The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (24 page)

‘Good Lord! Of course, they will be. How stupid! We could go on to Hastings.’

‘The shop at Watlington’ll be open.’

‘Will it?’ Villy had slowed and was looking for somewhere to turn.

‘It somehow always is. They’ll have white wool. And almost certainly flannel.’

‘Right.’ Villy stopped at someone’s drive and then backed into it.

‘It seems so inefficient. If only I’d kept Simon’s things. But I never thought I’d need them again.’

‘I chucked everything out, too. One can’t keep everything,’ Villy said. ‘I’ll help you, if you like.’

‘It would be angelic. I’ll never forget that christening robe you made for Teddy.’ It had been the finest white lawn, embroidered in white thread with wild flowers, and all the seams joined by drawn threadwork. The sort of work usually done by nuns.

‘You can borrow it, if you like. There won’t be time to make another of those.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I’m just aiming at four flannel nighties and a shawl.’

They were passing the white gates of the house on their way up the hill to the shop at Watlington. Villy said, ‘I’m sure the Duchy would help.’

‘She’s making one of her lovely tussore smocks for Clary’s birthday.’

‘Goodness! I’d forgotten that. What are you giving her?’

‘I can’t think. I don’t know really what she likes. She’s not a very happy little girl, is she? Rupert says she’s not doing well at school either. A bad report, order marks, and she doesn’t seem to have made any friends.’

‘I shouldn’t think Zoë would be very nice to them if she did.’

Neither of them liked Zoë, and both knew that they were about to embark upon a Zoë talk, which happened every holidays and always ended by them saying that they really must stop. This time they stopped because they had reached their destination – an old white-painted clapboard farmhouse the ground floor of which had been rather casually converted into a shop. It sold a little of everything: groceries, vegetables, packets of seeds, chocolates, cigarettes, elastic and buttons, knitting wool, eggs, bread, Panama hats, trugs, willow-pattern mugs and brown teapots, flowered Tootal cottons, fly papers, bird seed and dog biscuits, door mats and kettles. Mrs Cramp produced a roll of white flannel and cut the five yards required. Mr Cramp, at the other counter, was cutting bacon in the machine. A heavily encrusted fly paper hung above it, and banged against his bald head every time he collected a slice and put it on the scales, and sometimes a long-dead fly fell like a dried currant onto the counter. His customer, in the middle of narrating some indeterminate misfortune, fell silent when Sybil and Villy entered the shop, and only the weather – not a drop of rain for two weeks and looking as though it would hold up for the harvest – was discussed while the ladies were in the shop.

‘And white wool, Mrs Hugh. Paton’s two-ply; would that be what you were after? Or we do have the fleecy Shetland.’

‘I’ll make the shawl,’ said Villy. They chose the Shetland, and Sybil bought a reel of white cotton.

‘Mrs Cazalet Senior keeping well, is she? That’s right.’

The flannel was wrapped in a piece of soft brown paper and tied with string. The wool was put into a paper bag. Mrs Cramp avoided Sybil’s stomach like title plague.

But as soon as Villy had left the shop, she said, ‘She’s near her time, or I’m a Dutchman.’

And Mrs Miles, who had been buying the bacon, said, ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if it was twins.’

Mrs Cramp was shocked. It was her prerogative to remark on her customers. ‘They don’t have twins,’ she said. ‘Not ladies.’

In the car, Villy said, ‘Do you think it would be a good idea if Clary left school and joined our two with Miss Milliment?’

‘Very good for Clary. But do you think Rupert could afford it?’

‘Two pounds ten a week! It
must
be cheaper than her school.’

‘He probably gets a special rate for being a schoolmaster. He may not pay at all, except for the extras.’

‘Our two have extras.’

‘Rachel might help with those. Or the Duchy might speak to the Brig. Or you could – on one of your rides. He’d probably listen to you – you get on so well with him.’

‘Let’s talk to Rupert first.’ Villy ignored this compliment as she did all the others these days. ‘There would be fares, of course. She’d have to walk to Shepherd’s Bush and take the Underground. But I do feel it would be a family atmosphere for her, and that’s what she needs. I don’t think she gets much of that at home.’

Sybil said, ‘Of course, Zoë will start having a family one of these days.’

‘God forbid! I’m sure she doesn’t want babies.’

Sybil said, ‘As we all know, it isn’t always a question of wanting them.’

Villy glanced at her, startled. ‘Darling! Did you – not—’

‘Not really. Of course I’m pleased about it now.’

‘Of course you are.’ They were both treading water: not exactly out of their depths, but not wanting to feel their ground.

‘Oh, this country!’ he said once. ‘To me, it is the best in England.’

‘Have you been everywhere else?’

He laughed. ‘Of course not. I’m just indulging in a spot of prejudice!’

On the last of these stops he got out of the car: she followed him, and they went and leaned on a gate. They were on a crest of land, where they could look down and away for miles with all the things that they had seen separately on the drive spread out before them in a vast expanse, green and golden and gilded, varnished by sunlight. Rupert took her hand.

‘Darling. Don’t you think that’s a ripping view?’

‘Yes. And the sky is such a lovely blue.’ She thought for a moment, and then added, ‘It’s the kind of blue that nothing else actually
is,
isn’t it?

‘You’re perfectly right . . .
what
a good remark!’ He squeezed her hand, delighted with her. ‘It’s the kind of thing that is so obvious that nobody says it. Notices it, I mean,’ he added, seeing her face. ‘No, really, Zoë darling, I mean that.’ And he did: he so much wanted her to be an appreciator – of something other than themselves.

In Rye he bought her presents. They were walking down one of the steep roads to the harbour and there was a very small shop window crammed with jewellery, small pieces of silver and, in front, there was a tray of antique rings. Rupert decided that he wanted to buy her one so they went inside. He chose a rose diamond one with black and white enamel round the hoop, but she didn’t like it. She wanted an emerald with rose diamonds round it, but it was twenty-five pounds – too much. So she settled for a fire opal surrounded by seed pearls and that was ten pounds, but Rupert got it for eight. They didn’t know it was a fire opal until the man told them, just thought it was a marvellous dazzling orange colour, but Zoë was much keener on it once she knew. ‘It’s really unusual!’ she exclaimed, holding out her white hand for them to see.

‘Wouldn’t suit everyone, madam, but it’s perfect on you.’

‘There, madam,’ said Rupert when they were outside. ‘And what would madam like to do next?’

She wanted a book to read in the evening when everyone was sewing and playing the piano and things. So they went to a bookshop, and she chose
Gone With The Wind
, which she knew everyone was reading and was said to have good passionate scenes in it. Then they had lunch in a pub – or rather in the garden outside it: ham and salad and Heinz’s mayonnaise and half a pint of bitter for Rupert and a shandy for Zoë. They didn’t talk about the children at lunch, or afterwards, when they went to Winchelsea because Rupert wanted to see the Strachan glass there, but as they were driving back to Home Place, Zoë said, ‘Oh, darling, we’ve had such a lovely time, and I do love my ring.’

Rupert said, ‘Haven’t we just? Now we must go back to the bosom of the family. The madding crowd.’

‘Madding?’

‘It’s a book by Thomas Hardy.’

‘Oh.’ What a lot he knew.

‘And we must think of something splendid to do with the children tomorrow.’

‘I should think they are quite happy with their cousins, and everything.’

‘Yes. But I meant with all of them. Must do our bit.’

She was silent. He added gently, ‘You know, darling, I think you’d feel quite differently about family life if you had a baby. If we had one,’ he added.

‘Not yet. I don’t feel old enough.’

‘Well, one day you will be.’ She was twenty-two: a
young
twenty-two, he told himself.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I don’t think we could afford it. Not unless you get another job. Or become famous, or something. We aren’t rich – like Hugh and Edward. They have a proper staff to do things. Sybil and Villy don’t have to
cook
.’

It was his turn for silence. Ellen did most of the cooking, and he and Clary were out to lunch every day, but poor little Zoë did hate cooking, he knew that, had not got much beyond the frying pan or tins in three years.

‘Well,’ he said at last, he couldn’t bear to disrupt their day out, ‘it was just a thought. ‘Think about it.’

Just a thought! If he had had any idea of how she felt about having a baby, he wouldn’t even mention it. Her fear, which amounted to panic, meant that she never got beyond her imagination of pregnancy – getting larger and larger, her ankles swelling, waddling about, feeling sick – and the labour, frightful pain that might go on for hours and hours, might indeed kill her as it did some people she had read about in novels. And not only
read
about: look at Rupert’s first wife! She’d died that way. But even if she didn’t die, her figure would be ruined: she would have flabby breasts with the nipples too large, like Villy and Sybil whom she had seen in their bathing suits, her waist would be thick and she would have those fearful stripes on her stomach and thighs – Sybil again, Villy seemed to have escaped that – and varicose veins – Villy, but not Sybil – and, of course, Rupert would no longer love her. He’d pretend to for a bit, she supposed, but she would
know.
Because the one thing she knew for certain was that her appearance was what people were interested in or cared about: she hadn’t anything else, really, to attract or keep anyone
with.
She had used it all her life to get what she wanted, and she had never wanted anything so much as Rupert. So now she must use it to
keep
him. She knew, without thinking about it too much, that she wasn’t clever, either at doing things or at thinking about them; her mother had always said that this wasn’t important if you had the looks, and she had learned that very well. Why didn’t Rupert understand all this? He’d got two children anyway, and they cost a lot and were a constant source of anxiety. Sometimes she wished that he was thirty years older, too old for anyone but herself to care about – too old, anyway, to want to be a father, content with just being with her. In the three years of their marriage, he had only talked about having a baby twice before: once at the beginning, when he had assumed that she would want to get pregnant, and then about six months later when she had stupidly complained about what a nuisance Dutch caps were. He had said, ‘I couldn’t agree with you more. Why don’t you just stop using one, and let nature take its course?’ She had got out of that somehow – said that she wanted to get used to being married first or something, anything to stop him talking about it – and after that she had put the cap in long before he came from the school and never said any more about it at all. She had thought that perhaps he had given up the idea; now it was horribly clear that he hadn’t. The rest of the drive home was silent.