The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (72 page)

When Polly and Clary got back to Home Place in time for lunch after lessons, they discovered the door of their room open and, of course, Oscar was nowhere to be seen.

‘There’s a notice on the door,’ Polly said almost in tears. ‘Surely anyone can read that!’ After a frantic but thorough search of the room, they stood on the landing trying to think of what to do next.

‘It must have been one of the maids,’ Clary said.

‘Yes, but where do you think he would have gone? He might be trying to find his way back to London – cats do.’

‘I’ll try the kitchen. He’s very fond of food. You search all this floor.’

Clary sped downstairs, through the hall and the baize door into the kitchen quarters, but she did not get a good reception there.

‘No, Miss Clary, we’ve never gone and been in there,’ the housemaids said, and Mrs Cripps, in the state of pent-up tension that always preceded the serving of a meal, actually shouted, ‘Out with you now, miss. You know the rules. No children in the kitchen when I’m dishing up!’

‘Can’t I just look for him in here?’

‘No, you can not. Anyway, he isn’t here. How many times have I told you to put the vegetable dishes to warm on this rack, Emmeline? Now you’ll have to pass them under the hot tap. Look at Flossy, miss. She wouldn’t have another cat in her kitchen. Be off with you, now, there’s a good girl.’

Clary looked at Flossy who lay on the window-sill as round and voluptuous as a fur hat, and Flossy, who always seemed to know when people looked at her, lifted her head; Clary retreated from her steady malevolent gaze.

‘Any luck?’ she called from the hall.

‘No.’ Polly’s white face appeared over the banisters. ‘Oh, who could have been so wicked as to leave the door open?’

Most of the grown-ups were in the Brig’s study listening to the news, but she found her father and Zoë in the morning room. They were standing in front of the gate-legged table looking at some cloth that Zoë was unpacking and Dad had a drink in his hand.

‘Oh, Clary! Come and look!’ he said.

‘Dad, I can’t look at anything now. Some really awful
stupid
person has left the door to our room open, and Oscar has escaped and we can’t find him.’

And Zoë stopped pulling the paper off the cloth, looked at Dad, and said, ‘Oh, dear. I’m afraid that was me!’

‘
You?
’ Clary stared at her. All the feelings she had about Zoë that she never really said any more to anyone because they were so horrible suddenly came up like sick in her throat. ‘You! It would be you! You stupid idiot! You’ve gone and lost Polly’s cat! I hate you. You’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met in my life!’

Before she could go on her father caught one of her arms and said, ‘How dare you speak to Zoë like that? Apologise at once!’

‘I will not!’ She glared at him. He had never spoken to her like that before, and she felt a prickle of terror.

Zoë said, ‘I’m really terribly sorry,’ and Clary thought, No, you’re not! You’re just saying that to please Dad.

‘Why did you go into my room, anyway?’ she said.

‘She went to get one of your dresses because she’s bought some material to make you a new one,’ Dad said, and hearing the affection in his voice that was certainly not for
her
, she said, ‘Bet you were just doing that to please Dad. Weren’t you?’ and stared sullenly at her stepmother trying to keep angry at all costs.

But Zoë looked up from the table, straight into her face and simply said, ‘Yes, you see I know how much he loves you, so – of course.’

It felt like the first true thing she had ever said, and it was too much. She was
used
to her resentment and jealousy – congealed this last year into an armed truce, she could not shed it at a word, and unable to respond she put her face in her hands and wept and her plate, that had got comfortably loose at last, fell out onto the table. Dad put his arms round her, and Zoë picked it up and gave it back to her saying, ‘Won’t it be lovely when you don’t have to wear it?’ and nobody laughed, which was the best thing.

Oscar was not found until nearly tea-time, although Polly went without lunch to search for him. When Clary joined her after lunch, she had searched the house, the stables – braving Mr Wren, who shouted but was too sleepy to stand upright. (‘He fell down again as soon as he got up to shout at me,’ Polly said), the cottage, all the squash court, all the outbuildings, including the horrible coke cellar by the greenhouse. She and Clary then tried the orchard, the wood behind the house and finally the drive.

‘My throat’s sore from calling,’ Polly said.

‘If he’s gone onto the road he may have got tired and gone to sleep somewhere,’ Clary replied. ‘I
know
we are going to find him,’ she said, really to cheer them both up but Polly believed her at once. At the end of the drive there was a large old oak, and as they approached it they heard his voice. He seemed to be quite a long way up the tree, as they could not see him at first, but each time they called, he answered.

‘He
wants
to come down,’ Polly said. Clary suggested getting some food for him because it was well known that cats could smell for miles. She went off to do this while Polly tried to climb the tree. But the lowest branch was too high. When Clary came back with a saucer of fish, she found her friend in tears.

‘I don’t think he
can
get down. He wants to, but he’s frightened,’ she said. They held up the fish and called. Oscar made slithery scratching noises as though he was trying to come down but there was no sign of him.

‘What’s up?’

They had not heard the bicycle. Teddy had decided to go for a ride by himself. When they told him, he said, ‘I’ll get him down for you.’

‘Oh, Teddy, can you? Could you really?’

But even he could not reach the lowest branch. ‘Tell you what, you hold my bicycle steady, ’cos if I stand on the bar I could reach the branch.’ This worked. ‘He’s not very far up. I can see him,’ Teddy said. ‘The thing is, I can’t climb down with him in my arms. Ouch!’ he added. Then he said, ‘One of you get a carrier bag or a basket or something with a long piece of rope.’

So off they went to get that, which took some time. The carrier bag was easy but the rope wasn’t. In the end they found some in the potting shed. Polly went back to Teddy to explain why it was taking so long. Teddy was very nice about it and said he had a bar of motoring chocolate, and just as Polly was remembering that she hadn’t had lunch he kindly dropped two squares down to her.

They tied one end of the rope to the handles of the carrier bag. Then Teddy had to come down to the lowest branch to get it. ‘Put the rest of the rope inside the bag,’ he said. ‘No, don’t. Try and throw the end of the rope up to me.’ They tried and tried, and just as his patience was wearing thin by girls being so rotten at throwing things, Clary did a really good throw and he caught it. The rest would be easy, he thought. He tied the other end of the rope to a branch and then climbed up to Oscar’s level, but he had reckoned without getting Oscar into the bag. Oscar yowled, and scratched him badly, but he managed to cram him in and started lowering the rope. And that was it.

‘Oh, Teddy, you were marvellous!’ Polly hugged him. ‘We could never have got him without you.’ Clary agreed. She was clutching the bag handles closely together, but even so Oscar managed to get his outraged head out.

‘Shall I carry him back for you?’ Teddy offered. He was glowing with being so useful and admired.

Clary was about to say he needn’t and they would, but Polly said, ‘Please do. I feel quite tired and he might escape again.’

Clary wheeled Teddy’s bike and they all went back to the house and burst into the drawing room where nearly everybody seemed to be and Clary cried, ‘We’ve found him! And Teddy was—’ and broke off because everybody seemed to be
different
, all smiling and Christmassy and the Duchy said, ‘Mr Chamberlain has come back, children,’ and seeing Polly’s face she added, ‘Your father rang from London, Polly. He especially wanted you to know. It is going to be peace with honour.’ And Clary saw Polly’s face go china-white and her eyes look blind before she fainted.

‘What did I tell you, Mrs Cripps? There’s many a slip between cup and lip.’

‘It just shows you never can tell,’ she agreed. She was rolling thin strips of bacon round blanched prunes for the angels on horseback after the pheasant. ‘Would you fancy another drop scone, Mr Tonbridge?’

‘It wouldn’t say no. No – as I was saying, it’s an ill wind . . . Well, at least, now we can all get back to normal.’ Mrs Cripps, who had never departed from it, agreed. For him it meant getting those dratted Primuses out of his garage, for her, getting Dottie back downstairs when she had stopped scratching herself silly. That night was the first time he took her to the pub, which wasn’t at all normal, and she had a very nice time.

‘We regard the agreement signed last night, and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.’ Hugh, sitting beside Edward in the car, was reading from the evening paper they had bought on their way to Sussex.

‘Any more?’

‘One more bit. “We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be the method adopted to deal with any other questions that may concern our two countries and we are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus to contribute to assure the peace of Europe.”’

Edward grunted. Then he said, ‘Marvellous old man, Chamberlain. I must say, I didn’t really think he’d pull it off.’

‘Still, it was appeasement, wasn’t it? I don’t quite see where the honour comes in – nor can the Czechs, I imagine.’

‘Come on! You were the one who was so keen on there not being a war. There’s no pleasing you, old boy. Light me a gasper, would you?’

Hugh lit the cigarette. When Edward took it he said, ‘Well, at least it gives us time to rearm. Even with the most pessimistic view, you have to agree that.’

‘If we do.’

‘Oh, Lord, Hugh! Cheer up. Think of the merry old time we shall have getting those logs out of the river.’

‘And smoothing down the PLA.’ Hugh smiled. ‘Very jolly.’

‘Do you think’, Louise asked, as she and Nora shared a bath that evening, ‘that everybody who put their promise in the box will stick to them?’

‘Don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’ Nora was absently rubbing her flannel up and down the same bit of arm. ‘We could ask them, which might make them feel they had to, but we’ll never
know
. It’s a matter for each person’s conscience. I shall do mine.’