All Change: Cazalet Chronicles (64 page)

Hugh, Rupert and Archie were all invited to share the silver – when Archie protested that he was not really family, Rupert and Hugh said he certainly was. Laura, unsupervised, rushed to the nursery with a sticky label, which she attached to the battered old rocking-horse. ‘I shall paint his face better and the spots on his back and ride him to do wicked deeds at night.’ Polly’s twins asked for the dressing-up box, which was stuffed with feather boas and beaded dresses, while Tom and Henry wanted all the tennis and squash racquets. Bertie mysteriously found a top hat in a cupboard that he said he’d need in case he was a magician when grown-up.

‘What can I have?’ Andrew wailed. ‘This house is full of things I simply don’t want.’

Rachel came to the rescue with
The Times Atlas
and a pair of binoculars. ‘Essential for an explorer,’ she said.

Bertie was easy. The only thing he longed for, apart from the top hat, was a very large stuffed pike in a glass case from the Brig’s study.

By the end of the second day everyone had chosen, excepting Villy, Roland and Harriet.

Rachel suggested that Villy have the set of garden tools that had been the Duchy’s. ‘I should love to think of you using them.’ Harriet finally admitted to wanting a patchwork quilt sewn in cotton of many different blues, some rather faded now from the sun. ‘Why didn’t you say so, darling?’

‘I thought it might be too precious for me. That you would want to keep it.’

‘No, I’d love you to have it. Here is a label for you. Put your name and address there. I’m glad you like it. This quilt was made by your great-grandmother during the war.’

‘Oh! So it’s very, very old!’ This seemed to add to its charms, so Rachel agreed on its advanced antiquity.

And so the only person left who had chosen nothing was Roland.

‘Surely there’s something you would like,’ Villy said. Roland said there was, but it would be inconvenient for Aunt Rachel if he took it. ‘It’s that marvellous old telephone in the study. I’ve never come across one like that before, only seen them in films.’

Rachel, on being asked, said that she certainly wouldn’t want to keep it, but that she might need it until she left.

‘Oh, good! And do you want the Remington typewriter, by any chance?’ Rachel, who could only type with one finger, didn’t. ‘And there’s a very early camera I’m rather keen on. Or is that too much?’

‘No, Roland, it’s helpful, thank you. Put your labels on everything.’

When word got round that Roland was getting several things, some of the others wanted more too. ‘We can’t just leave all those poor old bears and monkeys and golliwogs to be got rid of, Mummy. I could look after them,’ Harriet offered coaxingly.

‘It seems a bit silly to leave all the board games, Mum,’ Polly’s twins said. ‘Aunt Rachel is really too old to want to play them.’

‘You’ve got lots of games at home.’

‘Not all of these. And then supposing four people want to play a game that’s meant for two? They’d have to wait for hours.’

Georgie said, ‘I wonder if I could have those stuffed pheasants as well. The Lady Amhurst is quite rare and the Golden Pheasant is too. I could have them in the museum part of my zoo, with the beetles.’

Parents apologised profusely to Rachel for this surge of acquisitiveness, but Rachel said she found it priceless. In fact, she thought of more things they might like.

The Choosing Game, as the children got to call it, proved a blessing. It kept everybody active with things to do. ‘Oh dear!’ the children kept saying. ‘The last two days!’ But Georgie was longing to get home because his best Christmas present would already be there, while Bertie and Harriet were excited by their impending move, and Laura was pretty sure that the present held back for her in London would be either a bicycle or a cat, both of which she really needed.

No, it was the older ones who were stricken: too reliant on an effortful reminiscence, effortful because each memory too easily provoked grief and anxiety.

Rachel told stories of the Brig, which were safe to laugh at: ‘Do you remember the way in which he would ask you if you had heard the story about the elephant he was given in India, and you said – rather bravely – that you had, and he would simply say, never mind, he would tell you again?’

‘And when rabbit’s fur came out of the well tap, he said we must not bother our pretty little heads about that.’ (This was Villy.)

‘And the terrifying way he would drive on the right-hand side of the road, and when the police stopped him, he said he had always ridden on that side and was too old to change now.’

There was a respectful silence after stories about the Brig seemed to have run out, and everyone reverted to private thoughts. Hugh was remembering Sybil – her giving birth to Simon; her terrible cancer, and how good Edward had been to him after her death. He had thought he would never get over it, but his darling Jemima had given him a whole new life. Villy thought of the good times she had had in this house, the days when Edward had seemed happy and devoted . . .

All over now. She had been shocked at the sight of him on Boxing Day. In some way, Diana’s brash uneasiness had confirmed the good realities of her own marriage to Edward. It had been happy; she knew now that sex had been the only problem. It had eventually occurred to her that pretending to like it was not good enough. It was a bit like what Miss Milliment had said about martyrs being dull to love; her distaste for sex must have communicated itself to Edward, who probably thought that ‘nice’ women were generally like her so went elsewhere for satisfaction. He had clearly married Diana for sex: she looked the sort of woman who might actually like that kind of thing. Villy wished – not for the first time – that Miss Milliment had not died, particularly had not died mistrusting her . . .

Clary looked round her. Anxiety, unhappiness, was like a fog in the room, slowly enveloping everybody. ‘I want to say something. I think it would be far better if we all expressed what we’re feeling. I know, Aunt Rachel, that you said not to talk about it during Christmas, but Christmas is over, and this is our last night here, and we’re all fearfully sad about that. But most of us are even more worried about what’s going to happen to us next. I think we ought to talk about that. And as I’ve introduced the subject, I think I’d better begin.’

In the short silence that followed, a log fell from the grate onto the hearth, and Rupert got up to retrieve it. Nobody took the slightest heed of this: everyone’s attention was on Clary.

‘This house,’ she began bravely. ‘I shall always love and remember it because this was my first home. And it was where I really got to know Polly. And you, Zoë, who I was determined to dislike because of my mother’s death and you marrying Dad. And you, darling Archie, most of all. All through the awful time when Dad was lost and I remained the only person who believed he was alive and would come back, you were here. You became my family, too. But the house stayed the same through that time. If I shut my eyes, I could still tell you the detail of any room, and outside, the orchard and the fields and the wood with the stream running through it. I could walk blindfold and still tell you where we were. What I’m trying to say is that this is the same for all of us. This house is inside us and we shall never forget it. I think we’re lucky to have somewhere so dear to remember in our hearts.’

A murmur of approval spread throughout the room. But that had been the easy part and Clary took a deep breath and began again: ‘The other thing we’re not talking about is what is going to happen to us when Cazalets’ has gone. I know you may think it’s all very well for Archie and Dad and Zoë and me, because we’ve decided to live together so Dad and Archie can start some art classes together. Archie and I are going to let our flat rather than sell it so that if the Mortlake idea doesn’t work we’ve at least got somewhere to live. Also, I hope I’ll be earning some money from writing. So, in a way, I feel we’re the luckiest people here. Gerald and Polly have their own problems, but luckily they’re not affected by Cazalets’ demise. But Uncle Hugh, you and Aunt Rachel are, and I suppose poor Uncle Edward too, but he’s not here.’ She looked expectantly at Hugh, who cleared his throat.

‘I don’t think any of you should worry about me. I have some money saved that should tide me over until I get some sort of job. Jemima has a small inheritance from her parents that should see the twins through university, and she owns our house. So you needn’t worry about me,’ he repeated, almost irritably this time.

All eyes then turned upon Rachel. She shrank from their gaze, but could not escape it. She had been sitting with her hands clenched round a small white handkerchief. She was incapable of lying, of dissembling at all, but she dreaded the prospect of exposing her real terror at the future now facing her.

‘As you all know, I’m selling Sid’s house so I shall have some money, but I’m told it will not be enough to live on. So I shall have to try and get a job, although goodness knows who would ever want to employ me. But I shall find something, I’m sure.’ Rachel looked up at her family before continuing: ‘I’ve had four incredibly kind invitations from you, Hugh, from you, Rupert and Zoë, from you, Villy, and from Gerald and Polly to come and stay.’ Her voice cracked at this point, her knuckles turning white as she clenched the handkerchief. ‘I’m just so grateful to all of you, but I know how busy your lives are. An elderly spinster aunt is hardly a brilliant addition to any household.’ She tried to smile – quite unsuccessfully, as her eyes were now full of tears – as she muttered, barely audible now, ‘I really am not needed any more.’

Hugh went to her, then knelt by her chair and put his arms round her. ‘You are loved and needed by all of us,’ he said. ‘You’re talking a lot of sad nonsense. Of course it’s worse for you, you’ve lived in this house for forty years—’

‘Forty-one.’

‘Forty-one, then. It’s been your home all this time. Miserable to leave it.’

‘I would need you awfully, Aunt Rach,’ Polly said. ‘With four children and all the wedding stuff we’re struggling with, not to mention our rather large house, I could keep you occupied from morning till night.’

‘She’d wear you out if you weren’t careful,’ Gerald added jokingly.

The others all made practical cases for her staying with them, too, excepting Villy, who wanted Rachel desperately to come and fill her silent little house with her company. So she simply said, ‘You know I’d love you to come – any time,’ and left it at that.

All this somehow made it all right for Rachel to cry now, which she did until Hugh gave her his handkerchief. ‘That silly little thing you have in your hands wouldn’t even mop up the tears of a mouse.’

And then Gerald suggested that he open a valedictory bottle of champagne - which he did to good effect – and even Rachel drank her small share, relieved that the evening was over at last.

‘Jolly good, my little playwright, the way you made them talk,’ Archie said, when they were in their bedroom.

Down the passageway upstairs, Hugh discovered that he could not reach his shoelaces. Rather, he could reach them but he couldn’t seem to grasp them – even in normal circumstances no easy matter if you had only one hand. It made him feel dizzy trying, and in the end he called Jemima. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter, but I don’t seem able to get my shoes off.’

Jemima took one look at him, and her heart sank. He looked exactly as he had in the bathroom. ‘You’re just tired, darling,’ she said. ‘I’m going to undress you – I love doing it.’ She got him out of his clothes and into his pyjama top without his having to get up from the stool he had been sitting on. She eased on the bottoms, then said, ‘Hold on to me, darling, while I pull them up. Then I’m going to lead you to bed.’

He sank upon his pillows with a sigh of contentment and held out his arms for her. She kissed his forehead and said, ‘Now you’re going straight to sleep.’

He did, almost at once, but for a long time Jemima lay awake full of fears for him. She must call the doctor and get him to London without fail as soon as possible.