Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (4 page)

For a moment Polly caught the grey eyes regarding her steadily in the dressing-table mirror, then Clary resumed tearing at her hair. She had opened her mouth to say that Clary didn’t
understand
what it was like for Wills or Simon – that Clary was wrong – before a warm tide of grief submerged any of that; she put her face in her hands and cried, for her own loss.

Clary stayed still without saying anything and then she got a face towel and sat opposite her on her own bed and simply waited until she had more or less stopped.

‘Better than about three handkerchiefs,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it funny how men have large ones and they hardly ever cry, and ours are only good for one dainty nose blow, and we cry far more than they do? Shall I make us some Bovril?’

‘In a minute. I spent the afternoon clearing up her things.’

‘I know. Aunt Rach told me. I didn’t offer to help, because I didn’t think you’d want anyone.’

‘I didn’t, but you aren’t anyone, Clary, at all.’ She saw Clary’s faint and sudden blush. Then, knowing that Clary always needed things of that kind to be said twice, she said, ‘If I’d wanted anyone, it would have been you.’

When Clary returned with the steaming mugs, they talked about quite practical things like how could they – and Simon – all stay with Archie in the holidays, when he only had two rooms and one bed.

‘Not that he’s asked us,’ Clary said, ‘but we want to be able to forestall any silly objections on account of
room
.’

‘We could sleep on his sofa – if he has one – and Simon could sleep in the bath.’

‘Or we could ask Archie to have Simon on his own, and then us at another time. Or you could go with just Simon,’ she added.

‘Surely you want to come?’

‘I could probably go some other time,’ Clary answered – a shade too carelessly, Polly thought. ‘Better not talk about it to anyone or Lydia and Neville will want to come as well.’

‘That’s out of the question. I’d rather go with you, though.’

‘I’ll ask Archie what he thinks would be best,’ Clary replied.

The atmosphere had changed again.

After that, she found herself crying quite often – nearly always at unexpected moments, which was difficult because she did not want the rest of the family to see her, but on the whole, she didn’t think they noticed. She and Clary both got awful colds, which helped, and lay in bed reading
A Tale of Two Cities
aloud to each other as they were doing the French Revolution with Miss Milliment. Aunt Rach arranged for her mother’s clothes to be sent to the Red Cross, and Tonbridge took them in the car. When her father had been away with Uncle Edward for a week, she began to worry about him, about whether he would come back feeling any less sad (but he
couldn’t
be, could he, in just a few days?) and, above all, about how to
be
with him.

‘You mustn’t,’ Clary said. ‘He will still be very sad, of course, but in the end, he’ll get over it. Men do. Look at my father.’

‘Do you mean you think he’ll marry someone else?’ The idea shocked her.

‘Don’t know, but he easily might. I should think remarrying probably runs in families – you know, like gout or being shortsighted.’

‘I don’t think our fathers are at all alike.’

‘Of course they aren’t
completely
. But in other ways they jolly well are. Think of their voices. And the way they keep changing their shoes all day because of their poor thin feet. But he probably won’t for ages. Poll, I wasn’t casting aspersions on him. I was just taking human nature into account. We can’t all be like Sydney Carton.’

‘I should hope not! There would be none of us left if we were.’

‘Oh, you mean if we
all
sacrificed our life for someone else. There’d be the someone else, silly.’

‘Not if we
all
did it . . .’ and they were into their game, founded on the rhetorical question that Ellen used constantly to ask Neville when he behaved badly at meals. ‘If everyone in the world was sick at the same time it would be very interesting. I should think we’d all drown,’ he had said after consideration, thereby, as Clary had pointed out, neatly making a nonsense of the whole notion. But almost as soon as they embarked upon playing it, they both – separately – recognised that it had lost its allure, their sallies were feeble and they no longer collapsed in giggles over them. ‘We’ve outgrown it as a game,’ Clary said sadly. ‘Now all we have to look forward to is being careful not to say it to anyone else, like Wills or Jules or Roly.’

‘There must be other things,’ she said, wondering what on earth they could be.

‘Of course there are. The end of the war and Dad coming back and being able to suit ourselves because we’ll be too old for them to boss us about and white bread and bananas and books not looking old when you buy them. And you’ll have your house, Poll – think of that!’

‘I do, sometimes,’ she answered. She sometimes wondered whether she had outgrown the house as well, without, so far as she could see, growing
into
anything else.

THE FAMILY

Spring 1942

‘Are you going to London, Aunt Rach?’

‘I am. How on earth did you guess?’

‘You’re wearing your London clothes,’ Lydia answered, and then after careful scrutiny added, ‘I honestly think you look
nicer
when you aren’t in them. I do hope you don’t mind my mentioning the fact.’

‘Not at all. You’re probably right. It’s ages since I had any new ones.’

‘What I mean
is
, I don’t think you ever looked your best in them. You would probably be the kind of person who ought to wear a uniform so that you were the same all the time. Then one could just notice whether your eyes were happy or not.’ She was hanging about in the passage by the open door to Rachel’s room watching her as she packed an overnight suitcase. ‘Clothes age you,’ she said finally. ‘Unlike Mummy. I think clothes youthen her – her best ones, that is.’

‘Don’t kick the skirting board, darling. The paint will come off.’

‘A lot of it’s off already. This house is getting most dilapidated. I wish
I
was going to London.’

‘Darling, what would you do when you got there?’

‘Go and stay with Archie like the lucky others. He’d take me to the cinema and out to a huge, exciting dinner and I could wear my christening present jewellery and we could have steak and chocolate cake and crème de menthe.’

‘Are they your best things?’ She was trying to decide whether she needed to pack bedroom slippers or not.

‘They
would
be if I ever had them. Archie said they had meat in his ship every day. It’s bad enough being a civilian, but being a civilian
child
. . . In restaurants it’s bound to be different. It’s ghastly bad luck to be living in a place where there aren’t any. You don’t wear make-up either, do you?
I
shall. I shall wear very black-red lipstick like film stars and a white fur coat, except in summer. And I shall read frisky books.’

‘
What
kind?’

‘You know. It’s French for not very nice. I shall tear through them by the dozen in my spare time.’

‘Talking of spare time, oughtn’t you to be with Miss Milliment?’

‘It’s the holidays, Aunt Rach. I should have thought you would have noticed that. Oh, yes. And I shall ask Archie to take me to the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds. I suppose you’ve seen them?’

‘I must have, I suppose, but years ago.’

‘Well, what kind of horrors are they? Because I’d rather know before I went. Neville pretends he’s been. He says the floor is running with blood, but I’m not tremendously interested in blood. And he says there are moaning sounds of torture but he is not at all a truthful boy so I am none the wiser. So what are they?’

‘It’s ages since I went there, my duck, I don’t remember – except a tableau of poor Mary Queen of Scots being executed. But I expect Mummy will take you to London some time during the holidays.’

‘I doubt it. She only takes me to Tunbridge Wells – for the dentist. Do you know something silly about Mr Alabone? When you go into his room, he’s always standing by the chair, and he takes two steps forward to shake you by the hand. Well, the carpet has two worn-out places where he takes the steps and they really look squalid and if he varied his gait it wouldn’t happen. You’d think that someone intelligent enough to make holes in people’s teeth would know that, wouldn’t you? I did mention it to him, because with the war the chances of his being able to get a new carpet are rather slim, if you ask me. But he simply said, “Quite, quite,” so I knew he wouldn’t take any notice.’

‘People seldom take advice,’ Rachel said absently. The times that she had begged Sid not to live on sandwiches, to take a lodger who would at least contribute to the household expenses and perhaps do a little cooking were foremost in her mind. ‘I
like
to have the house to myself. Then, when you come, my dear love,
we
can have it to ourselves,’ was all that Sid would say to that. Today, tonight, would be one of those – increasingly rare – times. Perhaps I ought to learn to cook, she thought. Villy has learned, after all, but then Villy is so
good
at tackling entirely new things.

‘Why are you taking so many handkerchiefs? Are you expecting to be awfully sad in London?’

‘No. But the Duchy always made me take six for a weekend, and a dozen if I was going away for a week. It has just become a habit. One had to have a clean one every day, you see, even if one hadn’t used it.’

‘So if you went away for a month you had to have forty-eight handkerchiefs. If you went away for three—’

‘No, no, then they would get washed. Now go and see if you can find Eileen for me.’

‘Okey-doke.’

Alone, she looked at her list. On one side of it were the things she had to see to before she caught the train. On the other, the things she must try to get done in London, when she’d finished her day at the office where she sat in a black little room doing accounts and listening to the repetitive woes of the staff, who had early found her the perfect repository for all their troubles. At least she would not be accompanied by the Brig, who had had a cold that had turned into bronchitis and had been forbidden by Dr Carr to leave the house until he was better. Miss Milliment would keep him occupied. He was editing an anthology on trees, and she was doing so much of the work that really, Rachel thought, she deserved to be part-author. But Aunt Dolly was to be looked after by the Duchy and Eileen which meant Eileen, as Aunt Dolly preserved an entirely fictitious independence in front of her sister and would admit no help. It would be Eileen who would have to stand around for hours, searching for garments that Aunt Dolly wished to wear. Rachel felt she must warn Eileen that many of the searches would be fruitless, since Aunt Dolly often chose clothes that she could not have possessed for many years. ‘The best thing is to say that they are in the wash,’ she told Eileen. ‘Poor Miss Barlow’s memory is not what it used to be. And just choose whatever you think most suitable.’

‘Yes, m’m.’

‘And her medicines. She’s frightfully keen on taking them, which means that when she forgets, she’s liable to have a second dose. It’s best if you give them to her with her breakfast and then take them away – you may put them in my room. She also has one yellow pill at night.’

‘And what about her bath, m’m? Will she be wanting me to draw that for her?’

‘I think she will prefer to wash in her room.’ Rachel felt she could hardly expose Aunt Dolly’s deep aversion to baths – she alleged that they were dangerous and that her father had forbidden her to take more than one a week. ‘She will go to bed after the nine o’clock news, so you need not be late. Thank you, Eileen. I know I can rely on you.’

That was another thing done. What a fuss just for two nights, she thought, but then, when I am in the train, I shall be able to look forward to two lovely evenings. She and Sid had been dogged by bad luck for weeks now. First, of course, because of poor Sybil, and then the Brig falling ill, and the Duchy had had a frightful cold which meant she could not go near him. And then Simon had come back for the holidays and Polly had been worrying her – altogether, it had been impossible to leave the house for more than her hours at the office. But somehow Sid didn’t seem to understand that she had obligations to the family – and to the house, come to that – that
had
to come before pleasure. Their last argument about this, in a tea shop near Rachel’s office where Sid had come for a miserable sandwich, had been really rather
painful
, and afterwards, although of course she had never told Sid, she had cried. The only place to do that had been the very nasty ladies’ lavatory at the office, on the sixth floor of the building where the usual lav paper was pieces of the
Evening Standard
cut into squares and attached to the wall by a piece of string, and the pipe leading to the cistern leaked. Sid either assumed that she
wanted
to go back to Home Place to look after Wills and Aunt Dolly and the Brig (which, in a way, was true because she wanted to do what she felt was right), or worse, she accused Rachel of not caring about her – sometimes, as on the tea-shop occasion, both. She knew that Sid was lonely, missed her teaching at the boys’ school, although she had recently taken one or two private pupils which helped her precarious finances, and found the ambulance station extremely boring a good deal of the time but, after all, one could not expect life to be anything but dull and tiring in wartime. And that was the least of it. When she thought of Clary’s vigil for her father, from whom, of course, nothing had been heard since the little Frenchman Pipette O’Neil had brought those scraps of paper back with him, and of the degree to which poor Hugh was shattered by Sybil’s death, of Villy now having to face her son becoming a fighter pilot and seeing less and less of Edward; when she thought of poor little Wills and Polly and Simon each in their different way trying to come to terms with the loss of their mother . . . when she thought of all or indeed
any
of these things she felt that being bored or lonely or actually rather often exhausted was hardly comparable, or deserving of complaint. She does not always think of others, she thought, reverting to Sid: it was a serious indictment. She went in search of the Duchy whom she found in the drawing room, mending china at the card table, which was spread with newspaper.