The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (70 page)

The house now loomed before her, golden light in the square windows, distant sounds of the servants washing up as she passed the kitchen quarters. By the time she reached the cottage and was clambering up the steep stairs, the glass of sherry she had been given before dinner was starting to wear off, and as she thought of doing the crossword in bed – a real luxury – she realised that the paper would be full of the Situation, the real, terrible state of Europe that she had been frivolously ignoring all the way home. She had been so wrapped in the silver lining that she had forgotten the cloud. If there was a war . . . but there would be a war – if not now then sooner or later. She thought of the lovely Renoirs at the Rosenberg and Helft gallery that she had haunted all summer, and sent up a prayer that they would be moved in time.

Hugh came into Edward’s office just before lunch, which they were going to have together. Miss Seafang, who stood by the desk to receive back letters she had handed Edward to sign, smiled a discreet welcome.

‘Won’t be a minute, old boy. Have a seat.’

But Hugh, who had been sitting all the morning, continued to wander about the large room, panelled in koko wood, apparently studying the dull pictures. Miss Seafang watched him with solicitude. He looked dreadfully tired – more, even, than usual: he was what her mother called a natural worrier, and that took its toll. He brought out the maternal in her, quite unlike Mr Edward, who brought out something quite else. Her gaze returned to her boss. Today, he was dressed in a pinstripe suit of the palest grey with a white shirt that had the tiniest grey stripe in it, and a lemon corded-silk tie. In his jacket pocket there was a corner of foulard silk handkerchief of a lemon and grey and dark green design. His slightly curly hair was glistened with brilliantine, and a faint, definitely exciting scent of cigars and lavender water seemed to emanate from his slightest movement. His left hand lay on the desk, displaying his gold signet ring with the family crest upon it – rather worn, but definitely a rearing lion – and the gold links gleamed on the immaculate cuffs from which his hairy wrists emerged, the left banded by a suitably glamorous and masculine watch. With his right hand, he was signing the letters in his bold rather careless manner with his fountain pen. It seemed to be failing: he shook it twice, and then turned to her. ‘Oh, Miss Seafang, it’s done the dirty on me again!’ Smiling slightly, she produced another pen from her cardigan pocket. Where would he be without her?

‘If anyone calls, Mr Edward, what time shall I say you’ll be back?’

‘He won’t be,’ Hugh said. ‘I’m taking him to the wharf.’

Edward looked at his brother and raised his eyebrows: Hugh gave him the obstinate, but at the same time sweet-tempered glare that was one of his most habitual expressions.

‘High-handed old bastard,’ he said. ‘The wharf it is, Miss Seafang.’

Bracken drove them to Hugh’s club, which was not so far from the river as Edward’s. They stopped on the way to buy an
Evening Standard
whose banner headlines were about the Prime Minister’s journey that morning.

‘“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety . . . ”,’ Edward read aloud. ‘That sort of remark’s more up your street than mine. What does the feller mean?’

Hugh shrugged. ‘That he hasn’t much hope, but he’s going to try, I should think,’ he said. ‘This time Daladier and Mussolini are going to be there, so it sounds like we’re approaching the crunch.’

‘What’s the point in having
them
there? If Hitler doesn’t take any notice of our Prime Minister, why should he take any notice of them?’

‘Well, I suppose neither of them wants a war – three against one, that sort of thing?’

Edward didn’t reply. He was wondering why Hugh wanted them to go to the wharf, but business of this kind was not discussed in front of servants.

When they were seated in the cavernous dining room that dwarfed its occupants by its immense marble pillars and distantly lofty ceiling eating Dover sole with a glass of hock, and Hugh still hadn’t mentioned the wharf, Edward said, ‘Come on, old boy. Out with it. It’s obviously something you think I shan’t agree to.’

‘Well, there are two things. Let’s take the logs first.’ And he launched into his scheme to get all of their most valuable logs into the river Lee to save them in case of air attack. ‘If we leave them where they are, and most of them are lying hard against the saw mill, and we get incendiaries, the whole thing will go up. We may lose the mill anyway, but we can replace that. A lot of these logs can’t be replaced.’

‘But apart from being tidal the river’s very narrow, and I can’t see the powers that be allowing us to block it up.’

‘We can apply for barges from the PLA in which to lodge the logs, but you know them, by the time we get them the whole thing may have happened. If we simply drop them in the river they’ll be far keener on letting us have the barges to clear the blockage.’

‘What about a crane? We’ll certainly need that.’

‘I’ve got one. Ordered it yesterday. It should be there this afternoon.’

‘Have you talked about this with the Old Man?’

‘No. I thought it would be better simply to do it and then tell him. But I think,’ he added, ‘that we should be there while they’re doing it. Or they’ll make a mess of it, or someone will come along and tell them they didn’t ought to and they’ll stop.’

‘If we turn out to be wrong, we’ll have gone to a hell of a lot of expense, not to mention putting the authorities’ backs up, for nothing. I mean, if peace breaks out after all.’ Edward stopped and then laughed. ‘This is ridiculous! It ought to have been me who had this idea and you who are putting in the objections! What has come over us? I’m game. I think it’s a damn good idea.’

They went on to discuss other things. Hugh wanted to get another night watchman at the wharf: Bernie Holmes had been doing the job for over thirty years now, nobody knew how old he was, but too old, Hugh felt, to have the responsibility of the place in an air raid. Edward said they couldn’t possibly sack him, and it was agreed to get in a younger man to keep him company. Then there was the question of fire drill, or simply air-raid drill, not only for the staff at the wharf but at the office as well. They thrashed that out while they were at the wharf and waiting while men shackled each end of each log with chains and fastened the steel cable between them, attached the crane’s hook to the ring on the cable and began the slow process of yanking the log into the air above the river and letting it down onto the mud – the tide was at low ebb – where it settled with gaseous bubbles and a stench of rotten seaweed and diesel oil. It all took hours. They got sixteen logs into the river by five thirty when the crane driver indicated that he had had enough and, in any case, they had used up all their river frontage. Edward was for moving up river, never mind the ownership, but Hugh said that would only put them in the wrong when the PLA woke up to what they were doing. So they called it a day, went back to their homes for baths, and met again at Hugh’s house where a very simple meal had been prepared for them by the house-parlourmaid. They listened to the nine o’clock news on the wireless, but there wasn’t any really except that the meeting in Munich was still going on. Hugh rang Sybil to say that he would be down tomorrow evening whichever way it went, and Edward thought that perhaps he’d better do the same with Villy. ‘All well?’ they asked each other after each of these sallies. They decided to have one whisky and call it a day.

‘Is Louise upset at the prospect of war?’ Hugh asked casually.

‘Do you know, old boy, I haven’t the faintest idea. Doesn’t seem to be. Why? Is Polly?’

‘She is, rather.’ Edward noticed that the tic at the side of Hugh’s forehead had started up. He drained his glass. ‘Listen, old boy. You’ve had a long day, and you worry too much. She’s probably perfectly all right, really. You worry too much,’ he repeated affectionately, clapped him on the shoulder to conceal deeper affection, and went.

Hugh, as he walked slowly up the stairs to bed, wondered what ‘too much’ was. Too much for him? Or too much for the Situation? He hadn’t broached the second problem he’d mentioned at lunch, which was that Edward would suddenly go off into some service and leave him, Hugh, with the whole firm on his shoulders. Unless Rupert came in. But Rupert would most likely want to join up himself. He was beginning to get a bad head and took some dope so feat he could get to sleep before it started hammering.

On Friday morning, the Brig, who had recognised the day before that the air-raid shelter was not making practicable progress (some people engaged upon it had wooden spades), ordered Sampson to put two men on to it. ‘I can’t be on the Elsans and the shelter at the same time, Mr Cazalet, sir,’ Sampson said, but it was a hopeless plea. ‘Nonsense, Sampson, I’m sure you can organise it.’

That morning, one dozen Primus stoves were delivered from Battle by Tilll’s. Tonbridge was told to move the cars out of the garage, which was likely to become a kitchen. Wren, from his stables, watched this wife glee. ‘First ’is ’ouse and now ’is place of work. ’E’ll soon be off and good riddance.’ He hated Tonbridge – always had.

That morning, in lessons, Miss Milliment made Polly trace out a map of Europe, printing the names of the countries in her best lettering. It was, of course, out of date already, since it did not take into account Hitler’s most recent acquisitions, which she now marked in. She felt that it was important for the children to have some comprehension of what was going on and a clear understanding of the juxtaposition of the countries immediately involved.

Mrs Cripps spent the morning plucking and drawing two brace of pheasant for dinner; she also minced the remains of the sirloin of beef for cottage pie, made a Madeira cake, three dozen damson tartlets, two pints of egg custard, two rice puddings, two pints of bread sauce, a prune mould and two pints of batter for the kitchen lunch of Toad-in-the-Hole, two lemon meringue pies, and fifteen stuffed baked apples for the dining-room lunch. She also oversaw the cooking of mountainous quantities of vegetables – the potatoes for the cottage pie, the cabbage to go with the Toad, the carrots, french beans, spinach and a pair of grotesque marrows, grown to an outlandish size by McAlpine, who won first prize every year for his marrows. They were, as Rupert had once remarked to Rachel, the vegetable equivalent of the rudest seaside postcards – not an idea that would have occurred to Mrs Cripps.

Everybody, in fact, went about their usual business except for Rupert, who was becoming more and more aware that he did not really have any. He had mentioned to Zoë that he thought Clary needed some new clothes, with the unexpected result that she had gone into Battle with Jessica and Villy to buy some material to make her a frock. Just as he was thinking what a good thing this was, he remembered what Clary had told him yesterday about Christopher; he’d done nothing about it. He was in the billiard room, ‘his studio’, absently staring at the portrait of Angela and trying to see what he had left out, and he spent several minutes trying to decide whom he should talk to or inform about the boy. Christopher? But he hardly knew him, and if he made a mess of it, it might make things worse. In one sense, Jessica was the obvious person, but Clary’s saying she would go absolutely bonkers made him think twice about that. Villy, then. She was in Battle. Rachel – of course: if he was in trouble, his sister was the first person he would go to. He went in search of her, but the Duchy said that Sid had taken her for her treatment in Tunbridge Wells. Then he thought – sisters. Of course – far best person to talk to would be Angela. She had been so sensible that day when he had talked about his career problems. She was older than Christopher, but not too old: he would be more likely to listen to her than to anyone else. She was nearly always somewhere about the place.