Casting Off: Cazalet Chronicles Book 4 (53 page)

‘I love our government,’ Rupert said. ‘Don’t you think it’s fascinating that the moment the war is over, we stop having dramatic chaps like Churchill and Roosevelt, and opt for quiet little men who look like bank clerks – like Truman and Attlee? It makes peace comfortingly middle class. More roast drowned lamb, please.’

The Duchy said, ‘Stop teasing your brother, Rupert.’

Bernadine fitted a cigarette into a long holder and lit it. This, Diana saw, did not go down well with anybody, and after a moment Teddy muttered, ‘We don’t smoke until after the port.’

Bernadine shrugged, gave him an angry look and then smiled and shrugged again as she stubbed it out on her side-plate. ‘I shall never get used to your British ways.’ So she had to wait, sulking through the rhubarb tart and cheese.

‘That was all right, wasn’t it, darling? They liked you – that was plain to see,’ Edward said when they were going to bed. ‘You fit in a jolly sight better than Teddy’s wife.’

She opened her mouth to say that she hoped she
did
, but desisted. Instead, she said, ‘It must be very difficult for her. I think she was bored, poor thing.’

‘Oh, well, I expect she’s wonderful in bed,’ he answered. ‘And you know what it’s like when you’re young.’

‘She’s not young! She looks older than Zoë. Is she the kind of girl you’d have gone for when you were Teddy’s age?’

‘Lord, no! When I was his age I was madly in love with a sweet, innocent girl called Daphne Brook-Jones – we got engaged, in fact, but we didn’t dare tell our families.’

‘Why not?’

‘We knew they wouldn’t approve,’ he said. She sensed that he didn’t want to tell her why.

‘We used to go riding in the Row before breakfast,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we just met at parties.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Oh, she married someone else,’ he said.

‘And you?’

‘I met Villy,’ he said shortly.

So his marriage had been a kind of rebound, she thought after he had made rather perfunctory love to her and gone to sleep. She had the feeling that there was more to his first love affair (if that was what it had been) than she would ever find out. But the knowledge that his marriage had been a rebound made her feel more sure of herself.

The weekend was pleasant but uneventful. ‘It seems so strange to be here without any of the children,’ Rachel said at one point.

‘Except me,’ Teddy said; he was consuming an enormous Sunday breakfast.

‘Well, yes, darling, but you are grown up now.’

‘So is Louise. So is Simon. So are Polly and Clary.’

‘Yes. There are only the babies left.’

‘They’re not babies, they’re what we used to be.’

‘Well, I miss the long table in the hall and the nursery meals,’ Rachel said. ‘Thread this needle for me, would you, Zoë? I need new specs – can’t see a thing.’

‘Even Lydia thinks she’s grown up,’ Teddy said. ‘Oh, Lord, I nearly forgot Bernie’s tray.’ She preferred to have breakfast in bed, he had earlier explained, and he put far more than her share of butter on the tray when he took it up. The Duchy, Rachel said, who deeply disapproved of people having any meals in bed unless they were too ill to eat anything, had said that he must be responsible for bringing the tray down to the dining room so that it could be cleared away with the rest of breakfast.

Diana went round the garden with the Duchy, who showed her her gentians. ‘They aren’t doing as well as I had hoped, but it’s lovely to have them. Do you like gardening?’

‘I think I should like it, but either I haven’t had the garden or when I had a cottage during the war there never seemed to be time.’

‘Ah. But you have three children?’

‘Four. Three sons and a daughter.’

The Duchy asked their ages, and Diana explained about the older ones being brought up by grandparents. ‘I have Jamie, but he’s just started prep school. So only Susan is at home.’

‘And how old is she?’

‘Almost four.’

‘And she is Edward’s child,’ the Duchy said tranquilly. It was hardly a question.

‘Yes – yes, she is.’

There was a pause, and then the Duchy said, ‘I don’t think that Edward’s wife knows this, and as there is to be a divorce, there seems to be no need to broadcast the fact. I hope you agree?’

‘Yes.’

She did not tell Edward about this exchange.

A great deal of the conversation consisted of family affairs. Polly’s wedding, for instance. Everybody seemed pleased about it, and the wedding was to be in July. Diana felt rather out of this, because she thought she was the only person who had not met Polly’s fiancé. ‘A nice young man,’ the Duchy said.

‘He’s no pin-up,’ Bernadine confided to her, ‘but she’ll have a title, and they say he’s got no money, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. He has a house as big as a
hotel
, so she can’t be short of dough the way Teddy and me are.’ (The remark about Polly had come out of a fairly long ingenuous ‘chat’ that she’d had with Diana about making ends meet and the meanness of Cazalets’ in this respect, which she knew she was supposed to hand on to Edward.)

‘Hugh is so pleased. He’s become a different person since Polly’s engagement,’ Rachel said. ‘He looks ten years younger.’

‘Clary will miss her,’ Rupert said. ‘They’ve been such friends for so long. When
is
she coming back to London, Archie, do you know? Archie?’

He had been knocking out his pipe against the grate, and seemed not to have heard. ‘I think she’ll come back when she’s finished her book,’ he said.

‘The best thing is that they’re so tremendously in love,’ Zoë had exclaimed, and Diana saw Rupert give her a very loving look. They’re in love, she thought. They really are. And envy briefly possessed her.

But on Sunday evening, when they were alone, Edward said, ‘Don’t get too excited about this wedding.’

‘I’m not, but why not? It sounds very happy.’

‘We shan’t be attending it, I’m afraid.’

‘Why not? I’ve met everyone now, and they seem to have accepted me.’

‘Because Hugh wants Villy to go. That’s why. Villy was awfully good to Sybil when she was dying, and Hugh has never forgotten that.’

‘Oh. Does that mean he’ll go on refusing to meet me?’

‘I don’t know. He may do. He’s stubborn as hell about some things. And there are other differences between us. It’s not just you.’

‘I’m glad of that,’ she said.

‘Are you?’ He looked hurt. ‘You know there are.’

Of course she did. It was all about capital investment and Southampton and things which, although he had told her about them, had seemed so tortuous, unresolvable and actually rather boring that she kept forgetting how much they preyed upon his mind. ‘Darling! I’m sorry! I know it worries you. I only wish there was something I could do to help.’

‘Sweetie! You do help. I love you very much, you know.’

‘I know. And I love you.’

Then, when they had returned to London, there had been the fearful business about John. The hospital had rung about an hour ago, Mrs Greenacre said, but when she had rung Home Place she had been told they had left. It was about Major Cresswell. He was in the Middlesex Hospital.

‘I’ll take you,’ Edward had said, and they had gone straight away without even ringing the hospital.

‘Do you think he’s been in a car accident or something?’

‘I don’t know, darling. He could just have had a particularly bad attack of malaria.’

‘They wouldn’t have rung us about that, surely?’

‘Or a heart attack or something like that. It’s no good worrying about what it is, we can’t know. Just have to get there as fast as we can.’ It was pouring with rain again, but there was not much traffic.

‘He took an overdose,’ the ward sister told them, ‘but fortunately, he was found in time. We’ve pumped him out, and he’s quite comfortable. Your name was in his address book so, naturally, we telephoned your number.’

She was leading the way down a ward. He was in a bed at the very end of it. Edward said he would wait for her outside. There was a chair by the bed and she sat on it. He lay, looking very grey and pinched with his eyes shut, but he opened them when she said his name. ‘Johnnie! It’s me, Diana.’

He looked dazed. ‘Awfully sorry,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t think what to do.’ She took his hand. He gazed at her earnestly. ‘It’s no use,’ he said, ‘I simply can’t – find . . . Haven’t even managed that, though, have I? Here I am again.’ He tried to smile and a single tear slid slowly out of one eye.

She stroked his hand. ‘Darling Johnnie, it’s all right. I’m here.’

‘There isn’t anyone to talk to, you see.’ He shut his eyes again, then, with them still shut, he said, ‘That was one good thing about the camp. No shortage of that kind of thing.’

‘I think you should get some sleep now. I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll talk properly.’

‘Poor old chap. What an awful thing!’

By dint of much questioning she discovered that no, he wasn’t much good at the job he had at Cazalets’; that they’d kind of
made
a job for him, but it wasn’t really working out. He kept worrying about how to do it, and asking other people. Hugh had thought he should go, and Edward had persuaded him to let things run for a bit longer.

‘Tell you what. Why don’t you talk to Rachel about him? She’s really good at that kind of thing.’

And she had been. Diana had rung her and she had come round the same day and they had had a long talk, and Rachel had said she would go and see him. ‘He sounds as though he is too lonely, poor fellow,’ she had said.

Diana felt grateful and relieved. Then she began to worry about where he should go when he came out of hospital, which, she had gathered from her second visit, was to be as soon as possible. Obviously, she could suggest his coming to her, but her heart sank at the prospect, and although she guessed that Edward would agree to such a scheme, she knew that he wouldn’t want it.

But Rachel had fixed everything. ‘I hope you don’t think I’ve been too bossy,’ she said on the telephone that same evening, ‘but Sister Moore said there was really no point in his remaining in hospital so I’ve arranged for him to go and stay with an old colleague of mine – a retired sister, who takes people in from time to time for light nursing or convalescence. She lives in Ealing, so you could visit him there. But I’ve told her what’s been going on, and she’s a very sensible person. I’m sure she will get him over the next stage. And, meanwhile, we can find him something more congenial to do than sit in a cubbyhole at Cazalets’ struggling with figures, which he says he’s not good at. I think what we should aim at is getting him a job in some community or institution, somewhere where there is built-in company for him. Sister Moore said that he was underweight, and his kidneys are not too good, so he needs a good rest first. I’ve talked to him a bit about this and told him that I’ll go and see him when he’s in Ealing.’

When she tried to thank Rachel, she was interrupted: ‘Oh, no. It’s the kind of thing I enjoy doing. I only hope you don’t think I’ve been too bossy. He’s such a sweet fellow and he deserves a better deal. There must be hundreds of people like him, mustn’t there? Who’ve really been wounded in the war, but in ways that don’t show so they simply don’t get the right attention.’ She paused for breath. ‘There was one rather sad thing. He gave me his address book because he wanted me to ring his dentist to cancel his appointment. The only addresses and numbers in it were the dentist and you.’

The morning had almost gone. As she got up, with the notion of having a bath, she thought about her visit to Johnnie the previous week. A fortnight with Sister Crouchback had worked wonders. He looked less shrunken and less generally pathetic; there was some colour in his face, and his clothes looked well cared-for – a properly ironed shirt, and his trousers pressed, his sparse hair neatly combed, his shoes polished. ‘He’s been learning to knit,’ Sister Crouchback declared. ‘Taken to it like a duck to water. And he’s cut my privet for me quite beautifully. I’m beginning to wonder what I’d do without him.’ And she saw him turn pink as she ended, ‘There’s nothing like having a man about the house.’

How lucky I am, she thought, compared to Johnnie! And she lay in the bath, counting up her blessings: a nice large house, not beautiful but convenient, a housekeeper who relieved her of all the shopping and cooking that had dominated her life for so long, four healthy children, and Edward, who had given up his marriage to marry her. What more could she want? But somehow she did not feel up to pursuing this question.

PART FOUR

LOUISE

Spring 1947

She sat at the built-in dressing table on which was a shallow cardboard box and a large bottle of nail-varnish remover. The box contained five very small turtles whose shells were thickly covered with bright green or bright yellow glossy paint. She had bought them that morning from a man who stood on a street corner of Madison Avenue and 48th Street with a tray of them. They cost five cents each and she was buying them to save their lives, since, covered with the paint, their shells were unable to breathe. She got a wad of cotton wool out of the dressing-table drawer and soaked it in the acetone. It took a long time to clean each turtle: the top layers of paint came off quite easily, but there was always a good deal left in the minute cracks and crevices. The turtle withdrew its head, which was a good thing, she thought, as the fumes of the acetone might also be bad for it. When she had got all the paint off, she took it to the bathroom and washed the shell with warm water and a bit of soap. Then she dried it on her face towel, and finally tipped some almond oil into a face cream lid, dipped her finger in it and gently massaged the oil into the shell. Then the turtle was ready to join the others – already cleaned – who sat in the bath. They had been in the hotel for nearly three weeks and now she had thirty-five of them cleaned.