The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (9 page)

Louise trailing sulkily down behind her muttered, ‘I don’t know.’ At the bottom, Villy turned. ‘Well, clear it up, darling, there’s a good girl. Good night, now.’ She bent to kiss her daughter, who held up her face in mute sacrifice.

‘Good night, Lou,’ called Edward. The front door slammed and they were gone. Three things on the floor! As if that was a terrible mess! If things were on the floor you could see them and that meant that you knew where they were. Grown-ups were the limit, sometimes. Children had a rotten time of it. At least Teddy would be home tomorrow and she would have someone decent to talk to. One of these days she would be
in
a play in London, and her parents – frightfully old by then – would come to see her, and beg her to go out to supper with them afterwards, but she and John Gielgud would be going to some terrifically glamorous party. ‘I’m afraid you are too old,’ she would have to tell them. ‘You really ought to be in bed and just having Grape Nuts on a tray.’ This made her feel better, and she wandered into the drawing room and got
The Painted Veil
by Somerset Maugham out of the locked bookcase and took it upstairs. She went into her parents bedroom and tried on some of Mummy’s rouge and in the middle of that Edna came in to turn the beds down.

‘You didn’t ought to do that, Miss Louise.’

‘I know,’ she said loftily. ‘But I thought I ought to know what it felt like since eventually I shall be covered with the stuff. You won’t tell, will you?’

‘I may and I may not.’ She was laying out Mr Edward’s pyjamas – a lovely wine silk they were – enjoying doing Phyllis’s job for once.

In the end, and to be on the safe side, Louise had to give her a pot – the smallest – of Wonder Cream in return for her silence.

One of the things that Hugh most disliked about the maid was the way in which she always seemed to be lying in wait for his return in the evenings. This evening he hardly had time to take the key out of the front door before she was there. She tried to seize his hat as he was putting it on the hall table, with the result that it fell to the floor.

‘I came your coat to take,’ she said, as she retrieved the hat. It sounded like a kind of
sexy
accusation, he thought, telling himself for the millionth time not to be prejudiced about Germans.

‘I haven’t got a coat,’ he said. ‘Where is Mrs Cazalet?’

Inge shrugged. ‘Up she went some time.’ Still standing far too close to him, she added, ‘You want a drink of whisky I make?’

‘No, thank you.’ He had actually to brush past her to get up the stairs. The movement made his head throb; he realised that he was dreading the Queen’s Hall, but he hated disappointing Sybil so much that nothing would induce him to tell her.

She lay on her side, half wrapped in the green silk kimono that the Old Man had brought back from Singapore (each daughter-in-law had been given one, but the Duchy had chosen the colours – green for Sybil, blue for Viola and peach for Zoë), her narrow feet bare and touchingly white – one arm flung out with a cluster of delicate veins running from the inside of her wrist into the palm of her pretty hand. When he leant over her, a breast, hard as marble and white and veined, moved him: her extremities seemed too fragile to support the great bulk of her body.

‘Hallo there.’ She patted the bed. ‘Tell me about your day.’

‘Much as usual. Did you see the doc?’

She nodded, noticing the little tic above and to the side of his right eye. He’d had one of his heads, poor sweetie.

‘What did he say?’

‘Well – as a matter of fact he thinks – although he couldn’t actually
hear
both hearts we’ve probably got Tweedledee as well.’

‘Good Lord!’ He wanted to say, ‘No wonder you’ve been done in,’ but it wasn’t what he meant, or only partly what he meant.

‘It doesn’t worry you?’ It worried her: whether Nanny Markby would cope with two; whether Hugh would consent to move house; whether it would actually hurt twice as much . . .

‘Of course not. It’s very exciting.’ He was wondering how on earth he would cope with the school fees if they turned out to be boys.

She heaved herself up so that she was sitting on the side of the bed. ‘It does slightly make up for being the size of a house. I haven’t told Polly, by the way.’

‘Do you think, in view of this, that perhaps you’d better not go to Sussex?’

‘Well, I won’t go for so long. Just a week. Otherwise I shall see next to nothing of Simon.’ Her back still ached – or perhaps it was aching from being in the same position.

‘Do you really want to go out tonight?’

‘Of course I do.’ She was determined not to disappoint him. ‘Unless, you don’t?’

‘Oh, no – I’m fine.’ He knew how much store she set by concerts. He’d take some more dope; it usually got him through. ‘Where’s Polly?’

‘Upstairs sulking, I’m afraid. I had to tell her about her move. She’s making a fuss about it.’

‘I’ll pop up and say good night to her.’

‘It’s me.’

‘I know. I know your voice.’

‘What’s up, Poll?’

There was a pause, and then Polly said distantly, ‘You shouldn’t say “me”, you should say “I”. I should have thought you’d know.’

‘It is I.’

‘I know. I know your voice.’

‘What’s up, Poll?’

‘Nothing. I hate geography homework.’ She jabbed her pencil hard through the paper and made a hole. ‘Now you’ve made me spoil my map!’ She gave him an agonised frown and two tears shot out of her eyes.

He sat down on the floor and put his good arm round her.

‘Nothing’s fair! Simon has the best room! He gets a treat
every
time he comes back from school and I don’t! He gets a treat the night before his term starts and I don’t! You can’t move cats about, they just go back to the old room and I hate that new nanny that’s coming – she smells of peardrops and she doesn’t like girls, she kept talking about my little brother. How does
she
know? If you aren’t any of you careful I’ll go and live with Louise only I don’t think Pompey would go in a wheelbarrow otherwise I would have gone!’ She took a gasping breath, but he could see that she felt better because she was watching for him to be shocked.

‘I couldn’t bear you to leave me and go and live with Louise,’ he said.

‘Would it really and truly horrify you?’

‘It certainly would.’

‘That’s something.’ She was trying to sound grudging, but he could see she was pleased.

He got to his feet. ‘Let’s go and look at your new room and see what we could do about it.’

‘All right, Dad.’ She felt for his hand, but it was the wrong arm; she gave the black silk sock that encased his stump a quick little stroke, then she said, ‘It’s nothing like as bad as a trench in the war: I expect I’ll get quite fond of it in the end.’

Her face was stern with the effort of concealing her concern for him.

The moment that her parents had gone, Polly rushed to the telephone which was in the back bit of the drawing room near the piano. She lifted the receiver and held it to her ear. In a moment the operator was saying, ‘Number, please.’

‘Park one seven eight nine.’ There was a click and then she heard the bell ringing and she started praying it wouldn’t be Aunt Villy the other end.

‘Hallo!’

‘Hallo! Lou! It’s me – Polly. Are you on your own?’

‘Yes. They’ve gone to the theatre. What about yours?’

‘A concert. What I’m ringing about is I’m having a new room. My father says I can have it painted whatever colour I like. What do you think about black? And he’s going to have shelves put all round the walls for my things – all round and all over so there will be room for everything! Black would be good for china, wouldn’t it?’

There was a silence the other end. Then Louise said, ‘People don’t have black walls, Polly, I should have thought you’d have known that.’

‘Why don’t they? People wear black clothes and there are black tulips.’

‘La Tulipe noir was actually very dark red. I know – I’ve read the book. It’s by a man called Dumas. It’s actually a French book.’

‘You can’t read French.’

‘It’s so famous you can get it in English. I can
read
French,’ she added, but not so that I can understand it properly. Of course I can
read
it.’

Louise seemed to be in a bate. So Polly asked about the catfish.

‘He’s all right, but he doesn’t seem to like the other fish much.’ Then while Polly was trying to think of another peace-making thing to say, she added, ‘I’m stupendously bored. I’ve put on a lot of rouge and I’m reading a book called
The Painted Veil
. It’s got sex in it. It’s nothing like as good as
Persuasion
.’

‘Do you think dark red would be good?’

‘You can get wallpaper like the sky and a sheet of different-sized seagulls that you can stick on. Why don’t you have that?’

‘There wouldn’t be room for them with all the shelves.’

‘Just don’t have boring cream. Everything’s cream here, as you know. It goes with everything, Mummy says, but in my view it just means you don’t notice anything. Have dark red,’ she added with a spurt of generosity. ‘Have you done your map?’

‘I did, but then I spoiled it. Have you?’

‘No. Whenever I think about it I can’t bear to begin. It’s pointless to make a map of somewhere that there is a map of already. I wouldn’t mind if it was an uncharted desert island. If you ask me, we are made to lead pointless lives – no wonder I’m bored to death.’

‘
They
don’t have to do it.’ Polly was entering the game. ‘I mean,
they
don’t have to settle down after dinner and learn dates of the kings of England, or exports of Australia or do awful long division about sacks of flour.’

‘I entirely agree with you. Of course they say they know it all but you can catch them out as easy as winking. The truth is they’re just hell bent on pleasure.’ Ganging up about their parents had made her friendly at last.

‘They don’t even let us break up in time to meet Teddy and Simon.
They
can go and we can’t. That’s not fair either.’

‘Well, actually, Polly, that cuts both ways. Teddy and Simon don’t
like
being met – except by Bracken.’

‘Why don’t they?’

‘The other boys. They don’t mind fathers, but mothers are an awful hazard – wearing silly clothes and showing their feelings.’

She didn’t say anything about sisters, and Polly didn’t want to ask. Simon’s good opinion of her was so important that she did not choose to discuss it.

‘This time tomorrow they’ll be back. Having their treat dinners.’

‘Well, we have them, too.’

‘But we don’t choose them. I say, Polly, that rouge. It won’t come off.’

‘Try licking your handkerchief and rubbing.’

‘Of course I’ve tried that. It comes off on the handkerchief
and
it seems to go on staying on my face. I don’t want it on all night.’