Confusion: Cazalet Chronicles Book 3 (5 page)

‘I’m off now, Duchy dear. Anything I can get you in London?’

‘Not unless you can find a new kitchenmaid.’

‘Is Edie leaving?’

‘Mrs Cripps tells me she wants to join the Women’s Air Force. She is so cross about it that Edie’s petrified and bang went another of the Copeland plates. As she says, Edie only breaks the best.’

‘Have you spoken to Edie?’

‘Not yet. But in any case I shouldn’t feel justified in asking her to stay. I rather admire her for wanting to serve her country. She came straight from school to us. She has never left the village. I think it’s rather brave of her. But, of course, Mrs Cripps is beside herself. I shall have to find a replacement, drat it, but goodness knows how. Is Mrs Lines still operating, do you know? That rather good agency – in Kensington, wasn’t it? They might have someone. After all, kitchenmaids are usually below the call-up age. You go, darling, or you’ll miss your train. But you might see if Mrs Lines
is
still going, and ask them. If you have time.’

‘I will. And don’t forget to remind Tonbridge to pick up the piano tuner.’

‘I won’t.’

At least she didn’t ask me to go to the Army and Navy Stores to get anything, she thought. The Duchy patronised very few shops and was convinced that any others were no good. She bought household linen from Robinson and Cleaver, her own clothes, acquired very occasionally, from Debenham and Freebody, material from Liberty, and practically everything else from the Army and Navy, which, being in Victoria Street, was not near anything else. As she had not been to London since the war began she relied upon her daughters-in-law and Rachel to provide her with her modest but none the less exacting requirements.

‘Have you your gas mask, Miss?’

‘Thank you, Tonbridge. It’s packed.’

As she settled into the back of the car, with Tonbridge tucking the old felt-lined fur rug over her lap, she thought how extraordinary war
was
; the juxtaposition of the gas mask and the fur rug seemed precisely to mirror what most of life was now like. Or like for the useless, stay-at-home people like me, she then thought. I do nothing to help end the war; I do nothing useful except trivial things that anyone else would probably do better. The depression that had descended upon her when she had finally realised that her beloved Babies’ Hotel had had its day descended yet again. The hotel had returned to its London home briefly after the Munich business, but then a combination of shortage of funds and shortage of girls who wished to train as nurses had gradually overwhelmed the whole enterprise. Matron had retired to look after an aged father, the replacement had been unsatisfactory, and by the time the blitzes on London began the whole thing had come to an end in the nick of time, since the premises – then mercifully empty – had received a direct hit. But it had been the last, indeed the only time when she had felt she had some sort of career. Now she was forty-three, too old to be called up and unable – or unwilling – to volunteer for anything more than supporting her parents and any others of the family who might need her. And then, one day, eventually her dear parents would die, and then she would be free to live with Sid. Then she would be able to look after Sid, make her happy, put her first, share everything with her. When, as now, she was by herself, it seemed sad that she could not talk about this future with Sid, but when they were together, the fact that this future depended upon her parents’ death somehow made it impossible to mention, let alone discuss.

In the train, she decided that she would buy Sid a gramophone, something she had never been able to afford. This idea made her feel suddenly far happier: they would have such fun choosing records together, and Sid would have it to assuage her loneliness. She would get a good machine, one of the ones with a large horn and thorn needles that were supposed to be less hard on records than the steel ones. She would go to HMV in Oxford Street in her lunch hour to choose one, and might very well be able to take it straight to Sid that evening in a taxi. It was a splendid idea – almost a solution.

‘Honestly, darling, as soon as I’ve had this baby, I’ll simply have to find somewhere else to live. Apart from the fact that the cottage is far too small for the boys, it isn’t even really large enough for Jamie and a baby. And poor Isla can’t have anyone to stay.’

She did not add that her sister-in-law was driving her mad, because she knew that people not getting on with each other simply embarrassed him.

They were lunching in a small Cypriot restaurant off Piccadilly Circus which he had described as convenient and quiet. Its convenience escaped her, but it was certainly quiet. Apart from a couple of disconsolate-looking American officers, there was nobody there. For lunch they had had rather tough chops surrounded by rice and tinned peas. It wasn’t at all the sort of place he usually took her to and she wondered, as she had when they walked in, whether he was embarrassed at taking somebody so conspicuously pregnant out to lunch. She had said she could not drink wine, and now, after the meal was over, the waiter brought her a carafe and poured some water into her glass. It was tepid, and tasted of chlorine. The hard chair on which she was sitting was extremely uncomfortable. On the wall – painted a rather dirty yellow – in front of her was a poster with an impossibly blue sky, a mountain with a ruin on top and in the foreground a ferociously smiling Greek Orthodox priest. The waiter arrived with small cups of Turkish coffee, upsetting the three paper carnations that stood in a vase on the table. He righted them with a flourish and then laid a saucer with two lumps of Turkish delight upon it in front of her with a benevolent smile directed at her belly. ‘On the house,’ he said, ‘for Madam.’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t much of a lunch. But I thought we’d rather go somewhere quiet, where we could talk. This coffee is perfectly beastly. I shouldn’t drink it.’

But they hadn’t talked much, she thought.

‘What about Scotland?’ he now said.

‘I couldn’t
live
there! They wouldn’t want me.’

‘I thought you said that they did.’

‘That was only immediately after Angus died. They felt they had to
offer
. They’d have been appalled if I’d agreed.’ She felt panic rising. He
couldn’t
– surely he wouldn’t – try to ditch her now.

‘I thought it might be a temporary solution for the older boys,’ he said.

Burying anything else he might have thought, she said, ‘Well, it would be, in a way. But it means I wouldn’t see them.’

There was a pause.

‘Darling, I feel so utterly
useless
. It’s just a bloody awful situation. I ought to be looking after you – and I can’t.’

Relief flooded over her. ‘I know you can’t. I do understand.’

His face brightened. ‘I know you do. You’re a marvellous person.’ He started to tell her, for the hundredth time, how he could not possibly leave Villy, but luckily the waiter came with the bill and he became occupied in paying it while she went in search of the lavatory. As she repaired her face – she really wasn’t looking her best, had overdone her make-up in the morning – she felt self-pity besieging her like a fog. They had nowhere to go, nowhere where they could quietly spend the time until she had to catch her train; the perm that she had had that morning in Brook Street (her excuse to Isla for escaping to London) looked tight and artificial and not at all as though it would ever be a success; her back ached from the uncomfortable chair and her best shoes had made her feet swell. The thought of being driven to the nursing home by the local taximan when the time came to have the baby, possibly unable even to
tell
him that she was going and then being visited by Isla who would go on and
on
about its likeness to Angus and indeed the whole Mackintosh family, filled her with a kind of irritable despair.

And then the awful uncertainty of what to do next – where to live and how to find the place; she was nearly in her eighth month and would have to get on with that. It all seemed too much. She seemed to be surrounded by discretion and loneliness and lies . . . This would not do; she must not give up; she decided to be confident and sanguine, but just a touch helpless over practical matters. She gave her nose a final admonishing dab of powder and went to rejoin him.

‘I was thinking,’ she said brightly, ‘that the best thing would be for me to find a flat in London. Or possibly, even, a small house. I don’t quite know how to go about it but I’m sure that it would be the solution. Where do you think I should look?’

They discussed this with animation while he drove her to Vigo Street where he parked outside Harvey and Gore and took her in to buy her a present.

‘Amethysts,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you could find us some nice amethysts, Mr Green.’ And Mr Green, who thought the only thing wrong with Mr Cazalet was his not having a title, rubbed his hands and produced an array of battered leather cases, inside the bruised velvet of which lay various brooches, pendants, necklaces and bracelets of amethyst set in gold, sometimes with pearls or diamonds, and one with tiny turquoises that Edward particularly liked. ‘Try it on,’ he said.

She did not want a necklace – when on earth would she wear it? – but she unbuttoned her coat and the top of her blouse and bared her neck which fortunately, humiliatingly, turned out to be too large for the necklace. Mr Green said that some chain could be put at the back to enlarge it, but Edward said no, try something else. What she wanted was a ring, but she sensed that this would be the wrong thing to ask for. The time he had driven her from Lansdowne Road and dumped Villy’s jewel box on her lap and, because it was not locked, all the jewellery spilled out, came suddenly into her mind, and she felt envious and desolate. For a moment she wondered quite madly whether he had
strings
of women who had had his children – whether the unctuous Mr Green was utterly used to visit upon visit with different women . . .

‘Darling? Look! What about this?’

It was a collar of graduated oval stones set and backed in gold, heavy and simple and handsome. She sat, and it was fastened on her and admired and he asked her whether she liked it and she agreed that she did.

‘If Madam is not absolutely sure . . .’ Mr Green had years of experience of ladies being bought things that they did not like or want, or being bought one thing when they would much rather have something else.

‘The only thing is that I don’t know when I would wear it.’

But he simply said, ‘Nonsense, darling, of course you’ll wear it.’ And when Mr Green retired to wrap it up, he leaned over her and whispered, ‘You can wear it in bed with me,’ and his moustache brushed her ear.

‘Well, it certainly makes a glamorous alternative to Utility nightgowns,’ she managed to say.

‘Darling, you don’t have Utility nightgowns!’

‘No, but I soon shall have. The Government has said no more embroidery on lingerie.’

‘Rotten bastards. Perhaps we’d better buy you some of that before the shops run out.’

‘They need coupons, darling, and everybody’s short of them.’

He had finished writing the cheque and Mr Green returned with a carefully sealed white package. ‘I hope Madam has much pleasure wearing it,’ he said.

Outside the shop she said, ‘Darling, thank you so much. It’s a marvellous present.’

‘Glad you like it. Now, I’m afraid, I’d better take you to your train.’

They drove down Bond Street to Piccadilly past the bombed church, round the boarded-up statue of Eros and into Haymarket. ‘Malta gets the George Cross!’ was the main headline on the billboards. The buildings round Trafalgar Square had sandbags piled against their lower windows. Outside Charing Cross station an old man was walking slowly up and down with a board strapped to his back that said: ‘The End of the World is Nigh.’ Starlings intermittently clouded the air. They arranged for her to come up the following week and he would give her lunch and help her to find a flat.

‘Darling, I wish I could take you down myself. But Hugh expects to go with me on Fridays – you know how it is.’

‘That’s all right, darling. Of course I understand.’

She understood, but it didn’t stop her minding.

‘You’re the most understanding girl in the world,’ he said, as he put her in the train and handed her the paper he had bought for her. ‘Afraid there wasn’t a
Country Life
.’

‘Never mind, I can read all about Malta getting the George Cross.’

He bent to kiss her and then, as he straightened up, began fumbling in his pocket. ‘I nearly forgot.’ He put three half-crowns onto her lap.

‘Darling! What’s this for?’

‘For your taxi because I can’t take you home.’

‘It’s far too much. It won’t be more than five bob.’

‘The third one is the Edward medal for bravery,’ he said. ‘For enduring that really ghastly lunch – and everything. I must fly, I’m late for Hugh already.’

Her eyes filled. ‘Fly,’ she said.

After he had gone and the train had bego�I thought you said that they did.'

‘That was only immediately after Angus died. They felt they had to
offer
. They'd have been appalled if I'd agreed.' She felt panic rising. He
couldn't
– surely he wouldn't – try to ditch her now.