The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (20 page)

‘I don’t think either of us would be much good at that. Now you must go and see Mr McAlpine and apologise to him. He’ll get it back.’

‘Oh,
no
, Aunt Rach! He’ll be so awfully angry.’

‘I’ll come with you, but you must do the apologising. And promise never to do anything like that again. It was a very naughty thing to do.’

‘I didn’t mean it to be. And I’m sorry.’

‘Yes, well you must tell
him
that. Off we go.’

So her letter was postponed again.

The Pickthornes stayed until twenty past eight, by which time some chance remark made by their host finally convinced Mrs Pickthorne that they had not, after all, been asked to dinner. ‘We really must be going,’ she said twice – tentatively, and then with desperation. Her husband, who had heard her the first time, had pretended not to – staving off until the last possible moment the confrontation with her in the car. But it was no use. William got heartily to his feet and, grasping her forearm quite painfully, escorted Mrs Pickthorne to the gate, so that her farewells had to be strewn over her shoulder
en route.
Mr Pickthorne had to follow: he managed to forget his hat – a Panama – but the child who had been handing round little biscuits fetched it for him as Uncle Edward told her to. ‘You must come again
soon
,’ William shouted when they were safely in the car. Mr Pickthorne gave a glassy smile, and clashed his gears before rumbling off down the drive. Mrs Pickthorne pretended not to hear.

‘Thought they’d never go!’ William exclaimed as he stumped back through the gate.

‘They thought you’d asked them to dinner,’ Rachel said.

‘Oh, I don’t think so. They can’t have. Did I?’

‘Of course you did,’ said the Duchy calmly. ‘It’s very tiresome of you, William. Most unfair on them.’

‘They’ll go sulking back to a quarrelsome tin of sardines,’ said Rupert. ‘I wouldn’t like to be Mr Pickthorne much. It’ll be all his fault.’

Eileen, who had been hovering for a good half-hour, now came out to say that dinner was served.

‘What he
said
was,’ this was his fourth attempt, ‘ “You must come over and dine.” And
later,
just when we were getting out of the train, he said, “Come about six and have a drink.” ’

‘Exactly!’

‘Well, it’s all my fault as usual,’ he said, to break some minutes of uncompanionable silence.

‘Oh, that makes it all right, does it? It’s all your fault so we needn’t say any more?’

‘Mildred, you know I can’t stop you saying anything you like.’

‘I’ve no wish to continue the subject.’

‘There’s nothing to eat at home,’ she said very soon afterwards.

‘We could open a tin of sardines.’

‘Sardines!
Sardines!
’ she repeated, as though they were tinned mice, as though nobody would think of putting them in a tin unless they were mad. ‘You can have sardines if you’re so keen on them. You know perfectly well what they do to me.’

I know what
I
’d like to do to you, he thought. I’d like to throttle you quite slowly, and then chuck you down the well. The viciousness of this thought, and the ease and speed with which it occurred, appalled him. I’m as bad as Crippen, he thought. Evil beyond belief. He put a hand on her knee. ‘Sorry I spoilt your evening. It isn’t as though you get a great deal of fun, is it? I don’t mind what I have. Whatever you knock up will be very nice, like it always is.’ He glanced at her and saw he was on the right lines.

‘If only you’d
listen
to people,’ she said. ‘I expect we’ve got some eggs.’

Dinner seemed to take ages, Zoë thought. They had cold salmon and new potatoes and peas, and there was a rather delicious hock to drink (although William, who considered white wine to be a ladies’ drink, had a bottle of claret) and then chocolate soufflé and finally Stilton and port, but it took a long time because they were all talking so hard that they forgot to take vegetables when they were handed them, and the men had second helpings of salmon, and then, of course, all the vegetables – Rupert got up to hand them round and during all this they were talking about several things at once – the theatre – well, she was interested in
that
but not
French
plays and Shakespeare and plays in verse. But then Edward had turned to her and asked her what plays she liked and when she said she hadn’t seen any lately, he told her about a play called
French Without Tears,
and just as she was thinking that the title sounded pretty boring, he laughed and said, ‘Do you remember, Villy, that wonderful girl, Kay something-or-other, and one of the men said, “She gave me the old green light”, and the other one said he thought she’d be pretty stingy with her yellows and reds?’ And then when Villy had nodded and smiled as though she was humouring him, he’d turned again to Zoë, ‘I think you ought to see that some day, it would make you laugh.’ She liked Edward, and she felt he was attracted to her. Earlier, as they’d been going into the dining room, he’d said what a pretty dress she was wearing. It was a navy voile with large white yellow-centred daisies on it and rather a low V neck, and once she felt sure that Edward was looking down her dress and turned her head to look at him and he had been. He gave her a small smile and winked. She tried to frown but, actually, it was the best moment at dinner and she wondered whether he was falling in love with her. Of course, that would be terrible, but it wouldn’t be her fault. She’d be distant, but very understanding; she’d probably let him kiss her once, because once wouldn’t count; she would be taken by surprise, or he would think she had been. But she’d explain to him how it would all be no good because it would break Rupert’s heart, and, anyway, she loved Rupert. Which was true. They would be having lunch at the Ivy – this would be after the kiss; the lunch would be to explain everything. Now she was married she hardly ever got invited out to lunch, and as an art master Rupert was far too poor for her to take people. He would be pleading with her just to let him see her occasionally – she began to wonder whether perhaps he might not be allowed to do that . . .

‘Darling! Wasn’t he the man who kept staring at you at the Gargoyle?’

‘Which man?’

‘You know who I mean. The small man with rather bulging eyes. The poet.’

‘
I
don’t know. I don’t say “What’s your name?” to people who stare at me!’

She felt she had scored, but there was a moment’s silence, and then Sybil said, ‘Dylan Thomas at a nightclub? How interesting!’

Rupert said, ‘That’s it.’

The Duchy said, ‘Poets used to be seen everywhere. It’s only nowadays that they seem to have gone underground. They were quite
persona grata
in my youth. One met them at luncheon and perfectly ordinary occasions like that.’

‘Darling Duchy, the Gargoyle is four floors up.’

‘Really? I thought all nightclubs were underground, I don’t know why. I’ve never been to one.’

William said, ‘Too late now.’

And she replied serenely, ‘Far too late,’ and rang for Eileen to clear the plates.

Edward further endeared himself to her by saying, ‘Never seen the point of poetry, can’t understand what the fellers are getting at.’

And Villy, who heard him, said, ‘But, darling, you never read
anything.
No use pretending it’s just
poetry
you don’t read.’

While Edward was saying good-humouredly that one highbrow member in the family was quite enough, Zoë eyed Villy appraisingly. She didn’t seem right for Edward, somehow. She was sort of – well, you couldn’t say she wasn’t attractive, but she wasn’t glamorous. She had a bony nose that was too big, a bony face but heavy eyebrows that were quite dark, not grey like her hair, and a boyish figure that was, none the less, lacking in allure. Her eyes were brown, and not bad, but her lips were too thin. Altogether, she was a surprising person for handsome Edward to have married. Of course, she was terribly good at things – not just riding and tennis, but she played the piano, and some sort of pipe instrument, and read French books, and made real lace on a pillow and bound books in floppy soft leather, and wove table-mats and then embroidered them. There seemed to be nothing that she couldn’t do, and no particular reason why she should do any of it – Edward was far richer than Rupert. And she was also what Zoë’s mother (and consequently Zoë) called well connected, although Zoë now never actually said that sort of thing aloud. Villy’s father had been a baronet; Villy had a picture of him in a silver frame in their drawing room; he looked fearfully old-fashioned, with a drooping white walrus moustache, a wing collar with a tight tie, and large melancholy eyes. He’d been a composer – and quite well known, something she wished Rupert would become; there was a lot of money in portrait painting if you got to paint the right people. Lady Rydal, though, was a real battleaxe. Zoë had only met her once, here, soon after she was married. The Duchy had asked her to stay because they’d all been very fond of Sir Hubert and were sorry for her when he died. She’d made it clear that she disapproved of painted nails, and the girls wearing shorts and the cinema and women drinking spirits – a real kill-joy.

‘ . . . What do you think, silent Zoë?’

‘Rupert says I’m no good at thinking about anything,’ she replied. She hadn’t been listening and hadn’t the faintest idea of what they had been talking about – not the
faintest.

‘I never said that, darling. I said you operated on your intuition.’

The Duchy said, ‘Women are perfectly capable of thought. They simply have different things to think about.’

Edward said, ‘I really don’t see why Zoë should think about Mussolini.’

‘Of course not! The less she thinks about that sort of thing the better! Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that wop dictator,’ the Brig added kindly to his daughter-in-law. ‘Although I have to say that he’s made a good job of planting eucalyptus and draining all those swamps. I have to give him that.’

‘Brig, darling! You talk as though he planted them himself.’ Rachel’s face crumpled with amusement. ‘Imagine him! Every button doing overtime on his uniform when he bent down—’

Sybil, who up until then had been listening affectionately to the Brig’s extremely long story about the second time he went to Burma, said, ‘But he’s also built some pretty good roads, hasn’t he? Had them built, I mean?’

‘Of course he has,’ said Edward. ‘Generated employment, got people to work. And, my God, I bet they work harder than they do here! I sometimes think that this country could do with a dictator. Look at Germany! Look at Hitler! Look what he’s done for his people!’