and find out what Teddy really wanted, he thought, as he jogged up the road, or what he wanted
most,
and then, probably, there would be some way of giving it to him, and then everything would be all right. If it was the tent he wanted, and some of the stores, they could be divided up. If it was that he wanted Simon to camp with? Simon was much younger and really he was in no position to mind effectively what decisions were made about him – well, he could have Simon. If it was the territory that he was after they would have to come to an agreement somehow. If they drew up an agreement – a treaty – then Teddy would have to stick to it if he signed, as of course
he
would if he signed. He would apologise for the fight, losing his temper, and sit down in a really reasonable way to get a fair agreement.

What he had not bargained for was finding Teddy already on the site, not where they were supposed to meet, which had been arranged to be the kennels at eleven o’clock which it wasn’t – anything like. When he discovered that Teddy had been using his bow and had lost all the arrows, he started to feel his terrible, unacceptable anger, but this time he swallowed it down and managed to make his apology for the fight, and said he would write down Teddy’s terms for proper consideration. In the tent, he found that his precious exercise book with all the lists and things in it had had pages torn out so that some of the lists were missing. Another test. And, when putting up with even this maddening depredation – anyone could light a fire without paper if they knew how – he sat down to listen to Teddy, he discovered that Teddy’s terms had mysteriously got much worse than they had been yesterday . . .

Zoë woke when Eileen brought in their early-morning tea, but she kept her eyes half closed while Eileen placed the tray carefully on the table beside her, drew the curtains and murmured that it was half past seven. Rupert, beside her, was deeply asleep. She sat up and poured out some tea for both of them. Moving hurt – she was still very sore, and when Rupert had made love to her last night it had been painful, but she knew that she had concealed that from him. If only it was a bit of pain that she had to contend with, she thought, that would be nothing, no less than I deserve. But it was much more than that: he had been so trusting, so tender and considerate of her pleasure, and all she had been able to respond with had been more lies. She had felt gratitude and pain and altogether unworthy. The gap between her body and her heart seemed an abyss and all she was conscious of wanting was confession – to tell him everything, to be punished and forgiven and be able to start afresh. But she couldn’t tell him, she could never tell anyone: if she had simply been raped perhaps it would have been possible, but it had not been rape – at all – and she could neither lie about that nor tell him. That’s my punishment, she thought. To have to go on lying for the rest of my life.

‘Darling! You’re looking very tragic! What is it?’

As she turned away to reach for his tea-cup she felt her eyes pricking.

‘I wasn’t nearly nice enough to Mummy,’ she said, remembering that that was also true.

He took the cup from her. ‘Bet you were, pet. It’s worn you out. How would you like me to bring you a lovely tray in bed?’

She shook her head, wishing he would not keep being so kind to her.

‘I thought you might like to come to Hastings with me this morning. I want some more paints, and I wouldn’t mind a couple of brushes if I could find anything decent.’ He knew how she loved little jaunts alone with him.

‘I thought perhaps I ought to help the Duchy with all the things about furnishing the cottage. Rachel said there was an awful lot to get done by this evening.’ The thought of the morning alone with him was too much for her.

‘Darling, what could you do? You know you hate all that sort of thing. I’m sure she won’t expect you to.’