Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (46 page)

‘How far are you going, madam?’

‘America,’ she said without thinking.

‘America?
America
? We don’t
go
there, madam. We go to Hastings and then we go to Bexhill. You can go to both of them if you like.’ A damp leaf was thrust into her hand.

When she felt that everybody had had a turn at being the driver, the conductor and a mere passenger, she said it was time for tea. The person who was the driver – Juliet – said it wasn’t fair, she hadn’t been driving nearly as long as the other two, but the other two, having had their turn, sided with Zoë about tea.

‘Yes, you have,’ they said brutally, ‘long enough for your age.’

Tea had begun by the time they got back. It took place in the hall where the long table was spread with a cloth and the Duchy presided at one end with the teapots. Jack was sitting at her right hand.

‘Here she is,’ the Duchy was saying as she came in with the children, tearing off their coats and boots to get at the tea. ‘Captain Greenfeldt has called on us, darling. Your friend, Margaret, told him where we were and as he was passing by he thought he would call. Isn’t that nice?’ And as she met her mother-in-law’s frank and penetrating eye she knew that the Duchy knew.

Jack had risen as she came into the room. ‘Just a quick call,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Of course not.’ Her mouth was dry, and she sat, almost collapsed, into a chair opposite him at the table.

‘If you were a proper American,’ Lydia said, ‘you’d have rushed round and pulled out her chair for her. That’s what they do in films. But we don’t do it here. Perhaps you knew that.’

‘Mummy, my socks have come off with my boots so could I just be in my feet for tea?’

‘He
is
American,’ Wills said. ‘You can tell by his uniform.’ He was eight and very interested in soldiers.

‘Don’t talk about people in front of them as “he”,’ Rachel said. She was pouring mugs of milk.

‘Is this your daughter?’ Of course he knew that she was.

‘Yes.’

Juliet had slipped into the seat beside her and was now gazing at Jack with unblinking intensity.

‘Captain Greenfeldt was telling us that he is just back from Germany,’ the Duchy was saying as she passed Zoë a cup of tea.

She suddenly remembered him saying ’a place called Belsen’ which, during the last ten days, had been much and horribly in the news.

‘Did you go to take photographs at the Belsen camp?’

‘I did.’

‘Oh,’ said Villy, ‘that must have been simply horrifying. Those poor, poor people!’

‘I think,’ the Duchy said, ‘that perhaps
pas devant les enfants
.’

‘Not in front of the children,’ Lydia said. ‘We all knew that ages ago.’

Wills, who often quoted him said, ‘Tonbridge said it was a death camp. But he said it was mostly Jews in it. What are Jews?’

Jack said, ‘I am a Jew.’

Wills looked at him gravely. ‘You don’t look at all different,’ he said. ‘I don’t see how they could tell.’

Lydia, who did not read newspapers or talk to Tonbridge, now said, ‘Do you mean it is a camp for
killing
people? What happens to all their children?’

Villy, in a voice of icy authority, said, ‘Lydia, will you please take all three children upstairs to the nursery? At once!’

And Lydia, after one glance at her mother’s face, did as she was told, the others following her with surprising meekness. The tension in the room lessened – but not very much. Villy offered Jack a cigarette and while he was lighting his and hers for her, Zoë, who discovered that she had been pressing the palms of her hands onto the carving of her chair so hard that she had nearly broken the skin, looked mutely at Jack as though to implore him to help them to escape.

The Duchy said, ‘Zoë, why don’t you take Captain Greenfeldt to the morning room for a little peace and quiet?’

‘Your daughter is very like you.’

The small room, with its gate-legged table, had four chairs ranged round it. He had sat down in one of them. Now she could look at him and was shocked. She had wanted to fling herself into his arms, tell him how sorry she was that she hadn’t immediately said she would come to London, but instead she sank into the chair opposite him. He was reaching in his pocket and drew out his packet of cigarettes to light one from the Goldflake that Villy had given him. She noticed that his hands shook.

‘It was all in front of the children there,’ he said. ‘They were playing round an enormous pit – eighty yards long, thirty feet wide – piled high with the bodies of their mothers, grandmothers, aunts – naked
skeletons
piled on top of each other – four feet high.’

She stared at him aghast, trying, and failing to imagine such a scene. ‘Would you like me to come back to London with you?’

He shook his head. ‘I have to go back very early tomorrow morning. It wouldn’t be worth it.’

‘Back to that camp?’

‘No, another one. Buchenwald. Our troops are there. I’ve been once, but I’ve got to go back.’ He stubbed out his cigarette.

She said, ‘But when you rang, when you called me from London, you wanted me to come then.’

‘Ah, well. I had a sudden urge to see you. Then I thought that I’d like to see you in your home – with your family – before I went.’

‘When will you be back?’

He shrugged. Then he tried to smile. ‘Your mother-in-law is one nice lady. You’re in good hands.’ He lit another cigarette. ‘But thanks for offering to come.’

There was a kind of bleak courtesy about him that frightened her. Searching for anything that might comfort either of them, she said, ‘But those poor people will be all right now, won’t they? I mean they are safe now and people will look after them and give them food.’

‘Some of them. Six hundred are dying and being buried every day at Belsen. And they say over two thousand will die at Buchenwald – too far gone. And those aren’t the only camps, you know. We haven’t reached all of them, but they’ll be like that. And millions
have
died.’

There did not seem to be any comfort.

He looked at his watch, and got to his feet. ‘My cab will be here by now. I mustn’t miss that train. I’m glad I’ve seen Juliet, at last.’

‘Are you really going to be away a long time?’

‘Yep. Better count on that.’

She was standing now, facing him, between him and the door.

‘Jack! You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘What makes you think that?’

She wanted to cry, ’Everything!’ but all she said was, ‘You haven’t kissed me. You haven’t touched me, even.’

For the first time, his black, bleak eyes softened in the old way; he took a step towards her and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I am not angry with you,’ he said. He kissed her gently on her lips. ‘I’ve gotten rather out of touch with love,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to bear with me about that.’

‘I will, I will! But it will come back, won’t it?’

Still holding her shoulders, he pushed her a little away from him. ‘Sure. Will you say goodbye to them for me? And thanks, for everything? Don’t cry.’ It was a command rather than a plea. ‘I left my cap in the hall.’

‘I’ll get it.’ She didn’t want the intrusion of other people. But the hall was empty, and the cap lay on the table. When she returned with it, he had already gone the other way to the front door which he had opened. He took the cap and put it on. ‘I’m glad I came.’ He touched her cheek with two fingers.

‘Look after yourself and – Jules, you call her, don’t you?’ He bent and kissed the cheek he had touched – his lips were as cold as his fingers. Then he swung away from her and walked, very fast, to the gate and out of sight. She stood, listening to the taxi’s engine starting, the door slamming and then the sound of it going down the drive until she could not hear it at all.

Villy, in town for a day and a night, was having lunch with Jessica in the little house in Chelsea she had rented in Paradise Walk. They were better friends again now that it was common knowledge that Laurence (they no longer called him Lorenzo) had left his wife to live with a young opera singer. They had even had a cautiously commiserating talk about poor Mercedes and what was to become of her, and had come to the uneasy conclusion that although she was desperately unhappy, she was probably better off without him. (Of course, Villy thought, Jessica did not know about her frightful evening.)

It was a Monday. Villy had spent the morning at Lansdowne Road and apologised for arriving dishevelled.

‘The news is so good, you’ll soon be back there, won’t you?’ said Jessica as she showed her the tiny bathroom.

‘Edward thinks it’s too big for us now that Louise is married and Teddy is launched, so to speak. I shall be very sad.’ She had taken off her watch and was rolling up her sleeves. ‘I’m so filthy, I really ought to have a bath.’

‘Darling, do, if you want to. Lunch can wait – it’s only a sort of pie.’

‘I’ll just wash.’

‘What a pretty house it is!’ she exclaimed as she came down the stairs again to the sitting room.

‘It is rather a doll’s house, but it suits me beautifully.
So
easy to keep. All I need is a daily for the housework.’

‘Has Raymond seen it?’

‘Not yet. It seems to be more and more difficult for him to get away. But he so loves being important, and he seems to have made friends in Oxford and, of course, I go to Frensham at weekends to help Nora.’

‘How is that going?’

‘Very well, I think. I don’t find
him
very easy to
know
, but she seems utterly devoted. It’s rather a weak gin, I’m afraid. I’ve run out and my local grocer rations everybody – one bottle a month.’ She took her gin and sat with it in the second armchair.

‘The news
is
good, isn’t it?’ said Villy. ‘We’ll be in Berlin any day now.’

‘Except for those awful, dreadful camps. I simply couldn’t believe it! It’s obscene!’

‘It seems so extraordinary that it could all have been going on and people didn’t
know
.’

‘I’m sure they knew. I’ve always loathed Germans.’

‘But Daddy had such a lovely time there when he was a student. Do you remember how marvellous he said it was? Even the smallest provincial town had its concerts.’

‘I agree with Mr Churchill. Words can’t express the horror.’

‘Yes.’ They could neither of them think of anything else to say about the camps, and there was a short silence while Villy smoked and Jessica watched her. She had got much older: her hair was nearly white now; her skin had become weatherbeaten and dry, the slate-blue veins on the back of her hands much raised, her neck an old woman’s neck. She is only a year older than me, Jessica thought, only forty-nine, but she does look older. The war has taken its toll on her, she thought, whereas for me it marked the time when I suddenly had more money and far fewer chores. And, of course, the affair with Lorenzo (she still called him that to herself), even if he was rather naughty in the end,
was
fun while it lasted. Actually, she was quite dreading the peace with Raymond about all the time wanting regular meals and having nothing to do. On her own, she hardly ever cooked – even the pie in the oven at the moment had been bought – and when Judy came home for the holidays, she either stayed with school friends or at Frensham. Nora was fully occupied, and Christopher seemed to like his strange hermit-like existence. Angela . . . That was the reason that she had wanted Villy to come to lunch, to have the chance to air some of her feelings about Angela. She waited, however, until they were sitting at the small table laid for lunch at the far end of the room.

She began by asking about Louise, who, Villy said, seemed rather under the weather. Dr Ballater, to whom Villy had made her go, said that she really ought to have her tonsils out – she was in fact going into hospital some time this week. Teddy, in Arizona, had finished his training as a fighter pilot, but had been kept on there, thank goodness: ‘With any luck, he won’t have to be in the war, and Lydia—’ And then, realizing from her sister’s face that she was bursting to tell her something, she stopped and said, ‘Come on, Jess. What is it? You’re looking quite tragic.’