The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (38 page)

‘It’s probably just a phase. What are you going to do with her next?’

‘I want her to do a shorthand and typing course because I’m afraid she is going to have to get a job of some sort. But, of course, she thinks that is far too dull. I mean, she wouldn’t think of nursing, and she couldn’t possibly teach, so what else is there?’

Villy agreed that there was absolutely nothing. ‘Of course, she’ll get married,’ she said eventually.

‘Yes, but, darling,
who to
? We really aren’t in a position to entertain and her doing a Season is out of the question. But that simply means she doesn’t meet anyone suitable. What are you going to do about Louise?’ she added.

‘Well, when she finishes with Miss Milliment, we’ll send her to France, of course. After that, I haven’t thought. She still says she wants to be an actress.’

‘At least she wants to
do
something. She’s grown up a lot this last year, hasn’t she?’

It was Villy’s turn to sigh. ‘She sulks too, and can be most tiresome at times. I think Clary has put her nose out of joint. She and Polly have become great friends since Clary started with Miss Milliment – three isn’t always a good number. And, of course, Edward spoils her and is always encouraging her to put on grown-up airs, which is absurd at fifteen. Did you have trouble with Nora? But no, you wouldn’t have, would you? Nora has always been an angelic child.’ She said this with emphasis. Nora had always been the plain one and needed compensatory virtues.

‘She’s always been an easy child, although she’s not getting on very well with Angela at present.’

‘She’s probably jealous of her.’

Jessica shot a shrewd glance at her sister, thinking, How funny it is, that people always think everyone else will feel the same as they do, as she answered, ‘Oh, no! Nora’s never been jealous of anybody.’ Then, unable to resist having remembered, she added, ‘Do you remember that time when you cut off my hair and put it in a biscuit tin and buried it in the back garden?’

‘I didn’t cut it all off!’

Just enough to make me look like an idiot at the school prize-giving, Jessica thought, but she said, ‘Mama was always very hard on you, I thought. All that fuss about you wanting to be a dancer. And you were so good at it!’

‘Daddy was the one who supported me.’

‘You were
his
favourite.’

‘They were shocking about that, weren’t they? Quite barefaced!’

‘Well, it taught us not to be.’

They both thought of their amazing sons, and then told themselves that, anyway, they didn’t show it. Then Judy interrupted them, sick of her rest, she said, and what could she do, when was Lydia coming back, and would it be tea soon? She wore shorts and a yellowing Chilprufe vest. ‘Angela’s locked herself in the bathroom for ever, so I had to use the pot,’ she added.

‘Judy, I’ve told you not to walk about the house in your vest. You don’t need it in this weather, anyway.’

‘I do.’ She stroked her chest. ‘I love it.’

There were sounds in the drive of a car arriving.

‘That will be Lydia and Neville back,’ said Villy. ‘You can have tea with them.’

‘Go and put on your blue Aertex shirt first, darling. You don’t want them to see you like that.’

‘I don’t mind at all how they see me.’ But seeing her mother’s face, she went.

Rupert, carrying a bundle of damp towels and a picnic basket, took her place in the doorway. He looked extremely hot.

‘Two children returned more or less intact. Where shall I put these? Oh, Jessica, how nice. I didn’t see you!’ He went over to the sofa and exchanged kisses with her.

‘Rupe, you look exhausted. It was sweet of you to take them all. Stay and have a cup of tea.’ Villy rang the bell, and Phyllis, who had been cutting bread and butter in the pantry with a pounding headache, looked at the kitchen clock and noticed that it was just after four and tea was supposed to be at four thirty. Still, they were out to dinner, so when she’d done the nursery tea and washed everything up she could go to bed with some aspirin.

‘Phyllis, we just want a pot of tea for the three of us now, and the children can have theirs at the usual time.’

‘Yes, m’m.’ She picked up the coffee tray.

‘I’m afraid Neville’s brought a jellyfish back.’

‘Didn’t you tell him it would die?’

‘Of course I did. But he wants it for a pet.’ He turned to Jessica. ‘It’s his asthma. He’s always wanting a cat or a dog, and they’re lethal for him. So we get goldfish, earthworms and tortoises – and now the wretched old jellyfish.’

He collapsed on the sofa and closed his eyes. ‘God! Aren’t the young
exhausting
? Even if you tire them out, a mere ice-cream will stoke them up again. They spent most of the journey back having a competition about what would be the worst way to die. They thought of the most ghastly ways. Better warn Ellen that Neville will probably have nightmares tonight.’ He opened his eyes. ‘How’s Raymond?’

‘Fine. He’s gone to visit his aunt. Coming next week, probably.’

‘Oh, good.’ Rupert liked Raymond, with whom he felt, without being able to define exactly how, he had something in common.

There was a short, peaceful silence, and then Angela entered the room. Entered, was the way to put it, Villy thought. She stood for a second in the doorway before moving, with studied grace, into the room. She was wearing a sleeveless piqué dress of the palest lemon yellow and sandals and a silver bracelet on one white wrist. She had spent the entire afternoon washing and setting her hair that hung in a long page boy bob at the back with little flat curls round her face like ram’s horns, which reminded Villy of Hermione’s hair. Rupert got to his feet.

‘I say! Is this really Angela?’

‘The same old me.’ She presented her perfectly powdered face for him to kiss.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not the same – not at all.’

‘Shut the door, darling,’ her mother said. ‘Oh, no – don’t. Phyllis is coming in with the tea. Where are the others?’

‘What others?’

‘Louise and Nora. And Neville and Lydia. You know perfectly well who I mean.’

‘Oh – the
children
! I haven’t the faintest.’ She disposed herself gracefully on the arm of the sofa.

Phyllis came in with the tea, and Villy said, ‘We shall want another cup for Miss Angela.’

‘Angela can fetch it,’ Jessica said somewhat sharply.

‘Don’t you move. I’ll get it for you.’ Rupert followed Phyllis out of the room. When he returned with the cup, Angela said, ‘Oh,
thank
you, Uncle Rupert. Although you aren’t really my uncle, are you?’

‘I think you could drop the uncle, in any case.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ She gave him a demure and – if only he knew it – much practised smile. Villy, pouring out the tea, exchanged glances with Jessica. She’s a bit of a minx, thought Rupert, but bloody attractive, and briefly wondered whether Zoë practised her early charms on any
old older
man who had come her way. Probably. Jessica was asking him about Zoë, and he said she was fine, she was learning to drive, whereupon Angela said she was dying to learn and would he teach her? Rupert, looking rather harassed, said he would see, and took out his case for a cigarette.

‘Oh, please! Could I have one? I’m dying for a smoke.’ She selected one from the proffered case, put it between her immaculately painted lips and leant towards him for a light.

We can’t afford cigarettes, Jessica thought, with some desperation, for how could she be stopped? Raymond had forbidden it until she was eighteen, and she had been promised a gold watch if she did not smoke until she was twenty-one, but this was another habit she had formed in France.

‘You know Daddy doesn’t like you to smoke,’ she said now.

But Angela simply answered, ‘I know he doesn’t. But I can’t help that. If one didn’t do any of the things one’s parents didn’t want one to do, one would hardly be able to
move
!’ she explained to Rupert.

There was the distant rumble of thunder, and Rupert said he’d better go or he’d get soaked putting the car away. He called to Neville to say he was off and instantly the door burst open and the three younger children surged in.

‘Mummy! He’s got a jellyfish and he says it’s cruel to stroke it and stroking
anything
can’t be cruel, can it?’

‘Oh, yes, it can. If you touch him I’ll cut you up into tiny pieces and fry you in boiling oil,’ said Neville. ‘He’s my jellyfish, and he doesn’t like girls. He’d sting you to death if I gave him the chance.’

‘He likes
me
,’ Lydia said. ‘You said he did.’

‘He likes you
so far
.’

‘Where have you put him, Neville?’

‘In the bath.’

‘How revolting!’

‘Don’t take any notice of Angela. She says everything’s revolting or else that she hasn’t the faintest,’ said Judy whose accurate mimicry of her sister in no way obscured her scorn.

‘And, Mummy,’ said Lydia caressing her mother, ‘we’ve used up all the dining-room salt and the water still doesn’t taste at all seaish, so I’m afraid we had to use all the big jars in the kitchen, but we can do without salt, can’t we, and for him it was an emergency.’

‘Yes, I see, but you might have asked.’

‘We might have asked,’ Neville conceded, ‘and you might have said no. And then where would we be?’

‘Well, I warned you, Nev, old chap, that jellyfish don’t take kindly to being removed from the sea. And the sort of salt we use isn’t the same. Goodbye, all. See you later. Thanks for the tea.’ Rupert kissed his son, ruffled his hair, and left.

‘Oh dear,’ said Villy, getting up. ‘I think I had better sort this out.’

Jessica and her eldest daughter were left among the tea-cups. Angela examined her nails, which were painted pale pink with the half-moons left carefully white. Jessica watched her for a moment, wondering what on earth went on in that shining and seemingly empty head.

Angela was repeating her dialogue with Rupert. ‘The same old me.’ He had kissed her cheek and said, ‘No. Not the same at all.’
He
, at any rate, noticed her. His admiration, which naturally he had had to conceal to some extent since they had not been alone, was none the less apparent. He’s really sweet, she thought, and went over it all again. Nothing could come of it, of course; he was married, but it was well known that married people fell in love with other people. She would have to be very strong, explain to him that she could not possibly do anything to hurt Aunt Zoë, and then he would love her more than ever. She expected it to be quite tragic and mark her for life, and was looking forward to it.

Simon had spent a wizard day with Teddy, who was not only two years older but in Simon’s view pretty marvellous in every way. In the morning they had played seventeen games of squash, until they were both so
boiling
they had to stop. They were fairly evenly matched: Teddy, being taller, had the longer reach, but Simon was very good at placing balls, in fact, potentially the better player. They played American scoring because the games, though sometimes longer, came to a predictable end, and part of the fun was to tell the grown-ups how many games they had played. ‘In
this
heat?’ their uncles and aunts and parents would say, and they would grin: they were impervious to heat. They had played in just their shorts and their tennis shoes until their hair was soaked and their faces were the colour of beetroot. Teddy won by two games – a respectable conclusion. They stopped, not because they were too hot, of course, but because they were starving, and it was half an hour till lunch, so they had a quick snack of motoring chocolate and tomatoes from the greenhouse. Teddy told Simon, who had good and awful reasons for wanting him to know, more about his new school at which Simon was to join him in the autumn. Everything that he said filled Simon with terror, which he concealed beneath a breezy interest. This morning the subject had been what happened to new boys and Simon had been told about them being strapped in a bath and the cold tap turned on very slowly and everybody going away and leaving them to drown. ‘And do they – often?’ he had asked with a thudding heart. ‘Oh, I don’t think
much
,’ Teddy had replied. ‘Someone usually comes back and turns off the taps and unties them.’
Usually!
The more he heard about it, the less Simon felt that he could possibly stand it, but in twenty-three days he would be there – in about fifty days, he might even be actually dead. Sometimes, he went to the really ghastly lengths of wishing he was a girl so that he wouldn’t have to face this frightful place that seemed to be full of awful rules that nobody told you till after you’d broken them and were in trouble, and trouble was a pretty mild word for it. Teddy, he felt, was unbelievably brave and probably could stand anything, whereas,
he
, who had felt homesick at Pinewood although it got better towards the end,
he knew
that it would start all over again in a new place: the feeling sick, and having nightmares, and forgetting things and having to rationalise how much he thought about home because it made him blub, and blubbing meant you got bullied, and then he got tummy aches and couldn’t stop going to the bog, and masters made sarcastic remarks and everybody laughed. Teddy would be senior to him and naturally couldn’t be his friend. Making friends with senior boys was completely out; they would call each other Cazalet and simply say hallo when they met, just as they had at Pinewood. Every night he prayed that something would happen so that he needn’t go, but he couldn’t think of anything much that that could be except scarlet fever or a war – and neither of them were in the least likely. The worst of it was that there was nobody to talk to about it: he knew exactly what Dad would say – that everybody went to public school, it was just one of those things, old man – and Mummy would say that she would miss him too, but he’d soon settle down, people did, and he had the holidays to look forward to, hadn’t he? Polly would be nice about it, but she didn’t know how awful it was as she was only a girl. And Teddy – how could he tell Teddy whose friendship he prized too deeply to incur scorn, which he was pretty sure Teddy would feel. In spite of this, he still managed to enjoy his holidays and even sometimes forgot next term, but it would suddenly come back without the slightest warning, like the lights fusing, and he would be sick with fear and wish that he could be dead before the end of September. However, he hadn’t felt bad all the morning playing squash, and when Teddy praised his corner shots he felt a little rush of happiness.