Casting Off (4 page)

‘Good God! I couldn’t begin to! I don’t know the first thing about it.’ He looked appalled. After a pause, he said, ‘And it would mean living here, wouldn’t it? Zoë has set her heart on London.’

This was not at all what he wanted to hear. He knew that Hugh would not consider running the place as he was dead against it – had been all along – and his own private life was far too complicated for him to conduct it so far from London. But there ought to be a Cazalet on the spot.

‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘let’s sleep on it. I want to show you round, but let’s get some lunch first.’

Lunch – at the Polygon Hotel – had taken ages. The place was unusually full, and the bar, where they had a drink while they waited for a table, was full of men poring over the election results in the early edition of the local evening paper. The banner headlines could be read across the room. ‘Labour Sweeping to Victory!’ ‘Conservatives Routed!’

‘There’s not much to drink to,’ he said, when their pink gins arrived, but Rupert said that he thought it was probably a good thing. They had a bit of an argument. Edward was shocked. ‘Get rid of Churchill?’ he said, more than once. ‘It seems to me sheer bloody-minded madness. After all, he got us through the war.’

‘But the war’s over. Or over here, anyway.’

‘The other lot are simply bent on running down the Empire, ruining the economy with their blasted Welfare State. It’s simply because people want something for nothing.’

‘Well, they’ve put up with nothing for something for quite a while.’

‘Really, old boy, you’re turning into some sort of Red!’

‘I’m not turning into anything. I’ve never been much of a Tory, but that doesn’t make me a Communist. I’d just like things to be a bit fairer.’

‘What do you mean by “fairer”?’

There was a short silence: his brother seemed intent upon twisting a bit of the foiled paper from his packet of Senior Service.

‘Bodies,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t mean dead ones. I noticed it when I was Number One on that destroyer. Men used to strip down, swabbing decks or in the engine room, or I just saw them when I was doing the rounds. I noticed that most of the Ordinary Seamen’s bodies were a different
shape
: narrower shoulders, barrel-chested, bandy legs, scrawny-looking, terrible teeth – you’d be surprised how many of them had false ones. They just looked as though they’d never had a chance to grow to what they were originally meant to be. Of course, there were exceptions – husky chaps who’d been stevedores or dockers or miners – but there were a hell of a lot who’d come from cities, from indoor jobs. I suppose it was mostly them I noticed. Anyway, compared to the officers they looked very different. It seemed to me then that except for our uniforms, we should have looked the same.’ He looked up at his brother with a small smile – like a silent and mirthless apology. ‘There were other things . . .’

Perhaps he’s going to tell me about France, Edward thought. He’s never talked about that – at all. ‘Things?’

‘Er – well, like if you haven’t got much to lose, it’s far worse when you lose it. One of our gunners lost his house in the bombing. If
we
lost a house, we’ve got another one, haven’t we? Or we could get one. He lost his house and his furniture, everything in it.’

‘That could happen to anyone –
has
happened—’

‘No doubt – but it’s what happens afterwards that’s different.’

He
wasn’t
going to talk about it – get whatever it was off his chest. Edward felt relieved when the waiter came to tell them that their table was ready.

But even when they got their table, the service was very slow and they didn’t get back to the wharf until after three. He’d decided to do a quick tour with Rupert and then get away as he’d promised Diana he’d be at her place in time for dinner and spend Friday night with her before going on to Home Place. But when they got back the man who was overseeing the building and repairs to the sawmill said that the borough surveyor wanted to see him with a list of changes to be made for fire precautions. This meant going over the list on site, and one way and another it took nearly three hours. Rupert left him after a bit, and said he’d have a prowl round on his own.

A good many of the modifications should have been done during the rebuilding of the sawmill: it was going to be far more expensive to do them now. He told Turner, the man in charge, to send him a copy of the list and said he would tackle their own surveyor about why he hadn’t called the borough surveyor earlier. Then he couldn’t find Rupert, and after he sent someone to go and look for him, he rang Diana to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to make it in time for dinner. ‘I’m still in Southampton. Got to get Rupert back to London before I come down to you – sorry, sweetie, but it can’t be helped.’

She was obviously very upset, and by the time he’d finished talking to her, and swivelled round in his chair to put out his cigarette, Rupert was standing in the open doorway to the office.

‘Look here, I’d no idea I was putting you out. I can easily get back on a train.’

‘It’s all right, old boy.’ He felt intensely irritated: Rupert must have heard every word he’d been saying – probably given the whole show away . . .

‘I didn’t realize that you were going on somewhere – much better if you put me on a train.’

If he drove straight from the station to Diana’s he could get there in an hour and a half . . .

‘Well, if it’s all the same to you . . . Let’s have a quick one first. There’s quite a nice little pub up the road.’

While they were having the drink he told Rupert about Diana, about how long the affair had been going on, about how he really didn’t feel ‘that way’ about Villy any more, about Diana’s husband having died leaving her with practically not a bean and four children. ‘It’s a hell of a mess,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ It was an enormous relief, he discovered, to have someone to talk to about it.

‘Do you want to marry her?’

‘Well, that’s the problem, you see.’ As he said this, he realized that he
did
want to very much indeed. ‘You know, if you’ve had somebody’s child—’

‘You didn’t say that—’

‘Didn’t I? As a matter of fact, she’s almost certainly had two of mine. You can see how it is – it makes you feel responsible – difficult just to walk out – leave her and all that.’

Rupert was silent. Edward began to be afraid that he was going to start disapproving of him – like Hugh. He couldn’t bear the idea of that: he desperately wanted someone on his side. ‘I really do love her,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t have gone on so long if I didn’t love her more than anyone I’ve ever met. And, anyway, how do you think she’d feel if I simply walked out on her?’

‘I don’t suppose Villy would feel too good if you left
her
. Does she know about it?’

‘Good God, no! Not a thing.’

As Rupert remained silent, he said, ‘What do you think I should do?’

‘I suppose you feel that whichever you did would be wrong.’

‘That’s it! That’s it exactly.’

‘And I suppose that she – Diana – wants to marry you?’

‘Well – we haven’t actually talked about it, but I’m pretty sure that she does.’ He gave a small, embarrassed laugh. ‘She keeps saying she adores me – that kind of thing. Do you want another?’ He’d noticed that Rupert had been staring into the bottom of his glass for some minutes now, but he shook his head.

‘I suppose you’ll just have to decide one way or the other.’

‘It’s a hell of a decision to make, though, isn’t it?’ It was all very well for Rupert to say that – he was not exactly known in the family as a decision-maker. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that perhaps I ought to wait until Villy’s found a house that she likes – get her installed in it, you know – before I – do anything. We ought to be off. I’ll just give her – Diana, I mean – a ring to tell her I will be back for dinner.’

On the way to the station he said, ‘I would love you to meet her.’

‘All right.’

‘You will? Hugh has absolutely refused to.’

‘Hugh knows about her, then?’

‘He sort of knows, but he refuses to understand the situation, simply buries his head in the sand, whereas Diana and I have agreed it’s much better to talk about things quite openly and frankly.’

‘Except to Villy?’

‘That’s different, old boy, you must see that. I can’t exactly
discuss
it with her until I’ve made up my mind to take the plunge.’

As he let Rupert out of the car he said, ‘Nobody else knows about this, by the way.’

Rupert said all right.

‘I’m really grateful to you letting me go off like this.’

‘I’m not
letting
—’

‘I mean, taking the train so that I don’t have to let Diana down.’

‘Oh, that! That’s OK by me – I’ve got all the time in the world.’

It was a clear, sunny evening and Edward drove east with the sun behind him, on his way to have dinner and stay the night with his mistress. The prospect, which usually made him feel excited and carefree – as he always felt on the nights before his holiday – seemed now to have other dimensions: the watertight compartments in which he had kept his two lives throughout the war were no longer sound; guilt was leaking steadily from one to the other. He supposed that talking to Rupert had somehow made everything seem more urgent. When he had said that Diana and he had not actually talked about marriage, he had rather simplified the point. Although she never said the word, she managed to bring all kinds of conversation to the outskirts of marriage. She couldn’t go on in the cottage, for instance. Well, that was fair enough: it was cut off and a mean little place where she was hopelessly isolated. But what should she do? she had asked – more than once – her lovely eyes fixed on his face. She also asked many small, trapping questions about whether Villy was to continue in the country or go back to London. He hadn’t told her about selling Lansdowne Road as he’d been afraid she would jump to conclusions. It was dreadfully hard on her, poor darling, having all this uncertainty. But, after all, he had it too. There was nothing he would like better than to have settled Villy comfortably, so that he needn’t worry about her, and then be free to start a wonderful new life with Diana. Perhaps, he thought, reaching for his snuff box (marvellous stuff if you got sleepy driving), perhaps I should tell her this, and resolved that he would.

So, after dinner when they were drinking brandy, he did tell her, and she was overcome, said, ‘Oh, darling, how wonderful!’ and was awfully understanding about the terribly difficult problem of Villy. ‘Of
course
I understand! Of course you must think of her first. We must
both
put her first, darling.’

When he had bought his ticket and discovered that the next train to London would be in twenty minutes, he wandered up and down the platform, past the news-stall – closed – to the station buffet. He went in: they might have some cigarettes and he was running out. They hadn’t. The place was disconsolately dirty and smelt of beer and coal dust; the walls, once decorated in pale green high gloss paint, were cracked and blistering, and the long counter had heavy glass domes that contained sandwiches writhing with antiquity. Just as he was wondering how on earth anybody could face them, a sailor came in and bought one with a bottle of Bass. Rupert left the buffet and walked to the very end of the platform. It was a beautiful evening full of tender yellow light and moth-coloured shadows; moth was a cop-out – they were all kinds of colours, really. He stopped looking: he was not a painter, he was a timber merchant. Like the rest of his life now, that seemed a completely unreal statement: he’d better think of something else. He thought about his brother, his older, once glamorous brother, whom he had felt was a kind of hero, or at least an heroic figure, although that, originating from when he was still a schoolboy during the First World War, had simply congealed into a habit. Poor old Edward! he now thought. He
has
got himself into a mess. Whatever he does now will make someone miserable . . . He suddenly found that he couldn’t think about that, either. ‘I suppose in the end she will get used to it,’ came into his head: he might even have spoken it aloud, the cat’s mother must be Villy. He knew, somehow, that Edward would do what he thought was the easier thing. He might well be wrong about what that might be, but when he did it that was what he would think. If whatever one did made one unhappy, might it not be best for Edward to do the harder thing? The harder thing was implicitly right, he knew, but that did not, he also knew, often provide much comfort. After all, Edward had been having it both ways for years; it was high time he had to face the music, make a decision one way or the other. His life must, for years, have been a tissue of lies, evasions, a withholding of essential truths.

He was no good at anger. Any resentment or disapproval he manufactured against Edward evaporated as fast as he put words to it: it wasn’t just a question of deciding, it was living afterwards, according to the decision, dealing with the lifelong consequences . . .

His train had arrived: he did not know how long it had been there, and hurried to catch it. He found an empty compartment and settled himself in a corner of it to sleep. But the moment that he closed his eyes his head was full of familiar, silent images that seemed waiting to become animate in his dreams – to speak, to repeat themselves, to re-enact the key moments of the last three months: Michèle’s head, sinking back upon her pillow after he had kissed her, then (he imagined) lying motionless as she listened to his departing footsteps – he had looked back once at the house to see if she had come to the window but she had not; the interim in the boat, which had seemed so painful and now seemed an almost blessed interlude when that image of her recurred and he could indulge in pure grief. He had wanted to stay one night in London on his own before embarking upon the last leg of his journey home, but he had no money except for the rail fares borrowed from the captain of the boat. He had not thought to ask for more – as it was, he walked from Waterloo Station to Charing Cross. The shabby, battered appearance of London appalled him. So he had bought his ticket and watched the familiar countryside and smoked his last cigarette from the packet they had given him on the boat and tried to imagine meeting Zoë.