Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (11 page)

Mrs Edward, who was making lists in the morning room, understood the problem at once and said she would ask everyone, including Lieutenant Hadleigh’s family, whether they could contribute some rations for the cake. People in the services could often help about things like that, she said, and she also seemed to understand that they must do so quickly, as a cake of that kind needed time to settle after baking. ‘Although some people are using artificial wedding cakes – just to be looked at and not eaten,’ she said.

Concealing her shock and disgust at such a notion, Mrs Cripps had said that this would not do for Miss Louise, and when Mrs Edward had agreed with her, she felt emboldened to put in a word for Frank who was working himself up about it.

‘Mr Tonbridge was hoping he would be driving the bride to church,’ she said.

‘Oh! Really I don’t know, Mrs Cripps, the wedding is to be in London, you know, so that it is easier for people to get to it.’

Mrs Cripps knew that. Information, often contradictory, sometimes invented, about the wedding, poured into the servants’ hall: Eileen provided a good deal from waiting at table, Ellen from what Mrs Rupert told her, the housemaids from airy suppositions made to them by Clary and Polly. She knew that the wedding was to be in Chelsea and the reception held at Claridge’s Hotel; she knew that a Lady Knebworth was making the dress and several other items, and that Mrs Lugg from Robertsbridge was making some of the underwear, of curtain net Eileen had remarked, but trimmed with some of Mrs Senior’s lace. She knew that Miss Lydia and Miss Clary and Miss Polly were to be bridesmaids and Mrs Rupert was making their dresses, that four hundred people had been invited and that there had been pictures in
The Times
, and in the paper that Mr Tonbridge read it had said ‘Hero’s Son to Wed’. Dottie had suggested that the King and Queen might be present, but she, Mrs Cripps, who in far earlier days, when she was second cook in a big place, had once made and rolled the hot-water pastry for game pie for a shooting lunch at which His Majesty’s father – His late Majesty – had shot and was therefore regarded as an authority on the subject, had snubbed her at once; Their Majesties would think twice before they went to weddings in the middle of a war, she had said, and Dottie should not get silly ideas above her station. The fact that the wedding was to be in London had come as a great blow to all of them: Dottie had cried, Bertha had stopped trimming their hats and Eileen had got one of her sick headaches. Mrs Cripps had felt that her station required her to preserve an impassive demeanour, but nevertheless told Frank that she thought it a great shame: girls always used to be married at home, and if this wasn’t Miss Louise’s home she would like to know what was. So it was with very great delight and no small surprise that she received the news now that everybody, the whole household, was to attend the wedding; that they were all to go up to town in the morning, lunch would be provided at the Charing Cross Hotel and they would then go in cabs to the church. ‘But Tonbridge will be driving Mr and Mrs Cazalet and Miss Barlow to London that morning, Mrs Cripps, so you will have to be in charge of the rest of the staff. Lunch will be at twelve o’clock which will give you plenty of time to get to the church by two thirty. I shall include Ellen and the two little boys in your party.’

‘Yes, madam.’ This was a relief, as Ellen knew London and she did not.

‘After the reception, you will all return in a train. I think there is one at six, but there is time to arrange that.’

This meant that they would all be going to the party after the wedding. ‘Everybody will be very pleased, I’m sure,’ she said.

‘Darling, if I was you, I would be counting my blessings. It’s a match that even our poor mamma would have approved of. And
she
would certainly not have thought Louise too young. I must say that I wish I was in your shoes. Angela shows no sign of an engagement to anyone and she was twenty-three last month. And, after all, you never
wanted
her to go on the stage.’

‘No, but he is fourteen years older than she is. Don’t you think that that is rather a lot?’

‘It simply means that he is old enough to look after her. How are you getting on with his family?’

‘Quite well, I think. We’ve had to do a good deal of liaising over plans. The Judge wanted it to be a dry wedding. He felt it would be more patriotic.’

‘Goodness! What did Edward say?’

‘He went white to the lips and said no daughter of
his
, et cetera. Of course,
I
had to tell them, but Lady Zinnia took it quite calmly. I think she has taken rather a shine to him.’

Villy had dropped in for tea after taking Louise to have a fitting with Hermione and doing various other errands about London. She had made the arrangement ahead so there were no farcical problems like there had been the time before when she had just turned up, Jessica thought, and then thought it funny that she had not mentioned Lorenzo. She had been there for over two hours now; tea had developed into sherry while they went through all the family news, taking turns as they had always done, and according each other the ritual sympathy expected. Teddy had nearly finished his initial square-bashing in the RAF and was then likely to be sent somewhere for further training. ‘But the actual flying part they do abroad, in Canada or America. I must say I dread that.’

‘Oh, darling!’

Christopher was still working in the market garden. He had acquired a second-hand caravan where he lived with his dog. ‘I
never
see him! He simply loathes London!’

‘Oh, darling!’

Lydia was doing quite well with Miss Milliment, but she was going to have to wear a brace on her teeth and probably have one out as her mouth was overcrowded; and she was quite dreadfully untidy and never stopped talking and mimicked everybody. ‘And she’s picked up some dreadful language – from Neville, I think – and they have the most
morbid
obsession with death – they’ve been playing cemeteries all the summer and keep looking for things to bury.’

‘Darling, it’s only her age. What is she, about twelve? Well, she’ll soon grow up.’

Nora was nursing and had fallen in love with a nineteen-year-old airman whose back had been broken before he bailed out of his plane. ‘He’ll be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but she is determined to marry him.’

‘Darling! You never told me!’

‘Well, I suppose I didn’t believe it would go
on
at first, but it has – for nearly a year. Would you believe it, it is
he
who doesn’t want to marry her!’

‘Goodness!’ Villy tried to put the right amount of shocked surprise into her voice. ‘At least it would put paid to the idea of being a nun,’ she said.

‘Oh, I think she’s over
that
. She’s far too bossy for
that
.’

There was a pause, and then Villy, having groped for the most delicate way to phrase it, asked: ‘If she
does
marry him . . . would there be the chance of offspring?’

‘I haven’t liked to ask. I
imagine
not—’ She fell silent, and for moments both sisters were occupied by the kind of thoughts that, naturally, neither of them would dream of voicing. Villy lit another cigarette, and Jessica poured them both more sherry.

‘How is Raymond?’

‘Oh, tremendously involved in his secret work at Woodstock. As it
is
secret, of course, he can’t tell me anything about it. But he seems to work fearfully long hours, and they live in some hostel so there is built-in company in the evenings. It’s ironic, really. When we had no money, he wouldn’t have dreamed of doing a steady job with a salary – always wanted to run his own business and they always came to grief – and now when money isn’t so tight, there he is, in a steady job with a salary.’

‘He did do the school job.’

‘Yes – after the mushrooms failed. But that was largely so that Christopher could go to that school as we only had to pay half fees. I think he will be one of the people who will be quite sad when the war finally
does
come to an end. Going back to Frensham with nothing to do will be dull for the poor lamb.’

‘The end of the war seems a long way off.’ Villy sighed. ‘Michael was involved in that raid on Dieppe last week.’

‘
Was
it meant to be the beginning of the invasion?’

‘Apparently not. No – Michael told Edward that it had been mounted because they had to find out what it would be like, but it must have been hell. We could hear the guns all day in Sussex – eerie and horrible. All we could see were the planes going over. Of course, Louise will have a very anxious time. Michael seems always to want to be in the thick of things.’

Jessica sighed. ‘I suppose we are really rather lucky.’

‘
Lucky?
’

‘To have escaped all that kind of thing. I mean, we married men who’d come
back
from the war. We didn’t have to worry about whether they’d be killed.’

‘I can’t say that I feel particularly lucky,’ Villy said stiffly, and Jessica thought: There she goes –
just
like Mamma, she has to be the tragedy queen . . .

‘How’s Edward?’ she asked with deliberate brightness.

‘All right. Dead tired.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Gosh! I must fly. Can I call a cab? I’ve got to get to Hugh’s to change. Edward and I are dining
chez
Storey – the wedding again. Thank you so much, darling. It was a lovely respite.’

From what? Jessica asked herself, when Villy had gone. Without apparently having made the slightest effort, Villy had achieved this desirable marriage for her daughter. It was true that Louise was very good-looking, but Angela, though perhaps not so striking, was lovely, with large, well-spaced features and an admirable figure, a statuesque girl with an air of remoteness that dear Mamma would deeply have approved of. But perhaps she was
too
remote: ever since that most unfortunate business with the BBC producer, nothing seemed to have happened to her. To begin with, this had been a relief, but now it was becoming a little worrying. She had left the BBC and got some job in the Ministry of Information which meant that, although she had registered for war service, she had not yet been called up. She shared a flat with another girl and Jessica hardly ever saw her. Her dreams of a débutante who married the right sort of person, had her picture in the front of
Country Life
and subsequently went to all the right sort of parties had faded. Now, she thought, she would be relieved if Angela married anyone at all.

‘Well?’

‘If you are asking me about the evening, Zee, I thought it both pleasant and sensible.’

‘Pleasant because?’

‘They are a nice couple. The backbone of English society.’

‘Ah! Of course you are right. I suppose I’ve always preferred the more decorative, less useful parts.’

‘He is an attractive man, surely? And a brave one. Two MCs and a recommendation for a Victoria Cross in the last war.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that.’

‘And she is a pleasant woman.’

‘Oh, yes. Most wives are that. The number of pleasant wives I have had to put up with! Thank God you left politics. It has cut down the number of women one
has
to have to dinner.’

He passed a fond hand over her wonderfully thick silver-white hair. ‘But, my darling Zee, if you had your way, there would
be
no women at all to have to dinner. There would be you – and a world full of handsome, entertaining, daring men. With just a few broody hens kept well in the background.’

She smiled slightly, but her eyes were sparkling. ‘Tell me, what was sensible about the evening?’

‘I thought we got a great many of the tiresome wedding arrangements sorted out without either argument or acrimony, and I am told that this is seldom the case.’

‘It was very good of you to say that you would share the cost of the reception.’

‘We are inviting so many people that it seemed to me right. And he is your beloved son. And you are one of the few women on whom it would be no good practising the cant of losing a son and gaining a daughter.’