The Light Years (The Cazalet Chronicle) (44 page)

They all had dinner – fourteen of them round the immense three-pedestal table extended to its uttermost and even then they were crammed round it. They ate four roast chickens, bread sauce, mashed potato and runner beans followed by plum tart and what the Duchy called Shape – blancmange. The grown-ups drank claret and the children water. They talked about what they had done that day; the beach party – Rupert was very funny about Neville and his jellyfish.
‘Bexhill?’
said the Duchy, wiping her eyes (she always cried when she laughed). ‘What on earth made him call it Bexhill?’ Rupert, although he could think of little else, said nothing about the Brig’s offer to him. Edward recounted Teddy’s brilliant shot with the rabbit, and Teddy sat scarlet and smiling; naturally Edward said nothing about his telephone call. Hugh imitated his caddy imitating him playing golf with one hand; he said nothing about his political anxiety. Rachel described the nearly deaf, and, according to her, quite mad, President of the Babies’ Hotel conducting the meeting without having the slightest idea which charity he was presiding over. ‘He spent the first half-hour under the impression that it was the home for retired horses – it was only when he started on bran mashes and regular deworming that Matron realised that there was some mistake somewhere.’ She said nothing about her day with Sid about whom, with effort that gave her a headache, she had not wept in the train. The Brig told two long stories – one about when he was in Burma and met an extremely interesting chap who turned out to have known someone he’d met in Western Australia (coincidence, with which his long life seemed to have been fraught, never failed to amaze and confound him), and another about the Suez canal, and when Edward said yes, they’d heard it, he simply said never mind, he’d tell them again and did. This took a very long time, and not everybody even pretended to listen to him.

Zoë and Angela eyed one another: Zoë instantly realised that Angela was interested in Rupert and scrutinised her more carefully therefore. One had to admit that she was very pretty – for those who liked blondes with rather pale blue eyes. She was tall and large-boned, like her mother, with a long, very rounded white neck, which poor old Jessica’s certainly wasn’t any more. She had the same cheekbones as Jessica, and the same sculptured mouth, only hers was painted a rather bright pink which was coming off as she ate her dinner. She was certainly fascinated by Rupert, who seemed, thank goodness, entirely unaware of it, but she met Zoë’s eyes guilelessly. She’s only a schoolgirl, really, Zoë thought with a mixture of relief and contempt.

Angela, who had not seen Zoë for over two years, was confounded at how much the same she looked. She, Angela, had changed so much herself in that time that she assumed Zoë would have done so, but she showed no sign of ageing. She was just as glamorous and beautiful as ever, but from novels she had read, Angela knew that there was a very fair chance that she did not
understand
Rupert, in which case it would not matter what she looked like. The Brig finished his story; he did not mention his satisfaction in having built enough accommodation for his family, which, like the large number of hardwood logs he had bought for veneers, was just in case . . .

Christopher and Simon both spilled their water, and Simon some bread sauce, but nobody, Christopher noticed, was sarcastic about it. He met Simon’s eye when the bread sauce happened and gave him a sympathetic wink. Instantly, Simon decided that Christopher was the best egg in the room. And when the end of the holidays was mentioned – barely three weeks away now and Simon felt terror and despair engulfing him – he again saw Christopher’s face, noticing and minding. From that moment, Christopher became his hero. As he grinned and lied in response to Aunt Jessica’s idiotic question about was he looking forward to his new school (
forward!
) Christopher winked – which was a jolly kind thing to do.

Villy, who carved the chickens beautifully, giving everybody the right bits, apportioning the four wishbones between Teddy, Louise, Nora and Simon, did not say very much. Her peaceful afternoon with Jessica had left her feeling oddly drained: the weight of what had not been said – on her part, at least – lay heavily inside her like indigestion. She sensed that Jessica envied her, and longed to be able to tell her that the bed of roses contained thorns. That her sister clearly had too much to do was not, Villy felt, entirely unfortunate. Jessica did not have time to wonder what she was for, to be bored, and ashamed of it, to long for some cataclysmic event that would provide the opportunity to
do
something and therefore
be
somebody. But besides these general feelings about her life there was one particular fact that she had fully intended to discuss with Jessica, and then all the afternoon baulked because she was afraid that Jessica would be unsympathetic, for different reasons from those that she might expect from Sybil, for instance, or from Rachel . . . Rachel!
She
thought that anyone having a baby was the most marvellous thing that could happen. For that was it. She had missed one period, was coming up to the second and felt fairly certain that she was pregnant and the idea appalled her. She was forty-two, after all; she didn’t really want to start all over again, having what would amount to an only child – Lydia was seven. But what on earth did one
do
if one didn’t want a baby? She knew, of course, that there
were
people who did that sort of thing, but how on earth did one find them? She had thought of Hermione as a possible source of information, but she did not at all want to confide in her. Also, of course, she hadn’t
absolutely
made up her mind; she was clinging to the idea that she might easily be wrong. She decided to wait until she was due and if she missed again she would go to London and see Dr Ballater.

Nora, who was by nature greedy about food, decided to give up her second helping of plum tart for the glory of God. She did not decide this until she was half-way through her first delicious piece, then she could not help supposing that He would have been better pleased if she had not had any at all. ‘Eschewed it, instead of chewed it,’ she explained to Him (she was always trying to encourage His sense of humour). But surely He could see that until she knew how delicious it was, she wouldn’t have been making a
witting
sacrifice. But really that didn’t wash: food always was delicious at Home Place – it was like Sunday lunch at home every day. Mummy was a jolly good cook, of course: it was simply that she had less to cook
with,
and the other side of that was that opportunities for sacrifice were seldom come by. It was common sense to eat enough to keep alive, so she did. She felt that she was full of common sense, and longed to have more of the other kind, to be full of mystic certainties. She talked a good deal to God, but He hardly ever said anything back: she was beginning to be afraid that she bored Him, which would be pretty worrying, because as He was known not to mind what people looked like, it followed that He’d mind more than ever how they
were.
And boring was something Mummy has always told her one should never be. Christopher was eating her piece of tart, his third, but she knew how awfully hungry he got after he’d been sick, so she didn’t grudge him. Angie had eaten her fruit and left the pastry. Well, if He really didn’t mind what people looked like, God would have been bored with Angela. She looked across at Louise. They had spent a long fascinating afternoon in the hammocks together where a number of secrets had been exchanged, although there were still things that she had not yet confided, which was probably true of Louise also. In any case almost nothing that they had talked about was suitable for family public and they would be bound to shock their mothers, as, mad and extraordinary though it was, they still seemed to be widely regarded as the children.

By the time the plum tarts were entirely eaten, the younger members of the party longed to get down from the table: Simon and Christopher and Teddy because they couldn’t see the point of sitting at a table when you’d eaten everything on it; Louise and Nora, because they longed to resume their private conversation; and Angela, because she wanted Rupert to see more of her than he could when she was sitting down. The women, too, were ready to leave, since the Brig had embarked upon his distressingly lovely Stilton – Christopher thought it was unexpectedly kind of him to let the maggots go on eating at the same time – and his views about Mr Chamberlain whom he felt was nothing like so suitable a prime minister as Mr Baldwin, who should never have been kicked upstairs as he put it. The Duchy surprisingly said that she had never liked Mr Baldwin, but she certainly did not think that Mr Chamberlain was an improvement. Whereupon Rupert said. ‘Darling, you know you only
really
admire Toscanini and the great British public would never accept him for such a post, so you are doomed to disappointment,’ and before she could retort that even she was not so idiotic as that, the thunder that had been rumbling distantly at intervals suddenly crashed over their heads. Sybil started up to see if it had woken Wills, and this was a general signal for the women and children to leave the Brig and his sons to their port.

In the hall, they could hear the rain drumming on the skylight and a few moments later Louise and Nora, rooting about for macs they could borrow to run home in the rain, were met by Clary and Polly, drenched in their nightgowns. ‘Where
have
you been?’ asked Louise, but she knew really. Having a midnight feast somewhere or other, as she had done last year with Polly.

‘Having a midnight feast,’ said Polly. ‘Where are they all? We’ve got to get upstairs without them seeing us.’ She thought Louise sounded distressingly like them and easily might not help.

The rain stopped some time in the early morning and the day began with white fog. It was decreed not a day for the beach. Clary tried to whip the others into a state of indignation about this, but although there was a general agreement that it was jolly unfair, nobody seemed to mind enough to do anything. ‘Anyway, what could we do? We can’t drive cars,’ Polly pointed out. Aunt Rachel said that Mrs Cripps wanted a lot of blackberries for jelly, and whoever got the most would get a prize, so the seven older children set off with bowls and baskets. Bexhill had died in the night; Neville refused to believe Ellen, but Aunt Villy, when fetched to view the motionless white blob in the bath, said that she was afraid there was no doubt.

‘He wouldn’t have felt any pain, though, would he?’ said Judy earnestly. ‘Or
would
he?’

Villy quickly said that she was sure that he wouldn’t.

‘Then what
happened?
’ Neville demanded. ‘How did he simply stop being alive?’

‘He just gave up the ghost,’ Lydia said. ‘Died. It happens to everything.’ She looked rather frightened. ‘It’s a perfectly ordinary thing. Either you get murdered, or you simply die. You stop being around. You can’t do anything any more. You’re just like – breath.’

Those remarks were not reassuring anyone, Villy could see, so she suggested that they have a really good funeral. This seemed to cheer everybody up, and they spent the rest of the morning arranging it.

Mrs Cripps sat in her kitchen dispensing rock cakes to Tonbridge who had dropped in for middle mornings – his ulcer, enhanced by Mrs Tonbridge’s furiously fried breakfast, could only be assuaged by cake and a sympathetic ear. Mrs Cripps passed no remarks about Mrs Tonbridge but received the oblique information given about her with impassive interest that none the less contrived to show which side she was on.

‘It’s the quiet, you see. It gets on her nerves.’

‘I expect it would do.’ She spread the
Sunday Express
on her spotless table.
‘CRISIS OFF TILL A WEEK TOMORROW,’
it said.
‘NO SENSATIONS EXPECTED.’
She tipped a heap of runner beans out of the trug onto the paper. ‘Do you fancy another cup?’